There is no more enduring symbol of America's expansion into the 'Wild West' than the cowboy. Immortalised in various Hollywood films, cowboys have come to reflect many of the values that Americans hold dear to this day – rugged individualism, strength in the face of adversity, courage and respect for nature and the land.
Click through this gallery to see black-and-white photos of real cowboys from the latter half of the 19th century...
The earliest cowboys didn’t really fit the stereotypes we have of them today, and here we see a photo of a Native American and an African-American cowboy taken in 1865. The very first cowboys were actually Mexican vaqueros ('cow herder') who had been trained by the Spanish centuries earlier. The extraordinary horse skills of the Native Americans also made them exceptional cowboys. And enslaved people in Texas honed their skills running ranches and made up the majority of cowboys in the state by the mid-19th century.
Not all these early cowboys roamed the wide-open plains of the West. Florida’s 'Cracker Cowboys' herded cattle along the state’s beaches and swamps, using bullwhips to herd them rather than the lassos preferred in the West. Indeed, the story goes that it was the crack of their whips that earned them their nickname. They also wore boots that reached above their knees to protect them from snakes. Here we see so-called 'King of the Crackers' Jacob Summerlin, a successful cattleman who herded stock all round Florida before shipping it to Cuba.
As America expanded westward – pursuing its supposed 'manifest destiny' – cowboys played a vital role rounding up livestock that was then transported to new frontiers by rail. Here we see three riders at Cathedral Spires in Colorado – a short way from the famous Goodnight-Loving Trail. This cattle trail was established by cowboys Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving in 1866 and connected ranches in Texas and New Mexico with the railroad in Denver. It took up to six months to ride and passed through hostile Native American territory.
Contrary to what Hollywood tells you, cowboys did not tend to be particularly skilled marksmen. It was through his lariat (lasso) that a cattle driver showed his skills. Stiffer than normal rope, a lariat would be coiled and hung on a cowboy's saddle, ready to lasso cattle for branding or pull them back into line if they wandered away from the herd. In their downtime some cowboys would practice tricks. Legendary Black cowboy Nat Love (pictured) became so adept he toured the West showing off his rope skills at rodeos.
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Each cattle drive was accompanied by a chuckwagon and a cook whose role was to keep the cowboys fed and watered. It was often said that a good ‘cookie’ was the most important part of the crew, especially if he could work wonders with the basic supplies of beans, biscuits and hard cheese. It was not an easy job, though. Cooks were sometimes expected to herd cattle as well. Legend has it that outlaw Billy the Kid was offered a job as a camp cook but decided to return to a life of crime instead.
Hollywood would have us believe that every saloon had swinging doors and a guy on a honky tonk piano who stopped playing the moment a cowboy stepped through them. However, most were like this one in Miles City, Montana where the paint work was as rough as the whiskey and there were not enough chairs to go around. Fun fact: you can still enjoy Golden Grain Belt beer across the Midwest. It’s brewed by Schell's Brewery in New Ulm in Minnesota.
Driving up to 2,000 head of cattle from a ranch to a railhead was a long and laborious process. Cowboys had to strike a balance between speed and the impact that would have on the condition of the cattle. Push the cattle too hard and they’d lose weight, making them hard to sell at the end of the trail. Most days cattle would be driven 10 to 15 miles (16-24km) and then allowed to rest and graze at midday and at night. These cowboys are on their way to the head of Rio Grande Railway in Denver.
Nobody did more to mythologise cowboys and the Wild West than Colonel William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. He had fought in the Civil War, rode for the Pony Express and served as a scout for the army, but attained international fame when he toured the world with his hugely popular Wild West Show. The spectacular show featured rootin’ tootin’ cowboys and yelling Indians and recreated famous battles along with a buffalo hunt. Here we see Buffalo Bill with the famous Indian leader, Sitting Bull, who was a cast member for four months in 1885.
Cowboys have always loved a mournful tune, either to calm jumpy longhorns or to sing around a campfire as a lament to their lonesome lifestyle. In 1897 the first cowboy band was formed by Chalkley 'Chalk' Beeson, the owner of the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City. Featuring cattle-scaring drums and French horns, they nevertheless proved very popular, performing at the inauguration of US President Benjamin Harrison in 1889. The band still performs to this day, but without the tame buffalo that used to follow back in the late 1800s.
