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Strains of Williams’ cowboy era remain strong even today

Williams was a cow town from the beginning.

One of the longest chapters from the history of Williams here in the American West on America’s Main Street is about the cowboy.

And he continues to attract the interest of people all over the world. After all, he’s a living connection, along with American Indians, to the time when this was an unmapped wilderness — a land of opportunity for those strong and bold enough to risk their lives and fortunes far from civilization.

Williams began as a cow town, and there always have been men earning their living on horseback. They were present when the steam-powered railroad arrived in 1882. That was when nearly all Americans thought of them as wild rovers because of the balderdash by eastern book and magazine authors who wrote sensationalized fiction soaked in blood and whiskey.

Over time, though, as the frontier was settled, public perceptions slowly began to change and the entire nation, as one historian put it, made the cowboy the hero of his country’s boldest legend and the ideal of American manhood.

Writers of stories and then movie scripts began to rehabilitate the make-believe outlaw image. They made additions to the code of conduct the cowboy already had because of the nature of his work, which required an uncommon amount of trustworthiness if he was to do it right.

The old code was based on common sense and the need for teamwork: Earn pay, obey the boss, don’t break your word or run from danger, pay your debts, keep your hands off another man’s property, hate rustlers and horse thieves, stay sober on the job, never turn a hungry man away, be dependable and depend on others because cowboys had to count on each other in an often dangerous business.

Western movies before the end of the 1920s were presenting the cowboy as a knight in denim armor portrayed for years to come by tremendously popular actors including Tom Mix, Gary Cooper, Gene Autry, Ken Maynard, Buck Jones, Roy Rogers and John Wayne.

The new code required the motion picture cowboy hero to be purer than the driven snow and recreated him as defender of justice, the weak and helpless. He always respected family and religion, never drew his gun first and loved his horse more than any woman other than his mother.

Little was ever written or shown about his real job on the ranch and range where his livelihood depended on physical stamina, agility, guts and a whole book full of skill and knowledge.

The work was hard, dirty, underpaid and often dangerous: Con-trolling cattle and horses when they were ready to panic and stampede, riding endless miles over rough terrain without losing his seat or hurting his pony, throwing a rope with accuracy either mounted or on foot, branding, breaking new mounts to the saddle and shoeing horses.

Sleeping on the ground in miserable weather, knowing what a cow said to her calf and outguessing her, holding the remuda at night in a rope corral, doctoring injured and sick animals and other cowboys, keeping his equipment repaired, mending and building corrals and fences, protecting himself from rope burns, rattlesnakes, scorpions, blow flies, cactus and thorny brush and sometimes living days at a time on beans and bacon.

Out of that came the stuff of myth and legend known worldwide for more than 120 years now: Ordinary men sometimes doing extraordinary things and with character traits important to people everywhere — loyalty, true grit and gallantry.

Most of the cowboy way of life is gone now, but some things still remain. Rodeos, for one thing, and the words he used: Cowpoke, cowhand, waddle and buckaroo — all meaning cowboy. Wrangler, bronco, maverick, mustang, lariat and lasso.

And the way he described his world and the people in it.

When the weather was dry, he’d say the bushes followed the dogs around. In hot weather, horned toads walked on stilts to keep their feet from burning. A rustler was a man with a sticky rope, a good-natured woman was sweet and mild as barnyard milk, and a politician was slick as snot on a doorknob.

When a cowboy was tired, he felt like a worn-out fiddle string. If he was nervous, he was like a long-tailed cat under a rocking chair or a whore in church. Dressed in new clothes he was a mail order catalog with legs.

The vocabulary, rodeos, high heeled boots, spurs and big hats are what remind us of the old time ranch hand, along with the music which probably tells the story best: “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “I’m an Old Cowhand,” “Empty Saddles,” “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” “Chisholm Trail,” “Red River Valley,” “Whoopee Ti Yi Yo,” “Goodbye Old Paint,” “Streets of Laredo,” “Home on the Range,” “The Last Round Up” and “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”

And this one: “Hooray for the cowboys brave and bold, hooray for the cowboys young and old, hooray for the cowboys short and tall, hooray for the cowboys one and all.”

You bet.

(Jim Harvey is a Williams historian who contributes a monthly series on our town’s early days.)


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