Jobs on a cattle drive
Von Fource
So how many different jobs were available on a typical cattle drive?
When I watch Rawhide on TV I see the boss - Mr. Favor. Then there's the
cook - Wishbone, his assistant - Mushy, the ramrod - Rowdy, a scout, and
some other cowboys. So how many different jobs actually existed in a real
cattle drive? Just wondering!
Thanks
Gerald Clough
Well, it varied with time and a bit with different outfits. In the
beginning, there was no "chuck wagon", and so, no full-time cook. In
what we might call the fully evolved drive, there would most often be:
A boss. A drive was bossed by an experienced man, usually one known
personally or by reputation by the owners. His reputation was founded on
an ability to move cattle over long distances with minimal losses and at
a rate that allowed the cattle to maintain or even gain weight. He had
to have good cow sense that came with experience in such things as
picking a bed ground for the night, perhaps on slightly inclined ground,
and in knowing how closely to hold the herd, which could have much to do
with how settled they remained after dark. It was like anything else -
success was made up of hundreds of bits of hard-won knowledge. He also
had to be trustworthy. A counter check signed by the boss and drawn on
the owner's bank would be accepted. (A boss might well finish a drive
with exactly the count with which he began, but he might also have
picked up a few cattle that belonged to someone else along the way. And
lots of old cow people maintained that anyone else's beef tasted better
than your own.)
A cook. The cook drew the second highest pay on the drive, roughly twice
the salary of the hands. A good cook could make it possible for the boss
to hire on experienced hands. A poor cook could leave the boss making do
with losers who couldn't work for the better outfits. Many of the cooks
worked hard at being characters. They were bad men to cross, and only
the boss (and sometimes not even the boss) was allowed to ride within a
rope length of the cooking operation. Cook's earned their pay. It's no
joke trying to whip up a meal on a fire of damp cow chips or with no
fire at all.
Horse wrangler. What was the wrangler's name on Rawhide? I seem to
recall him being Mexican. He was often a man who felt closer to horses
than to people. With each man rotating frequently through his string of
mounts, the wrangler had plenty to keep up with. He frequently helped
out the cook. It's unlikely that many drives had a full-time cook's helper.
Drovers. You could really divide them among the various positions they
occupied when the drive was proceeding normally. Point men were out in
front, appropriately more experienced men who had a good idea of how to
move cattle over the landscape. Depending on the size of the herd, there
would be flank and swing men to each side. Drags, the entry level, ate
dust and watched for strays.
A scout is something you don't hear about in contemporary accounts. The
boss knew the trail, and he generally went ahead to pick the next bed
ground, taking the cook along to begin preparing for the evening meal.
Having a "ramrod" was, I think a literary device on Rawhide, since it
provided some variety in jobs and a course of conflict, as well as a
place for a particular sort of character.
--
Gerald Clough
clo...@texas.net
"Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."
Von Fource
"Gerald Clough" <clo...@texas.net> wrote in message
news:3F1B2A50...@texas.net...
> Von Fource wrote:
>
> A cook. The cook drew the second highest pay on the drive, roughly twice
> the salary of the hands. A good cook could make it possible for the boss
> to hire on experienced hands. A poor cook could leave the boss making do
> with losers who couldn't work for the better outfits. Many of the cooks
> worked hard at being characters. They were bad men to cross, and only
> the boss (and sometimes not even the boss) was allowed to ride within a
> rope length of the cooking operation. Cook's earned their pay. It's no
> joke trying to whip up a meal on a fire of damp cow chips or with no
> fire at all.
Twice the salary of the other hands? Dang, and I thought Rowdy was the
cool one - lol. So Wishbone is making more than Rowdy? So Wishbone is not
only a clown but makes the big bucks too!
Can you also tell me how much these people made in modern terms? Would
being a cook or driver pay good for it's time?
Thanks!
Todd
Stampede and has been for a long time.
I discovered a couple years back that my great uncle Alexander Parsonage rode saddlebronc in the
original Calgary Stampede back in 1912! That darn near makes folks like me royalty, being a
descendant and all.
--
Todd
Sunsite
wrote:
>Horse wrangler. What was the wrangler's name on Rawhide? I seem to
>recall him being Mexican. He was often a man who felt closer to horses
>than to people. With each man rotating frequently through his string of
>mounts, the wrangler had plenty to keep up with. He frequently helped
>out the cook. It's unlikely that many drives had a full-time cook's helper.
On Rawhide that was Jesus. His superstitions were directly woven into
some plots.
Gerald Clough
> Can you also tell me how much these people made in modern terms? Would
> being a cook or driver pay good for it's time?
>
> Thanks!
Establishing salary equivalents are difficult. Certainly, and not
surprisingly, they weren't highly paid. Something like $25 or $30 a
month for a common drover sounds about like the $1/day working man par
for the time, but not everyone was going to find winter work. A cook
might make twice that. A highly thought of boss, in a situation in which
an owner was hard-up for a good man, might be offered $100/month. And
that sort of man could well be an owner in his own right and would
likely at least be secure in a year-round job. A man who found himself
without a job could end up "riding the line", drifting from ranch to
ranch, partaking, however embarassing it was, of the proverbial
generousity characteristic of the west.
