By: Janeen Wilder
| The most recognizable line about cowboys may have been captured in the old ballad The Streets of Laredo: “I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.” 1 A cowboy’s clothes and the gear he uses for everyday work have always distinguished him from the other mounted herdsmen of the world, and they can tell us a great deal about what the kind of hand he is and where he is from. The Texas cowboy, for example, dresses plainly, his hat brim curved up, his saddle and bridle with little decoration, and his reins two long leather straps. The rodeo hand has the same curvy brim to his hat, but he wears flashy chaps down to his boots, his saddle horn is wrapped in rubber, and he rides his horse with one looped rein. Combine the two, and we get the cowboy of the movie screen and of our imaginations. He is the cowboy who packs a gun and wears a curbed brim hat and cowboy boots. He has outfitted his horse with an unadorned saddle and bridle and single, unconnected leather reins that he loops around the hitching post in front of the saloon. The average cowboy’s outfit, however, has rarely been depicted on a movie screen. His clothing is traditional and practical, and his gear — such as ropes, spurs, saddles, and bits — are still painstakingly crafted using techniques that have been practiced for generations in the different regions of the West. | 1 |
| Cowboys’ outfits were originally developed for utilitarian purposes, but they also came to represent where a cowboy worked and how well he performed. Originally, cowboys’ clothing and gear were heavily influenced by Mexican herding styles and Anglo herding culture. Over time, those early styles were modified as cowboys moved into other regions and as different climates and terrains demanded new ways of handling livestock. Cowboys also were influenced by what they read in books and stories about the West and what they saw at rodeos, Wild West shows, and Hollywood movies. Perhaps the best example of the cowboys’ traditional outfit can still be found in southwestern Idaho, southeastern Oregon, and northern Nevada — that part of the Great Basin known as the ION. | 2 |
 These buckaroos from the XL ranch near Paisley, Oregon, ca. 1896, offer a glimpse of the variety of gear worn in the ION region in the late nineteenth century. In front of the Racket saloon are (left to right) Bill Blair on Satin; Jack Mulkey on XL Baldy; Ralph Dey, the XL cowboss, on Roman Nose; Jim Green on Coyote; Bob Farmer on Pin Ears; and Eli Bannom on Badger.Courtesy of Schminck Memorial Museum Historical Photo Collection, Lakeview, Oregon | |
| Cowboy poet and writer Baxter Black describes the cowboys in the ION in his novel, Hey, Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky? Southwestern Idaho, like eastern Oregon and northern Nevada, is cowboy country. Not pickup drivin’, CB talkin’, team ropin’, Marlboro smokin’, beboppin’ baseball cap cowboys. I mean real cowboys! … I rode into Idaho and found myself in the Wild West! They reveled in being cowboys! They wallowed in it! Shoot, they call themselves buckaroos! Ridin’ a deep-seat centerfire saddle with a horn like a cedar post! Tapaderos, romals, rawhide reins, bosals, horsehair McCarties, reatas and big, cover-the-country horses! Hightop boots tucked in, riding heels, jingle bobs, rowels like spinners on a ’58 Olds, chinks, silver buckles, silk scarves and big high-crown black hats. When gazing on one of these sagebrush centaurs you do not confuse him with an insurance salesman from Spokane!2Black has it right. Cowboys in the ION are distinctly different from cowboys in other regions, and their clothing and equipment have barely changed over the past hundred years. | 3 |
| Beginning in the nineteenth century, the dress and equipment of American herdsmen developed into two distinct styles. One was heavily influenced by the Mexican vaquero and the Californio herding styles of Spanish and Mexican California, found on the west side of the Rocky Mountains. The other was more Anglicized and was found on the east side of the Rockies. The two styles eventually became distinguishable as “cowboy” style on the east side of the mountains and “buckaroo” style on the west. | 4 |
| Most of the American herdsmen’s gear, language, and tools have their origins in Spain’s marshy cattle-raising regions. The principal herding method practiced there was the open-range system, in which cattle were allowed to roam freely without much human contact for most of the year. As a result, the cattle became semi-feral and impossible to manage unless they were herded by mounted horsemen. The men who handled the cattle were known as vaqueros, a word derived from vaca, which is Spanish for cow. Before 1540, almost 22 percent of the immigrants to New Spain (present-day Mexico) were vaqueros, and they brought their herding culture with them to their new homes. 3 | 5 |
| In Mexico and the region that would later become Texas, two important horse cultures developed: vaqueros, poor working cowherds who worked on the ranches and missions of Mexico, and Charros, who represented the middle and upper classes and who practiced riding exercises that dated back to medieval Spain. When Americans began settling in Texas in the 1820s, large-scale cattle ranching was generally left to the Mexican vaqueros while the Anglo immigrants concentrated on farming. After Texas became a state in 1845, however, and a southern border was established with Mexico in 1848, most of the Mexican ranchers north of the Rio Grande were “persuaded” to move south of the river, leaving their cattle behind. At the same time, many Mexican lands were lost through new land laws that those in political power often twisted in favor of the Anglos. In the Brownsville American Flag on June 2, 1842, for example, Judge Rice Garland, a land speculator, advertised that “by the laws of Texas no alien can hold real estate within its limits, and declared that original landowners must survey their land and procure deeds. Yet, before many Mexican claims were settled, Anglo legal challenges had already resulted in the newcomers gaining rights to the land in the area before many Mexicans could attain the deeds. The new Texans drew on a cow-herding culture that Irish and British immigrants had brought to the American colonies in the 1640s, practices that had spread to the backwoods of Pennsylvania and South Carolina and then had moved west with the descendants of the Irish–British immigrants who settled in Texas before the Civil War. It was those Anglos who replaced the Mexican ranchers and vaqueros.4 | 6 |
| In Texas, the Anglo immigrants could no longer consider horses only as a form of transportation, and they adopted the vaquero practice of working cattle from the back of a horse. As historian Bill Harris describes it, a “man on the plains without a horse was like a man overboard at sea, prey to anything the plains had to offer — distance from waterholes, predatory Indians, or wild beasts, even wild cattle, or not-so-wild cattle.” The new Texas cowboys began roping cattle while on horseback, as vaqueros did, and they adopted vaquero words such as “corral” and “remuda.” They combined the vaquero culture with their own, merging Mexican gear, equestrian skills, and terminology with their British–Irish herding culture and breeding their cows with the herds the vaqueros had left behind.5 | 7 |
| Over time, the Texas cowboys developed a culture and style that was distinctly their own, modifying their equipment, for example, to allow them to work the terrain most efficiently. Beginning in the 1830s, however, the primary reason for the move away from the vaquero tradition was “a virulent and enduring prejudice against Mexicans [that] prevailed among Anglo Texans,” an attitude that retarded “additional and more pervasive borrowing of Hispanic traits and personnel.”6 Texans modified their outfit so they would not be mistaken for vaqueros and chose the term “cowboy” over “buckaroo” to distinguish themselves from their Mexican counterparts. When Texas cowboys began to move north with the trail herds, such prejudices prevented many Mexicans from being hired to work on the drives, and as a result little of that influence reached the Great Plains and the northern areas east of the Rockies. In later years, succeeding generations of cowboys east of the Rockies adopted the Anglo Texas style, which was only slightly modified to fit the demands of the terrain.7 | 8 |
