Author: Ophelia Benson

The Cowboy, along with the Llanero, Caballero, Vaquero/ Vaqueiros, Gaucho, Paniolos, Huasos and Drovers produced in the animals that they tended a large quantity of calories and vital nutrients per unit of labor/worker, even though it was a very low per unit of land. In film and literature, one is so bound up in the mystique of the Cowboy that one rarely notices that they were producing a critical nutrient and calorie input that facilitated a significant transformation in the urban industrial complex from the 1870s on into the 20th century. As with the American Cowboy, the Vaquero, Gaucho and Drover were mythologized, while their more mundane but more vital role as producers of food was somewhat ignored.

In a previous article – Cowboy – An English speaking Vaquero? – Hiding in Plain Sight! – I argued that everything aspect of Cowboy paraphernalia (except the six-shooter) came from immigrants, and except for the Levis, all came to the U.S. from south of the border.  I traced the lineage of many of the items back through Mexico to Spain and in some cases to the Arab/Muslim cultures and even back to Buddhist Mongolia. One important element I did not dwell on was the fact that there was no tradition either from Spain (or the rest of Europe or Africa) of managing cattle from horseback, which was necessary on the vast open range. In fact for Spain and the rest of Europe, riding horses was for the elite and for the military and not for those who tended cattle. In the New World, Spain banned “natives” from riding horses. Yet this capability was necessary for managing cattle on the open range, so a way was found via the Missions and cattle ranchers to allow an exception to be made for herding cattle.

Other than the basics of horsemanship, the natives and later mestizos had to create the technology for managing cattle on horseback. This is absolutely critical to emphasize since this inventiveness comes from a section of the population which, to this day, conventional wisdom and popular culture assumes has nothing to give but their labor and a continuing supply of labor through procreation (Proletariat  – “From French prolétariat, from Latin proletarius [“a man whose only wealth is his offspring, or whose sole service to the state is as father”], from proles [“offspring, posterity”]”).   They had to learn to capture and break wild horses. They originally used only blankets, but in time built their own saddles with the horn and eventually the dally (dally from the Spanish dar la vuelta, to take a turn) which was wrapped around saddle horn for the leverage for roping cattle.  They needed chaps to protect their legs when going into the chaparral (Spanish chaparreras, or chaparro) to retrieve a calf. The stirrups had to be transformed because there were different needs from their use by the military. They had a knife at the end of a long pole which they used to cripple cattle when they were harvested only for their hide. They became so proficient that the Spanish colonial authorities had to ban their use (with a major fine for violation) for fear that they would rid the plains of all cattle. They substituted a loop of rope at the end of the pole and eventually created the lasso or lariat (la reata) and the skills necessary to use them. They created the rodeo (Spanish – rodear– to surround or go around) to display their skills. We could go with a plethora of details but it is simply important at a time of anti- immigrant debate to correct the myth that the so-called unskilled have nothing to contribute but cheap labor. It is at our peril and theirs that we ignore the critical contribution that they made to “our American way of life.” It is an indicator of what they can continue to contribute. Humanitarian arguments should be sufficient to admit them and give them new opportunities, but some applied practical augments can also be helpful.

This vast amount of nutrient on the hoof is of little value unless it can be transported from the low population density countries or areas where is produced to the cities and countries where it is needed. For Argentina, Australia and New Zealand, it was refrigerated ships that could get their beef and mutton to the European market. For the U.S., it was first the railroads and later also trucks, and for exports it was also ships.

Unlike the hard-working Cowboys who brought the cattle to the railroads, those who built those railroads were either ignored or demonized. Their stories were “often omitted from the triumphant narrative of progress.”  The “suffering and survival of the workers who were treated as outsiders” was an untold story until recently. Ryan Dearinger examines the moving frontiers of canal and railroad construction workers in the tumultuous years of American expansion, from the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, to the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in 1869. He tells the story of the immigrants and Americans—the Irish, Chinese, Mormons, and native-born citizens—whose labor created the West’s infrastructure and turned the nation’s dreams of a continental empire into a reality. Dearinger’s fine book follows in the tradition of  Common Labor: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals, 1780-1860.

