Misc. Information

ACORN CALF:
This is an undersized calf, often sickly; a runt.

AIRING THE LUNGS:
A cowboy term for cussing. And cussing they did!

AIR THE PAUNCH:
We call it vomiting or throwing up. They'd air the paunch after some hearty drinking.

ARBUCKLE'S:
When a cowboy had his Arbuckle's in hand, he was enjoying a cup of coffee. The Arbuckle Brothers of Pittsburgh made a mighty fine preroasted bean that was so popular in the Old West that Arbuckle's eventually became interchangeable with the actual word coffee, as in "Don't talk to me in the morning until I have my Arbuckle's." The "recipe" for coffee was generally a handful of coffee in a cup of water.

BANDANA:
The cowboy kerchief or bandana was another thing one could not be a cowboy without. The bandana had many uses, most notably as a dust mask while driving cattle kicking up dirt, as earmuffs in cold weather, as protection from sunburn on the neck, as a pot holder for hot pots or branding irons, as prevention against snow blindness in winter, a tourniquet or sling in case of injury and just in case they were planning to rob the stage, it made a nifty mask!. Red was the most common color and it could be made of silk, cotton or linen. Much like today, the bandana was generally folded into a triangle and tied around the neck, but with the knot in the back.

BOOTS:
Boots with pointy toes and high heels were designed and preferred because of their performance in the saddle. The heels allowed a good grip in the stirrup and the pointy toes allowed for fluid movement in and out of the stirrup.

BRANDING:
Most cows were branded on the left hip. Rustlers who were good at altering brands after pilfering the cows were known as "brand artists".

BUNKHOUSE:
When not on the trail, cowboys lived together in the communal bunkhouse on the ranch. The bunkhouse also was referred to as the doghouse, the dive, the shack, the dump, the dicehouse or the ram pasture.

CANNED COW:
This is what a cowboy called canned milk.

CHAPS:
Pronounced correctly as shaps, they're short for chaparejos (shap-ar-EH-hos), which were another important cowboy tool. These leather britches or wrap-around leggings were worn to prevent injury to the legs while chasing cattle. Popular types of chaps were woollies and shotguns.

COOK or COOKIE:
A cookie was the cook on the range when cowboys drove cattle. He was the most important person in camp and had to be quite resourceful in providing three hot square meals a day, rain or shine, cold or hot. Most were older white men, retired from cowboying but blacks, and foreign born men also fit the bill if they could cook up a storm. They were also called among other things, biscuit shooters, bean masters and belly cheaters. A cook's work was never done, as so it was true on the cattle drive. Since all the directions a drive took were guided by the North Star, it was the camp cook's duty each night to look up, note the North Star and turn the tongue of the chuckwagon toward it. That way, the next morning, the drive would know which way to head out.

COWBOY SONGS:
Cowboys really did sing cowboy songs to the cattle at night. Singing songs like "Old Dan Tucker," "Nearer My God To Thee," "In the Sweet By and By" or "The Texas Lullaby" soothed jittery cows, which helped reduce the likelihood of stampede. Thunder and lightning were the most common cause of stampede.

COWPUNCHERS:
Cowboys were sometimes called cowpunchers because while taking the Texas herds to the railhead markets in Kansas, cowboys would use long poles to whack the cattle into rail cars.

DIE-UP:
Cowboys all feared the dreaded die-up, when a bad blizzard or prolonged drought would kill mass amounts of cattle, sometimes the entire herd.

JUDAS STEER:
Part of the cowboy's job during the drive was to identify the Judas steer. Once at the end of the trail, the Judas could simply lead the other cattle to slaughter with no hassle. If a particularly good Judas was found, he was spared the meat hook and used again.

MAIL-ORDER COWBOY:
This was a derogatory term used to chide tenderfoot, urban "cowboys" who arrived from the East all decked out in fancy but hardly practical Western garb.

