COWBOYS

COWBOYS

COWBOYS

Introduction

Historian Frederick Jackson Turner's famous essay The Significance of the Frontier in American History defines the "frontier" as a place of westward expansion with new opportunities, heroism, triumph and progress mainly by brave white men. While he writes that the concluding of the frontier happened with the extinction of the Western frontier and cowboy's character, Americans have found a way to glamorize the image of the cowboy in the west during the 1800's. It is important to highlight the dissimilarity that historians make between the pop-culture romantic image of the cowboy and the actual lives of cowboys who worked the ranches in a quiet and solitary manner.

Discussion

Contemporary accounts of so-called cowboys offer many different images. John Clay, an old rancher who actually lived and worked among these men described them as a "devil may care, immoral, revolver-heeled, brazen, light fingered lot who usually came to no good end" (Cliff, 2005). Until the late 1880's, the term "cowboy" was synonymous with "drunkard," "outlaw," and "cattle thief" (Cliff, 2005).

Adding to the confusion surrounding the cowboy is that historians are inundated by a lack of documentation concerning cowboys. Most cowboys themselves were illiterate, and few intellectuals of the day had much interest in them. As a result, "no class of men were ever so unfaithfully represented and in consequence so misunderstood and unfairly judged by people generally as the old time cowboy has been" (Jean, Taylor, 2006). Another source of information on the romanticized cowboy comes from "professional writers, journalists, and filmmakers who are often located outside the West itself or in that peculiar corner of it, Hollywood" (Hough, 2005)

These are the versions we see throughout the mass media including books, magazines, and movies. Until the late 1880's, the term "cowboy" was synonymous with "drunkard," "outlaw," and "cattle thief" (Frantz, Choate, 2006). The first recorded, positive use of the word cowboy appeared in 1883. In Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Extravaganza, he called his young star Buck Taylor the King of the Cowboys. Buffalo Bill Cody "succeeded in convincing a people that the West, and the cowboys who set the tone and the pace, were heroic" (Hough, 2005). Eventually, the image of this cowboy spread not only all over the nation, but Buffalo Bill Cody took it to Europe, where it became an instant success.

In contrast, it is crucial to get a clear representation of not only the demographics, but the ...