Sheep Herding
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Smithsonian Institution. Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
setName: label: See more items in
content: Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2016 Smithsonian Folklife Festival
label: See more items in
content: Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2016 Smithsonian Folklife Festival / Series 2: Basque: Innovation by Culture / 2.3: Audio
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 1 Sound recording (digital audio file)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 2016 July 08
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections
identifier: label: Identifier
content: CFCH.SFF.2016, Item SFF2016_0708_Basque_Frontoia_0002
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Sound recordings
altformavail: label: Existence and Location of Copies
content: Listening copies available
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: For roughly a hundred years between 1870 and 1970, young Basque men made their way to the American West to become sheepherders. They lived in their artzaintza or sheepwagons, alone or with one other sheepherder for months at a time, in the high deserts and mountains from the Sierra Nevadas to the Bighorns, with the care of 200 to 2,000 sheep. Today, Basque-American families run large ranches of their own, like the Paris family from Elko (Nevada), where modern sheep wagons are still used by South American sheepherders. Other Basque Americans are entrepreneurs, teachers, and politicians, and keep close ties to their traditions.