Cattle raiding

"Rustler" and "Rustling" redirect here. For other uses, see Rustle.

A cattle raid during the Swabian War, 1499

Cattle raiding is the act of stealing cattle.

In Australia, such stealing is often referred to as duffing, and the perpetrator as a duffer. In North America, especially in cowboy culture, cattle theft is dubbed rustling and an individual who engages in it is a rustler.^{[citation needed]}

History

Historically, the act of cattle rustling is quite ancient, with the first suspected raids conducted over seven thousand years ago.

Mythology

Cattle raids play an important part in Indo-European mythology; see for example Táin Bó Cúailnge (Irish), the Rigvedic Panis (India), and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, who steals the cattle of Apollo (Greece). These myths are often paired with myths of the abduction of women (compare Helen, Sita, Saranyu, The Rape of the Sabine Women). Abduction of women and theft of livestock were practiced in many of the world's preurbanised cultures, the former likely reaching back to the Paleolithic, and the latter to the earliest domestication of animals in the Neolithic.

Tamil Sangam Era (300 B. C. to 300 A.D.) and Indian mythology

In numerous Sangam Tamil texts Cattle raiding is the warning given by war proposed team. Successively Cattle rescuing was done by war opposed team. In Mahabharatha there are several incidents which mentioned about Cattle raiding and rescuing.

American Old West

The Great Cattle Raid at Harrison's Landing during the American Civil War.

In the American Old West, rustling was considered a serious offense, and it did frequently result in lynching by vigilantes.

Mexican rustlers were a major issue during the American Civil War, with the Mexican government being accused of supporting the habit, as it was for the American rustlers stealing Mexican cattle from across the border. Failure to brand new calves facilitated theft.

Conflict over alleged rustling was a major issue in the Johnson County War in the U.S. state of Wyoming.

The transition from open range to fenced grazing gradually reduced the practice of rustling in North America. In the 20th century, so called 'suburban rustling' became more common, with rustlers anesthetizing cattle and taking them directly to auction. It often takes place at night, posing problems for law enforcement because on very large ranches it can take several days for loss of cattle to be noticed and reported. Convictions are rare to nonexistent.^{[citation needed]}

Patagonia

See also: malón

El Malón, Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802–1858)

La vuelta del malón (The return of the raiders) by Ángel Della Valle (1892).

Cattle raiding became a major issue at the end of the 19th century in Argentina, where cattle stolen during malones were taken through Rastrillada de los chilenos across the Andes to Chile, where they were exchanged for alcoholic beverages and weapons. Several indigenous groups, and outlaws such as the Boroanos and Ranqueles tribes and the Pincheira brothers, ravaged the southern frontier of Argentina in search of cattle. To prevent the cattle raiding, the Argentine government built a system of trenches called Zanja de Alsina in the 1870s. Most cattle raids ended after the military campaigns of the Conquest of the Desert, and the following partition of Patagonia by Chile and Argentina established by the 1881 Border Treaty.

East Africa

See also: Cattle raiding in Kenya

The northern Kenya – bordering Somalia, South Sudan and Ethiopia – is very insecure area. For years now, there has been a number of cattle raids going on, terrorising the civilian population and killing hundreds of people.

Cattle raiding is also a major problem in rural areas of South Sudan. In the state of Jonglei, cattle raids in August 2011 left around 600 people dead. Once again in January 2012, ethnic clashes related to cattle theft killed between 2000 and 3000 and displaced as many as 34,500 in the area around Pibor.

See also

• Beefsteak Raid
• Border Reivers
• Captain Starlight
• Horse theft
• Jack Sully
• Kenya cattle raids
• Slave raiding
• Sudanese nomadic conflicts

References

• George Raine (2007-12-16). "Cattle rustling on the rise in California". San Francisco Chronicle. 
• "The Handbook of Texas Online". Texas State Historical Association. 
• Webb, Walter Prescott; Eldon Stephen Branda (1952). The Handbook of Texas. Texas State Historical Association. 
• Robert Reinhold (1987-04-25). "Cattle rustling making a comeback as tough times hit Texas". The New York Times. 
• Tallent, Annie D. (1899). The Black Hills, Or, The Last Hunting Ground of the Dakotahs. Nixon-Jones. p. 559.