INTRODUCTION

The basement in my grandparents' home on El Paso Street was a monument to western ways.  The walls were covered with old photographs of the rodeo, the Range Ride, and ranch adventures.  The place was packed with old leather saddlery and hunting trophies.  My grandfather was a mid-century cowboy who grew up riding bucking broncos, my mother was a rodeo princess and my aunt was a rodeo queen.  My grandmother had grown up in a frontier mining town, and my father came from the wide-open spaces of the legendary cowtown of Cheyenne, Wyoming. My family made sure that we knew and respected western heritage—even though we lived most of our days in normal city jobs and normal city schools on normal city streets with normal city comforts and nary a nearby cow or horse to be seen.  I was a “sometimes” cowboy who stumbled upon the romance and mystique of the old west through a happy accident of birth.

It is a powerful force, this cowboy mystique.  It sells movies, cigarettes and beer.  It captures imagination for things it never was, and seems to bear little responsibility for what it was not.  Succeeding the founders and heroes of the Revolution in the minds of the people, the cowboys of the Old West came to personify the ideals and perspectives of the new nation.  According to Amber Kelly, in her essays on The Myth of the Literary Cowboy, the legendary American cowboy persona took root, in part, to assuage the horrors of the Civil War and create a “a cohesive story for the future that could overcome war-time grudges and fit into a singular American identity.”  The cowboy became the “knight” of the new frontier, “horse-reliant wanderers … symbols of gallantry and masculinity forged during times of social and economic change” (Kelly).  More than just looks and stories, the “cowboy way” is a whole way of seeing, feeling and acting.  It is a whole package of actions, habits and deeply held values that transcend traditional political lines.  It is worldview that is perhaps more faithful to the American Ideal than any other we know. But it is also one that has been corrupted in modern circles to ascribe to it values that were never embraced by real cowboys.  

A real cowboy’s self-reliance did not mean that he had to be anti-social. Ruggedness did not mean disregard for others.  Fearlessness in engaging nature did not mean a lack of respect for the land and the creatures on it.  Loneliness was an affliction, not a desired state of being.  Courage, pride and determination did not overshadow clear thinking.  You could ride for the brand without riding roughshod over others.  The life lessons that were passed down from generation to generation of American frontiersmen had nothing to do with Republican or Democrat politicking.  They were universal values born of the need for cooperation, compassion and individual effort in appropriate and roughly equal measure; and above all a respect for justice and equality among all human beings, regardless of class, race, gender or theology.  Those were hallmarks of the true cowboy way.

Unfortunately, we have plenty of evidence that many people who call themselves “cowboys” are not holding up their end of the justice, equality and compassion part of the true ethos.  We also know that many who proudly called themselves “good cowboys” in the past were racist, misogynist and xenophobic.  We have a lot of historical reckoning to do in America—and the old West is certainly not immune.  I am sure that my grandfather and father’s views were not always a pure reflection of justice, equality and compassion; but I also know that they were close enough to those ideals that they engendered a sturdy resistance in my soul—and those of my siblings—to the hateful callings of those who sometimes claim to be the voice of “western” values when they decry all forms of collective action, environmental stewardship, racial equality, compassionate immigration and equal justice.  We know enough about who we are and what values we stand for to resist all of that demagoguery.