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Short accounts of historic trails of the world and the people who traveled them for trade or migration.




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COWBOY CULTURE

3/25/2020

2 Comments

 
Picture
Mexican vaqueros wore chaps, high boots and tall hat. Notice the silver ornaments on chaps and stirrup. The Mexican vaquero was the forerunner of the American cowboy.
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Chuck wagon at mealtime.
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Dutch oven with embers on the lid.
PictureTexas Longhorn cattle.

Sue McCoy

    We should remember that today there are enormous cattle ranches in the southwest, and that daily life on a ranch today is not too different from life for the nineteenth-century ranchers. There are still chuck wagons to feed cowboys out in the field, and the clothing and gear are much the same.  Here are some details about the cowboys’ traditional clothing and gear, which was derived from the vaquero in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. The Spanish word for cowboy is vaquero, based on the word vaca or cow.

BOOTS
   Western cowboy boots in the nineteenth century were adapted from the Mexican vaqueros, whose clothing was based in turn upon Spanish ranchers' clothing and boots.  Following the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico were Spanish cattle ranchers working in northern Mexico and regions of the present American southwest: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and later in California.
    Leather boots were worn in many ancient cultures in Europe and Asia because riding horseback was the transportation for both peace and wartime.  Over time the style of leather boots, saddles, and leather clothing was adapted to local needs. The vaqueros and the cowboys were usually working in deserts with cactus, snakes, dirt, and mud, making a high-top leather boot more useful.       
      By the nineteenth century in the southwest, stirrups were common on saddles. The cowboy boot has tapered, rounded, or squared-off toes that make sliding the boot into a stirrup easier, and it has a higher heel so the boot “hooks” onto the stirrup securely.  Cowboys were not rich, so they required a sturdy leather boot that was as cheap as possible.  The fancy tooled boots of today developed later as cowboy boots moved into more fashionable, less utilitarian modes.
     A cowboy was proud of his spurs, and often made his own, with leather straps to attach to his boots.  Spurs were necessary as cowboys did not own their own horses, and had to ride different horses during the long cattle drives.  Some horses were less docile than others, some just broken to the saddle, so using spurs occasionally was necessary to keep the horse under control.  Also, cowboys in the Texas region were herding longhorn cattle, a boisterous, difficult breed to round up and contain. Skill in riding and roping was essential. 
​

SADDLES
    The exact date of the domestication of horses is in dispute, but could have possibly occurred as early as 4000 BC.  The first known saddle-like equipment was used by the Assyrian cavalry around the year 700 BC.  This equipment was a type of cloth padding attached around the horse with a girth or surcingle.  It typically included breast straps and cruppers (a strap attached to the saddle back and looped under the horse’s tail) to aid in keeping the pad in place. These saddles were unearthed in a burial site in Siberia.  They date back to 500-400 BC. 
       The first stirrup was a leather strap in which the rider could place only the toe.  The modern day open-strap stirrup was gradually developed; it offered greater support and was essential for warfare.  The stirrup was widespread across China by 477 AD and then spread into Europe.
       The design of saddles slowly changed and developed over centuries of horseback riding all over Europe and Asia. Wooden saddles were brought to Europe by the Huns, a fourth-century AD nomadic fighting people, and were common through the Middle Ages.  As leather working developed, and soft, durable hides were created, the saddle ‘tree’ (the wooden frame) was first covered in leather, and by the nineteenth century, the wooden tree was completely removed and the saddle was made entirely of leather with padding. A saddle blanket is placed under the saddle.
    The Spanish introduced horses to the North American Indians of the southwest. Today’s western saddle is an adapted version of the Spanish conquistadors' saddle to the vaquero’s working saddle. Saddle design was changed to suit the needs of ranchers, vaqueros, and cowboys. The primary addition was the saddle horn, developed to hold the cowboy’s lariat (from Spanish riata, or lariat), and the higher cantle (back of saddle seat) for strapping gear behind the saddle.
    Cowboys owned their saddles and they were valuable because a cowboy owning a saddle could more easily find work.  The saddle served the cowboy as a pillow at night under the stars.  They carefully kept the leather soft and supple by waxing it regularly.
​

