Cowboys of the Lone Star State

Is there any symbol of Texas more enduring and iconic than the cowboy? From the earliest cattle drives on the open range to the modern ranch to the NFL stadium, the image of this quintessential character is both well-defined and hard to pin down—just like the real-life version! Cowboys—and cowgirls—have been depicted in fireside tales, literature, song, art, and advertising. Of course, our State Archives, housed at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, preserves documentation of all of these and more!

The exploits of cowboys throughout Texas history are recorded in all types of official, business, and personal collections in the archives—both the heroic and the everyday, good and bad, fun and all work. Owen Wister (1860-1938), a prominent American writer during the late 1800s and early 1900s best known for his western stories, particularly his novel “The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains” (1902), took 115 photographs during his trip to Texas in 1893. These and many more photos of cowboys, horses, polo ponies, polo players and games, stables, architecture, the San Fernando cathedral in San Antonio, towns, residents, and landscapes can be browsed online in the Texas Digital Archive (https://tsl.access.preservica.com/tda/prints-and-photographs/#wister).

Other collections contain hundreds of photographs of cowboy work and life spanning many decades. A circa 1900-1920 photo shows Bob Simpson standing beside the chuck wagon from which he prepared meals for trail drivers on the Long S Ranch belonging to C. C. Slaughter. An undated photograph of two cowboys on horseback, working in tandem to rope a calf, reminds us that the official state sport—rodeo!—evolved from the chores of working cowboys during the early years of the cattle industry. Another undated photo, likely taken in the early twentieth century and labeled “Cowboys delight, bringing calves to brand,” likewise shows two cowboys working calves under big, open skies.

Marketing materials can also teach us about both the actual work or cowboys and how the cattle industry, ranching, the Texas landscape, and more were perceived and promoted over the years. The 1936 Texas Centennial Commission produced a series of posters to advertise that year’s exposition in Dallas, including two prominently featuring cowboys. Materials produced by the Texas Tourist Development Agency include many photos as well as audiovisual materials and advertisements from the mid-to-late twentieth century, such as a gorgeous 1992 color slide of Cottonwood Creek Ranch depicting a lone rider among bison. An undated but clearly modern, color photo from the same collection focuses on men leaning over intense open flames, stirring large pans of food and recalling the earlier photo of Bob Simpson and his chuck wagon. And an evocative image of a single man astride his horse, with a Texas-sized hat, working gloves, and lasso, provides a classic example of what many people picture when they hear the word “cowboy.”

However, not all cowboy history is heroic; take for instance, the outlaw Sam Bass, who first worked as a cowboy near Denton before turning to stagecoach and train robberies. In September 1877 he netted $60,000 in newly minted twenty-dollar gold pieces from the express car of a Union Pacific passenger train in Nebraska alongside his accomplice, former cowboy and San Antonio bartender Joel Collins. Bass made it back to Texas, where he formed a new gang. Meanwhile, the Texas Rangers were facing pressure to prove their effectiveness, and they set out to capture Bass at any cost, chasing the outlaw until July 1878, when he was shot in a gun battle during a bank robbery in Round Rock. The Ranger pursuit of Bass and the gun fight in Round Rock inflated the reputation of Bass and his gang, and the cowboy song “The Ballad of Sam Bass” made him a legend. Three years later, Governor Oran M. Roberts was still getting letters offering to pursue the remnants of the Bass Gang, including one from a detective in New Mexico.

Cowboys and the cowboy life have long been memorialized in song, and the State Archives holds sheet music documenting this history, as well. The 1932 publication, “The Cowboy Sings: Traditional Songs of the Western Frontier Arranged for General Singing” by Kenneth S. Clark, preserves tunes ranging from elegant to bawdy to religious, such as “The Dying Ranger,” “Sam Bass,” and “The Great Round-Up,” which includes the lyrics:

No maverick or slick will be tallied

In the great book of life and home,

For he knows all the brands and the earmarks

That down through the ages have come.

In addition to these rich archival collections, TSLAC also preserves historical artifacts. Implements like branding irons, spurs, cowbells, whips, saddles, and more can make cowboy history jump off the page and into reality. As we seek to understand this most storied of Texas archetypes, the records, photographs, and artifacts in the archive remind us that cowboys were—and are—far from just a romanticized hero, tourism trope, or even Old West outlaw, but an important part of the historical development and contemporary culture of Texas.