Slouched in the saddle, squinting into the sunset.  Nothing evokes the spirit of the West like the slow-talking, bowlegged, courtly cowboy.  He has become, along with the Bald Eagle and that green lady in New York Harbor, an icon of American independence and courage.  Fact is, our most American of occupations owes its fashions and customs to the Spanish Conquistadors.  The very name itself is an Anglicization of the Spanish word vaquero.

Although the average person might think all the terms for those who tend to cattle are interchangeable, you wouldn’t want to make that mistake on the range.  A wrangler is in charge of the care and feeding of horses and is traditionally very low down on the cowboy social ladder.  A cattle drive of 3,000 head requires 10 cowboys needing 3 horses each, so the wrangler is an overworked and underappreciated feller.  Next would come the buckaroo.  He breaks and trains horses.  The cowpoke, a little higher up the scale, was the man who prodded the cows at the end of the drive into the train cars at the railhead.  It is the cowboy who is the prince of this romantic group.  The “chase’em, rope’em, brand’em” go-to-guy, with the most highly-developed horsemanship and a way with a lariat as exact as a surgeon with a scalpel.

Cowpunchin’, pokin’ or boyin’, however glamorous, is still one of the lowest paying occupations.  In the early days of the American West, it was a dollar a day and room and board, if you want to call a pot of beans and a cot in a communal bunkhouse that.  Today the average yearly income for ranch workers is about $19,000.  But it has been traditionally one of the most racially and culturally diverse occupations in this country.  Long before desegregation and affirmative action, 15% of the working cowboys were African American.  That’s got Wall Street beat by 10%.  About 25% were Latino.

Well, it’s an honest livin’, so if your 401K is in the toilet or your neighbors are outside with torches demandin’ you divide your bonus with ‘em, you lowdown sidewinder, grab your cell phone, slip out the back door, saddle up and head west.  You’ll probably breathe a lot freer.

In the meantime, brew up a pot of acorn coffee and gnaw on a strip of coyote jerky while you browse here for high-fallutin’, ahem… HIGH DEFINITION clips of cowboys, cattle, the Wild West, and more!