WHAT THE COWBOY WORE AND WHY HE WORE IT—HAT, ITS FORM, DECORATION, USES AND NAMES—HANDKERCHIEF, ITS COLOR AND USE—SHIRT—COLLAR’S ABSENCE—GARTERS—COAT AND TROUSERS—BELT—VEST—“MAKINGS”—“NATURAL CURIOSITIES”—MATCHES—FANCY VEST—OVERCOAT—GLOVES—CUFFS—BOOTS—SPURS—“CHAPS”—FURS—“WAR PAINT”—HAIR CHAIN—OTHER RANCHMEN’S RAIMENT.
THE clothing worn by members of the trade was distinctive. Although picturesque, it was worn not for the production of this effect, but solely because it was the dress best suited to the work in hand. Inasmuch as it was selected with view only to comfort and convenience, it knew nothing of variable fashion and suffered from no change in style.
It, however, was subject, as were many of the cowboys’ customs, to differences in form according as the locality involved was the Northwest or the Southwest. The line of demarcation between these sections, though never very clearly defined, was in effect an imaginary westward extension of Mason and Dixon’s Line, this extension zigzagging a bit in some places.
The hat was, in material, of smooth, soft felt; and, in color, dovegray, less often light brown, occasionally black. It had a cylindrical crown seven inches or more in height, and a flat brim so wide as to overtop its wearer’s shoulders. The brim might or might not be edged with braid, which, if it appeared, was silken and was of the same color as the felt. In the Southwest, the crown was left at its full height, but its circumference above the summit of the wearer’s head was contracted by three or, more commonly, four, vertical, equidistant dents, the whole resembling a mountain from whose sharp peak descended three or four deep gullies. In the Northwest, the crown was left flat on top, but was so far telescoped by a pleat as to remain but approximately two and a half inches high.
Few men of either section creased their hats in the manner of the other. A denizen of the Northwest appearing in a high-crowned hat was supposed to be putting on airs, and was subject openly to be accused of “chucking the Rio,” vernacular for affecting the manners of the Southwesterners, whose dominant river was the Rio Grande. Present-day Northwesterners, faithless to this tradition, have foresworn the low crown and assumed the peak. The United States War Department recently has flown into the face of history by formally designating the dented high peak as the Montana poke.
Around the crown, just above the brim and for the purpose of regulating the fit of the hat, ran a belt, which was adjustable as to length. The belt was made usually of leather, but, particularly in the Southwest, occasionally of woven silver or gold wire. The belt, if of leather, commonly was studded with ornamental nails, or, did the owner’s purse permit, with “conchas,” which were flat metal plates, usually circular, generally of silver, in rare instances of gold, in much rarer instances set with jewels. Rattlesnake’s rattles, gold nuggets, or other showy curiosities not infrequently adorned the leather. For leather, some men substituted the skin of a rattlesnake.
From either side of the brim at its inner edge, depended a buckskin thong; these two thongs, sometimes known as “bonnet strings,” being tied together and so forming a guard, which, during rapid riding or in windy weather, was pushed under the base of the skull, but which at other times was thrust inside the hat.
Did the brim sag through age or unduly flop, it could be rectified by cutting, near its outer edge, a row of slits and threading through them a strip of buckskin.
The wide brim of the hat was not for appearance’s sake. It was for use. It defended from a burning sun and shaded the eyes under any conditions, particularly when clearness of vision was vital to a man awake or shelter was desirable for one asleep. In rainy weather it served as an umbrella. The brim, when grasped between the thumb and fingers and bent into a trough, was on its upper surface the only drinking-cup of the outdoors; when pulled down and tied over the ears, it gave complete protection from frost-bite. It fanned into activity every camp-fire started in the open, and enlarged the carrying capacity of the hat when used as a pail to transport water for extinguishing embers. The broad hat swung to right or left of the body or overhead provided conspicuous means of signalling; and, when shoved between one’s hip or shoulder and the hard ground, it sometimes hastened the arrival of a nap. Folded, it made a comfortable pillow. No narrow-brimmed creation could have had so many functions.
A Philadelphian manufacturer virtually monopolized the making of at least the better grades; and, from his name, every broad-brimmed head covering was apt everywhere slangily to be designated as a “Stetson,” instead of by either one of its two legitimate and interchangeable titles of “hat” and “sombrero.” While these two legitimate titles were interchangeable throughout the West, the Northwest leaned toward “hat,” the Southwest toward “sombrero.”