CHAPS
    The concept of chaps was introduced by the Spanish to protect their legs from cactus, brush, and thorns. They called them “chaparreras,”  which meant leather breeches or "leg of iron". The first chaps were just large pieces of cowhide attached to the saddle; later they were detached to wrap entirely around the legs, called “shotgun” chaps because they looked like a double-barreled shotgun. After the cattle industry reached California, vaqueros often used goat, sheep, wolf, bear, or mountain lion pelts with the fur left intact.  Chaps covered the thighs, providing warmth in cold and wet weather.
      Chaps today are often made from hides with showy skins, fringes, or silver ornaments, and are laced on. There are different shapes of chaps as well, some are straight and some curved with a flared side, called “batwings.”

​
GLOVES AND SCARVES
    Buckskins, waterproof gloves with high pieces covering the wrists and lower arms, were often called “gauntlets.”  They protected hands from rope burns and the rein straps, as well as other hard-usage, and for cowboys, protected shirt cuffs from fraying so readily. Gauntlets were in common use in Europe for centuries. Cowboys had kerchief squares tied around their necks to pull over mouth and nose in dusty conditions. These were always in bright colors. The famous red cotton “bandanna” was the neck scarf used by cowboys, and is still popular today. (The word “bandanna” is from the 18th century, probably from Portuguese.

HATS
   The wide-brimmed cowboy hat (later popularized by the Stetson company) was patterned after the vaquero’s hat.  The misleading term “ten-gallon hat” does not mean that it held ten gallons of liquid.  The term “tan galán” in Spanish translates in English to "so handsome." It's worth noting that the Spanish word “galón” translates as “braid” in English. One staple of many cowboy hats is a narrow leather hatband wrapped around the base crown, and was thus called the “braided hat."  It's possible that cowboys may have overheard Spanish speakers referring to western-style hats as handsome or braided and misheard their words as "ten-gallon.”
     The wide-brimmed and water-proofed wool or leather hats were good protection from sun and rain. The curved brim allowed rain water to run off down the back.

RAIN GEAR
     Long water-proofed or oiled cloth coats, split up the back for wearing in the saddle, gave some protection from rain.  Inner straps held the two lower pieces around the legs for riding.
     Heavy canvas tarps carried rolled behind the saddle could serve as makeshift tents over sleeping bags or blankets. Either rolled around blankets, or partly under the blanket and propped over the head and shoulders, canvas gave a little protection for saddle and cowboy at night.


CHUCK WAGONS AND COOKING
     On ranches today and on the nineteenth-century cattle drives, the chuck wagon carried a portable kitchen, supplies for two months, equipment, and was the cook’s bed. The eighteenth-century word “chuck” meant food.  These were horse-drawn covered wagons, with curved staves stretched over the wagon bed and covered with a canvas. When camped, the canvas was removed from the wagon staves and stretched out like a tent behind the wagon, covering the kitchen cabinet on the rear of the wagon and making a covered cooking and serving area.
      The kitchen portion was a cabinet with storage areas for food supplies and small tools, with cast-iron pots and skillets hanging on the sides.  There was an iron grill on legs, several feet wide, to be placed over a fire pit to hang pots or place skillets.
    Basic supplies were: flour, sourdough starter, salt pork, dried beans, lard, bacon, potatoes, coffee beans, molasses, sometimes dried fruit for pies. Meals were usually coffee,  beans cooked with salt pork, bacon, beef stew with potatoes, and sourdough biscuits. Breakfast was coffee, bacon, biscuits, maybe beans. Cowboy coffee was ground coffee beans boiled in a huge coffee pot of water until the right color…and strength.  Plates and mugs were made of tin, knives, forks, and spoons were the “eatin’ irons.”
    Richard Nowlin, a cowboy and rancher in central Texas for 45 years, said this about the cook’s life: “…Then, of course, in a cow camp, … you just eat when you get to it. There’s always somethin’ there to eat —he always keeps somethin’ there to eat when you get in. But he had a pretty rough time of it!”

