Range campfire scene in theSeven Rivers, New Mexico, area,ca. 1890. Stories were frequentlytold and songs sung around eve-ning campfires like this one.Courtesy Museum of New Mexico,Neg. No. 132452.

32 Spring 1988

WORDS, WORK, AND VALUES-A LOOK AT NEW MEXICO'SCOWBOY LITERATURE

By James S. Griffith

New Mexico is cow country-at least parts of itare. Some of it is also sheep country, wildernesscountry, farming country, tourist country, atomicbomb country. But in the northeastern, eastern,and southern parts of the state the cattle industryhas a history more than a hundred years old. Cowsneed people to take care of them, and that's wherecowboys come in. Cowboys- in one sense, they arethe prime figures of one of our most importantnational myths, symbols of independence, thetriumph of good over evil, and the like. In anotherequally real sense, they're the labor force of the cat-tle industry. It is not easy to separate the two sets ofmeaning, which have coexisted for almost a cen-tury. But cowboys are real people, with a set of veryspecial cultural traditions that they share withranchers and others who occupy the world of cattleraising. One of those traditions involves words andthe way they are put together.

And we might as well start off with words, the

raw material of any literature. For openers, cattlefolks have a special vocabulary to describe theirwork. "Cavvy" "remuda," "dally" -none of thesegets much play in Boston, but all are part of the liv-ing vocabulary of the American cowboy. All wereborrowed from the Mexican vaqueros who taughtAmerican cowboys many of their skills. "Cavvy" is amangling of caballada, or horse herd. "Remuda" isanother word for the same thing-a herd of re-mounts. And "dally" is truly wild-it is a shortenedform of the command dale vuelta or "give it a turn";'and refers to the technique of wrapping your catchrope a couple of times around the saddle hornafter you have roped a critter.

These loan words-and there are a lot more-are not the sum total of specialized cowboy vocab-

ulary, however. "Sull" is a verb meaning "to becomesullen or stubborn." A steer (or a person) thatdoesn't want to be led is said to "sull up." And justas nouns are made into verbs in cattle country,so things are defined by extension and association.Eggs can become "hen fruit." Quilts (also called"soogans") can, by extension of the notion thatsome of them may be stuffed with down, be called"goose hair." A "slick-eared calf' refers to an animalthat has no earmarks-that has never been branded.By extension, a "slick-eared heifer" could refer toan unmarried young woman. And so on.'

In fact, cattle culture seems to have the built-inoption of being pretty prodigal with words. (Con-sider the following quotes from classic cowboypoems:

I went a-gallyflutin' like a crazy lightnin' streak,

Just a-whizzing and a-dlartinl: first this way and

then that

The darn contrivatnce wsohbling like the flying of a

l)at.2

r,1.

Andl I hugged her all the tighter fi)r her trustifyin'

play

Nell (you what, the jos of Ileaven ain't a cussed

circ illstance

i the huggamnania pleasures Of a high-itunedSdance.i

When the stratnger hit the saddle , Old I)unn quit

the earth,

And travelled riglt straight up fuir all that he was

wo(rthI.

A-pitching and a-squealing, a-having wall-eyed

fits,

H is hind feet perpendicular, his front ones in the

bits.

I have called these cowboy poems. But anypo)em tbecomes a song when it is set to music, and

El Palacio 33

all of these are well-known songs as well asrecitations.

Or the response I got when I asked the late VanHolyoak, a cowboy from Clay Springs, Arizona(where the soil is so poor that you have to fertilize itbefore you can raise hell), how he was: "I never feltbetter," he replied, "and, by God, it's about timeI did." It is almost as though, leading a spare, hardlife with few surpluses, the old-time cowboy madeas free as he could with the one commodity hepossessed in abundance-words.

This fascination with wordplay surfaces else-where in the culture as well, notably in the sort ofacrostic parlor game cowboys play with brands. Abrand is simply a mark of ownership applied to ananimal by burning. In the hands of the Americancowboy, brands have become a complex code, with"lazy" letters (lying on their backs), "crazy" letters(written backwards and upside-down), and a host ofother named symbols. And brands can becomejokes, as witness the legendary 2 c P, known allover the West ?