MAKINS:
Nary a cowboy would be caught without his "makins", the cigarette paper and tobacco used to roll his own cigarettes.

NIGHT HAWK:
While cowboys slept under the stars on a drive, one unlucky soul who drew the short straw, the "night hawk", had to stay up all night and guard the saddles.

PAY:
While cows were the point, cowboys did make pay for the drive. A trail boss could earn as much as $125 a month, the average Old West cowboy drew $25 to $40 a month.

ROPE:
The rope was a critical piece of equipment for any cowboy. Some cowboys had lariats made from the Mexican maguey plant; others had rope made of sisal, which is a derivative of the agave plant; still others liked a lariat made of rawhide or American or Russian hemp. But, by far the most popular of ropes was one made of Manila hemp, made from the Philippine banana plant. Standard rope moves included the backhand slip, forefooting, heeling, the pitch and the hoolihan.

SADDLE HORN:
The horn of the saddle was also called the "cowboy's apple".

SCREW WORM:
Cowboys had to constantly check the herd for evidence of screw worm larvae laid in open wounds by blowflies. This insect plague caused the eventual death of massive amounts of cattle in the Old West.

STAMPEDE

As it refers to cattle, probably from the Spanish word "Estampidea" which means that the herd becomes "spooked" and takes off running wild. This was more of a problem on long trail drives, as they were being taken to market because the cattle were constantly in unknown territory. Longhorn cattle were more prone to stampede because they were more "jumpy and skittish" than domesticated cattle were. Longhorns could be provoked to stampede by any sudden noise, like a gunshot, a thunderclap, or even a broken twig, or a dropped cookpot being enough to set them off running.

When the Longhorns stampeded, the cowboys had several ways to try and stop the cattle, one was to ride and get ahead and turn them to the right (for some strange reason cattle don't want to turn to the left while running) and get them running in a tight circle, which would tighten until the cattle stopped. Another tactic was to just let them "run themselves out" and they would eventually stop and could be rounded up. Longhorns tended to stay together during a stampede unlike domestic cattle which tended to scatter.

Chasing after a stampeding herd was full of dangers like; the cowboys horse stepping in a hole or otherwise loosing its footing and throwing the cowboy off, perhaps into the path of the stampeding cows, or getting their foot caught in the stirrup and getting dragged to death. Cows could be lost, and some low level rustlers who were not brave enough to risk shooting it out with the trail cowboys, would stampede a herd, and gather a few cattle figuring the trail boss would assume that the cattle were "lost" and not stolen.

Although most stampedes were associated with Longhorn cattle, there were also Buffalo stampedes which were even more dangerous than cattle stampedes, because Buffalo ran straight ahead (their eyes were on the sides of their heads) blindly, and they could not as a practical matter, be stopped until they decided to stop running on their own. Also Buffalo stampedes might mean that 5,000 to 10,000 or more were on the move and they were generally bigger than most any cattle.

The Indians use to stampede Buffalo over cliffs, or into canyon walls to kill a lot of them quickly. There are also reports of Buffaloes running into trains and knocking them off of the tracks. A Buffalo stampede was a mighty movement of large heavy beasts, and best to stay away from.

ST. ELMO'S FIRE
This phenomena has also been called "Foxfire" and it is a phosphorescent light, in the context of the old west, often seen on the tips of the cattle's horns and at times on the ears of horses, during stormy nights, or when electricity is in the air.

TENDERFOOT

An Easterner who is unschooled in the ways of the West, also called a "greenhorn" or "pilgrim" and some say the term possibly applied first to Eastern Cattle whose feet were more tender than the Longhorn cattle, then later it applied to people new to the West.

TEN GALLON HAT
This hat was usually a Stetson hat, but it was always a Cowboy hat with a high crown and a wide brim. It was originally created for Buffalo Bill Cody, who wanted a larger-than-life Cowboy hat for his Wild West Show. And contrary to the name, the hat could not hold 10-gallons of anything.

