Make-Believe Cowboys

E.C. ‘Teddy Blue’ Abbott was a working cowboy. Born in Nebraska in I860, he ran away from his tyrannical father to join a trail-driving team at the of age 15, and at 29 had the exceptional good fortune to get ‘a start in life.’ He fell in love with an honest, capable woman, stopped drinking in order to marry her, and was able to purchase a ranch in Montana and raise a family. Reflecting on this experience many years later, Abbott emphasized ‘how damn hard it was to start out poor and get anywheres.’ As a rule, cowboys were rural working-class men who spent their money as fast as they made it and died in destitution, usually quite young.

The cowboys of American fantasy are not modeled on Teddy Blue Abbott, but on a famous showman named William F. ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, who elaborated the role and starred as its exemplar. Abbott himself knew Cody, and was amused by his capers. After Cody was rich and famous, he showed up with a wagon load of whiskey at a roundup where Abbott was working. All the work stopped, as Cody organized horse races and sharp-shooting contests, and offered $100 to the first man to rope a jack rabbit. The owners of the outfit, waiting for the herd to be delivered in Ogallala, came down to see what was holding things up, and ran Cody off.