All this playfulness, this fascination withwords, with their shape and their meaning, hasbecome a part of cowboy literature. One of thegreat exponents of this particular art was New Mex-ico's own Eugene Manlove Rhodes, who spent the1880s and 1890s wrangling horses, cowboying, andmining in and around theJornada del Muerto.Following his marriage in 1906, he moved back toNew York State and lived twenty years on his wife'sfarm among what he called "God's frozen people."He wrote novels and short stories, most of them forthe Saturday Evening Post, from the early 1900s untilhis death in 1934. Most of them resonate with theexile's passion for his country- the area fromSocorro down to El Paso and from Tularosa west toDeming. Some of Rhodes' dialogue comes off a bittoo clever, and his women tend towards the unbe-lievable. His male characters are men he knew,however, often disguised thinly or not at all. Theirskills, actions, and motivations are those of the NewMexico frontier where he came into his manhood,and which he celebrated until the end of his days.6

One thing about Rhodes' characters that hasalways interested me is that most of them sing.Snatches of song-well-known cowboy songs, oldballads, popular songs, nonsense ditties, and prob-ably a few songs of Rhodes' own writing-appearin most of the stories. People sing while they areriding alone, while they are working, while they are

thinking. They sing to themselves and to each other.Men are recognized by their friends through theirpersonal songs. In "Good Men and True'," a snatchof "The Streets of Laredo" is the prearrangedsignal for action? In the short story "Hit the LineHard," Neighbor Jones tells a young Easterner thedifference among songs for pacing, trotting, andgalloping on a horse'. And in "The Proud Sheriff,"Tip Chandler sings loudly to cover the noise of ajail escape. Andy Hinkle, newly returned from atrip back East, remarks:

"When I was a boy, everybody sang. Not good,hardly ever. But they sang. The children sang at

play, the women sang in the kitchen, the young

people sang at night, the men sang at the plow.They sang when they were alone and when theywere with somebody. Back East, they can't sing at

all. Nobody sings. It ain't right."

"Room for two opinions about that" said Buck,with a dark glance at the artistic Tip?

Paso Por Aqui is perhaps the best known ofRhodes' stories.'0 It is frequently assigned inEnglish courses that deal with Southwesternliterature. For the purposes of this article, I wouldadd the first and fourth chapters of Stepsons of Light,in which he carefully and lovingly describes theworking of an old-time roundup in the countryaround Engle." Cowboy literature, after all, is aboutcowboys-the labor force of the cattle industry.And this book presents a rare, detailed, and won-derfully accurate description of the cowboy's workin that part of New Mexico in the 1890s. But browseat will through Rhodes' writings; they all share thesame virtues and faults, and all present wonderfulvignettes of southern New Mexico at the turn of thecentury.

Rhodes was not the only writer of his genera-tion to write about New Mexico's cowboys or add totheir lore. N. Howard "Jack" Thorpe was the son ofa New York attorney who moved to New Mexicofollowing his father's business failure. In 1889, hetook off with his banjo-mandolin on a solo ride ineastern New Mexico and west Texas, looking forcowboy songs. The result of the trip was Songs of theCowboys, the first collection of cowboy songs ever

published. Privately printed in Estancia, New Mex-ico, in 1908, it contained twenty-four songs andpoems, several of which were of Thorpe's own com-position.

'12

Among the latter was one which he had writtenafter a tragic incident on a cattle drive in 1898. En-titled "LittleJoe the Wrangler," it has gone on to

34 Spring 1988

become a classic in its own right and is one of thefew relics of the old trail-driving days which is stillfound in the repertoire of cowboys. It tells the storyof a stray kid who turned up in camp on a traildrive and was given the most unskilled job avail-able-that of horse wrangler. He is generally likedby the cowboys and dies while trying to turn theherd of cattle during a stampede. A tragic song, butone that points up a moral which is repeated timeand again in cowboy literature. The respected in-dividuals in the cattle-raising West were those who,once they had committed themselves to a line of ac-tion, followed their commitment without hesitationto its logical conclusion. Few achieved a ripe,peaceful old age.

