The Orgins of the American Cowboy
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The United States of America, a fairly young country, is a nation built around social icons. These icons are what define us as Americans, host to nations and land of the free. One of its famous icons, and perhaps one of the oldest, is the American Cowboy. The cowboy of the open range holds a place in all our hearts; he has become our symbol of restless expansion, our manifest destiny. Our image of the cowboy is a young man who rides his faithful steed into the sunset every night with his six-gun at his hip, Stetson tilted just so, and no one but himself to answer to. He is celebrated to this day in song, books, film, even in fashion.
But where did this troubadour of the Wild West come from? This gun-slinging bronc buster didn’t just appear out of nowhere, so it begs the question: where did the origin of the cowboy culture itself begin?
Before we can understand where the cowboy came from, we must first strip ourselves of the pop culture image of the cowboy. The myths we accept as truths as to what the cowboy actually did in the west have become very obscure over time.
It is hard to say when the birth of the cowboy occurred in North America, or when he died out, for that matter. What is true is that his time in the United States was very brief.[1] It is true, however, that being a cowboy became a prominent profession after the American Civil War. When the war came to a close in 1865, much of the western prairies was devoid of settlers. West of the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains only a few mining camps and Mormon settlements existed. Bison and Native Americans roamed much of the west in this expanse that was known as The Great American Desert. Texas was still mostly frontier, and after the war, many sought to make their living ranching cattle.[2]
Being a ranch owner was no easy task. The Longhorn, the staple cattle for all ranchers, was an unruly beast, and each one had to branded, cared for, and fed. Each cow required an acre of land to graze over each day, and the rancher’s cattle numbered in the hundreds, sometimes thousands. So it was the practice of many to mark their own cattle and let them loose in the great expanse. The rancher would hire young men seeking employment to manage these massive beasts. Their main task was to keep an eye on the herds of cattle, protect them from rustlers and Indians, and to drive the cattle to market when the time came. It was a dangerous and chaotic job and the cowboy often lived among herds, exposed to all forms of weather and disasters, like tornados and flood, all the while protecting the herd from predators and rival rancher’s cowboys and hostile Indians.[3]
When it came time to drive the herd to market, the cowboys would have to make sure that the herd survived these long drives, accounting for all the cattle the rancher put to pasture, for all the calves that were born on the range, and picking up maverick Longhorns that did not have a brand to make up for any losses, or to ensure a bonus of pay for bringing back more cows than the rancher expected.
The life of a Cowboy was hard, grueling, and very dangerous. Living so far from a settlement to keep a watch over a rancher’s property was life-threatening on a day to day basis. Being gored by a steer, or bitten by a rattlesnake, or wounded in a fight while out on the range was almost certain death, as the nearest place to seek help was many miles away.
And in the end, when the money was made, the rancher took the largest share, his foreman took the next largest, and the cowboy’s themselves got what was left, which was usually enough to pay for saddles, a living space, and their food. Many ranchers found their fortune in this endeavor, and as the treaties with the Native Americans began to dissolve, the open prairies of the Great Plains were free for the taking, and it was not long before ranches lined the grasslands of the west from Mexico to Canada.[4]
The life of the American Cowboy is not what we today would call glamorous by any means. The desperado we imagine when we hear the word cowboy tells us nothing about what or who the cowboy really was.[5] The reality is that cowboys lead a hard life of hard labor, and many of them died at a young age, buried on the plains in unmarked graves.
While the birth date of the American Cowboy is debatable, the origins from which he came are clear. Mexican Cowboys, or Vaqueros, had been performing the art of cow handling for centuries before their trade was passed on to their northern counterparts. The skill, clothing, equipment, basically everything the American Cowboy had, come directly from the Vaqueros.
After the Catholic faith had been introduced to Mexico soon after the Spaniards invaded in 1519, missions had been erected across the land in an effort to convert the Native Americans to Christianity. Hundreds of these well built half-church-half-forts were constructed as far west as the California coast. Maintaining the missions and transporting the much needed supplies and provisions was costly, especially in the vast numbers in which they were built.