There were slang names other than the one just mentioned, but none that had more than infrequent usage. These other names included “lid,” “war-bonnet,” “conk cover,” “hair case,” and a host of like inventions.
Southwesterners often wore, in lieu of the hat already described, the real sombrero of Mexico, with its high crown either conical or cylindrical, its brim saucer-shaped, and its shaggy surface of plush, frequently embroidered with gold or silver thread. No Northwesterner ventured, while in his home country, to “chuck the Rio” to the extent of such a head-gear.
Most of these sombreros, though reaching the American wearer by the route of importation from Mexico, had been made in Philadelphia by the very manufacturer who is mentioned above.
Along the Mexican border, some men, principally “Greasers,” wore the huge straw hats of Mexico; but these head coverings were not often assumed by Americans, for there was a suggestion of peonage in the straw.
Many punchers had such vanity as to their hats that the makers gave, in the so-called “feather-weight” quality, a felt far better than that used in the shapes offered to city folk, and so fine as to roll up almost as would a handkerchief, a felt so costly that only ranchmen would pay its price, and thus they alone made use of it. Not infrequently a puncher spent from two to six months’ wages for his hat or sombrero and its ornamental belt.
Those hats and sombreros, while by Western classification “soft hats,” should not be confused with the unstiffened, cheap felt hats worn by city-dwellers; for these latter head coverings, though admittedly “soft,” were subject to the contemptuous accusation of being mere “wool hats.” Furthermore the Range knew that the city-dwellers wore also “hard” or “hard-boiled” hats, subdivided into the two classes of, first, “derby” or “pot” and, second, “plug” or “stovepipe”; but no “hard hat” attempted, unless accompanied by a tenderfoot, to appear within the Cattle Country.
The handkerchief which encircled every cowboy’s neck was intended as a mask for occasional use, and not as an article of dress.
This handkerchief, diagonally folded and with its two thus most widely separated corners fastened together by a square knot, ordinarily hung loosely about the base of the wearer’s neck; but, as the wearer rode in behind a bunch of moving live stock, the still knotted handkerchief’s broadest part was pulled up over the wearer’s mouth and nose. The mask thus formed eliminated the otherwise suffocating dust and made breathing possible. It offered relatively like protection against stinging sleet and freezing wind.
The cowboy did not dare risk being without this vitally necessary mask when need for it should come, and so he ever kept it on the safest peg he knew; under his chin.
In color and material the handkerchief, though sometimes of silk, usually was of red bandanna cotton; of red, not because the puncher affirmatively demanded it, but because ordinarily that was the only color other than white obtainable from the local shopkeepers. The shopping cowboy was very tolerant save in his selection of hats, chaps, spurs, guns, ropes, and saddles.
The handkerchief-selling shopkeeper in his own turn had followed the line of least resistance; and, being subject to no special demand for green, blue, or whatever, had forborne to make among the manufacturers a hunt for varied colors, and had stocked himself with an article which he readily could obtain, the red bandanna.
Thanks to the requirements of the Southern negro, this article constantly was manufactured. Thus the “Aunt Dinahs” of the Southern kitchens unwittingly dictated as to what the cowboy of the West should hang about his neck.
A relatively similar reason foisted the Texan heraldic star upon the saddles, bridles, chaps, and boots of many of the Northwesterners. The Texans, with their intense State pride, asked for this adornment, and the manufacturers, putting it on the Texans’ accoutrements, standardized output, and starred the equipment of almost everybody who did not object.
White handkerchiefs were eschewed by many punchers, because these handkerchiefs, when clean, reflected light; and thus sometimes, upon the Range, called attention to their wearers when the latter wished to avoid notice by other people or by animals. Moreover white soon so suffered from dust as to appear unpleasantly soiled.
There was nothing peculiar about the shirt beyond that it was always of cotton or wool, always was collarless and starchless (not “boiled,” “biled,” or “bald-faced”); and, though of any checked or striped design or solid color, almost never was red. That latter tone was reputed to go badly among the cattle, and, in any event, belonged to the miners. Furthermore, the puncher’s taste in colors was in the main quite subdued.
