Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Of The American Cowboy 20171222

Hollywood images of the american cowboy. Good evening. It is great to have everybody here tonight. It is a great crowd and it feels like just kind of a festive, light atmosphere. Im glad. We have a great presentation for you tonight. My name is Steve Wieberg and i work here at the museum. It will be my honor to introduce i have gotten to know and i admire during the last few months working with him. Some of you may have been through our new exhibit that opened under two weeks ago on the second floor in the mountain gallery, titled cowboys and culture. If you havent, i would strongly urge you to. It is just a fascinating collection, and im talking about a large collection of artifacts, art and other objects that illuminate the connection i wasnt aware of down through history, going back to the cattle days between the city of kansas city and amarillo, texas. It is so big, in fact, part of it spilled out into kirk hall down on the first hall. You may have seen the big saddle there and the big hall tree. It is a terrific exhibit. I would be remiss probably at this point before getting to michael if i didnt introduce ann dousy standing in the very back back there. She is our Library Art Exhibit director, and she has worked with michael. She is response for all of the great exhibits that you see in both of our galleries. She does a terrific job. Michael really is responsible for the most part for this exhibit being here, bringing it to us. He is the associate director of Curatorial Affairs and the curator of art and heritage at the panhandleplains historical museum. That is in canyon, texas, and south of amarillo in the texas panhandle. It is the Largest History Museum in the state of texas and if it is the largest of texas, you Better Believe it is large. [ laughter ] he also is a lecturer in western american studies at west texas a m university. Michael oversees art, weapons, military, sports and cowboy and ranching collections at the museum, which as he puts it is like working in a giant toy store. I call it stealing money. But you curated this exhibit with an associate professor of art history at west texas a m, amy von lintel. Michael is from the kansas city area, born in kck, graduate of oak park high school. He went to college at ku where he had a double major in art history and painting, went on to earn his masters degree in art history at smu in dallas. After college he worked at what is now the smithsonian, the American Art Museum in washington, d. C. Ultimately he landed at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in texas. From the time he was a kid michael says he was always fascinated by historical objects. He collected animal bones and relics and he was always fascinated by the American West. He grew up wanting to be a cowboy or a pro football player. He says he went to art school because he was good at drawing horses. Well, here is how big hes gotten. Michael was invited to dinner at the white house with george w. And laura bush at one point during the second bush presidency. The museum had loaned a painting, a couple of paintings to one painting to the white house for display there, and michael turned them down. It turns out that he would have had to have missed his sons graduation from high school, so he turned down the invitation to the white house. So good for him. Among other things, michael knows a lot, an awful lot about cowboys. He is revered in the amarillo area for the Living History Program that he presents as cowboy mike. I think he has come tonight as cowboy mike. I was kind of making the joke. Some of you all may remember a few years ago when we did our big read on true grit and cross by temple, our director, was fond of pulling out an eye patch, a cowboy hat and a duss duster and he looked cool, but you never got the sense he had strung some fence. This guy looks like he has strung some fence. Tonight he is going to set us straight about cowboys. Hes going to give us their true history. One spoiler. Six shooters are not involved. I say this all the time. Im proud of the programming, the public programming that we do here at the library. All of the speakers we bring in, i think they are really good. But the ones who really stand out are the ones who just bring a passion thats infectious. They love what they do. They love talking about it and they love sharing it with other people. Weve gotten that from michael in the several months that he has worked with us on the exhibit, and youre going to get that tonight. Youre in for a real treat. Please welcome michael grauer. [ applause ] first of all, thank yall for coming. It is a really nice crowd that includes not only people from kansas city but that group from kansas city includes some very close my dearest friends are here and also some of my family. Whew, got a little surprise here a few minutes ago. Ive been doing the cowboy mike program for almost a decade at panhandle plains, and it stems from an interest in correcting history and being a public historian. Public history is a little different from academic history is that our job as public historians is to take history out of the academia and put it in the hands of the general public and tell good stories. Thats basically what i get to do for a living, hang pictures on the wall and tell good stories. I make valuable american dollars doing that, and they keep paying me so i guess it is working out okay for somebody in any case. But when this project really kind of fell in my lap and my cocurator, amy von lintel, i am a great believer in giving back. I think it is vital to give back to our communities. I am lucky in this project im able to give back to the two places that are my home. Whew, the opportunity to give back to my hometown is a great thing for me because i remember as a little kid my grandparents lived over in what used to be called the rosedale addition and we would drive by on the highway and i could see the saddle building when we drove by, and also the big bull that was moved since i moved away from kansas city, and thats where the dream of being a cowboy came from. Im not a cowboy but i get to play one on tv, and i do it quite a lot. I have come to know cowboys. I have had the honor to handle artifacts that belonged to some of the greatest cowboys that ever lived or some you never heard of. Those are the ones that interest me, the less famous ones. Thats what were going to talk about today, and thats why it is a true