Cowboy Life: Reconstructing an American Myth

Joseph Nimmo, Jr. "A creature of circumstance"

Joseph Nimmo, Jr. "A creature of circumstance" 1886 In 1885, Joseph Nimmo, Jr., chief of the United States Bureau of Statistics, produced a report of lasting value to historians of the western range-cattle industry. But the "Nimmo Report" (which was published under several titles io several diHerent government documents ) had little to say about the cowboy, concentrating instead on quantifiable data. The statistician spoke up, however, in Harper's New Monthly MagaZine in November, 1886. Nimmo praised the cowboy and described him as performing an "important public service." During the last fifteen years the American cow-boy has occupied a place sufficiently important to entitle him to a considerable share of public attention. His occupation is unique. In the exercise of his function he is always a man on horseback. His duty as a worker in the cattle business is at times to ride over the range in order to see that straying cattle do not rove too far from the assigned limits of the herd of which he has charge; at times to drive the herd from one locality to another; and at times to "round up" the dispersed cattle, by which is meant to collect them together for the purpose of branding calves, or of selecting beef cattle, which latter are driven to railroad stations for shipment to market. The chief qualifications of efficiency in this calling are courage, physical alertness, ability to endure exposure and fatigue, horsemanship, and skill in the use of the lariat. From Joseph Nimmo, Jr., "The American Cow-Boy," Harper's New Monthly MagaZine, Vol. LVII (November, 1886), 880-84. 77 COWBOY LIFE The original cow-boy of this country was essentially a creature of circumstance, and mainly a product of western and southwestern Texas. Armed to the teeth, booted and spurred, long-haired, and covered with the broad-brimmed sombrero-the distinctive badge of his calling-hiS personal appearance proclaimed the sort of man he was. The Texas cow-boys were frontiersmen, accustomed from their earliest childhood to the alarms and the struggles incident to forays of Indians of the most ferocious and warlike nature. The section of the State in which they lived was also for many years exposed to incursions of bandits from Mexico, who came with predatory intent upon the herds and the homes of the people of Texas. The carrying offire-arms and other deadly weapons was consequently a prevalent custom among them. And being scattered over vast areas, and beyond the efficient protection and restraints of civil law, they of necessity became a law unto themselves. It is not a strange thing that such an occupation and such environment should have developed a class of men whom persons accustomed to the usages of cultivated society would characterize as ruffians of the most pronounced type. But among the better disposed of the Texas cow-boys, who constitute, it is believed, much more than a majority of them, there were true and trusty men, in whom the dangers and fortunes of their lives developed generous and heroic traits of character. The same experiences, however, led the viciously inclined to give free vent to the worst passions. Upon slight provocation they would shoot down a fellow-man with ahnost as little compunction as they fired upon the wild beasts. But the peculiar characteristics of the Texas cow-boys qualified them for an important public service. By virtue of their courage and recklessness of danger, their excellent horsemanship, and skill in the use of fire-arms, and by virtue also of the influence which they have exerted upon their gentler brethren of the northern ranges, they have been an efficient instrumentality in preventing Indian outbreaks , and in protecting the frontier settlements of the entire range and ranch cattle area against predatory incursions and massacres by Indians. This has been a natural result of the fact that the cow-boys constitute throughout that region a corps of mounted scouts, armed JOSEPH NIMMO, JR. and equipped, twenty thousand strong. They traverse vast ranges, ford rivers, and search for cattle amid mountain fastnesses and in lurking-places of the river bottoms. No hostile movement could for a day escape their notice. It is certain that they have done much toward subduing a vast area to the arts of peace, and that an unarmed man may now travel alone throughout Wyoming, Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, and even in Texas, as safely as...