Many of the Franciscan Friars who ran these missions devised a plan to support their churches, and maybe earn a little extra. A majority of these priests were descendents of noblemen back in Spain, and many had been raised around cattle and the cattle trade. They viewed the vast grassy-scrub plains of Mexico as one big opportunity.[6]
Nearly everywhere the Spanish explored since they set foot on in the New World, the natives were hostile, and in the constant fights with the Indians, many of their horses and cattle were lost or forgotten to the plains.[7] It is believed that over a million feral Longhorns grazed across the territory, and they were free for the taking.[8] The Friars of the missions knew that a fortune was to be had if they could manage to ranch these animals on their mission property and begin their own cattle trade. They knew that it would take a number of workers to obtain this goal, but they didn’t need to look far to find them.[9]
Many of the citizens of the New Spain were eager to help the missions in any way as an effort to serve the priests and God, and these cow hands honed their skills until it became an art. Many took to horse riding as if it was a natural ability, and they became known as the famed Vaqueros.[10]
When Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, the new government resented the wealth these missions had accumulated and delivered back to Spain. In 1834, the government stripped the ranches from the missions and turned the property over to upper class Mexicans, known as Charros. When the Charros took over, they developed the practice of branding and cattle driving to markets in the expanding United States, and when the territory of Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836, and became annexed by the United States 1845, the vaqueros soon found themselves in a foreign land that was desperate to begin its own cattle trade, and surrounded by a large group of eager young men they would eventually pass their legacy to as Mexico slowly sold the territories of Nevada, California, New Mexico and Arizona, to the United States of America.[11]
Horses and cattle were brought to the Americas at the same exact time. When Christopher Columbus made his voyage in 1492, he had opened a new frontier for the powerful and wealthy Spain. When King Charles I was proclaimed monarch of Spain in 1516, the Spanish army had just returned to their homes from waging war with the Spanish Arabs for hundreds of years. These soldiers were bred to fight, and now Charles had a massive contingent of these armed men who had no enemy to fight.[12]
When Charles found out that a massive mainland loomed just west of the Caribbean Islands Columbus had discovered, and the resistance the natives were putting up, he had a new theater of war to send his troops thus removing a removing the heavily armed force from the vicinity of Spain’s captital. In 1518 the expedition of Mexico was scheduled, mainly to determine whether reports of an indigenous population in the interior of the country were true. Charles’s troops were to be placed under the command of a 33-year-old son of a nobleman who had quelled a slave resistance on Cuba, Captain-General Hernán Cortés.[13] On February 18th, 1519, Cortés and his force of Conquistadores landed on the shores of Mexico, and immediately named the cite Veracruz.
If the Spaniards had any doubts about an advanced civilization existing in Mexico’s interior, all suspicions were soon laid to rest. The Aztecs of Mexico had been the ruling tribe for over 300 years, and at its core stood the grandeur of Technoctitlán, their capital. The city had a population of over 200,000 and a massive infrastructure of causeways and canals. At the city’s center stood the Temple of Tenoch, the Aztecan god the city was named for.
In 1428, the Aztecs launched a surprise attack on the other tribes that inhabited the central valley of Mexico, and by the early sixteenth century the Aztecs reigned over the entire valley as far south as Guatemala, with an estimated population of 20 million people under their empire.
They made one fatal error, however. The brutality of the war they waged was not forgotten by the tribes they conquered, and animosity towards the Aztecs ran high among these rival tribes. When Cortés and his army of Conquistadores landed at Veracruz, the first natives to look upon him thought he was their god Quetzalcoatl, the blond Toltec deity who was the bringer of
justice and punishment to evil ones. The blond-haired, blue-eyed Cortés fit the part, and he soon had allies among many tribes who thought he was there to deliver them from the firm grasp of Aztec rule. Cortés soon learned of Technoctitlán, and he immediately turned his sights north towards the great city.[14]
Cortés landed with 11 ships and a force that included 32 crossbow-men, 13 musketeers, 508 foot soldiers, 100 sailors, an arsenal of 14 cannons, and 16 horses. This, with his newly attained allies, was the force that brought about the fall of the Aztec Empire.[15]
Montezuma, Emperor of the Aztecs, knew of the invasion as soon as the Spanish set foot on the beach, but he was dumbfounded. He did not know how to deal with these intruders because he, like most of the other natives, thought Cortés was in fact Quetzalcoatl, and that his Conquistadores were immortal. Montezuma was struck with such indecision that the Spaniards simply walked into Technoctitlán and informed the king that he could consider himself and his people conquered. The city remained under Spanish occupation for nearly a year until July 1, 1521.[16]
On that day, the Spanish mistakenly took a ritual performed by the Aztec citizens of the city as an uprising, and had executed many of the natives before they realized their error. But by then it was too late. Fed up with their treatment by the Spanish and the passiveness of their king, an uprising occurred, and the Spanish fled the city, and Montezuma was taken from his palace and stoned to death by his own people.
