hckrnws
A former slave who became a cowboy, a rancher, and a Texas legend
by bikenaga
Very cool. It’s great that we’re starting to learn more about US history. There’s so many untold stories that need to be told.
Country music sometimes has a chorus that changes interpretation* after each verse; in one case I encountered a song where the verses themselves changed interpretation after I'd learned some North American history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33931615
* are there any other genres which do this?
It's quite common in folk music to use clever metaphors to cloak a song's true meaning. For example, the traditional English folk tune "John Barleycorn" looks like a murder ballad at first sight, but is in fact describing the harvest of barley and it's many uses (especially alcoholic!):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barleycorn
Country music has strong roots in English and Irish folk music, so there are a lot of thematic crossovers.
Follow-up comments:
- its* (facepalm)
- The excellent folk music website MainlyNorfolk has a fascinating amount of detail about this tune: https://mainlynorfolk.info/lloyd/songs/johnbarleycorn.html
> ...the sceptical incline to think it may be an invention or refurbishing carried out by some educated antiquarian. If so, he did his work long ago and successfully, for the ballad was already in print in the early years of the seventeenth century...
That's an amusing possibility. I'm inclined to assign authorship of JB to "Trad." but do believe I ran into a similar case of a joke running for a few thousand years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39658391
Important to remember just how close we really are to slavery. It's not ancient history by any means. The last living child of an American slave just died a few years ago. And we still have living memory of people born in slavery; the African Americans who marched in the 50s and 60s grew up with stories of slavery from their grandparents. This is crucial to understanding race relations in the US.
Important to remember just how close we really are to slavery. It's not ancient history by any means.
Absolutely. My grandmother's grandmother was a slave. It's still hard for me to wrap my hand around the fact that I knew and talked to someone that new a slave.
(yes, I know modern-day slavery exists, I'm speaking in context of US chattel slavery)
Agreed.
This article sorta outlines the complexity of slavery too.
Yes, flat out chattel slavery was a dehumanizing system.
It also created a legacy of complex family relationships that as often as not bridged race - and leave those families still intertwined today - this is something white america has not yet really begun to grapple with.
That complex history of slavery is something that we as a nation are still grappling with today.
Just finish Lawmen: Bass Reeves (about the legendary lawman of the wild West, Bass Reeves, the first Black deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River.)
https://thetvdb.com/series/bass-reeves
Recommended.
Cowboys did manual labor that didn't require much of an education for low pay. How they became the white symbol of Texas is beyond me.
"didn't require much of an education"
Have you ever tried to move one single cow? Now would you consider trying to move a whole group of cows, without someone educating you how to do so?
Probably not I think. It certainly takes lots of education to become a skilled cowboy. But it required no school education. And more people grew up with horses than with books(back then) so the low pay was because of high supply, not because it was a simple job.
Maybe due to decades of the romanticized "cowboy" shown by Hollywood?
But also, maybe what you described is something people respect, even though they wouldn't want to actually do it themselves.
Well that is a pretty common trope the US, where red states applaud the independent blue collar worker, and blue states look down on them, unless they are part of a union.
Like a slave plantation forever stuck in a unproductive quagmire?
A Texan YouTuber once mentioned offhandedly that his history teacher father had taught him that the The Alamo was largely about slavery. This blew my Yankee-educated mind.
When I looked to research it more I found this piece, also from Texas Monthly, about that year's winner of "The Texas Historical Commission’s annual prize for the best work of Texas history."
> Forget the Alamo
I now have to totally revaluate my beliefs about the historical moment in 1982 when Ozzy Osborne got arrested for pissing on the Alamo Cenotaph while wearing his wife's dress.
Eh, like many things, there were a lot of causes for The Texas Revolution, and, by extension, The Battle of the Alamo. It's pretty reductive, and from a 21st century POV, to say that it was about slavery first and foremost. There was a lot of unrest in Mexico around this time (Texas wasn't the only breakaway region), there were plenty of American settlers who didn't integrate with the Mexican culture (although there were plenty that did, and plenty Texians who fought for independence as well), and there was a significant geographical distance between Mexico City and the settlers. Slavery was a motivation for some, that is undeniable. But like much, it's more complicated than that.
I agree that there were many factors, and I didn't say the Alamo was all about slavery, but apparently a large component.
Losing the ability to profitably harvest cotton was a major factor, according to this winner of that Texan historical prize.
Learning history as kid in Massachusetts, the fact that slavery was any part of the Texas Revolution was never mentioned.
> Texas Convention of 1836
> ... It also explicitly legalized slavery... [0]
Somehow we were never taught any of that. But I get it, it's nicer to wrap up history in a nice bow when teaching children.
>Learning history as kid in Massachusetts, the fact that slavery was any part of the Texas Revolution was never mentioned.
That leads me to wonder what were you taught. It seems strange to me that my Texas education taught more about slavery than a New England state. How could slavery be left out like that. History classes for me were a long time ago, and there are definitely things I have to ask myself if they were not really taught, or I just didn't learn/retain/care when they were taught. For example, my recollection of WWII history classes was heavily focused on the European campaign while the Pacific campaign was much more limited. Is that bias on what I paid attention to, or was that how it was actually taught?
> It seems strange to me that my Texas education taught more about slavery than a New England state.
Me too! As I grow older, so many of my early supposistions have been proven wrong.
Regarding WWII, this has been one of the most interesting threads on HN which I have participated in. For a further example of "it's more complicated than we are taught in school" see my crazy comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40089205
You probably spent a lot more time on the details of TX history than they did in Mass
But don't you think it would be the Texans white washing the slavery aspect than the northern states? That's my point of confusion.
