But They're Only Sheep

 

 

 

First, a film recommendation – “The Sheep Detectives” based on the bestselling book “Three Bags Full – A Sheep Detective Story.”  Without giving too much away let’s just say that it confirms everything we’ve come to believe about these gentle, wool-producing ovine since getting to know them over the past eight years at El Rancho de las Golondrinas living history museum here in Santa Fe.

The museum sheep are “Churro” (Spanish “Churra” altered by American frontiersmen)  –  valued for their hardiness, adaptability and fertility coupled with milk, meat and coarse wool especially good for rugs, blankets, rebozos (shawls) and serapes.   The “first breed of domesticated sheep in the New World.” (theethnichome.com)  The namesake fried-dough pastry is so-called for its resemblance to the sheep’s curly wool.  The other major Spanish breed, Merino, produces a finer wool but could not tolerate the harsh, arid climate of Nuevo Méjico.

Christopher Columbus verified their viability as a food source on his second voyage in 1493.  (The animals, not the donuts.)  In 1519 Hernán Cortés fed his troops with them during his conquest of the Aztec Empire.  And Francisco Coronado did the same in the 1540s on his fruitless, two-year, 4,000 mile search for the mythical Seven Cities of Gold – but his herd of 5,000 could not keep up the pace and were dispersed and stashed in several places during his expedition.  Hundreds strayed off and went feral.

Churra, 2500 of them, were permanently introduced to Nuevo Mexico in 1598 by Juan de Onate along with 850 goats, 200 oxen, 320 horses, 40 mules, 50 hogs, 500 calves, 800 cattle and 400-500 settlers & soldiers. The Spanish forced enslaved Pueblo Natives to herd the sheep and weave textiles that were traded back to Spain through Mexico – the first sheep-to-shawl sweatshop in the New World.  

Money was not yet a thing, so sheep functioned as the region's primary medium of exchange.   Most were owned by wealthy landowners (“ricos”) who built massive flocks and loaned them to smaller farmers under the “partido” system wherein the borrower tended the flock and paid the owner an annual percentage ( normally 20%) in wool or lambs, then returned the original number of sheep after 3 to 5 years.  Thousands of sheep were driven 1,600 miles south along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro to feed silver and gold miners in Chihuahua and Durango Mexico.  “In good years as many as 500,000 of the animals.” (terrapatrefarms.com)

Meanwhile, through “raiding-and-trading” (a common economic system of the time) the Navajo and Apache acquired their own Churra.  The Apache used them for food.  The Navajo bred them and switched from cotton to wool for their weaving.  (The cotton came through barter with their Puebloan and Hopi neighbors.)  The change transformed the tribe from nomadic hunter-gatherers to a sedentary, pastoral society.  “Dibé bé iiná” (“sheep is life”) describes the cultural, spiritual, and historical significance of the animals to the Navajo people. 

The opening of the Santa Fe Trail (1821) and coming of the railroads (1878) shifted the sheep industry to large-scale, heavily-capitalized wool production with well-financed Anglo-Americans joining forces to compete with the rico Hispanic sheepmen.   In the mid-1800s these capitalists made huge profits selling Churro mutton to California gold miners and Colorado silver miners.   By the late 19th century the gold/silver rushes were over and their business model shifted to wool instead of meat.  They crossbred the Churro with Merino and Rambouillet rams imported from the East and Midwest to produce a finer more delicate fiber.  It was impossible to manually weave the amount of fiber now being produced and New Mexico lacked the factories to process it.  Instead it was packed into 400-pound burlap sacks and shipped to New England. where the world’s largest textile mills operated.  While New Mexico became the biggest producer of sheep and wool in the country.    

Another Anglo-American making money off the Churro’s backs was Kit Carson – a master of what we today call the “gig economy.”  In addition to being a part-time frontiersman and Army scout, in 1853 he and some business partners purchased 6,500 of the sheep, which Kit drove to California and sold for a major profit.  Ten years later the U.S. government employed Carson to “scorch earth” the Navajo's crops, peach orchards and livestock, then force-march the starving Natives on the “Long Walk” to internment at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico.  Several Navajo however took shelter with their flocks in the mountains and valleys saving the breed from extinction.

