Cowboys 'n' Indians

Indian raids were certainly among the most prominent concerns of the 19th century cowboy. The image portrayed to us by fictional westerns of Indians swooping down from nearby mesas and hill-tops, killing everyone in their path is only partially true in terms of devastation, although it was usually far less dramatic than portrayed by the movies. Some trails, such as the Chisholm trail, that ran from Texas to Kansas followed a route through Indian Territory, or the modern day Oklahoma. Cowboys who drove their cattle down these trails ran the great risk of Indian attack. Rather than always brutally attack the driving parties, Indians would also take to other tactics to try to dissuade cowboys from driving their cattle through their territory. Often times the Indians were the cause behind other such trail calamities such as stealing cattle or even worse: causing a stampede.

Different brand types

Of course the Indians were not the only cattle thieves on the trail. White, black and Mexican bandits were also responsible for cyphering cattle from herds being driven on any trail. Theft of cattle indeed was such a problem that the practice of branding the cattle became commonplace amongst cowboys and ranchers alike. The symbol branded on the cattle varied based on which ranch the cattle came from. Designs for symbols ranged from elegant to very simple -- often times just the initials of the owner of the ranch the cattle were originally from. Branding the cattle also made it far easier to recover cattle who sometimes ran great distances during a stampede by allowing the cowboys to distinguish them from either wild cattle or another rancher’s cattle in the event that they should mix with other cattle.

A Stampeded Herd

Stampedes were another major concern of the cowboys. During a stampede, the cattle would run en masse, which not only made them difficult to round up again after the stampede had ended, but also presented a grave danger to the personal safety of the cowboys themselves. A stampede could easily be triggered by even the slightest thing. A single cow could step on a twig causing it to snap, the cow would panic and run, not knowing what made the noise. The other cows would quickly follow suit, assuming that if that cow had been frightened by something, they do not want to deal with it. A cowboy in the way of a stampeding herd was in terrible danger as the panicked herd would not stop or even bother to go around the cowboy -- even if the cowboy was mounted on his horse. If all was well and no one had been maimed or killed by the stampede, the cowboys would then have to round up all of the cattle which could take several days.

As full of danger and excitement as the cattle drive might have been, it was indeed a short-lived phenomenon. By the 1890’s -- only about 30 years after the first large drives began -- most of the open range had all but disappeared and the cattle drive was suffocated by the quickly encroaching ranches. Ranchers began using barbed wire to mark their property and to prevent large herds from being driven through them. Another chapter of American history had closed.

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The first large cattle drive took place in 1866. A rancher in Texas and a group of hired cowhands attempted to drive a large herd of cattle with several thousand head from the ranch in Texas to the nearest railroad point in Sedalia, Missouri. The goal was to then ship the cattle by railroad to meat packing plants in Chicago and other eastern cities, however, because Missouri was already “settled” state, the Missourians objected to the large herd being driven through their farms and towns. The drive was not successful. The rancher was forced to sell his cattle at a loss and return to Texas.

The next year saw a new railroad head open in Abilene, Kansas. Texas ranchers took the first drive as an example and chose to drive their cattle to Abilene instead. This time they were successful. A total of about 36,000 head of cattle were driven to Abilene in 1867 and the trail they took from Texas to Abilene would eventually come to be known as the Chisholm Trail. In following years the trail was expanded to reach another new railroad head in Dodge City, Kansas to accommodate the escalating number of cattle making their way to Abilene and Dodge City. In 1877, 500,000 head of cattle were driven to Abilene and Dodge City.

For cowboys, life on the cattle trail was often brutal. They had no shelter other than what their hats could provide and the food they had to eat was often marginal at best. A quote from James H. Cook sums up the cowboys’ life on the trail:

On the trail we were each allowed to take a pair of bed blankets and a sack containing a little extra clothing...We had no tents or shelter of any sort other than our blankets.

On a drive, cowboys would spend everyday for two months in the saddle and would often drive a herd of about 3,000 head of cattle as far as 15 to 20 miles a day. A drive team would generally consist of ten cowboys -- one of which was usually the rancher and in charge, a cook with a chuckwagon and a horse wrangler, who looked after the remuda, or spare horses. Each cowboy would need at least three horses. The younger and less experienced cowboys were generally made to ride behind the herd where the most dust would be kicked up.

While on the trail, the cook was considered king. While he may not have been necessarily in charge, only the dumbest of cowboys would do anything to irritate him. As the title implies, the cook was in charge of the food and cooking, however, he generally also had a basic knowledge of medicine and was in charge of the chuckwagon. The chuckwagon hauled supplies for the cowboys such as food, an extra change of clothes, bedrolls, tools that could not be carried on the horse such as shovels, and anything else needed by the team. Chuckwagons were usually pulled by a team of oxen contradictory to how most are depicted today.

