In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

56 3. Making a Living and a Life Perhaps the most enduring romantic figure in the history of the American West is the cowboy. As the myths portray him, the cowboy rides a beautiful mount through picturesque territory, and the close-up reveals a rugged, typically white, man. His main job is to ride the range, usually among cattle , which he occasionally rounds up for branding. Rarely do these men sit on substandard horses or mended saddles. They are never seen back at the ranch headquarters mucking out stables. Real ranchers know that much of the work happens at home and at the hands of children, women, and especially men of color. Given that many of our terms for what cowboys do (rodeo), what they wear (chaps), what they use (lariat), and even where they work (ranch) derive from Spanish, the language of cowboys itself significantly undermines this myth. In the Purgatory, cowboys were often Hispanicboysandmen,andtheywerejustaslikelytoberearingandshearing sheep as they were driving cattle to a railhead. They were also probably wage laborers, as was the case in much of the West (Schwantes 1987). To move beyond the fantasy of western agricultural enterprises we can turn to several sources. Oral histories and biographies are available that document the lives of workers. Census data that provide a demographic close-up on a regional work pattern can supplement these sources. Finally , when addressing daily activities and the places where they happened, archaeology provides a fine-grained view of the residues of routines and the remnants of tools. The archaeology of work offers an important way for historical archaeologists to refine American historical understanding (e.g., Silliman 2004). The following chapter focuses on La Placita because it is the larger and more materially rich of the two case studies. This chapter ends by presenting the evidence from Wild Plum as a counterpoint, bringing the strategies evident at La Placita into focus through contrast. Sojourning for a Wage In No Separate Refuge, historian Sarah Deutsch (1987) contends that from 1880 to 1940 the Hispanic residents of northern New Mexico and south- Making a Living and a Life 57 ern Colorado pursued an economic strategy spread over hundreds of miles. She terms this phenomenon a “regional community” (Deutsch 1987:9). Families made their homes in communal villages, but the agricultural enterprises centered there did not provide enough income for the settlements to be self-sufficient. This became increasingly true as villagers were forced to pay grazing fees, taxes, and often lawyer’s fees to uphold land claims. Such settlements traditionally benefitted from outside sources of income, but many of these avenues were no longer open, especially freighting and the Indian trade. From 1880 on, many villagers would spend months and sometimes years working as wage laborers, especially for the railroads and in local coal fields. Men comprised the majority of these sojourning workers, while women stayed at home taking care of the fields and livestock and maintaining critical social ties. Seasonal wage labor was an attractive option for villagers, allowing them to maintain many elements of their way of life. It provided the needed capital for settlements to survive, but it fit into the traditional pattern of trading, where male laborers could plan their wage work around communal labor needs, such as those associated with planting, harvesting, or lambing. As Deutsch (1987:40) argues, between 1880 and 1914 the regional community was “a highly adaptable system.” One of the key research questions that guided work at La Placita and Wild Plum was whether the sites fit into Deutsch’s model of the regional community and its sojourning workers. It is necessary to turn to complementary lines of evidence in order to address this question. The first issue is the productive capacity of each site. What features are present and what were they used to produce? The next factor is what was being consumed. How heavily were residents relying on what they could make themselves on-site? How much of what is found there was acquired through a cash-based economy? Finally, this analysis must compare the two sites. Where do the remains at each site fall on a continuum between subsistence and a cash-based economy? Would the types of work revealed at each locale have yielded enough surplus income for residents to purchase the items found there? If the evidence of consumption overwhelms signs of production, the site’s very existence would suggest that residents had an outside source of income. [3.14.142.115...

Share