Actually they found wide-open meadows thanks to Native use of fire to promote the edge habitat many game species value and the medicinal plants one finds in a meadow but not a climax beech/maple forest, and fire suppression in Eastern forests has more damage than cattle by a mile https://twitter.com/gnrosenberg/status/1296162679783120896

Capitalist systems of food production are extractive and damaging. Colonialism is too. Cattle are not intrinsically linked to either of those things, and that's why in the Pueblo uprising against the Spanish in 1680 they took cattle and horses when they escaped the mission

Honestly I wish some of the people who conflate agriculture with whiteness and colonialism could just talk to the earliest cowboys, many of whom were BIPOC. They'd get some serious side eye and a generous serving of flank steak

Agriculture can and has and will continue to be a tool of colonial subjugation, and it can also be a tool of liberation and self-sufficiency and health.

If you want a good intro to early encounters between Native peoples and livestock on the East Coast, try this book. Pigs are quite damaging to many North American ecosystems, but herbivorous ungulates aren't inherently. https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/Creatures-of-EmpireVirginia-DeJohn-Anderson/1100617039?ean=9780199839728

Demonizing all livestock and animal husbandry as inherently colonial on a continent with Diné shepherds, Yavapai cowboys, and Lakota horse wranglers just ain't it.

Anyways, interrogating food systems is good, and crucial to a free and equitable society. Right now I'm personally more worried about the corporate consolidation of the meat and dairy industries and not so worried that a cow is gonna abstractly colonize a pasture by existing

And while I'm at it, most beef cattle start their lives on family farms with a herd size of less than a hundred. A disproportionate percentage of those farmers are white. The former is a Good Thing, the latter needs fixing fast.