So what about the 500 calves, and 800 cattle that Onate brought on his colonizing expedition?  According to historian Marc Simmons, “why did the New Mexicans abandon their cows and become wool-raisers? … hostile Indians in their raids preferred to steal cattle, since they were easy to drive long distances.  Only the Navajos were interested in sheep, and while they stole large numbers to build up their own flocks, the thefts put only a small dent in the total held by New Mexicans.  [Also] by the 1700s the majority of New Mexicans lived … on small subsistence farms. Their fields were unfenced and it was fairly simple to keep sheep away from the crops, since shepherds were with them all the time.  Cattle, however, were usually turned out to fend for themselves and they had a long history of getting into the farmer’s plot and eating up his winter supply of grain.”

When New Mexico became a U.S Territory, Anglo-Americans from Texas and the East began grazing beef cattle on the nutritious grass that then covered much of the area, ranching vast herds that they sold to the federal government to feed soldiers at Army forts and Indians on reservations.  While the owners of the ranches were predominately Anglos, their cowboys included large numbers of African Americans as well as Native Americans, and Hispanic New Mexicans.

“Conditions for raising cattle changed dramatically, however, when the Santa Fe Railroad [came] into the Territory in 1879 [providing] the means to ship cattle to slaughterhouses in Kansas City and Chicago that processed beef for the burgeoning population of the eastern seaboard …  large herds of Texas longhorns were driven onto New Mexico’s public domain and a period of open range ranching that extended for the next 20 years.” (nmfarmandranchmuseum.org)

Pastureland was first-come, first-served with range-wars erupting between nomadic sheepmen and cattle ranchers who claimed sheep destroyed the grass, ruined watering holes and left an odor that deterred cattle from grazing.  Flocks were slaughtered and human lives taken. Overgrazing plus severe droughts threatened the entire rangeland ecosystem.  To stabilize the situation Congress passed the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 establishing districts managed by what became the Bureau of Land Management. 

The act favored cattle over sheep operations.  Only owners of private land or water rights were allowed to secure a grazing permit.  Because most of the sheepherders were still operating under the partido system the herders walked vast distances across open, unfenced rangeland to raise and fatten the flocks.  The Navajo also moved their flocks across vast stretches of tribal and open-land to graze.  Many rico sheep owners transitioned into cattle operations to take advantage of the permit.

In 1933, the U.S. government decided to drastically downsize the massive Navajo herds – 1.5 to 2 million head across New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.  Begun as a voluntary buy-back program it quickly turned into mandatory, forced killings as Federal Agents shot and burned hundreds of thousands of sheep, destroying the pastoral economy of the Navajo and again causing widespread starvation.  The Navajo call this the “Second Long Walk.”  Once again some took shelter in the mountains and valleys with their sheep thereby saving Navajo-Churro sheep from extinction.

By mid-20th century the domestic demand for lamb dropped significantly in favor of beef – and the rapid rise of cheap synthetics greatly reduced the global demand for natural wool. By century’s end sheep populations plunged from historically high millions to record lows.  Organizations such as the Navajo-Churro Sheep Association were formed to save the strain from extinction.  Today there are an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 alive in North America. 

The Churro have been witnesses to, or participants in basically every significant chapter of New Mexico history.  As historian Winifred Kupper wrote, “Sheep were the real conquerors of the Southwest.” 

At las Golondrinas we talk about that legacy while showing off the museum’s small herd of ≈30 to our guests.  Frequently the sheep will stop whatever they are doing, saunter over and connect eyes with their audience – occasionally contributing a “baa” or two to the conversation.  When the talk is over they return to their previous activities.  

In the Sheep Detectives George Hardy is a shepherd who loves to read murder mysteries out loud to his flock.  “I like to pretend that they follow along, but, they're only sheep,” he explains.  We and many of our museum guests share that same ambivalent point of view about our own Churro-adjacent history conversations.  

Wishful thinking?  

Before you judge, see the movie.  Or better yet read the book – either by yourself or aloud to your nearest neighboring sheep.

And while you’re doing that we’ll be trying to find out what happened to those fugitive Churras from Coronado’s expedition – “The Sheep Defectors.”