THE COWBOY ORIGINATED in Texas. The Texas cowboy, along with the Texas
cowman, was an evolvement from and a blend of the riding, shooting,
frontier-formed southerner, the Mexican-Indian horseback worker with
livestock (the vaquero), and the Spanish open-range rancher. The blend
was not in blood, but in occupational techniques. I have traced this
genesis with more detail in _The Longhorns_. Compared with evolution
in species, evolution in human affairs is meteor-swift. The driving of
millions of cattle and horses from Texas to stock the whole plains area
of North America while, following the Civil War, it was being denuded of
buffaloes and secured from Indian domination, enabled the Texas cowboy
to set his impress upon the whole ranching industry. The cowboy became
the best-known occupational type that America has given the world. He
exists still and will long exist, though much changed from the original.
His fame derives from the past.
Romance, both genuine and spurious, has obscured the realities of range
and trail. The realities themselves have, however, been such that few
riders really belonging to the range wished to lead any other existence.
Only by force of circumstances have they changed "the grass beneath and
the sky above" for a more settled, more confining, and more materially
remunerative way of life. Some of the old-time cowboys were little more
adaptable to change than the Plains Indians; few were less reluctant
to plow or work in houses. Heaven in their dreams was a range better
watered than the one they knew, with grass never stricken by drought,
plenty of fat cattle, the best horses and comrades of their experience,
more of women than they talked about in public, and nothing at all of
golden streets, golden harps, angel wings, and thrones; it was a mere
extension, somewhat improved, of the present. Bankers, manufacturers,
merchants, and mechanics seldom so idealize their own occupations; they
work fifty weeks a year to go free the other two.
For every hired man on horseback there have been hundreds of plowmen in
America, and tens of millions of acres of rangelands have been plowed
under, but who can cite a single autobiography of a laborer in the
fields of cotton, of corn, of wheat? Or do coal miners, steelmongers,
workers in oil refineries, factory hands of any kind of factory,
the employees of chain stores and department stores ever write
autobiographies? Many scores of autobiographies have been written by
range men, perhaps half of them by cowboys who never became owners at
all. A high percentage of the autobiographies are in pamphlet form; many
that were written have not been published. The trail drivers of open
range days, nearly all dead now, felt the urge to record experiences
more strongly than their successors. They realized that they had been a
part of an epic life.
The fact that the hired man on horseback has been as good a man as the
owner and, on the average, has been a more spirited and eager man
than the hand on foot may afford some explanation of the validity and
vitality of his chroniclings, no matter how crude they be. On the other
hand, the fact that the rich owner and the college-educated aspirant to
be a cowboy soon learned, if they stayed on the range, that _a man's
a man for a' that_ may to some extent account for a certain generous
amplitude of character inherent in their most representative
reminiscences. Sympathy for the life biases my judgment; that judgment,
nevertheless, is that some of the strongest and raciest autobiographic
writing produced by America has been by range men.
{illust. caption = Tom Lea, in _The Longhorns_ by J. Frank Dobie (1941)}
This is not to say that these chronicles are of a high literary order.
Their writers have generally lacked the maturity of mind, the reflective
wisdom, and the power of observation found in personal narratives of the
highest order. No man who camped with a chuck wagon has written anything
remotely comparable to Charles M. Doughty's _Arabia Deserta_, a
chronicle at once personal and impersonal, restrainedly subjective and
widely objective, of his life with nomadic Bedouins. Perspective is a
concomitant of civilization. The chronicles of the range that show
perspective have come mostly from educated New Englanders, Englishmen,
and Scots. The great majority of the chronicles are limited in subject
matter to physical activities. They make few concessions to "the desire
of the moth for the star"; they hardly enter the complexities of life,
including those of sex. In one section of the West at one time the
outstanding differences among range men were between owners of sheep and
owners of cattle, the ambition of both being to hog the whole country.
On another area of the range at another time, the outstanding difference
was between little ranchers, many of whom were stealing, and big
ranchers, plenty of whom had stolen. Such differences are not exponents
of the kind of individualism that burns itself into great human
documents.
Seldom deeper than the chronicles does range fiction go below physical
surface into reflection, broodings, hungers--the smolderings deep down
in a cowman oppressed by drought and mortgage sitting in a rocking chair
on a ranch gallery looking at the dust devils and hoping for a cloud;
the goings-on inside a silent cowboy riding away alone from an empty pen
to which he will never return; the streams of consciousness in a silent
man and a silent woman bedded together in a wind-lashed frame house away
out on the lone prairie. The wide range of human interests leaves ample
room for downright, straightaway narratives of the careers of strong
men. If the literature of the range ever matures, however, it will
include keener searchings for meanings and harder struggles for human
truths by writers who strive in "the craft so long to lerne." For
three-quarters of a century the output of fiction on the cowboy has been
tremendous, and it shows little diminution. Mass production inundating
the masses of readers has made it difficult for serious fictionists
writing about range people to get a hearing.
The code of the West was concentrated into the code of the range--and
not all of it by any means depended upon the six-shooter. No one can
comprehend this code without knowing something about the code of the Old
South, whence the Texas cowboy came.
Mexican goats make the best eating in Mexico and mohair has made
good money for many ranchers of the Southwest. Goats, goat herders,
goatskins, and wine in goatskins figure in the literature of Spain as
prominently as six-shooters in Blazing Frontier fiction--and far more
pleasantly. Read George Borrow's _The Bible in Spain_, one of the
most delectable of travel books. Beyond a few notices of Mexican goat
herders, there is on the subject of goats next to nothing readable in
American writings. Where there is no competition, supremacy is small
distinction; so I should offend no taste by saying that "The Man of
Goats" in my own _Tongues of the Monte_ is about the best there is so
far as goats go.
Although sheep are among the most salient facts of range life, they
have, as compared with cattle and horses, been a dim item in the range
tradition. Yet, of less than a dozen books on sheep and sheepmen, more
than half of them are better written than hundreds of books concerning
cowboy life. Mary Austin's _The Flock_ is subtle and beautiful;
Archer B. Gilfillan's _Sheep_ is literature in addition to having much
information; Hughie Call's _Golden Fleece_ is delightful; Winifred
Kupper's _The Golden Hoof_ and _Texas Sheepman_ have charm--a rare
quality in most books on cows and cow people. Among furnishings in the
cabin of Robert Maudslay, "the Texas Sheepman," were a set of Sir Walter
Scott's works, Shakespeare, and a file of the _Illustrated London News_.
"A man who read Shakespeare and the _Illustrated London News_ had little
to contribute to
Come a ti yi yoopee
Ti yi ya!"
O. Henry's ranch experiences in Texas were largely confined to a sheep
ranch. The setting of his "Last of the Troubadours" is a sheep ranch. I
nominate it as the best range story in American fiction.
"Cowboy Songs" and "Horses" are separate chapters following this. The
literature cited in them is mostly range literature, although precious
little in all the songs rises to the status of poetry. A considerable
part of the literature listed under "Texas Rangers" and "The Bad Man
Tradition" bears on range life.
ABBOTT, E. C., and SMITH, HELENA HUNTINGTON. We _Pointed Them North_,
New York, 1939. Abbott, better known as Teddy Blue, used to give his
address as Three Duce Ranch, Gilt Edge, Montana. Helena Huntington
Smith, who actually wrote and arranged his reminiscences, instead of
currying him down and putting a checkrein on him, spurred him in the
flanks and told him to swaller his head. He did. This book is franker
about the women a rollicky cowboy was likely to meet in town than all
the other range books put together. The fact that Teddy Blue's wife was
a half-breed Indian, daughter of Granville Stuart, and that Indian women
do not object to the truth about sex life may account in part for his
frankness. The book is mighty good reading. OP.
ADAMS, ANDY. _The Log of a Cowboy_ (1903). In 1882, at the age of
twenty-three, Andy Adams came to Texas from Indiana. For about ten years
he traded horses and drove them up the trail. He knew cattle people
and their ranges from Brownsville to Caldwell, Kansas. After mining for
another decade, he began to write. If all other books on trail driving
were destroyed, a reader could still get a just and authentic conception
of trail men, trail work, range cattle, cow horses, and the cow country
in general from _The Log of a Cowboy_. It is a novel without a plot, a
woman, character development, or sustained dramatic incidents; yet it
is the classic of the occupation. It is a simple, straightaway narrative
that takes a trail herd from the Rio Grande to the Canadian line, the
hands talking as naturally as cows chew cuds, every page illuminated
by an easy intimacy with the life. Adams wrote six other books. _The
Outlet, A Texas Matchmaker, Cattle Brands_, and _Reed Anthony, Cowman_
all make good reading. _Wells Brothers_ and _The Ranch on the Beaver_
are stories for boys. I read them with pleasure long after I was grown.