Comment was deleted :(
While there were more reasons for sure, I had never heard about the slavery aspect until today. Doing some google search showed me indeed historians think that it was one of the reasons and I find it surprising it isn’t talked about as much
> and I find it surprising it isn’t talked about as much
there have been many attempts to talk about it, the latest attempt was turned into a boogeyman called "Critical Race Theory" and censored by all levels of state government in that region of the country
maybe this is an opportunity to look into what people are trying to actually teach and point out about American history
there has been a century of pushback starting from parents for history that isn't resoundingly "go America, #1 in every aspect, moral leader of all time all the time".
eh I'm beating around the bush because the reality might dilute the point in this crowd as it might sound fictional and unfamiliar: white parents want their white children to feel comfortable with the country's history. this neglects that other groups have always felt uncomfortable with that version of American history. other groups trying to merge in aspects of American history that affect them have had a century+ of pushback from the more numerous group of people who have representatives similar to them in office.
yeah yeah #notallwhiteparents, ok.
just enough to get governors and legislatures to continue creating boogeymen and blocking the teaching of history that isn't resoundingly comfortable for those same people.
If I was to learn a larger lesson from experiencing acquiring this major detail about the Texas Revolution myself, it might be that history is much more complicated than we are taught.
Another huge example for me is that even though we escaped the communist-bloc when I was a kid, where my mom had to de-program me from preschool lessons about Lenin...
I still bought into the whole "WWII was won with American industry, and Russian blood" story. Meanwhile, a major missing fact in that story is that Stalin and Hitler started WWII together, as allies. A few days after this pact was signed, Poland was invaded from both East and West. It is very arguable that without this agreement, even nutjob Hitler would not have tried to invade all of Europe. Now that I know that, it makes a lot more sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...
BTW, this historical fact is now illegal to discuss in Russia:
https://www.jpost.com/international/comparing-soviet-union-t...
Don't really see how that fact changes that story, both can be true.
Agreed, both could be true. This is another example of the simplified "kid history" which we were all taught. It is actually much more complicated. As an example from "the other side," in the USA, were we ever taught about the Business Plot?[0] Or the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden?[1] Why doesn't every American know about these events?
However, in the case of “Russian Blood won WWII.”
1) This patriotic story which still rings true in Russia today, would be WTF’ed if the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was mentioned in the same breath. As in, so many died because papa Stalin allied with Satan Hilter? WTF?
2) It was actually mostly Belarusian and Ukrainian soldiers who lost their lives on the front lines, not Russians. Because of course the Kremlin would decide to send them in first.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ...
Countries tend to not teach their bad parts of history, not unique for the us, and one side of the political spectrum is especially bad.
Would less people have died if there wasn't a pact? Wouldn't Hitler have taken Poland anyway? Hitlers plan was always to invade and kill the population east of Germany. Stalin was already suspicious but thought they would have time to rebuild their armies before m the invasion.
I read the soviet union when people say Russia during ww2, so includes other ethnicities for me. Wouldn't surprise me if they used non-russians like that, but I'm not sure about what you say. According to the link 5.7m out of 8.7m military deaths were ethnic russians.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/ch....
> It was actually mostly Belarusian and Ukrainian soldiers who lost their lives on the front lines, not Russians. Because of course the Kremlin would decide to send them in first.
Yeah, this is probably bullshit. Russians will claim the numbers are heavily skewed the other way, but let’s look at some actual numbers. (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/unnj1t/what_...)
> I have some numbers on hand from Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna bez grifa sekretnosti (roughly Great Patriotic War declassified) by Krivosheev and Adronikov…
> Out of 8,668,400 total combat losses where nationality could be established, only 5,756,000 were Russian (66%). Ukrainians made up 1,377,400 losses (16%), Belarusians 252,900 (3%), Tatars 187,700 (2%), Jews 142,500 (1.6%), Kazakhs 125,500 (1.4%), Uzbeks 117,900 (1.4%) and other nationalities made up less than one percent of the total losses apiece.
> The number of prisoners of war tallied also show that Russians were the most numerous population involved, but that much. Out of 1,368,849 cases tallied up in the book, 657,339 POWs were Russian (48%), 386,568 were Ukrainian (28%), 103,053 were Belarusian (7.5%), 30,698 were Tatars (2%) 28,228 were Uzbeks (2%), 23,816 were Georgians (1.7%), 23,142 were Kazakh (1.7%), 20,850 were Azeri (1.5%), 20,067 were Armenians (1.5%) and then the remaining nationalities made up less than 1% each.
> When determining the percentages of each nationality that fought in the Red Army it is also important to remember that pre-war populations won't do you much good. Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics were fully occupied by the Germans for the majority of the war, meaning that any civilians who would come of fighting age during this time were unable to join the Red Army. Men of fighting age or nearing it would likely be kidnapped for forced labour in Germany or killed, which further drove down those numbers. In contrast, it would be much easier to draft someone who turned 18 in Eastern RSFSR, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc. so the proportion of these nationalities were higher.
It’s likely that Belarus and Ukraine probably did suffer more in some proportional sense. Is this because the Soviet Union followed a policy of ethnic Russian supremacism (under the rule of an ethnic Georgian dictator), or because Belarus and Ukraine are closer to Germany and got the worst of what the Nazis had to dish out? Likewise, I’ve also seen insinuations that the Holodomor was an ethnically motivated genocide of Ukrainians, and while it did affect Ukraine especially hard, there seems to be very good evidence that it was primarily motivated by communist class hatred towards the kulaks, combined with the sort of brutal forced reorganization of the economy that also led to millions of deaths at the hands of the Chinese and Cambodian communist regimes. Plenty of Russians also died in the terror-famine, and at any rate, the communist regime was preoccupied with questions of class and ideology. It’s much more fair to attribute their atrocities to these motivations more than the ethnic ones that people are perhaps more heavily fixated on today.
