cowboys

cowboys in American history. 1 Tory marauders, adherents to the British cause in the American Revolution, who fought in the contested area of Westchester co., N.Y. Their opposite numbers, who favored the Revolutionary cause and who operated in the same territory at the same period, were called skinners. 2 Mounted men employed as herders on cattle ranches of the American West. They were more important and picturesque in the days before the vast ranches were fenced, when their duties consisted of driving cattle to pasture and water, branding them at the roundup, protecting them from wild animals and thieves, and driving them to the shipping point. See rodeo .

Bibliography: See E. Hough, The Story of the Cowboy (1897, repr. 1970); J. B. Frantz and J. E. Choate, Jr., The American Cowboy, the Myth and the Reality (1955, repr. 1968); J. A. Lomax and A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (rev. ed. 1966).

Cowboys. The American cowboy descended from the Spanish and Mexican vaquero, who evolved in New Spain after the arrival of cattle in the Western Hemisphere. As cattle ranching spread northward into California and Texas, Americans adopted the tools and techniques of the vaquero. Texas cowboys watched over cattle, branded them, and rounded them up before herding them to markets first in New Orleans and by the 1850s northward to Missouri and beyond. As railroads pushed westward following the Civil War and the demand for beef increased in the East, Texas cowboys began to drive cattle herds north to railheads in Kansas and later Nebraska. By the late 1870s, cowboys, including many ofAfrican‐American and Hispanic descent, were found in cattle‐raising regions throughout the West. After the invention of barbed wire and the fencing of ranches, the cowboy became a hired man on a horseback, repairing fences, doctoring cattle, and participating in cattle‐branding roundups. By 1900, the golden age of the American cowboy was over.

Compared to his counterpart south of the Rio Grande, the American cowboy played a regional and relatively short‐lived role. Yet he found his place in the history and mythology of the West, celebrated for fairness, justice, and courage, as exemplified by the hero of Owen Wister's enduring novel The Virginian (1902). Dime novels, folk songs, motion pictures, television series, and the fashion and advertising industries all helped to create the mythic version of the American cowboy that survives today.
See also Folklore; Hispanic Americans; Livestock Industry; Southwest, The.

Bibliography

David Dary , Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries, 1982.

David Dary