Large cattle muster

An 1898 photo of a round-up in Colorado

Colorado. "Round up" on the Cimarron, a photochrom print from c. 1898, showing one of the large musters of cattle done in the days before barbed wire, fences, and easy access to transport ended the necessity for the practice. This is almost certainly in the town of Cimarron and the river on the left is the Cimarron River.

 

The roundup is an iconic image of the Old West: the gathering of cattle in the open range, followed by them being driven vast distances from ranches to distant railheads over a period of several weeks. Due to the time and distance involved, not only did livestock and cowboys have to endure rough terrain and extreme weather, herds were also at risk from theft, hunger and disease.

In the 1830s cattle driving became a steady occupation.

In 1867 the Goodnight–Loving Trail opened markets for Texas cattle in Colorado and New Mexico.

 

A photochrom is a colorized image produced from black-and-white photographic negatives.

 

SOURCE: Wikipedia

What do Cowboys eat from the chuckwagon?

This is a nice picture of a cowboy cook with his chuck wagon. The photograph was taken in 1907 on a Texas Ranch. I don't know if you have ever had the chance to eat real cowboy cooking, but let me tell you that it is really good. I grew up on West Texas cowboy cooking. Cowboy food is not about living long, but living large. A chuckwagon like this one would likely be cooking up buttermilk biscuits prepared in a dutch oven on a campfire, beef, lamb, and goat slow cooked over oak coals, hard cured hams, pinto beans, cowboy coffee and even peach cobbler. The food is typically high fat, and high salt. You can bet that this cowboy is not serving up a salad with the meal he is preparing. 

FROM OLD PICTURE OF THE DAY

What did cowboys eat on the range?

Texas Cowboys eating lunch. 1907 

 
These cowboys are eating out of cans. Canned tomatoes and canned peaches were cowboy favorites on the range. They probably got sick of beans...cowboys ate a lot of beans, dried beef, buffalo or pork and more beans. Dried meat was called Jerky which was a way of preserving the meat so it would last. It was made and eaten by Native Americans as well as the cowboys of America.

In 1866 the first chuckwagons started moving from camp to camp feeding the cowboys. Find out more about what food was served to the cowboys from the chuckwagons here.

RESOURCES: Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries by David Dary

Get along little dogies or Dogie's Lament

Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little dogies
It's your misfortune and none of my own
Whoopie ti yi yo, git along little dogies
You know that Wyoming will be your new home

Do you know this American folk song? Little dogies means the cattle or more specifically a motherless calf which was sometimes referred to as a dogie, (pronounced with a long "o")  In this traditional song, Dogie's Lament, also known as Git along little dogies, the "dogies" meant cattle strong enough to be herded from Texas to Wyoming, including  young, non-orphaned animals. 

"In Western Words Ramon F. Adams gives one possible etymology for dogie, whose origin is unknown. During the 1880s, when a series of harsh winters left large numbers of orphaned calves, the little calves, weaned too early, were unable to digest coarse range grass, and their swollen bellies "very much resembled a batch of sourdough carried in a sack." Such a calf was referred to as dough-guts. The term, altered to dogie according to Adams, "has been used ever since throughout cattle land to refer to a pot-gutted orphan calf." Another possibility is that dogie is an alteration of Spanish dogal, "lariat." Still another is that it is simply a variant pronunciation of doggie." THE FREE DICTIONARY

You can hear different versions of the song on:
Cisco Houston Sings Songs Of The Open Road, 1960 ALBUM
Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs Volume 2, 1964 ALBUM
Creek Nickel Little Cowpoke, 1998 ALBUM

Have you heard this song before? I originally thought Woody Guthrie wrote it but have learnt that he often takes traditional songs and changes them around. Do you know any other cowboy songs?