We showed our gratitude to the Chinese who built the railroads going east from the West Coast by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882).  This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. Sound familiar?

The large open ranges of the American West meant that herding cattle had to be done on horseback. Such large open ranges were absent east of the Mississippi and in the overseas sources from whence they came, the cattle herding horse culture had to be learned by those who went west to settle or just to be cowboys.

With the development of the railroad and industrial production, the horses became ever more important, pulling trolleys or wagon loads of beer or other goods, or for pulling the large-scale complex farm machinery that industry created, opening up large acreages to cultivation. These evolved into large specially-bred, powerful horse that did not have the agility needed for herding cattle on the open range.

The large-scale complex farm machinery that industry created allowed for large scale industrial agriculture in the Northern Plains. Like the Cowboy herding cattle (see below), we have agriculture producing not particularly high yields per unit of land but because of the machinery, it produced high yields per unit of labor. It was a marvelously reciprocal relationship with Industry providing better technology and agriculture providing more food to feel the Industrial cities. It is a dynamic relationship along with improved yields from plant breeding, synthetic fertilizer and pesticides which continues to the present. The railroads took the wheat to places like Minneapolis where it was milled (and after 1880s) packaged and sent off to make bread and other products. Prior to this time, Americans preferred maize to wheat because of its greater reliability. See Rachel Laudan’s wonderful essays Mutable Maize and The Mutability of Maize.

The large scale (industrial) production of wheat in the northern plains of the U.S. play a complimentary role to that of the Vaquero/Cowboy in changing diet and feeding the rapidly growing industrial cities. The U.S. went from pork to beef as the leading source of meat (and much more recently to industrially produced chicken) and from maize to wheat as the predominant grain. Pigs were often raised in the cities or nearby and were not as land intensive to raise as beef cattle. This mode of pork production would not have been able to keep up with the growth of the industrial cities as reformers were seeking to remove pigs from the cities for sanitation and other reasons – see for example  Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City by Catherine McNeur. Similar  transformation in meat (including mutton as well as beef) and wheat production as increasing amounts of food were being produced for a growing urban population in industrializing cities in Europe, North America and to a lesser degree elsewhere. For the growing international trade in beef, mutton and wheat, refrigerated ships played the role that railroads played in the U.S.

We have seen the role that immigrant culture played in producing beef for the industrial cities of the U.S. It was Mennonite immigrants from the Ukraine (then part of Russia – the Mennonites were originally from Prussia) that brought the Turkey Red wheat that transformed the northern plains of the U.S. It was hardy and could be planted in Fall and harvested in Spring. The hard soils required the steel plough to work the land and steel rollers to mill. The “invention in 1873 of a steam engine that could grind wheat in such a way to produce fine white flour” facilitated the large scale production flour (along with the revolution in packaging occurring at the same time) which was shipped to cities to be baked into wheat bread which became a staple of the urban worker’s diet.

Later as large scale vegetable (and fruit) production became feasible in California to be shipped East to the Industrial areas of the country, it was the Chinese immigrant laborers who built the railroads from the West Coast, also were the ones who drained the marches, built the levees (dykes), dug the canals that drained the marches of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and later the Central Valley hat transformed California in a great agricultural state. The Chinese Exclusion Act came along as the Chinese laborers were being replaced by power equipment in the 1880s.

From 1880 onward in Europe and North America, there was a sustained increase in life expectancy passing forty years for the first time in most Industrial areas. That improve nutrition played an important part is evidenced by the fact that there was also as sustained increase in average height from generation to generation.

The large-scale complex farm machinery that industry created allowed for large scale industrial agriculture in the Northern Plains. Like the Cowboy herding cattle (see below), we have agriculture producing not particularly high yields per unit of land but because of the machinery, it produced high yields per unit of labor. It was a marvelously reciprocal relationship with Industry providing better technology and agriculture providing more food to feel the Industrial cities. It is a dynamic relationship along with improved yields from plant breeding, synthetic fertilizer and pesticides which continues to the present.