Of course, the drover's pay was "and found", his meals being provided,
both on a drive and on a ranch, were he fortunate enough to find a
berth. A prudent man who didn't have to replace too much of his own gear
could wind up with decent money in his pocket, even after getting rigged
out in new clothes and boots at the end of drive. (His old clothes
likely weren't even worth of being called rags.) Of course, there were
no benefits, except what a generous boss might pay for, if a man was
hurt. The usual benefit was to ride the wagon for a few days while you
healed. And no cowboy cared about lide insurance, nor would any company
be so foolish as to insure a cowboy's life.
Figure a traveler in Texas in the mid-19th century could find lodgings
for the night, with meal and fodder for his horse, for about $1. An
actor at Ford's Theater in Washington about 1858 might make anywhere
from $20 to $80 a month. A US Senator immediately after the Civil War
made $5,000 a year.
A cowboy wasn't going to get rich off his salary. But they had something
a city worker found hard to come by. They had considerable freedom, both
to move about and freedom from an ever-present set of bills each month.
On a ranching operation, until later in the 19th century when a more
corporate mentality set in, a man was often allowed to take some time to
build up his own small herd, which could be his ticket out of somewhat
itinerant bachelorhood to become a ranching family man.
Earlier, just after the Civil War, in Texas, any kind of paying job was
unusual. There wasn't any cash around. Common currency was a note good
for a cow and a calf, generally accepted to be worth about $10, and
passed from hand to hand, in lieu of money. But a man of determination
could accumulate as many wild cattle (and they were mostly all wild as
deer) as he could catch and brand. Many men who could be considered
well-to-do might not handle $50 in cash in a year. But most of what we
expect to pay for was made or grown or built by physical effort. That's
part of why it's deceptive to compare pay scales.
Just think of a cowboy as an agricultural worker on horseback. That
gives you a feel for where they fell in earning power.
Also, keep in mind that trail driving was tough work, and lots of men
went up the trail once or only a very few times.
toadmonkey
>
>Establishing salary equivalents are difficult. Certainly, and not
>surprisingly, they weren't highly paid. Something like $25 or $30 a
>month for a common drover sounds about like the $1/day working man par
>for the time, but not everyone was going to find winter work. A cook
>might make twice that. A highly thought of boss, in a situation in which
>an owner was hard-up for a good man, might be offered $100/month. And
>that sort of man could well be an owner in his own right and would
>likely at least be secure in a year-round job. A man who found himself
>without a job could end up "riding the line", drifting from ranch to
>ranch, partaking, however embarassing it was, of the proverbial
>generousity characteristic of the west.
>
DAMN! That's a hell of lot more than I knew before about that! I always
thought they were tossed a few gold coins or something. Huge thanks, Gerald!
TM
--
Toadmonkey: "Now now. Brain popping and world crashing may be hazardous to ones perception of reality.
Very dangerous business that can lead to madness or something worse for some, truth."
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John Dean
Yeah - though they called him Hey Soos on the credits in case any WASPs got
upset.
--
John Dean
Oxford
De-frag to reply
Gerald Clough
-
> DAMN! That's a hell of lot more than I knew before about that! I always
> thought they were tossed a few gold coins or something. Huge thanks, Gerald!
> TM
For a straight shot at some first-hand accounts by them what done it, I
suggest Trail Driver's of Texas, the compiled recollections of members
of the Trail Drivers Association, collected while a fair number of them
were still alive. It's readily available in a reprint combining the two
volumes.
Anyone interested in reliable information on trail drives and drives can
find a good many primary sources. However, one must not assume too much.
I was taken to task once on a newsgroup (not this one, as I recall) by
someone who held that drovers routinely shot off pistols to turn
stampeding cattle. He knew they had done it, because he read about in
Andy Adams' Log of a Cowboy. Log of a Cowboy is a very readable piece,
but Andy Adams drove horses, not cattle, and there's no reason to assume
he ever had an opportunity to witness such a practice.
James Cook is good in his biographical Fifty Years on the Old Frontier.
Cook, a direct descendant of Captain James Cook, was a particularly
literate, humorous and enlightened man whose life covers a great many
highlights of western history.
And Charles Siringo, who began as a Texas cowboy and became Pinkerton's
famed "cowboy detective", wrote well, if sometimes self-servingly, in A
Texas Cow Boy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony
(1885). Note the unconcatentated "cow boy", correct for the time of
which he writes.
If you want to do a lot of reading, a good starting place is J. Frank
Dobie's bibliographical work, Guide to Life and Literature of the
Southwest, in which he lists and comments frankly on works having
largely to do with the old west.
Russell Watson
You sure they weren't just phoneticising it for the folks who would
have otherwise been looking for the Son of God among the cowboys and
wonderin' why He was in the credits if He wasn't on the show? :-)
'97 FLSTF
To reply by e-mail, remove nospam from address.
Jake Pockets
cowboy cooking site of interest. http://castironkettlecookout.com
Jake Pockets
archc...@gmail.com
It seemed to me that the cattle drive model had some aspects to it that attracted my imagination for a possible fit.
God bless you sir.