| Meanwhile, another style developed west of the Rocky Mountains in California, complete with different clothing, equipment, and techniques. In 1769, two parties of Spanish soldiers led by Gaspar de Portola entered present-day California. Accompanying the soldiers were Father Junipero Serra and a group of Franciscan friars who would establish both missions and cattle ranches and who brought the first cattle and horses into California. In those early years, there were few non-Native vaqueros in the region, so Indians lived on the missions to take care of the cattle and to work the horses even though there was a Spanish law forbidding them to ride.8 Before long, the Indians became top-notch vaqueros. | 9 |
| When new settlers, most of them poor, began to move into the region, they applied for land grants from the Spanish government, and many acquired their first cattle as a loan from the missions. As the area became more “civilized,” wealthier people from Spain or Mexico also began to move into California, ushering in what is known as California’s Golden Era, that period before Anglos arrived and when ranchers measured their holdings by leagues instead of acres. The new settlers carved out huge ranches that ran as many as fifteen thousand head of cattle and eight thousand horses. In 1833, Mexico, in its tenth year of independence from Spain, passed the Secularization Act, stripping missions of their landholdings and granting land to settlers, many of them veterans of the Mexican Revolution of 1821–1822. With hundreds of workers, house servants, and vaqueros in their employ, the wealthy settlers were similar to feudal barons.9 To work on their immense ranches, especially after the Secularization Act gave mission Indians their freedom, they recruited large numbers of Indians to work as vaqueros.10 | 10 |
| The vastness of the area and the Spanish culture that the wealthy settlers brought with them combined to create a new horse culture — that of the Californios, who had a unique style of equipment and dress and new ways of handling livestock.11 The Californios held horsemanship in the highest esteem and considered themselves to be gentlemen who were noble and courteous. It was from this culture, as well as the early California mission vaqueros and ranches, that the distinctive vaquero outfit and practices in the ION region have their origin. | 11 |
| Anglo ranching began west of the Rocky Mountains between 1821 and 1846, about the same time that Anglos began ranching in Texas. During this period, the Mexican government made pastoral land grants to emigrants from the United States, concentrated mainly in the Sacramento Valley. In contrast to Texas, where a bitter war had developed between the Mexican ruling class and the numerically superior Anglos, in California there was a much longer and friendlier period of contact between the two cultures.12 This allowed extensive borrowing to take place between the Mexican vaqueros and their Anglo counterparts. As a result, even though the Mexican ranch era in California began to decline in 1848 and had completely ended by 1865 — due to the loss of many Mexican land grants to Anglo Americans through squatting, unfounded legal claims, trickery, and even violence — the vaquero class and cultural traditions survived.13 | 12 |
| The ION region is primarily made up of southwestern Idaho, southeastern Oregon, and northern Nevada. Map by Dean Shapiro | |
| Between 1864 and 1890, California was hit by a terrible drought, which put more pressure on the land and increased tensions between cattlemen and farmers.14 In 1872, California repealed the Trespass Act of 1850, which had held farmers responsible for keeping livestock out of their crops. The repeal meant that ranchers were now responsible for damages their cattle might cause. Under the new law, ranchers had to pay to build and maintain fences around their land. If cattle broke through fences and destroyed crops, the rancher had to pay for the damages and for the new fence. All of this could be very costly, especially if a ranch consisted of thousands of acres of land. The Frying Pan ranch in Texas, for example, required 150 miles of barbed wire in the early 1880s, encircling 250,000 acres and costing over $39,000.15 | 13 |
| At about the same time, the expansion of mining activities was creating new markets for beef in the Great Basin, and many California ranchers went north searching for new pastures for their cattle. Some only went as far as northern California, but others moved to ranges east of the Sierra Nevadas, east of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, and into southwestern Idaho, where they established cattle ranching in the ION. Ranchers hired Mexican vaqueros almost exclusively to accompany the herds to their new locations and to care for them once they arrived. When cattle rancher Peter French set out for Oregon in June of 1872 to form a cattle operation for Dr. Hugh Glenn, for example, he headed up the Sacramento River with twelve hundred head of cattle, a Chinese cook, and half a dozen Mexican vaqueros. Henry Miller and Charles Lux also employed Mexican hands on their large ranches in the Northwest.16 | 14 |
| This influx of California vaqueros into the Great Basin continued well into the twentieth century, as Californians established most of the ranches in the region. Until the 1920s and before many of the big Nevada ranches were broken up, about half of the herders who worked in the region had Mexican heritage. Furthermore, most of the cattle used to stock the early ranches west of the Rockies came from stock raised by settlers in Washington and Oregon rather than from the Great Plains or Texas. The supply routes that would have brought in Texas cattle were cut off by Indian treaties in 1867, isolating the Northwest from any contact with the Texas style for many years.17 As a result, the herdsmen who worked and lived west of the Rockies developed their own styles of dress and equipment, borrowing heavily from Mexican traditions but with little additional influence from the outside. | 15 |
| The vaquero style was strongest and most enduring in the Great Basin, including the ION. Mounted herders in this area initially referred to themselves as vaqueros; but during World War I they began to call themselves buckaroos, a word derived from vaquero. They adopted other words into their vocabulary as well, including tule (a bulrush marsh), hackamore (a halter, from the Spanish jáquima), bosal (a small, braided hackamore), romal (a longer version of the handheld quirt that is attached to the reins), cavvy (a group of saddle horses), leppy (a motherless calf, from the Spanish la pepita), and chinks (a style of chaps, from the Spanish chinquederos). 18 Another distinctive trait found in the Great Basin was the use of the “war knot,” a knot tied in a horse’s tail to keep it free of mud and to move the tail out of the way while the horse was being ridden, especially while roping. 19 There seems to be no evidence of the war knot being used east of the Rocky Mountains, and its use could be what was left of an early Spanish roping practice where a rope was tied to a horse’s tail instead of the saddle. | 16 |
| Vaqueros and buckaroos in the region also continued the Spanish practice of crafting horse and rider gear from rawhide and horsehair. Many vaqueros twisted or braided their own mecates, or horsehair ropes used as reins, which eventually became known as McCarties. They also made reatas for roping, along with quirts, reins, headstalls, hackamores, and hobbles, all of braided rawhide. Sometimes the headstalls were decorated with or made of hitched (tied) horsehair. Eventually, individuals or families in the Great Basin became known for their expert craftsmanship and individual styles. For example, Joe Samora, of Bruneau Valley, Idaho, who had come north with the trail herds, was known for his “eight-strand reins and sixteen-strand works of art.” G.S. Garcia of Elko, Nevada, who had learned his craft in California, was one of the finest bit and spur makers in all of the West. Cowboys made their own horse gear because it was not otherwise available, especially the gear needed for the Californio method of training horses.20 | 17 |