In summation, we can argue the scientific/industrial revolution in Europe was built upon a foundation of knowledge and technology that came from Asia and the Arab world. The rapid growth in population in the Industrializing cities of Europe required the increasing yields from potatoes and maize that came from the “New World” to feed them. The increasing yields mined the soils so Europe and the U.S. had to import nitrates from Peru and guano from islands that they claimed. The latter was unsustainable until replaced by synthetic fertilizer in the 1900s.  In other words, we are all products of a continuous process of what we obtain from elsewhere from trade or other contacts or what immigrants bring us. What counts is how we refashion it, carry it forward and make it our own. We need to recognize the full richness of the process that got us to where we are now and the necessity of sustaining the openness in its many facets which is necessary to keep it alive and vital.

There is no more iconic American figure than the Cowboy. The generic English language terms when combined have lost their original meanings as  boys  possibly herding or milking a cow. Most anywhere in the world, the term cowboy refers to that ironically American (U.S.A. American) figure.

In recent years, there has been an upsurge in seeking to define the “real.” On the very extreme right is the American Renaissance which seems to believe that the real America was created and sustained by native (native in the sense of those who began coming to these shores in early 1600s and not those natives who were there to greet them) white English-speaking males. (See for example – Rep. Steve King warns that ‘our civilization’ can’t be restored with ‘somebody else’s babies’, By Philip Bump, Washington Post, March 12, 2017; Steve King Says Civilization Can’t Be Restored With ‘Somebody Else’s Babies’ By MATTHEW HAAG, The New York Times, MARCH 12, 2017;   and King defends controversial tweet: ‘I meant exactly what I said’ by Mallory Shelbourne – The Hill March13, 2017. The role of women (in a quaint form of long ridiculed Freudian beliefs about the role of women in procreation) was to continue the procreation of more white English speaking males who were creating American Civilization. The Freudian view in a new disguise has new believers; the American Renaissance has become its most devoted and devout followers.

One does not have to go that far to the right to find a vision of the real America being rural white English-speaking Americans. No group fits this image better than the romanticized iconic American cowboy of novels and films – not only in the U.S. but elsewhere in the world. The typical cowboy is a white English-speaking male. If in cowboy films there is any religion, it would be a nondenominational Protestant church in a Western small town.

This image spans the spectrum of U.S. politics. On the right, two brothers lead a group to take over a National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, essentially asserting that they are more real American than the constitutionally established elected national government. They of course dress like cowboys to assert their claim visually. Though they may have been raised on a ranch in Nevada, one of them manages a valet car fleet in a Phoenix, Arizona suburb and the other is listed as owning a construction company in Utah and having frequent problems with the local government.

This romanticized image of the cowboy has its counterpart on the left of the political spectrum. The anarchist/naturalist Edward Abbey (who immediately preceded me as chairman of the Philosophy Club at the University of New Mexico) in his marvelous novel The Brave Cowboy: An Old Tale in a New Time  portrays the mid -20th century cowboy whose libertarian lifestyle cannot survive the restraints of the modern world. It was made into a superb movie – Lonely Are the Brave (1962) produced by and starring Kirk Douglas.  The screenplay for the film was written by Dalton Trumbo who had been “blacklisted and jailed after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.”

As would be expected, the iconic cowboy has become part of the debate over immigration and efforts to restrict it. Frederic Remington and Charles Russell are considered to be the two greatest artists of cowboys and the American West that they inhabited. In an evening TV news story showing President Trump signing one of his decrees on immigration, one of Frederic Remington’s famous bronze sculptures, Bronco Buster, was visible on the President’s desk.

Similarly, Daniel Pipes, in a rant defending President Trump’s policy of restricting immigration from six predominantly Muslim Middle Eastern countries, uses the image of Charles Russell’s Smoking Them Out.

