Richard Irving Dodge

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Richard Irving Dodge "The most reckless of all the reckless desperadoes" 1882 Richard Irving Dodge presented his assessment of the cowboy in Our Wild IndiMns: Thirty-three Years' Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West. A military man and one-time aide to General William Tecumseh Sherman, Dodge came to a discussion of the cowboy by way of a rhetorical investigation into the causes of Indian unrest in the West. Unsavory frontiersmen aggravated the Indians, he concluded, and among these rude folk were miners, buffalo hunters, and cowboys. His is the soldier's view. Years ago, while yet a cherished portion of Mexico, Texas was famous for its cattle. Individuals owned thousands, even tens of thousands, which roamed almost at will, over the vast and fertile plains. The care of these was left to a few men and a crowd of Mexican boys from eight to twenty years of age; for not much money could be paid in wages, when the finest cow or fattest ox was worth but two or three dollars. After the annexation of Texas to the United States the earlier drives of great herds of cattle were accompanied by such numbers of these boys, that all the herders were commonly called "Texas Cow-boys"; and though the cattle business has now spread over the greater portion of the great West; though the price of cattle has From Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years' Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West (Hartford, A. D. Worthington & Co., 1882), 609-18. 33

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Richard Irving Dodge "The most reckless of all the reckless desperadoes" 1882 Richard Irving Dodge presented his assessment of the cowboy in Our Wild IndiMns: Thirty-three Years' Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West. A military man and one-time aide to General William Tecumseh Sherman, Dodge came to a discussion of the cowboy by way of a rhetorical investigation into the causes of Indian unrest in the West. Unsavory frontiersmen aggravated the Indians, he concluded, and among these rude folk were miners, buffalo hunters, and cowboys. His is the soldier's view. Years ago, while yet a cherished portion of Mexico, Texas was famous for its cattle. Individuals owned thousands, even tens of thousands, which roamed almost at will, over the vast and fertile plains. The care of these was left to a few men and a crowd of Mexican boys from eight to twenty years of age; for not much money could be paid in wages, when the finest cow or fattest ox was worth but two or three dollars. After the annexation of Texas to the United States the earlier drives of great herds of cattle were accompanied by such numbers of these boys, that all the herders were commonly called "Texas Cow-boys"; and though the cattle business has now spread over the greater portion of the great West; though the price of cattle has From Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three Years' Personal Experience Among the Red Men of the Great West (Hartford, A. D. Worthington & Co., 1882), 609-18. 33

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