英美文化概论论文

英美文化概论论文

－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－

英美文化概论论文

In the past few weeks, we spent 10 lessons on essentials of British & American cultures study. In

this course, we learn in brief about the history and government system etc. During the Learning

process, what impresses me most is the cowboys.

An integral part of the story of America, the cowboy is a national icon, a romantic, rugged

metaphor for America’s frontier past, Westward expansion and creation myths. Sensationalizedby

Hollywood and by real-life bad boys, the heroic, hard-working, hard-riding, free-thinking cowboy

is inseparable from American history itself.

America’s first cowboys came from Mexico. Beginning in the 1500s, vaqueros—the Spanish term

for “cowboy”—were hired by ranchersto drive and tend to livestockbetween Mexico and what is

now New Mexico and Texas. During the early 1800s, and leading up to Texas’s independence from

Mexico in 1836, the number of English speaking settlers in the area increased. These American

settlers took their cues from the vaquero culture, borrowing clothing styles and vocabulary and

learning how to drive their cattle in the same way.

The vaquero influence persisted throughout the 1800s. Cowboys came from a variety of

backgrounds, and included European immigrants, African Americans, Native Americans and

Midwestern and Southern settlers. In the nineteenth century, one out of three American

cowboys in the south was Mexican.

As America built railroads further and further west, fostering industry, transportation and white

settlements in former Indian territories, the cowboy played a crucial part in the nation’s

expansion. In the early 1800s, Texas cattleman had herded cows via the Shawnee Trail to cattle

markets in St. Louis and Kansas City. During the 1860s and following the Civil War, they began

herding via the Chisholm and Western Trails towards the new railroads in Kansas, where livestock

was then loaded into freight cars and transported to markets around the country.

In less than two decades cowboys herded more than six million cows and steers to the railroads.

Most cowboys were young—the average age was 24—and hard-working men in need of quick

cash, although the pay was low. The work was exhausting and lonely. Cowboys also helped

establish towns, spending their money in the “cowtown” settlements across the wes t during

their time off. Townspeople frowned oncowboys as lawless troublemakers who brought nothing

but violence and immorality, and some even banned them from town.

Ranching, or the raising of cattle or other livestock on range land, also expanded during the late

nineteenth century. The forced removal of Native Americans and the clearing of the American

frontier resulted in the near extinction of the region’s many buffalo and bison. This land, now

dominated by white homesteaders, was used for ranching.

Public lands on the Great Plains constituted “open range,” where any white settler could buy and

raise cattle for grazing. The invention and distribution of barbed wire in the 1870s revolutionized

the concept of privately owned land in the Midwest, fencing off homesteads suitable for farming

and ranching—but also limiting the work to be done by cowboys.

With the rise of private landholdings in the late 1800s, the cattle driving industry had lost its

cachet. Private landowners and “free grazers”—vaqueros and cowboys alike—locked horns over

what was appropriate use for land whose ownership was also in question. By the 1890s, the wide open ranges and cattle trails were gone and privatized, and the days of the long cattle drives to

the railroads were over.

Smaller-scale cattle drives continued until the mid-1900s, with livestock herded from Arizona to

New Mexico and throughout the southwestern United States. Most cowboys left the open trail

and took jobs at one of the myriad of private ranches that were settling across the West. But as

the work of actual cowboys declined in the U.S., the cowboy lifestyle continued to be

popularized—and stereotyped—by a new Hollywood film genre: the Western movie.

The late 1900s were tough times for cowboys, ranchers, farmers and anyone working with the

land in the U.S. Changing modes of food distribution and production, widespread urbanization

and severe economic difficulties forced many to sell their land, go bankrupt, change professions,

or take out large loans. As Vern Sager says in The Last Cowboy, “Don’t seem quite fair. A person

works hard to make a little and gives it to the bank.”

Cowboys in the 21st century might seem like an anachronism, but as Sager demonstrates, their