| The Californio method was significantly different from the methods used by cowboys east of the Rocky Mountains, where most horses were started in a hackamore and then, after a year or two of riding, went straight into a bridle (that is, the headstall, bit, and reins). The Californio system could take years and required a number of steps to prepare a horse for a bridle. The system used a jáquima (hackamore), a mecate (a horsehair rope used for reins and a lead rope), and eventually a bit with a Spade mouthpiece, which had been adapted in Mexico and California. Horses were started in a braided rawhide hackamore with mecate reins attached. Introducing a horse to reining, without using a bit, kept the horse’s mouth responsive and sensitive. When a horse responded well to the direct pull of the hackamore reins, a bit — usually a Spade — was placed in its mouth. The Spade bit was attached to a headstall and a second set of reins. During the two-rein stage of training, a buckaroo handled both sets of reins at the same time, those attached to the hackamore and those attached to the bit. While the horse was getting accustomed to the bit in its mouth, the rider continued to use the hackamore reins to direct the animal. Gradually, the rider began to make the horse aware of the bit by applying just a slight touch of the bridle reins.21 The horse now began “to associate the direct pulls on his nose” created by the hackamore “with the subtle accompany movement of the reins attached to the bit.” He could “anticipate the gentle wiggle of the bit from a breath of pressure of the bridle reins.”22 The rider eventually used just the bridle reins to direct the horse, removing the hackamore and that set of reins.23 At the end of this long and careful process, the rider had a “finished” or “bridle” horse. Buckaroos such as J.D. Bunch of Mitchell, Oregon, have kept the Californio horse-training system alive in the Great Basin. With years of working on the ZX Ranch in Paisley, Oregon, and the Cold Springs Ranch outside of Paulina, Oregon, he believes, like the Californios and vaqueros before him, that training a horse takes “time and patience.”24 | 18 |
| Buckaroo J.D. Bunch moves cows near Grizzly Mountain outside Prineville, Oregon. Bunch is wearing sunglasses, a recent addition to many buckaroos’ outfit. Kim Griffin, photographer, courtesy of the author | |
| Today’s buckaroos use styles of clothing and equipment that are similar to what their vaquero predecessors wore. While two styles of outfit did eventually develop on each side of the Rockies, until the end of the nineteenth century the clothing of both cowboys and buckaroos was relatively similar throughout the West. Hats, shirts, vests, pants, chaps, bandanas, and boots were standard herdsman dress. Originally, utility took precedence over fashion, but eventually fashion was affected by the region the rider worked in. According to J.D. Bunch, “looking good while you do your work” in the ION buckaroo country “is very important.” For example, buckaroos often work in clean white shirts and use horse gear that is decorated with silver and horsehair. Bunch’s mother, ranch wife Patty Bunch of Prineville, Oregon, explains: “Not often do they get to show off [their buckaroo gear]. Often their audience is each other, but that’s enough to satisfy them.”25 | 19 |
| One of the most distinctive symbols of cowboy culture is the cowboy hat, which protects cowboys from the sun and bad weather and provides a way for them to carry water and haze stock. Traditionally, hats worn by cowboys in the Southwest had high crowns to keep the riders’ heads cool and sported wide brims to shade their faces and necks from the sun. Cowboy hats in the north — in Montana and Wyoming, where weather conditions can be extreme — had short crowns and small brims so they stayed on in a windstorm. In the desert countries, cowboys wore hats with flat tops to deflect the sun. 26 | 20 |
| The cowboy hat was originally derived from the sombreros worn by Mexican vaqueros, the poblanos style of hat worn by the Californios, and the military slouch or southern Cavalry hats worn by Confederate soldiers. A sombrero is a high-crowned hat, usually made out of leather or inexpensive felt, that peaks at the top with a broad brim designed to keep sun off the face. The hat was practical in Texas in the Gulf region, but it was likely to blow off on the windy plains. The poblano, originally from Pueblo, Mexico, was basically the same as the hats worn in California in the early days of Spanish colonization. A poblano was usually made of black felt, had a broad brim and a low crown, and was equipped with a chinstrap to hold it on in windy weather.27 The slouch hat was smaller and more apt to stay on in foul weather, but it had a floppy brim that could fall over a cowpuncher’s eyes while he was riding through brush or trying to rope a cow. There was a need for a new hat that was better suited to the cowboys’ environment and ways of working. | 21 |
| By the 1860s, John B. Stetson had designed a new style of beaver hat with a brim stiff enough to keep it out of a cowboy’s eyes. Stetson’s hats soon became known as the “Hat of the West,” and his first design, known as the “Boss of the Plains” or the “Sugar Loaf,” resembled the hats worn by Californios. It had a small flat brim, which helped the hat stay on in high winds, and a crown with no creases. The “Boss of the Plains” was popular throughout the West until about the 1880s, when the “Montana Peak” became the hat of choice.28 Later, Stetson came out with the “Carlsbad,” which had a rolled edge and a single crease down the front; it was perhaps the largest of all cowboy hats, with an eleven-inch-high crown and a seven-inch-wide brim.29 The Carlsbad was the “standard” cowboy hat for the rest of the twentieth century, even as the number of creases in the crown and the amount of curve in the brim varied over the decades. Rodeo riders wore Carlsbad hats, and so did movie stars such as John Wayne and Tom Mix and cowboy comic heroes such as Red Rider. The general public wore Carlsbad hats, and so did many working cowboys, especially east of the Rocky Mountains. On the west side of the Rockies, however, vaqueros and many of their buckaroo counterparts continued to wear the stiff-brimmed, low-crowned hats that resembled those worn by early California vaqueros and Stetson’s “Boss of the Plains.” | 22 |
| While early herdsmen wore shirts that were homemade from material with a checked pattern, by the Texas trail drive era most cowboys purchased their shirts at stores. The shirts were loose fitting, with straight sleeves and close-fitting cuffs. They usually came in limited sizes, which is why many cowboys wore arm garters to regulate the length of the sleeves, and most shirts sported only one pocket. Later, when manufacturers began to create standard sizes, the garters were abandoned and an extra pocket was added to the shirt. Shirts with buttons down the front became popular after World War I, and from that time on all cowboy shirts had long sleeves and were buttoned or snapped down the front. The long sleeves were essential to prevent cowboys from getting sunburned or windburned and to protect their arms from scratches. Cattleman Pat Bunch says that sleeves are especially important in the desert regions to protect a cowboy’s arms from being beaten raw by tiny, windblown sand particles. Cowboys and buckaroos also wore vests with pockets to carry such things as tobacco, matches, a pocketknife, tally books, a pencil stub, medicines for doctoring cattle, and some jerky. The unbuttoned vest hung loosely so a rider could move easily while chasing a wild cow or roping a critter. He could also button it up to provide some extra warmth.30 | 23 |
| Herdsmen’s pants — woolen army pants, brown homemade “jeans,” pants left over from a suit of “town clothes,” striped California pants, or buckskin pants in Texas and the Southwest — were close fitting in the hips and legs to ensure that they would stay in place while a cowboy was on horseback. Early cowboys and vaqueros did not wear cotton denim jeans, because they were considered poor man’s wear. This attitude changed radically in the 1890s, however, when Levi’s heavy denim jeans became popular with herdsmen on both sides of the Rockies. Originally, Levis were made of brown canvas. In 1911, blue denim replaced the brown canvas material of Levi’s original jeans, and blue has been the standard color of cowboy jeans ever since.31 | 24 |
