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After the introduction of cattle to California and Hawai‘i, the establishment of the species depended on ecological resources and native responses. The second chapter examines the ecological changes prompted by cattle and the effects of these changes on indigenous subsistence strategies. California Indians intensely managed the California environment in order to attain significant yields and sustain a large population through hunting and gathering. Hawaiians utilized plants and animals brought through Polynesian migration and trade, and they developed their own agricultural regimes to support a large organized population. Cattle grazed on Hawaiian crops and items gathered by California Indians, and they also facilitated the introduction of new species that competed with more familiar resources. Thus, cattle presented a clear challenge to native lifeways. At the same time, introduced diseases and military conflicts destabilized indigenous societies, exacerbating the effects of livestock introductions.

This chapter covers the European efforts to ensure the survival of cattle populations in new lands by eliciting native cooperation and labor in California and Hawaiʻi. Different colonial systems in the Pacific borderlands led to varying approaches to guiding the management of the new resources that livestock represented. The Franciscan missionaries taught natives European methods of agriculture as part of the conversion process. These agricultural methods included traditional practices of cattle management adapted to the North American context of abundant rangeland. Many Indians in the mission system became vaqueros who utilized the equipment and techniques developed to manage and transport vast herds of cattle in New Spain. In Hawaiʻi, as cattle from California rapidly multiplied and threatened native fields, native Hawaiians attempted to herd animals that had gone feral and become dangerous. Thus, the initial native response to the introduced animals occurred within the context of sudden environmental change but nevertheless demonstrated rapid adaptations.

This chapter argues that Hawaiʻi's industrialized environment is the product of ecological changes that occurred before introduction of sugar production as well as after. According to recent archaeological and ecosystem science investigations, human activity in this remote archipelago has had significant consequences. Hawaiian agriculture and European trade started a process of ecological change that industrial agriculture had to address in order to advance. Untangling the influences of the waves of human economic activity is thus important to sugar's environmental story. Hence the chapter explores the impacts brought about by the first wave of human presence on Hawaiʻi—early Polynesian settlers from roughly around A.D. 1000—to its second wave of human influence—the Europeans who reached island shores in the late eighteenth century.