How did cattle drives come about--and why did the cowboy become an
iconic American hero?
Cattle drives were the largest, longest, and ultimately the last of the
great forced animal migrations in human history. Spilling out of Texas,
they spread longhorns, cowboys, and the culture that roped the two
together throughout the American West. In cities like Abilene, Dodge
City, and Wichita, buyers paid off ranchers, ranchers paid off
wranglers, and railroad lines took the cattle east to the packing plants
of St. Louis and Chicago.
The cattle drives of our imagination are filled with colorful cowboys
prodding and coaxing a line of bellowing animals along a dusty path
through the wilderness. These sturdy cowhands always triumph over
stampedes, swollen rivers, and bloodthirsty Indians to deliver their
mighty-horned companions to market--but Tim Lehman's Up the Trail
reveals that the gritty reality was vastly different. Far from being
rugged individualists, the actual cow herders were itinerant laborers--a
proletariat on horseback who connected cattle from the remote prairies
of Texas with the nation's industrial slaughterhouses.
Lehman demystifies the cowboy life by describing the origins of the
cattle drive and the extensive planning, complicated logistics, great
skill, and good luck essential to getting the cows to market. He reveals
how drives figured into the larger story of postwar economic development
and traces the complex effects the cattle business had on the
environment. He also explores how the premodern cowboy became a national
hero who personified the manly virtues of rugged individualism and
personal independence. Grounded in primary sources, this absorbing book
takes advantage of recent scholarship on labor, race, gender, and the
environment. The lively narrative will appeal to students of Texas and
western history as well as anyone interested in cowboy culture.