Cortés was unwilling to let the natives go unpunished. His men laid siege to the city with their cannons and cut off supply lines, starving the citizens into submission. It was also at this time many of the germs that the European Spaniards carried and were immune too was ravaging the native populations with disease, killing millions. Cortés ordered that Technoctitlán be razed to the ground, and a new European city be built atop the ruins. This would become modern day Mexico City, and by the time its construction was complete, as much as 90 percent of the Aztec population lay dead by the hands of the Spaniards.[17]
Once the Spaniards established a foot hold in the new world, it did not take long for them to discover that the European oxen they planned on using as a beasts of burden would not survive long in the rugged, hostile terrain. Rough mountain passes and scrub land covered their new territory, and it was going to take a special breed of bovine to survive the harsh conditions. They chose the Andalusian Cow, eventually known as the Mexican Longhorn, and, as they were driven north over the years, the Texas Longhorn. These cows were adapted to the arid climate and sparse grass coverage Mexico had to offer, and they flourished not only as a beast of burden, but an ample food supply. However, much of the newly discovered land had yet to be charted, and much resistance was met when the Spanish explorers probed into a new area. Many outposts erected by the Conquistadores were overrun or abandoned, and many times their equipment and
provisions were left behind. On many occasions, the cattle were left in the haste of retreat, and the hardy Longhorns had no problem propagating in great numbers, filling the land with feral cattle that would eventually become the economic cornerstone for the Catholic missions some years down the line.[18]
These cows remained feral for generations, and the Longhorn, a breed of cattle that is known for its unruly nature, was not willing to be driven back to domestication without a fight. There was really only one weapon in the vaquero’s arsenal that could match the maverick Longhorns brute strength, and this was the Spanish Mustang.
The Mustang (a corruption of its Spanish name, Mesteña, which means ‘belonging to the people’), was bred for war. They were the staple horse used by the Spanish Calvary for centuries, and they were as fierce an opponent as the soldiers who rode them. They were trained not only to ride fearlessly into combat, but they were also trained to bite, kick, and trample opponents. They were greatly feared by the enemies of Spain, and they were revered by the Spanish riders, and they are thought to be one of the most intelligent breeds of horse.[19]
When the Conquistadores began exploring the mainland, they were unknowingly reintroducing horses to North America, where all Horse species had became extinct 10,000 years ago. Many natives were unsure what to make of the tall, four-legged-animals. Many believed the horse and rider were one creature, and when the Native Americans finally did resist their conquerors, the Calvary, atop their faithful steeds, stacked up a staggering number of casualties.[20]
When the need arose for a mount that could withstand the strength and weight of a wild, Andalusian bull, it was no surprise that the Mesteña was the Vaquero’s weapon of choice in this duel of the plains. Alongside their bovine cousins, many of these horses were abandoned when troops fled or were overrun by the natives, and they took to the terrain and climate just as well as the Longhorns. Wild horses held a higher value to the missions and charros than feral cows, and they were a much sought prize. Breaking these wild horses was a favorite pastime of vaqueros not only to tame them enough to sell, but also as a way to hone their skills, and it was these re-domesticated horses that became known as the Mustang, a prized mount of the vaqueros. These horses would develop a camaraderie with their new, and only, Vaquero owner, much like they were bred to do with soldiers, and it was in this connection between horse and man that the cowboy life was born.[21]
Cowboys owe their entire existence to the horse. Frederic Remington, a famous painter of cowboys and the west, stated that vaqueros “on foot are odd fish….Their knees work outward and they have a decided ‘hitch’ in their gait; but once let them get a foot in a stirrup and a grasp on the horn of a saddle, and a dynamite cartridge alone could expel them from their seat….”.[22]
Cowboys became famous for their horsemanship. They had to be good at what they did because their job demanded it. One slip up and a cowboy could easily find himself desperate situation of pain and death. Fear of this meant the cowboys left no room for error, and this included the choice of mount they rode.