Life on the trail was often boring, but there were times it could also be quite exciting and even dangerous. Cowboys were constantly faced with many dangers on the trail that several didn’t survive.

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Large herds of cattle and the promise of a new start away from the memories of the war drove many people west. Jobs were easy to come across as large cattle ranches were founded in Texas, among other places, and cowhands were needed to keep the cattle in line before the invention of barbed wire fencing. The easiest way to perform this task over the arid span of the vast ranches was the tried and true method of the horse-mounted Mexican vaqueros.

The vaqueros, and subsequently the American cowboys, used practical tools and clothing for their jobs. Examples that we are all familiar with today include the wide-brimmed cowboy hat, which was used to block the sun, rain and other elements, the bandana, which was used to cover their mouths and to avoid inhaling the huge amounts dust kicked up by cattle, and leather chaps, which were used to protect the cowboys’ legs when spending long hours in the saddle. The typical leather boots worn by the cowboys had a pointed tip, a tall top and high heel. They had a pointed tip to allow for easy entry into the stirrup, the tall top was to protect the lower leg where the chaps were their weakest and the high heel was the prevent the foot from slipping through the stirrup when standing. Other tools such as the lariat, spurs and the branding iron were also common. The lariat was used to rope cattle while mounted on a horse, the spurs were used for better control of the horse while the cowboys’ hands were busy with the lariat and the branding iron was used to burn an identifying mark on the cattle so others knew they belonged to a specific ranch and/or rancher.

Cowboys were also needed in the west to bring the cattle to market. Ranchers in the west tried their best to meet the high demand for beef in the eastern states, however, the infrastructure in the west was almost non-existent in the 19th century, which meant the cattle had to be driven on foot to the nearest railroad head. The cattle drive was born and the legend of the heroic cowboy was soon to follow.

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When the Spanish conquistadores, or conquerors, arrived on the North American continent in the fifteenth century and later colonized what is now Mexico and the southwestern United States, they brought with them this tradition as well as cattle and horses. Horses had disappeared in North America long before the arrival of the Spanish at the end of the prehistoric ice age. The cattle they brought with them would eventually evolve into today's Texas Longhorn cattle (see the picture on the right).

The vaqueros evolved further in North America bringing into it traditions from the natives as well as adaptations to the new climate of the new continent. One such difference is that in North America, the vaqueros tended to be of native origin while the hacendados (owners of the haciendas) tended to be of Spanish origin. The Mexican vaqueros were hired by the hacendados to drive cattle between New Mexico and Mexico city and later between Texas and Mexico City.

In the eighteenth century, the first English-speaking traders and settlers began trickling westward from what would become the United States. The beginning of trade between Mexico and the United States also brought with it a trade in culture and language. In 1821, the first group of American settlers arrived in Texas under the leadership of Stephen F. Austin. The group wanted to take advantage of the cattle free for the taking in Texas. By that time, the Texas Longhorn had become a feral group and had multiplied until its numbers swelled. The new arrivals turned to the Mexican tradition of the vaquero to help them in their undertaking.

By the 1840's, the Santa Fe trail leading from Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico was a well-established and well-used route for traders and settlers alike. The route would later be used by the American Army of the West during the Mexican-American War in their quest to capture New Mexico for the United States. All along the trail, the Americans encountered the Mexican vaqueros and soon began to adopt the vaquero tradition in their own manner. Thus, the American cowboy was born.

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That was the advice of just one of hundreds of anonymous cowboys of the 19th century. While many of us are familiar with romanticized cowboys such as those played by John Wayne and Clint Eastwood in western films, many of us do not know much about the real cowboys, what their lives were like on and off the cattle drive tails or what they even did. This series aims to enlighten those who do not know much about the real cowboys.

The cowboy image as we have come to know and love today has by and large been romanticized by legend and fiction. Movies, books and other forms of fiction pertaining to the cowboy theme became so popular so quickly around the turn of the last century that they gave birth to a genre of story-telling known as the western genre. The first western films were created as early as 1903 (The Great Train Robbery), but they were not produced en masse until much later. In the 1950's and 1960's, Hollywood began producing what we tend to think of as stereotypical westerns with such stars as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. The films and television series produced led to several more genres branched out from the original western genre. An example of one such genre is the "spaghetti western," which are westerns based in the 19th century American west, but produced in Italy.

These films tended to make the lone and nameless cowboy an unsung hero willing to do whatever it takes for good to triumph over evil. Other common western themes revolved around settlers' struggles against the native Indian population, land controversies, the hunt for gold and hunting down outlaws, to name only a few. Somehow the heroic cowboy is involved in all of these problems.

But is this how cowboys actually lived? While it might make an entertaining story, it bears little to no resemblance to how the real cowboys lived and worked.

Part 2

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