True Eveyday Life Of A Cowboy In The Old West.

[Dispatch]

Unlike the flamboyant characteristics depicted by TV and movies about life in the old west, what was the real, 'true' everyday life like for that of a cowboy/ranch hand?  What was the average age of a cowboy?

[Skeeter Lewis]

The long cattle drives of the 1870s were for the young and hardy - 18 to 28 years old  or thereabouts.

[Delmonico]

Lots of information out there for those willing to do just a little searching and reading.  Dozens of memoirs of those who came up the trails.

Have you checked any of that information out yet?

[Skeeter Lewis]

The classic memoir is 'We pointed them North' by Teddy Blue Abbott. He was a great western character who knew everybody and  didn't brag. Just told his story.

[Shotgun Franklin]

Hard work Dawn to Dusk, or more. Move the cows, check the cows, doctor the cows, get hurt by a cow, count the cows, look for the missing cows, fix stuff that cows tore up or stuff you needed to work the cows. On occassion, get together with other Cowboys, catch the cows, sort the calves, brand anything that ain't branded. Maybe once a season for a couple of months do basicly the same thing but also push the cows to a market.
No matter how much fun this sounds, it was much better than living in an Eastern Slum. There was a chance that you'd get a place of your own with some cows which meant that now Cowboys worked your cows Dawn to Dust.
Cowboy work was always available to fall back on if you got run off from a different job. Many famous Westerners did Cowboy work between their times of regular employment.

[Ranch 13]

 Besides Teddy Blues book , also look for Wind River Adventure, and My life as a Dakota Cattleman. Both books will give you great insight to what the actual "cowboys" life was like. Altho Cowboys and drovers shouldn't be totally confused as drovers generally headed back home to their farms/homes after the drive was over. Cowboys stayed on the range, until winter , and then jobs were few so , if they got lucky they could stay on a ranch thru the winter, or got a job in town. The less fortunate rode the grubline, going from place to place and bumming a meal and a bed in out of the weather. (We'ld call them homeless nowdays )

Anyways a cowboys life has changed some in the last 100 years, but the basic nofrills, long hours, for little pay,hasn't changed a wit.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

Charles A. Siringo A TEXAS COWBOY

http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Siringo+Texas+Cowboy&x=13&y=13

Siringo was raised on the Gulf Coast just before the Civil War.  He became a cowboy, rode on many drives and eventually became a stock detective.  One of his anecdotes was of roping a buffalo calf, and having left his knife behind, he was at a loss as to how to get him off the rope. A first hand account of life as a cowboy.

[Dispatch]

Hard work Dawn to Dusk, or more. Move the cows, check the cows, doctor the cows, get hurt by a cow, count the cows, look for the missing cows, fix stuff that cows tore up or stuff you needed to work the cows. On occassion, get together with other Cowboys, catch the cows, sort the calves, brand anything that ain't branded. Maybe once a season for a couple of months do basicly the same thing but also push the cows to a market.
No matter how much fun this sounds, it was much better than living in an Eastern Slum. There was a chance that you'd get a place of your own with some cows which meant that now Cowboys worked your cows Dawn to Dust.
Cowboy work was always available to fall back on if you got run off from a different job. Many famous Westerners did Cowboy work between their times of regular employment.

Damn shame, the great cattle drives of ole are gone. I wonder, how much of this life is still in existence today? I would assume Texas and maybe Arizona might still have the biggest ranches where they still might hire hands to work them. I figure it's nothing even close to what it once was though. 
Ranch 13 & Sir Charles, thanks for the book referrals, I'll check them out. 

[Delmonico]

You better check again, you have offend both Ranch 13 a Wyoming rancher and my state where I know a heck of a lot of them., plus Kansas, Ollahoma, Colarado, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and a bunch a folks north of the Medicine Line and I know I missed some, including the Dakotas.

The west and the cowboy are still very much alive, as Baxter Black says though, "You just can't see him from the road." 

[St. George]

There are a large number of cited references available on both this forum as well as the 'NCOWS' forum - looking through the 'back pages' of both will give you many titles and authors to consider.

Additionally - the reprint catalogs from the 'University of Oklahoma Press' and the 'University of Nebraska Press' are filled with references to the 'real' life of the American cowboy - not the 'reel' life that forms so many opinions of the 'romance' of the Old West.

A publication titled 'Persimmon Hill' is available through the National Cowboy Museum.