I’d also point out that when you’re talking about modern Ukraine, you’re not quite talking about the same country as pre-WWII Ukraine. The eastern parts of Poland that were annexed by the USSR according to the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact became the western parts of Belarus and Ukraine. The Ukrainian city of Lviv, also known by its Russian name Lvov had been the Polish city of Lwow. Prior to that, before Poland was granted independence in the aftermath of WWI, it was the Austro-Hungarian city of Lemberg. Similarly, the Crimea was transferred from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR in the 1950’s for administrative reasons, but even since then was still mostly populated with ethnic Russians.
Speaking of parts of history that don’t get talked about, let’s mention some other borders that got moved. Poland was ultimately “compensated” for the loss of its eastern territory to the USSR with the annexation of most of the easternmost parts of Germany, complete with the forced relocation of Germans into the now smaller territory of occupied Germany, a massive exercise in what most Americans would call “ethnic cleansing” if the US wasn’t utterly complicit in it. This happened to some degree across Eastern Europe during and after the war, and there are perhaps understandable and sympathetic motivations for that, what with the presence of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland providing excuses for German aggression at the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, that doesn’t quite justify annexing parts of Germany and driving out all of the Germans. Altogether, at least 12 million ethnic Germans were driven out of their homes during and after the war, with somewhere between half a million to 2.5 million of them dying in the process. And it’s not like it was always straightforward to accurately identify “ethnic Germans” either—some of the displaced and dead from the territories annexed to Poland were probably ethnic Poles with German citizenship.
Thanks for some interesting details on the USSR casualty numbers.
However:
> Speaking of parts of history that don’t get talked about, let’s mention some other borders that got moved. Poland was ultimately “compensated” for the loss of its eastern territory to the USSR with the annexation of most of the easternmost parts of Germany, complete with the forced relocation of Germans into the now smaller territory of occupied Germany, a massive exercise in what most Americans would call “ethnic cleansing” if the US wasn’t utterly complicit in it.
I am not sure how the US was complicit in this exactly. You skipped the part where ethnic cleansing was also done to the Poles in Eastern Poland, and they were moved at gun-point to where I currently am writing from.. Lower Silesia. The understanding here was that the USSR moved Poland to the East, so that Russia moved further to the East. It sucked for the Germans and the Poles. The Soviet Army did this. BTW, it's oddly not nationalist around here, as there is no multi-century family land history.
Everyone around here does not believe that these new borders were at the request of the USA. If the USA/UK is to blame at all, it is that they abandoned us all to the monsters in Moscow. People are still a little pissed off about that to be honest.
Here is my family story: One of my grandmothers lived in Kalisz, Poland. Her family was considered "reis deutsch," so was not taken for extermination. Her farmhouse was used by German officers as a BnB, as it laid exactly half-way between Berlin and Warsaw.
My other grandmother pretended she was Polish for all of her adult life. However, it turns out she was 100% German. Her parents were shot, in a big public show, by the Red Army in Riga, Latvia - as they owned the brick factory, and were German. After her parents were shot, she walked to Poland at the age of 18 and never spoke another word in German for the rest of her life.
As my Polish grandmother began suffering from dementia, she started to drop her guard and finally started to answer all my dumb WWII questions (we were living comfortably in Seattle at the time.) I was not ready for the answers. In addition to regular wartime, she was SA'ed by both German and Soviet Army members. Meanwhile, my secretly German grandmother didn't have as good a time, having seen her parents shot and then who know what happened during her lost years while she walked to Warsaw over the course of 11 months. Later in adult life, she was committed multiple times.
All in all, my family history turns out to be the definition of: it's more complicated than what I was taught in school, and I can imagine.
When people start to talk about left/right, commie/fascist, as if one is better than the other, I don't know how to respond except that I believe in the horseshoe theory of politics. It's us normies in the middle, and murderous assholes on the edges. Those assholes sign things like the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, call each other "the other," and we all have to suffer.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I truly appreciate communication on this website.
> I am not sure how the US was complicit in this exactly.
We were allied with the Soviet Union and explicitly agreed to the program of forced relocations. I agree with you that the vast majority of the blame should be placed on the communists, but in my opinion the United States was still too naive and conciliatory towards Stalin during the war. If there was some way that the Nazis and communists could have both lost World War II without killing everyone else in Eastern Europe along the way, that would have been ideal. Unfortunately, that’s not how things work. I think the US ultimately took one of the better possible courses of action, but I still have my criticisms.
> You skipped the part where ethnic cleansing was also done to the Poles in Eastern Poland, and they were moved at gun-point to where I currently am writing from.. Lower Silesia. The understanding here was that the USSR moved Poland to the East, so that Russia moved further to the East.
Yes, thanks for bringing this up. Aside from the Kaliningrad Oblast, I think it was mostly Belarus and Ukraine that moved west, though the distinction between Russia and Ukraine is much more salient today than it was at the time.
Thanks for sharing your family history. I absolutely agree that the truth is extremely complicated and defies any simplistic and tendentious narrative that anyone tries to apply to it.