| Most nineteenth-century herdsmen wore chaps over their pants to protect their legs and provide warmth in cold weather. The word “chap” comes from the Spanish chaparejos, which means leather breeches or leg armor. Chaparejos were originally two large sheets of leather wrapped around a rider’s legs and attached to his saddle to protect him from cactus, thorns, and bushes. Hispanic vaqueros later modified the chaparejos so that they hung from a belt around the waist, extended down the legs to below the knee, and were held on by rawhide thongs.32 These armas, as they were called, quickly caught on and became the basis of design for all chaps since — leather covering the legs, hung from a waist belt, attached with leather. The name armas did not endure, however, and both Texas cowboys and Grest Basin buckaroos used the word chaps to refer to this protective gear. | 25 |
| In the Great Basin, riders such as the buckaroos who worked for Peter French in Oregon’s Harney Valley, wore chaps all year ’round. In the winter, they wore heavy chaps made from Angora goat hair, sealskin, or bearskin because the fur shed moisture and provided insulation from the cold. Lighter chaps were worn in the summer to protect riders from brush.33 The most popular type of light chap was called chinks, which covered only two-thirds of the legs to about mid-shin and were fastened with rawhide straps. Chinks were popular because they were cooler than other styles of chaps and the protection they provided worked well for the ION region. Many cowboys on the northern ranges chose not to wear chaps in warm weather because there was little flesh-damaging vegetation in the region or they used them as an extra covering at night or while riding in cold and wet weather.34 | 26 |
| The style of chaps used in all areas during the trail-drive and open-range eras, with the exception of the chinks used in the ION, were called “shotgun chaps.” They resembled “a pair of straight leg trousers with the seat cut out,” much like the barrel of a shotgun; each leg was fastened together along the outer edge. Chaps made of fur or angora wool appeared in the 1880s and became especially popular with the Oregon and Idaho buckaroos and on the northern plains of Montana and Wyoming. At the turn of the twentieth century, some cowboys began wearing “batwings,” open-legged chaps made of wide pieces of leather “wings” that flapped freely. The batwing style of chaps only buckled to the knees so that a cowboy could bend his legs easily, giving him more freedom to react quickly, whether during a performance for a crowd or on the range working cattle.35 The snaps, which held each leg of the chaps together, also allowed for easy removal and ventilation. Batwings could be easily decorated, and they quickly became the chap of choice for rodeo riders, Wild West showmen, many working cowboys east of the Rockies, and some cowboys of the Great Basin. | 27 |
| Bandanas absorbed sweat in the summer and acted as a muffler in the winter, making them an extremely valuable piece of clothing for nineteenth-century herdsmen. Tied around the face, a bandana protected a cowboy from dust and bitter winds, and it could also be used as a tourniquet or bandage. Almost all bandanas worn by working cowboys during the nineteenth century were made of inexpensive, patterned cotton, and they were usually the only bright-colored piece of clothing a cowboy owned. Like other parts of the cowboys’ outfit, the bandanna appears to have been used by Mexican vaqueros, who wore scarves around their necks. In California after the Colonial period, it became en vogue to wear a large kerchief or silk scarf loosely tied around the neck, the folds falling in front over the chest.36 Vaqueros brought this style to the Great Basin. | 28 |
| Finally, to protect their feet, early American herdsmen wore military-style boots made of thick, black leather, with a flat heel and rounded toe. By the 1870s, boots designed especially for cowboys were being offered for sale in cowtowns. The boot tops reached almost to the knee; the boot itself had a rounded toe and no fancy ornamentation. Most of the boots had leather pull-on straps, often called mule ears, attached on each side of the boot top so they could be pulled on easier. Eventually, the cowboy boot was designed with stovepipe tops and was a much narrower, high-heeled version of the military boot. The high tops protected a cowboy’s legs from chafing against his saddle’s stirrup leathers and from sagebrush, thistles, cacti, rattlesnakes, kicks from horses or cattle, and foul weather. A cowboy’s ankles were protected against jolts, and he could wade through water without his boots filling up. The boots’ soles were smooth and slick to allow for easier movement in stirrups, and the shank and narrow toe helped a rider’s foot fit into a stirrup easily and safely. Higher heels kept his foot from sliding through the stirrup. While most early cowboy boots were unadorned, bootmakers soon began adding decorative stitching to add strength and to make the boot tops more rigid. Eventually, they added colored inlays, initially due to demands of cowgirls who liked fancier boots; but the new style soon became popular among many riders and continued throughout the twentieth century.37 | 29 |
| This buckaroo is wearing chinks with fringes around the edges for decoration. He is also wearing Wranglers, identifiable by the distinct Wrangler patch on his back pocket, tucked inside his boots to show off his fancy, inlaid leather boots. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Wilson, Silver Lake, Oregon, the High Desert Museum, Bend, Oregon | |
| Unlike clothing, which did not change dramatically throughout the nineteenth century, equipment styles diverged almost immediately. Soon it became possible to tell what region a cowboy was from just by the gear he used. In Trails Plowed Under, Montana cowboy and artist Charles M. Russell wrote that the cow people who came from California, unlike their Texas counterparts, “were generally strong on pretty, usin’ plenty of hoss jewelry, silver mounted spurs, bits, an’ conchas…. These fellows were sure fancy an’ called themselves buccaroos….” Russell continued: “the cowpuncher east of the Rockies originated in Texas and ranged north to the Big Bow. He wasn’t so much for pretty; his saddle was low horn, rimfire or double-cinch….” 38 | 30 |
| The western stock saddle evolved from the early Spanish war saddle that Hernán Cortés and his expedition had brought to Mexico in the early sixteenth century. This silla de montar had a heavy hardwood saddletree, the high fork and cantle forming a deep seat, with short lengths of leather suspending the stirrups. Vaqueros modified the design by covering the wooden saddletree with rawhide and adding a cinch ring secured with a leather strap. They added a wooden horn, lowered the cantle to make mounting and dismounting easier, and draped a piece of leather called a mochilla over the tree to pad the rider’s seat. The saddles only had one cinch ring, and their stirrups were made of wood cut in a box shape. It was also during this period that the vaqueros changed their roping style and began wrapping their ropes around the saddlehorn after catching an animal instead of tying the rope to the horse’s tail. | 31 |
Buckaroo TermsBOSAL—A noseband, usually made of braided rawhide.BUTTONS—Braided leather knobs placed on romal reins for decoration and to help balance them.BUCKAROO—A herdsman of the Great Basin region of Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada.CAVVY—The group of saddle horses used for the day’s work west of the Rocky Mountains.CHAP—Shortened from the Spanish chaparejos, leather coverings that protect herdsmen’s legs.CHAP GUARD—A knob on top of the spur shank to prevent the chap from interfering with the rowel and the rowel from gouging the chap leather.CHINKS—A style of chaps widely used in the ION region, from the Spanish word chinquederos.CINCH—A wide band that holds the saddle in place by two leather straps that hang from each side of the saddle.CURB BIT—A bit with a solid mouthpiece and a curved port in the middle of the mouthpiece. This bit has shanks that come down on the sides of the bit that create leverage when pulled.COWBOY—Originally used during the Revolutionary War to describe men who gathered cattle for the troops. The word was used in the eastern U.S. to describe men who watched herds of cattle, and it was later adopted by Texan herders. Today it is the most common name for the American herdsman.DALLY—Wrapping a rope around the saddle horn to hold an animal after roping it. From the Spanish, Dar la vuelta, meaning to give a turn.DOUBLE RIGGED—Having two cinches, one in front and one in back to give a saddle more stability when roping.HACKAMORE—A