Title: The golden hoof
Description: The sheep industry of the Southwest has involved as much color and picturesque lore as the cattle industry ever did, and over a longer period. By bringing together the discoverable facts into a chronicle at once systematic and lively, Mrs. Kupper has made a real contribution to American history. Her chronicle goes back to the sheepwalks of medieval Spain. An early chapter records the massacre of Coronado's men by Indians who carefully saved the Spanish sheep. Later chapters reproduce the life of the open range. Its characters were men of variegated breeds whose existence was guerrilla warfare, first with the Plains Indians, then with cattlemen, always with blizzard and drought, prairie wolf and prairie fire. This book tells the whole story down to its latterday phases of wool growers' associations and scientific crossbreeding. It is a story dominated from first to last by the lonely and enigmatic figure of the pastor, with or without his trained sheep-dog. Mrs. Kupper, daughter of a sheepman and holder of a degree from the University of Texas, learned the management of flocks in youth under the tutelage of an old-timer whose experience reached well back into the era of the range war, the long drive, and the lobo wolf. This practical background plus later research results in a book engaging to the casual reader and invaluable to the student of history -- Book jacket.
Subjects: Sheep, History
Places: New Mexico, Texas