My Native Land - The United States: its Wonders, its Beauties, and its People; - with Descriptive Notes, Character Sketches, Folk Lore, Traditions, - Legends and History, for the Amusement of the Old and the - Instruction of the Young by James Cox
page 101 of 334 (30%)
page 101 of 334 (30%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
We give a picture of a cowboy of to-day, and will endeavor to show in
what important respects he differs from the cowboy of fiction, and even of history. Sensational writers have described the cowboy as a thoroughly bad man, and, moreover, as one who delights in the word "bad," and regards it as a sort of diploma or qualification. Travelers over the region in which the cowboy used to be predominant give him a very different character, and speak of him as a hard-working, honest citizen, generous to a fault, courteous to women and aged or infirm men, but inclined to be humorous at the expense of those who are strong and big enough to return a joke, or resent it, if they so prefer. We have spoken of the cowboy in two tenses: the present and the past. Strictly speaking, we should, perhaps, have only used one, for many of the best judges say that there is no such thing as a cowboy in this day and generation. He flourished in all his glory in the days of immense ranges, when there was an abundance of elbow room for both man and beast, and when such modern interferences with the cattle business as the barb-wire fence did not exist. The work of cattle herding and feeding to-day certainly differs in a most remarkable manner from that of thirty and even twenty years ago, and the man has naturally changed with his work. Now, the cowboy is, to all intents and purposes, a farm hand. He feeds the stock, drives it to water when necessary, and goes to the nearest market town to dispose of surplus products, with all the system and method of a thoroughly domesticated man. Formerly he had charge of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of branded cattle, which ranged at will over boundless prairies, and the day's work was frequently varied by a set-to with some unfriendly Indians or some exceptionally daring cattle thieves. |
|