bosal attached to a headstall, from the Spanish jáquima.JINGLE BOBS—Metal pieces that hang from the rowel and make noise when the spurs move. LARIAT—A long rope made of rawhide, hemp, polyester, or nylon used for roping; from the Spanish lazo.LATIGO—Leather straps that secure the cinch. There is one on each side of the saddle, and they hang from a rigging ring or latigo ring.LEPPY—A motherless calf; from the Spanish la pepita.MCCARTY—Originally called a mecate, a rope that is used as a lead rope or rein.OUTFIT—(1) The collective gear used by cowboys and buckaroos. (2) The company or ranch that a cowboy or buckaroo works for.REATA—A rope made of braided rawhide used for roping cattle and horses.REINS—The straps that run from each side of the bit to the rider’s hands.REMUDA—A word used east of the Rocky Mountains to refer to the saddle horse bunch from which riders select horses for the day’s work.RIGGING—The placement of the cinch ring, latigo, and cinch that hold the saddle on the horse.ROWEL—The disk at the end of the spur shaft. This disk turns and helps encourage the horse to move.SHANK—(1) Also known as the shaft, the part of the spur that extends from the heel band that fits around the boot. (2) The side pieces of the bit, outside the mouth; the reins attach to the shank.SNAFFLE BIT—A bit with a jointed mouthpiece and rings on the side; used for young or untrained horses.TAPADEROS—Covered stirrups with long pieces of leather that hang down.TREE—The foundation, or skeleton, of a saddle.WAR KNOT—A special knot that ties the horse’s tail up, used in the ION region.WILDRAG—A neckerchief or a scarf, usually made of silk, worn by buckaroos. | |
| Texas cowboys made the next changes. Saddle makers in Texas began building saddletrees out of cottonwood, willow, or elm and added a plain leather skirt to the saddles. Metal saddle horns were screwed to saddle trees and covered in leather. They abandoned the practice of making stirrups out of carved, hollowed-out wood and instead made them out of wide steam-bent wood, which was stronger. The most significant alteration in this era was the addition of a second, or back, cinch to the saddle, which firmly anchored the saddle to the horse. Texas roping cowboys preferred to tie hard and fast — that is, tying the tail end of the rope securely to the saddle horn so it would not slip off and catching a calf with a loop in the other end of the rope.39 The back cinch helped considerably in distributing the jolt to horse and rider when a roped animal hit the end of the rope. Unlike Texas saddles, which had little or no ornamentation, early California designs were heavily influenced by Mexican vaqueros and were often ornately decorated with leather stamping and silver. They had smaller skirts and only one cinch ring, unlike the double-rigged (two cinch rings built on the saddle) Texas saddles, and used a larger, more vertical horn to accommodate the dally method of roping. | 32 |
| As riders spread out to various parts of the West, saddle makers in different regions developed distinct styles.40 East of the Rockies, the saddles had low, small horns to accommodate the tying hard-and-fast roping method. In Texas, cowboys rode double-rigged saddles, called “rim fire” saddles, which were equipped with both a front and a back cinch. Cowboys on the northern ranges east of the Rocky Mountains also used rim-fire saddles, but most riders took the back cinch off even though most ropers tied hard and fast. Later, in the first half of the twentieth century, saddle makers in Miles City, Montana, developed the three-quarter-rigged saddle, which set the first cinch slightly back from the horse’s front legs and did not include a back cinch. It soon replaced the old rim fire as the rigging of choice in the north, east of the Rockies. West of the mountains, most riders used single-rig, “center fire” saddles with the rigging placed in the center of the saddle and the cinch hung from the middle of the tree. While this saddle was not well suited for tying hard and fast, it worked well for dally-style roping and was also “a good saddle to ride a mean horse.”41 | 33 |
| Despite the differences in rigging, all saddles — whether in Nevada, Montana, or Texas — had one thing in common prior to 1900: they were all “A” or slick-fork saddles, with the area in front of the rider’s upper thigh shaped like an A, sharply angling down from the horn. With this type of fork, riders had little security while riding in rough country or on a bucking horse. Bucking rolls — that is, two small leather pouches stuffed with horsehair and laced together across the front of the seat of the saddle — were invented to give riders more protection and security, but an extended and widened fork soon became an option.42 The new fork, called a swell fork, was reportedly created in 1904 by Victor Mardin, a saddle maker in The Dalles, Oregon. | 34 |
| Using a double rein is one of the many steps taken to train a horse to work in a Spade bit. While all horses do not become “Spade bit horses,” the ones that do are highly admired among buckaroos. From Ed Connell, Reinsman of the West: Bridles and Bits (Wilshire Book Co., 1964), reprinted with permission from Melvin Powers | |
| The rope was another essential piece of an American herdsman’s outfit. With it, a cowboy could efficiently catch, brand, doctor, mark, pull out of tight spots, and redirect his charges if they insisted on heading in the wrong direction. Ropes, lariats, whale lines, lassos, and reatas have been used for centuries. Herdsmen in Castilian Spain used a lazo made of grass to pull animals out of marshes. Unlike their American counterparts, they did not throw the lasso from horseback but secured it to the animal on foot. Next they attached the rope to the end of the horse’s tail and then remounted, pulling the roped cow along. It was not until about 1640 that a “prototypical form of lasooing from horseback” was first demonstrated in Spain by several North American vaqueros. The audience was not familiar with the practice, so it appears that roping from horseback was a purely New World invention.43 | 35 |
| By the mid–nineteenth century, two styles of roping had emerged: dallying to the horn or tying hard and fast to the horn. Texas cowboys took the roping practice of tying hard and fast north with the trail herds, and it was the method of choice in Montana and Wyoming and on the Great Plains. Buckaroos in the ION region preferred to dally to the horn like their vaquero counterparts did. With these two roping methods, two types of rope were used: grass hard twist and braided rawhide. In the 1880s, two-thirds of cowboys on the Great Plains preferred to use a rawhide reata, while others used ropes made out of Mexican maguey fiber, sea grass, and sisal. The ropes were usually forty to fifty feet in length. Most of these cowboys were from Texas, and they threw relatively small loops, following practices learned in brushy country.44 West of the Rockies, most ropes were made of rawhide and called reatas and were sometimes seventy feet long. Vaqueros and buckaroos in this region threw a much bigger loop because the terrain was shorter brush and open grasslands.45 | 36 |
| The rawhide used to make Romal reins usually comes from older cows since they have tougher hide. While there are many professional braiders who make exquisite reins, there are also many buckaroos who braid reins and then trade them to others for gear. From Ed Connell, Reinsman of the West: Bridles and Bits (Wilshire Book Co., 1964), reprinted with permission from Melvin Powers | |
| Between the 1890s and the 1920s, hemp ropes replaced the rawhide reata on the east side of the Rocky Mountains. By the 1950s, the cowboys in those states, who had been mostly tie men, also began to dally. The exception was in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, where tying hard and fast was still the preferred roping method. In the ION, buckaroos still preferred the practice of dallying, but more and more they began to use a grass twist or “poly” rope.46 | 37 |
| Bridles — the headstall, bit, and reins — also differed on each side of the Rocky Mountains. East of the mountains, most cowboys used heavy, brow-band headstalls with little decoration, which were attached to light-curb bits called Grazers.47 Cowboys in this region also rode with “split reins” instead of using the reins-and-romal combination preferred by the vaqueros. Early Texas cowboys who rode in brush attached a smooth, single leather rein to each side of a horse’s bit. The two reins were joined together only in the rider’s grip and could be used individually to halt or turn the horse should brush jerk one rein away from the rider.48 Heavy headstalls, Grazer bits, and split reins spread north with the trail herds and were commonly used on the Great Plains and the northern ranges. | 38 |
