When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West by Peter Iverson
Focusing on the northern plains and the Southwest, Iverson traces the rise and fall of individual and tribal cattle industries against the backdrop of changing federal Indian policies. He describes the Indian Bureau's inability to recognize that most nineteenth-century reservations were better suited to ranching than farming. Even though allotment and leasing stifled ranching, livestock became symbols and ranching a new means of resisting, adapting, and living--for remaining Native.
In the twentieth century, allotment, leasing, non-Indian competition, and a changing regional economy have limited the long-term economic success of Indian ranching. Although the New Deal era saw some marked improvements in Native ranching operations, Iverson suggests that since the 1960s, Indian and non-Indian ranchers alike have faced the same dilemma that confronted Indians in the nineteenth century: they are surrounded by a society that does not understand them and has different priorities for their land. Cattle ranching is no more likely to disappear than are the Indian communities themselves, but cowboys and Indians, who share a common sense of place and tradition, also share an uncertain future.