    The cook rode ahead, setting up the wagon, and cooking the beans or stew that required hours of cooking.  Making a long pit in the ground, a fire was built and allowed to burn down into hot coals, adding fuel as needed. The long metal grill was set over this fire pit. The ‘dutch oven‘ used for most cooking was a a large cast-iron pot with short legs, a bail handle, and a rimmed lid.  This could either hang over the fire by a hook from the grill, or be sunken into a small fire pit by itself with coals on the lid, thus creating a small oven in the ground.  Biscuits were cut and placed into this dutch oven to bake over the fire, sometimes fruit pie with a crust was baked in the pot.  It took some skill to prevent food from burning over a hot open fire!  Skillets were used on top of the grill to cook bacon, and sometimes biscuits. 

RODEOS
    With the fencing of the open range in the late 1880s, the cattle industry changed to a more confining job for the range cowboy. When communities sprang up, social occasions like the Fourth of July celebrations gave cowboys a chance to challenge the bronc riding and roping skills of cowboys from other ranches. Riding, roping, and branding, and even the word rodeo ("roundup") originated with the vaqueros as they worked in areas where there were stray cattle and horses.  Soon local contests became annual events.
    Since the cowboy's work was often seasonal, some cowboys also signed up to exhibit their skills with wild-west shows such as the first one William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) staged in his home town of North Platte, Nebraska, on the Fourth of July, 1882. Wild-west shows led exhibitions of rodeo skills in the East and eventually in Europe. By  the 1890s rodeo had become a spectator event in the West. Rodeo became an annual event in many places. Two of the earliest rodeos on record were held in Pecos, Texas, in 1883, the first to give prizes, and in Prescott, Arizona, in 1888, the first to charge admission. The first indoor rodeo took place at Fort Worth in 1917. By the late 1920s rodeo had become an annual event in some places in the East. In New York City, the Madison Square Garden Rodeo often lasted for thirty days. It was followed by a two-week rodeo in Boston. This gave rodeo national publicity.  Rodeo became viewed as entertainment by the public and in 1929 the Rodeo Association of America was organized by several rodeo committees (the people who put the rodeos on, not the cowboys) to standardize rules, establish a point system to determine world champions, monitor judges, and establish a fair practice in advertising and awarding prize money. Although the RAA helped correct some of the problems in rodeo, the idea of the cowboys' having their own organization surfaced at different times, but no permanent organization occurred until October 30, 1936, when sixty-one cowboys voted to strike in protest of the prize money offered at Boston. As a result, the cowboys were given their "fair share of the prize money." 
    

    Women were included in less dangerous skills, such as barrel-racing. Rodeo clowns were important to rush in and distract violent animals when cowboys fell. Barrels were always on the field for the clowns to jump into when threatened by raging bulls. Recently the question of whether animals suffer from their treatment in rodeos has resulted in less attention to the rodeos themselves.

THE ROMANCE OF THE COWBOY
    Hollywood in the 1920s and 30s did much to romanticize the cowboy culture. None of the movie cowboys would have made the grade in 1860 Texas.  Gene Autry and Roy Rogers created the famous “singing cowboy” image, with songs written about the west and ranching, such as “Don’t Fence Me In” and “Home on the Range.”  Later films and TV shows built on cowboy lives and ranchers’ issues, “Bonanza” was one such show.
   In the 1980s Cowboy Poetry was brought to the attention of the country through annual festivals held in Elko,Nevada where real cowboys read their poetry. One definition of cowboy poetry is:
      "It [is] a jazz of Irish storytelling, Scottish seafaring and cattle tending, Moorish and Spanish horsemanship, European cavalry traditions, African improvisation, and Native American experience, if also oppression. . . . the songs and poems of the American cowboy are part of that old tradition of balladry." —Western Folklife Center Archive
      As cowboys spend hours alone on the range, they naturally turn to making up stories or poems about their lives. The particulars derive from the American West: horses, cattle, fire, prairie storms, mythic figures of cowboys and ranchers, and the sublime wilderness. The use of forms such as ballads and odes and of poetic devices such as mnemonics and repetition sets cowboy poetry apart from the majority of contemporary poetry and relates it more to the Homeric tradition of oral poetry.
     Elements of cowboy dress and life entered into Country and Western Music, the Grand ‘Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee broadcast on radio in the 1940s to audiences in the southeast and southwest, bringing a different aspect of cowboy romance.  Square-dancing and line-dancing promote cowboy and western clothing styles, although the dances themselves originated in the English Border countries and Ireland, and were brought to America in the eighteenth century by the emigrants to Appalachia.


