frontier of American story.

But for long there was no sign of permanent settlement on the
Plains, and no one thought of this region as the frontier. The
men there who were prospecting and exploiting were classified as
no more than adventurers. No one seems to have taken a lesson
from the Indian and the buffalo. The reports of Fremont long
since had called attention to the nourishing quality of those
grasses of the high country, but the day of the cowboy had not
yet dawned. There is a somewhat feeble story which runs to the
effect that in 1866 one of the great wagon-trains, caught by the
early snows of winter, was obliged to abandon its oxen on the
range. It was supposed that, of course, the oxen must perish
during the winter. But next spring the owners were surprised to
find that the oxen, so far from perishing, had flourished very
much--indeed, were fat and in good condition. So runs the story
which is often repeated. It may be true, but to accredit to this
incident the beginnings of the cattle industry in the Indian
country would surely be going too far. The truth is that the cow
industry was not a Saxon discovery. It was a Latin enterprise,
flourishing in Mexico long before the first of these miners and
adventurers came on the range.

Something was known of the Spanish lands to the south through the
explorations of Pike, but more through the commerce of the
prairies--the old wagon trade from the Missouri River to the
Spanish cities of Sante Fe and Chihuahua. Now the cow business,
south of the Rio Grande, was already well differentiated and
developed at the time the first adventurers from the United
States went into Texas and began to crowd their Latin neighbors