All but _The Log of a Cowboy_ are OP, published by Houghton Mifflin,
Boston.
ADAMS, RAMON F. _Cowboy Lingo_, Boston, 1936. A dictionary of cowboy
words, figures of speech, picturesque phraseology, slang, etc., with
explanations of many factors peculiar to range life. OP. _Western
Words_, University of Oklahoma Press, 1944. A companion book. _Come an'
Get It_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1952. Informal exposition
of chuck wagon cooks.
ALDRIDGE, REGINALD. _Ranch Notes_, London, 1884. Aldridge, an educated
Englishman, got into the cattle business before, in the late eighties,
it boomed itself flat. His book is not important, but it is maybe
a shade better than _Ranch Life in Southern Kansas and the Indian
Territory_ by Benjamin S. Miller, New York, 1896. Aldridge and Miller
were partners, and each writes kindly about the other.
ALLEN, JOHN HOUGHTON. _Southwest_, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1952. A
chemical compound of highly impressionistic autobiographic nonfiction
and highly romantic fiction and folk tales. The setting is a ranch of
Mexican tradition in the lower border country of Texas, also saloons and
bawdy houses of border towns. Vaqueros and their work in the brush are
intensely vivid. The author has a passion for superlatives and for "a
joyous cruelty, a good cruelty, a young cruelty."
ARNOLD, OREN, and HALE, J. P. _Hot Irons_, Macmillan, New York, 1940.
Technique and lore of cattle brands. OP.
AUSTIN, MARY. _The Flock_, Boston, 1906, OP. Mary Austin saw the
meanings of things; she was a creator. Very quietly she sublimated life
into the literature of pictures and emotions.
Australian ranching is not foreign to American ranching. The best book
on the subject that I have found is _Pastures New_, by R. V. Billis and
A. S. Kenyon, London, 1930.
BARNARD, EVAN G. ("Parson"). _A Rider of the Cherokee Strip_, Houghton
Mifflin, Boston, 1936. Savory with little incidents and cowboy humor.
OP.
BARNES, WILL C. _Tales from the X-Bar Horse Camp_, Chicago, 1920. OP.
Good simple narratives. _Apaches and Longhorns_, Los Angeles, 1941.
Autobiography. OP. _Western Grazing Grounds and Forest Ranges_, Chicago,
1913. OP. Governmentally factual. Barnes was in the U.S. Forest Service
and was informed.
BARROWS, JOHN R. _Ubet_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1934. Excellent on Northwest;
autobiographical. OP.
BECHDOLT, FREDERICK R. _Tales of the Old Timers_, New York, 1924. Vivid,
economical stories of "The Warriors of the Pecos" (Billy the Kid and the
troubles on John Chisum's ranch-empire), of Butch Cassidy and his Wild
Bunch in their Wyoming hide-outs, of the way frontier Texans fought
Mexicans and Comanches over the open ranges. Research clogs the style of
many historians; perhaps it is just as well that Bechdolt did not search
more extensively into the arcana of footnotes. OP.
BOATRIGHT, MODY C. _Tall Tales from Texas Cow Camps_, Dallas, 1934. The
tales are tall all right and true to cows that never saw a milk bucket.
OP. Reprinted 1946 by Haldeman-Julius, Girard, Kansas.
BOREIN, EDWARD. _Etchings of the West_, edited by Edward S. Spaulding,
Santa Barbara, California, 1950. OP. A very handsome folio; primarily a
reproduction of sketches, many of which are on range subjects. Ed
Borein tells more in them than hundreds of windbags have told in tens of
thousands of pages. They are beautiful and authentic, even if they are
what post-impressionists call "documentary." Believers in the True Faith
say now that Leonardo da Vinci is documentary in his painting of the
Lord's Supper. Ed Borein was a great friend of Charlie Russell's but not
an imitator. _Etchings of the West_ will soon be among the rarities of
Western books.
BOWER, B. M. _Chip of the Flying U_, New York, 1904. Charles Russell
illustrated this and three other Bower novels. Contrary to his denial,
he is supposed to have been the prototype for Chip. A long time ago I
read _Chit of the Flying U_ and _The Lure of the Dim Trails_ and thought
them as good as Eugene Manlove Rhodes's stories. That they have faded
almost completely out of memory is a commentary on my memory; just the
same, a character as well named as Chip should, if he have substance
beyond his name, leave an impression even on weak memories. B. M.
Bower was a woman, Bower being the name of her first husband. A Montana
cowpuncher named "Fiddle Back" Sinclair was her second, and Robert
Ellsworth Cowan became the third. Under the name of Bud Cowan he
published a book of reminiscences entitled _Range Rider_ (Garden City,
N. Y., 1930). B. M. Bower wrote a slight introduction to it; neither he
nor she says anything about being married to the other. In the best
of her fiction she is truer to life than he is in a good part of his
nonfiction. Her chaste English is partly explained in an autobiographic
note contributed to _Adventure_ magazine, December 10, 1924. Her
restless father had moved the family from Minnesota to Montana. There,
she wrote, he "taught me music and how to draw plans of houses (he was
an architect among other things) and to read _Paradise Lost_ and Dante
and H. Rider Haggard and the Bible and the Constitution--and my taste
has been extremely catholic ever since."
BRANCH, E. DOUGLAS. _The Cowboy and His Interpreters_, New York, 1926.
Useful bibliography on range matters, and excellent criticism of two
kinds of fiction writers. OP.
BRATT, JOHN. _Trails of Yesterday_, Chicago, 1921. John Bratt,
twenty-two years old, came to America from England in 1864, went west,
and by 1870 was ranching on the Platte. He became a big operator, but
his reminiscences, beautifully printed, are stronger on camp cooks and
other hired hands than on cattle "kings." Nobody ever heard a cowman
call himself or another cowman a king. "Cattle king" is journalese.
BRISBIN, GENERAL JAMES S. _The Beef Bonanza; or, How to Get Rich on the
Plains_, Philadelphia, 1881. One of several books of its decade designed
to appeal to eastern and European interest in ranching as an investment.
Figureless and with more human interest is _Prairie Experiences in
Handling Cattle and Sheep_, by Major W. Shepherd (of England), London?
1884.
BRONSON, EDGAR BEECHER. _Cowboy Life on the Western Plains_, Chicago,
1910. _The Red Blooded_, Chicago, 1910. Freewheeling nonfiction.
BROOKS, BRYANT B. _Memoirs_, Gardendale, California, 1939. The book
never was published; it was merely printed to satisfy the senescent
vanity of a property-worshiping, cliche-parroting reactionary who made
money ranching before he became governor of Wyoming. He tells a few good
anecdotes of range days. Numerous better books pertaining to the range
are NOT listed here; this mediocrity represents a particular type.
BROTHERS, MARY HUDSON. A _Pecos Pioneer_, University of New Mexico
Press, Albuquerque, 1943. Superior to numerous better-known books. See
comment under "Women Pioneers."
BROWN, DEE, and SCHMITT, MARTIN F. _Trail Driving Days_, Scribner's,
New York, 1952. Primarily a pictorial record, more on the side of
action than of realism, except for post-trailing period. Excellent
bibliography.
BURTON, HARLEY TRUE. A _History of the J A Ranch_, Austin, 1928. Facts
about one of the greatest ranches of Texas and its founder, Charles
Goodnight. OP.
CALL, HUGHIE. _Golden Fleece_, Boston, 1942. Hughie married a sheepman,
and after mothering the range as well as children with him for a
quarter of a century, concluded that Montana is still rather masculine.
Especially good on domestic life and on sheepherders. OP.
CANTON, FRANK M. _Frontier Trails_, edited by E. E. Dale, Boston, 1930.
OP. Good on tough hombres.
CLAY, JOHN. My _Life on the Range_, privately printed, Chicago, 1924.
OP. John Clay, an educated Scot, came to Canada in 1879 and in time
managed some of the largest British-owned ranches of North America. His
book is the best of all sources on British-owned ranches. It is just as
good on cowboys and sheepherders. Clay was a fine gentleman in addition
to being a canny businessman in the realm of cattle and land. He
appreciated the beautiful and had a sense of style.
