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COWBOY HISTORY

Hollywood decided how the American Cowboy should be portrayed and thus, the way Americans saw cowboys were born. While celebrities are a dime a dozen, the cowboy has been for well over a hundred plus years and is still seen every day in music, dress and in advertising (“The Marlboro Man”). A cowboy’s history is memorialized in the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Cowboys are seen in parades, atop their well-groomed horses and dressed impeccably.

The truth, however, is very different than what Hollywood portrayed the cowboy. Real cowboys didn’t think of themselves as good or bad. They did their jobs and moved on. If the cowboys of old saw today’s cowboy leading a parade, they’d probably fall off their horses laughing.

The first cowboys were actually of Spanish descent and the methods they developed were later copied by American cowboys. When Spain ruled Texas in the early 1800s, only a few thousand people were ranchers and were known as rancheros. The men hired to manage cattle were called vaqueros. < alt="vaqueros" />Vaqueros preferred wild mustangs, which they roped and tamed to use as cow ponies because they were smaller and could make sharper turns, which came in useful when hunting down the longhorns. During the 1835 war between Texas and Mexico, ranches were abandoned and the cattle fended for themselves. A year later, when Americans won & established the Republic of Texas; more Texans were into farming, instead of cattle, so the cattle continued to roam free. The herds found their own water and food, rested when necessary. The herds moved from the southern part of Texas to the north and west, feeding on the grasses between the Rio Grande river and the upper Panhandle. Since no one lived in this part of Texas yet, the cattle continued to roam free. Then, the short-horned cattle (Anglo cattle) met up with the wild Mexican cattle and what a battle that was.
The Mexican cattle gouged the short-horned cattle, they’d knock them down and drive them off their territory. This went on for about 35 years. By 1865, there was an estimated five million cattle and one million mustangs; all roaming free. In the meantime, the Mexican cattle and the Anglo cattle had finally mated and produced a strong, deadly and intelligent breed of cattle: longhorns.

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The longhorn stands over six feet tall, with long legs and lanky bodies built for speed. They can be any color with splotches of white in no particular pattern. Their long heads give them a sinister look and their mean appearance was compounded by those gigantic horns that spanned eight feet from tip to tip. They survived droughts and wolf attacks by developing tough hides and hard hooves, and a definite attitude. They would walk fifteen miles for a drink of water and make it last three days. At the first sign of trouble, they did what was effective. They charged; twelve hundred pounds of battering ram muscle, head down, horns up. A Texas rancher once said of longhorns when they charged, “fifty times more dangerous than the fiercest buffalo.” Another rancher said, “If I had my choice, I’d rather face down a wounded bear than a longhorn.” While Texans and Mexicans knew about the wild longhorns, they pretty much left them alone and carried on with farming. Texans grew cotton and a few other crops and Mexicans returned to ranching and produced the beef that was needed in Texas. Since the longhorns were hard to capture and many thought them too tough to eat, they were deemed worthless---until the end of the American Civil War in 1865.

By then, the railroad had reached Missouri and in 1866, it reached Kansas which enabled ranchers to bring their cattle to the railheads to be shipped back east since Easterners paid very well for beef and so the Era of the American Cowboy began.

In Texas, the term “cowboy” defined men who caught longhorns and drove them to Kansas. Initially, most of the cowboys were vaqueros and African Americans. Vaqueros were hired because of their experience with cattle. Only about a third of cowboys were Anglo. Until they learned more about the cattle drive, these Anglos were often referred to as “greenies”. Most were in their late teens, a few in their early twenties and many were illiterate. Some became cowboys because they liked the outdoors and wanted the excitement of working with wild animals. Far more became cowboys because after the war, there were few jobs available. If a greenie could ride a horse and shoot a gun, they qualified for the job.

Today, the cowboy still tends cattle and their horses plus various other jobs, like mending fences, helping the vet care for other sick animals and bringing in hay.