"The cowboys form a class by themselves, and are now quite as typical
representatives of the wilder side of Western life, as were a few years
ago the skin-clad hunters and trappers. They are mostly of native birth,
and although there are among them wild spirits from every land, yet the
latter soon become undistinguishable from their American companions, for
these plainsmen are far from being so heterogeneous a people as is
commonly supposed." --Theodore Roosevelt, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman
Hunting Trips of a Ranchman--Hunting Trips on The Prairie and in the
Mountains (1882), written by Theodore Roosevelt before he became
president, is about his time as a ranchman in the Dakota badlands and
his hunting trips into the wilderness and the mountains. Roosevelt's
vivid descriptions of the beauty of nature and the individualism of
ranchmen and cowboys has become a classic of the West.