Hopkins Jr., John A

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Volume 11 | Number 7 Article 3
7-1-1930
The Passing of the Herds
John A. Hopkins Jr.
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Hopkins Jr., John A. "The Passing of the Herds." The Palimpsest 11 (1930), 282-291.
Available at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/palimpsest/vol11/iss7/3
The P assing o f the H erds
Whenever a group of old Iowa settlers get to­
gether the chances are that sooner or later the con­
versation Avill turn to the herds of cattle that mark­
ed the first use of the prairies of Iowa by the white 
man. These herds appeared at the beginning of 
settlement, and from that time until about 1890 cat­
tle were herded on such land as had not yet been 
taken into farms.
In the southeastern part of the State settlement 
progressed so rapidly that the herds lasted but a 
short time. To the west and north there was a 
longer period during which sections of land were 
still available for grazing, and consequently herd­
ing lasted longer. Settlement progressed across the 
State from southeast to northwest so that the same 
stage of development appeared from thirty to forty 
years apart in different sections of the State.
In Wapello County there were herds in the late 
fifties, but only for a few years, until settlement 
took up all the available grazing land. In Jasper 
County there were enough cattle to start herding 
between 1860 and 1862. Immediately after this, set­
tlement was greatly slowed down for four years dur­
ing the Civil War. In the late sixties there was 
still a good deal of unused land in Delaware County, 
but there seem to have been but few regular herds
282
I
THE PASSING OF THE HERDS 283
on it. For the most part the cattle there ran loose 
on the prairie.
About 1870 the business of herding began to be 
more highly developed and herds were organized 
cooperatively by settlers in the older sections to 
make use of the free pasture still available for a 
good many miles to the west and north. In the 
Iowa Homestead in 1872 it was said: “ Stock can be 
herded anywhere in the state, by good reliable herds­
men, at a cost not to exceed $2.00 per head for the 
season. In such case they can be salted and cared 
for, and be subject to the inspection of the owner 
at any time; while if turned loose, on the prairie, 
the time spent in hunting, together with the loss by 
straying, would amount to more than two dollars 
per head. . . . This is now becoming the practice 
in many counties where farmers have not range 
left in the vicinity of their home.”
In Black Hawk County there were a few herds in 
the sixties, but during the seventies herding came 
to an end and cattle were driven from the neighbor­
hood of Cedar Falls to Cerro Gordo and Kossuth 
counties for summer pasturing. Between 1875 and 
1880 the same process of transition from keeping 
herds near home to driving them farther northwest 
was in progress in Lucas County and somewhat 
farther to the west along the Mormon Trail. In 1880 
herds were being driven west and north irom Fre­
mont, Cass, and Dallas counties as well as from 
Black Hawk. By 1885 most of the land that was
284 THE PALIMPSEST
not already in homesteads was being used for graz­
ing by these herds, and the new comers generally 
had a hard time finding pastures. In the north­
western part of the State public land was available 
longer, and there a few herds were still to be found 
in 1890.
The herds were made up in the spring as soon as 
there was pasture, and were driven to the grazing 
ground. There the herder usually had a shack in 
which to live. He tended the herd on horseback 
during the day and generally, though not always, 
corralled the cattle at night to prevent straying.
Herds numbered from one to two hundred head. 
Sometimes they were much larger, and herds of four 
to six hundred were not rare. The herder who 
received from $1.50 to $2.00 per head per season, 
was fairly well off for a working man. In addition 
to these wages he often owned some of the cattle 
in the herd himself, if he were ambitious. There 
was a real opportunity in the business which some 
of the herders used to good advantage.
In 1879 Robison Baxter bought up a hundred 
calves in and around Delaware County and drove 
them to Ida County where he had recently settled. 
In addition to these he collected a large herd of 
cattle from the farmers of Ida County and tended 
them with the help of one other man. At one time 
the whole herd amounted to nearly fifteen hundred 
head. The Delaware County calves were run with the 
herd at very little expense until they were four years
TIIE PASSING OF TIIE HERDS 285
old. Baxter was unusually fortunate because these 
calves were sold during the period ot high cattle 
prices in 1883 at $6.50 per hundred pounds, bringing 
nearly $100 per head.
