A big part of the boulevard and park system is to maintain up. Maintain it. As they get older, they take maintenance. You have to rebuild things. Whether it is the pavement, curb, drain structures. The original plan, a lot of it done by George Kessler was treeplanting. Multiple rows of trees were planted on boulevards. Trees have a lifespan. We have to maintain. The biggest challenge today is maintenance. I think generally speaking, kansas city citizens appreciate the park and boulevard system. We strongly believe that to be true. We would encourage anybody who does not appreciate it to appreciate what they have. If you live here, you take it for granted. Announcer our cities tour staff recently traveled to kansas city, missouri, to learn about its rich history. Learn more about kansas city and other stops on our tour at cspan. Org\citiestour. You are watching American History tv all weekend every weekend on cspan3. Musancer Panhandle Plains Museum curator discusses the origin of the american cowboy. He talks about the Common Misconceptions caused by the iconic cowboy image from hollywood movies and time novels. Novels dime novels. It is a great crowd. Is a festive atmosphere. We had a great presentation for you tonight. I work at the Public Affairs department. It will be my honor to introduce a guy i have gotten to know and really come to admire a lot here in the past few months, working with him. Some of you may have been through our new exhibit, open just under two weeks ago on the ,econd floor in the map gallery cattle, cowboys and culture. If you have not, i would strongly urge you to. It is a fascinating collection. I am talking about a large collection of artifacts, art and other objects that illuminate the connection that i was not aware of, down through history through the cattle days, between the city of kansas city and amarillo, texas. Out onto thelled first floor. Saddle have seen the big. It is a terrific exhibit. Point, be remiss at this before getting to michael, if i the introduce the man woman standing in the back. She is our Library Art Exhibit erector. She has worked director. She has worked with michael. She does a terrific job. Responsibleeally for the most part, for this exhibit being here and bringing it to us. He is the associate director of Curatorial Affairs and the art and western heritage at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in canyon, texas, just south of amarillo in the texas panhandle. It is the Largest History Museum and the state of texas. If it is the largest in texas, you Better Believe it is large. He is also a lecturer in western american studies at west texas university. He oversees art, weapons, military, sports and cowboy and ranching collections at the museum. It, it is like working at a giant 20 story. Toy story. I call it stealing money. Michael is here from here, from the kansas city area. He is a graduate of oak park high school. He had a double major in art history. After college, he worked at what is now the smithsonian and art museum in washington dc. 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 in loans and relics. He was always fascinated by the American West, growth wanting to be a cowboy or a pro football player. He went to art school because he drawing horses. Here is how big he has gotten. He was invited to dinner at the george w. Bushh and laura bush during the second bush presidency. The museum have loaned a couple house forto the white display there. Michael turned him down. It turned out that he wouldve had to miss his sons graduation from high school. He turned down the invitation to the white house, so good for him. He 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 making the joke. You may remember a few years ago when we did the big read on true grit. Our director was very fond on putting on an eye patch and a duster. He looked cool. This guy looks like he has strung some presence. He is going to set it straight about cowboys. He is going to give us their true history. One spoiler. Shooters are not involved. I say this all the time. Of the programming, the public programming that we do at the library. All of the speakers that we bring in are really good. The ones who really stand out are the ones who bring a pass in. Passion that is infectious they love talking about it and they love sharing it with other people. We have gotten that from michael in the several months he has worked with us on the exhibit. You are going to get that tonight. You are in for a real treat. Please welcome, michael. [applause] michael thank you for coming. It is a really nice crowd. That includes, not only people in kansas city, but some of my dearest friends are here, also some of my family. Few minutesprised a ago. I have been doing the cowboy mike program for almost a decade. It stems from what he was saying. Correcting history and being a public historian. Our job as public historians is to take history out of academia and put it in the hands of the general public to help tell good stories. That is basically what i have to do as a living as to tell good stories. I make valuable american dollars doing that. They keep paying the, so it is working out well for somebody. When this project fell into my believer ingreat giving back. I think it is vital for us to give back to our communities. I am able tocause give back to the two places that are my home. Back tortunity to give my hometown is a great thing for me. I remember as a little kid, my grandparents lived in what used to be rosedale. We would drive by on the highway. Also the big bull that got moved since it moved away from kansas city. Not a cowboy, but i get to play one on tv. I have come to know cowboys. I have had the honor to handle artifacts that long to some of the greatest cowboys who ever lived, or those you are never heard of. Those are the ones that interest me are the less heard of. It is not about the famous ones. It is about the ones that did the work. That is what i hope to convey