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 The cowboys' life in the 1800's was a solitary one. On the western range, most cowboys were young, unmarried rovers. The ranch bunkhouse provided a base camp for the cowboys and became their home. During roundups, the chuck wagon served the same purpose. The bunkhouse and chuck wagon developed the cowboy's sense of belonging to the ranch community.

The very first American cowboys came from Mexico and were called vaqueros.  Many cowboys were African Americans, who had learned how to handle horses during service in the Civil War. Others were Tejanos, who used Mexican techniques of controlling cattle, horse-riding equipment, and a vocabulary inherited from the original vaqueros of colonial Mexico, who had been transformed into dashing horsemen -- skilled, proud and brave. As more people moved westward, young white men also learned to be cowboys.

After the Civil War, Texan cattle barons like Charles Goodnight  and Jesse Driskill were convinced that they had to drive their cattle north out of Texas in order to get their cattle to market.  A cattle drive was comprised of a cook, the trail boss, cowboys, horses, cattle and supplies. The first cowboys to drive cattle north were Texans, and the first kind of cattle to be driven north were Longhorns. Examine a short history of cowboys. You can see a map of some of the cattle trails here.  A good article on cattle trails can be found at The University of Texas's Handbook of Texas Online.

The cowboys would slowly drive the cattle northward to the railroad stations or northern pastures, allowing the cattle to graze along the way.  Cowboys had to drive the cattle through all kinds of weather including dust storms, thunderstorms and extreme heat.  The cowboys would ride their horses for hours upon hours with very  few breaks and sometimes had to move the cattle through rushing rivers. Cowboys had to wear protective clothes like heavy leather boots and chaps to help prevent injury from the hooves of cattle and thorny brush that they rode through as they pushed the cattle. At night, the cowboys had to sleep in shifts so they could take turns guarding the cattle from cattle rustlers and predators like wolves.  The cowboys did not have the luxury of sleeping in a bed, but instead they slept on the hard ground using their saddles as pillows.  The cowboys slept with  their boots on in case they had to get up quickly for a cattle emergency.

Before the trail drive, the cook had to stock the wagon with enough food to last one or two months. He could not go shopping during the drive because the towns with stores were often too far away from the trails. The most important job the cook had to do before the drive was to prepare the sourdough starter for making bread. Starter is a water, sugar and flour mixture. The cook used this sticky paste to make bread. He scooped out some starter and added more water, flour, salt and baking soda. He kneaded or punched the dough, rolled it and put it into the Dutch oven to bake.

Cookie's Day
Cookie's day began at around 3:30 in the morning. He would get up and start fixing the beef, sourdough bread or biscuits and dried fruit for the cowboy's breakfast. At 4:00 a.m., Cookie would wake the cowboys by yelling, "Come and get it!" Dishes would be "washed" with sand in the creek and camp packed up by 5:00a.m. Cookie would then head for the open prairie. Cookie would charge ahead of the cattle drive because he could move faster than the cattle with his 4-horse team. He had to make a new camp and have lunch ready by noon. Cookie fed the crew a meal such as chili or stew with bread, coffee and water. At 1:00p.m. the chuck wagon was packed again and headed toward the evening's campsite. By 5:00 Cookie had arrived at the night camp and a dinner of beans, beef, and potatoes and gravy was served at 6:30pm. For dessert, Cookie served prune and raisin cobbler. Cookie went to bed at 9:00pm. He slept until morning because he did not have to take a turn herding the cattle at night.
from Grant-Kohr's Ranch Website

Assignment:

Write a short story from the perspective of either a cowboy, a trail boss, a steer, or a horse involved with a cattle drive. Try to write your story in the style of first-person narrative. Be creative and descriptive of what your character would see, feel, taste, touch and smell as your character traveled northward. As you write, be sure to tell how your character defines ideas, if applicable, like home, independence, education, talent and skills, and his or her attitudes towards others. Your story must be typed and should be at least one page, double-spaced, in 12 point Times New Roman font. but do not write more than two pages.  For help in developing your ideas, you may want to visit the Vocabulary Page.  You will have one fifty minute class period to research your ideas on cowboys and to write your story.