Thorpe later wrote an expanded version ofSongs of the Cowboys and some Western fiction.' " Hisbook of autobiographical reminiscences, Pardner tothe Wind, was published posthumously.'" Like thewritings of his friend Rhodes, it presents a lovingand accurate portrayal of cowboy life in southernNew Mexico in the old days. Like Rhodes' writing, itis about more than cowboying-tales of Billy theKid and other New Mexico outlaws come into it, aswell as yarns on a host of other subjects. But thework, life, and values of the southern New Mexicocowboy lie at the heart of both men's writing.Among my favorite chapters are "Banjo in the CowCamps," a description of Thorpe's 1889 song-hunting expedition, and the ones dealing withhorses and cattle. They ring true and have awonderful presence about them.

A few years after Thorpe published his firstSongs of the Cowboys, a Texan named John A. Lomaxcame out with what is now the classic collection ofcowboy songs and poems-Cowboy Songs and OtherFrontier Ballads.' First published in 1910 and laterrevised, it contained several poems from Thorpe'sbook. Lomax visited New Mexico during the courseof his long career as a pioneer folksong collector. Inhis autobiography, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, hedescribes a visit to the Diamond A Ranch nearSilver City, then owned by Senator George Hearst,father of William Randolph Hearst.' 6 Here he col-lected several cowboy songs, and made an im-

pression that caused him to be remembered for

many years.One other set of reminiscences of early days in

New Mexico should be noted, this time from theeast central part of the state.John H. "Jack" Culley,an English graduate of Harrow and Oxford followed

Eugene Manlove Rhodes, cowboyauthor. From The Little WorldWaddles by Eugene ManloveRhodes. Chico, Calif.: WilliamHutchinson, 1946.

El Palacio 35

The back of this photo tells usthat cowboy author S. OmarBarker, at Tecolotino, New Mex-ico, exclaims, "Excelsior! 13,311feet. Now-For a Heroic Pose.' 'Courtesy Museum of New Mexico,Neg. No.127447.

his dreams to New Mexico in the late 1880s. From1893 to 1897 he was range manager for the famousBell Ranch, and he later operated his own cattleoutfit in the area around Wagon Mound. Out ofthese experiences came the book Cattle, Horses andMen. 7

Like Thorpe and Rhodes, Culley writes aboutNew Mexico gunmen (such as BlackJack Ketchumand Clay Allison, who lived in that part of thestate), but like them he is at his most compellingwhen he describes cattle and horses and the menwho worked with them. Favorite horses are a con-stant theme all through cowboy literature, and NewMexico literature is no exception. Thorpe wrote apoem, "Chopo," about one favorite horse andpublished it in his original collection. This set apattern that has been followed by cowboy poetsever since. Some of Rhodes' most memorable pas-sages deal with the favorite horses of his characters.Their names-Twilight, Sleepycat, Wisenose, Alibi,Terrapin-give a special flavor to the stories andoften reflect the action, as horses are borrowed andrenamed for special occasions. It is easy to get theimpression that while outlaws were exciting andpeople-especially outsiders-wanted to hearabout them, the matters of real interest to theseolder New Mexico writers were the everydayrealities: cattle, work, and the horses that madework possible. In fact, both Thorpe and Rhodeswere remembered by old-timers more as excellent

horsemen than as all-round cowboys... a fine butreal distinction.

Northeastern New Mexico was home for manyyears to New Mexico's best-known cowboy poet-S. Omar Barker. According to legend, Barker wasborn Omar S. Barker but had his name legallychanged so that he would be justified in runningthe SOB brand. Now there's dedication! More thanthat, it is a wonderful example of the way in whichcowboy literature, brands, and the whole cowboyworld view tie together. Barker's first book ofcowboy poetry was published in 1928; his last in1964.18 He died in 1985.

