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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstey, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff

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Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbon here. Whether it's John Wayne or Little nas X,

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Speaker 1: the cowboy holds a place in the pantheon of American heroes.

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Speaker 1: But the cowboy that we know didn't spring fully formed

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Speaker 1: from the dust and tumbleweeds of the wild West. The

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Speaker 1: original cowboy had nothing to do with the wild West.

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Speaker 1: Historically speaking, the whole cowboy image the trusty horse, the

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Speaker 1: open range, get along, little doggie, campfires under starry knights,

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Speaker 1: old town road, beans from a chuck wagon, yeehaw, cattle drives, branding, chaps,

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Speaker 1: and spurs. That image grew from roots a long way

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Speaker 1: from the American West. It all began in Europe with

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Speaker 1: three central elements man, cow, and horse. In Spain for centuries,

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Speaker 1: the horse and those who wrote it held high status.

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Speaker 1: Portraits of Spanish kings posed them on rearing horses. The

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Speaker 1: Spanish used their horses in a burgeoning livestock economy, which

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Speaker 1: included cattle and sheep to complement farming in the fourteen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: and so when the Spanish set out to conquer new

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Speaker 1: lands later that century and into the next one, they

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Speaker 1: took with them horses and cattle. Eventually, from the island

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Speaker 1: of Hispaniola, which now holds the Dominican Republic and Haiti,

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Speaker 1: the people, the horses, and the cattle made their way

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Speaker 1: to parts of what is now Florida and Mexico. Those

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Speaker 1: cattle multiplied, and the need for horsemen to track them

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Speaker 1: down and keep them in line grew. Back then, cattle

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Speaker 1: were needed more for their hides than their meat. European

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Speaker 1: ranchers taught what they knew to indigenous peoples, who in

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Speaker 1: turn came up with all sorts of new cattle handling techniques,

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Speaker 1: and so the vacquero was born. Vaccuero is a Spanish

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Speaker 1: word for cowboy, and it roots from a Spanish word

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Speaker 1: for cat avakka. The vocaro is the direct predecessor to

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Speaker 1: the American cowboy and lots of other cowboys throughout Central

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Speaker 1: and South America. As cattle, as some introduced on purpose

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Speaker 1: and some of which wandered wild, made their way across

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Speaker 1: the Americas as they learned to rope and ride and

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Speaker 1: row lariates, as they modified their saddles to include a

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Speaker 1: horn to anchor a rope to as they introduced some

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Speaker 1: blocking hats and leg protecting chaps. Bacaros moved into what

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Speaker 1: is now Texas, and their influence was felt way farther west.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty two, King Kamehameha, the Third, sent for

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Speaker 1: some vocaros to wrangle wild cattle in Hawaii. The Hawaiian

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Speaker 1: cowboy became known as the paniolo, a word perhaps rooted

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Speaker 1: in the word for the language that the vocaro spoke Espanol. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: a counterpart formed and spread throughout the American West. The

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Speaker 1: cowboys had other names cowhans, cowpunchers, cow pokes, cattlemen, buckaroos,

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Speaker 1: but the work was more or less the same. Long days,

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Speaker 1: nights on the planes, a lot of dust, some danger

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Speaker 1: from wrestlers and from Native Americans whose lands they were invading,

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Speaker 1: And when they weren't working the herds, they were fixing fences,

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Speaker 1: caring for their horses, and performing other hard labor around ranches.

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Speaker 1: They weren't necessarily gamblers and gunfighters like say, wild Bill Hiccock,

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Speaker 1: or gunslinging lawmen like whitet Rb or Doc Holiday, nor

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Speaker 1: sharpshooters like Annie Oakley, nor all out showmen like Buffalo

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Speaker 1: Bill Cody, though all those legends have today become known

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Speaker 1: as cowboys. Historian Richard W. Slatta wrote in his nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety four book The Cowboy Encyclopedia a quote, the cowboy

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Speaker 1: of the American West, a dashing figure in popular novels

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Speaker 1: and films, was in reality a poorly paid laborer engaged

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Speaker 1: in difficult, dirty, often monotonous work. The cowboys work years

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Speaker 1: centered on two big events, the round up and the

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Speaker 1: long drive. Round Ups were held in the spring and

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Speaker 1: often also in the fall. After cowboys had herded cattle

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Speaker 1: to a central location, they branded newborn calves, castrated and

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Speaker 1: dehorned older animals, and in the spring chose the cattle

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Speaker 1: to be taken to market. At one time, tens of

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Speaker 1: thousands of cowboys worked ranches throughout the West. By the

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Speaker 1: end of the American Civil War, an estimated quarter of

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Speaker 1: them were black, and some historians claim the number is

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Speaker 1: even higher than that. Landowners who had moved into the

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Speaker 1: territory of Texas for cheap land and a new start,

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Speaker 1: had brought enslaved people with them. After the war, they

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Speaker 1: and thousands of other black people were looking for work,

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Speaker 1: some already experienced with cattle and other livestock, and work

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Speaker 1: they found, but the cowboys heyday didn't last long. The

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Speaker 1: invention of barbed wire in the late eighteen hundreds helped pencattle,

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Speaker 1: and the expansion of railroads made long cattle drives less necessary.

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Speaker 1: In contemporary retellings, especially in Hollywood westerns, cowboys tend to

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Speaker 1: be honest, hard working men, of strong moral character and

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Speaker 1: few words. They're almost always white. It's not a particularly

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Speaker 1: accurate image, but like cowboys themselves, it is an enduring one.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article How the Cowboys

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Speaker 1: Saddled Up and Wrote into American History on how stuffworks

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Speaker 1: dot Com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff is producted

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Speaker 1: by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com,

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Speaker 1: and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from

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Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.