A Brief History of Cowboys
– by Mary Collins Ecsedy
Don't Fence Me In
When my old soul hunts range and
rest
Beyond the last divide,
Just plant me in some
stretch of West
That's sunny, lone, and wide.
Let
cattle rub my tombstone down
and coyotes mourn their
kin,
Let horses paw and tromp the mound
But don't
you fence it in!
Of all the mythic characters from the American West – the Indians, explorers, trappers, traders, gunmen, pioneers and the rest – the cowboy has proved the most irresistible, his popularity the most durable. The cowboy is the folk character that fiction writers and movie directors have enshrined in more pages of print and images on film than any other figure of American frontier history.
Stampeded by Ligntning, by Frederick
Remington
Of course they got most of it wrong. The truth about cowboys has been distorted since the very beginning of the cowboy myth in the 19th century:
"The cowboy has at the present time become a
personage; nay, more, he is rapidly becoming a mythical
one. Distance is doing for him what lapse of time did for the
heroes of antiquity. His admirers are investing him with all
manner of romantic qualities; they descant upon him his
manifold virtues and his pardonable weaknesses as if he were a
demi-god, and I have no doubt that before long there will be
ample material for any philosophic inquirer who may wish to
enlighten the world as to the cause and meaning of the cowboy
myth. Meanwhile, the true character of the cowboy has been
obscured, his genuine qualities are lost in fantastic tales of
impossible daring and skill, of daring equitation and
unexampled endurance."
[Quoting an English traveler to the American West,
1887. Source unknown: the bibliography of the high school
paper from which this quote was taken was lost 30 years
ago...]
Not only is the real cowboy almost lost in the dustcloud of his own myth and the passage of time, but the term "cowboy" has gained a negative taint over the past few decades, especially since Reagan's presidency. The word is now used to describe someone who resorts to violent reckless behavior at the drop of a hat with no thought about the consequences. Nothing could be further from the truth for real cowboys.
My father was raised by his grandfather, Herman Collins, who grew up as a cowboy on a ranch in Raton Pass, Colorado during the late 1800's. My mother is descended from Mexican ranchers. Don grew up on Saturday morning westerns like the old John Wayne Republic films. We love cowboys and want to help keep the record straight about them. The cowboy and his exuberent, savvy attitude embodied the best of what was once valued in America.
Like everything else commodified by the entertainment industry, the truth about the American cowboy is much more interesting than what we're sold.
Origins
Holling C. Holling, The Book of
Cowboys"
The Spaniards brought the first cattle and horses to North America during the early years of their colonization of the new world. Over a period of three hundred years, some of the animals got separated from the herds, and multiplied in the wild until there were great numbers of them roaming across the open plains of northern Mexico. The wild cattle gradually developed long horns, and later became known as Texas Longhorns. The wild horses were known as mustangs. All a man needed to have a herd of his own was to catch enough of these wild animals. The Mexicans who caught their own herds were the first cowboys, and were called vaqueros. The vaqueros were the first to develop the science of cowboys, including lariats (from the Spanish "la reata", "the rope"), big-horn saddles, chaps, ranches, and brands.
The coming of the railroads to the west after the American civil war made it economically feasible for Texas ranchers to reach the eastern markets; the war had decimated eastern beef herds and demand was great. Ranchers began to drive cattle north in great herds from the Texas plains to the railroads in Kansas, and the American cattle industry was born.
American cowboys came from two major groups: they were men from the South, who were ex-Confederates or freed slaves (25% were African Americans), and they were men whose fathers had settled in the west. Others were men from civilized regions of the country or even abroad, who came west looking for adventure; the rest were Native Americans, Mexicans, men who came north with the herds from Texas, and men who came from who-knows-where. It was considered impolite to ask a man too many questions about his past.
The Great American Desert
They were a diverse group of men, yet they all shared several traits in common: fierce independence, a love of wide open spaces (most were claustrophobic), expert horsemanship, qualities of honesty, hospitality, and integrity, a keen sense of justice, and a legendary sense of humor. These traits were bred into them by the nature of their work, the scope and beauty of the land, and the conditions under which they lived and toiled.
They were as red-brown as Indians, but their eyes
were narrow slits between squinting eyelids. They wore flaps
of leather over their legs, and spurs, and wide-brimmed
hats. Handkerchiefs were knotted around their necks, and
pistols were on their hips.
– Laura Ingalls
Wilder, "The Little House on the Prairie"
Cowboy Work
High Heels
Unlike the life of the Singing Cowboys in the movies, real cowboys worked in the heat and cold riding range after "dumb critters" known as cattle, or beef on the hoof. In his memoirs, my great-grandfather, Herman Collins wrote:
"The life of the real Cowboy in the days of the open ranges or the trail herd was indeed a hard one. It really makes me Disgusted to read stories of Cowboys where they do nothing but fight Indians and tell jokes and never work."