history of true cowboys because it is not about the famous ones but the ones that did the work. Thats what i hope to convey to you today, that this is a special type of person that mostly is misunderstood. Thats where im going to take you on a journey today. Ann doucey was willing to take a risk by allowing us to did a presentation about two years ago this month. We came and gave a presentation about cowboys and culture, and it was very much in the infancy. And we didnt know how big it was going to get. We just kept looking in our collection and finding these connections. Every time we opened a page we found two more pages. For every rock we overturned we fond two more rocks. There are stories everywhere. One of the things that as a student of the American West i believe very strongly and i see it in both of my hometowns is turning your back on your history is the worst thing you can possibly do. Being able to come back to kansas city and seeing what is happening in amarillo now, youre in a cowtown, folks. You will always be a cowtown, no matter how many things you build, youre a cowtown. Embrace it. Thats what im trying to do today. Im going to ee advantage lies for you today, and i have done it in amarillo as well. I dont care what you build. You cant escape your roots, so embrace them. Capitalize on them and use them. You have Great Stories here in kansas city. Use them. Leverage them. Everybody loves cowboys, right . I do this program for little bitty critters, all the way up to the Little Critters that are 75 years old. I swear every time i do it i watch people turn into children, whether theyre four years old or 84 years old and thats a fact. Im going to take you through a history of cowboys according to my own research. You may agree or disagree, but there will be time for questions. I only have a short time, and i have tendency to go off on trails, chasing ones, thats what i tend to do. I will try to stay on point as best i can. Im also a technophobe and i learned how to use the clicker dealy a little while ago. [ laughter ] well see how this goes. All right. So as they say tighten your cinches, and here we go. First of all, what were cowboys were not certain things. They were not gun fighters, they were not crime fighters, they were not bank robbers unless they got fired. They didnt come to town and shoot things up generally speaking. This is probably my favorite artifact in our exhibition, is right here. This is from our panhandleplains collection, shoot for kansas city. This cowboy, this cowboy in this little ribbon, it is only about this big, is carrying hand cannons as if all cowboys carried that kind of nonsense. We will get to that in a minute. As Charles Goodnight said, cowboys are the most misunderstood of allamericans in certain respects, but they were also in the cow country where i live today and which still exists from texas all the way to western canada, they lived a particularly dangerous life and they did the work that no one really wanted to do because the wages were low, it was dangerous, it was dirty and, frankly, a lot of times it was boring. But they were responsible for someone elses property and i think thats the key to understanding what they were doing, and they were filling an important void. As american expanded to the west, we grabbed big chunks of territory and the cow country is generally all of this in here, everything from the rockies east although there is cattle country in california and the northwest, it is generally the great plains. Kansas city is the gateway to the great plains and thats key to understanding. After the civil war theres a great demand for beef cattle in the midwest and also in the eastern United States as well as in Great Britain specifically. Cattle has been left to run wild in texas where estimates are anywhere from 6 million to 10 million animals by 1865. Here is the other part of the equation. All of the wild horses were there as well. At least two million wild horses in texas by 1865. The final part of the equation is most cowboys came from texas. I will get to the two waves of cowboydom that goes north. Generally speaking the horses were there, the cattle were there and the cowboys were there, and they all come out of texas. Okay. This is the kind of animal were talking about, is descendants of spanish cattle which we will get to in a minute, Texas Longhorns whose meat was not terribly good. Almost immediately there were attempts to breed these animals up and make the quality of their meat better and kansas city plays a huge role in that. This is what the plains looked like and it is hard to understand that unless you go out to western kansas or nebraska or wyoming or where i live in northwest texas, it is as simple as this. I have to do my lectures or my program to school kids so you satisfy the Legislature Knows what to teach in school. Everybody say it with me. We aint got no trees. We aint got no trees. That is important to the remember that, because there aint no trees out, there and so there is no place to hide. Cattle, this great commodity is seen by an illinois businessman named joseph g. Mccoy who realizes the way to get this product to that great need, that great market in the midwest and also the eastern United States and europe, you had to get em to market somehow. There were railroads in text the as but it was three times as expensive to ship your cats by rail in texas as it was to drive them to the new rail head in the Central Pacific. The first rail head was, of course, at abilene. The original cattle trails came out of south texas. Kansas city is not even on this map. Yall can do something about that, you can. Okay. So the shawnee trail is to the east, but almost immediately by the 1850s here illinois has quarantines, is shut off. It is because of the domestic fever. They carried a tick that would kill domestic cattle, however they could enter the state on rail cars. This is why the Central Pacific goes out here, because eastern kansas counties also instituted quarantines. Texas cattle on the hoof were not welcomed into the part of the company we normally reckon. The cowtowns moved west. Abilene was a cow town for about a year and a half and then it went to wichita, caldwell is here and dodge city is about right there. So you can see the great cattle trails. One of the things we need to remember is that the cattle trails went right through comancheria, which was a territory basically governed by comanche from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi