|
Search over 100 encyclopedias and dictionaries: |
Research categories | Follow us on Twitter |
Research categories
View all topics in the newsView all reference sources at Encyclopedia.com |
|||
Cowboy
COWBOYThe cowboy, a person who rounded up and "drove" large herds of cattle, figured prominently in U.S. life from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s. During this 20-year period the cattle industry in the West grew rapidly. After the Civil War (1861–65) demand for beef increased, and butchers in the East and North were willing to pay handsomely for it. At the same time, large herds of cattle, produced by bulls and cows left behind by the early Spanish settlers, roamed freely on the open ranges of Texas. Seeing the business opportunity, cattle ranchers hired cowboys to round up the cattle, brand them (burn the skin with a rancher's mark or symbol), release them again onto the open range, protect them from rustlers, and at the end of the grazing season, round them up. The cowboys then ran a trail drive—guiding the cattle as far as 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) to the nearest railhead, where the animals were loaded into railcars and transported eastward. The train terminals at Abilene and Dodge City, Kansas, made those cities into "cow towns," frontier boom towns of the cattle industry. By 1870 cattle ranches had spread northward into present-day Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana. Between 1860 and 1880, the cattle population in these areas increased from 130,000 to 4.5 million. Where the cattle went, so did the cowboys, conducting roundups twice a year. Though there were probably no more than 100,000 cowboys (also called cowpokes or cowhands) in the West, they captured the American imagination and came to symbolize the days of the "Wild West." (As many as 25 percent of the mounted cowboys were African Americans.) The innovation of barbed wire (1874) allowed ranchers to fence in their lands, and by the 1880s the railroads reached into previously remote areas. The long cattle drives became a thing of the past and the need for cowboys declined. See also: Cow Towns, Barbed Wire, Open Range, Chisholm Trail, Prairie, Longhorn Cattle |
|
|
Cite this article
"Cowboy." Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. 1999. Encyclopedia.com. 12 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "Cowboy." Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. 1999. Encyclopedia.com. (February 12, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406400220.html "Cowboy." Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History. 1999. Retrieved February 12, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406400220.html |
|
Cowboy
Cowboy, name given during the Revolution to lawless marauders who pillaged neutral territory and were supposedly favorable to the English. Those who favored the rebels were known as Skinners. Both figure in fiction about the Revolutionary War, particularly Cooper's The Spy. The term “cowboy” has since been applied, particularly in the West, to cattle herders, and there are distinctive cowboy ballads and tall tales. Popular romancing about the cowboy dates back to dime novels and other pulp fiction beginning in the 1870s, preceding infrequent realistic reminiscences like A Texas Cowboy (1885) by Charles Siringo. Owen Wister's The Virginian (1902) became the classic handling of the type, far surpassing in popularity the literary works of writers who had more experience of cowboy life, such as Andy Adams's The Log of a Cowboy (1903) and E.M. Rhodes's Good Men and True (1910). The mythology of the masculine and heroic cowboy has been continued in a large body of fiction from the time of Clarence E. Mulford (Hopalong Cassidy, 1910), Zane Grey (Riders of the Purple Sage, 1912), and Max Brand (Destry Rides Again, 1930) to modern paperback publications of Louis L'Amour. The works of these authors and others in their vein have been further popularized in numerous film versions by stars who have included William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and John Wayne. Cowboys have also been the subject of television programs.
|
|
|
Cite this article
James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Cowboy." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. 12 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Cowboy." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. (February 12, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-Cowboy.html James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Cowboy." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Retrieved February 12, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-Cowboy.html |
|
cowboy
cowboy Originally, a lawless marauder. The name was first applied to some pro-British gangs in the USA during the American War of Independence, who roamed the neutral ground of Westchester county in New York state (their Revolutionary counterparts were ‘skinners’). By the 1870s, a cowboy described a herder of cattle on the Great Plains. The cattle industry spread across the Great Plains from Texas to Canada and westward to the Rocky Mountains. The introduction of barbed wire to fence in ranches rapidly encroached on the open ranges, and by 1895 railway expansion had made trail-driving uneconomical, and cowboys settled to work on the cattle ranches.
|
|
|
Cite this article
"cowboy." A Dictionary of World History. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. 12 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "cowboy." A Dictionary of World History. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. (February 12, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O48-cowboy.html "cowboy." A Dictionary of World History. 2000. Retrieved February 12, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O48-cowboy.html |
|
cowboy
cow·boy / ˈkouˌboi/ • n. 1. a man, typically one on horseback, who herds and tends cattle, esp. in the western U.S. and as represented in westerns and novels. 2. inf. a person who is reckless or careless. • v. [intr.] work as a cowboy: Sonora, Mexico, where he learned to cowboy.PHRASES: cowboy up inf. mount a brave effort to overcome a formidable obstacle. |
|
|
Cite this article
"cowboy." The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Encyclopedia.com. 12 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "cowboy." The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Encyclopedia.com. (February 12, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-cowboy.html "cowboy." The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Retrieved February 12, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-cowboy.html |
|
cowboy
|
|
|
Cite this article
"cowboy." World Encyclopedia. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 12 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "cowboy." World Encyclopedia. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. (February 12, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O142-cowboy.html "cowboy." World Encyclopedia. 2005. Retrieved February 12, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O142-cowboy.html |
|
cowboy
cowboy
•sandboy • bellboy • rentboy • playboy
•pageboy • lifebuoy • tomboy
•ballboy, tallboy
•cowboy • houseboy
•doughboy, hautboy, lowboy
•homeboy • toyboy • schoolboy
•bootboy • newsboy • busboy
•choirboy • paperboy • attaboy
|
|
|
Cite this article
"cowboy." Oxford Dictionary of Rhymes. 2007. Encyclopedia.com. 12 Feb. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. "cowboy." Oxford Dictionary of Rhymes. 2007. Encyclopedia.com. (February 12, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O233-cowboy.html "cowboy." Oxford Dictionary of Rhymes. 2007. Retrieved February 12, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O233-cowboy.html |
|
Search over 100 encyclopedias and dictionaries:
HighBeam™ Research, Inc. © Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.
The Encyclopedia.com advertising network includes:
