REPORT 



STATISTICAL AND HISTORICAL INVESTIGATIONS 



PROGRESS AND RESULTS OF THE TEXAS CATTLE DISEASE. 



DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 



Statistical Division, June 10, 1870. 



SIR : Two years prior to the initiation of the series of investigations chronicled in 

 the preceding pages, and long before the public mind of the Atlantic States was aroused to 

 the dangers of the summer transportation of cattle fresh from the plains of the Gulf States, 

 there was undertaken, under my direction, a systematic investigation of the facts, stated and 

 reiterated by reliable farmers in the track of Texas cattle migration, stoutly denied by 

 Texans, referred by drovers to every cause but their own cattle, and faintly believed or 

 mildly doubted by the people, and even by the papers, of the East. Some affected to regard 

 the reports from Kentucky, from Missouri, and from Kansas, as wild exaggerations of the 

 truth, or fabrications in extenuation of controversies and violence begotten of encroach 

 ments upon the ranges of cattle-growers of the border. But the reports were too general, 

 the statements tco direct, and fortified by substantiations too strong, to be wholly ignored. 

 Besides, they had been repeated year after year since the introduction of the southern cattle, 

 not only in those States, but in the more eastern States of similar latitudes or climatic con 

 ditions. The drovers of Florida and Georgia, in the past generation, had witnessed similar 

 results from the movement of coast cattle ; and indeed the disease characterized in the pre 

 ceding report as splenic fever can be distinctly traced back into the eighteenth century, as 

 I propose to show. 



It has been in existence ever since cattle were first driven from the country bordering 

 on the coast of the Mexican Gulf to the upland regions to the northward, wherever cattle 

 were present on the line of march to receive the infection. If the Indians, prior to the 

 settlement of the States, ever brought with them, in their northern migrations, Spanish 

 or Mexican cattle which were native to or had been acclimated in the lowlands, it is more 

 than probable that this disease was communicated to the cattle of the higher latitudes. 



The existence of this disease, proven by adequate testimony from many places and 

 through a long period of time, was still either positively unknown or practically ignored 

 by agriculturists at a distance from the places of its prevalence ; so that, on the introduc 

 tion of Texas and Cherokee cattle, through the swift intervention of steam, by river and 

 by rail, into the heart of the Ohio valley, the results hitherto invariably occurring among 

 Kansas or Missouri stock now visited, with equal severity, the cattle of Illinois and Indiana; 

 and forthwith the doubt and indifference with which a distant calamity was regarded were 

 exchanged for apprehension and alarm, which spread rapidly eastward, awakening the 

 anxiety of stock owners, arousing to action city boards of health, and causing panic among 

 purchasers of meats. Even agricultural editors, ignorant of the real character of the 