The cowboy trusted his horse more than most other humans, and Mesteñas that the Conquistadores and Vaqueros rode was the best steed one could ask for. The Mesteña, however, was a breed not to be taken for granted. It had taken centuries of breeding to work the training, intellect, power, and sociability with humans into their genes. The Spaniards did not waste their time on just any horse; they sought out all of these traits in many breeds to create their warhorse. Because of this, the lineage of the Mesteña is part of one of the oldest breeds of horse known to man, the Arabian.[23]
The origins of the Arabian horse are unclear to this day, but it is an undisputed fact that the breed was running free in the Arabian Peninsula as long ago as 2500 B.C.E. They are mentioned both in the Bible and the Koran, and their stamina, soundness, intelligence and beauty are unmatched by any other breed.[24]
A testament to their stamina is the legend that the prophet Mohamed once caged a hundred horses for seven days without water in the desert heat. On the seventh day, he released them and they all stampeded for the stream that ran near their pen. Just before they reached water, Mohamed had a war bugle sound. Even though they were mad with thirst, five mares turned to the call of war, and it was with these five horses, as legend has it, that Mohamed started refining the breed of the Arabian.[25]
These horses were attuned to desert life, and they were valued by their owners to the point that most horses lived in the same tent as their master, and many were held in higher regard than family members. The Arabian became a sign of wealth and power, and these nomads quickly trained their horses to give them a fast, tactical advantage on the field of battle.[26] When Mohammed created his church of Islam, he taught that the faith would be spread through fire and sword. Many of the fast, noble horses were used in the conquering of Middle East, and by 637 A.D. Damascus and Jerusalem had both fallen to the Islamic jihad. By the early 8th century, the Muslim faith was spread on horseback across Saharan Africa, and by the year 711 A.D. the Muslims crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, and pushed their way into Spain. They were finally stopped in central France, but by then, they had established a new Arab province that would rule for over 700 years.[27]
In July of 710 A.D. four small ships landed in Spain with a compliment of 300 foot soldiers and 100 horsemen. The invasion was reconnaissance in nature, and was a complete success. The expedition to cross the Strait of Gibraltar was heavily influenced by tales primitive civilization and the treasures they possessed.
Spain, at the time, was a territory of the Roman Empire, but for the few hundred years, Roman sights had been set on the east, in Byzantium, and the eastern half of the empire was left to crumble. The natives of Spain, tribes of Visigoths, resisted but were no match to the superior fighting tactics the Muslims used, and it did not take long for them to conquer all of Spain and Portugal, known as Iberia.[28] These Arab Islamic settlers became known as the Moors.
Iberia was a state of chaos from the start. Many native Spaniards did not take to their Islamic occupiers well. A majority of these natives were Christians as they were a part of the Roman Empire at one time. As the Spanish monarchy slowly began to draw power, the Spanish started to drive the Moors back across the strait. Kingdoms began to spring up across the land, and alliances were signed. Spain became a hostile land for Moors to reside in, and many chose to leave rather than stay.[29]
The final thrust to remove these intruders began in 1314 when Dominican priests in the Kingdom of Aragon launched an Inquisition to banish several heretics of the faith, and burn several others at the stake. The pursuit for what the Spaniards called ‘Hounds of God’ was on. For generations, Spaniards were taught that their native Catholic values passed down by the Pope were the words of God, and so they should be followed, and that all others were blasphemers and heretics. It was bred into the children, and their children’s children, and so on down the line, that anyone of different color, faith, and language, was an enemy to them, and the Holy Empire of Spain. When King Ferdinand and Queen took the throne of a unified Spain, they appointed a new cardinal to the office of Grand Inquisitor, a bloodthirsty priest by the name of Tomás de Torquemada. Under his fundamentalist regime, the Moors were deemed enemies of God, tortured and executed in droves, and by 1491, the last Moorish stronghold of Grenada was overrun by Spanish troops.[30]
By 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella lead the wealthiest nation in Europe, and with their new-found wealth, they financed a small expedition lead by an Italian explorer by the name of Christopher Columbus to find a sea route to India. When he returned in 1493, Columbus had news of a primitive civilization and the treasures they possessed.
The Moors heavily influenced Spain during their rule; their architecture and culture is still very prominent today in cities like Toledo and Grenada. However, their chief legacy would be the introduction of the Arabian horse to Spain. While they occupied the country, some of the best Arabian studs were paired with Andalucian mares. This breed is the oldest in all of native Spain, the lineage protected by Carthusian monks, and, like the Arabian, is thought to be one of the purest breeds of horse. This equine has been used for herding for thousands of years, and was the chosen mount of the Rejoneadore, the famed Spanish bullfighters.[31] The Moors saw that this horse was a powerhouse of brute force and strength, and believed a combination of the two horses would create an unstoppable horse that in the right hands could conquer the world.
In a way, it did. It was their offspring, the Mesteña, which provided the means for the Spaniards to conquer the Aztec nation, offered a mount that gave a vaquero the edge to take down a stampeding Longhorn, and influence the lives and culture of our own American Cowboy.
When barbed wire was invented in 1873, the American Cowboy began to slowly fade.[32] It was the end of a long journey that had started in the deserts of Arabia, to the bloody streets of Spain, to the arid scrublands of the Mexico, to the grasslands and prairies of the United States. The Cowboy’s history is a long and arduous one, and his symbolism in America has a new meaning. He is not just the clothes he wore, or the songs he sang, or values he held. He is a representation of our cultural richness. In a country that is home to all nations, America is the world’s melting pot, and what better icon to celebrate in our songs and books than the one whose heritage spans half the globe--the cowboy.