> I agree with you that the vast majority of the blame should be placed on the communists, but in my opinion the United States was still too naive and conciliatory towards Stalin during the war.
Historically, is seems as there is a normalcy bias[0] towards Moscow, whether it's the USA, UK, Germany, or France, trying to consider Russia as a "normal" European peer society. While Moscow keeps proving that they are not, and mostly that their leadership sees an advantage in being some sort of contrarian opposition to the ideals of Europe.
A while back in modern history, imperial Germany was also this type of problem. Is it too late to destroy and rebuild Russia, as Germany was rebuilt, now that nukes are involved?
How this divide is to be conquered all these decades later is still the challenge of our times. I almost give up. Our governments are clearly not up to the task, even today. My only hope at this point are very brave Russian artists like IC3PEAK.
Comment was deleted :(
They sure put a lot of effort into enshrining chattel slavery into law and preventing its destruction. It's the only state to secede from another nation twice to protect slavery.
Correct, I put that in my comment, where I said that slavery was a factor.
Slavery was the primary motivation (just as it was the primary motivation for the 1861 pro-slavery rebellion of the US South). The weakness of the Mexican central state and its logistical difficulties sustaining its army was a convenient (for the white Texans) bonus that made their pro-slavery revolt possible.
If you want to keep digging, you can add American expansionism and ambitions to conquer big parts of Mexico, i.e. a "manifest destiny" land grab. The US was happy to tacitly support the Texans because whether they failed or succeeded it was relatively low risk for the US government and their success was likely to further US interests.
It's fair to say that the primary cause of Texan separatism was slavery.
It's also fair to say that Santa Anna was a proto-fascist and that was a legitimate factor, not a convenience. Lorenzo de Zavala, the former Mexican finance minister, didn't become Vice President of Texas for slavery or American expansionism.
Mexican elites were a brutal and repressive bunch, both before and long after this time, and "fascism" doesn't even begin to describe the evil racist systems of repression of indigenous people from the 16th up through at least the mid 20th century.
But Texas anglos didn't really give a shit about any of that. They just wanted to left alone to build their own little profitable slave plantation economy modeled after the US southern states.
Texas anglos weren't the only people involved in the Texan revolution. And while it's true that Mexican elites were largely brutal and repressive, they didn't generally generate rebellions in half the Mexican states simultaneously. Santa Anna did.
> "didn't generally generate rebellions"
The periods before and after Santa Anna were also very violent and politically unstable, with armed rebellions all over Mexico. Santa Anna was fairly ordinary in his goals and methods by the standards of Mexican/Latin American caudillos.
The fundamental problem was not one or another particular person, but a society organized along quasi-feudal lines with extreme wealth/power concentration and systematic repression by elite landowners and a central state with limited power or legitimacy and huge logistical challenges. If it had been someone else other than Santa Anna in charge of Mexico, Texas anglo slave owners would have still had the same motivations and more or less the same systemic context, as would the US government, and eventual outcomes would have likely been similar.
Comment was deleted :(
>It's the only state to secede from another nation twice to protect slavery.
I would be shocked if that was true.
So, your shocked? Seceded from Mexico, then the USA.
I was thinking about the first in history part.
[flagged]
Let's take a trip back in time to a period just before the Texas Revolution. Perhaps we can find some basis for claims that a leading cause of the revolution was Anglo settler's desire to increase the number of slaves in Texas to help them build the economy and Mexico's reluctance to allow more slaves.
For this trip we will briefly reflect on the writings of a man who traveled to Texas in 1828 to gather information about Texas - plants, geology, business and industry, the political climate, etc for a report back to leaders in Mexico City so that they could use the intelligence to shape their own policies relating to the province. We will use the book *Texas by Teran*. [0] [1]
[0] https://archive.org/details/texasbyterandiar0000mier
[1] https://utpress.utexas.edu/9780292752351/
He touches on the subject of slavery several times since it is becoming, at the time, a point of friction between the Mexican government and the Anglo settlers. A couple of diary entries that support the fact that slavery was a keystone issue in Anglo settler's decisions to separate from Mexico follow.
pp38 - He is making recommendations in a letter to President Guadalupe Victoria and his second recommendation notes - "If the North Americans are allowed to introduce slaves, the Mexicans of Tejas should also be permitted to do so, but if slavery is denied to some it should be denied to all."
In 1824 Mexico adopted a new constitution that abolished slavery. By 1829 they elected their first president who had partial African ancestry (Guerrero). Slavery was not allowed in Mexico at the time of Teran's journey.
pp 56 - The most persistent goal for this colony is to obtain permission for the introduction of slaves. Without them they say that their settlement cannot prosper, nor can much of the land be cultivated, because there are forests so thick that only with negro labor can they be cleared. They petition the state government for permission to have slaves and make the following proposals: that the slave will be such only temporarily until he repays through his labor the cost of owning him, and that his descendants will be emancipated.
There is more in that entry that I encourage people to read but the gist is that anglo settlers wanted slaves and were willing to get them into the territory whether the Mexicans permitted it or not.
Thank you very much for these details. I know every country wants to teach their children the simplest, easiest to digest truth. But we are not children here, and this is why I come to this website.
You're welcome. I have roots in Texas back to at least 1835. I have always enjoyed reading history, especially obscure stuff. One problem that I run into far too often is the assertion that when children in Texas are taught about anglo settlement, the empresario system, the grants for settlement, etc that state curriculum glosses over the role of slavery in anglo settlement at the time. I had Texas history in grade school back in the 60's and we definitely covered the fact that anglo settlers brought slaves with them into Texas and that this was a contentious point. We covered Mexican history leading up to the Texas Revolution so we could understand the whole background of the relationship between Mexicans already living for generations in the Mexican state of Tejas and the Anglos who hoped to establish themselves in the state. Of course the fall of the Alamo was a sacred event to be remembered forever but we still learned that there were Mexican residents of Texas who opposed Santa Ana.
