It's a Cowboy's Life

Next to the cattle, the most important element in a successful ranch were the cowboys.  Contrary to Hollywood movies and dime novels, the legend of the Wild West, always ready to defend the female and round up the bad guys was not entirely accurate.  Most cowboys existed as casual laborers, earning money from their abilities to ride and lasso. 

Their bosses gave the orders, often petty restrictions such as limiting cards games within the ranch acreage.  Cussing, liquor and gambling were all at the discretion of the owner's whim and many did not allow any of them.  Cowboys lived in the saddle for weeks at a time, through blizzards and heat waves, risked their lived at rounds up and cattle drives - and made $30 a month for 18 hour days, t
heir pay and work hours also set by the ranch owner.

There was, however, a romance to a cowboy's life - living on horseback in a wide open country.  American farm boys, Englishmen, Scots, German, Frenchmen, Black and Mexicans, were all attracted to the cowboy way of life.  Blacks and Mexicans, unlike those in films, made up a third of all cowboys.   In the 1870s and 1880s it was fashionable to run away from home to become a cowboy (also to join the circus!). 

The romance of the cowboy life brought many young men west but there was something more than kept them there. It was a male society, where courage was required to handle many dangers - rustlers, stampedes, rattlesnakes, droughts and blizzards.  These dangers developed a unique comradeship among those who rode.  There emerged a recognizable type of man who was a cowboy, described by Theodore Roosevelt...

"All cowboys have a certain curious similarity, existence in the west seems to put the same stamp upon each.  Sinewy, hardy, self-reliant.  Their life forces them to be both daring and adventurous, and the passing over their heads of a few years leaves printed on their faces certain lines which tell of dangers quietly fronted and hardships uncomplainingly endured." 

Next time...The Age of the Cattle Baron
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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 2, 1876,  Wild Bill Hickok was playing cards with his back to the saloon door. At 4:15 in the afternoon, a young gunslinger named Jack McCall walked into the saloon, approached Hickok from behind, and shot him in the back of the head. Hickok died immediately. McCall tried to shoot others in the crowd, but amazingly, all of the remaining cartridges in his pistol were duds. McCall was later tried, convicted, and hanged.