West African herding knowledge
Fulani and Senegambian herdsmen stand at the opening of this history. Their cattle knowledge and labor traditions provide essential context for the making of ranching cultures across the Atlantic world.
Sluyter, 2015.
Timeline · an evolving record
The cattle frontier began long before the open range.
This evolving chronology follows the knowledge, labor, and movement that shaped cattle culture across the Atlantic world. It begins with West African pastoral traditions, then traces the routes that made Black cowboy history inseparable from the history of the Americas.
Scroll through the chronology
Start here
West African foundations
Fulani and Senegambian herding traditions form a vital starting point for understanding the cattle knowledge carried into the Americas. This timeline places those histories before the nineteenth-century Texas frontier, where Black cowboys' work would later be made visible—and too often left out of the record.
Andrew Sluyter, “How Africans and Their Descendants Participated in Establishing Open-Range Cattle Ranching in the Americas,” Environment and History, 2015.
Chronology
This is a growing research timeline. Dates and descriptions are being expanded with verified citations and archival records.
Before 1493
1493
Cattle reach Hispaniola
Christopher Columbus introduces cattle to Hispaniola during his second voyage, launching the first open-range ranching frontier in the Americas.
Sluyter, 2015.
1521
Cattle arrive in New Spain
Cattle are introduced to mainland New Spain, in what is now Mexico. Herders initially use the desjarretadera, or hock cutter, to hunt feral herds.
Sluyter, 2015.
1493
Cattle enter the Americas
Christopher Columbus’s second voyage is traditionally understood as the point when the first cattle arrived in the Americas.
Puiu, 2023, reporting Delsol et al., 2023.
Early 1500s
A small European founding herd
Spanish expeditions bring additional European cattle, including black Andalusian and piebald berrenda breeds. For centuries, historians largely assumed that later American herds descended only from this small European founding population.
Puiu, 2023, reporting Delsol et al., 2023.
1521
Cattle arrive in Florida
Spanish explorers introduce cattle to the colony of Florida. The early stock-raising venture fails, and abandoned herds multiply over time.
Kersting, 2012.
Early 1600s
African cattle and herding expertise shape ranching
A cow bone later recovered in what is now Mexico City carried an exclusively African genetic signature, showing African cattle had arrived more than a century before surviving written records documented their import. Spanish and Portuguese colonizers relied on coerced African labor and targeted pastoralist communities with deep cattle knowledge, including Fulani herders. In Mexico and the Caribbean, African-descended ranchers and cowboys helped establish cattle work, including horseback herding and lasso practice.
Puiu, 2023, reporting Delsol et al., 2023; Sluyter, 2015.
1531–1650
Senegambian herders in Central America
An estimated 35,430 Senegambian herders disembark in Spanish Central America. Hundreds bring expertise in Sahelian open-range cattle practices.
Sluyter, 2015.
1537
Mexico City establishes the Mesta
Mexico City’s municipal council establishes the Mesta, regulating conflicts among livestock herders through an initial code of 17 ordinances.
Sluyter, 2015.
1574
The desjarretadera is criminalized
Viceroy Martín Enríquez de Almanza expands the Mesta code to 83 ordinances and criminalizes the desjarretadera to protect female breeding cattle. Racially unequal punishments for non-white people carrying the tool create strong pressure for Black vaqueros to develop non-lethal ways to catch cattle.
Sluyter, 2015.
1643
Mounted lassoing documented
Gregorio de Tapia y Salzedo publishes Ejercicios de la Gineta in Madrid, recording an equestrian display in which Afro-descended “creole slaves from the Americas” demonstrate an innovative mounted lassoing technique before European royalty.
Sluyter, 2015.
17th century
Horses reshape Plains life
Plains Indian communities acquire horses from feral herds introduced by Spanish colonizers, supporting a major cultural and economic transformation centered on horse-bound bison hunting.
Kersting, 2012.
1712
A water-lifting parallel
Engelbert Kaempfer publishes Amoenitatum Exoticarum, illustrating Persian water hoists with a design closely resembling the balde sin fondo, or bottomless bucket.
Sluyter, 2015.
1800–1806
Senegambian expertise reaches the Río de la Plata
An influx of 2,175 Senegambians arrives through the slave trade in the Río de la Plata region, bringing West African knowledge of supplying water during cattle drives across arid terrain.
Sluyter, 2015.
1813
Argentina begins ending the transatlantic slave trade
Argentina’s revolutionary government passes legislation to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, beginning a long decline in the Afro-Argentine population.
Sluyter, 2015.
August 1815
African-descended ranch workers in the Pampas
A rural Pampas census finds Africans and their descendants comprise 13.6% of the population; most are owned by ranchers and work as cattle herders.
Sluyter, 2015.
1820s
The bottomless bucket changes ranching
As Argentine ranching reaches arid pastures far from rivers, the balde sin fondo emerges as an efficient water-lifting device, enabling one mounted rider to water as many as 2,000 cattle a day.
