Pop Culture's Cowboy vs. The Real Cowboy
When we think of cowboys nowadays we often associate them
with qualities of great strength and bravery, Indiana Jones-like adventure, attractiveness,
and carefree enjoyment. Movies depicting cowboys trace as far back as Thomas
Edison’s film The Great Train Robbery
in which brave and extremely overly exaggerated strong cowboys rob a train. Good
or bad, cowboys are perceived with great skill and strength an attractive set
of characteristics for both modern and historic Americans. However in actuality
cowboys in the West were quite the opposite of the common popular culture’s heroic
perception of these low paid workers. One
of the biggest misconceptions is that cowboys often fought Indians. In truth
the most common people to have fought Indians would have been white miners,
settlers, and soldiers. Not cowboys. A cowboy’s job required a skill set of
handling livestock which would not have been very useful in defense against Indians
in comparison to settlers with hunting skills or miners with strength and
weapon like tools. Perhaps the only skill a cowboy would use is fleeing in
which he obtained from chasing after cows.
Other misconceptions of the cowboy include comfortable
living and romance. These factors were distorted through fictional novels,
paintings, and other forms of art. Sure a cowboy could have a romantic
lifestyle but it’s also likely that chasing women was not above the priority of
chasing cows considering the job in which they partook in required a great deal
of labor with very low pay. It would be hard to imagine that in truth cowboys
lived comfortably. Somehow cowboys became the icon of the West when the
majority of the West consisted of migrating families with more money than that
of a cowboy, or people who were poor looking to become wealthy. It’s very
possible that the false image of the heroic cowboy became the symbol of the
West because he represented what the West wanted to: Strength, Bravery, Independence,
Romance, Power, and Success.
The factor the contributed most to the ideal of the cowboy
are strength and pride. Strength, which much was required to settle to the
West, was viewed very positively through the idealistic cowboy who enticed
people to settle to the Great Frontier when the idea of the abundant amount of strength
required to succeed could have easily discouraged people from moving West.
Seeing the results that mental and physical strength had on the cowboy made
people look up to him in a desire to achieve the same quality of strength within
them. With great strength comes great pride. Americans already being a prideful
group of people could easily relate to the cowboy. This was the important
quality that convinced people they could be like the idealistic figurehead
considering he was an American just like the rest of them. It is through these
qualities people look up to the cowboy because in some way whether it be
strength, bravery, romance, or pride people look up to the pop culture’s hero,
The Cowboy.
