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Various Elements of Cowboy Life

Jimmie Durham The Cows Europe is cattle country. Most especially England and Ireland so many of the old Irish stories are about cattle rustling, as Jean Fisher has said. What could be more English than a Beefeater? All over Europe, eating beef is the best symbol of well-being, then of health, then even luxury. This might almost be natural, or at least supernatural; Europe began mythically when Zeus, disguised as a bull, seduced a herdswoman named Europa and brought her (I suppose) to somewhere around Marseilles. Europe has considered itself to be based in farming. But the reality should probably be considered animal husbandry. Europeans early on began following the cattle around, eating them, the milk and butter they produced, and what the cows themselves ate: the various grasses and grains. Hamburgers, made of wheat and cows, have been the basic foodstuff of agricultural Europe since its beginning. In London not so long ago the underprivileged only got to eat oysters. Spanish people like to eat pigs and goats as well as cows, but when they came to Mexico, their cattle felt at home and flourished in the wild. So did the goats, but I think the coyotes and wolves kept the goat population under control. Let us look at the cattle ranches of the West as they begin, in Texas. Texas was part of Spanish Mexico for hundreds of years before the settlers from the US arrived. (The poor little Rio Grande, little more that a stream these days, is not a natural border.) (There is a river in Texas that the Mexicans call El Rio de los Brazos de Dios The River of the Arms of God, which the Texans call the Brazos.) The eastern half of the state, from Louisana to the Edwards Plateau, from the Gulf of Mexico to Oklahoma, an area bigger than any other state, is lush, fertile, grassy woodlands. The western part of the state, more arid, is good land for cattle.

2 The US settlers came in with permission from the Mexican government, and found ranches full of longhorn cattle and thousands of wild longhorns. The settlers were almost all pro-slavery and slavery was against the law in Mexico. (The main occupation of James Bowie, a hero of the battle of the Alamo, was slave-running.) That was the main reason for the war of independence of Texas. (Independence did not last long. Texas soon became a state of the US, and then of the pro-slavery Confederacy.)* The settlers learned how to handle the horse-and-cattle method of ranching (a rancho was originally a rough military fortress) from the Mexicans. All of the cowboy gear is Mexican. After independence, with many Mexicans killed, expelled, or moved south, the new Texans simply rounded up Mexican cattle and drove them to the Gulf ports of Corpus Christi and Galveston for sale. When this had reduced the number of easily available cattle, these cowboys (who were not yet called that) began to raise cattle in the freerange manner of the Mexicans. This involved spring round-ups of cattle for branding and the castration of young born during the previous year. The railroads introduced cattle-drives into towns in Kansas, from which the railroads could transport live cows to Eastern markets. Before that, the cattle were usually slaughtered on the beach or the docks, so that mountains of skins and offal were dumped into the Gulf. Spanish culture is fairly celebratory about cruelty to animals, but the cruelty to cattle is particularly intense, beginning with bullfights. Imagine a sport wherein baby animals, lambs or colts, or even baby goats or pigs, are roped around the neck at full run and jerked to the ground. Now in the US, this is the way calves are treated at rodeos and at the very many calf-roping schools. At a calf-roping school or club cowboys and students are advised that a calf should not be run more that four times a day because the calf will get sour. Rodeos also feature bull-riding. There is a kind of cowboy hat called a bull-riders hat, but why a bull-rider needs a special kind of hat is not known by us. In the rodeo chute the bull is rigged up with a painful belt that constricts its testicles. This is what makes the bull buck and fight, not the rider. Sometimes they, as is common practice for the horses, are given a shot of adrenaline. Malcolm Lowry, in his book, Under the Volcano, describes a rodeo in Mexico in which a bull actually tries to climb a wall to escape the arena. I once went to the same rodeo grounds he wrote about and saw the very same phenomenon with another bull.

*Within twenty years, the US had declared war on Mexico and took more than half of its national territory, which became the present US Southwest and California. There is a funny connection there to land-use: both Bruce Nauman and James Turrell own large tracts of land in the Southwest. They both have cattle. I know why. In the West, to have land without cattle is to be liable to open contempt from everyone around, including the postman, the local grocer and the sheriff. It is necessary to use the land, which means having some cows on it. George Bush has a ranch. But before becoming president his job was in the petroleum industry; in what way does he, or did Reagan, have a ranch? It is to say that one pretends to be a rancher so that one will be taken to be a serious man; to pretend to not be pretending. There are still the constant, strange rituals of showing dominance over cattle. The Horses A human cannot go faster than while riding a fast horse. On a horse the rider becomes part of the horse. You can feel your body, your muscles and perception, with the horse's body and perception. When the horse gallops you also gallop. But it is completely physical. When you drive a fast car it is almost a purely visible experience, directed by the cerebral control necessary to stay on the road. Your actual body has no way of experiencing such speed. It is no longer physical. We feel so much bigger sitting on horses that we feel important. Most of the American Indians that we think of as Plains Indians, such as the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota (Sioux) arrived there only recently. They were forced onto the Plains because of European settlement of the East and Northeast of the continent. [OK??]. But right away the men changed their style of clothing. The large feather headdresses, fringes and ribbons were developed to look good while riding a horse. Honour to the horse, which was often also dressed up, just as in Europe. Readers probably know that horses originated in South America. In those days North and South America were not connected. These South American horses had one main predator, an extremely large bird, like a small dinosaur. Horses were smaller in those days, but not so small rather like present day goats. The birds swallowed the horses whole. Doesn't seem right does it? A few years ago I spent some time with the Yakut people in northern Siberia. (Yakutia). They are of the Turkoman people, and have been in Siberia not much more than a thousand years. They rode their sturdy little horses up from around what is maybe not Anatolia.[Check tricky meaning here]

