Basque Sheepherding
by Janice Pariza
Title
Basque Sheepherding
Artist
Janice Pariza
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
I lived in Delta, Colorado on Sawmill Mesa, with agriculture being #1, this was my normal 'traffic jam'...what an awesome sight to behold!
Basque immigration peaked after the Spanish Carlist Wars in the 1830s—Ebro customs relocated to the Pyrenees—and in the 1860s following the discovery of gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. The current day descendants of Basque immigrants remain most notably in this area and across the Sierras into the neighboring area of northern Nevada, then northward, into Idaho. When the present-day states of California, Arizona and New Mexico were annexed by the United States after the Mexican–American War (1848), there were reportedly thousands of Basques of Spanish or mixed Mexican origin living in the Pacific Northwest.
By the 1850s, there were some Basque sheepherders working in Cahuenga Valley (today Los Angeles, California). In the 1870s, the Los Angeles and Inland Empire land rush reportedly attracted thousands of Basques from Spain, Mexico and Latin America, but such reports do not bear out in a current census of Basque persons in the Southern United States where Basque persons are exceptionally rare in US census reporting. By the 1880s Basque immigration had spread up into Oregon, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, with significantly lesser numbers reaching the Southern states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas in the Southern most region. By 1895 there were reportedly about ten thousand self reporting Basque-Americans in the United States.
The current census figures demonstrated in the US map on this page are remarkably low in comparison to these reports and the overall increase in the US population since the 19th century. There has been a radical decrease in Basque immigration since that era which has resulted in the significant decline in persons of Basque national or Spanish origin throughout the US. Most of the self reporting Basque persons remaining in the US today are descendants of the original peak of Basque immigrants who arrived between 200 and 100 years ago, typically reporting as multi-generational or great great grandchildren (1860 immigrants) as opposed to native born persons of Basque ethnic identification and their subsequent immediate family, children, or grandchildren.
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Prints of this art are available on canvas, metal, acrylic and gallery prints, framed or unframed, greeting cards and iPhone or Galaxy phone covers and so many other quality items. FAA has a large selection of frames, mats and surfaces available for you to create museum quality masterpieces of your original print selections. Should you have any questions, feel free to contact me and I can give you any suggestions! Thank you!
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Uploaded
August 24th, 2018
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