Valley by fear in trade. What do you do . You strike a treaty with these comanches who didnt understand the treaty in 1857 at Medicine Lodge, kansas, and sell them they have to give up all of this and move to this. We know nobody wants to go to oklahoma on purpose, right . Right . Nobody wants to do that. So that didnt go over too well, but nevertheless this is what happened. The u. S. Army was in collusion i believe through my own research in this in protecting the cattle trails that came out of texas. See the line of military forts here . They were there to protect the cattle interests. By the time that the trails start, and they continued roughly from 1865 to 1890, we believe that there were about 35,000 cowboys involved in this, but nobody knew what a cowboy was or what a trail driver was. A trail drive looked like given what you see here in new monthly magazine, harpers magazine, there is no cattle trail that looked like that and Texas Longhorns didnt look like jersey cows either. Thats important to remember. The whole idea what was a cowboy and what were these cattle, that was something that enters the popular consciousness. Of course, there were attempts to render what a texas cowboy looked like but nobody knew. So Popular Culture gets hold of it quickly. They appear in the wild west show as literally part of the wild west, okay, as wild riders, wild west cowboys. Eventually dime novels pick up on this in the 1880s and 1890s. By the way, jesse james was not a cowboy. He was a psychopath with a gun. Thats important, he was never a cowboy. You see the blending between what were called wild west heroes and cowboys and theyre sucked into it. Eventually western fiction gets a jump start in 1902 with the publication of the virginian and the next thank you know, you had a tsunami of the western fiction sweeping across the country, and everybody who can pick up a pen are wright cowboy sto stories and artists are supplying illustrations, most of which by artists that never had been out west. N. C. Roberts went out west and worked as a cowboy nine days and then he went back to pennsylvania and made accurate western stories. Eventually the cult magazines in the 1930s got involved and this is what cowboys allegedly did according to western fiction. They did this sort of thing. Hollywood gets involved with moving pictures. This is one much my favorite images showing gary cooper getting his lipstick applied so he could play the texan. Hollywood has gotten it wrong nearly every time. Im about to tell you why. So true west magazine a couple of years ago decided they would look into this in a scholarly way. Where was cowboy ground zero . Where did it start . So there were a couple of people writing about it. In my own research, here is with what i am going to tell you, that cowboy ground zero starts in spain. With the beginning of bringing of cattle to north american roughly about 1521 into what is now mexico. They were brought over on ships and turned loose. Spanish herding practices meant they dont castrate the bull calves and cows do what cows do, and so they made a lot more cows. These herding techniques were learned by someone. I always ask students this way, who taught the spaniards how to be cowboys . Okay. It was north africans, who rode up in the air. It means that they rode on a shortened stirrup and they were not nice, they were not fighting men. They were about maneuver ability on the back of a horse with quick moving, moving direction after direction. It means you had to Wear Clothing that allowed you to move, okay. Thats part of this whole idea. So north africans taught what would become spanish vaqueros, but they also did not use ropes. They used what was called a hocking blade, a long pole with a crescent shaped blade on the back. Because the wild cattle were running everywhere and there were so many of them in mexico, they would ride up behind them and cut their hamstring with that blade and they would drop. They would butcher them, render the tallow and leave the meat to rot. Does it sound familiar to you . What else happened in north american a couple hundred years ago . Absolutely. Exactly what happened with the buffalo, same thing. Where did the rope come in . It comes from west african slaves who used a rope to capture and herd animals that they roped from foot. It is a blending of technologies from north and west africa that gives us the cowboy that we know today. This is cowboy ground zero, is africa. Thats vital for us to understand where they go. Now, what kind much cowboys were they . Initially vaqueros in mexico were not rancheros or owners of the ranches, but they were mixed blood people. So the first cowboys were probably indians. Oh, no. They did not wear boots. They might wear shoes. They didnt wear spurs, usually on their bare feet. Some of them didnt even use stirrups, but they learned how to use ropes. Hispanic cowboys and ultimately mexican cowboys learned to do things with ropes that nobody can do today. I laid out on the floor today that i laid out on the floor a vaquero rope, and it is about 18 feet long. A texas cowboy rope is about 25 or 30 feet long. It is half the size. So it is all about how you manage the rope and this style learned from the vaqueros is wrap around. It is what we call dallying today. When you rope the animal, and i will try to do that with my rope, thats what it is for. Pretend this is a cow. It is all about securing your loop, right . And doing it the right way. Hopefully i can do that today. We hit it most of the time this afternoon. Wind caught it. Did yall see that. The wind caught it. Yeah. In any case, i captured the animal here and i use my rope and i will wrap it and my saddle horn. In that way i can feed the rope back and forth theoretically using the vaquero method. It is like fishing, give them a little room going back in because you dont want to hurt their selfesteem. You want to coax them in and make them think it is their idea. This method is very much still alive in california, and the land of the fruits and the nuttings, right . Where we cared about the feelings. In texas, they did what was called tying it fast. You dont care about the animals feelings, you tie it fast. Thats the distinction. Spanish cowboys as you can see were part of the equation. There were africanamerican cowboys, paid the same way as the euroamerican cowboy. About a quarter were black or hispanic, but mostly black. There were americanindian cowboys. They raised their own cattle in indian territory. In fact, comanches