I was there in January, average daytime temperature between 55 C and 60 C. The horses had no shelter at all. There was a light coat of snow on their backs. The hair is like fur, but very oily. In the summer the temperature climbs close to 50 C, and the men race wildly on their horses and drink kumiss, an alcoholic drink made from horse's milk. There was not much to eat on my visit except horses. At least once a day I was offered the delicacy of boiled horse noses. Horses are really very adaptable. Friends tell me that there are now wild horses in an area between Rome and the sea where Western films were once made. One by one they escaped or were abandoned; they formed groups and lived happily ever after. The Spanish got their horses and their cruel horse gear and knowledge from Arabs. But in Mexico, when Aztecs captured one of Cortez's horses, they brought it every good thing to eat they could find, to see what it liked most. US cowboys still basically use the Spanish gear they learned from Mexican cowboys. The expertise is about breaking and controlling the horses. In fact, commonsense tells you, if you just think about it, that any animal humans included performs better if it is not broken. Breaking is more about theatre; its about dominance that is publicly visible. Many cowboys still use the old spade bit. As it says, it is a mouth bit for a horse, which is a piece of steel shaped like a spade. Pulling on the reins pushes the spade into the roof of the horses mouth. Push the flat blade of a table knife into the roof of your mouth and you will see how effective it is. Coupled with sharp spurs to make the horse go forward and a whip, the cowboy can have complete control over the horse. The trouble is, this abuse allows the horse no freedom of action and makes him stupid. The cowboy must then do all the work that the horse should be doing. Horses are smart, and emotional. They can do all sorts of complicated work just to please people. American Indians used to use a hackmore instead of a bit of any kind. The hackmore fits over the muzzle so that there is nothing in the horse's mouth. With no bit and no saddle, no spurs, look how Plains Indians could ride horses! (I write in the past tense because most Indian horse riders now use modified cowboy gear.) The silliest and most insidious cowboy and European attitudes toward horses is the stuff about thoroughbreds. Thoroughbred! Does it mean that some horses have a non-horse ancestor in the background?

We hardly know any horses from non-domestic stock, even thought he word mustang means mixed. (A bronco is a wild horse) Wild horses are free domestic horses. I guess thoroughbred means bred for racing. But many racehorses are so over-bred for running qualities that their lungs cannot keep up with the rest of the body, and they spew lung-blood from nose and mouth at the end of a race. For intelligence and endurance a mustang is best. In the 1950s there was a champion racehorse named Bill not even a racehorse name and he had no pedigree at all. He liked to bite photographers. Obviously he liked to run. The Cigarettes In the movies it is mostly the bad guys who smoked cigars. Real men must smoke, but cigarettes. For many years before Marlborough, cowboys were known to smoke Bull Durham tobacco. It comes in a cloth sack and has a flat, coin-shaped cardboard tag attached to the drawstring and bearing a drawing of a bull. This tag was worn outside the pocket of the shirt so that it could be seen. I began wearing a sack of Bull Durham tobacco in my shirt pocket when I was eight years old. It is not good and not at all practical. The tobacco is some kind of Virginia Brightleaf, but without much taste. It is very dry and cut into small confetti chips, so that what doesn't blow away in the wind gets sucked down your windpipe. Supposedly real cowboys can roll a Bull Durham cigarette with one hand and watch out for strays or Indians at the same time. Everyone I knew smoked Camels (when I started smoking there were no filter cigarettes. When I first tried one an L & M I thought it tasted like vanilla ice cream.) Camels were known to be so pure that they could be used for ceremonies. And I think that was true, because I often got a pack with weevils or little maggots living in it. When I moved to Mexico in 1987 I switched to the similar-tasting brand, Delicados. Most Mexican cowboys smoke Delicados. Originally made for women, there is a bit of sugar in the paper.