For years, cowboys have paid him the ultimatecompliment by memorizing his poems and usingthem as recitations. Many of his rhymes depict realexperiences, and ones that are common to ranchpeople all over the West. They strike a chord ofunderstanding and memory and are therefore"picked up" and learned. There is still a strongpoetry tradition all over ranch country. Cowboyswrite poems, usually in rhymed verse, about theirexperiences, their horses, and stories they haveheard. And they recite them as well. Sometimes therecitations are at gatherings-campfires, bars,bunkhouses, motel rooms on the rodeo circuit, orwherever cowboys get together. Sometimes thereciting takes place during the long, solitary hoursof relaxed alertness that are such an important partof cow work. But cowboy poetry is alive and well inNew Mexico and all over the West.

And Barker's poems live in this context. Ragged,thumbed-over copies of his books can be found inmany ranch homes, and a lot of cow folks know hisname and his poems. That's a different kind offame than most poets expect or get in twentieth-century America, but this is cow country, and therules are a little different, a bit old-fashioned.

For the rest of our sampling of literature byand about New Mexico cowboys, we have to go backsouth again. Right down into Rhodes country, as amatter of fact. Frank Dines (descendant of one ofRhodes' friends and characters) has written twoslim books of reminiscences. One of them, Bear,Lion and Deer Where the Wild Mustangs Roamed, 9 is afine set of stories, framed around a hunting trip.The stories are about the land and the Dines family'sexperiences with and in that land, and are set downpretty much as they would be told in the eveningafter supper was cleaned up and folks were sittingaround for a while before bedding down.

36 Spring 1988

Cowboys in typical clothing andgear of the period at the TL Ranchheadquarters, Prairie Cattle Co.,Ltd., ca. 1893. Note that the manon the white horse is carrying asix-gun, a chuck wagon is behindthe men, a horse remuda is in thedistance. Courtesy Museum ofNew Mexico, Neg. No. 55156.

Land and Cattle concerns another long-timeranching family from the same Hillsboro area?. Itis a bit different from Dines' effort, though, in thatit consists of transcripts of interviews with Hills-boro rancherJoe Pankey, beautifully illustratedwith photographs taken by Jack Parsons. The wholebook was put together by an ex-president of theSierra Club as a gesture of respect to an occasionaladversary. It is worth getting, poring over, andreading carefully. Like Dines' book, it is based onalmost a century of local tradition and familyexperience.

Our last book takes up a bit north, to whatJohn Sinclair calls Cowboy Riding Country-aroundRoswell, Socorro, and that part of the state.?' Hisbook is part history, part reminiscence. It containsa lot of stories that grab me, stories that give a clearpicture not only of a way of life and a kind of work,but of a shared set of values that were instrumentalto our nation's expansion to the Pacific coast. Hardwork, independence, and a willingness to stand onprinciples and take whatever consequences mightcome along as a result-these are best exemplifiedin Sinclair's last vignette ofJohn Prather standingoff the U.S. Military's attempt at taking his ranch fora testing site and finally winning the right to stay-and die-in his own time.

So there's a sampling of New Mexico cowboyliterature. I have just been talking about the tip of

the iceberg. The real cowboy literary tradition is anoral one, and only a few of the folks who have par-ticipated in that rich tradition of the spoken wordhave had the skill and inclination to set their wordsdown on paper for the rest of us. But those whohave done so have enriched us considerably. Theyhave shared with us some specialized skills andknowledge, a way of life, a world view, and a set ofvalues that are definitely of one specific place andtime-cattle-raising New Mexico in the last hun-dred years. In the last analysis they are worthreading, for they tell us a good deal about how wecame to be where we are.

NOTES1. Ramon E Adams, Western Words, A Dictionary of the

American West (Norman: The University of OklahomaPress, 1968) is the best place to start an investigationof special cowboy lingo.

2. "The Gol-Darned Wheel," author unknown. FromHal Cannon, ed., Cowboy Poetry: A Gathering (Layton,Utah: Peregrine Smith, 1985), 10.