CLELAND, ROBERT GLASS. _The Cattle on a Thousand Hills_, Huntington
Library, San Marino, California, 1941 (revised, 1951). Scholarly work on
Spanish-Mexican ranching in California.
CLEAVELAND, AGNES MORLEY. _No Life for a Lady_, Houghton Mifflin,
Boston, 1941. Best book on range life from a woman's point of view ever
published. The setting is New Mexico; humor and humanity prevail.
COLLINGS, ELLSWORTH. _The 101 Ranch_, University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 1937. The 101 Ranch was far more than a ranch; it was a unique
institution. The 101 Ranch Wild West Show is emphasized in this book.
OP.
COLLINS, DENNIS. _The Indians' Last Fight or the Dull Knife Raid_, Press
of the Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kansas, n.d. Nearly half of this
very scarce book deals autobiographically with frontier range life.
Realistic, strong, written from the perspective of a man who "wanted
something to read" in camp.
COLLINS, HUBERT E. _Warpath and Cattle Trail_, New York, 1928. The
pageant of trail life as it passed by a stage stand in Oklahoma;
autobiographical. Beautifully printed and illustrated. Far better than
numerous other out-of-print books that bring much higher prices in the
second-hand market.
CONN, WILLIAM (translator). _Cow-Boys and Colonels: Narrative of a
Journey across the Prairie and over the Black Hills of Dakota_, London,
1887; New York (1888?). More of a curiosity than an illuminator,
the book is a sparsely annotated translation of _Dans les Montagnes
Rocheuses_, by Le Baron E. de Mandat-Grancey, Paris, October, 1884. (The
only copy I have examined is of 1889 printing.) It is a gossipy account
of an excursion made in 1883-84; cowboys and ranching are viewed pretty
much as a sophisticated Parisian views a zoo. The author must have
felt more at home with the fantastic Marquis de Mores of Medora, North
Dakota. The book appeared at a time when European capital was being
invested in western ranches. It was followed by _La Breche aux Buffles:
Un Ranch Francais dans le Dakota_, Paris, 1889. Not translated so far as
I know.
COOK, JAMES H. _Fifty Years on the Old Frontier_, 1923. Cook came to
Texas soon after the close of the Civil War and became a brush popper
on the Frio River. Nothing better on cow work in the brush country and
trail driving in the seventies has appeared. OP. A good deal of the
same material was put into Cook's _Longhorn Cowboy_ (Putnam's, 1942), to
which the pushing Mr. Howard R. Driggs attached his name.
COOLIDGE, DANE. _Texas Cowboys_, 1937. Thin, but genuine. _Arizona
Cowboys_, 1938. _Old California Cowboys_, 1939. All well illustrated by
photographs and all OP.
Cox, JAMES. _The Cattle Industry of Texas and Adjacent Territory_, St.
Louis, 1895. Contains many important biographies and much good history.
In 1928 I traded a pair of store-bought boots to my uncle Neville Dobie
for his copy of this book. A man would have to throw in a young Santa
Gertrudis bull now to get a copy.
CRAIG, JOHN R. _Ranching with lords and Commons_, Toronto, 1903. During
the great boom of the early 1880'S in the range business, Craig promoted
a cattle company in London and then managed a ranch in western Canada.
His book is good on mismanaged range business and it is good on people,
especially lords, and the land. He attributes to De Quincey a Latin
quotation that properly, I think, belongs to Thackeray. He quotes Hamlin
Garland: "The trail is poetry; a wagon road is prose; the railroad,
arithmetic." He was probably not so good at ranching as at writing. His
book supplements _From Home to Home_, by Alex. Staveley Hill, New York,
1885. Hill was a major investor in the Oxley Ranch, and was, I judge,
the pompous cheat and scoundrel that Craig said he was.
CRAWFORD, LEWIS F. _Rekindling Camp Fires: The Exploits of Ben Arnold
(Connor)_, Bismarck, North Dakota, 1926. OP. The skill of Lewis F.
Crawford of the North Dakota Historical Society made this a richer
autobiography than if Arnold had been unaided. He was squaw man, scout,
trapper, soldier, deserter, prospector, and actor in other occupations
as well as cowboy. He had a fierce sense of justice that extended to
Indians. His outlook was wider than that of the average ranch hand.
_Badlands and Broncho Trails_, Bismarck, 1922, is a slight book of
simple narratives that catches the tune of the Badlands life. OP.
_Ranching Days in Dakota_, Wirth Brothers, Baltimore, 1950, is good on
horse-raising and the terrible winter of 1886-87.
CULLEY, JOHN. _Cattle, Horses, and Men_, Los Angeles, 1940. Much about
the noted Bell Ranch of New Mexico. Especially good on horses. Culley
was educated at Oxford. When I visited him in California, he had on his
table a presentation copy of a book by Walter Pater. His book has the
luminosity that comes from cultivated intelligence. OP.
DACY, GEORGE F. _Four Centuries of Florida Ranching_, St. Louis, 1940.
OP. In _Crooked Trails_, Frederic Remington has a chapter (illustrated)
on "Cracker Cowboys of Florida," and _Lake Okeechobee_, by A. J. Hanna
and Kathryn Abbey, Indianapolis, 1948, treats of modern ranching
in Florida, but the range people of that state have been too
lethargic-minded to write about themselves and no Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings has settled in their midst to interpret them.
DALE, E. E. _The Range Cattle Industry_, Norman, Oklahoma, 1930.
Economic aspects. Bibliography. _Cow Country,_ Norman, Oklahoma, 1942.
Bully tales and easy history. Both books are OP.
DANA, RICHARD HENRY. _Two Years Before the Mast_, 1841. This transcript
of reality has been reprinted many times. It is the classic of the hide
and tallow trade of California.
DAVID, ROBERT D. _Malcolm Campbell, Sheriff_, Casper, Wyoming, 1932.
Much of the "Johnson County War" between cowmen and thieving nesters.
OP.
DAYTON, EDSON C. _Dakota Days_. Privately printed by the author at
Clifton Springs, New York, 1937--three hundred copies only. Dayton was
more sheepman than cowman. He had a spiritual content. His very use of
the word _intellectual_ on the second page of his book; his estimate
of Milton and Gladstone, adjacent to talk about a frontier saloon; his
consciousness of his own inner growth--something no extravert cowboy
ever noticed, usually because he did not have it; his quotation to
express harmony with nature:
I have some kinship to the bee,
I am boon brother with the tree;
The breathing earth is part of me--
all indicate a refinement that any gambler could safely bet originated
in the East and not in Texas or the South.
DOBIE, J. FRANK. _A Vaquero of the Brush Country_, 1929. Much on border
troubles over cattle, the "skinning war," running wild cattle in the
brush, mustanging, trail driving; John Young's narrative, told in the
first person, against range backgrounds. _The Longhorns_, illustrated by
Tom Lea, 1941. History of the Longhorn breed, psychology of stampedes;
days of maverickers and mavericks; stories of individual lead steers
and outlaws of the range; stories about rawhide and many other related
subjects. The book attempts to reveal the blend made by man, beast, and
range. Both books published by Little, Brown, Boston. _The Mustangs_,
1952. See under "Horses."
FORD, GUS L. _Texas Cattle Brands_, Dallas, 1936. A catalogue of brands.
OP.
FRENCH, WILLIAM. _Some Recollections of a Western Ranchman_, London,
1927. A civilized Englishman remembers. OP.
GANN, WALTER. _The Trail Boss_, Boston, 1937. Faithful fiction, with a
steer that Charlie Russell should have painted. OP.
GARD, WAYNE. _Frontier Justice_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman,
1949. This book could be classified under "The Bad Man Tradition,"
but it has authentic chapters on fence-cutting, the so-called "Johnson
County Cattlemen's War" of Wyoming, and other range "difficulties."
Clearly written from an equable point of view. Useful bibliography of
range books.
GIBSON, J. W. (Watt). _Recollections of a Pioneer_, St. Joseph, Missouri
(about 1912). Like many another book concerned only incidentally with
range life, this contains essential information on the subject. Here it
is trailing cattle from Missouri to California in the 1840's and
1850's. Cattle driving from the East to California was not economically
important. The outstanding account on the subject is _A Log of the
Texas-California Cattle Trail, 1854_, by James G. Bell, edited
by J. Evetts Haley, published in the _Southwestern Historical
Quarterly_, 1932 (Vols. XXXV and XXXVI). Also reprinted as a separate.
