Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Real Story of Cowboys

Starting point is 00:00:00 One of the most iconic images of America is the cowboy. Cowboys have defined genres of literature and movies and are the basis for entire types of fashion. But how did cowboys come about? And what exactly did they do? And who exactly became cowboys? And perhaps most importantly, how realistic is our image of cowboys? Spoiler, it's not very realistic at all. Learn more about cowboys, how they came to be, and how realistic their portrayal is in media,

Starting point is 00:00:28 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. In a previous episode, I asked the question,

Starting point is 00:01:12 how wild was the Wild West? And the answer was not very, or at least not as wild as it appears in television and movies. For example, there were no recorded quick draw gun fights on Main Street ever recorded, even though it happens all the time in westerns. In this episode, I want to focus on one element that I addressed in the previous episode, Cowboys. And the first question we have to ask is what exactly is a cowboy? A cowboy is a livestock herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, usually on horseback, and often performs various ranching and livestock management tasks. Cowboys actually have their origins in Europe. In England, someone who tended cattle was known as a cowherd, similar to how someone who tends sheep is known as a shepherd. A cowherd, however, is not a cowboy.

Starting point is 00:02:07 The primary difference is that a cowherd would have tend to be a cowherd would have tend to tended cattle on foot, similar to a shepherd. The origins of the North American cowboy actually come from Spain. In Spain, cow herds tended cattle on horseback. A Spanish cowboy was known as a vicaro. Vakero comes from the Spanish word for cow, which is vaca. The first use of the word cowboy in print was in 1725 by the author Jonathan Swift, who used the word in reference to young boys who tended cattle.

Starting point is 00:02:38 It wasn't actually referencing what we think of as cowboys today. The origin of cowboys in North America actually came from Mexico. In Spain, there was a system that developed in the Middle Ages known as the Hacienda system. Hacienda's were estates that held large amounts of land. When the Spanish came to the new world, they brought the Hacienda system with them. Along with the Haciendas came the Vaceros, and perhaps more importantly, horses. The Hacienda system wasn't just brought to me. Mexico. It was also brought to other countries in South America, including Argentina, Chile,

Starting point is 00:03:12 and Uruguay. Vicaros adopted to different countries. In Argentina and Uruguay, they became known as Gauchos, which is a topic for another episode. The Hacienda system spread through the American Southwest into Texas, New Mexico, and California. Eventually, English-speaking settlers came along and began adopting and modifying the Hacienda system into large ranches. The Golden Age of the Cowboy is considered to have begun after the American Civil War. This period, beginning approximately around 1865, is notable for several reasons. The American Civil War profoundly changed the beef industry in the United States. For starters, the Union Army depleted much of the available beef in the North causing shortages.

Starting point is 00:03:59 At the same time, the trade in beef from Texas to the rest of the Confederacy was cut off due to to the union control of the Mississippi River. While cattle couldn't be sold for several years, they kept breeding, increasing the cattle population west of the Mississippi. By the end of the war, there were an estimated 5 million cattle in just the state of Texas. Prior to the war, the cattle industry was primarily for the production of tallow and leather, not meat. After the war, meat became the driving factor, because a $5 head of cattle in the South could now

Starting point is 00:04:33 sell for $40 in the north. The result was a perfect storm of supply and demand. This demand was met due to the creation of the railroad. The railroad companies were looking for freight to haul and cattle were perfect. They were large and heavy enough to be transported only by rail. However, they had to be loaded onto rail cars, which couldn't be done just anywhere. And that led to the development of cow towns. Cow towns were railheads where cattle could be loaded into rail cars to be taken to cities like Chicago. The first cow town is considered to be Abilene, Kansas. It was established by a cattleman by the name of Joseph Cowboy McCoy. The route that cattle took from Texas to Abilene was known as the Chisholm Trail, named after a Scottish fur trader named Jesse Chisholm.

Starting point is 00:05:22 The large cattle ranches of the West developed a system in which cattle were allowed to graze far away from stockyards and railheads. In fact, cattle would spend much of the year grazing in the open range without any human oversight whatsoever. This was possible immediately after the war, because most of the land in the West was still open prairie and hadn't yet been divided and fenced in with barbed wire. This system resulted in the need for cowboys. Cowboys would usually participate in two roundups each year in the spring and the fall. Cattle drives were established in the 1830, but they became much more important after the war. During a roundup,

Starting point is 00:06:02 cowboys would gather cattle that were scattered over a large area and herd them into a central location, such as a corral or a holding pen. Here, the cowboys would engage in such tasks as branding, tagging, and basic veterinary checks. Once or twice a year, cattle would then be taken, sometimes long distances to a cow town for sale and loaded into rail cars.