Sluyter, 2015.
November–December 1826
Lanuza receives a patent
Vicente Lanuza applies for and receives a four-year Buenos Aires patent for the bottomless bucket. The reviewing commission notes that the design “is not a new idea,” while recognizing its local usefulness.
Sluyter, 2015.
March 1827
Ranchers copy the bucket design
Lanuza reports that ranchers across the Pampas are copying the bottomless bucket without licensing it. Authorities do not enforce the patent; the simple leather buckets can be easily hidden.
Sluyter, 2015.
1853
An elite attribution enters print
Engineer Carlos Pellegrini credits Lanuza with inventing the balde sin fondo in Revista del Plata, beginning a long tradition of attributing Afro-descended ranching innovations to elite white figures.
Sluyter, 2015.
1820s
A Texas herding culture takes shape
Anglo-American settlers move into East Texas, where Anglo herding practices meet Spanish-Mexican vaquero traditions.
Kersting, 2012.
1839
Jim Kelly is born
James “Jim” Kelly is born in Williamson County, Texas, to Amos and Phoebe Kelly, formerly enslaved people who work for the Olive ranching family.
Davis, 2019.
Mid-19th century
Black cowboys in Texas
In key ranching regions, African Americans comprise a major share of the cowboy workforce. In Texas, the research points to Black cowboys as a majority in important cattle-work settings during this period.
Puiu, 2023; Davis, 2019.
1854
Nat Love is born
Nat Love, later celebrated as the cowboy “Deadwood Dick,” is born into slavery in Tennessee.
Davis, 2019.
Late 19th–early 20th century
Bill Pickett develops bulldogging
Rodeo performer Bill Pickett develops “bulldogging,” a steer-wrestling technique that became the direct precursor to the modern rodeo event.
Archive research; date to be refined with verified record.
1861
Argentina abolishes slavery nationwide
Argentina abolishes slavery nationwide through the Bonaerense ratification of the constitution, while Afro-Argentine contributions to ranching technology remain marginalized in official history.
Sluyter, 2015.
1880s
Windmills displace manual water lifting
Pampas ranchers begin importing American windmills, making manual water-lifting devices increasingly obsolete by the early twentieth century.
Sluyter, 2015.
1865–1890
Emancipation and cattle drives
The era of the Texas open range coincides with an expanded demand for skilled cattle labor. Newly emancipated African Americans become central to moving cattle north to railheads.
Davis, 2019.
1866–1884
The height of the trail era
Cowboys drive millions of Texas cattle north. Estimates cited in the research describe substantial Black and Mexican participation among trail drivers.
Davis, 2019.
1869
Nat Love heads west
At age fifteen, Nat Love leaves Tennessee for opportunities on the western frontier.
Davis, 2019.
July 4, 1876
“Deadwood Dick”
Nat Love wins a rodeo in Deadwood, South Dakota, earning the name “Deadwood Dick.”
Davis, 2019.
1886
Tom Mills leads a Texas ranch
Formerly enslaved cowboy Tom Mills manages a ranch in Kerr County, Texas, serving as boss for two years.
Davis, 2019.
1890s
An industry changes
Barbed wire and restricted access to grazing land accelerate the decline of the open range cattle industry. Nat Love leaves cowboy work and becomes a Pullman porter.
Davis, 2019.
1907
Nat Love publishes his story
Nat Love publishes The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, preserving one of the best-known autobiographical accounts of Black cowboy life.
Davis, 2019.
October 2, 2023
DNA research revises the record
Research by archaeozoologist Nicolas Delsol and collaborators on a 400-year-old Mexico City cow bone is published in Scientific Reports. The African genetic signature revises longstanding narratives of how cattle and ranching knowledge moved through the Americas.
Delsol et al., Scientific Reports, 2023; Puiu, 2023.
Sources in this first build
Built from the archive’s research library
This first pass draws from scholarly works currently available through the research library, alongside contextual reporting on recently published archaeozoological research. Each timeline entry identifies its supporting work; source details will continue to be refined as archival records are verified.
- Davis, Ronald Wendell II. “If it wasn’t for my damned old black face I’d have been boss”: Black Cowboys in Texas from 1865 to 1890. Master’s report, The University of Texas at Austin, 2019.
- Kersting, Dulce L. Diversity on the Open Range: Exploring the Experiences of Minority Cowboys During the Nineteenth Century. Report for Grant-Kohrs National Historic Site and the 2012 Jerry O’Neal Fellowship, 2012.
- Puiu, Tibi. “400-Year-Old Cow Bones Reveal Forgotten African Roots of American Cowboys.” ZME Science, October 2, 2023. https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/400-year-old-cow-bones-reveal-forgotten-african-roots-of-american-cowboys
- Sluyter, Andrew. “How Africans and Their Descendants Participated in Establishing Open-Range Cattle Ranching in the Americas.” Environment and History 21, no. 1 (February 2015): 77–101. https://doi.org/10.3197/096734015X14183179969782.