{illust. caption = Tom Lea, in _The Longhorns_ by J. Frank Dobie (1941)}
GILFILLAN, ARCHER B. _Sheep_, Boston, 1929. With humor and grace, this
sheepherder, who collected books on Samuel Pepys, tells more about sheep
dogs, sheep nature, and sheepherder life than any other writer I know.
OP.
GIPSON, FRED. _Fabulous Empire_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1946.
Biography of Zack Miller of the 101 Ranch and 101 Wild West Show.
GOODWYN, FRANK. _Life on the King Ranch_, Crowell, New York, 1951. The
author was reared on the King Ranch. He is especially refreshing on the
vaqueros, their techniques and tales.
GRAY, FRANK S. _Pioneer Adventures_, 1948, and _Pioneering in Southwest
Texas_, 1949, both printed by the author, Copperas Cove, Texas. These
books are listed because the author has the perspective of a civilized
gentleman and integrates home life on frontier ranches with range work.
GREER, JAMES K. _Bois d'Arc to Barbed Wire_, Dallas, 1936. Outstanding
horse lore. OP.
HAGEDORN, HERMANN. _Roosevelt in the Bad Lands_, Boston, 1921. A better
book than Roosevelt's own _Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail_. OP.
HALEY, J. EVETTS. _The XIT Ranch of Texas_, Chicago, 1929. As county and
town afford the basis for historical treatment of many areas, ranches
have afforded bases for various range country histories. Of such this is
tops. A lawsuit for libel brought by one or more individuals mentioned
in the book put a stop to the selling of copies by the publishers and
made it very "rare." _Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman_, Boston,
1936, reissued by University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949. Goodnight,
powerful individual and extraordinary observer, summed up in himself the
whole life of range and trail. Haley's book, packed with realities of
incident and character, paints him against a mighty background. _George
W. Littlefield, Texan_, University of Oklahoma Presss Norman, Okla.,
1943, is a lesser biography of a lesser man.
HAMILTON, W. H. _Autobiography of a Cowman_, in _South Dakota Historical
Collections_, XIX (1938), 475-637. A first-rate narrative of life on the
Dakota range.
HAMNER, LAURA V. _Short Grass and Longhorns_, Norman, Oklahoma, 1943.
Sketches of Panhandle ranches and ranch people. OP.
HARRIS, FRANK. _My Reminiscences as a Cowboy_, 1930. A blatant farrago
of lies, included in this list because of its supreme worthlessness.
However, some judges might regard the debilitated and puerile lying in
_The Autobiography of Frank Tarbeaux_, as told to Donald H. Clarke, New
York, 1930, as equally worthless.
HART, JOHN A., and Others. _History of Pioneer Days in Texas and
Oklahoma_. No date or place of publication; no table of contents. This
slight book was enlarged into _Pioneer Days in the Southwest from 1850
to 1879_, "Contributions by Charles Goodnight, Emanuel Dubbs, John A.
Hart and Others," Guthrie, Oklahoma, 1909. Good on the way frontier
ranch families lived. The writers show no sense of humor and no idea of
being literary.
HASTINGS, FRANK S. _A Ranchman's Recollections_, Chicago, 1921. OP.
Hastings was urbane, which means he had perspective; "Old Gran'pa" is
the most pulling cowhorse story I know.
HENRY, O. _Heart of the West_. Interpretative stories of Texas range
life, which O. Henry for a time lived. His range stories are scattered
through several volumes. "The Last of the Troubadours" is a classic.
HENRY, STUART. _Our Great American Plains_, New York, 1930. OP. An
unworshipful, anti-Philistinic picture of Abilene, Kansas, when it was
at the end of the Chisholm Trail. While not a primary range book, this
is absolutely unique in its analysis of cow-town society, both citizens
and drovers. Stuart Henry came to Abilene as a boy in 1868. His brother
was the first mayor of the town. After graduating from the University
of Kansas in 1881, he in time acquired "the habit of authorship." He
had written a book on London and _French Essays and Profiles_ and _Hours
with Famous Parisians_ before he returned to Kansas for a subject.
Some of his non-complimentary characterizations of westerners aroused
a mighty roar among panegyrists of the West. They did not try to refute
his anecdote about the sign of the Bull Head Saloon. This sign showed
the whole of a great red bull. The citizens of Abilene were used to
seeing bulls driven through town and they could go out any day and
see bulls with cows on the prairie. Nature might be good, but any art
suggesting nature's virility was indecent. There was such an uprising
of Victorian taste that what distinguishes a bull from a cow had to be
painted out. A similar artistic operation had to be performed on the
bull signifying Bull Durham tobacco--once the range favorite for making
cigarettes.
HILL, J. L. _The End of the Cattle Trail_, Long Beach, California [May,
1924]. Rare and meaty pamphlet.
HOLDEN, W. C. _Rollie Burns_, Dallas, 1932. Biography of a Plains
cowman. OP. _The Spur Ranch_, Boston, 1934. History of a great Texas
ranch. OP.
HORN, TOM. _Life of Tom Horn... Written by Himself, together with His
Letters and Statements by His Friends, A Vindication_. Published (for
John C. Coble) by the Louthan Book Company, Denver, 1904. Who wrote the
book has been somewhat in debate. John C. Coble's name is signed to the
preface attributing full authorship to Horn. Of Pennsylvania background,
wealthy and educated, he had employed Horn as a stock detective on his
Wyoming ranch. He had the means and ability to see the book through the
press. A letter from his wife to me, from Cheyenne, June 21,1926, says
that Horn wrote the book. Charles H. Coe, who succeeded Horn as stock
detective in Wyoming, says in _Juggling a Rope_ (Pendleton, Oregon,
1927, P. 108), that Horn wrote it. I have a copy, bought from Fred
Rosenstock of the Bargain Book Store in Denver, who got it from Hattie
Horner Louthan, of Denver also. For years she taught English in the
University of Denver, College of Commerce, and is the author of more
than one textbook. The Louthan Book Company of Denver was owned by her
family. This copy of _Tom Horn_ contains her bookplate. On top of the
first page of the preface is written in pencil: "I wrote this--`Ghost
wrote.' H. H. L." Then, penciled at the top of the first page of
"Closing Word," is "I wrote this."
Glendolene Myrtle Kimmell was a schoolteacher in the country where Tom
Horn operated. As her picture shows, she was lush and beautiful. Pages
287-309 print "Miss Kimmell's Statement." She did her best to keep Tom
Horn from hanging. She frankly admired him and, it seems to me, loved
him. Jay Monaghan, _The Legend of Tom Horn, Last of the Bad Men_,
Indianapolis and New York, 1946, says (p. 267), without discussion or
proof, that after Horn was hanged and buried Miss Kimmell was "writing
a long manuscript about a Sir Galahad horseman who was `crushed between
the grinding stones of two civilizations,' but she never found a
publisher who thought her book would sell. It was entitled _The True
Life of Tom Horn_."
The main debate has been over Horn himself. The books about him are
not highly important, but they contribute to a spectacular and highly
controversial phase of range history, the so-called Johnson County War
of Wyoming. Mercer's _Banditti of the Plains_, Mokler's _History of
Natrona County, Wyoming_, Canton's _Frontier Trails_, and David's
_Malcolm Campbell, Sheriff_ (all listed in this chapter) are primary
sources on the subject.
HOUGH, EMERSON. _The Story of the Cowboy_, New York, 1897. Exposition
not nearly so good as Philip Ashton Rollins' _The Cowboy. North of
36_, New York, 1923. Historical novel of the Chisholm Trail. The best
character in it is Old Alamo, lead steer. A young woman owner of the
herd trails with it. The success of the romance caused Emerson Hough
to advise his friend Andy Adams to put a woman in a novel about trail
driving--so Andy Adams told me. Adams replied that a woman with a trail
herd would be as useless as a fifth wheel on a wagon and that he would
not violate reality by having her. For a devastation of Hough's use of
history in _North of 36_ see the Appendix in Stuart Henry's _Conquering
Our Great American Plains_. Yet the novel does have the right temper.
HOYT, HENRY F. _A Frontier Doctor_, Boston, 1929. Texas Panhandle and
New Mexico during Billy the Kid days. Reminiscences.