after they moved on to the reservations in southwestern oklahoma insisted that any cowboys that were grazing herds on their own land had to be indian cowboys because they didnt like texans. Imagine that, right . But most of them are euroamerican of some type. As you can see in this photograph from dodge city in the 1870s, this came from Great Britain, denmark, france, germany, all over the place. Most of them were attracted by the stories they read that made it sound very exciting. Most men that came out and tried to be cowboys didnt last because it was just too hard. It was too difficult. It was dirty. All kinds of Different Things, so they didnt really last. Okay. And then everybody got swept up. Even by the mid 1880s you have people doing this sort of stuff, posing for photographs in dodge city. Pay close attention. None were cowboys, just dressed this way for a picture. Notice this. This is the key, is the firearms. Im not antigun. Im not. But the whole idea that cowboys were bristling with firearms is patently false. The historical record does not bear it out. If a cowboy owned a gun, and most did not, they were obliged to keep it in the chuck wagon or keep it in the chuck box, because on the back of a horse a firearm is dangerous. Most cowboys if they owned one, it was civil war surplus like this example here. Civil war surplus percussion revolvers had a tendency to do this, called chainfire. You can see in this photograph, those are rounds that are jammed between the frame and the cylinder when chainfire happens. Imagine this happening on the back of a horse. So the key to understanding all of this stuff is also it was against the law in texas after 1871 for you to carry a gun. You could not do it. It was against the law except for a couple of the Frontier County for incursions of hostile indians. Battles between cowboys and indians never happened. The indians would just steal the cows and let them have them or pay a toll when you crossed into the indian territory. However, the cowboys when you owned a gun if you got close to oklaho oklahoma, it is always better to be armed when you go into oklahoma, right . Or montana, and that is the up there by the canadian border. Likewise, most of the ranches had rules forbidding you to carry even on your person or in your saddle bag a pistol, dirk, dagger, sling shot, knuckles, bowie knife or any other similar instruments for the purposes of offense or defense. Oops. In other words you could get fired if you were carrying a gun. Most of them had rules against drinking whiskey, playing cards, dealing with women, which basically ruined every western you ever have seen. Ruins all of them. Okay. Here, the question is youre more likely to have better use for a claw hammer on the back of a horse doing cow work than you are with a six shooter. You just dont need it. It is dangerous. And theyre heavy, they bang on your leg and do all kind of things. You just dont need it. Now, i know that there are people who do competitive shooting and so on and one is in the audience and he is a friend of mine hope he doesnt correct me right here but thats all part of the mythology. It really isnt part of it. Even cowboys themselves started to believe what Popular Culture told them. You know, there was a six shooter, everybody has got their gun. But this is my favorite. We didnt think we was grown till we got to where we could carry a pistol and roll and light a cigarette with the horse a trotting. Their buying their own mythology by the 19 teens. But this is how work right here. Done from the back of a horse. You dont need a gun, you need a good rope and you need to wear your tool kit. As you can see in this photograph here from our collection, a cowboy had to wear his tool kit because once hes on the back of the horse theres no going back to the pickup because, oh, i forgot something. There aint no pickup. Once youre mounted, you stay there all the livelong day. A cowboy might change horses five or six times a day because, horses get tired, too, okay. You got all of your clothing and your equipment. A cowboy wears a big hat. It is basically an umbrella. Covers your hat. Cowboys get bigger, they get smaller over time. Down in texas now they wear what looks like a taco shell on their head. Mine is what we call a stetson. By the way, all cowboys called them a stetson, they didnt know there were other makers. Likewise with coffee there was only one brand ar buckles, and so when you went to chuck wagon, it was always arbuckles. All of them were stetsons and they also got trained to your head and they were sort of proud of Different Things that happened to them over time. Most of them wore what cowboys called a wild rag. You teachers can use it in your math component when talking about it to students, they would go and buy a yard, whatever they had for two bits. That becomes your first aid kit. You tie it on to keep your hat on, for ear muffs when it was cold, also your dust mask if you want to play ninja, and also, blow your nose. Just kidding, i made that up. Also it was a sling. You have to remember there were no doctors out there. You broke your arm, you had to fix it yourself. Unlike today, you get a hang nail, you go to the urgent care center, right . Theres no doctors or nurses there. You doctor yourself. So a sling is around your neck a and it is a handy thing to have. And the cowboys did not wear the sheepskin coats like you see in the stetson commercials so you wore a short jacket or wool coat like mine, and a jacket, and nearly all of them wore a vest, because it kept the body warm and allow and allowed you to do the work and stay on the back of the horse and so that is a pocket for all of your stuff, and especially your cell phone. So you can snapchat the other cowboys across to let them know that you are still moving the the cows, and what are you still doing . Right . So you a lot of pockets for all of your stuff, and long sleeved shirts to keep the dirt out, because they never took a bath. Never. Everybody smelled as rank as the next guy. Likewise, they were not clean shaven, and they were bearded mostly. Most of the men when you get up do you shave in the dark . There are no mirrors out here or lantern, and they were bearded. So they cut their own hair just like that. They did not look like brad pitt. They were not clean shaven, they were dirty an smelled bad. So you kept the shirt on to keep the dirt out. You might have two shirts, one to wear to town and one to work in. So to protect yourself from rope burn, you