Cowboy Life: Reconstructing an American Myth

Richard Irving Dodge "The most reckless of all the reckless desperadoes"

Richard Irving Dodge "The most reckless ofall the reckless desperadoes" 1882 Richard Irving Dodge presented his assessment of the cowboy in Our Wild IndiMns: Thirty-three Years' Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West. A military man and one-time aide to General William Tecumseh Sherman, Dodge came to a discussion of the cowboy by way of a rhetorical investigation into the causes of Indian unrest in the West. Unsavory frontiersmen aggravated the Indians, he concluded, and among these rude folk were miners, buffalo hunters, and cowboys. His is the soldier's view. Years ago, while yet a cherished portion of Mexico, Texas was famous for its cattle. Individuals owned thousands, even tens of thousands, which roamed almost at will, over the vast and fertile plains. The care of these was left to a few men and a crowd of Mexican boys from eight to twenty years of age; for not much money could be paid in wages, when the finest cow or fattest ox was worth but two or three dollars. After the annexation of Texas to the United States the earlier drives of great herds of cattle were accompanied by such numbers of these boys, that all the herders were commonly called "Texas Cow-boys"; and though the cattle business has now spread over the greater portion of the great West; though the price of cattle has From Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years' Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West (Hartford, A. D. Worthington & Co., 1882), 609-18. 33 COWBOY LIFE increased so enonnously that the best wages are given; and though the Mexican boys are replaced by full-grown white men, the appellative "cow-boy" is everywhere "out west" commonly applied to all those who herd cattle. The daily life of the cow-boy is so replete with privation, hardship and danger, that it is a marvel how any sane man can voluntarily assume it, yet thousands of men not only do assume it, but actually like it to infatuation. I doubt if there be in the whole world a class of men who lead lives so solitary, so exposed to constant hardship and danger, as this. A large herd of cattle will be guarded by a number of men, who have a common place for eating and sleeping, but they are never there together. Day and night, in good weather and bad weather, some of them must be with the herd. The men are divided up into reliefs, each relief being on duty in the saddle not less than eight hours of the twenty-four, and each individual haVing a specified beat sometimes eight or ten miles long. Each relief must go around the whole herd, see that all are quiet and unmolested. The outside limits are carefully watched, and if any animals have strayed beyond them, their trail must be followed up, and the fugitives driven back to their proper grazing ground. Under ordinary circumstances, and when the herd is Simply being held on certain good grazing ground, with abundance of water, these duties are comparatively easy; but when the grass is poor, and water scarce, the animals stray continually, and great watchfulness and labor are required for their care. Especially is this the case in winter, when the grass is covered with snow. Cattle in large herds are easily stampeded, becoming panic-stricken on very slight, and frequently without, provocation. Nothing so starts them as a Plains "Norther," and they will fly before a severe storm of wind and snow sometimes for incredible distances. These are the trying times for the cow-boys. When a stampede occurs from any cause, every man must be in the saddle, follow the fleeing animals day and night, get control of the herd and bring it back to its ground. The worse the weather, the worse the stampede, and the greater the necessity for the presence and activity of the cow-boys. A terrible Norther, during the winter of 1880, stampeded many 34 RICHARD ffiVING DODGE herds in Southern Kansas and the Cherokee strip, some of which made fully ninety miles to the south before being got under control. With and among them were numbers of cow-boys, with only the scantiest ration of bread and meat, with no shelter or bedding, with no protection from the terrible cold except the clothing they happened to have on...