History always has weird twists and unexpected alliances. That book is a great book full of descriptions of contemporary occurrences that really make you appreciate how far we have all come.
[flagged]
Are you claiming that slavery had nothing to do with it?
> The revolution began in October 1835, after a decade of political and cultural clashes between the Mexican government and the increasingly large population of Anglo-American settlers in Texas. The Mexican government had become increasingly centralized and the rights of its citizens had become increasingly curtailed, particularly regarding immigration from the United States. Mexico had officially abolished slavery in Texas in 1829, and the desire of Anglo Texans to maintain the institution of chattel slavery in Texas was also a major cause of secession.
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
Don't know what that is but I was only teasing.
[flagged]
Here's a link to the general provisions of the Texas Constitution from 1836.
https://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/constitutions/republic-texas-...
Comment was deleted :(
No trolling, just some light teasing. I found it disturbing that you were repeatedly accusing this publication of 'race baiting" with no real basis. We all need to recognise the gravity of the history of slavery and the continuing social stratification that its legacy is causing around the world. I think it's dangerous to make accusations like you have done here. I asked you several times to clarify what you were saying and only received vague spiels about the Spanish language somehow ensuring that English derivations must be free of racist connotations. This left me a little exasperated and I felt that a bit of light banter would highlight some of the vacuuity of the accusations I was reading.
Totally fine if you think they've made a factual error but the accusation of race bait is a serious one and only serves to undermine any chance of such conversations being held with civility. Not everyone who says things you disagree with are trolling or baiting or acting with insiduous agendas.
I did not deny racial aspects of American history.
I just dispute that it has anything to do with this event.
I welcome you to expand on your linkage between the two though.
Look, I wasn't taught any of this either, and I went to school in Massachusetts (Yankee as heck.)
But search the web for: Texas Revolution Slavery or Texas Cotton Slavery
There are sound arguments from historians that slavery was indeed a significant factor in the Texas Revolution. Was it the only factor? No. But it was significant. In those days, in cotton land, cotton was not economically viable without human slavery. I also didn't know that Texas was cotton land back then.
The Texas Convention of 1836 explicitly legalized slavery.
I was never taught any of that. However, as I said in another comment: "But I get it, it's nicer to wrap up history in a nice bow when teaching children."
I am on the old side of age, and I have to say that it's nice to still be learning things. Maybe the Internet wasn't a mistake :)
edit: BTW, my deceased father's Cameron (Iron Works) and Cooper Oil Tools coveralls are hanging about 20 feet from me. I am not unfamiliar with modern Texas.
It was covered quite well in Texas, the entire 7th grade year history is dedicated to it.
Though recently the coverage has shifted to alternative points of views I've heard, but I don't have a kid so I don't know exactly how they cover it now.
If you would like to pick a "sound argument" from one of those historians I'd like to hear it and cross-examine it.
Hey, so I have made all of the "arguments" that I am willing to make on this topic. Check out other parts of the thread if you are interested.
However, while talking about voting is breaking HN guidelines... your higher-level comment got flagged. While I disagree with some of what of what you said, I vouched for your comment, because I believe that this discussion is important for people to see.
Here's to you, bubba!
Thanks. I appreciate it.
Remember Joe Travis!
Wow, thanks for making me search his name.
that reminds me of this:
This is why I visit Hacker News every day. Thank you community!!!!
> responded by whupping the offender in a fistfight, which apparently instilled respect in his adversary. Improbable as it seems, the two men developed a friendship.
Is this improbable? It's common enough to be a trope. I've had it happen twice.
One of my co workers had words with me and promptly knocked me on my ass. We became friends while he helped me off the ground.
A drunk once got lippy with me and said "you won't hit me". Naturally, that forced my hand. Soon thereafter he became one of the best friends I ever had.
This can't be uniquely American, right?
Jebe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebe) became one of Ghenghis Khan's top generals after shooting the Khan's horse out from under him in battle. Heart recognizes heart.
> Heart recognizes heart
This is a good line.
Yeah, that line also struck me as somewhat silly. Even in the days of outright dueling, this was known to happen. If you study the life of Andrew Jackson (who frankly comes across to any modern American as an absolute psycho), he had several duels throughout his life, and while many of them ended in Jackson killing his opponent, he also befriended many of his surviving dueling opponents. It was fairly common for a duel to end with both parties intentionally missing the other with their pistols, and it was probably safer for everyone involved for the fistfight to replace the duel as a ritual test of bravery and honor, though even that is on the decline.
Comment was deleted :(
"“The word ‘cowboy’ itself began being used in Fort Bend County and the surrounding area in 1821,” Callies says. “It was applied to Black slaves who worked with cattle.” (He notes that just as an enslaved person who worked inside the mansion would be referred to as a “houseboy,” one who took care of cattle was referred to as a “cowboy.” Even decades later, the term “cowboy” remained unpopular with white cowpunchers because of its racial connotations"
So cowboy was initially a term for black slaves? And now the idea of a black cowboy seems weird. Interesting how much of our worldview was shaped by movies ..
When I grew up the vast majority of station hands were black, the majority of rodeo stars were black, most of the people crazy enough to launch off of a quarter horse onto a cleanskin bull and pull it short by the tail were black ...
