I only wonder why John Cannon chose to settle in such an area? The hot Arizona desert couldn't even be the best place to raise cattle? You can't farm it. Mostly Indians and Mexicans...?
shareOpen land, free for the taking... you know, if you ignore the native Americans already living there, but that's a subject for another day.
~ the hardest thing in this world... is to live in it ~
I agree. Raising cattle in the desert is an ecological disaster. They eat too much and drink too much and their ma nure sprouts plants they won't eat. What you want is sheep. The Navajos raise fine sheep with excellent wool. The Apaches had the more ecologically sound way of life in southern Arizona Territory.
Surely the land wasn't free. It came with a house and cattle. Better homesteading land was available on the Great Plains but you could also utilize the still open range land. After the Civil War there were cattle free for the taking in Texas that were herded on north to fatten and then they were sent east to slaughter. If you married a Native American, you would also have rights to graze on reservation land.
If you were going to travel a thousand miles in the post Civil War era to find a new home, life was far sweeter in Dakota Territory, or indeed almost anywhere on the mid to northern Great Plains, than near Tucson.
I agree. Raising cattle in the desert is an ecological disaster. They eat too much and drink too much and their ma nure sprouts plants they won't eat. What you want is sheep. The Navajos raise fine sheep with excellent wool. The Apaches had the more ecologically sound way of life in southern Arizona Territory.
Surely the land wasn't free. It came with a house and cattle. Better homesteading land was available on the Great Plains but you could also utilize the still open range land. After the Civil War there were cattle free for the taking in Texas that were herded on north to fatten and then they were sent east to slaughter. If you married a Native American, you would also have rights to graze on reservation land.
If you were going to travel a thousand miles in the post Civil War era to find a new home, life was far sweeter in Dakota Territory, or indeed almost anywhere on the mid to northern Great Plains, than near Tucson.