| In contrast, headstalls used in the ION and Great Basin were created of narrower leather straps and generally had some silver conchas on them. They were similar to the headstalls used by the Californios, which Jo Mora describes as “narrow banded” and “dyed black with the brow band possibly embellished with silver or other ornamentation and a silver concha where it joined the cheek strap.”49 Bits used in the ION were variations of the curb and Spade bits, often with rollers in the mouthpiece and elaborate silver cheek-pieces. The Spade bit, which originated in Spain but evolved primarily in northern Mexico and early California, was almost exclusively built with heavily silvered cheek-pieces. Although cowboys used the Spade in other areas of the West, it lost popularity outside of California and the ION because of its severity in the hands of inexperienced riders and its potential to injure a horse if used incorrectly. It also required more time to train a horse to work successfully in a Spade bit.50 Rein chains between the end of each rein and the shanks of the bit were also used in the ION region to help balance the bit, prevent the ends of the rawhide or leather reins from getting wet while the horse was drinking water, and create a graceful angle to the reins while riding. Rein chains also acted as a shock absorber while reining and helped “telegraph” a rider’s commands to the horse.51 | 39 |
| Mohair chaps, like the pair worn by this rider near Madras, Oregon, were popular in the early twentieth century. They were flashy and could keep a man’s legs warm in cold weather. Burlington Northern/SP & S Collection, Del Hedlund photographer, OHS neg., CN 018541 | |
| Anglo herdsmen continued to use the romal and reins used by vaqueros. Romal-and-reins generally consisted of two pieces — a long looping rein extending from one side of the bit to the other and a romal attached mid-loop. These reins suited the vaquero method of training horses, allowing them to exert an even pull on a horse’s mouth. Romal-and-reins were almost always made of braided rawhide with various braided buttons on the romal and the lower reins, close to the bit. The braiding was intricately done. According to James Gorton, “the combined weight of the braided reins and rein chains balance the bit,” creating an extremely effective piece of equipment. The braided buttons added a little weight to the reins, along with the rein chains, to allow a horse to feel a rider’s command. This system served to alert a horse that he was going to be working, without his rider having to jerk the reins.52 | 40 |
| The wider horn of a buckaroo saddle creates more surface area, so a rope wrapped around it can grab easier and stay on the horn. The horn is wrapped in mule hide, although latigo leather is sometimes used. Courtesy of the author | |
| During the open-range era, most herdsmen owned a pair of spurs. The spurs the conquistadors brought to Mexico in 1519 were made of iron and had a “narrow heel band, dropping shanks and sizeable rowels, 6 to 10 inches in diameter,” but between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries herdsmen made the rowels smaller with many more rowel points and the shanks shorter. Spurs are a quintessential piece of cowboy gear — “a necessary implement when upon a horse and a social requirement when off its back,” cowpuncher Philip Ashton writes. “He’d rather hear ’em jingle than to jab with ’em,” cowboy author Will James tells us, “for while they’re just jingling everything is okay and in harmony.” Riders used spurs to get a horse’s attention, not to cut him, and the sharp rowels of the spurs were filed smooth before a cowboy ever got on a horse. Those cowboys who they left “panther sign” or “bear tracks” on their horses were usually fired.53 Spurs also made heads turn when a cowboy dressed up and went to town, not just because of the music they made but also because they were often works of art. As with much cowboy gear, spurs began to take on distinct regional styles as herdsmen moved into the Plains and California. | 41 |
| West of the Rocky Mountains, spurs were often embellished with engraved inlaid or overlaid silver and brass, closely resembling the Spanish style. They usually had chap guards and jingle bobs on the spur shank, along with heel chains under the boot instep. In contrast, on the northern ranges, spurs had rowels about one and a half inch in diameter on a two-inch shank, a combination of the Texas style, which had small rowels, and the California style, which had large rowels. The leather straps that held the spurs in place, “spur straps,” also varied in design depending on geographic location. A narrower strap was popular in the Southwest, and wider straps were popular in the Northwest.54 In the ION country, straps generally possessed more ornately carved and stamped than straps in other areas of the West. | 42 |
| In the ION region, spurs are usually encrusted with silver, engraved or inlaid, with intricate designs. Many spurs, as well as bits, are decorated with stars and half moons, designs that date to the Moorish occupation of Spain from the eighth to the fifteenth century. Other designs are also used, such as flowers, geometric patterns, or animals, including snakes and horses. Courtesy of the author | |
| In the early twentieth century, mostly because of the influence of Hollywood and the rodeo cowboy, cowboy hat and clothing styles began to change in many areas of the West. Outside the ION region, the Carlsbad-style hat became extremely popular, and vests and bandanas were used less and less. Levi brand jeans, though the most commonly worn for most of the twentieth century, have been substantially replaced by Wrangler jeans, invented in 1947 by celebrity tailor Rodeo Ben, who designed clothes for western stars such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Wrangler jeans became the official jeans of the ProRodeo Cowboy Association in 1974 and are now the most commonly worn jeans in the West. In the ION region, however, many items of clothing and equipment are still similar to those used in the nineteenth century. Many hats worn in the ION closely resemble the old “Boss of the Plains” style and those depicted in the paintings of Charles Russell. They have a narrower brim and a crown that can be pushed up to its full height with three or four vertical creases or brought down to a flat top with a one-inch raised rim around the edge. 55 The brims are often flat or sometimes curved up in the back like a duck’s tail. | 43 |
| Most cowhands still choose to wear long-sleeved, buttoned-front shirts, and ION buckaroos often choose to wear shirts of a solid color, preferably white. Vests are also worn, not from necessity any more but because of style and tradition. Many buckaroos in the ION prefer to wear Levi’s jeans, and the ION is one of the only areas of the West where it appears that Levi’s are still accepted as cowboy jeans. The batwing style of chaps is still popular in most areas of the West. Shotgun chaps are not only worn by cowboys in the Southwest, east of the Rocky Mountains, but also in winter by cowboys nearly everywhere. Chinks are still the chaps of choice in the ION region, and since the 1980s their use has begun to gain popularity outside the ION.56 | 44 |
| Buckaroos in the region often wear scarves, or wildrags, whether at work or in town.57 The preferred fabric is plain or patterned silk (although polyester is also common), because moisture does not stick to silk, which helps when a buckaroo wears a scarf over his nose to keep the dust out. The scarves are large, measuring thirty to thirty-six inches square, and buckaroos tie them in a variety of ways. When it is cold, they are usually double-wrapped around the neck and tied in front.58 When the dust flies or when trailing cattle, scarves are usually worn over the face or are used to wipe the dust out of a horse’s nostrils; when it is warm, they are often left long and hanging around the neck. ION buckaroos call this item of clothing a neckerchief, wild rag, or neck scarf. | 45 |