to you today is this is a typo perk special type of person that is misunderstood. E was willing to take a risk by letting us do a presentation here two years ago this month. We came and gave a presentation about cattle cowboys and culture. We do not know how big it was going to get. We kept looking at our collection and finding connections every time we opened a page. Every rock we overturned, we found two more rocks. One of the things as a student of the American West i believe strongly in, i see this in my hometown. Turning your back on your history is the worst thing you can possibly do. The able to come back to kansas city and seeing what is happening in amarillo now, you are a cap town. Town. Ter cow embrace it. I am going to evangelize for you today. I do not care what you build, you cannot escape your route. Mbrace them the Great Stories in kansas city. Use them. Leverage them. I do this program for little bitty critters come all the way to the critters that are 75 years old. Every time i do it, i watch people turn into children, whether they are four years old or 84 years old. That is fact. I will take you through the history of cowboys. You may agree or disagree. There will be time for questions. Will try to stay on point as best i can, ok . I am a technophobe. We will see how this goes, all right . Here we go. Nott of all, cowboys were certain things. They were not gunfighters. There were not crimefighters. Hey were not bank robbers they did not come into town to shoot things are, generally speaking, ok . This is from our panhandleplains collection. Shoot for kansas city. This cowboy in this little ribbon. It is only this big. It is hand painted, as if all cowboys carried that kind of nonsense. Cowboys are the most misunderstood of all americans in certain respects but they were also in the cow country, whichi live today and still exists largely from texas all the way to western canada, they live date particularly dangerous life and did the work no one wanted to do because wages are low. Was dangerous, and dirty. Times it wast of boring. But they were responsible for someone elses property. An importantling void. As america expanded to the west, we grabbed big chunks of territory. Cow country is generally all of this in here. Generally the great planes. Kansas city, the gateway to the great planes. That is key to understanding. After the civil war, there was a for feed cattle in the United States and written. Cattle was left to run wild in texas. By 18g 10 million animals 65. Did other side of the equation, all of the wild horses were there. 2 million wild horses in 1865. Most cowboys came from texas. Ill get to the two ways of going west. At the calvary was there, and the cowboys were there. And the cows were there. This is the time of what we are talking about, Texas Longhorns. To breatheattempts animals to make a better quality of meat and kansas city plays a big role in that. It is hard to stand unless you go to western kansas, montana, wyoming, northwest texas. It is as simple as this this is what i tell the school kids. I have to give my lectures to the schoolkids. Everybody say it with me we int got no trees. Remember that. It is important. No place to hide. So cattle, this great commodity, is seen by an illinois businessman named joseph jean mccoy who realizes the way to product to that great martin in the northwestern United States and europe, you had to get them to market. There were rob roads in texas but it was three times as expensive to ship your cattle by rail as it was to drive them to the new railhead in the Central Pacific, the first one was in abilene. The original cattle trail came up to texas through sedalia. Shawnee trail is to the east, but almost immediately by the 1850s, here illinois had quarantine against texas cattle, then missouri, that missouri is cattlef from texas because of texas fever. They carried a tick that would killed investigated cattle. But they could enter the state on rail car. That is why the Central Pacific is out there because eastern Kansas County also instituted 14. So texas cattle on the were not welcome into the part of the country we recognize. So count has moved west. Abilene for a while, then dodgerth, wichita, then city. You can see the great cattle trails. One of the things you need to remember is the cattle trails went right through command through comancheria. Andas dominated by fear trade. So what to do do . You signed a treaty with these comanches that did not understand. You tell them they have to give to this. This and move we all know nobody wants to go to oklahoma on purpose, right . [laughter] Michael Coleman that did not go over too well but nevertheless this is what happened. Michael that did not go over too well, but nevertheless it is what happened. By the time the trail started 18651890,inued from we believe there were probably about 35,000 cowboys involved in this. But nobody knew what a cowboy was a nobody knew what a trail drive looked like it given what you see here in harpers magazine. There aint no cow trail that ever looked like that. And Texas Longhorns did not look anyhow. Sey cattle what was a cowboy . What was cattle . That was something that under lexicon. Ar nobody really knew. Popular culture gets a hold of it quickly. West show asld literally part of the wild west. Wild west cowboys. Eventually, dime novels pick up on this in the 1880s and 1890s. Either way, jesse james was not a cowboy. He was a psychopath with a gun. That is really important. He was never a cowboy. It you see a blending between well west heroes and cowboys and cowboys get sucked into that. With they gets a jump publication of the virginian and pretty soon you have a tsunami of western fiction sweeping the country. Everybody who can pick up a pen is writing cowboy stories and artists supplying illustrations, most of which by artist to have never been out there. In this case, the artist went to colorado and worked for nine days and then went back to pennsylvania and wrote stories. 