In all sections of Iowa it was realized that the 
practice of herding was to be shortlived and would 
come to an end as soon as enough settlers appeared 
to take most of the land into farms. The herds 
simply withdrew from each section as settlers 
moved in. But on the actual frontier of settlement 
there was frequently a conflict between herders and 
settlers whose crops were injured by the herds. In 
most counties, also, there was at some time a politi­
cal battle for the adoption of the herd or fence law.
Along with the crops came fences. Strange as it 
may now seem, fencing was a much debated question 
in Iowa in the early years of its settlement. In the 
first place fencing material was scarce and expen­
sive. Consequently there was an incentive to use 
it as sparingly as possible. As a general thing the 
men whose chief interest was in cattle felt little 
need for fencing. It was cheaper for them to herd 
their cattle or else to turn them loose on the prairie 
and round them up from time to time, at least in the 
fall.
On the other hand the small settler was ordi­
narily poor and did not have enough capital to own 
very many cattle. He was forced to get most of his 
income from crops or at least to raise as many acres 
of crops as he could handle. If a near-by herder was
286 THE PALIMPSEST
careless of his charges for a single night the settler 
might wake up in the morning to find the greater 
part of his season’s crop trampled down or eaten 
off. Consequently fencing of some sort was essen­
tial to the settlers, but it was a matter of consider­
able debate whether it was most economical to put 
the fence around the pasture to keep the cattle in or 
to put it around the crops to keep the stock out.
The lack of fences in the early communities was a 
serious obstacle to the improvement of the stock. 
In 1865 H. B. Hoyt said, “ Until we have a more 
stringent law in regard to male animals roaming at 
large, those who would improve their stock, can­
not.” Consequently most of the more progressive 
farmers were heartily in favor of a law to compel 
herding or fencing, and preferably the latter.
But the argument was not all on one side. There 
were those who had invested what little capital they 
had in cattle. They soon discovered that the “ poor 
man’s rights” were being invaded. It was said by 
Warren Spurrier of Johnson County in a debate in 
the “ Farmer’s Club” of the legislature, “ The poor 
man with eighty acres of land can keep as many cat­
tle as the man with his many sections, as long as he 
is not required to fence them in.”
J. W. Cessna of Nevada said in the Iowa Home­
stead that the free pasture would be lost by the herd 
law, to the serious injury of the man of moderate 
means. “ As it is he can invest every spare dollar 
in young stock, turn them out on the unbounded
THE PASSING OF THE HERDS 287
pastures of Iowa, and by a few dollars thus expend­
ed, he would receive a greater return with less labor 
than from all the rest of his farm. But deprive him 
of this privilege by your herd laws, and compel him 
to herd his cattle through thick and thin, at cost 
of $2.00 per head, and you have taken away one of 
the greatest inducements to men of small capital, in 
the East, to emigrate to Iowa.”
In 1871 it was said concerning cattle running at 
large that “ it is a part of our peculiar civilization 
which demands that stock shall be free commoners, 
and any law to the contrary will work an injury in­
stead of a blessing.”
As the State filled up with settlers the arguments 
in favor of the herd law increased in number and 
urgency. Consequently in 1870 the legislature 
passed a law making owners of live stock running at 
large liable for any damage done by them. The 
owner of any cultivated land was given a lien on any 
wandering stock, and means were provided by which 
he could collect from the owner for any damage 
done. The enforcement of the law was left to local 
option.
The board of supervisors of each county was 
given authority to determine each year whether the 
county should vote on the adoption of the law. In 
1872 the local option feature was extended to the 
township, which was to vote on adoption oi a peti­
tion signed by one-third of the voters of the town­
ship. In 1874 the features of the law were extended
288 THE PALIMPSEST
so that on a petition signed by one-fourth of the 
voters of a county, or on their own initiative, the 
county supervisors might submit to a vote the re­
straining of stock from running at large, or of re­
straining them between sunset and sunrise, or be­
tween such dates as might be named in the ballot.
The local option feature did not seem to please 
any one very much. “ In many cases adjoining 
counties voted in opposite directions upon it, and 
the border wars which have ensued, make matters 
worse than before. We have need of a general 
statute or nothing, and it is the duty of our repre­
sentatives to put this matter at rest this winter. 