| Buckaroos wear boots of the narrow, high-heeled, stovepipe variety, but changes in ranching techniques have forced cowpunchers to spend more time on their feet and a new type of boot has become popular. The Packer, invented in the 1980s, laces up the front and resembles a logging boot, but it has a pointed toe, high heel, and a slick sole for riding. Originally worn by outfitters operating in rough country, the Packer has gained popularity among working cowboys and buckaroos and is now found throughout the West.59 Still, many buckaroos continue to wear the old stovepipe style of boot, especially while riding. Peter Osborne, a buckaroo from Lakeview, Oregon, explains that the lace-up style will not pull off if a rider gets his foot hung up in the stirrup, while the stovepipe at least has a good chance of coming off and saving the rider from being dragged.60 | 46 |
| Seventeen-year-old Willie Bunch holds a calf during the family branding. The extra rope running from under the horse’s chin and hooked into his belt is called a McCarty. It is tied around the horse’s neck with a bowline knot and run through the noseband of a thin hackamore. Then it is either attached to the rider or fixed to the saddle. If the rider has to dismount — voluntarily or involuntarily — he can still lead or stop his horse with a rope instead of the bit, which could damage sensitive nerve endings in the horse’s mouth. Kim Griffin, photographer, courtesy of the author | |
| The buckaroo style of equipment has changed little from what it was a hundred years ago. Saddles still have high cantles and are of the slick or A-fork variety but now often have quick-change stirrups and padded seats. There has been some mix with other styles, as saddle horns have become larger and more cinches are in use, but buckaroos still use romals and ride saddles that are decorated with silver and stamping. Most spurs are still handmade and embellished with beautifully engraved silver or brass, and bridle horses that will work in a Spade bit are highly prized. The only alteration has been the introduction of the snaffle bit among Great Basin horsemen, which has added another step to the Californio horse-training process.61 Ropes used in the ION region are now more often made of nylon or polypropylene than rawhide, but they are still sixty feet long or more. Today, rawhide reatas are used for special occasions and events, such as the horse-roping competition at the Jordan Valley Big Loop Rodeo. | 47 |
| This buckaroo’s horse is wearing a snaffle bit, which most buckaroos prefer to use with young horses because it has no leverage and is easier on a young horse’s mouth. The leather cuffs are typical gear in the ION region, and they protect the buckaroo’s lower arms from brush and rope burns. Alfred Monner, photographer, Oregonian, OHS neg., OrHi 23501 | |
| Braided or twisted rawhide and horsehair gear has not disappeared and is still a trademark of vaqueros and buckaroos. According to buckaroo J.D. Bunch, “having rawhide reins is a real high prestige thing — horsehair McCarties, twisted or braided — I prefer braided rawhide reatas, rawhide hackamores braided.” Buckaroos collect this highly prized gear, but “the pride in the collection is the usefulness of it,” as Bunch says. A buckaroo will not put a piece of gear on the wall that he cannot take off and use. For example, if a buckaroo “buys a five hundred dollar bit and he can’t find a horse to use it on he will sell it for just fifty dollars just to get rid of it, because it is not useful if you can’t use it. If it looks good but sores a horse, it’s not any good.” Buckaroos purchase high-quality handmade gear from various gear-makers throughout the ION region, but there are also a fair number who make their own.62 | 48 |
| One old westerner once described a cowboy as “a man with guts and a hoss.” 63 Rodeo, western literature, Wild West shows, and Hollywood have defined for the public what it means to be a cowboy, but working herdsmen on both sides of the Rocky Mountains have developed techniques, clothing, and gear to fit their traditions and the landscape they work in. As Baxter Black reminds us, “you cannot necessarily assume just ’cause a feller’s got on a black hat and he’s broke that he’s a cowboy!” 64 There is much more to it than that. The influence of Hollywood and the pace of modern life have had little real effect on the buckaroos who live and work in the ION and other parts of the Great Basin. In cow camps all across the ION, they can still be found making and using the same gear and practicing the same techniques that could have been seen in old California or on the P Ranch a hundred years ago. With jingle bobs jingling, the buckaroo rides the sagebrush flats of the Great Basin. Although he may be hard to see from the highway, he is one of America’s most fascinating figures. |
Notes
This article is adapted from “The Changing Material Culture of the Cowboy” (senior thesis, Eastern Oregon University, June 2001). It was delivered as a paper at the Pacific Northwest Phi Alpha Theta conference, April 2001. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Professor Charles Coate, for his encouragement and guidance. A version of this paper was also read at the American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch Phi Alpha Theta session in August 2001. I am grateful to Professor Michael Allen, Linda Davies Gage, and the two anonymous readers of this journal for their constructive criticisms and helpful suggestions.
1.� John A.Lomax and Alan Lomax, Folk Song U.S.A. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947), 207.
2.� Baxter Black, Hey, Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky? (New York: Crown, 1994), 33–4.
3.� Bill Harris and Claude Poulet, Cowboys: America’s Living Legend (New York: Crescent Books, 1986), 7; Terry G. Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, and Differentiation (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 35.
4,� Harris, Cowboys, 7; Richard W. Slatta, Comparing Cowboys and Frontiers (Norman: University of Okalahoma Press, 1997) 74; Armando C. Alonzo, “Mexican-American Land Grand Adjudication,” in Handbook of Texas Online, www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/MM/pqmck.html (August 18, 2003).
5.� Joe B. Frantz and Julian Ernest Choate, Jr., The American Cowboy: The Myth and the Reality (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), 22–3; Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 187.
6.� Lawrence Clayton, “Cowboys and Buckaroos: Two Faces of the Same Figure,” West Texas Historical Yearbook (1988): 107; Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 211.
7.� Kenneth C. Erickson, “Hats and Boots: Some Regional and Temporal Aspects of the Cowboy Complex as Seen in the Photographic Record,” University of Wyoming Publications, no. 1 (1978): 3; Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 212.
8.� Jo Mora, Californios: The Saga of the Hard-Riding Vaqueros, America’s First Cowboys (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1949), 20, 43; Lawrence Clayton, Jim Hoy, and Jerald Underwood, Vaqueros, Cowboys, and Buckaroos (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 10.
9.� Ibid., 75, 80. See also Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, “Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve,” www.openspace.org/preserves/rancho_san_antonio/rancho_san_antonio.html (August 18, 2003).
10.� David Dary, Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), 56.
11.� “The Californios,” Wayback: Gold Rush!, 1999, www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/kids/goldrush/california.html (March 5, 2003).
12.� Ibid. Anglo ranchers were not the dominant owners of land between 1821 and 1848. Prior to the Gold Rush, Hispanics owned most of the land.
13.� Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 249; “The Californios.”
14.� Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 249; James A. Young and B. Abbott Sparks, Cattle in the Cold Desert (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1985), 125.
15.� Dary, Cowboy Culture, 310. See also Otto Wolfgang, “How the Wild West Was Fenced In,” The Early Days, reprinted from The Cattleman 53, no. 3 (August 1966), available online, www.thecattlemanmagazine.com/earlyDays/earlywestfenced.asp (August 18, 2003); and Scott Cook, “The Introduction of Barbed Wire to the Frontier,” The Rise of Barbed Wire and Its Transformation of the American Frontier, www.xroads.virginia.edu/~CLASS/am485_98/cook/develp2.htm (August 18, 2003).