Collars were unknown. A white one starched would have wrecked its wearer’s social position. This denying the ranchman a white collar did not withhold it from such of the professional gamblers as cared to wear it. A “turndown” collar of celluloid (of paper in the early years), provided the wearer’s handkerchief and salivary glands occasionally functioned in unison, would make the gambler showily immaculate, and so would advertise apparent prosperity.
Each of the cowboy’s shirt-sleeves customarily was drawn in above the elbow by a garter, which was of either twisted wire or of elastic webbing, and frequently, and as an exception to the general demureness of sartorial tone, was brightly colored, crude shades of pink or blue being much in favor.
Nor was there anything distinctive about the coat and trousers, which were woollen and, in cut, of the sack-suit variety; then, as now, the usual garb of American men, unless one regards as distinctive the fact that almost universally these garments were sombre in hue.
Possibly this predilection for black and darkest shades found its source in Texas and Missouri, where the frock coat, string tie, and slouch hat of the Southern “colonel” had ever been of black.
However, the cowboy sometimes substituted for his woollen coat one of similar cut, but made of either brown canvas or black or brown leather.
Denim overalls were considered beneath the dignity of riders, and were left to wearing by the farmers, the townsfolk, and the subordinate employees of the ranches.
The puncher’s trousers, universally called “pants,” stayed in place largely through luck, because the puncher both avoided “galluses,” the suspenders of the tenderfoot, as tending to bind the shoulders, and also was wary of supporting belts, as the latter, if drawn at all tightly, were conducive to hernia when one’s horse was pitching. However, if the puncher were of Mexican blood, he would gird himself with a sash of red or green silk.
In the mending of rents the safety-pin often functioned in lieu of thread and needle.
The pistol’s belt, wide and looped for extra cartridges, ever loosely sagged, and so threw the weapon’s weight upon the thigh instead of placing strain upon the abdomen.
When possible the cowboy went coatless, but he always wore a vest. The coat was arrestive to ease of motion. Also it somewhat invited perspiration, and perspiration for a man condemned to remain out of doors day and night in a country of cold winds was uncomfortable, if not dangerous.
In every-day life the vest was of ordinary, civilian type, and usually was left unbuttoned. It was worn, not as a piece of clothing, but solely because its outside pockets gave handy storage not only to matches but also to “makings,” which last-mentioned articles were cigarette papers and a bag of “Bull Durham” tobacco.
Mixed in with these necessaries were, in all probability, a gold nugget, an Indian arrow-head, or an “elk tush” or two. These “tushes,” the canine teeth from the wapiti’s upper jaw, now widely known as insignia of a great secret order, were in the West of years ago equally well known as the most treasured jewels of the Indian squaw. Every cowboy acquired all the “tushes” he conveniently could, doing so usually with no purpose of ultimate trade with the Indians, but only because of a vague, boylike idea that somehow, some day, they might be useful. In reality, as he got them he gave them to Eastern souvenir hunters, as he also gave the nuggets and the arrow-heads.
This naïve predilection for so-called “natural curiosities” went hand in hand with desire to benefit either science or the federal government; was shared, in this public-spirited form, with the scouts and hunters, and worked for the inconvenience of the receiving clerks at the Smithsonian Institution. There flowed, for years, to the door of the latter’s museum and from out of the West a steady stream of useless bones, horns, skins, crystals, pieces of wood, and other things, all enthusiastically started on their journeys and most of them ultimately and properly landing on the scrap-heap at Washington.
Men would undergo great personal risks to obtain “fine specimens.”
The prevalent desire to patronize “The Smithsonian” was exemplified in the experience of two Northwestern scouts who had the same beneficent attitude toward science as had the punchers.
The Crow Indians had “jumped” their reservation and were on the war-path. They were being trailed by Taze-well Woody and James Dewing, Woody riding a horse, Dewing a mule.
These scouts discovered an enormous bald eagle, which, feeding at a carcass, was so gorged as to be helpless. The tremendous size of the bird suggested immediately that Washington was in great need of this fine specimen, so a heavy stick was brought down on the national emblem’s neck, and the latter’s immediate owner was then pronounced to be dead. The eagle’s legs were lashed to the back of Dewing’s saddle, while a thong held in place the folded wings of the hanging bird.