During the winter of 1886-1887 the West was hit by a series of brutal storms and sub-zero temperatures that saw hundreds of thousands of cattle perish on the Great Plains. Thick blankets of snow covered the grass the cattle needed to graze and some of the blizzards were so intense that many cattle were separated from their herd and ended up lost or dead. It became known as ‘The Big Die-Up' (or Great Die-Up) with the Poudre Livestock Company losing two-thirds of its herd alone. The days of open range grazing, where cattle were set loose on public land and watched by cowboys, were over.
Cowboys lived for months at a time on a cattle drive and had to contend with all kinds of threats. Sometimes it was rustlers, attempting to steal the cattle. Other times it was Native Americans, unhappy that they were encroaching on their land. Wild animals posed a threat too, especially wolves, cougars and coyotes that often sought to kill the livestock. Here we see a group of cowboys in 1887 with a grey wolf they captured on the plains of Wyoming.
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When they weren’t out on the range herding cattle, cowboys were back at the ranch where they lived in bunkhouses and performed general tasks around the farm. Some repaired fences and outbuildings. Others tended to the horses and cattle. Ned Coy, a famous Dakota cowboy, specialised in taming wild broncos for the round-up. Here we see him breaking a bronco in South Dakota in 1888.
This photo taken by photographer John Grabill in Sturgis, Dakota, in 1888, could easily be titled ‘How To Dress Like a Cowboy’. The large wide-brimmed hat kept out the sun. Bandanas could be used to wipe away sweat or pulled up to cover your nose when the trail got dusty. The tough woollen shirts and leather chaps provided protection from rocky terrain, branches, thorns and spiky cactus needles. And the boots had pointy toes to facilitate a quick mount or dismount. The moustache, however, was purely ornamental.
This photo of a group of cowboys gathered around a chuck wagon was taken in the 1890s but the influence of Mexico’s vaqueros (cow men) was still very much apparent. The vaqueros had brought their roping, riding and herding skills to present-day Texas, New Mexico and Arizona in the early 1700s and had in turn been influenced by the Spanish who’d been building ranches and cattle in Mexico since 1519. By the turn of the 19th century, every newly arrived settler from the east was copying both their clothing style and the way they herded cattle.
When this photo was taken in 1890 cattle ranching in Montana was undergoing something of a transformation. The completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1883 meant that cowboys no longer had to drive cattle hundreds of miles to Utah or Wyoming to sell them. Ranchers began to focus on smaller herds and land preservation, with some turning to sheep which proved hardier in the tough winter conditions. The ranches of Big Sky Country were still huge though, meaning that cowboys were still needed, especially at round-up time.
For much of the mid 1800s, it was possible to become wealthy raising cattle even if you didn’t own land – depending on your ethnicity, of course. ‘Open Range’ laws meant that any white settler could graze their cattle on millions of unfenced public land across Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming and other western states for free. However, the invention of barbed wire in the 1870s, coupled with devastating stock losses during the ‘Big Die-up’ of 1886-87 led many ranchers to officially register their homesteads, buy land, and fence their pastures, as seen here in Weiser, Idaho.
The first advertisements in America appeared in colonial newspapers in the early 1800s and boomed during the Civil War years. As we can see from the walls of this Wild West saloon in 1890, this typically American industry followed the nation’s manifest destiny and headed west too. Look past the two townspeople and the two cowboys and you spot ads extolling the virtues of Milwaukee Brewing, Schlitz, Blatz and Budweiser. In the mirror you can also make out the bottom of a poster about Custer's Last Stand.
Early cowboys earned between $25-$40 a month. They worked hard for that money. And when they finally reached a town they played hard with it too. Many drank and gambled their wages away as soon as they were paid. Whiskey was their drink of choice, with over 20,000 barrels (about 650,000 gallons/ 2.9 million litres) shipped over the Sierras in 1853 alone. When you consider that they’d just spent six months on the range watching their friends doing lasso tricks as entertainment, it’s a surprise the cowboys didn’t drink more.
Another important task performed by cowboys back on the ranch was branding cattle. These unique marks burned into their hides helped distinguish what cattle belonged to which ranch back in the days open range grazing and continued to be important in reclaiming livestock stolen by cattle rustlers. American ranchers tended to use the alphabet for their brands, although it soon developed its own language and meaning. This photo taken by John Grabill in 1891 shows six cowboys branding cattle in front of a house in South Dakota.
Those brands were also useful for toting up how much was owed when livestock was sold in the big cattle markets in the east, like Union Stock Yard in Chicago seen here. After the Civil War the city quickly became the meatpacking capital of America and by 1890 a network of railways were bringing over 12 million head of cattle and hogs from the West. So many that a team of cowboys were employed to wrangle the beasts around the vast network of pens covering 345 acres on the southern outskirts of the city.
