Rustling

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, while an individual who engages in it is a rustler.

The act of cattle rustling is quite ancient, first attested over seven thousand years ago, and is one the oldest-known aspects of Proto-Indo-European culture, being seen in inscriptions on artifacts such as the Norse Golden Horns of Gallehus and in works such as the Old Irish Táin Bó Cúailnge ("Cattle Raid of Cooley"), the paṇis of the Rigveda, the Mahabharata cattle raids and cattle rescues; and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, who steals the cattle of Apollo. The theft of livestock are practiced in many pastoral cultures and 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. These tribes, 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. Theseraids 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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