4 ms·
Interestingly, cowboys didn't work alone. They had teams of real people that they had to work with and trust along with their horses and the cows themselves.
by dhbradshaw 3y ago
Interestingly, cowboys didn't work alone.
They had teams of real people that they had to work with and trust along with their horses and the cows themselves.
Even homesteaders would typically pull together for building, digging, playing, dancing, harvesting and more. The west was colonized by people with active social lives working together and depending on each other.
- krapp 3y agoYeah, the modern idea of the frontiersman as a rugged individualist who answered to no law but God in his heart and the gun at his hip is a fantasy, like the noble knight or honorable samurai. Actual cowboys weren't nomads because their fierce independent spirit couldn't be tamed by society and its rules, but because their job was moving herds of cattle from place to place and of course they didn't do it alone. And many of them weren't even white - "buckaroo" is a corruption of the Spanish vaquero. But you wouldn't know any of that from any American cowboy movie or tv show.