What Is a Corriente?
Some call any horned steer from Mexico a Corriente. This fails to recognize that other cattle breeds have horns and that the true Corriente can be traced to the cattle the Spanish used in the settlement of the Americas. Their origins go back to 10th century Castile. As the Spanish drove the Moors south, out of the Iberian Peninsula, they brought cattle to the vast plains of Andalusia. Some cattle herds were as large 1,000 to 1,500 head. A pattern of herd management and ranching began to develop in the 13th century that would be carried to the New World centuries later. Men on horseback, the use of the rope, the roundup and branding all began there. The Andalusian cattle appear to have been native cattle. There is no evidence of influence from the Moorish cattle from Africa. The best guess is that the cattle shipped to the New World resembled types of old Spanish cattle found in Andalusia today: the Retinto (a red or tan colored animal, sometimes almost brown), the Black Andalusian (a solid black), the Berrenda (a white with black points) and possibly a few Cacereno (a pure white).
The cargo manifests for Spanish ships sailing for the Americas reveal the first cattle arrived in the New World with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in November 1493. Columbus had been made Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Governor of the Indies. His task was to colonize the land he had claimed for the Spanish crown. The seventeen ships with him carried everything needed to become self-sufficient, including cattle. Because of the small size of the ships, the number of animals must have been limited. Not only would the ship have carried cattle, it would also have had to carry all the feed and water necessary for the journey. From Spain to the Canary Islands was a voyage of 900 miles, taking 4 to 8 days. From the Canaries to the East Indies was 2,500 miles, taking an average of 60 days. Columbus's second voyage took a record 22 days from the Canary Islands to Hispaniola. Other crossings would not have been so fortunate and the death loss must have been high.
While there is no description of how the cattle were transported and unloaded, they must have been handled like horses. Once on board the animals would have spent the entire voyage suspended in a sling to keep them from being hurt by the roll of the ship. An average ship could carry about 100 tons of cargo. To reduce weight, bred heifers and young bulls were normally transported overseas. On a bare maintenance diet, each animal would require at least three times its own weight in feed and water for a sixty-day trip.
Spanish cattle had been shipped to the Canary Islands fifteen years before Columbus’s voyage. Both the Spanish ports and the Canary Islands served as sources of cattle for the Americas. As colonization progressed, many requests for cattle also included the stipulation they originate from the Canaries. This reduced the time at sea and improved the condition of the animals arriving in the New World.
Soon after Columbus arrived, he realized that the colony’s survival depended on cattle. On January 30, 1494, he made an urgent request to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella for cattle and beasts of burden for food and work. The colony on Hispaniola struggled to survive during its first decade. As the island was settled, cattlemen would occupy a villa and establish their herd in the surrounding open range. Open range management developed similar to the way cattle were raised on the plains of Andalusia. The lush land proved ideal and the cattle multiplied.
By 1512 the cattle numbers on Hispaniola had reached and excess and they were being killed for their hides. Although records are incomplete until 1529, it is unlikely that the Spanish would continue to ship cattle over the Atlantic with an abundance of cattle on Hispaniola. From 1529 to 1599 colonial records are abundant and there is no record of cattle being crossed from Spain or the Canary Islands except for the De Lidia.
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The De Lidia is the first known breed of cattle to be distinguished as a breed. They were known for their aggressive behavior and were bred for bull fighting and later bull baiting. These cattle were raised in isolation, separate from the cattle for domestic use. The first noted shipment of fighting cattle was in 1552, when 12 pairs of bulls and cows were shipped to Mexico. This was well after cattle were established in Mexico. In 1540, Coronado traveled into what would become the United States taking with him 500 head of cattle. By the time the De Lidia arrived, the herds in Mexico numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Even if they were bred to the other Spanish cattle, their genetic impact would have been nil. The best explanation for any similarity between Mexican fighting cattle and the Corriente is their common ancestry in Spain.
The cattle, which in the next two centuries were to spread from Oregon to Patagonia, originated from a gene pool of cattle brought across in the first couple of decades of Spanish settlement. The Casa de Contractiòn was established in 1503 to direct all commerce and shipping in the New World. The Casa began a pattern of exporting cattle from Hispaniola to the nearby Islands in order to establish new herds and settlements. Cattle and Spanish settlement were linked together. Spanish conquest never moved at a pace greater than the expansion of their herds. They brought cattle to Jamaica and Puerto Rico (1509), Panama (1510), Cuba (1511), Mexico (1521), South America (1524) and Florida (1565). The cattle spread to all the contiguous lands the Spanish controlled. Spanish cattle were well established by the time the English brought their first cattle to North America in 1608. The numbers of Spanish cattle are astounding. In 1783 Buenos Aires alone shipped 1,400,000 hides to Europe—all from the cattle that had spread from the first herd established on Hispaniola.
In Mexico, ranches and cattle multiplied and spread. By 1539 wild cattle had reached the present border of United States and Mexico. Large herds abounded. In 1586, one herd was numbered at 130,000 head with 33,000 calves branded that year. On the open range of Mexico’s central plateau, bulls were left uncastrated and natural selection created a type of cattle adapted to the rough country. Until the last half of the nineteenth century, all the cattle in Mexico were descendants of the first cattle brought over by the Spanish Conquistadores. The Mexican cattle remained pure until 1884, when Zebu cattle were imported into Mexico to be crossed with the native cattle. European beef breeds soon followed. Most roping cattle being imported into the United States today show signs of other breeds in their ancestry: the big droopy ears and loose hide of the Zebu, the lineback of the Longhorn, the big paint-like spots of the Holstein, or the bald face of the Hereford. In isolated parts of Mexico, pure Corrientes can still be found.
The forces of natural selection/and or selective breeding have created many diverse types of cattle from the small group of cattle the Spanish carried over the Atlantic. In the United States there are Florida Scrub cattle (or Cracker), Louisiana Swamp Cattle and the Texas Longhorn (which developed in the wild by crossing with American Colonial cattle brought in by the English). In Baja California, Chinampo cows weigh 600 to 700 pounds in good flesh with bulls averaging a 100 pounds more. These desert cattle are night grazers browsing mainly on shrubs and have a lower metabolic rate. In contrast, the Cuban Criollo cow weighs 1,200 pounds and the bulls several hundred pounds more. Horns can vary from the massive horns of the Longhorn to the Romo Sinuano of Columbia, the only polled breed of Spanish cattle. The breed of cattle we call Corriente and the Mexicans call Rodeo Cattle, developed under centuries of natural selection in the high desert of Mexico’s central plateau. These cattle are small, agile, hardy and have a good disposition—ideally suited for team roping.
For more information: The Criollo: Spanish Cattle in the Americas. By John Rouse. University of Oklahoma Press, 1977. Or,
corrientecattle.org
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