There's no shortage of good, solid references available, once you start looking.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[Don Nix]

Well you beat me to it i just said the same thing just took too loong for these old fingers to pound out.
From ARkansas to Oklahoma,Texas New Mexico erc wesr and north west there are plenty of big and small outfits working.
the sixes,the Matador the Pitchfork and untold others are still here  pulling out the wagon.
if you want to meet some of these folks, take a trip to the National Cowboy Celebration and Symposium in Lubbock each Sept.
Cow folks from all over gather and spend three or four days  visiting .Its open to the public.
It used to be  best part of out year to go out and visit with friends and family and catch up. Sadly many have passed on and after my herat atack we dont make the trip any longer.
But you need to know how to tell the ranch folks from the town folks dressed up like cowboys.
its rael easy just take  alook at their boots ,theres generally a whole  bunch of mud and manure permanently wedged in the instep.
Just keep looking but you gotta be where the work is.
We still feed by oil lamp in the winter and keep a ream and harness ready if the tractor wont start. Hats boots and jeans are a part of your skin and most likely vovered with blood ,dak stained by swert and water  with cppertox and wormer thrown in. The crease just kinda takes care of itself and woreout overalls  are comfortable yearround.
Yeah they are still here you just gotta know one when you see him

[Ranch 13]

  Dell no offense taken.
After my baby sisters' first husband died up on the Bixby ranch out of Glenrock, she went back to school. Married herself a nice young Mormon boy, been divorced, but had custody of his daughter.
They came here to the place one day in the fall, I was busy shuffling cows around getting ready to ship calves, didn't get to visit a whole lot. Sis had to make a couple of trips to town for us to get needles, Ivomec etc.
Well time came for them to head back over the mtn, and Derwoods lil girl said " but you guys said we were going to the ranch?" Sis said we've been at the ranch for 2 days. Kaylie says " no sir there wasn't any cowboys and cowgirls sitting on the fences watching the other dance on the hay" Bout busted my gut laughing as the rolled down the road back towards town.
So now I got folks in the family that the closest they've ever been or ever likely will be to a cow is the drive up winder at McDonalds.

Should point out that the Bixby is the old historical CY ranch.

[Ranch 13]

 Brandings look more and more like this than they used to, but with the increasing age of folks on the ranch , and the younguns off to make a decent living.....

[Delmonico]

One of the perks of my job is having to over the years most likely got to meet a majority of the working cowboys in Nebraska, and quite a few from the surrounding states.

[Delmonico]

Brandings look more and more like this than they used to, but with the increasing age of folks on the ranch , and the younguns off to make a decent living.....

My friend, if you are not already doing it, you need to write down your memiors of what you've seen and done in your lifetime.  Will be valuble to scholars studing the history of ranching a 100 years into the future.

[Ranch 13]

Del you're probably right. There's so much from the 2 previous generation in my lineage that is missing now, but had someone of just wrote in a note book their daily routines, and some of the antidotes.......
Hard to think about anybody 50-100 years from now not knowing what we did and where we did it, but then I suspect the folks in the pictures I have in an old shoe box , and have no clue about, thought the same thing.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

The old open range operations, and the cowboys that made it work, had to transform themselves after the severe blizzards of 1886 in the Northern US plains, and the Alberta winter of 1906.  After that, "ranching" became different.  It was more loke farming, even though ranch culture persisted, and still does.  Ranches became smaller, and focussed on land ownership, hay was cut for winter feed, and animals provide appropriate shelter.

Yes, ranches still exist north of the medicine line!

[Delmonico]

Yes, ranches still exist north of the medicine line!

And you folks up there have gave us Ian, who reminds us all the time that you folks have them also.

[Shotgun Franklin]

Today, just like back then, Ranching is a business. The object is, at least in theory, to make a profit. You do what it takes to ensure that profit. There are some places that do the work kinda like it used to be done. There are places that offer the 'Old West Experience' at a price. Bottom line is that if you stay in the 'black' you keep the Ranch, a few years in the 'red' and they put a subdivision on what used to be the Ranch.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

The GANG RANCH, in the Cariboo district of BC,is the largest ranch in north america after the KING RANCH

Lonesome Dove was partly filmed on the Copithorne Ranch in Southern Alberta.  Copithorne was a small rancher who looked after his stock, and picked up the pieces when then big ranches died in the blizzards of '06.

The Calgary Stampede was created about 1912, as it was felt that the cowboy skills of the open range were too valuable to let die.

Here is a short selection of books I found on abebooks.ca, by searching "ranching in Alberta".

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=246389748&searchurl=fromanz%3Dfromanz%26kn%3DRanching%2Bin%2BAlberta%26sortby%3D96%26sts%3Dt%26x%3D44%26y%3D8

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1317303282&searchurl=bsi%3D30%26fromanz%3Dfromanz%26kn%3DRanching%2Bin%2BAlberta%26sortby%3D96%26x%3D44%26y%3D8

Here's one for Del;

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=943385781&searchurl=bsi%3D30%26fromanz%3Dfromanz%26kn%3DRanching%2Bin%2BAlberta%26sortby%3D96%26x%3D44%26y%3D8

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1289301313&searchurl=bsi%3D90%26fromanz%3Dfromanz%26kn%3DRanching%2Bin%2BAlberta%26sortby%3D96%26x%3D44%26y%3D8