HUNT, FRAZIER. _Cat Mossman: Last of the Great Cowmen_, illustrated by
Ross Santee, Hastings House, New York, 1951. Few full-length biographies
of big operators among cowmen have been written. This reveals not only
Cap Mossman's operations on enormous ranges, but the man.
HUNTER, J. MARVIN (compiler). _The Trail Drivers of Texas_, two volumes,
Bandera, Texas, 1920, 1923. Reprinted in one volume, 1925. All OP.
George W. Saunders, founder of the Old Time Trail Drivers Association
and for many years president, prevailed on hundreds of old-time range
and trail men to write autobiographic sketches. He used to refer to
Volume II as the "second edition"; just the same, he was not ignorant,
and he had a passion for the history of his people. The chronicles,
though chaotic in arrangement, comprise basic source material. An index
to the one-volume edition of _The Trail Drivers of Texas_ is printed as
an appendix to _The Chisholm Trail and Other Routes_, by T. U. Taylor,
San Antonio, 1936--a hodgepodge.
JAMES, WILL. _Cowboys North and South_, New York, 1924. _The Drifting
Cowboy_, 1925. _Smoky_--a cowhorse story--1930. Several other books,
mostly repetitious. Will James knew his frijoles, but burned them up
before he died, in 1942. He illustrated all his books. The best one is
his first, written before he became sophisticated with life--without
becoming in the right way more sophisticated in the arts of drawing
and writing. _Lone Cowboy: My Life Story_ (1930) is without a date or a
geographical location less generalized than the space between Canada and
Mexico.
JAMES, W. S. _Cowboy Life in Texas_, Chicago, 1893. A genuine cowboy who
became a genuine preacher and wrote a book of validity. This is the best
of several books of reminiscences by cowboy preachers, some of whom are
as lacking in the real thing as certain cowboy artists. Next to _Cowboy
Life in Texas_, in its genre, might come _From the Plains to the
Pulpit_, by J. W. Anderson, Houston, 1907. The second edition (reset)
has six added chapters. The third, and final, edition, Goose Creek,
Texas, 1922, again reset, has another added chapter. J. B. Cranfill was
a trail driver from a rough range before he became a Baptist preacher
and publisher. His bulky _Chronicle, A Story of Life in Texas_, 1916, is
downright and concrete.
KELEHER, WILLIAM A. _Maxwell Land Grant: A New Mexico Item_, Santa Fe,
1942. The Maxwell grant of 1,714,764 acres on the Cimarron River was at
one time perhaps the most famous tract of land in the West. This history
brings in ranching only incidentally; it focuses on the land business,
including grabs by Catron, Dorsey, and other affluent politicians.
Perhaps stronger on characters involved during long litigation over
the land, and containing more documentary evidence, is _The Grant That
Maxwell Bought_, by F. Stanley, The World Press, Denver, 1952 (a folio
of 256 pages in an edition of 250 copies at $15.00). Keleher is a
lawyer; Stanley is a priest. Harvey Fergusson in his historical novel
_Grant of Kingdom_, New York, 1950, vividly supplements both. Keleher's
second book, _The Fabulous Frontier_, Rydal, Santa Fe, 1945, illuminates
connections between ranch lands and politicians; principally it sketches
the careers of A. B. Fall, John Chisum, Pat Garrett, Oliver Lee, Jack
Thorp, Gene Rhodes, and other New Mexico notables.
KENT, WILLIAM. _Reminiscences of Outdoor Life_, San Francisco, 1929. OP.
This is far from being a straight-out range book. It is the easy talk of
an urbane man associated with ranches and ranch people who was equally
at home in a Chicago office and among fellow congressmen. He had a
country-going nature and gusto for character.
KING, FRANK M. _Wranglin' the Past_, Los Angeles, 1935. King went all
the way from Texas to California, listening and looking. OP. His second
book, _Longhorn Trail Drivers_ (1940), is worthless. His _Pioneer
Western Empire Builders_ (1946) and _Mavericks_ (1947) are no better.
Most of the contents of these books appeared in _Western Livestock
Journal_, Los Angeles.
KUPPER, WINIFRED. _The Golden Hoof_, New York, 1945. Story of the sheep
and sheep people of the Southwest. Facts, but, above that, truth that
comes only through imagination and sympathy. OP. _Texas Sheepman_,
University of Texas Press, Austin, 1951. The edited reminiscences of
Robert Maudslay. He drove sheep all over the West, and lived up to the
ideals of an honest Englishman in writing as well as in ranching. He had
a sense of humor.
LAMPMAN, CLINTON PARKS. _The Great Western Trail_, New York, 1939. OP.
In the upper bracket of autobiographic chronicles, by a sensitive man
who never had the provincial point of view. Lampman contemplated as well
as observed He felt the pathos of human destiny.
LANG, LINCOLN A. _Ranching with Roosevelt_, Philadelphia, 1926.
Civilized. OP.
LEWIS, ALFRED HENRY. _Wolfville_ (1897) and other Wolfville books. All
OP. Sketches and rambling stories faithful to cattle backgrounds; flavor
and humanity through fictionized anecdote. "The Old Cattleman," who
tells all the Wolfville stories, is a substantial and flavorsome
creation.
LOCKWOOD, FRANK C. _Arizona Characters_, Los Angeles, 1928. Skilfully
written biographies. OP.
MCCARTY, JOHN L. _Maverick Town_, University of Oklahoma Press, 1946.
Tascosa, Texas, on the Canadian River, with emphasis on the guns.
MCCAULEY, JAMES EMMIT. _A Stove-up Cowboy's Story_, with Introduction
by John A. Lomas and Illustrations by Tom Lea, Austin, 1943. OP. "My
parents be poor like Job's turkey," McCauley wrote. He was a common
cowhand with uncommon saltiness of speech. He wrote as he talked. "God
pity the wight for whom this vivid, honest story has no interest," John
Lomax pronounced. It is one of several brief books of reminiscences
brought out in small editions in the "Range Life Series," under the
editorship of J. Frank Dobie, by the Texas Folklore Society. The two
others worth having are _A Tenderfoot Kid on Gyp Water_, by Carl Peters
Benedict (1943) and _Ed Nichols Rode a Horse_, as told to Ruby Nichols
Cutbirth (1943).
MCCOY, JOSEPH G. _Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and
Southwest_, Kansas City, 1874. In 1867, McCoy established at Abilene,
Kansas, terminus of the Chisholm Trail, the first market upon which
Texas drovers could depend. He went broke and thereupon put his sense,
information, and vinegar into the first of all range histories. It is a
landmark. Of the several reprinted editions, the one preferred is that
edited by Ralph P. Bieber, with an information-packed introduction and
many illuminating notes, Glendale, California, 1940. This is Volume VIII
in the "Southwest Historical Series," edited by Bieber, and the index to
it is included in the general index to the whole series. Available is an
edition published by Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio. About the
best of original sources on McCoy is _Twenty Years of Kansas City's Live
Stock and Traders_, by Cuthbert Powell, Kansas City, 1893--one of the
rarities.
MACKAY, MALCOLM S. _Cow Range and Hunting Trail_, New York, 1925. Among
the best of civilized range books. Fresh observations and something
besides ordinary narrative. OP. Illustrations by Russell.
MANDAT-GRANCEY, BARON E. DE. See Conn, William.
MERCER, A. S. _Banditti of the Plains, or The Cattlemen's Invasion of
Wyoming in 1892_, Cheyenne, 1894; reprinted at Chicago in 1923
under title of _Powder River Invasion, War on the Rustlers in 1892_,
"Rewritten by John Mercer Boots." Reprinted 1935, with Foreword by James
Mitchell Clarke, by the Grabhorn Press, San Francisco. All editions
OP. Bloody troubles between cowmen and nesters in Wyoming, the "Johnson
County War." For more literature on the subject, consult the entry under
Tom Horn in this chapter.
MILLER, LEWIS B. _Saddles and Lariats_, Boston, 1912. A fictional
chronicle, based almost entirely on facts, of a trail herd that tried to
get to California in the fifties. The author was a Texan. OP.
MOKLER, ALFRED JAMES. _History of Natrona County, Wyoming, 1888-1922_,
Chicago, 1923. Contains some good material on the "Johnson County War."