3. James Barton Adams, "The Cowboy's Dance Song"(also known as "The High-Toned Dance"). From Can-non, 30.

4. "The Zebra Dun" (also known as "The EducatedFeller"), author unknown. From N. Howard (Jack)Thorpe, comp., Songs of the Cowboys (Lincoln: TheUniversity of Nebraska Press, 1984 reprint of the 1921edition), 171.

5. The best discussion I know of how to read cattle

El Palacio 37

$

I I

brands is in chapter 3 of Manfred R. Wolfenstine,The Manual of Brands and Marks (Norman: TheUniversity of Oklahoma Press, 1970).

6. Lawrence Clark Powell, Southwest Classics (Pasadena:Ward Ritchie Press, 1975), contains a short biographyof Rhodes and a literary appraisal of his work.

7. Eugene Manlove Rhodes, "Good Men and True:' InThe Best Novels and Stories of Eugene Manlove Rhodes(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949).

8. Eugene Manlove Rhodes, "Hit the Line Hard'" In TheBest Novels and Stories of Eugene Manlove Rhodes(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949).

9. Eugene Manlove Rhodes, The Proud Sheriff(Norman:The University of Oklahoma Press, 1968 reprint of1935 original). Most of the action in this book takesplace in and around Hillsboro. The passage I quotedis on page 138.

10. Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Paso Por Aqui (Norman: TheUniversity of Oklahoma Press, 1973 reprint of 1926original).

11. Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Stepsons of Light (Norman:The University of Oklahoma Press, 1969 reprint of1921 original). An excellent selection of Rhodes'shorter writings is contained in The Rhodes Reader:Stories of Virgins, Villains and Varmints, selected byW.H. Hutchison (Norman: The University ofOklahoma Press, 1975).

12. N. Howard (Jack) Thorpe, Songs of the Cowboys, ed.Austin and Alta Fife (New York: Clarkson N. Potter,Inc., 1966).

13. Thorpe, 1984.14. N. Howard (Jack) Thorpe, in collaboration with Neil

M. Clark, Pardner of the Wind (Lincoln: The Universityof Nebraska Press, 1977 reprint of 1941 original).

15. John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads(New York: The Macmillan Co., 1910, and subsequenteditions).

16. John A. Lomax, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter (NewYork: The Macmillan Co., 1947), 64-68.

17. John H. (Jack) Culley, Cattle, Horses and Men of theWestern Range (Tucson: The University of ArizonaPress, 1984 reissue of 1940 original).

18. S. Omar Barker, Buckaroo Ballads (Santa Fe: Santa Fe,New Mexico Publishing Co., 1928); Songs of the Sad-dlemen (Denver: Sage Books, 1954); and RawhideRhymes (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co.,1968).

19. Frank Dines, Bear, Lion and Deer Where the WildMustangs Roamed (Frank Dines, P.O. Box 453,Hillsboro, New Mexico, 1983).

20. Jack Parsons and Michael Earney, Land and Cattle.Conversations with Joe Pankey, A New Mexico Rancher(Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press,1978).

21. John L. Sinclair, Cowboy Riding Country (Albuquerque:The University of New Mexico Press, 1982).

Cowboys relaxing in camp after aday of moving cattle. © 1981 Bar-bara Van Cleve.

James Griffith, Director of the Southwest FolkloreCenter at the University of Arizona in Tucson, is a notedauthor and folklorist.

El Palacio 39

A BEGINNER'S BRAND VOCABULARY

' "flying" A

A "dragging" A

. "walking" A

, "rocking" A

/ "crazy" A

> "lazy" A

P "tumbling" A

bar

/ slash

,. "AL connected"

Thus,'/Ocan be read as "crazy A slash 0" and'as "rocking A I, connected." It gets much, muchmore complicated than this, of course, and arguingover how to read a particular brand could be aform of entertainment in itself. (There are also pic-ture brands), as in ,, (anchor), 4 (rockingchair), and (fishhook). A good source forbrands, from which this list has been adapted, isManfred R. Wolfenstine's The Manual of Brands andMarks. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press,1981, 2nd printing.