Cowboy Up!

Thought I’d post the column I wrote for the June 11 edition of The Nugget Newspaper, as Sisters welcomes the 85th Sisters Rodeo.

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There is no more iconic symbol of America than the cowboy.

People the world over project their understanding of the American character onto this working man on horseback. For some, the cowboy represents classic American virtues: hard work, loyalty, self-reliance, quiet resilience, a willingness to do the hard, right thing, regardless of consequences. For others, the term “cowboy” is a pejorative, denoting cocky, heedless recklessness, profligacy, and an all-to-easy default to violence to solve problems.

The dichotomy has existed since the first American cowboy saddled up to drive Texas cattle up the Chisholm Trail to the Kansas cowtowns, where the beef on the hoof would be shipped east to feed the burgeoning cities of an America bursting with the energy and appetite of the Industrial Revolution.

In those early days — the 1860s and ’70s — respectable town folk looked askance at the rowdy young riders who drove the great trail herds north. They were mostly very young — often teenagers — and when they hit a town after months of eating dust, getting soaked in thunderstorms and river crossings, getting the little sleep they could on the ground, they blew off steam in the way that young men do. Things got rowdy. With a few exceptions, the cowboys were just high-spirited and rough in their ways; very few were actually malicious and violent. But they did make a helluva ruckus.

Right from the get-go, there was something romantic about their image, with the picturesque hats, boots, spurs, and chaps — and possibly a six-gun. They knew it themselves; when they set out on a spree in one of those cowtowns, they often started by getting a portrait made in a photographic studio.

If you’re looking for diversity, inclusivity, and ethnic representation in a historical phenomenon, you’ll find it in the world of the cowboy. Around 20 percent of the old-time cowboys were Black, and another 15 percent or so were of Mexican descent — more on ranches in the Southwest. Many native peoples took readily to cowboying, and do to this day.

Edward Charles Abbott, known as Teddy Blue, left us the finest memoir of the old trail driving days in his book We Pointed Them North. Teddy Blue was an old-school cowboy himself — and he encapsulated the rough virtues that define the American Cowboy:

“In person the cowboys were mostly medium-sized men, as a heavy man was hard on horses, quick and wiry, and as a rule very good natured; in fact, it did not pay to be anything else. In character there like never was or will be again. They were intensely loyal to the outfit they were working for and would fight to the death for it. They would follow their wagon boss through hell and never complain. I have seen them ride into camp after two days and nights on herd, lay down on their saddle blankets in the rain, and sleep like dead men, then get up laughing and joking about some good time they had had in Ogallala or Dodge City. Living that kind of a life, they were bound to be wild and brave. In fact, there was only two things the old-time cowpuncher was afraid of, a decent woman and being set afoot.”

This weekend’s 85th Sisters Rodeo celebrates the cowboy and the Western way of life. Nowadays, women as much as men embody the cowboy spirit. In fact, the Professional Bull Riders Association (PBR) campaign “Be Cowboy” explicitly emphasizes that the values embodied in that spirit are shared by people of all kinds of backgrounds and walks of life.

Whether you are a real-deal cowboy or your hat and boots come out one weekend a year, making yourself the kind of person Teddy Blue describes — good natured, loyal, wild, and brave — is something to aspire to and something to celebrate.

Cowboy up, and enjoy the Biggest Little Show in the World.

 

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If you have never read We Pointed Them North — do it. Just a wonderful book. True West Magazine did a cover story on TEddy Blue, and it is quite good.

Yellowstone Cowboys

Teddy Blue’s narrative provided the inspiration for the great Ian Tyson/Tom Russell collaboration The Banks of the Musselshell.