also needed the chaps like they call them down in texas. And the vaqueros down in spain were able to use them like spring buckles like mine to take them on and off. Once the cowboys dismounted they took them off, because they are hot. You would be covered with cow and horse slobber and covered in blood. It looked great in the western movies, but you took them off, because they were hot. And you had pants that were called the california papt. A. D cool. Or cotton dust, and the only kind of odamn trousers that cowboys ever wore were made by levys, and wranglers were clever market iing. So if you had a pair of those wranglers you go burn them in backyard and get yourself a proper pair. They only had a pocket and a cinch in the back. And you had to wear the suspenders to keep them up, and remember, this is an opportunity to accessorize, right . And boots were d difficult to come by, because they came to kansas city to buy the boots up to the knee. Sometimes pointed and sometimes not. High heels were certain, and spurs were not fancy, because the cowboys could not afford them. They were expensive and so they would buy 1. 50 Sears Roebuck or oak spurs. We have spurs down in the exhibition that i hope that you would go see, because you could get them here in kansas city from oscar and shipley or askew as well. So that is where you bought your spurs. That is the cowboy kit. No gun, because you didnt need one or you kept it in the saddle bags or the chuck box. And how about drinking whiskey . Not so much. When the cowboy was paid he would go to the general store and buy cans of peaches and eat so many that he would get sick, because he craved the shoe h gar. Cowboys had a sweet tooth and so they would drink whiskey rarely on the trail, and there were three or four kinds of cowboys. Trail hands that were drivers and usually Contracting Companies going to texas to say, for xdollars i will take your herd to abilene or dodge city or to kansas city for you, and contracting crews. Then there were ranch hands that worked on the ranch all of time. Seasonal workers who were shopkeepers in the day and wanted to be cowboys and come in for the spring and fall round up. The droefr drovers supplied the own horses. The cowboy rarely owned his own horse, but the ranch did. And so of course, they were always singing. Dont forget they were dumb as a box of rock ares or whatever analogy you want. They ate a lot of bane, aeans, Blazing Saddles got it right. Pinto bean beans were very good. And what kind of dressing did they have on the salad . Ranch. And they did not eat beefsteak off of the trail. What did they want . Fried chicken, because they were southern boys, a thane grew up eating fried chick anne and you could not raise a chicken, because the hailstorms would pound them to death. Captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2008 captioning performed by vitac we actually own this. This is the only time in u. S. History where cowboys wentz on strike. Because they love riding around on a horse and all that fresh air for a doctllar a day. So they asked for a raise in wages. They all got fired because by this time virtually every cattle ranch in north america was owned by british capitalists. Nearly every single one and they didnt see any difference between a hired man and a man who worked in a shoe factory in london. They didnt care. They fired him had. Most of them became black listed and never worked as cowboys again. At about this time rail lines are open. And i think this is a very telling statistic on this next slides. 1887 is when the rail lines hit amarillo from here. Within a year a half million head of cattle and in two years 1 million animals from where im from. Youre a cow town. Be a cow town. Be a baseball town. But thats okay. But be a cow town. Thats the key. And so the trail driving changed. Cowboys would get on the train after the cattle are loaded in special cattle cars, either ride in the cubooss or special bump cars to take of the animals all it way to kansas city and they were responsible for somebody elses animals. Thats the key to understanding this. That sense of responsibility that is largely lost today. So they didnt come can to town to shoot things up because the whiskey wasnt available till they got here and theyre probably eating peaches. Their foreman or wagon becauses wouldnt let them have guns. But occasion tale did happen. Because the average age was 15 to 25 years old. Theyre just kids. They were little. Im 64. So im a lot taller than most cowboys. Im about the same height as the average american cowboy just older and fatter. Yulshzy they were small because horses were small. Cow ponies. With all due respect to the American Quarter Horse association, they didnt ride those until the 1950s. And so a bigging cowboy didnt last very long because it out last it horses and the horse is far more important than the cowboy. But if you give liquor and gun to a kid, what do you think is going to happen . Most towns ordinances against carrying firearms in town. Were there women cowboys . Yes, markers got ahold of something they called the cowboy girl and she wore kind of a uniform as you can see, always sporting a gun. A leather skirt. She wore laceup shoes, usually high heels and marketers used this and morphed into recognizing that there were women who did do ranch work, cow work but usually from a side saddle. Yall see that . And it reminds me of what ginger said about fred. I dids everything he did but backwards and in high heels. The wouoman was obliged to ride sideways until 1905 and suddenly women are riding astride and pushing cows. Theyre performing in wild west shows and rodeos and women were an absolute central part of rodeo until 1943 when gene oughtry, the singing cowboy himself basically barred women from rodeo competition. After bonny mccarol was killed on a bucking horse and some others were ifjured, he said that wasnt lady like and created the whole rodeo princesses thing. Im just a reporter of that. I didnt do that. Im just telling you. But there are ranch women today. They call them cowboy girls but theyre cow girls today. The kelly sisters. And ill conclude with this. Theres a belief that cowboys dont exist, that cowboys are gone. And remember a man wearing a western at is not a cowboy necessarily. I was in the amarillo airport at 6 00 this morning and i was the only one sporting a cowboy hat and then i saw one in a wheelchair and one more. And when my friends from southeastern kansas walked in, theyre wearing the correct