Sources:
Cochise Leather Company. History of Western Leather, Spurs, Chaps and Saddles.                       retrieved from cochiseleather.com/leather-history.aspx

Academy of American Poets. Retrieved from poets.org 
 

Additional websites: grizzlyrose.com; quarterhorsenews.com; lonehand.com;                                  www.horse.com; www.thc.texas.gov (Texas State Historical Assoc.)
















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Cattle Drive Trails

3/11/2020

9 Comments

 
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Painting of cattle drive. Date and artist unknown.
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The four most used trails from 1866-1890
PictureCattle drive at high water river crossing.


    The movie industry has burned into our memories the image of nineteenth-century cattle drives. Movies such as Red River (1948) with John Wayne, or the TV series Lonesome Dove (1989) with Robert Duval each give a somewhat blurry picture of the cattle drive experience. Today tourists can have a taste of life on the cattle trail offered by companies that try to simulate the experience. The comedy City Slickers (1991) with Billy Crystal portrays the urge to play cowboy. The “blurry” part of the picture is the emphasis movies make on gun fights, Indian raids, and natural disasters. Most actual accounts tell of a long, dusty, hazardous trip on a very long trail. The raids and natural disasters occurred, but less often than the movies would have us believe.
     
The origin of trails from south Texas to central Kansas can be partly attributed to a sharp drop in cattle prices in the South. When the Union army advanced into the South, access to those markets was interrupted and a surplus of cattle in Texas south rose significantly. After the war cattle could not be sold for more than two dollars a head in Texas, and In 1866 there were an estimated 200,000 to 260,000 surplus cattle available.
     
At the end of the Civil War a new market opened when Philip Danforth Armour opened a meat packing plant in Chicago known as Armour and Company. With this expansion of the meat packing industry, the demand for beef increased significantly. In 1866 cattle could be sold in the north for as much as forty dollars per head, making it profitable for cattle from Texas to be herded long distances to market. To accomplish this they needed some designated routes to follow. The map shows several trails that developed at that time, and two of the most used were the Chisholm Trail and the Goodnight-Loving Trail.
    
The southern terminus of the Chisholm Trail was a trading post near the Red River in north Texas, and the northern terminus was a trading post near Kansas City, Kansas. Both trading posts were owned by Chisholm. The main source area for the Texas cattle was in the area south of San Antonio and Houston down to the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande River.
     
The trail was established by a Delaware scout/cattle rancher named Black Beaver and his friend Jesse Chisholm, who was a merchant. Although the trail laid out and named by Black Beaver and Jesse Chisholm began at the crossing of the Red River into Indian Territory, present day Oklahoma, common usage often considers it beginning in south Texas and extending into Kansas. A trail certainly existed for the entire distance. The difference lies in deciding where to begin calling it the Chisholm Trail.
     
The first major effort to drive cattle from Texas to the nearest railhead for shipment to Chicago came in 1866 when Texas ranchers banded together to drive their cattle to the closest point with a railroad, which at that time was Sedalia, Missouri, eighty-five miles east of Kansas City. The route to Sedalia, called the Shawnee Trail, passed through farming land in Kansas and Missouri but resistance from farmers upset by tick fever brought with the cattle forced the cattlemen to use a more westerly route. 
     
On typical drives lasting about two months, the cattlemen faced many natural obstacles. They crossed major rivers such as the Arkansas River and the Red River and many smaller creeks, yet often completely lacked water for long distances. The weather was also a major factor. The drives typically needed to start in the spring after the rains brought green grasses for the grazing cattle. The spring rains also created higher water levels in streams and thus more dangerous river crossings.
    
In 1867 cattle shipping facilities were built in Abilene, Kansas, by Joseph G. McCoy. Jesse Chisholm marked out a route through Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and the tribes allowed the cattle herds to pass for a toll of ten cents per head. Conflicts were few. Historians usually point out that only the trail north of the Red River and through Indian Territory is actually the Chisholm Trail. Generalists use the name Chisholm for the entire distance from south Texas to Abilene.
     