[1]The American Cowboy, Harold McCracken, published by arrangement with Doubleday: New York, 1973, pg 11.
[2]The American Cowboy: The Myth & Reality, Joe B. Frantz and Julian Ernest Choate, Jr. University of Oklahoma Press; Norman, 1955, pg 15,16.
[3]The Best of the American Cowboy, Ramon F. Adams, University of Oklahoma Press; Norman, 1957, pg 37-42.
[4]The American Cowboy: A Photographic History, Richard Collins, The Lyons Press, 2004, pg 9.
[5]Clio’s Cowboys: Studies in the Histiography of the Cattle Trade, Don D. Walker, University of Nebraska Press; Lincoln & London, 1981, pg 3.
[6]Vaqueros: America’s First Cowmen, Martin W. Sandler, Henry Holt Company: New York, 2001 pg 15.
[7]The American Cowboy, Harold McCracken, published by arrangement with Doubleday: New York, 1973, pg 55.
[8]Haeber, Jonathan, Vaqueros: The First Cowboys of the Open Range, National Geographic News, August 15, 2003, pg 2.
[9]Vaqueros: America’s First Cowmen, Martin W. Sandler, Henry Holt Company: New York, 2001, pg 16.
[10]The American Cowboy, Harold McCracken, published by arrangement with Doubleday: New York, 1973, pg 46.
[11]Vaqueros: America’s First Cowmen, Martin W. Sandler, Henry Holt Company: New York, 2001, pg 18,19.
[12]The Importance of Hernando Cortes, Stephen R. Lilley, Lucent Books; San Diego, 1996, Pg 15.
[13]The Importance of Hernando Cortes, Stephen R. Lilley, Lucent Books; San Diego, 1996, pg 18-23.
[14]Reference Library of Hispanic America, Volume 1, Nicholas Kanellos, Gale Research; Michigan, 1998, pg 54-55.
[15]The Importance of Hernando Cortes, Stephen R. Lilley, Lucent Books; San Diego, 1996, pg 26.
[16]Reference Library of Hispanic America, Volume 1, Nicholas Kanellos, Gale Research; Michigan, 1998, pg 9.
[17]Reference Library of Hispanic America, Volume 1, Nicholas Kanellos, Gale Research; Michigan, 1998, pg 10-11.
[18]The American Cowboy, Harold McCracken, published by arrangement with Doubleday: New York, 1973, pg 45.
[19]The Encyclopedia of the Horse, 1st ed., Elwyn Hartley Edwards, Dorling Kindersley; London, New York, Stuttgart, and Moscow, 1994, pg 216.
[20]Ultimate Horse, 2nd ed., Elwyn Hartley Edwards, Dorling Kindersley; London, New York, Munich, and Delhi, 2002, pg, 172-173.
[21]The Spanish Mustang, Amanda Parise-Peterson, Capstone Press, Minnesota, 2006, pg 4,6.
[22]Vaqueros: America’s First Cowmen, Martin W. Sandler, Henry Holt Company: New York, 2001, pg 39.
[23]Ultimate Horse, 2nd ed., Elwyn Hartley Edwards, Dorling Kindersley; London, New York, Munich, and Delhi, 2002, pg 40.
[24]Ultimate Horse, 2nd ed., Elwyn Hartley Edwards, Dorling Kindersley; London, New York, Munich, and Delhi, 2002, pg 40.
[25]The Arabian Horse, Gail B. Stewart, Capstone Press: Minneapolis, 1995, pg 7-8.
[26]The Arabian Horse, Gail B. Stewart, Capstone Press: Minneapolis, 1995, pg, 11, 14-15.
[27]Arab Horses, Tomáš Míĉek, Sunburst Books; London 1994, pg 14.
[28]The Moors in Spain and Portugal, Jane Read, Faeber and Faeber Limited, Great Britain, 1974, pg 21-25.
[29]The Story of Spain, 4th ed., Mark Williams, Santana Books; Malaga, Spain, 2000, pg 87-89.
[30]Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors, James Reston, Jr. Doubleday: New York, 2005, pg 10-12.
[31]Ultimate Horse, 2nd ed., Elwyn Hartley Edwards, Dorling Kindersley; London, New York, Munich, and Delhi, 2002, pg 50.
[32]Haeber, Jonathan, Vaqueros: The First Cowboys of the Open Range, National Geographic News, August 15, 2003, pg 2.
WesternHistory Level 3 Commenter 7 months ago
Voted up. Excellent hub. Just about everything cowboy came from the Spaniards who were the ones who introduced cattle into North America. The cowboy is an extension of the vaquero who adapted to the American southwest.