To handle these millions of cattle, the cowboy proliferated too. Beef was suddenly abundant and cheap, and Americans rushed to consume it. For a couple of decades, my family’s ranch, the CK, was one of the big shippers-every year we averaged 15,000 steers to the Chicago stockyards.
By the 1880’s, there were millions of cattle on the prairies and plains. But after the Civil War (1861–65), as native tribes were being slaughtered or swept onto reservations, millions of square miles of grassland in the Western interior were suddenly open to grazing, and the livestock industry exploded. Already in colonial times, cattle and herders dotted the English-speaking east coast and the Spanish-speaking southwest. Rodeo is said to be “the only sport that grew out of an industry,” namely the vast 19th-century livestock business that flourished west of the Mississippi, from Mexico north to Canada. To find the roots of gay rodeo riders-and rodeo itself-we have to dig in this soil of the Old West. Indeed, frontier men may have gravitated to this job so they could enjoy the company of other males. Back through American history, few occupations were more conducive to secret man-to-man love than cowboying.
I grew up on a historic Montana cattle ranch that was steeped in cowboy tradition.
God help us, and John Wayne forgive us!” In Congress, senators from the sagebrush states pushed a resolution declaring July 22 as “National Day of the American Cowboy.” But the movie also pushed a button for professional rodeo, with some contestants stepping forward to assure the media that, in all their years around the arenas, they never met a real-life Jack Twist.
A typical Christian blogger screamed: “Now they’re out to destroy the American legend of the cowboy. THE POLITICAL DUST STORM kicked up by the Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain, however predictable, found right-wingers railing that yet another symbol of American “family values,” the cowboy, was being desecrated.