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who were the human inhabitants of
the prairie biomes, declaring war
upon them and forcing them onto
reservations. As a result of the Indian
Removal Act, between 1830 and 1850
thousands of people belonging to the
Cherokee, Choctaw and Seminole
tribes trekked the “Trail of Tears”
from Florida and the Gulf Coast
states westward across the Mississippi
into the Oklahoma Territory. In the
decades bracketing the Civil War,
signifi cant confl ict erupted everywhere
Anglo-Americans came to settle, with
the most severe and prolonged Indian
wars occurring in areas bordering
Mexico in California, Arizona, New
Mexico and Texas.OLD TEXAS RANCHOS
Armed confl ict between settlers
and Apaches, Comanches, Karankawas
and other tribes began in Texas as
soon as Spanish colonists from Mexico
forded the Rio Grande in the late 17th
century. In an effort to increase the
population, in 1731 the governor of
México sponsored the immigration of
Isleños---16 families from the Canary
Islands---to the Province of Téjas. At the
Presidio of San Antonio de Béxar they
established a community that soon
became the largest in the region.
Fifty years later, one Juan Ignacio
Pérez, an Isleño descendant, received
a Spanish grant of land along San
Antonio’s Medina River. He built a
large house, workers’ quarters and
corrals for horses and cattle. Using
native stone, timber and adobe, he
built walls that were tall, thick and
strong, for Indian attacks remained
a constant threat. Pérez’s rancho lay
a full day’s ride from San Antonio,
and thus, as historian Jason Weston
observes, it “was perched on the edgeThe American Quarter Horse
Association (AQHA) was still more
than 30 years in the future when
this Erwin Smith image of a JA
cowhand was taken in 1908. There
were no Quarter Horses in America
at this time, but their ancestors
the Billys were common in Texas.
This cowhand’s mount is a Cayuse,
a mixture of Billy and mustang
with possibly a little government-
remount Thoroughbred thrown
in. Old “A-fork” Western saddles
were made to fit these narrow-
bodied horses; they will not fit the
modern wide-body model that the
Quarter Horse has become.
JA ranch
foreman “Boney”
Caldwell in an
Erwin Smith
image of 1908.
His horse is
of a little finer
type, reflecting
Thoroughbred or
possibly Peter
McCue breeding.biome. Plowed farmland cut across
migrational pathways that had been
established since the end of the last
Ice Age. Plowing permitted inroads
by mammal and bird species that
had not previously been found on
the prairie, while contributing to the
extinction of others. It also exposed
soil to wind erosion, culminating in
the great dust storms of the 1930s,
when it is estimated that 75 percent
of prairie topsoil was blown into the
Gulf of Mexico. Today, more than
90 percent of the original tallgrass
prairie in provinces and states from
Saskatchewan south to Arkansas lies
under cultivation (mostly corn and
soybeans), while a little farther west,
the soil in 50 percent of the shortgrass
prairie from Alberta to Texas has been
turned over (mostly to wheat).
In the decades leading up to the
Civil War, Congress dealt harshly and
sometimes dishonestly with the tribes