The men mounted, and forthwith a war party broke from cover and attacked them. The scouts spurred their mounts into a retreat, but were rapidly being overhauled by the Indians, whose ponies were fleeter than Dewing’s mule. Meanwhile shots were flying.
Just as it began to look hopeless for the two whites, there happened simultaneously three things: First, a bullet struck the ground in front of the galloping mule, raised a flurry of dust, and caused the brute to spin around and to hurry toward the foe. Second, a bullet cut the thong which had bound the eagle’s wings. Third, the eagle came to life, and, though with legs still fastened to the saddle, stood erect.
Then the charge completely reversed its direction and appearance. It had been to both whites and Reds a hundred armed warriors chasing two helpless victims. Now it seemed to the Reds a pursuing demon hastening to destroy a fleeing Indian tribe. What Woody witnessed was a screaming eagle with talons imbedded in the rump of a crazed mule, with wings outspread and beating the air, and with beak digging, amid the screams, into uncomfortable Dewing’s back, while the mule rushed after the Indians, intermittently pausing to buck and bray, Dewing himself meanwhile shouting, cursing, and shooting.
The matches in the cowboy’s pocket, like all matches on the Range, were in thin sheets like coarsely toothed combs. They had small brown or blue heads that were slow to start a blaze, and, for some time after striking, merely bubbled and emitted strong fumes of sulphur. To obtain a light, the West tightened its trousers by raising its right knee, and then drew the match across the trouser’s seat.
There has been described the vest of every day, but there were occasional days which were not like every day, the occasional days when the puncher went in state either to town or to call upon his lady-love. On these infrequent and important errands, he was fain to put on a waistcoat which was specially manufactured for the Western trade, and which, though normal in size and shape, was monumental in appearance. Plush or shaggy woollen material was prey to the dyer’s brutality, and on the cowboy’s manly but innocent front the Aurora Borealis, and the artist’s paint-box met their chromatic rival. A man of modest taste, and such were the majority of the punchers, was content with brown plush edged with wide, black braid. But what was such passive pleasure as compared with the bouncing gladness which another and more primitive being derived from a still well-remembered vest of brilliant purple checker-boarded in pink and green?
The overcoat was of canvas, light brown in color, with skirts to the knee, was blanket-lined, and, to make it wholly wind-proof, commonly received an exterior coat of paint; which latter process often successfully invited the sketching of the owner’s brand upon the freshly covered surface.
All men donned gloves in cold weather; this, of course, to keep the hands warm. In warm weather most men wore gloves when roping, this to prevent burns or blisters from the hurrying lariat, and wore them also when riding bucking horses, this to avoid manual injury. But some men, regardless of temperature or the nature of their work, wore gloves all the waking hours. This latter habit, while an affectation, did not necessarily indicate effeminacy. It rather was an expression of vanity, and permitted the wearer tacitly but conspicuously to advertise that his riding and roping were so excellent as to excuse him from all other tasks. The hands of such men frequently were as white and soft as those of a young girl.
The ungloved fraternity, being without excuse for absence from the wood-pile, resented the fragile hands, though not their owners, and to visitors gruntingly descanted on the theme that it was “cheaper to grow skin than to buy it.”
The gloves were sometimes of horse-hide or smooth-surfaced leather, but usually were of buckskin of the best quality. Whatever the material, they customarily were in color yellow, gray, or a greenish or creamy white, though brown was not infrequent.
They had to be of good quality, lest they stiffen after a wetting; for an unduly stiff glove well might misdirect a lariat throw, or even cause a man to miss his hold upon the saddle horn when he essayed to mount a plunging horse.
Practically all gloves had flaring gantlets of generous size, five inches or so in both depth and maximum width, the gantlets commonly being embroidered with silken thread or with thin wire of silver or brass, and being edged with a deep leathern or buckskin fringe along the littlefinger side. The designs for such embroidery followed principally geometrical forms, and very often included a spread eagle or the Texan heraldic star.
Conchas not infrequently augmented the decoration.
When the thermometer was very low, either gloves or mittens of knitted wool or of fur made their appearance.
Almost always in the absence of gloves, and frequently when gloves were present, men wore tightly fitting brown or black, stiff, leathern cuffs, which extended backward for four or five inches from the wearer’s wrist joint, were adjustable by buckled straps, protected the wrists, and held the sleeves in pound.