This book is listed as an illustration of many county histories of
western states containing concrete information on ranching. Other
examples of such county histories are S. D. Butcher's _Pioneer History
of Custer County_ (Nebraska), Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1901; _History of
Jack County_ (Texas), Jacksboro, Texas (about 1935); _Historical Sketch
of Parker County and Weatherford, Texas_, St. Louis, 1877.
MORA, JO. _Trail Dust and Saddle Leather_, Scribner's, New York, 1946.
No better exposition anywhere, and here tellingly illustrated, of
reatas, spurs, bits, saddles, and other gear. _Californios_, Doubleday,
Garden City, N. Y., 1949. Profusely illustrated. Largely on vaquero
techniques. Jo Mora knew the California vaquero, but did not know the
range history of other regions and, therefore, judged as unique what was
widespread.
NIMMO, JOSEPH, JR. _The Range and Ranch Cattle Traffic in the
Western States and Territories_, Executive Document No. 267, House of
Representatives, 48th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, D. C., 1885.
Printed also in one or more other government documents. A statistical
record concerning grazing lands, trail driving, railroad shipping of
cattle, markets, foreign investments in ranches, etc. This document
is the outstanding example of factual material to be found in various
government publications, Volume III of the _Tenth Census of the United
States_ (1880) being another. _The Western Range: Letter from the
Secretary of Agriculture_, etc (a "letter" 620 pages long), United
States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1936, lists many
government publications both state and national.
NORDYKE, LEWIS. _Cattle Empire_, Morrow, New York, 1949. History,
largely political, of the XIT Ranch. Not so careful in documentation as
Haley's _XIT Ranch of Texas_, and not so detailed on ranch operations,
but thoroughly illuminative on the not-heroic side of big businessmen in
big land deals. The two histories complement each other.
O'NEIL, JAMES B. _They Die But Once_, New York, 1935. The biographical
narrative of a Tejano who vigorously swings a very big loop; fine
illustration of the fact that a man can lie authentically. OP.
OSGOOD, E. S. _The Day of the Cattleman_, Minneapolis, 1929. Excellent
history and excellent bibliography. Northwest. OP.
PEAKE, ORA BROOKS. _The Colorado Range Cattle Industry_, Clark,
Glendale, California, 1937. Dry on facts, but sound in scholarship.
Bibliography.
PELZER, LOUIS. _The Cattlemen's Frontier_, Clark, Glendale, California,
1936. Economic treatment, faithful but static. Bibliography.
PENDER, ROSE. A _Lady's Experiences in the Wild West in 1883_, London
(1883?); second printing with a new preface, 1888. Rose Pender and
two fellow-Englishmen went through Wyoming ranch country, stopping on
ranches, and she, a very intelligent, spirited woman, saw realities that
few other chroniclers suggest. This is a valuable bit of social history.
PERKINS, CHARLES E. _The Pinto Horse_, Santa Barbara, California, 1927.
_The Phantom Bull_, Boston, 1932. Fictional narratives of veracity;
literature. OP.
PILGRIM, THOMAS (under pseudonym of Arthur Morecamp). _Live Boys;
or Charley and Nasho in Texas_, Boston, 1878. The chronicle, little
fictionized, of a trail drive to Kansas. So far as I know, this is the
first narrative printed on cattle trailing or cowboy life that is to be
accounted authentic. The book is dated from Kerrville, Texas.
PONTING, TOM CANDY. _The Life of Tom Candy Ponting_, Decatur, Illinois
[1907], reprinted, with Notes and Introduction by Herbert O. Brayer,
by Branding Iron Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1952. An account of buying
cattle in Texas in 1853, driving them to Illinois, and later shipping
some to New York. Accounts of trail driving before about 1870 have been
few and obscurely printed. The stark diary kept by George C. Duffield
of a drive from San Saba County, Texas, to southern Iowa in 1866 is as
realistic--often agonizing--as anything extant on this much romanticized
subject. It is published in _Annals of Iowa_, Des Moines, IV (April,
1924), 243-62.
POTTER, JACK. Born in 1864, son of the noted "fighting parson," Andrew
Jackson Potter, Jack became a far-known trail boss and ranch manager.
His first published piece, "Coming Down the Trail," appeared in _The
Trail Drivers of Texas_, compiled by J. Marvin Hunter, and is about
the livest thing in that monumental collection. Jack Potter wrote for
various Western magazines and newspapers. He was more interested in
cow nature than in gun fights; he had humor and imagination as well as
mastery of facts and a tangy language, though small command over form.
His privately printed booklets are: _Lead Steer_ (with Introduction by
J. Frank Dobie), Clayton, N. M., 1939; _Cattle Trails of the Old
West_ (with map), Clayton, N.M., 1935; _Cattle Trails of the Old West_
(virtually a new booklet), Clayton, N. M., 1939. All OP.
_Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States_,
Denver, 1905. Biographies of big cowmen and history based on genuine
research. The richest in matter of all the hundred-dollar-and-up rare
books in its field.
RAINE, WILLIAM MCLEOD, and BARNES, WILL C. _Cattle_, Garden City, N. Y.,
1930. A succinct and vivid focusing of much scattered history. OP.
RAK, MARY KIDDER. _A Cowman s Wife_, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1934.
Unglossed, impersonal realism about life on a small modern Arizona
ranch. _Mountain Cattle_, 1936, and OP, is an extension of the first
book.
REMINGTON, FREDERIC. _Pony Tracks_, New York, 1895 (now published by
Long's College Book Co., Columbus, Ohio); _Crooked Trails_, New York,
1898. Sketches and pictures.
RHODES, EUGENE MANLOVE. _West Is West, Once in the Saddle, Good Men and
True, Stepsons of Light_, and other novels. "Gene" Rhodes had the "right
tune." He achieved a style that can be called literary. _The Hired Man
on Horseback_, by May D. Rhodes, is a biography of the writer. Perhaps
"Paso Por Aqui" will endure as his masterpiece. Rhodes had an intense
loyalty to his land and people; he was as gay, gallant, and witty as
he was earnest. More than most Western writers, Rhodes was conscious of
art. He had the common touch and also he was a writer for writing men.
The elements of simplicity and the right kind of sophistication, always
with generosity and with an unflagging zeal for the rights of human
beings, were mixed in him. The reach of any ample-natured man exceeds
his grasp. Rhodes was ample-natured, but he cannot be classed as great
because his grasp was too often disproportionately short of the long
reach. His fiction becomes increasingly dated.
_The Best Novels and, Stories of Eugene Manlove Rhodes_, edited by Frank
V. Dearing, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1949, contains an introduction,
with plenty of anecdotes and too much enthusiasm, by J. Frank Dobie.
RICHARDS, CLARICE E. A _Tenderfoot Bride_, Garden City, N. Y., 1920.
The experiences of a ranchman's wife in Colorado. The telling has charm,
warmth, and flexibility. In the way that art is always truer than a
literal report, _A Tenderfoot Bride_ brings out truths of life that the
literalistic _A Cowman's Wife_ by Mary Kidder Rak misses.
RICHTER, CONRAD. _The Sea of Grass_, Knopf, New York, 1937. A poetic
portrait in fiction, with psychological values, of a big cowman and his
wife.
RICKETTS, W. P. _50 Years in the Saddle_, Sheridan, Wyoming, 1942. OP.
A natural book with much interesting information. It contains the best
account of trailing cattle from Oregon to Wyoming that I have seen.
RIDINGS, SAM P. _The Chisholm Trail_, 1926. Sam P. Ridings, a lawyer,
published this book himself from Medford, Oklahoma. He had gone over
the land, lived with range men, studied history. A noble book, rich in
anecdote and character. The subtitle reads: "A History of the World's
Greatest Cattle Trail, together with a Description of the Persons, a
Narrative of the Events, and Reminiscences associated with the Same."
OP.
ROBINSON, FRANK C. _A Ram in a Thicket_, Abelard Press, New York, 1950.
Robinson is the author of many Westerns, none of which I have read. This
is an autobiography, here noted because it reveals a maturity of mind
and an awareness of political economy and social evolution hardly
suggested by other writers of Western fiction.
ROLLINS, ALICE WELLINGTON. _The Story of a Ranch_, New York, 1885.
Philip Ashton Rollins (no relation that I know of to Alice Wellington
Rollins) went into Charlie Everitt's bookstore in New York one day and
said, "I want every book with the word _cowboy_ printed in it." _The
Story of a Ranch_ is listed here to illustrate how titles often have
nothing to do with subject. It is without either story or ranch; it is
about some dilettanteish people who go out to a Kansas sheep farm, talk
Chopin, and wash their fingers in finger bowls.