The Cowboy Suit The Bandana In the older cowboy movies outlaws pulled their bandanas up to cover their mouth and noses before the robbery. Surely that would not work they still rode the same horses and wore the same hats. It is said that cowboys wore bandanas in the same fashion to keep the dust out their lungs on the trail to sell their cattle. Mustve happened. But in old photos of

6 cowboys few are seen wearing bandanas. Mostly guys like Billy the Kid, a murderer of Indians, especially when dressed up especially for a photo portrait. [transposed parts of sentence here. OK?] In film every cowboy has a bandana. The styles differ by decade, more or less, and as with hats, according to whether you were a good guy or a bad guy. In the 1950's the Hollywood bandana became a minimal, elegant accessory for the good guy. I remember seeing a film starring Randolph Scott, acknowledged as one of the more authenticlooking cowboys. In this particular film he wore a thin lavender silk bandana (or maybe it was 1950s rayon) tied at the side of his neck. He had undone it to wash up in the river and, walking back to the corral, or whatever, carefully tied it back in the same place, and was once again fully dressed. Roy Rogers wore the same kind of bandana. Illustrations one, two and three are examples of this style; the third begins to go into the more full-bodied, but not yet traditional bandana of 1960s film cowboys. I believe the next three images (4, 5 and 6) begin to show that style. With the 1980s lets say with the rise of Kevin Costner the super-authentic bandana style, the old-fashioned style has returned. Illustration 7, 8, and 9 show this. The Shirts We know that the cowboy suit is a modified Mexican vaquero suit, and so, of course, I imagine that the fancy bat-wing yoke on cowboy shirts must be from Spanish fanciness. But why do cowboys shirts have snaps instead of buttons? Are they functional? The Pants My family got a radio when I was seven years old, and my brother and I listened to a cowboy show called Tom Mix. Tom Mix had been a silent film cowboy, and before that had worked on one of the Oklahoma show ranches that put on entertainment for the public. William S. Hart, the first Hollywood cowboy, started out on the same ranch. Toms radio show was sponsored by a breakfast cereal called Shredded Ralston (the Ralston Company also makes Purina Dog Chow.) I can still sing the horrible song: Take a tip from Tom, go and tell your mom, Shredded Ralston cant be beat. But we never had it at home. Well, anyway, here is a photo of Mix in his cowboy suit. Notice that he is proudly wearing ski pants. (Illustration) The British novelist Len Deighton often dresses his Americans in 'denim trousers'. I do not own a pair of blue jeans, and would not wear them. As the artist Alan Michelson says, Blue jeans are the ubiquitous sign of rebellion. How can rebellion be ubiquitous? But generation after generation, the blue jeans revolution continues to expands.

7 Readers might begin to think that I had a strange childhood; it was really quite normal. There were no blue jeans at all. Throughout the forties and early 1950s young boys wore overall with a bib and suspender straps. None of us, of course, wore the ones made of light denim, although some of the stupid boys did. We wore striped ones. Very elegant. Grey and black strips of equal width. In summer we wore khaki shorts. Older boys stopped wearing overalls and switched to khaki trousers. The first blue jeans came in the early 1950s. Maybe it was 1954 when I got a pair. The smell of new blue jeans was beautiful, even though they turned your legs blue. It was the smell of the dye. It is semi-interesting that so much of Western history coincides with both the explosion of slavery and the Industrial Revolution. Both the cheap supply of cotton twill and indigo dye owe to slavery and new machinery. Those ur-American histories made the cowboy suit. After that first pair I wore nothing else until about 1991.In the early 1960s I wore Mexican huarache sandals, blue jeans, white shirts and a suit coat, sometimes with a black tie. That was for dress-up. From 1956 to 65, except for four years military service, I mostly wore blue jeans and cowboy boots. It was professional gear I wore the stuff to work. In the mid 1970s I was the American Indian Movement's representative tot he United Nations. There were often meetings and receptions that required formal attire, although those who wore national costumes were exempt from this rule. I convinced the Protocol Office that blue jeans were part of the national costume of American Indians if worn with a ribbon shirt and some sort of headband. Blue jeans do not look good on people. When British men wear blue jeans they look like silly versions of James Dean. Italian men in bluejeans look like workers more than rebels, and French men wear blue jeans as though they were denim trousers. Scandinavians and Germans look like slobs. The Hat Cowboys are suckers for brand names: Marlboroughs, Levis, Tony Lama boots, John B. Stetson hats. My father was not a cowboy, and it is impossible for me to imagine him in a pair of blue jeans. But he was inordinately proud of his Stetson. He never wore a cowboy Stetson more the western townsman-gentleman-cattle king style favoured by the more timid type of Indian and black dudes as well as Joseph Cotton, Charles Pickford and Jackie Gleason when he played a cop in Burt Reynolds road movies. Stetsons have been around a long time, but not in the way now mythologized by the company. The company started in Philadelphia in the 1860s. It took advantage of all of

