Cowboys in U.S. History

In American history a cowboy is seen as a heroic figure. A man that seeks justice and is very courageous. He rides horses carries a gun everywhere he goes,  and fights of Indians. In many western movies they give prime examples of what a cowboys was romanticized as; usually very good looking, always go the girl, that sort of thing. But in reality the cowboy was a very low paid working class man that spent his days herding in fields. This character was derived from the Mexican vaqueros. His job was to protect his herd and not much more. Cowboys rarely saw opportunities for improvement in their work. They were pretty much sentenced to a lonely life with cows for friends.

The image of the romanticized cowboy was put into the world so when you think of the west you think of this magnificent character and everything was hunky-dory and the good always won.  The historical reality of the west was that it was very hard to find work for a while. There were a lot of immigrants taking jobs that a lot of Americans set out west to have. There was an over population of Chinese at first and they use this as a way to cover up the problems. The farmers had a hard time adjusting to land with the different landscape and at first the economy struggled. So people needed something to look up to, so the romanticized version of the cowboy was born.

What made the American cowboy idealized was the fact that people needed something to look up to, to have something to put faith in. With all the failing jobs and struggles people were going through. Once this image became known many books were published of this romanticized version of the cowboy. One of the first movies with sound came out about a cowboy and this image took of in the U.S. People seek to have someone to look up to and when the west was struggling, and this heroic image came about it gave the people something to take their minds of the bad things.