Not Texas, but it was the 1960s | 1970s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKTW0f_eJdY
I have read here and there that about a quarter of cowboys in the old west were Black. My dad mentioned that as a boy in the central valley in the 1930's a lot of the farm labor was done by Mexicans. Mexicans used to work their farms in the winter then head north to the US in the summer.
Comment was deleted :(
There is Scott Joplin the 19th century black composer from Texas who is the inspiration for most Mario music.
More notably he wrote the Maple Leaf Rag, which is still taught to piano students to this day, and was featured in The Sting[0], 1973's Best Picture winner.
I don't recall Maple Leaf Rag in the movie, but Solace and the Entertainer by Joplin are there.
Solace in particular is magnificent.
Some people might also know Solace from BioShock: Infinite.
Yes - you're right. The Entertainer.
Unlike this guy Scott Joplin is pretty famous. Its easy to find his music on CDs or as sheet music.
[dead]
[flagged]
Comment was deleted :(
[flagged]
If one thing’s for certain, it’s that Lil Wayne was unsuccessful
He has money and fame. It’s hard to call that unsuccessful.
That's completely false, but I wouldn't put any stock in anything that comes out of Texas Monthly, it's usually just race-bait...
The word "cowboy" originates from the Spanish term "vaquero" which refers to an individual who manages cattle while mounted on horseback.
The Spanish word "vaquero" is derived from "vaca" meaning "cow" which comes from the Latin word "vacca".
The term "cowboy" was first used in print by Jonathan Swift in 1725 and was used in the British Isles from 1820 to 1850 to describe young boys who tended the family or community cows.
Before "cowboy" the English word "cowherd" was used to describe a cattle herder, often referring to a pre-adolescent or early adolescent boy who usually worked on foot. This term is very old in the English language, originating prior to the year 1000.
The term "cowboy" was in use by 1849, although it was not used in all locations. The men who drove cattle for a living in the southwest were usually called cowhands, drovers, or stockmen.
Variations on the word appeared later, such as "cowhand" in about 1852 and "cowpoke" in 1881, originally restricted to individuals who prodded cattle with long poles to load them onto railroad cars for shipping.
To this day, cowhand and ranchhand are mainly used in America. The term cowboy is now generally used in the rodeo and a catch-all term.
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? You did a ton of it in this thread and it's the opposite of what we're trying for here.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting, we'd appreciate it.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40084620.
What's the link between vaquero and cowboy? I get that they both derive from the name of the same animal but is there actually a lineal relationship between them? And why would a Spanish source word cancel out or disprove any later racial associations of the word?
Regarding the other terms that were in use: Cowhand, ranchhand, drovers, stockmen etc etc. - does the use of these terms disprove the racialised aspects of cowboy or the story of how the word became popularised? I would think cowboy could have still been popularised in the slavery context despite not having been coined especially for it.
The original claim also only referred to the usage of the term in Fort Bend County and the surrounding area
Well, the term "buckaroo" is believed to be an anglicized version of "vaquero" showing phonological characteristics compatible with its Spanish origin. The word "buckaroo" first appeared in American English in 1827. It's still used to refer to a certain style of cowboys and horsemanship, particularly in the Great Basin region of the United States, which retains characteristics of the traditional vaquero.
But to your criticism, the transition from "vaquero" to "cowboy" just reflects the influence of Spanish culture on American ranching practices.
Vaqueros and cowboys worked side by side so it seems to be a natural transition between the two and has much more support historically and linguistically than the complete lack of evidence provided by the article.
Words don't appear out of nowhere, they naturally evolve and generally are based on imported words and root words, and it makes sense that Spain, the ones who created this practice and imported these cows and horses were the root of the evolution, beginning from the latin root word "vacca".
I think both origins are probably correct at the same time, as you well know, Texas is a big place, and communications/movements of people were very slow until the 20th Century.
Black cowboy culture is kinda lost from the popular narrative - and cowboy culture was anglicized to an extent that the Mexican origins were also buried - similarly both mexican and black folks experienced similar kinds of racism depending on which part of the state they were in.
So what is the lineage from "buckaroo" to "cowboy"?
In side by side duolingo usage and then somewhat interchangeably .. so no real "from" -> "to" was outlined.
FWiW, though, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) predates Space Cowboys (2000) by a good 0x10000 years; this ties in Hollywood, westerns, two chronological points and binary.
I don't think there is a lineage it's believed to be the literal anglicized version of vaquero. It was another branching of the word vaquero.
The term cowboy seems to have occurred naturally as a less literal transition of the word vaquero.
I am not a linguistics expert though, there may be someone else that has more details on the transition.
I will also accept a fortification of the article's attempt at explaining the origin, but I don't see any evidence or attempt at providing any.
Also as I noted in earlier comments the word "cowboy" was being used in print in 1725 by that time and used heavily in the British Isles in the mid 1800s
Certainly the onus to prove their claims lies with the authors of the article but the claim that they are engaging in "race baiting" is also very serious and as yet unsubstantiated.
Many words that were in print in the 18th Century have since been used in different contexts and taken on new associations.
I cannot provide a criticism against their theory of origin as they did not provide any evidence.
Judging from the theme and tones of their articles and their lack of evidence in their claims it is of my opinion they are race-baiting.
That is a subjective view so feel free to interpret their motives as you wish, I will interpret them how I view them based on my evaluations.
That's totally fine if you believe that. I only took issue when I saw you in 3 different parts of the thread saying the authors should be ignored because the publication engages in "race baiting."