It is interesting to note that Remington’s 1889 visit to Mexico is rarely mentioned in accounts of his life or merely mentioned in passing as if it were of  little significance. Yet he wrote extensively on it and the Mexican Vaqueros whom he studied. His drawing Mexican Vaqueros Breaking a ‘Bonc’ appears to be the model for his bronze Bucking Bronco (or Bucking Broncho as it was originally spelled). In other words, the Bucking Bronco statue on the President’s desk (replications of which can often be found around the world) may actually been a Vaquero and not a Cowboy?

A BBC News story on 23 February 2017 opens with an image – “In the middle of a packed arena a cowboy clings on to a wildly bucking bronco” in which every everything seen in that image except the rider himself (and of course the pants he was wearing) originally came to the U.S. across what is now the border where a wall is to be built. When posted online the rider on a bucking bronco is not shown, though the accompanying text has the above quote.  No mention either that the very word Rodeo comes from Spanish as does the Rodeo itself. It does open with a man standing in front of a Burrito (little burro) sign voicing support for the deportations underway and of course, the wall.

The hats they wore would have come from Mexico and were decedent from hats worn by the (Buddhist) Mongols. J.B. Stetson took “sombreros” East, made some changes, and sold them around the world, including the American West, as Stetsons. The settlers coming from the East wore Derbies. The cattle in the picture would have been descended from those brought North with the settlers, got loose, and went wild, and which were much later crossed with Herefords which were brought from the East. Everything else in the pictures and statues, from the hat to the boots to the saddle and the horses, came to the American West via Mexico.

There is a biting irony in these images at a time when issues of the U.S.-Mexican Border and the deportation of “illegal” immigrants is so much in the news.  Essentially everything depicted in the sculptures and everything in the paintings came from across what is now the U.S. –Mexican Border, except that the pistol in a cowboy’s hand, which appears to be a Colt 45 Peacemaker, and the pants. Only the gun would have been brought West across the Mississippi. The pants would have been a product of two Jewish immigrants who may have entered the U.S. in the East but who set up shop in California (San Francisco) and Nevada (Reno) where the pants – Levi’s – were created and manufactured. Levi Strauss was born in Bavaria and Jacob Davis (nee – Jacob Youphes) was from Riga, Latvia which was then part of the Russian Empire.

In 1598 when Don Juan de Oñate y Salazar crossed the river at El Paso Del Norte and followed the Rio Grande northward, he had settlers, horses and cattle. For the Vaqueros who drove the 7000 head of cattle, one could claim that they were among the first Cowboys in what was to become the United States. From Santa Fe (La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asísi) which he founded in 1609, the settlers spread out over what is now Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. In 1680 when the Pueblo Indians rose up and drove the settlers out, many of the cattle and horses became feral and began stocking the region with Mustangs and Longhorns. The Spaniards successfully and brutally returned in 1692.

Many of the settlers were Conversos – recently converted Jews. In the last few decades, it has been increasingly understood that many of these Conversos in fact retained their Jewish religious practices in their home and in many cases, may have secretly retained their Jewish faith. Recently some in the region have reclaimed their Jewish faith. All this has opened up a new area of scholarly inquiry with Ph.D. dissertations, books and articles. This means that the Cowboy heritage not only includes the Catholicism of the Spaniards but the Judaism of the Conversos. Given the antisemitism of many of the real America proponents, it would be a supremely delicious irony if the first Cowboys in what is now the U.S. were Jews.

That was 1598. The emergence of the iconic Cowboy after the Civil War is another story. We are just recently beginning to learn of the ex-slave slaves and other Black Cowboys. If there were significant numbers of Jewish Cowboys, it is a story yet to be told. In our era of celebrating multi-culturalism, I expect and look forward to future research finding more ethnic, racial, religious and other diversity than we now recognize. Whether Jewish Cowboys are found is as yet unknown but we can still celebrate them as the first American (north of what is now the U.S. Southern Border) Cowboys.

The horses that the Spaniards brought to the New World were brought to them by the Moors (Arabs and Berbers) who were Muslim. Given that the horse was absolutely essential for herding cattle on an open range, one could argue that, fully understood, the Arab Muslim contribution to the Cowboy culture was more important than anything that came from East across the Mississippi River.

