Books about the cowboys and the long cattle drives that made them an enduring America archetype, beginning with Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian , have always fascinated me. As a three year old my family lived briefly in Texarkana. My mother recorded in a letter to her parents that when we went to the grocery or department stores, I asked complete strangers if they were cowboys, hoping to find a real one. This has turned into a lifelong fascination with the cowboy kingdom. Cowboy gear figured in my every letter to Santa and by the time I could join my like-minded schoolmates at the smaller (and cheaper) movie houses, cowboy films predominated.

Cowboy gear topped my Christmas list every year as a boy. Note the steer-horn grips on my twin six shooters and my authentic leather gloves with fringed gauntlets. All this was inspired by the post World War II Hollywood “B” movies of that era featuring Lash LaRue, Whip Wilson, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, Red Ryder that replaced the tougher, non-guitar playing, bunk house sagas like those starring Johnny Mack Brown, Bob Steele (the “Durango Kid”) and John Wayne films made in the thirties and forties.

Before Roy Rogers and Gene Autry appeared with their modern bunkhouses and their onscreen singing, there were dozens of tougher, quick draw, horse loving, knights of the plains riding the range and toting their Colt 44, sleeping on the hard ground, intuitively committed to the principle that the only law was right. Many were ex-confederate soldiers escaping from a broken south, searching for a new life, but finding they had to fight for it. And, they usually chose to help others achieve some kind of justice in spite of the sometimes selfish cattle barons or violent bandits who robbed banks, trains and stagecoaches. “Knights” was the perfect label. They were lone riders fighting for the underdogs on a lawless frontier. From John Wayne in Stagecoach to Allan Ladd in Shane, it was always about the fight for right.

Because I had enjoyed the style and research that had gone into Christopher Knowlton’s treatment of the Florida real estate boom and bust of the 1920’s (reviewed earlier on this site), I felt sure his current best seller, Cattle Kingdom; The Hidden History of the Cowboy West should be my next read. I was not disappointed. The research is superb and the narrative filled with exciting characters and new information. The earliest such general study was Water Prescott Webb’s (still relevant) 1929 treatment, The Great Plains. Webb paved the way for Knowlton’s interpretation by identifying the bonanzas that created the west: the post Civil War cattle boom, the mining bonanza and the farming bonanza that came with the Homestead Act of 1867.

Cattle ranging and later cattle ranching replaced the great buffalo herds that were hunted to extinction and fueled the market for beef. Railroads and refrigerated rail cars eventually made the log drives unnecessary. But the entire boom and bust era of the log drives lasted a bare twenty years. They produced one of the great stereotypical American archetypes-the cowboy.

Knowlton does a great job of detailing the life of the cowboys, who end up in the telling far less violent and and rowdy than is depicted in films. But it was a lonely and precarious occupation that came to an end as ranching replaced the long drives. Barbed wire became the bane of the cowboys existence, encircling homesteader farms and blocking the easier routes to the rail depots in the cattle towns. But soon it was adopted by cattlemen who found it more profitable to stop free ranging their steers and driving them long distances to market across dangerous terrain while facing extremes of heat and bitter cold. The cattlemen soon transformed into settled ranchers and barbed wire became their friend.

Confirming much of what is common knowledge about the west, Knowlton adds a new twist, choosing to emphasize the role of capitalism and financial opportunity in shaping the west and, attracting the outsized characters who built the cattle kingdom. He also carefully explains the reciprocal, that is, that the west served to encourage and test a generation of courageous, if sometimes misguided, adventurers.

Most famous among these men was young Theodore Roosevelt. Devastated by the simultaneous death of his beloved wife and mother, Roosevelt sought solace through the challenges of managing a ranch, hunting (he may have killed the last remaining buffalo in the range of the Sioux). His stay on the plains coincided with the worst winter in anyone’s memory, virtually wrecking the cattle industry for the short run, but toughening Roosevelt. His writing about the ranging life and the outdoor life associated with it, added to easterners’ knowledge and excitement about the “Wild West.” The patrician Roosevelt became the hardened president who “busted” the corporate “trusts” that dominated pricing and labor conditions.

In the larger studies, such as this, there are often insights the reader collects and applies to the narrower subjects of their own interests. In my case, my writing often focuses on Southern and even more specifically, Georgia history. Reading Cattle Kingdom reminded me that Georgia has its own era of cattle ranching and long drives.

You will probably be surprised to learn that the free ranging of cattle was a profitable and widely practiced business in Georgia, dating to the founding of the colony. And, the ranging was done to a great extent in the longleaf forests of the coastal plain. When Georgia’s founder, General James Oglethorpe, founded the colony of Georgia he made a deal with “Creek Mary” Musgrove allowing her to create a ranch- a cow pen- near Savannah to keep the new arrivals stocked with beef. And, the long drives in the west were presaged by a roundup and long drive from Georgia to Philadelphia during the American Revolution. Other authors have pointed out how the free range cattle practice spread from the southeast into Texas and has its roots in free ranging in the Celtic regions of the British Isles-Scotland, Wales and Ireland. I will tell some of that story in a later post.