I am not ignoring it nor did I say to ignore it. I simply dispute what they said.
If anything I want people to read it and see how trash it is.
Just don't be caught off guard if you use a "fact" of theirs and get embarrassed for being wrong.
Comment was deleted :(
“Race baiting” is a fairly incendiary way of putting it. The way I would put it would be to say that there’s a contemporary fixation on race that gets naively projected into other times and places in ways that are anachronistic and miss a lot of nuances. There’s also a tendency to overcorrect for past instances of this.
The thing is, you can motivate almost any oversimplified narrative with mutually exclusive rationales. Maybe you claim that all cowboys were white because you’re racist and you don’t think black people had the heroic qualities necessary for herding cattle. Or you could claim that all cowboys were white because the evil white man didn’t allow blacks to settle the frontier. I actually think this story is more on the side of nuance: it turns out some West Texas cowboys were black, some were white, and people on the frontier didn’t have the same obsession with maintaining racial systems of social hierarchy the way people did in the Deep South. Some of them would still be racist but a black man could handle those differences the same way men in that culture handled many of their differences, with his fists. And when this particular black cowboy did that, it worked out fine.
The odd claim about the etymology of the word “cowboy” does sort of hint and edge towards a completely different totalizing mythology of “actually, all cowboys were black”, but this also smells like bullshit to me. There were almost certainly more black cowboys than you’d assume based on watching old westerns, but they weren’t all black and none of the people in that place and time comfortably fit into any side of any contemporary culture war anyway. They were different people with ideas and motivations of their own, not just symbols in your contemporary culture war.
Will you also accept that a word might have several roots? I mean, it's a simple word. It could have been created several times in different places. Also not an etymology expert but such things must have happened, more than twice.
Sure, if you provide valid historical and linguistic evidence.
[dead]
> used in the British Isles from 1820 to 1850 to describe young boys who tended the family or community cows
This sounds like exactly the kind of definition that would get appropriated to belittle slaves. See also simply, “boy.”
That's your own prejudice coming out. The word boy may have a negative connotation in some usages, but in this case it's referring to literal boys.
The term was used for family and community farms, not for large ranches / plantations.
The fathers and sons would tend to a small head of cattle used to feed their family and the community. They did not and could not afford to own slaves.
Plus the term was used well after Britain outlawed slavery.
I think the point being made is that it seems plausible that a term used in Britain to refer to literal boys was repurposed later in a different context to be a demeaning way to refer to an adult man working with cattle in the US.
It might be plausible if any evidence was presented, otherwise it's very loose speculation.
Many of the cowhands working side by side vaqueros were literal boys (15-17) and very young men.
In Texas it's very common to call a young man a boy.
Currently it's a baseless accusation that it was a derogatory term, even moreso that it's racial.
It's never been mentioned as such until now, well past the high days of cowboys.
"put any stock in anything that comes out of Texas Monthly, it's usually just race-bait" citation?
[0] “I made it up.”
[flagged]
Comment was deleted :(
[flagged]
If you don't have real examples then I will take it that you are just creating a problem where none exists.
Who is "they"? It looks like the origin is coming from a quote by Larry Callies who runs the Black Cowboy Museum. Is everything quoted correct? I don't know but it read as a fun story that may be some mix of truth / story and probably heavily location specific. I am not sure sure that would classify as "race-baiting".
There are articles of slavery and race in TM but I would not classify it as more than 25% maybe?
I just gave an example of them making up an origin of the term "cowboy" being related to slavery with no supporting evidence.
Who is them? It’s a quote from a man who runs a museum? Did he make it up? Is it from passing down of verbal knowledge? Seems like if I was writing an article, going to the museum of black cowboys could have some interesting information. Just because his information is different from your “linguistic” history does not mean it’s race baiting trash.
>I wouldn't put any stock in anything that comes out of Texas Monthly, it's usually just race-bait...
I've been reading TM since the 1970's. Anyone who characterizes their reporting as race-baiting is playing to an agenda. They have always reported on stories, events, personalities, etc that have a connection to Texas with no regard for who they might offend in the process. They roast politicians from the left and right and offer the most unvarnished accounts of events in the state. They are about as middle-ground as you'll find anywhere. I don't always agree with things they write but they do honest reporting.
With that said, I agree with you about the origins of the term "cowboy" and how it has never been associated with nor has it ever been explained historically as a term first applied to black slaves in Texas who found themselves tending cattle. That is as I have been known to say periodically, bullshit of the purest kind.
It is quite true that black men in the southern slave states were denigrated by referring to them as "boys" regardless of their ages but it is not accurate historically for anyone to connect "cow" and "boy" as in the article in such a way that would imply the that the term "cowboy" was first used in that county to describe slaves who tended cattle. Those black slaves who helped tend the cattle learned that trade from Mexican vaqueros (Spanish for "herder of cattle") employed to tend cattle or from the white owners of those cattle.
I found one article that makes a similar claim to the one made in the article - that black cowhands were referred to as "cowboys" and white cowhands were referred to as "cowmen". [0] There is no merit to this claim. The author's byline implies to me, a bit of bias on the subject and cements in my own mind a perception of this claim as bullshit.
[0] https://medium.com/@ronaustin/the-true-origin-of-the-histori...
In fact if you have ever read a biography of someone who actually was a black cowboy, born as a slave, who later rode the cattle drives you would find that the term was applied equally to all who shared that dust regardless of race. [1] This is Nat Love's biography. He was a notable black cowboy whose exploits became the basis for the Deadwood Dick stories in the late 19th century.
