Cowboy Life: Reconstructing an American Myth

Preface

Preface to the New Edition 'This book presents a composite view ofthe life ofthe cowboy on the Southern Great Plains - more particularly Texas, Indian Territory, and Kansas - from the 1860's to around 1900. It has reference to the persistence ofthe cowboyimage in American culture,argues in behalf ofthe mythic qualities ofthat image, and suggests that, ifmyths are to be useful, their basis in reality must be understood." Or at least that was how the Preface to the first edition of Cowboy Life had it in 1975. In the years since, the book has proved to be a durable item, establishing itself in standard bibliographies as an acceptable anthology. The University Press ofColorado has seen fit to reissue Cowboy Life and has kindly allowed its editor an Afterword in which to assess whatever "reconstruction" ofthe cowboy myth may have occurred in the past two decades. Those whose generous assistance I acknowledged in the first edition are now gone up the trail, as it were, and their whereabouts are, without exception, unknown to me. I trust that once was enough. This time around, I express gratitude to Jack E Wardlow III, who secured fresh copies of the photographs herein from the Western HistoryCollections ofthe UniversityofOklahoma; toJohn R Lovettof the Western History Collections, for his archival support; to Matt Despain , an admirable factotum; to Keith Shadden, for instruction in the cowboy way; to Moses Glidden, for his prayers; to Luci Butler, who typed the material for the new edition; and to Sheila Bobalik Savage, for indulgences too numerous to mention. WILLIAM W. SAVAGE,]R. Norman. Oklahoma 1993 ...