Most people are familiar with the tales of cowboys in the Old West leading herds of cattle from Texas to places such as Kansas. Movies such as Lonesome Dove have characterized cattle drives from Texas to Montana and movies such as Monte Walsh (with Tom Selleck) have characterized the ruggedness and individuality that made the American cowboy a unique breed on the stage of world history.
Yet few are aware that before the Old West cowboy entered the stage there was another type of cowboy in Florida. Florida’s first cowboys were known as Cracker Cowboys. The origin of the name is lost to history but some have said it was because they used whips instead of lassos and the sound of the whip “cracking” in the air gave them the name. Florida cracker cowboys used a bullwhip, 10 - 12 feet long made of braided leather, which had quite an effect when “cracked” over the head of the cattle.
The first Florida cowboys arrived in 1763 when Spain traded Florida to Great Britain.
The first cattle had arrived in Florida in 1521 with a small band of Spanish settlers led by Ponce de Leon. More animals arrived when Spaniards settled St. Augustine in 1565 and by the early 1600s there were sizable herds of cattle and ponies at dozens of Spanish ranches and missions in North Florida.
Yet the Florida "cowhunter" or "cracker cowboy" of the 19th and early 20th centuries was distinct from the Spanish vaquero which had existed under Spanish colonial rule. They were even more distinct from their cousins in Texas and further west.
Some of the differences involved geography and the animals. Florida cattle and horses were small. The "cracker cow", also known as the "native cow", or "scrub cow" averaged about 600 pounds and had large horns and large feet. During the 1800s, cattle roamed free throughout Florida. There were no “range laws” and when cattle were going to be sold, they had to be rounded up by the cracker cowboys.
As recently as 1895, there were still enough cowboys roaming the interiors of Florida to attract artist Frederic Remington, who came to the state to capture the essence of the cracker cowboys. He wrote, “With me, cowboys are what gems and porcelains are to some others.”
Remington was not impressed by some of the emaciated Texas ponies he saw at use in the Florida back country but soon he was introduced to Florida’s own wild horses which had been tamed by the local cowboys. The horses were of Spanish descent and called marshtackies. They were small ponies but very hardy and they got by on meager forage.
During the War Between the States, Southerners in Florida sold beef to the Confederate government. Union forces and pro-Union loyalists would raid and kill the cattle roaming the woods. Following the war there was a great market for beef, yet it had to all be rounded up from the Florida back country.
In the days after the war, free-range grazing was going on all over the state. Unbranded cattle in Florida were called heretics, rather than mavericks, and cowboys preferred to be called cow hunters, rather than cowboys, because rounding up scrub cattle was much like tracking wild animals in the woods.
The cattle would be rounded up on great drives and sent to market. Yet, oddly enough, the main market for the Florida cattle was not the United States, but Cuba.
The glory days of the Cracker Cowboys came to an end in 1949 when the Florida Fence Law was enacted by the Florida legislature.