One passage describes his own experiences riding the range with other cowboys: -
Love recalled the camaraderie of cowboys with admiration. “A braver, truer set of men never lived than these wild sons of the plains whose home was in the saddle and their couch, mother earth, with the sky for a covering,” he wrote. “They were always ready to share their blanket and their last ration with a less fortunate fellow companion and always assisted each other in the many trying situations that were continually coming up in a cowboy's life.”
[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21634
To me the thing that makes it so unlikely that "cowboy" was a derogatory term invented locally and used to describe black cowhands is the fact that during and after the Civil War in the heyday of cattle drives and up until today the term "cowboy" was applied to those men who drove the herds to the rails to feed the eastern appetite for steak. By all accounts 25% of the cowboys were black, 30% were hispanic, and 45% were white. If the white men were so racist that they used that term to insult the black men they rode with and shared trail dust with, then why did they accept the term when it was used contemporaneously by others to describe themselves? Why did it historically become okay for a white guy to be called a cowboy? As they say down around where I'm from here in Texas - "sumpum ain't raht" or "that dog won't hunt".
With all that said, I agree with you that the term cowboy was already in use in one form or another to apply to men and boys who worked cattle in Texas and did not carry any racial connotations related to the 'boy' ending. That's bullshit.
In Texas, by the time Anglos settled Ft Bend County and started plantations with their imported slaves providing most of the labor, there was already a culture of cattle working from horseback with roots in the original Spanish settlers in the 17th century and the Spanish term vaquero became anglicized to cowboy as white settlers moved in during the early 19th century.
Comment was deleted :(
[flagged]
Texas monthly is fairly left in a Texas context. But I don’t make the connection that any of the articles are race bait.
Yeah and the Patriot Act was about patriotism.
[flagged]
Surprising because I know quite a few Texans that do enjoy Texas Monthly. Please share some facts.
Edit: Happy to be wrong, I am sure the magazine has change over the years, it is an old publication but I always found it to be actually pretty "left" if you will especially regarding Texas politics. Again I have not read all of the publication so who knows but the magazine in my timeline has always been fairly critical of the government taking out apart the public schools and other related themes.
What specifically about it? The problem with using the Alamo as an example is for too long of a damn time Texas was teaching these myths in the public school system. That example feels more systemic than the specifics of the modern TM publication being race baiting trash.
I just meant that TM is hardly alone in questioning the old Alamo myth. I guess that makes Time race baiting trash in the views of some.
Which point of view is the myth?
I guess it depends on the number of outlets repeating it?
And yes it does to answer your question about Time Magazine, one in the same really.
At one point Time Magazine was a good publication, not in the last decade though. (in my opinion incase that needs to be stated)
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? You did a ton of it in this thread and it's the opposite of what we're trying for here.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting, we'd appreciate it.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40083203.
What are the “false” facts? Please share.
Was Daniel Webster Wallace not a real person?
Was he not a former slave turned successful cowboy/rancher?
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
That is describing the profession, the article is describing the origin of the term used to describe the profession. A “vaquero” is what we now would call “cowboy”, and we call them “cowboys” because it was originally applied to Black slaves who worked with cattle.
There’s no way to say the word “cowboy” originated from the word “vaquero”, because there is no similarity phonetically, nor does “vaquero” specifically include the Spanish word “boy”. (un cocinero is a “cook”, not a “cookboy”.)
> and we call them “cowboys” because it was originally applied to Black slaves who worked with cattle.
source?
The article.
Nothing to do with politics, why even bring it up? He keeps saying the original article is race baiting. It’s a quote from a black man who runs the black cowboy museum. It’s some regionally specific history/story. I asked for a some citations and he says make up my own mind. Felt very inflammatory and racist. Like I said I don’t know if this man who runs the black cowboy museum is a liar or this is specific to the locality. Happy to see sources when there are different opinions. I just don’t appreciate race baiting being thrown around with any evidence, in this case it seems to be race baiting of itself compared to the original article, hence being a racist of some sort.
[flagged]
At least by this site, it is center.
https://www.allsides.com/news-source/texas-monthly-media-bia...
"Texas Monthly is a news media source with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Center.
"
[flagged]
If all you consume is right leaning, then from your point of view the center will appear left leaning.
Sometimes you do need to step back some.
I think we've seen pretty clearly that people do go down rabbit holes and loose perspective. Even to the extreme of taking action like loading up the car with weapons, driving to another city to attack a pizza shop because it contains vampiric democrats that drink the blood of babies. Or, advocating that Russia should be allowed to do what they want in Ukraine.
I said nothing of my political leaning, only that you shouldn't rely on some sort of "meter" of bias from an outlet. It's circular reasoning.
There's no "authority of bias" you can trust. You have to view many sides and perspectives and judge for yourself the truth in the middle.
But judging from your hyperbolic, unsolicited statements you do seem to have some biases yourself that you may want to even out.
Technically, I also didn't state anything about my leanings. I just stated facts of things that have occurred. Why are you assuming I lean left, by just stating things that have happened?
Sure, relying on authorities is not a great solution. Not sure there is any good way for any individual to do mass surveys of the current media and form their own opinion of where all publications reside. You can have an opinion, but in a vacuum it will mostly also be off. Who has the time to read a million articles, form a think tank, and produce some 'analysis of where everyone resides on some scale' compared to their own scale. This is why we rely on some 'authority'. Nobody is going home and replicating all scientific research either.
All language is circular. It is a conundrum.
I wonder if he ever demanded "reparations", like so many "activists" today.
Crafted by Rajat
Source Code