What we know today as a rodeo can be traced back to horseplay between cowboys during their downtime on the range or back at the ranch. They’d have competitions as to who could tame the wildest horse or rope the friskiest steer. Soon that evolved into competitions between different ranches, and then into the first annual professional rodeo held in Prescott, Arizona on 4 July 1888. Here we see a cowboy taking a tumble at the Cheyenne Frontier Day in Wyoming in 1897. Its roots can be traced back even further to 1872 when it started as an exhibition of cowboy skills and prowess.
Despite the thrills and spills of the rodeo and the undeniable pride of being crowned the best among your peers, cowboys still felt most at home on the open range. Nat Love, who won more rodeo competitions than most, spent the first chapter of his best-selling autobiography, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, extolling the freedom of the open range and the bond which bound cowboys to one another as a ‘brotherhood of men’. It’s a bond you can almost feel in this photo of cowboys rounding up cattle in Colorado in 1898.
The romantic appeal of the life of a cowboy extended well beyond the open plains of America’s West. Coloured photochrom prints like this one dating from 1898 were sold as souvenirs and snapped up by people on the east coast of America – and Europe – smitten by the idea of a life of freedom in the vast open spaces of the Great Plains. The prints usually measured 6.5 by 9 inches (16.5x 22.9cm) and were collected in albums or framed for display.
America’s other dream factory, the motion picture industry, was quick to recognise the excitement and allure of the cowboy as well. In 1903, the Edison Manufacturing Company released The Great Train Robbery, directed by Edwin S. Porter and widely recognised as the first American Western. It starred respected stage actor Justus D. Barnes (pictured) as the leader of a group of outlaw cowboys who carry out a daring train robbery. The very first cowboy movie, however, was shot in Blackburn, England in 1899 and was called Kidnapping By Indians.
This photo taken in Hugo, Colorado in 1903 may look like a still from a movie, but is in fact a group of real-life cowboys cheering on President Theodore Roosevelt who was on board the train. Roosevelt had been a rancher himself, in Dakota, but the Big Die-Up of 1886-87 saw him lose half of his herd. He decided to sell up his interest and focus on writing and politics instead. His love and respect for the cowboy lifestyle never left him though, as seen in his creation of the Rough Riders, a regiment of the US cavalry, composed largely of cowboys.
With its round, curved brim and pinched crown, the cowboy hat is arguably the most iconic part of the cowboy image. Influenced by the sombreros worn by the early Mexican vaqueros, the design was eminently practical, with the wide brims offering protection from the harsh western sun. They could also be used to fan a campfire, waved to catch the attention of another rider or to scoop up a drink of water, like this cowboy on the ED Ranch near Cromwell in Texas in 1905.
By the time this photo was taken in 1910, ranches were much smaller with cattle fenced in with barbed wire and the days of the open range cowboy were waning. American photographer Erwin Evans Smith, a cowboy himself, captured this aspect of cowboy culture before it was lost forever. Armed with nothing more than his trusty Eastman Kodak box camera, he captured evocative images like this one, which he simply titled 'The Horse Wrangler'.
It is estimated that up to 25% of the cowboys in America’s West were African-American. And like Nat Love, arguably the most famous Black cowboy, many of them were considered the best riders, ropers and wranglers in the business. But while they found a level of respect unknown to other African-Americans at that time, segregation still abounded. Here we see a group of Black cowboys at the Negro State Fair in Bonham, Texas around 1913. They were banned from white-only state fairs, usually held a week before.
Cowgirls were busy breaking down the barriers too. Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane became crowd favourites as they performed amazing feats on horseback as part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. And real-life cowgirl Lucille Mulhall was showing the cowboys a thing or two in rodeos across the US and Canada. Here we see her roping a steer in record time at the 1913 Winnipeg Stampede, securing her title as Champion Lady Steer Roper of the World.
This photo of the cowboy Slim Riley riding a wild bronco at the Tucumcari Round-Up in New Mexico was taken by Ruth Salmon, a world champion rodeo performer herself. The image – and her hand-scrawled inscription of ‘Never too high for Slim Riley’ – perfectly captures the enduring legacy of the ‘Spirit of the Cowboy’ and a way of life characterised by hard work, strength and resilience in the face of adversity. And as a symbol of the freedom and individualism that remains part of the American identity to this day.
Now read on for fascinating now-and-then photographs of America’s Old West