ROLLINS, PHILIP ASHTON. _The Cowboy_, Scribner's, New York, 1924.
Revised, 1936. A scientific exposition; full. Rollins wrote two Western
novels, not important. A wealthy man with ranch experience, he collected
one of the finest libraries of Western books ever assembled by any
individual and presented it to Princeton University.
ROLLINSON, JOHN K. _Pony Trails in Wyoming_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1941. Not
inspired and not indispensable, but honest autobiography. OP. _Wyoming
Cattle Trails_, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1948. A more significant book
than the autobiography. Good on trailing cattle from Oregon.
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. _Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail_, New York, 1888.
Roosevelt understood the West. He became the peg upon which several
range books were hung, Hagedorn's _Roosevelt in the Bad Lands_ and
Lang's _Ranching with Roosevelt_ in particular. A good summing up, with
bibliography, is _Roosevelt and the Stockman's Association_, by Ray
H. Mattison, pamphlet issued by the State Historical Society of North
Dakota, Bismarck, 1950.
RUSH, OSCAR. _The Open Range_, Salt Lake City, 1930. Reprinted 1936 by
Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho. A sensitive range man's response to natural
things. The subtitle, _Bunk House Philosophy_, characterizes the book.
RUSSELL, CHARLES M. _Trails Plowed Under_, 1927, with introduction by
Will Rogers. Russell was the greatest painter that ever painted a range
man, a range cow, a range horse or a Plains Indian. He savvied the cow,
the grass, the blizzard, the drought, the wolf, the young puncher in
love with his own shadow, the old waddie remembering rides and thirsts
of far away and long ago. He was a wonderful storyteller, and most of
his pictures tell stories. He never generalized, painting "a man," "a
horse," "a buffalo" in the abstract. His subjects are warm with life,
whether awake or asleep, at a particular instant, under particular
conditions. _Trails Plowed Under_, prodigally illustrated, is a
collection of yarns and anecdotes saturated with humor and humanity.
It incorporates the materials in two Rawhide Rawlins pamphlets. _Good
Medicine_, published posthumously, is a collection of Russell's letters,
illustrations saying more than written words.
Russell's illustrations have enriched numerous range books, B. M.
Bower's novels, Malcolm S. Mackay's _Cow Range and Hunting Trail_, and
Patrick T. Tucker's _Riding the High Country_ being outstanding among
them. Tucker's book, autobiography, has a bully chapter on Charlie
Russell. _Charles M. Russell, the Cowboy Artist: A Bibliography_, by
Karl Yost, Pasadena, California, 1948, is better composed than its
companion biography, _Charles M. Russell the Cowboy Artist_, by Ramon F.
Adams and Homer E. Britzman. (Both OP.) One of the most concrete pieces
of writing on Russell is a chapter in _In the Land of Chinook_, by
Al. J. Noyes, Helena, Montana, 1917. "Memories of Charlie Russell," in
_Memories of Old Montana_, by Con Price, Hollywood, 1945, is also
good. All right as far as it goes, about a rock's throw away, is "The
Conservatism of Charles M. Russell," by J. Frank Dobie, in a portfolio
reproduction of _Seven Drawings by Charles M. Russell, with an
Additional Drawing by Tom Lea_, printed by Carl Hertzog, El Paso [1950].
SANTEE, ROSS. _Cowboy_, 1928. OP. The plotless narrative, reading like
autobiography, of a kid who ran away from a farm in East Texas to be a
cowboy in Arizona. His cowpuncher teachers are the kind "who know what
a cow is thinking of before she knows herself." Passages in _Cowboy_
combine reality and elemental melody in a way that almost no other
range writer excepting Charles M. Russell has achieved. Santee is a
pen-and-ink artist also. Among his other books, _Men and Horses_ is
about the best.
SHAW, JAMES C. _North from Texas: Incidents in the Early Life of a
Range Man in Texas, Dakota and Wyoming, 1852-1883_, edited by Herbert O.
Brayer. Branding Iron Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1952. Edition limited
to 750 copies. I first met this honest autobiography by long quotations
from it in Virginia Cole Trenholm's _Footprints on the Frontier_
(Douglas, Wyoming, 1945), wherein I learned that Shaw's narrative had
been privately printed in Cheyenne in 1931, in pamphlet form, for gifts
to a few friends and members of the author's family. I tried to buy a
copy but could find none for sale at any price. This reprint is in a
format suitable to the economical prose, replete with telling incidents
and homely details. It will soon be only a little less scarce than the
original.
SHEEDY, DENNIS. _The Autobiography of Dennis Sheedy_. Privately printed
in Denver, 1922 or 1923. Sixty pages bound in leather and as scarce as
psalm-singing in "fancy houses." The item is not very important in the
realm of range literature but it exemplifies the successful businessman
that the judicious cowman of open range days frequently became.
SHEFFY, L. F. _The Life and Times of Timothy Dwight Hobart, 1855-1935_,
Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, Canyon, Texas, 1950. Hobart was
manager for the large J A Ranch, established by Charles Goodnight.
He had a sense of history. This mature biography treats of important
developments pertaining to ranching in the Texas Panhandle.
SIRINGO, CHARLES A. A _Texas Cowboy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane
Deck of a Spanish Cow Pony_, 1885. The first in time of all cowboy
autobiographies and first, also, in plain rollickiness. Siringo later
told the same story with additions under the titles of _A Lone Star
Cowboy, A Cowboy Detective_, etc., all out of print. Finally, there
appeared his _Riata and Spurs_, Boston, 1927, a summation and extension
of previous autobiographies. Because of a threatened lawsuit, half of it
had to be cut and additional material provided for a "Revised Edition."
No other cowboy ever talked about himself so much in print; few had more
to talk about. I have said my full say on him in an introduction, which
includes a bibliography, to _A Texas Cowboy_, published with Tom Lea
illustrations by Sloane, New York, 1950. OP.
SMITH, ERWIN E., and HALEY, J. EVETTS. _Life on the Texas Range_,
photographs by Smith and text by Haley, University of Texas Press,
Austin, 1952. Erwin Smith yearned and studied to be a sculptor. Early in
this century he went with camera to photograph the life of land, cattle,
horses, and men on the big ranches of West Texas. In him feeling and
perspective of artist were fused with technical mastership. "I don't
mean," wrote Tom Lea, "that he made just the best photographs I ever
saw on the subject. I mean the best pictures. That includes paintings,
drawings, prints." On 9 by 12 pages of 100-pound antique finish paper,
the photographs are superbly reproduced. Evetts Haley's introduction
interprets as well as chronicles the life of a strange and tragic man.
The book is easily the finest range book in the realm of the pictorial
ever published.
SMITH, WALLACE. _Garden of the Sun_, Los Angeles, 1939. OP. Despite
the banal title, this is a scholarly work with first-rate chapters on
California horses and ranching in the San Joaquin Valley.
SNYDER, A. B., as told to Nellie Snyder Yost. _Pinnacle Jake_, Caxton,
Caldwell, Idaho, 1951. The setting is Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana
from the 1880's on. Had Pinnacle Jake kept a diary, his accounts of
range characters, especially camp cooks and range horses, with emphasis
on night horses and outlaws, could not have been fresher or more precise
in detail. Reading this book will not give a new interpretation of open
range work with big outfits, but the aliveness of it in both narrative
and sketch makes it among the best of old-time cowboy reminiscences.
SONNICHSEN, C. L. _Cowboys and Cattle Kings: Life on the Range Today_,
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1950. An interviewer's findings
without the historical criticism exemplified by Bernard DeVoto on the
subject of federal-owned ranges (in essays in _Harper's Magazine_ during
the late 1940'S).
STANLEY, CLARK, "better known as the Rattlesnake King." _The Life
and Adventures of the American Cow-Boy_, published by the author at
Providence, Rhode Island, 1897. This pamphlet of forty-one pages, plus
about twenty pages of Snake Oil Liniment advertisements, is one of the
curiosities of cowboy literature. It includes a collection of cowboy
songs, the earliest I know of in time of printing, antedating by eleven
years Jack Thorp's booklet of cowboy songs printed at Estancia, New
Mexico, in 1908. Clark Stanley no doubt used the contents of his
pamphlet in medicine show harangues, thus adding to the cowboy myth. As
time went on, he added scraps of anecdotes and western history, along
with testimonials, to the pamphlet, the latest edition I have seen being
about 1906, printed in Worcester, Massachusetts.