8 the advances being made in mass-production factories in England and New England. I once stayed in an apartment made for a Stetson Company workers family at the old headquarters in Philadelphia. The entire dinky little street had been a company street with company housing only for Stetson workers. So mean! So small! And so owned and captive the workers. Taking full advantage of recent immigrants. Some of them probably supplied hat-making expertise from Europe. Have you ever seen a hat being made? It is extraordinary European peasant technology, the stuff called felt. Felt can be made from a variety of animal fur. The fur is heated carefully in boiling water at the same time, that it is shaped and pressed. The fur shrinks, tightens and becomes practically a solid mass. By the time the John B. Stetson Company was founded, beaver pelts were scarce in New England. John Jacob Astors first fortune was made in beaver pelts. During the New Deal, as a strategy to lift the U.S. out of the depression the government commissioned artists to make designs for Manhattan subway stations. Astor Place station has tile-work beavers on the walls to commemorate this wealth. (And it includes a clever pun: the French for beaver is castor) For Stetson the final settling of the West must have been the ability to buy the last bulk of beaver pelts from the western traders and trappers. He advertised that his hats were made of pure beaver fur. English gentlemen at the time were also wearing beaver fur hats made by this North American trade. Those were the last days of trapper-heroes such as Jim Bridger. It was not only a time of deliberate destruction of the buffalo [or bison?], but of everything exploitable in the American West. Stetson was maybe the first major (non-gun) company to capitalise on the ideology of invasion of the West. I think, then, that they may have sold at least as many hats back East, if not many more, than they did to the cowboys of the West. Even now, their advertisements take credit for assisting the invasion. (illustration) Lets see, what is a cowboy hat? As we know it, it is basically a German carpenters hat. Odd to think, but true. Traditionally, German carpenters guild members wear a kind of cowboy suit and did so before the cowboys did. ((Hope to get an image)) Beginning around 1850 large numbers of Germans began to settle in Texas. (The cuisine known as Tex-Mex ought really to be called Ger- Mex.) They made much more of a cultural impact on the West than did the earlier settlers from Britain.

Hats with broad brims have been around a long time, but because fashion has often demanded that the brims be curled in different ways, it is difficult to notice that they are what they are. Lord Nelson wore a sombrero, as did Napoleon, but Napoleon pulled the sides of the brim all the way up, while Nelson pulled the front and back all the way up. Just imagine pulling these brims back flat and the English sailor looks of like a Mexican in his very wide brim cowboy hat. The tricorn colonial hat worn by Paul Revere and Mel Gibson is a cowboy hats that has been overlay squashed. A Mexican sombrero always has a strap of some sort, that ties under the chin. Besides the Mexicans only Clint Eastwood wears this. I dont see how cowboys keep their hats on. Doesnt the wind blow it off? If you are working say, driving a herd to Abilene and your hat blows off, it would be very inconvenient to double back, dismount and retrieve your hat. So why not have a strap, or string? I am not sure I believe all these cowboys riding everywhere, fighting, roping and all the other daily activities on horseback without losing their hats. When we see photos from the old days, there are not so many cowboy hats. Here is a photo of some guys in 1889 preparing to take some Cherokee land in Oklahoma. Look at their hats. (Fotos)

Robert Redford always wears his cowboy hat a little back on his head, with boyish tufts of hair sticking out in front. Thats because he has such an intricately natural hair-do that a hat worn in the normal way would ruin it. The problem with hair and hats began in the 1960s when mens hair-dos got fuller and fluffier. The hats moulded the hair into shapes not intended by the cowboys. Hat hair, it was called. The consequence is that cowboys never take off their hats in public, except, of course, those who still keep the Ronald Reagan hair-do. In restaurants and bars, in film and television, the pretence now is that historically cowboys never took their hats off. The Boots They may not be communist, but cowboy boots are at least Russian. OK, Mongolian. Developed by the hordes on the Russian Steppe. Because of the stirrup. The boot is pointed so that it can get quickly into the stirrup, and the high heel keeps the foot from going all the way through and possibly breaking your ankle. The militaries of Western Europe adopted this gear early on and, once again, the Spanish brought it to the New World.

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Not made for walking at all, bad for backs. Yet Spain put them on women. Womens high heel shoes are originally just more cowboy boots. Yes, I used to wear them. But my feet are very wide, so I had to cut the sides open to make them fit. That way, when you dismount it is possible to get thorns or small sticks in your boots. Still, I felt taller walking along. Tougher. The Gun Robert Wilson, the America opera artist and Philip de Montebello [??] the Director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, both like to wear cowboy boots and blue jeans with sports jackets. This kit has an understood gun. The wearer and the public know that the gun is there. Every cowboy suit has a gun. (And a script, of course.)