FeralHog_HernandodeSoto_Taylor_Rick_UvaldeTX_22September2020_Reel4034.mp3

Rick Taylor [00:00:00] Christopher Columbus brought the first hogs into the New World back in, I don't know, the late 1400s, I think 1493, and brought them into the West Indies.

Rick Taylor [00:00:13] They're a source of food. You know, they're prolific. They serve, they, you know, they were useful for a lot of things.

Rick Taylor [00:00:21] But it wasn't until about 40 years later, when Hernando de Soto brought the first bunch from Cuba into Florida and that was like 1539, something like that, 1542. And he decided he was going to trek across southeastern United States to try to find his way to, into Mexico, you know, across the land, as opposed to going across on the, on the Gulf of Mexico. So they traveled across southeastern, the United States, with the hogs that he brought from Florida. And I think he started out with, like I said, 13. And by the time he got to Arkansas or something, I think he had several hundred. He died, actually died in Arkansas.

Rick Taylor [00:01:12] But the second in command, a guy named Luis de Moscoso, he took over and pushed them on into Texas, probably crossing around Fort Worth or maybe below there. And before he decided to turn back to, you know, this ain't going to happen, so anyway, several hundred hogs crossed into Texas, you know, like I said, late or mid-1500s.

Rick Taylor [00:01:39] And what they said is that the reason he turned around was because they'd hit the open prairies. And that there wasn't enough food for the hogs to forage. You know, they'd left the oak trees and the pine trees and some foraging areas. And once they hit the prairies, there wasn't the food to keep the hogs going. And they said that was one of the reasons why that he had, that he went ahead and turned around and went back.

Rick Taylor [00:02:06] And then, of course, later on, Rene-Robert La Salle, when he tried to to start a colony for the French, on Matagorda Island or Matagorda Bay, he brought some hogs with him as well. And that was in, that was probably one hundred years later and in the late 1600s. And he ate and he had some hogs or he brought some hogs with his colonists out there. And of course, that was a fiasco. La Salle is killed by his soldiers and you know all the colonists died and all. But anyway, the hogs, they escaped or were gone.

Rick Taylor [00:02:44] And the Indians actually called them the "dogs of the French". And they, they were, they wouldn't touch them. They thought they were voodoo or whatever, but they didn't, you know, they didn't want to eat them.

Rick Taylor [00:02:57] And so they've been, you know, hogs have been in and out for a long time. And throughout the 1700s, you know, hogs were found at many of the Spanish missions as well.

Rick Taylor [00:03:07] So they've been in and out for, you know, for quite, quite a long time... 500 years, almost.