kind of male head wear. Thats good. I wonder when we stopped wearing hats. I dont mean caps, i mean hats. I digressed. Anyway, do cowboys still exist . On march 6th of this year, which is alamo day in texas, three prairie fires swept across the texas pan handle and out there they go rapidly. They go Different Directions and cowboys life was always about trying to anticipates what comes next and being ready to take action for somebody elses property and three cowboys. This young man, Cody Crockett was a cowboy in the middle of that and his fiance Sidney Wallace was in the middle of that and Sloan Everett was in the middle of that and they road into the prairie fire to rescue 40 mama cows and their calves buzz they could not stand to let them burn to death. Okay. And this quote is really telling about it cowboy philosophy that most of us dont understand is why in the world would you do that for someone elses property . You dont think fwitwice about and thats it underscore of what a true cowboy is. They saved them and all three of those cowboys burned to death, are of them. All three. When they found them the only thing left was their boots and their leather belt. All their clothes and hair had had burned completely off of them. Sidney and cody had had ridden on a horse named junior. Sloan went on a fourwheeler. The only thing left of juniors saddle was a burnt crisp. He came back to the house. So these are true cowboys and they still exist today and the true cowboys in america are buried in unmarked graves all across the American West. Theyre not the famous ones, theyre not the ones that made it to the dime novels or into the movies. Theyre it ones whose names we dont know. Who brought a product that built america because america was built on its stomach and beef cattle were absolutely vite thool building of america including kansas city and amarillo, texas. But its hard for us to understand that. So i leave it to wailen and willy who said it better than anybody. Them that dont know them wont like him and them that do sometimes wont know how to take him. He aint wrong thank you. [ applause ] howd i do on time . Now questions. And if i dont know the answer, ill makeup a real good story. Could you please talk a little bit about why most of the ranches were owned not by american interests but by did you say british interests owned these . Why didnt some big finance ear from it northeast or other parts of america end up owning all of that at the time . Its a great question and we may deal with this in the spring in a separate program. But a book called how to get rich on the plains was published by a u. S. Army officer and the army and probably the federal government were inclusi collusi with the cattle industry. However the book was published in Great Britain and they literally lined up. One of the most famous and biggest ranches in texas was entirely owned by british conglomerate who thought they were going to get rich. Theyicide have visited it first. The frying pan, the turkey track. Some ranches you may have heard of and some were managed from here. The tea anchor was managed from here. The turkey tracks was managed from here. It was an opportunity they thought could make a killing and they didnt. But it was an opportunity that america and its a great question. Why did american entrepreneurs not do it . Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Well, i got to ask you. Whats your favorite western movie and favorite western tv series and why . This may sound like splitting hairs but theres a difference between a western and a cowboy movie. A western isnt necessarily a cowboy movie. My favorite western favorite cowboy movie is john wayne called the cowboy. Literally those little boys remember the opening scene they all show up with big guns and he makes them put them all in the baks in the wagon, right . Thats as accurate as it could be. John wayne was not a cowboy. He was an actor. I have one hat. John wayne might have six hats during the show. Thats important. But the cowboys, the most recent cowboy movie i thing is accurate, open range. Its a great, great story. Unforgiven is not a cowboy show. Its a western. Western tv show . Wow. Current or past . Well, man. Im a junky for that stuff. Gunsmoke of course. It was soabsolutely true. My first horse was named gun smoke as a matter of fact. Yes, maam. You said the average age was 15 to 25. Did they live much longer than that or what did they do after 25 . Most of the time they stopped because it was too hard. And they made no money. They got hurt. And heres the other thing that flies in the face of the great western. Most of them wanted to be farmers. Because with farms come wives and children and then schools and towns. And i believe heres my belief is the open range time, the ranchers who started the big ranches in the ladder part of the 19th century, they knew their window was narrow. They had to make as much money as fast as they could because they knew the farmers were coming and the towns were coming and so they did. Now, along with her question is some of you probably have ancestors my great grandpa went up the trail about 12 times. Grandpa probably was telling you a lie. Because most of them did once. Or they quit halfway because it was too dangerous. Texas is a ladder of rivers and every time you cross a river and because most cowboys couldnt swim, they were terrified of water. One was drowning. The other was getting hung up in the stirup. Thats why they wore tall heeled boots and they road on the instep. They sunk into the stirrip this way. But if you were unlucky enough to get pitched off your horse, they wont stop and i know a cowboy who was dragged to death and he was in pieces by it time they caught the horse. Im not trying to over dramas it stuff. Im going to grow up to be a cowboy. The wrangler song talks about that. They were just kids. Looking for an adventure, generally. Yes, maam. Yes, sir. I was talking to my friends involved in the history. The dangers of driving a herd up through southwestern whether wr could you talk about that a little bit . What hes talking about is the risks of driving cattle either through southwestern missouri or southeastern kansas in that corner, because of the civil war, the bush whackers and thats where all that stuff was going on. And texans were southerners and thats where the cattle were coming from. A lot of cowboys were killed and the herd stolen and brought up to kansas city and sold. It was basically condoned Cattle Rustling is what it