Cattle raiding

Cattle raiding is the act of stealing cattle. In Australia, such stealing is often referred to as duffing, and the perpetrator as a duffer. In North America, especially in cowboy culture, cattle theft is dubbed rustling and an individual who engages in it is a rustler.

The act of cattle rustling is quite ancient. Historically, the first suspected raids occurred over seven thousand years ago.

Abduction of women and theft of livestock were and are practiced in many pastoral cultures. Cattle raids play an important part in Proto-Indo-European religion; see for example the Old Irish Táin Bó Cúailnge ("Cattle Raid of Cooley"), the paṇis of the Rigveda and the Mahabharata cattle raids and cattle rescues (India), and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, who steals the cattle of Apollo (ancient Greece). These myths are often paired with myths of the abduction of women (compare Helen of Troy, Saranyu, Sita, and The Rape of the Sabine Women).

In the American frontier, rustling was considered a serious offense, and in some cases resulted in vigilantes hanging the thieves.

One cause of tensions between Mexico and the United States in the years leading up to the Mexican–American War (of 1846-1848) was the frequent raiding of cattle by Native Americans from north of the border. Mexico's military and diplomatic capabilities had declined after it attained independence and left the northern half of the country vulnerable to the Apache, Comanche, and Navajo Indians. The Indians, especially the Comanche, took advantage of Mexico's weakness to undertake large-scale raids hundreds of miles deep into the country to steal livestock for their own use and to supply an expanding market in Texas and the United States. The Indian raids left thousands of people dead and devastated northern Mexico. When American troops entered northern Mexico in 1846 they found a demoralized people and little resistance from the civilian population.

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