American history had dawned.



Chapter III. The Cattle Trails

The customary method of studying history by means of a series of
events and dates is not the method which we have chosen to
employ in this study of the Old West. Speaking generally, our
minds are unable to assimilate a condensed mass of events and
dates; and that is precisely what would be required of us if we
should attempt here to follow the ways of conventional history.
Dates are at best no more than milestones on the pathway of time;
and in the present instance it is not the milestones but the road
itself with which we are concerned. Where does the road begin?
Why comes it hither? Whither does it lead? These are the real
questions.

Under all the exuberance of the life of the range there lay a
steady business of tremendous size and enormous values. The
"uproarious iniquity" of the West, its picturesqueness, its
vividness--these were but froth on the stream. The stream itself
was a steady and somber flood. Beyond this picturesqueness of
environment very few have cared to go, and therefore sometimes
have had little realization of the vastness of the cowboy's
kingdom, the "magnitude of the interests in his care, or the
fortitude, resolution, and instant readiness essential to his
daily life." The American cowboy is the most modern
representative of a human industry that is second to very few in
antiquity.