was. Because those eastern kansas counties and the western missouri counties didnt want those animals on the hoof coming through there and killing the domesticated cattle. So it was condoned largely. Is that what you meant . Yes, sir. That did happen, you bet. So that did lead to some of them going armed, but generally they were only armed in the frontier counties and so on. But there were dangerous times, yes. Its a great presentation, thank you, very educational. Let me ask you, the term cowboy, at some point, when did it become synonymous to someone who just lived out west as opposed to someone who herded cattle. Because you dont think of using the term, its a term like for anyone who wears boots and hats and they live out west and when did that happen and why . Hes talking about the entomology of the term cowboy, how that word makes it into popular language. There was no cowboy word in the english language. The scotchirish word, cow and boy, there was some herding practices on foot, usually a small boy with a stick. However the spanish word vacarro is cowboy but when did it enter the lexicon for the standin as a word for western people . It starts, you can actually blame pawnee bill. Because he blended two Different Things together, okay . And the next thing you know, they are gunfighters, they are bank robbers, they are crime fighters and superheroes and stuff. So its a blending. And ill take this a little bit further. In recent times, its both popular and a throw away snide Cocktail Party line, hes just a cowboy. Hes just a cowboy. Or cowboy up, which means stepping up in a time when its needed. Heres something you will learn in the cow country if you know this. They will something like, he sure can cowboy. And theres greater complement than that. Or hell make hand. Thats the other. But the blending of people in a western hat, with a cowboy, thats a late 19th century phenomenon, according to my research. Does that help you . 1880s or so, give or take. In the back. Can you tell us how long it took to move the cattle by rail from texas up to kansas city . And when you said that the cowboys ride on the cars and they take care of the cattle, what does that, take care of the cattle entail . The trains werent very fast, 20 miles an hour, give or take, okay . And every couple of days they would get them off and water them and feed them, because theyre cramped into a cattle car. And one of the things that cowboys would do when theyre riding in either the bunk cars or the caboose cars because some of them would get down, and once theyre down, they die. So they have to get them back on their feet. So it was literally just a different kind of trail, its just they were on foot, and they wore in a mechanized vehicle by this time. It would probably take about four days, give or take, from where i live, which is down near amarillo. Its 570 miles. Actually when we installed the exhibition, i found a way to drive the original Santa Fe Railway route as close as i could with a truck. But it took a little while. But i was glad i did it. I really was. Just so youll know, a little side thing, because of Texas Railroad law, santa fe cannot go completely into texas. They had to establish a completely called the Southern Kansas Railway of texas. It was a subsidiary and part of the line, which is in higgins, texas, down to amarillo, that was a separate company. Okay, and the ft. Worth and denver city also shipped cattle through kansas city through fort worth. What kinds or what breeds of horses were used for driving cattle . Was there a certain breed there was preferred over others . Thats a great question. Because almost immediately while people discovered there was this great longhorns that were in texas, but the meat wasnt very good. Almost immediately, durhams and herefords and they brought them down and crossbred them. Moist from kansas city city, theyre not purebred. Theyre not full longhorn, but theyre half and half. But the breeding of the mustangs started almost immediately as well. So there were thoroughbreds brought in, standard breds, all different kinds and they were crossed usually. Because the quality of the mustang, the sure footedness, the ability to go a long way without water. It was something they wanted to maintain likewise with the texas longhorn. Because a hereford cow cant walk across the street without collapsing. But the mustang could run for a forever. But theyre little, tiny. They used to talk about them not much bigger than a dog. They were little. But the problem with a mustang was they were wild, okay . And its in the historical record, that two out of every three mustangs would die after it was captured. They called it a broken heart. And you can do with what whatever you want. They were mostly mustangs. And by the way, ill relate to it horses, the last herd of wild mustangs where i live was captured in 1907, sent on the train to kansas city, to be trained as harness horses and sold here for 7 an animal. And then theyre out of texas. Because what happened wild horses became considered as vermin. There were two things you would do. You would shoot the stallion first and kill it. And you would drive the rest of them off a cliff or shoot them with a winchester. They got pushed off a cliff. So every wild horse today is descended from a texas mustang, every one of them. They came out of mexico, they came from spain, to mexico, up into texas and then spread. Yes, sir . You mentioned the native americans and the treaties. Uhhuh. How did they strike those treaties . Thats an excellent question. And who was doing the striking . Striking . What do you mean striking . The native americans had to communicate with somebody about how to draw up the treaty. And with whom . Okay, i understand your question. Treaties were u. S. Indian policy. And treaties are only struck between sovereign nations, so the u. S. Government recognized that Indian Tribes were sovereign nations, otherwise they wouldnt use treaties, they would just push them out of the way. So ostensibly they are dealing with a foreign nation, right . So they had to use interpreters. And if you used interpreters, language is going fail. There are very few comanches alive today. But all the kiowa, arapaho, apache, if you made a deal with the u. S. Government, you got presence, you may not understand what you just put your mark on. They call it touching the pen. You make a mark on a piece of paper, wheres my stuff. And yes of course i speak for the entire comanche nation, wheres my stuff. I know