Ridin', Ropin', and Readin'?

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

The following article by  Phillip I. Earl appeared in the Sunday, June 06, 1999 Las Vegas Review-Journal


      Although the American cowboy has long been the subject of literary endeavors, little is known about his own reading habits in the early days. Certainly there were some men who had no interest in reading -- indeed, many could not read at all -- but there is ample evidence that others revered the printed word and sought out newspapers, magazines and books at every opportunity.
      At the home ranch, there was often a small collection of books, usually the works of Shakespeare or Dante, or a volume or two of English history, but most cowboys preferred the dime novels that touched upon life in the West, stereotypical as they may have been.
      Ranchers with children often hired a teacher to come out. She arrived with her own books -- geographies, histories, literature -- all of which were available to men working on the ranch. Some cowboys even had their own collections. Most smoked Bull Durham tobacco and were able to send off the coupons included in each package for paperbound books offered by Munro's Library of Popular Books, with titles representing Dumas and Dickens as well as popular American novelists.
      Ranchers often subscribed to newspapers and their wives usually received Harper's Magazine, a publication that gave the ranch hands some insights into higher culture. The Illustrated Police Gazette was a particular favorite of the cowboys since the magazine featured many illustrations for those who could not fathom the printed word.
      But, it was mail-order catalogs that are more frequently mentioned in accounts of cowboy life. As an intellectual exercise, cowboys sometimes engaged in lively debates over the comparative merits of the various grand pianos, wedding dresses, rowboats, parasols for the seashore and gilt-edged frames containing "genuine oil paintings" that were offered for sale. The men also showed an inordinate interest in the young women who modeled dresses, corsets and such. Whether there is any truth to the story of the young cowboy who wrote Sears, Roebuck & Co. asking it to "send me the girl on page 39," many a lonely young lad surely had such thoughts.
      There was little time for reading on a trail drive, where reading materials were scarce in any case. In such a literary desert, anything sufficed. One old cowhand recalled he had had nothing to read except a patent medicine pamphlet on a two-month drive. "I had read that so often and so thoroughly," he recalled, "that I had some of the symptoms of seven different maladies that were therein pronounced fatal. If I had been in the neighborhood of a drugstore at the time, I would have bought a supply of the cure-all regardless of results."
      Cowboys in isolated cow camps would read and reread the labels on tin cans, committing them to memory and testing each other in competitive recitals. One cowboy who spent a winter at an isolated line shack found the walls and the ceilings had been papered with newspapers and pages from a farm journal. "This cowboy," a later observer of range life wrote, "started on the south wall and read in turn the east, west and north walls and was well along on the ceiling when word came from headquarters for him to join the spring roundup."
      Some folklorists have suggested the scarcity of books and magazines was a factor in the development of cowboy lore. As Charles Russell, the famed cowboy artist, once observed, cowboys were not "vicious liars," as some chroniclers of the West have charged. "It was a love of romance," he wrote, "lack of reading matter, and the wish to be entertainin' that made 'em stretch facts and invent yarns."
      And so it was -- and we are all richer for it.        Phillip I. Earl is curator for the Nevada Historical Society.


For those who like to read, but don't particularly want to buy, there's lots of free reading at the following, and other online E-book sites (I especially recommend Andy Adams' Log of a Cowboy.  It sounded so real, I had no idea it was a work of fiction until long after I had read it.) :

http://www.online-literature.com/andy-adams/

http://www.online-literature.com/bm-bower/

http://www.online-literature.com/william-raine/

http://www.online-literature.com/zane-grey/

http://www.online-literature.com/london/

http://www.online-literature.com/twain/

[Silver Creek Slim]

Thanks, Capt. I'll have to check it out.

Slim

[Four-Eyed Buck]

Some of the infamous were quite well read, I've heard. Doc we know for sure, John Ringo, one of the riders with Wyatt on the " Vendetta" was supposedly an accountant or something like that. They weren't all just hayseeds..........Buck

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

The movies and pulps hardly ever show that aspect of life as it related to the average person back then - guess it isn't exciting enough. 

[Four-Eyed Buck]

Every day life just don't sell tickets, Cap'n. ........Buck

[litl rooster]

this one is dated some don't know how I missed it. Thanks for the links...I liked the story you posted I remember reading the entire labels on the cans and boxes, just for lack of something to read.

[Rev Willy Duncum]

My great granddad was born in 1850 and lived to be 97.  Never could read or write.  Signed his name with an X.  He was pretty smart and could cipher good tho.  My grandad was born in 1900 and made it through 8th grade and loved to read.

I've always loved the history of this country.  It is so varied.

Rev