Although upon the Range any one not professing to be a puncher incased his feet in whatever form of leather covering he preferred, all cowboys wore the black, high-topped, high-heeled boots typical of the craft.
These boots had vamps of the best quality of pliable, thin leather, and legs of either like material or finest kid. The vamps fitted tightly around the instep, and thus gave to the boot its principal hold, for there were no lacings, and the legs were quite loose about the wearer’s entrousered calf. The boots’ legs, coming well up toward the wearer’s knees, usually ended in a horizontal line, but sometimes were so cut as to rise an inch or so higher at the front than at the back. The legs were prone to show much fancy stitching. This was of the quilting pattern, when, as was often the case, thin padding was inserted for protective purposes.
A concha or an inlay of a bit of colored leather might appear at the front of each boot-leg at its top.
These tall legs shielded against rain, and supplemented the protection which was furnished by the leathern overalls or “chaparejos.”
The boots’ heels, two inches in height, were vertical at the front, and were in length and breadth much smaller at the bottom than at the top.
The tall heel, highly arching the wearer’s instep, insured, as did the elimination of all projections, outstanding nails, and square corners from the sole, against the wearer’s foot slipping through the stirrup or being entangled in it. The tall heel also so moulded the shod foot that the latter automatically took in the stirrup such position as brought the leg above it into proper fitting with the saddle’s numerous curves. The heel’s height and peg-like shape together gave effective anchorage to the wearer when he threw his lariat afoot, instead of from his horse’s back.
The sole usually was quite thin, this to grant to the wearer a semiprehensile “feel of the stirrup.” To these necessary attributes, the vanity of many a rider added another and uncomfortable one, tight fit; and throughout the Range unduly cramped toes appeared in conjunction with the enforced, highly arched insteps.
The conventions of Range society permitted to the buckaroo at any formal function no foot-gear other than this riding-boot. It was as obligatory for him at a dance as it was useful to him when ahorse.
The puncher with vanity for his tight, thin boots, and with contempt for the heavily soled foot coverings of Easterners, “put his feet into decent boots, and not into entire cows.”
In very cold weather, this boot sometimes gave way to one of felt or to the ordinary Eastern “arctic” overshoe worn over a “German sock,” this last a knee-high stocking of thick shoddy. Save under such frigid conditions and save also when the puncher was in bed, his feet were ever in his leathern boots.
Spurs were a necessary implement when upon the horse, and a social requirement when off its back. One, when in public, would as readily omit his trousers as his spurs.
The spurs were of a build far heavier than those of more effete sections of the country. Their rowels were very blunt, since they were intended as much for a means of clinging to a bucking horse as for an instrument of punishment. This assistance to clinging was augmented in many spurs by adding, to the frame of the spur, a blunt-nosed, up-curved piece, the “buck hook,” which rose behind the rider’s heel, and which it was reassuring to engage or “lock” in the cinch or in the side of a plunging horse. A rider, intending to lock his spurs, usually first wired or jammed their wheels so as to prevent their revolving. Ordinarily, the rowels were half an inch in length, the wheel of which they formed the spokes being slightly larger in diameter than an American, present-day, twenty-five-cent piece; but spurs imported from Mexico, and having two-and-a-half-inch wheels with rowels of corresponding length, frequently were used in the Southwest as a matter of course, in the Northwest as an advertisement of distant travel.
Each spur, or “grappling-iron,” as slang often dubbed it, was kept in place both by two chains passing under the wearer’s instep and also by a “spur-leather,” which last-mentioned object was a broad, crescentic shield of leather laid over the instep. This spur-leather tended as well to protect the ankle from chafing, and incidentally was usually decorated by a concha and stamped with intricate designs.
The shank of almost every spur turned downward, thus allowing the buck hook, if there were one, to catch without interference by the rowels, and also permitting the wheel, when the rider was afoot, to roll noisily along the ground. This noise frequently was increased by disconnecting from the spur one of the two chains at one of its ends and allowing it to drag, and also by the addition of “danglers.” Danglers were inch-long, pear-shaped pendants loosely hanging from the end of the wheel’s axle.
A cowboy moving across a board floor suggested the transit of a knight in armor. This purposely created jangle fought loneliness when one was completely isolated, and was not abhorrent in public, even though it might announce the presence of a noted man.
