1. Why did cattle trails start?• Ranchers in TX needed to sell

their cattle• People in the south couldn’t buy

them• People up north wanted beef• Texas ranchers took their cattle

up north where people would buy them.

• Lasted from about 1866-1890… then railroads and meat processing plants made them unnecessary

2. Most cattle trails started from…

3. Two popular cattle trails were

• Great Western Cattle Trail

• Chisholm Trail

4. Great Western Cattle Trail Facts

• Longest cattle trail

• Went from Texas to Canada

5. Chisholm Trail Facts

• Went from Texas to Kansas

• Named for Jesse Chisholm, who marked out the route but died in 1868, too soon to ever drive cattle on the trail! How ironic!

6. Who were the black cowboys?• During the Civil War, many Texas ranchers left

their slaves in charge of running their ranches while they fought the war.

• These slaves learned how to run the business of ranching and became VERY good at working with cattle.

• (Barbed wire was not invented yet, so they had to be very good at rounding up cattle who were trying to wander away.)

• When the Civil War ended and slavery was outlawed, many of the former rancher slaves worked as cowboys on the cattle trails.

7. Why did plantation

owners prefer former slaves from Ghana

and Gambia?

• They were already skilled in herding animals

8. Two jobs black cowboys had to do while traveling on the cattle

trails were:

• Horse wrangler

• Cook

• (These were the jobs with the least recognition.)

9. Black cowboys are just now getting the recognition they deserve because

• Historians and artists of the time were prejudiced and chose to exclude them.