Read the Book

2011-11-05T08:10:00.000-07:00

Don’t believe what you see in the movies. Don’t believe what you see on TV. If you want to know something you can believe in, read a book.

Case in point.

The American cowboy was an agricultural laborer who herded cattle on the open range in the 1870s and 1880s. He was poorly paid, but he worked hard, and the work was dangerous.

Roundup on the Belle Fourche, John C. H. Grabill, 1887

Following the trail herds from Texas to the north after the Civil War, he slept on the ground at night, had meat, beans, and sourdough biscuits for meals, and worked in all kinds of weather.

Saloon, Arizona, 1885

He knew how to ride a horse, and how to rope. He swore like anything and rarely had a day off. It was high-risk work. He could die from drowning, snake bite, lightning, falling from a horse, accidental gunshot, or infections and disease.

Recreation was a rare night in a cow town where the range of pastimes included drinking, gambling, and maybe a short hour with a prostitute.

Pals of the Saddle, 1938

The movies changed all that and gave us a cowboy hero who was too busy chasing stagecoach bandits and thieves to ever do a day’s work. He always rode the same horse, and he usually rode it hard.

He dressed like few cowboys ever dressed, in fancy duds, and high crowned hats, with a clean shaven face and a clean-cut look.

And he was forever firing his guns, able to pick off a moving target while riding a horse at full gallop. Always ready for a fist fight, he was also fast on the draw, he could shoot a gun from another man’s hands. Somehow he never ran out of ammunition. Never even had to reload his gun.

Oh, Susanna!, 1936

When sound movies came in the 1930s, he was forever bursting into song, as if life was a musical comedy. He passed the time this way even while riding his horse. Often he’d find a pretty girl to sing to, and in westerns there was always a pretty girl.

Later years, in the 1960s and 1970s, westerns got more realistic. But instead of showing the real life of cowboys, realism meant more death and bloodshed. At that point, the western nearly bled to death itself, only to be revived now and then to wade even deeper into graphic violence.

Texas cowboy, Stanley L. Wood (1866-1928)

I’m here to tell you, it’s all crap. Most westerns are an insult to the men who were the real cowboys. They’re an insult to American history. And if you are American, they’re an insult to you.

Show some respect to our forefathers by learning about the lives they really lived. Go to the library. Go to a bookstore. If cowboys don’t interest you, find the books about the men and women who do.

Stop letting Hollywood and TV tell you your history. Read the book.

Picture credits: Wikimedia Commons

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level = 5.7

The Real West

Read the Book