Starting point is 00:06:23 Most cattle drives began in Texas and would go north as far as can't, Kansas or Missouri. A cattle drive could last two months depending on the distance. It was a balance between how fast the cattle could walk and their weight on arrival. If you walk them too fast, they would lose too much weight. So who were the cowboys? For starters, being a cowboy was a very low status job. Little boys at the time did not dream of becoming cowboys when they grew up. Cowboys were usually young men, often civil war veterans in the late 1860s, who earned about $1 a day. The ethnic makeup of cowboys was not what you usually see in the movies. Cowboys were actually quite diverse.

Starting point is 00:07:10 About a quarter of all cowboys were black. They were freed slaves or the children of freed slaves. Being a cowboy was considered one of the better job options available after the war for emancipated men. Many black cowboys had been in charge of cattle herds during the war and continued to use the skills they developed after the war. It was also an opportunity to escape cities where they would otherwise suffer discrimination. Cowboys such as Nat Love, Bill Pickett, and Bob Lemons were some of the most celebrated and accomplished cowboys of the 19th century. Other large groups of cowboys consisted of Mexicans, Native Americans, and European immigrants. Cow girls really weren't a thing during the golden age of the cowboy. There were some women who worked on ranches,

Starting point is 00:07:57 but there are no accounts of any women working on cattle drives alongside men. The idea of a cowgirl was the creation of the Wild West shows later in the 19th century, who had women like Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane as their star attractions. Another way that cowboys are often misrepresented in the media is where they work. Cowboys were usually out working on the planes amongst the, the cattle alone and in the middle of nowhere. If they weren't out with the cattle, they would probably be working on a ranch and living in a bunkhouse with other cowboys. Cowboys certainly did go into town on occasion, but most movies often portray cowboys as doing something other than

Starting point is 00:08:35 handling cattle. When they went into town, they would often blow their money, drinking and gambling. Cowboys in this respect were very similar to people who work in oil fields or remote mining sites. They would be outworking for weeks or months at a time and then have an extended period of time off. During a cattle drive, about 3,000 cattle would be accompanied by about 10 cowboys. Each cowboy would bring with them about three horses. They would ride the horses until they were tired and then switch horses. The cowboys would usually work shifts so that somebody would be watching over the cattle 24 hours a day. The most inexperienced cowboy was usually the Wrangler. who was responsible for taking care of everyone's horses.

Starting point is 00:09:19 The most prestigious position was that of cook. The cook drove the chuck wagon that contained all of the supplies the cowboys used when they were out in the field. In addition to cooking for the crew, the cook would often serve as a doctor while they were out in the field. The dress of cowboys was extremely practical. Leather chaps were worn on the legs to protect them when they were riding through brush. Cowboy boots were designed to make it easy for the foot to fit into a stir-up while they were in the saddle. Almost all cowboys wore hats to protect themselves from the sun and the rain. However, the most popular hat amongst cowboys immediately after the war was actually the bowler hat.

Starting point is 00:09:57 What became known as the cowboy hat was first released in 1865 by John B. Stetson. The hat initially didn't look like what you'd think of as a cowboy hat. The brim was flat, as was the top of the hat. Over time, however, hats became deformed with indentations on the top and later the brims of the being bent upward. At first, it was just an artifact from being used, and later on it became a style choice. Cowboys would often kill time by competing amongst themselves in skills that they used on their job. These contests consisted of bull riding, calf-roping, steer wrestling, bearback bronco riding, and barrel racing. And this eventually evolved into formal rodeo competitions. The golden age of the cowboy began to come to an end in the 1880s due to a host of factors.

Starting point is 00:10:46 refrigerated rail cars were introduced in 1878, eliminating the need to ship live cattle to cities in the north and east. Slaughterhouses were built in many of the cow towns. The other big change was the introduction of barbed wire in the 1880s. Ranches began to fence off their land, preventing the large-scale movement of cattle and cattle drives. There were also a series of weather events in the 1880s that hurt the cattle industry. In 1883, there was a drought that stunted grass growth, which reduced the amount of cattle feed. And the winter of 1886 and 1887 saw a particularly brutal winter which killed thousands of cattle and dozens of cowboys. That winter is often given as the end of the post-war cattle boom in the end of the cowboy era.

Starting point is 00:11:32 Cattle ranching became a much more settled activity centered on a particular ranch. A crew might still go out for an extended period of time, but not as long as they would have, on longer cattle drives. While the golden age of the cowboy was rather short-lived, and probably only lasted about 20 years, cowboys never disappeared entirely. Cattle drives continued until the 1940s, albeit not as long as the ones which took place after the war. Although the number of cowboys shrunk throughout the 20th century, they never disappeared.

Starting point is 00:12:04 Today there are somewhere around 10,000 cowboys in the United States and Canada. The one thing that hasn't changed is that being a cowboy is still not a high-paying job, and it's still very difficult and demanding. The life of a cowboy wasn't as glamorous or as exciting as movies and television made it out to be. It was often a lonely pursuit that required long hours of work under very difficult conditions. But despite all the changes that have taken place in the cattle industry over 150 years, the cowboy still has a place in the American world. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

Starting point is 00:12:45 The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server.

Starting point is 00:13:13 Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Real Story of Cowboys

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