One of the earliest drives was made by cattleman M.A. Withers in April 1868. He rode north out of Lockhart, Texas (near San Antonio), with a herd of 600 Longhorn steers, eight hands, and a cook, headed for Abilene, Kansas where facilities had opened the previous summer. Withers rode several miles ahead of the herd and was near the site of present-day Wichita, Kansas where he stopped to water his horse. When his horse suddenly jerked to attention and Withers looked up, he saw seven mounted Osages galloping straight toward him. There was no chance of escape so he had no choice but to face them. The Indians, all well armed, raced right up to Withers and reined to a stop. After an uncomfortably long pause the Osage leader held out his hand and asked for tobacco. Withers, still thinking perhaps his time on earth was about to end, handed over all the tobacco he had. Much to his surprise and relief the Osages abruptly whirled and raced away.
    Dodge City, Kansas became the chief shipping point for another trail west of the Chisholm Trail. This so-called Western Trail brought Dodge City to particular prominence as the typical western “cow town.” By 1877 Dodge City alone had shipped 500,000 head of cattle to Kansas City and Chicago.  
     
A drive usually consisted of 1,500–2,500 head of cattle, a trail boss, ten to fifteen hands, a horse wrangler who handled spare horses for each hand, and a cook who drove the chuck wagon with food and carried the bedrolls. The chuck wagon provided meals of bread, meat, beans with bacon, and coffee. When the cattle were sold at the end of the drive each man received wages amounting to about forty dollars a month—about eighty dollars per man after a two-month drive. A typical pay for the trail boss was ninety dollars per month.
     
The men drove and grazed the cattle most of the day and shared watching them at night. The drive was held to ten or twelve miles per day to assure that the cattle had sufficient time to graze and maintain weight throughout the route. At the end of the drive, after months of monotonous days, uninteresting food, no alcoholic drinks, and no women, the cowboys were paid and free to do what they pleased. They usually started with a bath and shave, along with some new clothes and gear. The local businesses anticipated their needs and hardware stores, clothing stores, barbers, and prostitutes thrived when the cattlemen arrived. The saloons especially did a thriving business when drovers came to  town. The traditional price for a twenty-five ounce bottle of cheap whiskey in a cowboy saloon was twenty-five cents. Whiskey was not sold in one-ounce shots, but typically in a four-ounce glass for five cents.      
     
At the end of a long drive the cowboys’ celebration often involved rowdiness that could get them in trouble with the law. Their violence and ebullient spirits gave rise to the need for more law officers to help keep the peace—some of whom became famous. James Butler Hickok (in Hays, Kansas among other places), Wyatt Earp (in Wichita, Kansas), and Bat Masterson (Dodge City, Kansas) were among the best-known cattle town marshals. The TV series Gunsmoke was a popular depiction of the town marshal with Matt Dillon (Dodge City) as the lawman.
     
The cattle trails began to change after 1871 when Abilene lost its preeminence as a shipping point for Texas cattle. In 1883 an extension of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway opened to Caldwell, Kansas (south of Abilene near the Kansas border), isolating Abilene. This only lasted until the 1890’s when railroad lines were built to southern Texas near the main source area for cattle. These rail shipments brought an end to long cattle drives over dusty trails.  
     
At the same time meat packing plants moved closer to major ranching areas and the railroads carried meat rather than cattle, with better profits for all. Another aspect leading to the end of cattle drives was that the trails had become over-used and grazing was inadequate. Also ranchers and other settlers began to move into the western plains and used barbed wire to enclose their land. Ultimately all these factors: overgrazing, barbed wire fences, and expansion of railroads brought the cattle drive era (1866-1890) to an end.
     
The drovers traveled the trails for two months or more every year of their working lives. These men worked day and night at very hazardous jobs, yet they returned every year for another cattle drive.

Sources
Hunter, J. Marvin. The Trail Drivers of Texas: Interesting Sketches of Early Cowboys. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1998. (original 1924)

Ludwig, Wayne. The Old Chisholm Trail: From Cow Path to Tourist Stop. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. 2018.

https://www.historynet.com/know-ol-chisholm-trail.htm

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