Art by Bob Boze Bell, True West Magazine
This month’s cover feature in True West Magazine is a search for “Cowboy Ground Zero” — the origin of cowboy culture. Different writers and historians make their cases for the Atlas Mountains of North Africa; Spain; Ireland and Scotland; Mexico.
This kind of exploration is right in my wheelhouse. Because, of course, there is no one, definitive answer to the question “Where is Cowboy Ground Zero?” Any kind of historical exploration like this starts teasing out connections that are both older and more culturally and geographically diffuse than you’d expect. That delights me. It’s the impetus behind and the purpose of Frontier Partisans.
It’s worth picking up the issue on the news stand. The stories are accompanied by the art of publisher Bob Boze Bell, which also delights me. His style allows him to retain a certain mythic quality in his subjects while adhering to historically accurate depictions.
Art by Bob Boze Bell, True West Magazine
John Maddox Roberts says
Since the domestication of cattle there have been cattle herders and cattle thieves. The Iliad is full of cow thieves. The term “rustler” for cow thief comes from the Anglo-Scottish border culture, where the ancestors of many Western cowboys and rustlers thrived.