16.� Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 249, 251, 255; Giles French, Cattle Country of Peter French (Portland, Ore.: Binford & Mort, 1964), 41.
17.� Clayton, Hoy, and Underwood, Vaqueros, 157; Clayton, “Cowboys and Buckaroos,” 110.
18.� Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 256–7.
19.� Mike Laughlin, “War Knots: Horse Tail Knots Used by Northwestern Buckaroos,” Cowboy Showcase: Cowboy Lore, 2000, www.cowboyshowcase.com/war_knots.htm (November 27, 2000).
20.� James A. Young and B. Abbot Sparks, Cattle in the Cold Desert (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1985), 110; Monika Szumowska, “Rawhiders of Elko County,” Western Horseman 67:4 (April 2002): 101.
21.� Ed Connell, Reinsman of the West: Bridles & Bits, (Hollywood, Calif.: Melvin Powers Wilshire Book Company, 1964), 3, 10, 54, 58, 99.
22.� David R. Stoecklein, photographer, The Western Horse: A Photographic Anthology, text by Buster McLaury (Ketchum, Idaho: Stoecklein, 1999), 250.
23.� Connell, Reinsman, 100.
24.� J.D. Bunch, interview by author, Prineville, Ore., April 2002. Bunch worked on the Viewpoint section of the ZX, which is located in Christmas Valley.
25.� Patty Bunch, interview by author, Prineville, Ore., April 2002.
26.� Don Rickey Jr., $10 Horse, $40 Saddle: Cowboy Clothing, Arms, Tools, and Horse Gear Of the 1880’s (Fort Collins, Colo.: Old Army Press, 1976), 19; William Manns and Elizabeth Clair Flood, Cowboys & The Trappings of the Old West, ed. Charlotte Berney (Santa Fe, N.M.: Zon International, 1997), 22.
27.� Mora, Californios, 101–2.
28.� Manns and Flood, Cowboys, 16, 19–22. This hat was distinctive for its high crown that rose to a peak. The crown also sported a crease, the location depending on the wearer’s preference.
29.� Manns and Flood, Cowboys, 18, 23, 25. Around 1910, cowgirl rodeo performers created a boom in big cowboy hats, and their male counterparts quickly adopted the big style. The decrease in size of the hat seems to be due more to style than utility. In 1933, Montana cowboy Will James described the cowboy’s hat as having a six-inch brim with a seven-and-a-half-inch crown. Even then, the hat was still shrinking. See Will James, All in the Day’s Riding (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1933; reprint, Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press, 1998), 17, 18.
30.� Bunch interview; French, Cattle Country, 53; Manns and Flood, Cowboys, 12.
31.� Ibid, 32, 35. See also “Timeline” Levi Straus & Co.: History, 2001, www.levistrauss.com/about/history/timeline.asp (August 18, 2003).
32.� French, Cattle Country, 65, 68.
33.� Ibid., 54.
34.� Rickey, $10 Horse, $40 Saddle, 46.
35.� Ibid., 48, 35; Manns and Flood, Cowboys, 36, 69; Rickey, $10 Horse, $40 Saddle, 66.
36.� Mora, Californios, 102.
37.� Manns and Flood, Cowboys, 29, 31; Rickey, $10 Horse, $40 Saddle, 51; James, All in the Day’s Riding, 35, 40.
38.� Charles M. Russell, Trails Plowed Under (1927; reprint, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), 2, 3.
39.� Manns and Flood, Cowboys, 109–13, 50; Fay E. Ward, The Cowboy at Work: All about His Job and How He Does It (New York: Hastings House, 1958; reprint, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 159.
40.� Ward, Cowboy at Work.
41.� Ibid., 120; Will James, Cowboys North and South (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1924; reprint, Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press, 1995) 14, 17; Rickey, $10 Horse, $40 Saddle, 111.
42.� Manns and Flood, Cowboys, 138, 54.
43.� Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 25, 95, fig. 23.
44.� Rickey, $10 Horse, $40 Saddle, 93, 94, 96. In brush, a large loop would get caught easily.
45.� A rawhide rope had to be long because it needed to run through the roper’s hand and slip around the horn in order to slow the cow down when it hit the end the leather rope. See C.J. Hadley, Trappings of the Great Basin Buckaroo, (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1993), 73.
46.� The reason for this change seems to be practicality. While the rawhide reata could be thrown farther and with less energy, it was more easily damaged than the other kinds of ropes. When a large cow or bull hit the end of a reata at full speed, the rope would often snap, whereas a grass twist was stronger. A leather-covered saddle horn also had to be used with the reata, or it would not be able to slip around the horn and would break. The grass ropes were also the most accurate on flat, open land, whereas the reata was most useful in rough, hilly country like that found in the Great Basin. See Ward, Cowboy at Work, 155, 159; Hadley, Trappings, 73.
47.� James, Cowboys North and South, 18; Clayton, “Cowboys and Buckaroos,” 109.
48.� Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 257; Bunch interview.
49.� James, Cowboys North and South, 18; Mora, Californios, 112.
50.� Elizabeth Dear, “Jinglebobs, Bosals, and Batwings — Southwestern Cowboy Gear,” Palacio 93 (Spring 1988): 45. One Texas cowboy judged that the Californio training method was fine if one had the time. In Texas, he said, they needed to get on, get the cows in, and get the job done and did not have spare hours to ride.
51.� Patty Bunch interview; Ned Martin and Jody Martin, Bit and Spur Makers in the Vaquero Tradition: A Historical Perspective (Nicasio, Calif.: Hawk Hill Press, 1997), 22.
52.� Jordan, North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers, 257; Connell, Reinsman, 11, 13; Martin and Martin, Bit and Spur Makers, 27.
53.� Manns and Flood, Cowboys, 39; Ward, Cowboy at Work, 232; James, All in the Day’s Riding, 64. Dropping shanks are curved downward.
54.� Manns and Flood, Cowboys, 42, 45, 55, 57; Ward, Cowboy at Work, 233. Chap guard — a knob on the top of the shank to prevent the chap from interfering or gouging the leather.
55.� “All About Tradition,” 2003, www.wrangler.com/pages/history.asp (January 3, 2001); Clayton, “Cowboys and Buckaroos,” 110.
56.� Clayton, “Cowboys and Buckaroos,” 108. At the Big Loop Rodeo in Jordan Valley, Oregon, in May 2000, at least half of the buckaroos were wearing Levi’s, while all of the cowboys at the Umpqua Valley Roundup in Roseburg, Oregon, a month later were wearing Wranglers.
57.� French, Cattle Country, 53.
58.� Patty Bunch interview; Clayton, Hoy, and Underwood, Vaqueros, 164–5; Kurt Markus, Images from the Sagebrush Basin (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987), plate 103, 115.
59.� Kurt Markus, “Riding the Trails: Cowboying in Lace-ups,” Western Horseman (February 1981): 46.
60.� Peter Osborne, buckaroo, interview by author, Lakeview, Ore., January 7, 2001.
61.� J.D. Bunch interview.
62.� Ibid.; Patty Bunch interview. See also Hadley in Trappings; Szumowska, “Rawhiders,” 99.
63.� Manns and Flood, Cowboys, 193.
64.� Black, Hey, Cowboy, 34.
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