He knew what he was talking about when he said that the "life of a Cowboy was no snap". (Cowboys were also responsible for much slang still in use today.) He grew up in the 1880's and 90's on the Mule Shoe Bar ranch in Raton Pass, south of Trinidad Colorado. The first paying job he ever had was bronc-busting for a Mr. W.C. Riggs. Cowboy ponies were barely tamed mustangs, and often had to be broken every time they were saddled. If you've ever watched a rodeo, you can appreciate what kind of a day at work that must have been. One day, when Herman was busting a range horse for the third time in a row, it was gored repeatedly under him by an enraged bull. Riggs had to shoot the bull so it wouldn't go to work on Herman, and then shot the horse to put it out of its misery. Nobody got too excited; it was just another day on the job.
The Line Camp
One of the hardest jobs of the cowboy was to winter in a line camp. Two or three men would stay in a shack on the range all winter, and their job was to ride the circuit of the range boundary looking for straying cattle and herding them back to safer pastures. It was a lonely, cold, hard job, but one that had to be done; an entire herd could disappear into the arroyos and box canyons over the winter.
Out in the middle of nowhere, with no 911 to call if something went wrong, the work bred a toughness and independence hard to comprehend today. The strong and the lucky survived. A sense of humor was essential. Western literature seldom addresses the unglamorous but necessary job done by the line camps. The men survived on cigarettes, Arbuckle coffee, Mexican beans, salt pork, canned tomatoes, and their own companionship.
Cowboy Roping a Steer by C.M. Russell
The movies never show men putting their ropes around their bed rolls at night to keep out tarantulas, scorpions, or rattle snakes. They never depict grim reality:
"Our camp consisted of a shack, one-room, an old dilapidated rusty cook stove, a rude small table, a dry-goods box nailed in one corner which served as a cubbard and two or three empty goods boxes for chairs; our beds were spread on the floor. There had been at some time a window but the glass had all been broken out and nothing but the frame was left. The door swayed on its hinges and could not be either shut or opened; it stood at about two thirds open and stock had been going into the shack in the summer for the shade it offered. We had to scrape the manure out to make a place to put our beds on the floor." – Herman Collins, Memoirs
Savvy Sayin's
The cowboy's greatest legacy is their knowing savvy, passed down to us in such robust language that many of their sayings are still in use today – and if they ain't they oughtta be. Much trouble could be avoided – on a personal, national, and global level – if we'd remember what the cowboys have to teach us. Here's a sample:
"Never draw a gun unless you mean to shoot."
"It's hard to put a foot in a shut mouth."
"You can't beat experience for sweatin' the fat off'n the brain."
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
"Stick your nose in trouble and you're likely to find your foot's in there, too."
"Never tamper with the natural ignorance of a greenhorn."
"Food for thought gives some folks indigestion."
"The farther you run, the longer the way back."
"Life ain't in holdin' a good hand but in playin' a poor one well."
"A brave man doesn't admit courage. Cowards don't admit fear."
"Ignorance is expensive."
"Fear breeds hate."
"There's no room at the chuck wagon for a quitter's blankets."
"Laugh when you borrow and you'll cry when you pay."
"Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction."
"Too little temptation kin lead to virtue."
"Many things should be done in silence and talkin' about them is a mistake."
Singing Cowboys
There is a kernel of truth at the heart of every myth; cowboys really did sing - to their cattle. Cattle love the sound of music, and music would help them bed down peacefully after a long day on the trail. The cowboys sang old cowboy songs, or played guitar, or fiddled away on an old violin. The cattle liked it, and would quiet down after a couple of tunes, and one by one drop off to sleep. "Poor Lonesome Cowboy" had a reputation for being as good as chloroform.
"Don't Fence Me In", "Red River Valley", "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie", "The Texas Trail", the "Streets of Laredo", and more have been performed by musicians as diverse as the Sons of the Pioneers, Aaron Copeland, Bugs Bunny, and Johnny Cash, but the Texas Longhorns were the first appreciative audience.
Casting a Long Shadow
Yes, much of it was myth, but myth is always founded in truth. The American cowboy is still out there, riding range on the shimmering edge of the western horizon in our collective imagination, casting a long shadow before us. When we remember why freedom matters, we'll look back and be inspired by our own myths once again.
The herds were so near now that Laura could hear them plainly. The mournful lowing sounded over the prairie til the night was dark. Then the cattle were quieter and the cowboys began to sing. Their songs were not like lullabies. They were high, lonely, wailing songs, almost like the howling of wolves.
Laura lay awake, listening to the lonely songs wandering in the night. Farther away, real wolves howled. Sometimes the cattle lowed. But the cowboys' songs went on, rising and falling and wailing away under the moon. When everyone else was asleep, Laura stole softly to the window, and she saw three fires gleaming like red eyes from the dark edge of the land. Overhead the sky was big and still and full of moonlight. The lonely songs seemed to be crying for the moon. They made Laura's throat ache. – Laura Ingalls Wilder, "The Little House on the Prairie"