In New Mexico where I spent my formative years through the completion of my Master’s Degree in Economics, the Hispano population claim to be the originators of the Mexican-American cuisine and that Tex-Mex, for example, is merely a derivative of what they created. I have never been able to find a decent sopapilla (also spelled sopaipilla or sopaipa) outside of this region.

As Rachel Laudan has cogently demonstrated, much of what we consider to be the Mexican (and following from that New Mexican) cuisine is an adaptation of cuisine that was brought to Spain by the Moors. This cuisine has roots that extend all the way back to Persia, and passes through the Middle East and North Africa. Immigration from some of the countries that now occupy this region may be “temporarily” banned but the product of their culinary arts is welcomed throughout the Southwest United States. From Hurriyet:

These cooking traditions were carried to Mexico by the first Spanish conquistadors, followed later by many Middle Eastern immigrants after the break of the Ottoman Empire. The latter is more responsible with el Pastor being a popular street food in Mexico, just like the Döner Kebab in Turkey, Souvlaki in Greece or Shawarma (from Turkish çevirme-to rotate) in Syria or Lebanon.

The famous Fart Scene in Mel Books’ Blazing Saddles begins by showing a plate of beans. These beans were either the common bean – Phaseolus vulgaris (which originated in South America and is now grown on every continent except Antarctica —or the Tepary bean – Phaseolus acutifolius – which along with maize and squash formed the fabled Three Sisters of Mexican (aka Aztec) and North American agricultural row sequencing and rotation. One or the other beans probably became one of the crops of the settlers. In Spain, they are called judias o frijoles blancos. Whatever flatulence came from the East, it was not from either of these nutritious beans.

Increasingly, after 1868, the Tabasco Sauce that the Cowboys put on their beans would have been produced on Avery Island in Louisiana; the Tabasco peppers (Capsicum frutescens var. tabasco) from which they were then and are now made originally came from the Mexican state of Tabasco. The McIlhenny Company claims to have formulated the sauce in 1868.

In trying to understand the diverse cultural, racial and ethnic origins of the cowboy, one must not forget the important role that ex-slaves played after the Civil War.  Estimates of the number Black Cowboys are as high as 5,000 or about one in four. In one video documentary, the claim is made that cowboy was originally a derogatory term directed towards Blacks who herded cows. No evidence was offered so we will have to leave that nugget as a very interesting hypothesis. Among the many  sources on the Black Cowboy are the following:

• America’s forgotten black cowboys
• African American Cowboys by Roger D. Hardaway
• Black Cowboys
• Who Were The Cowboys Behind ‘Cowboy Songs’?

Addendum on the Real America

My Real America is a nation of immigrants that takes what is brought to it and makes it their own be it 100% from one group or a bringing together of traits from different groups.  As such, the Cowboy can be seen as 100% American because we in America have made it our own. My Real America recognizes the various heritages that have allowed us to shape our country including the Vaquero heritage that created the modern Cowboy. Recent research is adding new diversity to our Cowboy heritage. In my Real America, the richness of the human endeavor allows us to violate (this one time only) basic arithmetic and allow someone to be 100% American and still have another heritage or even multiple other heritages. These multiple heritages enrich our culture and give it added strength and resilience. It is a dynamic interaction that doesn’t end with the initial appropriation but continues in a culture continuing to be receptive to new ideas. It definitely does not demonize or demean and seek to cut us off from those who brought us such a precious heritage as the Cowboy. One of the great strengths of our multiple heritages is that immigrant groups have continued to evolve their cultural contribution where it frequently flows back to the originating homeland and to the world. A view of the Cowboy as being uniquely an American creation falsifies it and denies its rich heritage. Walling ourselves off from any part of our rich, diverse heritage implies that we as a nation do not have the capacity to separate out that which is beneficial and that which is not. It provides only the delusion of strength but in the long term it cuts us off from the ongoing transformation that is necessary for success in our ever changing 21st century.

“In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.”  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 1933