it sounds trite but thats the truth. Officials would go back to washington, d. C. And say, you know what . We just signed a treaty with the whole comanche nation. I mean they just signed a treaty with one guy. But its really quite sad. But heres the other thing we learn, the violations went both ways. The Medicine Lodge treaty said, we will feed you, we will house you, you move into a corner of oklahoma and well provide all the tools, so guess what . You stop being the greatest warriors of the plains and you get to be farmers and were going to take away your horses and everything about your way of life and you get to live in a log house. What a great deal, right . However they were also assured that there would be no buffalo hunting below the canadian river. Or the arkansas river, actually, initially. They violated that immediately. The indians also said they would stop raiding into texas. They didnt stop either. Go to Medicine Lodge, if you have never been there, its a pretty interesting place. The western painters, which one of the painters get the moist accurate portrayal of cowboys . Wow, thats a tough question. Its a really tough question. Because they were both subject to Popular Culture already. Remington had never been a cowboy, he tried to be, but he was a sheep herder and he worked as a bartender in kansas city for a while. He always wanted to be a cowboy, and he wanted to glorify the cowboy. Russell worked briefly also as a sheepherder and horse wrangler in montana. He was from st. Louis. And i think generally russell is probably closer to being accurate to cow work. I think thats safe to say. In terms over being the best parent, in my opinion, hands down, its remington. Remington is a far better painter. Russell is more interesting. Any other . I would put will james in there, but will james is known for his drawings in particular and hes a little bit later. Thats one. What were the skills that made a good hand . Thats an excellent question. You had to be good with a rope, you had to be good with a rope. If you were no good with a rope, you didnt get a job. Go be a store clerk, because you cant help us. You had to be able to manage a horse. There were levels of hands, the least experienced on a trail drive, for example, was usually riding drag, with all the dust and the mud going back in their face, then you graduated to swing and flank and up to the lead. Generally a cowboy crew averaged up to 1200 cowboys. The average trail herd was 1,500 to 2,500 animals, average trail drive was about three months. So to be a good hand, you had to have proficiency with a rope, you had to be able to ride green horses and in the morningthe question about horses is really good. And the question about hands is really good. Because theres this idea that the cowboys best friend was his horse and they loved each other and all that stuff. A horse will bite you if he wants to. He dont like you. You may think he likes you, but he doesnt want you on his back, especially if it was cold and in the morning. So in the morning, it was a rodeo, all the time. Every morning it was a rodeo. So you had to be able to stay on a pitching horse. And there were stories where you would be riding along, singing to the cows, and the next thing you know, that animal has exploded for no apparent reason and youre on the ground wondering what the heck just happened. The ability to stay in the saddle, that was great. You had to be able to rope. You had to think quickly, you had to be responsible, and you had to be committed. And a lot of men couldnt do it. They just couldnt do it. For all those reasons, its dangerous, dirty and all that. Low wages. Does that answer your question . Yes, sir. Yes, maam. You said that there were many people that died along the trail. Yes, maam. And there are unmarked graves. Thats right. Ock okay, so when they went back home, how did they tell the families that their 15yearold to 25 was not they usually collected their belongings if they got them. If they drowned they usually didnt get the body. They usually collected the belongings they had. And a cowboy usually carried something called his war bag, which were his personal possessions and they would gather those up along with their wages and take them to the family. That happened a lot. Most cowboys were illiterate, they couldnt read or write. So women started to showing up on the ranches, the woman becomes their mama, their girlfriend, their sweetheart, their nurse, oftentimes their stenographer, write a letter home to my mom and tell her im still alive. We take it for granted today, we have instant messaging, right . You send a message to someone and you have a heart attack when they dont respond in seven seconds. [ laughter ] you go years being away from home and cowboys were so starved for word you read until your letter fell apart and you were obliged to read it out loud because not everybody got a letter. They read it over and over again. Cowboy life was largely boring, it really was. You have been great audience and asked great questions. Go see the exhibition and thanks for coming. [ applause ] youre watching American History tv, 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter cspan history for information on our schedule and to keep wake up the latest history news. Friday night, American History tv is in primetime with cspan cities tour focusing on religion. First, well take you to the Oldest Baptist Church congregation in the United States founded by Roger Williams in providence, rhode island. The tour also includes a visit to a nativeamerican Cultural Center in alabama, and a christian sect in albany, new york, which promotes come munnal living and the equality of the sexes. Thats American History tv in primetime, friday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. This weekend on American History tv on cspan3, saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on lectures in history, American University professor aaron bell talks about privacy laws and federal surveillance of city rights leaders. Hires William Sullivan shortly after the walk on washington and Martin Luther king jr. s i have a dream teach. We must mark him as the most dangerous negro in the standpoint of reflect on Lessons Learned and ignores during the war. We learned the limits of military power during the vietnam war. We learned that as a society, a culture, that you cant kill an idea with a bullet. American history tv this weekend, only on cspan3. 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