TEXAS FEVER
This was a cattle disease caused by a Texas "tick" that the Longhorn cattle themselves were immune to, but it infected other cattle in Kansas and Missouri. In Missouri state laws were passed to prevent Texas cattle from infecting the local herds, and Kansas vigilantes formed as early as 1855, which led to some very dangerous armed conflicts. In 1866, quarantine laws were enacted to keep Texas cattle out of eastern Kansas, which resulted in the emergence of the western cattle towns such as Dodge City becoming cattle drive towns for a period of time.

TRAIL DRIVES

The most famous "Trail Drives" were from Texas north to the railheads in Kansas. They usually began in the spring, so that the cattle could feed on the new grass as they were herded along. For the northern ranges, the key element was to get to their destinations before an early winter came upon them. Also driving cattle driven in the spring, usually avoided the flooded rivers, so if a herd could leave at the right time, the streams and rivers would be shallow and fordable.

Starting too late could cause problems (including the loss of cattle) because the streams/rivers would be flooded from melted snow. The favorite speed was around 10 to 12 miles a day, although at different times, or under ideal conditions the herd might travel 18-24 miles per day. Generally a herd of steers moved faster, but a mixed herd that included cows and calves that moved slower, but was less likely to stampede.

In a trail drive, the cattle were "guided" and sort of drifted along rather than actually driven on an exact path. The drive started after breakfast, and went until time for the noonday meal (dinner) in which the Chuckwagon had gone ahead to pick a spot for the noonday meal. The Trail Boss would scout ahead for a place to bed down the herd for the night.

A herd of around 3000 or so cattle would need somewhere between 12 to 15 drovers, and this included the Trail Boss, the cook, and the wrangler. Rank and/or status of the cowboy was determined by his place on the drive. The best positions were lead riders who "guided" the herd, the outriders on the flank were next, and the least favorite position was the "drag" riders who ate a lot of dust from the herd. At night two man teams would takes about two hour shifts, they would often sing to the cattle and to keep themselves awake. A term that was used for the shift was "Night Hawks" and they circled the herd to make sure they stayed together.

In the best of the trail outfits, each cowboy anywhere between eight and 10 horses in a group of horses taken care of by the "wrangler" because the cowboys needed a good swimming horse, a good night horse and so forth. It was up to the Wrangler who was usually a young and inexperienced lad, and many cowboys got their start as wranglers themselves. The wrangler had to know who each horse belonged to, and keep them together.

TUMBLEWEEDS

This is a phrase used to describe various varieties of bushes that break off when very dry, and roll with the wind. These thick matted bushes sometimes stick to each other to resemble a giant Tumbleweed, and single Tumbleweeds six or eight feet in diameter, are not uncommon in the Southwest at times. They have been seen in many Western movies, but far from being "quaint" they can be both a nuisance and a fire hazard.

WAR BAG:
Cowboys traveled light, and stored their meager worldly possessions in his "war bag". Inside was generally everything he owned, typically an extra set of clothes, extra ammunition, spare parts for equipment, playing cards, bill of sale for his horse, his makins and maybe a harmonica or a few precious letters.

WESTERN TRAIL
The cattle trail that led to western Kansas and was made after laws were passed against Texas cattle because of the Texas Fever. The trail began near San Antonio and then moved up to Fort Griffin, then crossed the Red River (the present day border of Texas with Oklahoma) and then headed north through Indian territory across several rivers (that were actually necessary for the watering of the cattle) then on to Dodge City where the trail headed north to Colby Kansas and then to Ogallala, Nebraska where the Union Pacific Railroad had constructed cattle pens and loading chutes. Beyond that there were several other destinations like Deadwood, and some Forts near the Canadian border.

WRANGLER
The name for the cowboy who takes care of the horses, usually a younger and inexperienced lad who generally has to prove he can do a good job at "Wrangling" before he will be given a job as a trail rider. Wrangling means to take care of the horses and to herd and/or drive them along.


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