The year was 1865 and one of the bloodiest periods in our nation’s history, the Civil War, had come to an end. Homes were destroyed, money was short, and jobs were scarce. But strewn among the destruction and loss was one commodity in great supply: cattle, tens of thousands of them dispersed across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. These cattle, tough and lean, with horns spanning over six feet in length, had migrated up from Mexico, where the cattle industry was alive and well and had existed for hundreds of years.
COWBOY TRIVIA
It’s a little-known fact that cowboys come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. During the glory days of the American cattle drives, one quarter of the working ranch cowboy population was black, one quarter Mexican, and one half white. Cowboys take pride in the fact that their lifestyle welcomes people from all walks of life.
Businessmen saw in the cattle the opportunity of a lifetime. Bring beef to the people and reap the profits, they thought. Yet, as with most brilliant ideas, there was a catch. The cattle were roaming free across millions of acres of rugged land called open range, where the only boundaries were those that existed in nature. And the main market for the cattle was thousands of miles away, along the eastern seaboard.
COWBOY TRIVIA
In 1876 there were fewer than six people per square mile living west of San Antonio, Texas.
The businessmen, who became known as cattlemen, needed a labor force of sizeable proportions to gather the cattle and transport them to the East. As luck would have it, the manpower shortage in the West was met by a surplus in the East, drawn mainly from those whose lives had been consumed by the war. These veterans needed to work. They needed to escape. They needed to survive.
COWBOY TRIVIA
Those who headed west to work cattle were male, typically thirteen to eighteen years old, of European descent, and, on many ranches, required to be single.
The hopeful ventured west, where they signed on with the greatest cow operators of the time. There they were taught the skills needed to work the cattle by vaqueros, Mexican cattle herders who had come to the United States to share their knowledge of the trade.
In Spanish, the word vaquero means “cowboy,” and those who learned from these Mexican cowboys were known as cowboys themselves. With this simple English translation, the cowboy tradition began.
ROCCO SAYS
If you think that cowboys came only from the lower fringes of society, guess again. Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president of the United States, was a Harvard College graduate and a diehard cattleman who not only lived the cowboy life he embraced but also wrote extensively on the subject to preserve its beauty for future generations.
The vaqueros were excellent instructors because they already had a several-hundred-year history of wrangling cattle in environments as tough as, if not tougher than, those they would face north of their border. So they used their experiences to teach their American counterparts how to ride, rope, round up, and brand, along with a multitude of other skills that would not only come in handy on the range, but would also help to ensure their survival in the wilds of the West.
COWBOY LAW
In the Old West, when strangers passed each other on the trail, they never turned around to look at one another after passing. To do so was considered cowardly and an insult if either stranger turned out to be a good man. The same rule applies today.
While the training and work on the home range was demanding for these up-and-coming cowboys, it was nothing compared to their hired task of driving cattle to market. In order to succeed in their jobs, it was necessary for the cowboys to possess fortitude and determination as tough as the hides of the animals they worked.
Cattle Drives of the 1800s
COWBOY TRIVIA
The Hawaiian cattle industry started in 1793, many years before it did on the mainland.
A cattle drive was one of the most dangerous activities that could be undertaken on the western frontier. Often the cows had to be herded over a thousand miles to the railroads, imposing upon cow, horse, and man a near-death sentence. There were treacherous rivers to cross; snakes, bears, and mountain lions on the prowl; and Indians who would massacre a cow crew and steal their cattle and horses. In modern vernacular, the cowboys would have called the land en route to market “rough country.”
COWBOY TRIVIA
Over the years cowboys have answered to many names: cowpoke, cowpuncher, caballero, and cowman, to name a few.
But there was some respite from the struggles of the cattle drive. Most of the time, cowboys could count on a hot meal cooked in an open fire pit behind the chuck wagon that often tasted better and was more generous than what most of the hands ate at home. And every now and again, when they weren’t too exhausted, the cowboys would gather around the campfire, where one might recite a verse of poetry or break out his guitar and sing. If the mood was right, a few might even rise from their seats on the ground and break into dance. As simple as these pastimes seemed, they kept the cowboys as happy as they could be in the unforgiving environment of the West.
Despite the almost unbearable ruggedness of the world in which the cowboy lived, the drives succeeded—at least most of them did. However, there was always a price to pay in the form of saddle sores, tuberculosis, tooth decay and infection, broken bones, and of course death. But in the cowboy’s mind, there was no better life to lead, for it was a calling in which he escaped the horrors of war, saw a land many only dreamed of, and, most of all, determined his own fate.
If you want to get a real taste for what it was like to be a cowboy in the 1860s, you need to visit the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
By the late 1800s the industry and cities of the East were growing at a rapid pace, and as a result, demand for beef was greater than ever. To meet the increasing demand, eastern businessmen expanded the railroad to reach more territories across the western United States. With railroads now closer to the home range, cowboys no longer had to drive their cattle as far to reach the railheads and get them to the market. In addition, cattlemen increasingly used barbed wire to fence in their herds, decreasing the need for cowboys to patrol vast amounts of land to manage the cattle. Suddenly, the open range was no more.
COWBOY TRIVIA
Barbed wire was invented by Michael Kelly in 1868, and from 1874 to 1884 thousands of patents were issued on variations of barbed wire, although few were ever produced in any significant quantity.
And so, not long after the rise of the cowboy, began his great decline. Some cowboys headed back east. Others stayed in the territories they’d come to think of as home, homesteading small ranches of their own. And some possessed the stubbornness to continue pursuing the lifestyle they had grown to love, roaming freely among ranches in search of work. But even though the twenty-some-year history that marked the pinnacle of the cowboy’s historical existence may seem brief, it was forever burned into the minds and culture of this nation, thus defining the cowboy’s captivating image.
Believe it or not, today there are still cowboys out there living, working, and playing just as they did in the 1800s. Their gear is newer, and their saddles more comfortable, but they still ride horses and rou...
