April 2018 10 As a boy coming of age in the early and mid-1960s I always looked forward to watching those great television shows like “Cheyenne”, “Gunsmoke”, “The Virginian”, “Bonanza”, “Wagon Train”, “The Rifleman” and so many others. The characters seemed to be so real, so honest, complex yet simple; the situations? Well, most of them came out of Cowboy Legend and Lore, save for what Hollywood wanted to throw in. After all, Doug McClure’s (RIP) kindly, smiling ranch hand and friend of the Virginian Trampas bore no resemblance whatsoever to the snarling, cattle rustling deadly rival of the Virginian in Owen Wister’s great novel based on the Johnson County Wars of Wyoming. But watching a Clint Walker, or a Chuck Connors (RIP), Jim Arness or the Duke (RIP) made American boys wish they were like them or had the opportunity to live back in those Old West times. It was an innocent and relatively good time to be an American boy, those times only to be broken by the Kennedy assassination, a growing war in Southeast Asia, the increased cynicism of the time, and - only two months after Kennedy’s death the arrival of four mop- topped lads from Liverpool who completely changed American cultural history. Those Western shows gave a fleeting glimpse of what cowboy life was like, that is, in the romantic sense, as did most if not all of those movies in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, before blood and guts and excessive sex became the norm. The reality is Hollywood might have been far off the mark, but then again, maybe not that far. The American Cowboy was indeed the best America could offer the world. Rugged, individualistic, lonely but never alone, they came of age between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and when the range closed in 1888 after the great Montana blizzard made the open range obsolete, and the subsequent Johnson County War four years later. Many were Civil War veterans, mainly from the losing side, the Confederacy. Many were drifters, escaping a bad life at home or broken romance or just trying to become a man and find themselves. There was very little racial prejudice in the company of cowboys. A Black Bill Pickett or a Bass Reeves was just as equal as a Charlie Russell or a Will Rogers. Yes, there were Indian cowboys too, and cowboys from other races, religions, and creeds. It wasn’t an easy life nor a romantic one, waking up well before dawn and going to bed late at night, riding trails, roping cattle, herding them for hundreds if not a thousand miles, from the Red River in Texas to the cattle towns of Kansas - Abilene, Wichita, Dodge City, or further north to Montana. A typical cattle drive could last for six months or so, or even a year, across all kinds of terrain, and while it might have been mostly tedious, it was also very dangerous work. A cowboy could encounter storms that would cause the cattle to stampede, and not a few cowboys died as a result of being caught in a cattle stampede, trampled to death. There were swollen rivers, rocky terrain, dust, dry plains, rattlesnakes and other creatures and critters. There were man-made dangers too, cattle rustlers, outlaws, or where a trivial argument could turn into a deadly gun battle, and yes, in this era before and after Custer, hostile Native American tribes fully prepared to attack the drovers. The cowboy also had to contend with gambling, booze, and as the Eagles so aptly put it “faithless women”. Some of the cowboys couldn’t understand the laws of the new cattle towns, and some of them found themselves on the wrong end of the law or a gun. Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Big Bill Tilghman and Wild Bill Hickok cut their law-abiding teeth in towns like Dodge City and Abilene facing The American Cowboy down drunk and disorderly Texas cowboys in the dusty streets. Sure, that’s the sordid side. But here, in my opinion, is what made the cowboy so special, what draws me to them, why they are so quintessantly American. There was a cowboy code, still is. That code was to befriend and defend women and children, befriend one another, work as a team, love their animals, especially their horses, defend family, and be loyal to the country, flag, and faith. It is no surprise that so many Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming, Dakota, and Montana cowboys signed up to join fellow cowboy Teddy Roosevelt in his 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, The Rough Riders when we went to war with Spain in 1898. One of Roosevelt’s beloved company commanders was none other than Arizona cowboy and lawman Buckey O’Neill from Prescott, who tragically died from a Spanish continued on page 13 “Cowboy You Were America. You were the West. You were Legend. You were the Best”... –William Smith (from “The Poetic Works of William Smith”, 2009) bullet right before the charge up San Juan Hill. Other cowboys who flocked to the Rough Riders included famed Oklahoma lawman Chris Madsen, who helped to track down the Doolin- Dalton gang just five years earlier, and grizzled Apache fighter, a veteran scout and hired gun Tom Horn. Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West show may have given the cowboy a new life and shiny gloss, but it was a real cowboy, a down-to-earth homespun one of “9/32” Cherokee blood (his By Alan Rockman