How to Read a Brand

A brand is always read from left to right, from the top down, or from the outside in. It should be as simple as possible, good looking, difficult to blot or smear, easy to make, hard to alter, and easy to name or describe.

There are a number of common, recognizable figures used in brand terminology that include the:

By turning a letter or figure around 360 degrees, it is possible to create the standard original plus seven other named positions. As an example, by turning the number 5 clockwise 45 degrees, with each step we have a:

With a few of the basics, even a greenhorn can learn to read a number of brands. By placing a quarteror half-circle facing up under a letter or figure, you have a rocking brand, such as the Rocking AA. Placing the same circle facing down above a figure makes it a swinging brand, such as the Swinging WW. Positioning a figure on its face or back makes it lazy, sometimes designated as left or right lazy, such as the Left Lazy 5 or Right Lazy 55. Putting feet on a figure that faces backward makes the mark a dragging brand, such as the Dragging MM. Turning the feet forward, the mark becomes a walking brand, such as the Walking AA. By adding wings to a figure it becomes a flying brand, as the Flying UU, or a running mark, such as the famous Running W of the King's Ranch. Turning a figure backward or reversing it makes it a backward or reverse S 2.

When two or more figures, letters, or combinations are side by side on a brand, they are described as two, three, or more blocks long; more often, the lingo is shortened to simply two, three, or more blocks. By stacking the figures vertically they are described as two, three, or more stories high.

If two or more figures in a brand connect, they are simply called connected, such as the Havasupai Indian tribe's Small H, Lazy T Connected 2 Blocks.

When a letter or figure hangs from another, it is a hanging mark and the designation of stories becomes unnecessary. An example would be the Lazy S, Hanging (Left) Tumbling JS.

If two or more figures or letters are designed to form an integral part of each other, they are usually combined, as the Forty-Five brand which technically would be called Four, Five Combined 11/2 Story 5.

Although reading brands may be a little confusing at first, once you get the hang of the basics you'll be able to read them like an old cowpuncher.

However, a number of intricate and decorative brand designs of Spanish and Mexican origin or influence do not follow the usual number and letter patterns and are puzzling to even the most experienced brand reader. Perhaps due to this Spanish influence, Quien Sabe (who knows) is the name of three of these nonstandard brands registered in Arizona.

Whiteface Herefords roam the White Mountains near Nutrioso, in northeastern Arizona. The area was once the home ranch of Hart and Campbell's HC brand, one of hundreds of early-day iron brands listed in Arizona's first Brand Books. Wayne Davis text continued from page 19 Sharing the northern ranges with the Babbitt brothers' huge CO Bar and the Aztec Cattle Company, known by its Hash Knife brand, was the A I Bar outfit, an outgrowth of the Moroni Cattle Company. In the 1880s, it controlled a territory 35-miles long and 25-miles wide. Before its absorption by the CO Bar in 1889, it held the title of the largest ranch in Arizona Territory.

In Arizona's early days, a great number of brands were applied by simply using a hot saddle cinch ring, held with green sticks. With it the cowman could virtually draw a brand on cattle. So easy was the device to use that suspicious strangers caught with an extra cinch ring tied to their saddles were sometimes shot or hung, with few questions asked.

Later, cowboys developed the notorious running iron, a short iron rod with one end bent into the shape of a U. It was used to draw brands . . . and could also swiftly alter original marks. It fit neatly into a saddle bag, was easy to use, and easy to make. It essentially came into play on Arizona's great open ranges, where regular roundups and brandings were often impossible to carry out. When cowboys found unmarked or maverick calves, they branded them on the spot with a running iron. To use the iron to make some kind of adjustment in an original mark on an already branded animal, though, is a somewhat different story. That requires skill and intelligence, if not artistry and certainly a touch of larceny. text continued on page 26

(Preceding panel, pages 24-25) Spring grass still grows high and lush on the old Sierra Bonita range in Sulphur Springs Valley. It was here that cattle barons Henry C. Hooker and James M. Barney began operations with 4000 head in 1872. Their brand was the Crooked H. David Muench On the Big Sandy River, in west-central Arizona, near Wikieup, the 400-square-mile Ericsson Ranch uses the Lazy E Quarter Circle 2 stories brand to mark the crossbred brahman cattle that roam this rugged desert range. Ray Manley

text continued from page 23

One of the most notorious examples of clever usage of a running iron occurred on the old XIT Ranch in Texas, around the late 1880s. By carefully drawing a few additional marks on the ranch's branded cows, a rustler converted the XIT to his own registered Star Cross Brand, a five-pointed star with a cross in the center.

"The boy who did that burning," said one old Texas cowhand, "did it so exact that it was some time before he was suspected. And when he was tried there wasn't a man on the jury who could figure out how to run the XIT into a Star with a cross inside. Said it couldn't be done and acquitted him."

Later, after receiving a generous gift from the XIT's owner, the rustler confessed how the trick was accomplished and promised to stop stealing XIT beeves.

A favorite method of brand adjusting in Arizona, according to author Edna Hoffman Evans, writing in the November, 1960, issue of Arizona Highways Magazine," was to wring out a wet blanket, place it over the brand and then, with a red-hot frying pan applied to the blanket, scald off the hair on the branded area. In a month or so, when the hair grew back, the area could be re-branded."

But the easiest method of rustling did not require brand alteration at all, wrote Ms. Evans. "The rustler posed as an honest rancher, but always somehow seemed to have more branded calves on his ranch than he had adult cows. Since twins and triplets on the range are fairly uncommon, the conclusion was obvious."

Big spreads and absentee ownership were great aids to this kind of rustling in early Arizona. It was said that in the old days a saddle horse and a rope were all the equipment anyone needed to start a cattle herd on the old Hash Knife or A I Bar ranges. These outfits especially lost hundreds of head of cattle to the wide loop and running irons of small and ambitious "business men."

The cowboy's life was lonesome, and his lot was not the best; But if it hadn't a been for the life he lived. Why there wouldn't a been no West.... "Man With the Big Hat" by Steve Fromholz 1968 by MCA Music, a division of MCA, Inc. Used by permission.

Today there are more registered brands in use in Arizona than at any other time in history. About 17,000. Many, like the old Pacheco brand, the Diamond Bell, have been handed down through the generations and are still being used today, carrying on family tradition on the range. With deep personal pride, ranches throughout Arizona have slapped their family coat of arms not only on cattle, but the front gate, trucks, tack, stationery, tableware, linen, and even bank checks.

Handed down, too, from those days of the open range, is the significance of the brand as a mark of legal ownership. Since 1887, when the Territorial Legislature established the Livestock Sanitary Commission, Arizona has been registering cattle brands. The first Brand Book was published in 1898. Nowadays, no sale, transfer, or exchange of cattle takes place without one of the Commission's 87 brand inspectors being on hand to check the validity of each brand in the transaction. These men also are fully certified peace officers.

In addition to its role in untangling legal ownership of cattle, brands have, of a certainty, played a major role in keeping alive the romance of the Old West. And this is still true when it comes to the art of brand naming. Despite the growth of legal terminology and computer brand registration, it's here that the breezy, often picturesque speech of the old-time waddie lives on. Who else could devise such down-to-earth terms for simple iron brand symbols as the Flying Buzzard, the D Dog Bone, the ICU, and the Damfino.