How Did the Cowboy Gallop into American History?

Cowboy culture didn't start in the Wild West. Learn about the Spanish, Indigenous, and Black history of cowboys in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/cowboys.htm

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstey, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Lauren vogelbon here. Whether it's John Wayne or Little nas X,
the cowboy holds a place in the pantheon of American heroes.
But the cowboy that we know didn't spring fully formed
from the dust and tumbleweeds of the wild West. The

(00:23):
original cowboy had nothing to do with the wild West.
Historically speaking, the whole cowboy image the trusty horse, the
open range, get along, little doggie, campfires under starry knights,
old town road, beans from a chuck wagon, yeehaw, cattle drives, branding, chaps,
and spurs. That image grew from roots a long way

(00:45):
from the American West. It all began in Europe with
three central elements man, cow, and horse. In Spain for centuries,
the horse and those who wrote it held high status.
Portraits of Spanish kings posed them on rearing horses. The

(01:06):
Spanish used their horses in a burgeoning livestock economy, which
included cattle and sheep to complement farming in the fourteen hundreds,
and so when the Spanish set out to conquer new
lands later that century and into the next one, they
took with them horses and cattle. Eventually, from the island
of Hispaniola, which now holds the Dominican Republic and Haiti,

(01:28):
the people, the horses, and the cattle made their way
to parts of what is now Florida and Mexico. Those
cattle multiplied, and the need for horsemen to track them
down and keep them in line grew. Back then, cattle
were needed more for their hides than their meat. European
ranchers taught what they knew to indigenous peoples, who in
turn came up with all sorts of new cattle handling techniques,

(01:52):
and so the vacquero was born. Vaccuero is a Spanish
word for cowboy, and it roots from a Spanish word
for cat avakka. The vocaro is the direct predecessor to
the American cowboy and lots of other cowboys throughout Central
and South America. As cattle, as some introduced on purpose
and some of which wandered wild, made their way across

(02:13):
the Americas as they learned to rope and ride and
row lariates, as they modified their saddles to include a
horn to anchor a rope to as they introduced some
blocking hats and leg protecting chaps. Bacaros moved into what
is now Texas, and their influence was felt way farther west.

(02:34):
In eighteen thirty two, King Kamehameha, the Third, sent for
some vocaros to wrangle wild cattle in Hawaii. The Hawaiian
cowboy became known as the paniolo, a word perhaps rooted
in the word for the language that the vocaro spoke Espanol. Eventually,
a counterpart formed and spread throughout the American West. The

(02:55):
cowboys had other names cowhans, cowpunchers, cow pokes, cattlemen, buckaroos,
but the work was more or less the same. Long days,
nights on the planes, a lot of dust, some danger
from wrestlers and from Native Americans whose lands they were invading,
And when they weren't working the herds, they were fixing fences,

(03:16):
caring for their horses, and performing other hard labor around ranches.
They weren't necessarily gamblers and gunfighters like say, wild Bill Hiccock,
or gunslinging lawmen like whitet Rb or Doc Holiday, nor
sharpshooters like Annie Oakley, nor all out showmen like Buffalo
Bill Cody, though all those legends have today become known

(03:40):
as cowboys. Historian Richard W. Slatta wrote in his nineteen
ninety four book The Cowboy Encyclopedia a quote, the cowboy
of the American West, a dashing figure in popular novels
and films, was in reality a poorly paid laborer engaged
in difficult, dirty, often monotonous work. The cowboys work years

(04:02):
centered on two big events, the round up and the
long drive. Round Ups were held in the spring and
often also in the fall. After cowboys had herded cattle
to a central location, they branded newborn calves, castrated and
dehorned older animals, and in the spring chose the cattle
to be taken to market. At one time, tens of

(04:25):
thousands of cowboys worked ranches throughout the West. By the
end of the American Civil War, an estimated quarter of
them were black, and some historians claim the number is
even higher than that. Landowners who had moved into the
territory of Texas for cheap land and a new start,
had brought enslaved people with them. After the war, they
and thousands of other black people were looking for work,

(04:47):
some already experienced with cattle and other livestock, and work
they found, but the cowboys heyday didn't last long. The
invention of barbed wire in the late eighteen hundreds helped pencattle,
and the expansion of railroads made long cattle drives less necessary.
In contemporary retellings, especially in Hollywood westerns, cowboys tend to

(05:11):
be honest, hard working men, of strong moral character and
few words. They're almost always white. It's not a particularly
accurate image, but like cowboys themselves, it is an enduring one.
Today's episode is based on the article How the Cowboys

(05:32):
Saddled Up and Wrote into American History on how stuffworks
dot Com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff is producted
by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com,
and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.