STEEDMAN, CHARLES J. _Bucking the Sagebrush_, New York, 1904. OP.
Charming; much of nature. Illustrated by Russell.
{illust. caption = Charles M. Russell, in _The Virginian_ by Owen
Wister}
STEVENS, MONTAGUE. _Meet Mr. Grizzly_, University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, 1943. Stevens, a Cambridge Englishman, ranched, hunted, and
made deductions. See characterization under "Bears and Bear Hunters."
STREETER, FLOYD B. _Prairie Trails and Cow Towns_, Boston, 1936. OP.
This brings together considerable information on Kansas cow towns.
Primary books on the subject, besides those by Stuart Henry, McCoy,
Vestal, and Wright herewith listed, are _The Oklahoma Scout_, by
Theodore Baughman, Chicago, 1886; _Midnight and Noonday_, by G. D.
Freeman, Caldwell, Kansas, 1892; biographies of Wild Bill Hickok,
town marshal; Stuart N. Lake's biography of Wyatt Earp, another noted
marshal; _Hard Knocks_, by Harry Young, Chicago, 1915, not too prudish
to notice dance hall girls but too Victorian to say much. Many Texas
trail drivers had trouble as well as fun in the cow towns. _Life
and Adventures of Ben Thompson_, by W. M. Walton, 1884, reprinted at
Bandera, Texas, 1926, gives samples. Thompson was more gambler than
cowboy; various other men who rode from cow camps into town and found
themselves in their element were gamblers and gunmen first and cowboys
only in passing.
STUART, GRANVILLE. _Forty Years on the Frontier_, two volumes,
Cleveland, 1925. Nothing better on the cowboy has ever been written
than the chapter entitled "Cattle Business" in Volume II. A prime work
throughout. OP.
THORP, JACK (N. Howard) has a secure place in range literature because
of his contribution in cowboy songs. (See entry under "Cowboy Songs and
Other Ballads.") In 1926 he had printed at Santa Fe a paper-backed book
of 123 pages entitled _Tales of the Chuck Wagon_, but "didn't sell
more than two or three million copies." Some of the tales are in his
posthumously published reminiscences, _Pardner of the Wind_ (as told
to Neil McCullough Clark, Caxton, Caldwell, Idaho, 1945). This book
is richest on range horses, and will be found listed in the section on
"Horses."
TOWNE, CHARLES WAYLAND, and WENTWORTH, EDWARD NORRIS. _Shepherd's
Empire_, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1945. Not firsthand in
the manner of Gilfillan's _Sheep_, nor charming and light in the manner
of Kupper's _The Golden Hoof_, but an essayical history, based on
research. The deference paid to Mary Austin's _The Flock_ marks the
author as civilized. Towne wrote the book; Wentworth supplied the
information. Wentworth's own book, _America's Sheep Trails_, Iowa State
College Press, Ames, 1948, is ponderous, amorphous, and in part, only a
eulogistic "mugbook."
TOWNSHEND, R. B. _A Tenderfoot in Colorado_, London, 1923; _The
Tenderfoot in New Mexico_, 1924. Delightful as well as faithful.
Literature by an Englishman who translated Tacitus under the spires of
Oxford after he retired from the range.
TREADWELL, EDWARD F. _The Cattle King_, New York, 1931; reissued by
Christopher, Boston. A strong biography of a very strong man--Henry
Miller of California.
TRENHOLM, VIRGINIA COLE. _Footprints on the Frontier_, Douglas, Wyoming,
1945. OP. The best range material in this book is a reprint of parts of
James C. Shaw's _Pioneering in Texas and Wyoming_, privately printed at
Cheyenne in 1931.
TRUETT, VELMA STEVENS. _On the Hoof in Nevada_, Gehrett-Truett-Hall, Los
Angeles, 1950. A 613-page album of cattle brands--priced at $10.00. The
introduction is one of the sparse items on Nevada ranching.
TUCKER, PATRICK T. _Riding the High Country_, Caldwell, Idaho, 1933. A
brave book with much of Charlie Russell in it. OP.
VESTAL, STANLEY (pen name for Walter S. Campbell). _Queen of Cow Towns,
Dodge City_, Harper, New York, 1952. "Bibulous Babylon," "Killing of
Dora Hand," and "Marshals for Breakfast" are chapter titles suggesting
the tenor of the book.
_Vocabulario y Refranero Criollo_, text and illustrations by Tito
Saudibet, Guillermo Kraft Ltda., Buenos Aires, 1945. North American
ranges have called forth nothing to compare with this fully illustrated,
thorough, magnificent history-dictionary of the gaucho world. It stands
out in contrast to American slapdash, puerile-minded pretenses at
dictionary treatises on cowboy life.
"He who knows only the history of his own country does not know it." The
cowboy is not a singular type. He was no better rider than the Cossack
of Asia. His counterpart in South America, developed also from
Spanish cattle, Spanish horses, and Spanish techniques, is the gaucho.
Literature on the gaucho is extensive, some of it of a high order.
Primary is _Martin Fierro_, the epic by Jose Hernandez (published
1872-79). A translation by Walter Owen was published in the United
States in 1936. No combination of knowledge, sympathy, imagination, and
craftsmanship has produced stories and sketches about the cowboy equal
to those on the gaucho by W. H. Hudson, especially in _Tales of the
Pampas_ and _Far Away and Long Ago_, and by R. B. Cunninghame Graham,
whose writings are dispersed and difficult to come by.
WEBB, WALTER PRESCOTT. _The Great Plains_, Ginn, Boston, 1931. While
this landmark in historical interpretation of the West is by no means
limited to the subject of grazing, it contains a long and penetrating
chapter entitled "The Cattle Kingdom." The book is an analysis of land,
climate, barbed wire, dry farming, wells and windmills, native animal
life, etc. No other work on the plains country goes so meatily into
causes and effects.
WELLMAN, PAUL I. _The Trampling Herd_, Doubleday, Garden City, N. Y.,
1939; reissued, 1951. An attempt to sum up the story of the cattle range
in America.
WHITE, STEWART EDWARD. _Arizona Nights_, 1902. "Rawhide," one of the
stories in this excellent collection, utilizes folk motifs about rawhide
with much skill.
WILLIAMS, J. R. _Cowboys Out Our Way_, with an Introduction by J.
Frank Dobie, Scribner's, New York, 1951. An album reproducing about two
hundred of the realistic, humorous, and human J. R. Williams syndicated
cartoons. This book was preceded by _Out Our Way_, New York, 1943, and
includes numerous cartoons therein printed. There was an earlier and
less extensive collection. Modest Jim Williams has been progressively
dissatisfied with all his cartoon books--and with cartoons not in books.
I like them and in my Introduction say why.
WISTER, OWEN. _The Virginian_, 1902. Wister was an outsider looking in.
His hero, "The Virginian," is a cowboy without cows--like the cowboys
of Eugene Manlove Rhodes; but this hero does not even smell of cows,
whereas Rhodes's men do. Nevertheless, the novel authentically realizes
the code of the range, and it makes such absorbing reading that in fifty
years (1902-52) it sold over 1,600,000 copies, not counting foreign
translations and paper reprints.
Wister was an urbane Harvard man, of clubs and travels. In 1952 the
University of Wyoming celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the
publication of _The Virginian_. To mark the event, Frances K. W. Stokes
wrote _My Father Owen Wister_, a biographical pamphlet including "ten
letters written to his mother during his trip to Wyoming in 1885"--a
trip that prepared him to write the novel. The pamphlet is published at
Laramie, Wyoming, name of publisher not printed on it.
WRIGHT, PETER. _A Three-Foot Stool_, New York and London, 1909. Like
several other Englishmen who went west, Wright had the perspective that
enabled him to comprehend some aspects of ranch life more fully than
many range men who knew nothing but their own environment and times.
He compares the cowboy to the cowherd described by Queen Elizabeth's
Spenser. Into exposition of ranching on the Gila, he interweaves talk
on Arabian afreets, Stevenson's philosophy of adventure, and German
imperialism.
WRIGHT, ROBERT M. _Dodge City, Cowboy Capital_, Wichita, Kansas, 1913;
reprinted. Good on the most cowboyish of all the cow towns.