1930s,ly, a in that this is what they said cowboys did according to western fiction. Then hollywood got involved with pictures. This is one of my favorite pictures showing gary cooper getting his lipstick applied so he can play a texan. So true west magazine a couple of years ago decided they would look into this and sort of a scholarly way. Where was cowboy ground zero . Where did it start . There were three different people writing about this. In my own research, heres what im about to tell you. Cowboy ground zero starts in spain with the beginning of burning cattle through north america roughly about 1521 into what was now new mexico. They were brought on ships and turned loose. They did not castrate the bull calves. Cows do what cows do and they made a lot more calves. That is important to remember. These are hurting techniques were learned by someone. I always ask students this one, who taught the spaniards had be cowboys . Ok . It was north africa. Air] up in the air it was about maneuverability on the horse, quick mobility. Direction after direction. You Wear Clothing that allows you to move. North africans taught what would become spanish geppettos. But they also did not use rope. A blade. A long pole with a crescent shaped blade on the back. Because these wild cowboys were running everywhere and there are mexico, they simply would flick that hawking blade and cut hamstrings and they would drop on the spot. Which of them there, render the tallow, leave the meat to rock. What does that sound like to you . What else happened in north america about a couple hundred years later . Absolutely. That is what happened to the buffalo. Same thing. In . E does the rope come it comes from west african slaves who used the rope to capture in herd animal they roped from foot. It is a blending of technology from north and west africa the gives us a cowboy we know today. This is cowboy ground zero. Africa. That is vital for us to understand where they go. They were not owners of ranches. They were mixed blood people. When i want to tell you folks, the first cowboys were probably indians. Uhoh. That flies in the face of a lot of stuff, doesnt it . They did not wear boots. They might wear shoes. Some did not even use stirrups. They learned how to use a rope. Ultimately, mexican cowboys can do things with rope no one can do today. I laid out on here in the front and i want you to come look, i have a cattle rope that as you can see is about 80 feet long. S rode with this about 2030 feet long. Half the size, ok . It is all about how you manage the rope. The style learned will become part of it. Wraparound. When you rope the animal. I am going to try to show you how to do this. Pretend this is a cow. It is all about securing your loop. Afternoon. S the wind caught it. Do you see that . The wind caught it. [laughter] michael so i will capture the animal here. Rope back and forth theoretically. Goinghem a little room back in because you do not want to hurt their self esteem. [laughter] vaquero tradition is very much alive and well in california. In texas, they did what is called tie it fast. I fast and drag the animal where you want it to go, you dont care about his feelings. That is the important distinction. Hispanic cowboys were very much equation. E but they were paid about one third the wages of other cowboys. This is important. There were africanamerican cowboys. About a quarter of them were black or hispanic, mostly black. There were American Indian cowboys. They raised their own cattle in indian territory. Comanches, after they moved on to the reservations in southwestern oklahoma, insisted that any cowboys grazing herds on their only and had to be indian cowboys. They did not like texans. Imagine that. Them weref euroamericans of some type. As you can see in this photograph of dodge city. Denmark, germany, france, all over the place. Most of them were attracted by the stories they read that made it sound very exciting. Most men the came out and tried to be cowboys did not last. It was just too hard. It was too difficult. It was dirty. All kinds of Different Things, they really do not last. 1880s youry the mid people doing this sort of thing, posing for photographs in dodge city. None work cowboys. Just dressed this way for a picture. Laughter] michael but notice this. This is the key. The firearms. Ok . I am not antigun. I am not. The whole idea that cowboys were bristling with violence, the historical record is not buried out. Of cowboy own to go in owned a gun, and most did not, they were advised to keep it on the on the backbecause course a firearm is dangerous. Most cowboys, if they owned one, it was civil war surplus like this one here. They had a tendency to do this chain fire. Ok . As you can see in this photograph, those are rounds jammed between the frame and the cylinder when chainfire happens. Imagine this happening on the back row horse, ok . The key to understanding all this stuff is it was also 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 your frontier open to hostile fire. They took a toll as you crossed indian territory. That is important remember. However, when they got close to oklahoma it was better to be armed. It is always better to be armed when he going to oklahoma, right . Likewise, most of the ranches had roles for bidding carrying even on your person or in your set aback a pistol, dagger, boring knife, other instruments for defense. Could getords, you fired if you were carrying a gun. Most had roles against whiskey, women, whichg with basically ruined the western you have ever seen, right . Ruined all of them. Areere is the question you more likely to have better use for a claw hammer then a sixshooter. You just dont need it. Theyre dangerous. And they are heavy. They bank a on your leg. I know there are people who do competitive shooting and one is a friend of mine in the audience right here but that is all mythology. Even cowboys themselves started to believe wha