Petitions for such a law will not be wanting; the 
whole bent and tendency of civilization is in its 
favor, and there is nothing opposed to it but the ves­
tiges of a very early condition of things, which still 
lingers about the timber, and looks with ill concealed 
dislike upon those who are toiling to make homes 
upon the prairie, and by making them are ‘spiling 
the range’.
“ What more direct argument in favor of the herd 
law, in an economic point of view, personal to every 
farmer in the northwest, are the columns of the 
Homestead tilled as they are every week with estrav 
notices of cattle and horses which have been turned 
into space in the fashion common here, and who 
have wandered aimlessly off, to be recovered only at 
an expense, as often as any way, equal to their 
value. ’ ’
THE PASSING OF THE HERDS 289
On tlie whole, it seems that the local option fea­
ture was at this time one of the most valuable fea­
tures of the law. Some sections of the State were 
already well settled and in need of the protection to 
crops which the herd law gave. In other sections, 
still relatively unsettled, there were two reasons 
for leaving the prairies unfenced. In the first place, 
it was cheaper to fence the few small areas in crops. 
In the second, to compel the fencing of the pastures 
would have diverted an important part of the scarce 
capital of the owners of live stock into a relatively 
less productive use than the enlargement of their 
herds. Thus the herd law moved westward along 
with increasing density of settlement.
In the eastern and central parts of Iowa there 
was but little conflict between the settlers and the 
herders. Of course, a large number, perhaps most 
of the herds, were cooperative and belonged to the 
settlers. But even the herds owned by cattle men 
rather than farmers generally moved whenever set­
tlers became numerous. As long as they could se­
cure other grazing land at little or no cost there 
was no reason for their staying in a neighborhood 
where their cattle were likely to stray into settlers’ 
crops and cause unpleasantness.
Even the much discussed fence laws were not 
aimed at the herds which were regularly tended on 
the prairies, but rather at the straying cattle of 
other settlers who did not bother to fence them in. 
However, the fence laws put the herders at a disad-
290 THE PALIMPSEST
vantage to some extent by forcing a closer watch 
of the stock and by putting the responsibility more 
definitely on the herders. Consequently the business 
came to have more and more unpleasant features as 
time passed.
The settlers, protected by the fence laws, and with 
a growing sentiment against live stock running at 
large, were inclined to plant their crops with little 
or no fence. If the cattle of a near-by herd wander­
ed into a settler’s corn field the peace of the neigh­
borhood was pretty likely to be broken. If a herder 
unwittingly drove his herd into a patch of wild hay 
that a settler intended to cut for his winter’s forage, 
an argument was likely to occur in which each party 
considered himself fully in the right.
This was by no means a new cause of trouble in 
the settlement of the country. In the early settle­
ment of New England it is said that the straying of 
cattle from the settlements into the Indian’s corn 
fields was among the most frequent causes of 
trouble. The Indian liked beef as well as venison, 
however, and had less compunction about shooting 
the trespassing cow than did the white settler in 
Iowa over two hundred years later.
In Iowa the herders and the settlers seemed to 
come into actual conflict only in the last years ot 
herding. At this time, however, the relationship be­
tween the adherents of the two systems of produc­
tion became very unpleasant. In Pottawattamie 
County during the late seventies and early eighties
THE PASSING OF THE HERDS 291
encounters occurred between armed groups of set­
tlers and herders whose cattle had ranged over the 
unenclosed wild hay and occasionally broken into 
the crops.
At last the herders had no place to go. The coun­
try to the east was already settled. To the west was 
the Missouri River and across it in Nebraska the 
country was rapidly filling up with settlers. Conse­
quently they were inclined to insist more stubbornly 
than before on staying where they were. The herd­
ers were warned to take their herds out of the neigh­
borhood. They protested vigorously, but finally 
complied. A few of the herds crossed the river at 
various places and moved on westward with the 
frontier into Nebraska and the Dakotas. But most 
of them “ went west” in another sense. The herds 
were gradually disbanded and simply ceased to 
exist.
J o h n  A. H o p k i n s , J r.


The Passing of the Herds

Hopkins, John A

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