Not more specialized than the spurs but more conspicuous were the “chaparejos,” universally called “chaps.” They were skeleton overalls worn primarily as armor to protect a rider’s legs from injury when he was thrown or when his horse fell upon him, carried him through sage-brush, cactus, or chaparral, pushed him against either a fence or another animal, or attempted to bite; but also they were proof against both rain and cold wind.
Take a pair of long trousers of the city, cut away the seat, sever the seam between the legs, and fasten to a broad belt buckled at the wearer’s back as much of the two legs as is thus left. Then you have a pattern for a pair of chaps. Reproduce your pattern in either dehaired, heavy leather, preferably brown, but black if you must, or else in a shaggy skin of a bear, wolf, dog, goat, or sheep, and you have the real article. You must, of course, make your pattern very loosely fitting, have on the length of each leg but a single seam, and that at the rear, and do a bit of shaping at the knee. Should you employ dehaired leather, so cut it that long fringe will hang from the leg seam, and you might well cover this seam with a wide strip of white buckskin. You will hurt nobody’s feelings should you stamp the leather here and there with frontier animals or with women’s heads, or all over in tiny checkerboard, or should you stud the belt with conchas. In so doing you will be no inventor, but merely a follower of custom.
The long hair or wool upon a pair of shaggy chaps represented not so much artistic preference as it did judgment that thereby protection would be increased. Naked leather was not oversoft under a prone horse, and could not be relied upon to withstand the stab of either the yucca’s pointed leaves or the spines of the tall cacti.
The cowboy wore chaps when riding and also when either within the confines of a settlement or in the presence of womankind. Chaps and his fancy vest, if he had the latter, were, in combination with his gun and spurs, his “best Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes,” or what he called his “full warpaint.” When there was no riding to be done, no social convention to fulfil, or there were neither jealousies to excite nor hearts to conquer, the chaps, unless their owner was either a slave to habit or very vain, often hung from a nail. They were heavy and, for a pedestrian, quite uncomfortable.
“Hung from a nail,” to be truthful, is poetic license for “thrown on the floor.” The Cattle Country, thoroughly masculine, “hung its clothes on the floor, so they couldn’t fall down and get lost.” Only saddles, bridles, lariats, and firearms received considerate care.
Fur coat and cap for winter use, of buffalo skin in earlier days or wolf pelt in later times, were regularly worn in cold climates, but were distinguishing not of the vocation but of the temperature. Generally they were not owned by the cowboy, but were loaned to him by his employer.
The conditions which called forth the furs often compelled a cowboy, as a preventative of snow blindness, to “wear war-paint on his face,” that is, to daub below his eyes and upon his cheek bones a mixture of soot and grease. This made him look, as Ed Johnson said, like a “grief-stricken Venus.”
Lastly and affectionately is recalled the horsehair chain, which was laboriously and often most excellently woven from the hairs of horses’ tails. These chains usually were of length sufficient to surround the neck and to reach to the bottom pocket of the vest, and, at the lower end, had a small loop and a “crown knot” wherewith to engage the watch. They were a factor in the courting on the Range, for among cowboys it was as axiomatic that the female doted on horsehair chains as it now is among the cowboys’ descendants that she has no aversion to pearl necklaces. The puncher, disdaining to shoot Cupid’s arrows at his inamorata, essayed to lasso her with a tiny lariat made from the discards of his favorite pony’s tail.
Ranch owners and such of their employees as were not cowboys dressed as did the cowboy; save that, having no dignity of position to maintain, they felt less compelled to wear fine quality of raiment and, as already stated, reserved the right to use foot-gear other than the conventional, high-topped boot.
A few of the ranch owners, either Englishmen or such Easterners as had been much in Europe, laid aside from time to time long trousers and appeared in shorts. These latter abbreviated garments, then still a novelty upon the Atlantic coast, were to the cowboy an enigma, a cause of irritation and an object of surprise and contempt. In the words of Kansas Evans, “Bill, what’ je think? Yesterday, up to that English outfit’s ranch, I seen a grown man walkin’ around in boy’s knee pants. And they say he’s second cousin to a dook. Gosh! Wonder what the dook wears.” “Knee pants” were resented as being un-American, and they cost their wearers no small loss of caste upon the Range. None save a ranch owner would dare appear in them.