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WE POINTED THEM NORTH; Recollections of a Cowpuncher
E. C. Abbott was a cowboy in the great days of the 1870's and 1880's. He came up the trail to Montana from Texas with the long-horned herds which were to stock the northern ranges; he punched cows in Montana when there wasn't a fence in the territory; and he married a daughter of Granville Stuart, the famous early-day stockman and Montana pioneer. For more than fifty years he was known to cowmen from Texas to Alberta as "Teddy Blue."
This is his story, as told to Helena Huntington Smith, who says that the book is "all Teddy Blue. My part was to keep out of the way and not mess it up by being literary.... Because the cowboy flourished in the middle of the Victorian age, which is certainly a funny paradox, no realistic picture of him was ever drawn in his own day. Here is a self-portrait by a cowboy which is full and honest." And Teddy Blue himself says, "Other old-timers have told all about stampedes and swimming rivers and what a terrible time we had, but they never put in any of the fun, and fun was at least half of it."
So here it isthe cowboy classic, with the "terrible" times and the "fun" which have entertained readers everywhere. First published in 1939, We Pointed Them North has been brought back into print by the University of Oklahoma Press in completely new format, with drawings by Nick Eggenhofer, and with the full, original text.
Hardcover
First published March 1, 1955
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September 29, 2021
A few years before my Grandmother died (she was 93), she gave me about one hundred volumes (some were duplicates) from the The Lakeside Press, published by R.R. Donnelly & Sons. These little volumes were created specifically for employees of R.R. Donnelley, with a new volume created every year, usually meant to capture and commemorate uniquely American works, and to display some of the bookmaking skills Donnelley offered. My Grandfather (who died in 1965) had worked for Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and they continued to send my Grandmother a volume every year even after he passed (I think they both must have worked there for a season, thus the duplicates?). These neat little volumes have sat on my shelves for over ten years now. I’ve started a handful but never made it more than a few pages. Until now. While reading McMurtry’s travel memoir, "Roads," he mentions “With the help of a Montana newspaperwoman, Helena Huntington Smith, Teddy Blue produced what is in my view the single best memoir of the cowboy era. The book, "We Pointed Them North," is as readable today as it was when it was published, sixty years ago [sic: first published in 1939]. What distinguishes it is its vividness, its exuberance, and its candor.” I immediately recognized the title as being one of the Lakeside volumes, located it, and devoured it. It’s an insightful and entertaining read that’s hard to put down. His perspective on women and Indians comes from a different era, but can likely be thought of as innovative for his time. I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandma lately. She gave me a nesting tea pot/cup set that I like to drink from in the afternoons, and when I use it I think of her. It feels good to be reading from the series of books she gave me and to think of her at the same time. She was a neat lady, always ready to go somewhere when I was a kid, always kind with me, and always generous to share from what little she had. I wish I could have shown her more gratitude when she was alive.
August 19, 2016
In the Steve McQueen movie about Tom Horn, the indian tracker, cowboy, and accused murderer, Tom falls for a young teacher from Hawaii, now living in Wyoming. She is intrigued with Tom because, in her words, Tom is a "link to the Old West." Tom's response to her was telling: "If you really knew how dirty and raggedy-assed the Old West was, you wouldn't want any part of it." He goes on to tell her that if she sticks around him she'll find out just how raggedy-assed the Old West really was.
McQueen's description of the Old West is an apt one. It wasn't glamorous, and often times it wasn't noble. Living in the Old West was hard and dangerous. And few tell the true story of the Old West better than one who lived it: "Teddy Blue" Abbott. In "We Pointed Them North," Abbott recounts his life as a cowpuncher, driving cattle up the trails from Texas to Montana. Along the way, he encounters some of the Old West's most colorful characters. It is the book that inspired the language and characters of much of Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer winning "Lonesome Dove."
McQueen's description of the Old West is an apt one. It wasn't glamorous, and often times it wasn't noble. Living in the Old West was hard and dangerous. And few tell the true story of the Old West better than one who lived it: "Teddy Blue" Abbott. In "We Pointed Them North," Abbott recounts his life as a cowpuncher, driving cattle up the trails from Texas to Montana. Along the way, he encounters some of the Old West's most colorful characters. It is the book that inspired the language and characters of much of Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer winning "Lonesome Dove."
January 14, 2019
Abbott was a cowboy in the halcyon days of the 1870s and 1880s and this is his own account, ghost written for him (Helena Huntingdon Smith), of his life, originally published in 1939, shortly before his death at the age of 78. (“My part was to keep out the way and not mess up it being literary”).
It is, as The English Westerners Brand Book puts it,
There are some fascinating anecdotes based on the innumerable lives of trail-driving cowboys who exchanged stories with, and yet uninterested in promoting his own ego.
In his latter years, after telling stories about his experiences to audiences and with the publication of some of his recollections in the local papers and stories about him in books, Abbott had become a legend. He claimed that he had wanted to write a history of the area in Montana where he had settled and had also tried to write the autobiography of his days on the trail, but he had never completed his projects. Over the course of a couple of years, Smith visited Abbott a number of times and recorded his narratives as he spoke them to her, playing the part, she says, of “ghost writer” engaged in “delightful collaboration”.
It’s a great book to read in accompaniment to something like Lonesome Dove , or Butcher’s Crossing for example.
It is, as The English Westerners Brand Book puts it,
The story of a wild and happy cowboy, without a care, a man that knew ‘em all - the harlots and the high-rollers, the Cheyenne and the Sioux, the cussin’ and the cattle - a fellow whose life was an uproarious adventure that you must on no account miss sharing.
There are some fascinating anecdotes based on the innumerable lives of trail-driving cowboys who exchanged stories with, and yet uninterested in promoting his own ego.
In his latter years, after telling stories about his experiences to audiences and with the publication of some of his recollections in the local papers and stories about him in books, Abbott had become a legend. He claimed that he had wanted to write a history of the area in Montana where he had settled and had also tried to write the autobiography of his days on the trail, but he had never completed his projects. Over the course of a couple of years, Smith visited Abbott a number of times and recorded his narratives as he spoke them to her, playing the part, she says, of “ghost writer” engaged in “delightful collaboration”.
It’s a great book to read in accompaniment to something like Lonesome Dove , or Butcher’s Crossing for example.
October 25, 2019
I went back and read one of my favorite memoirs by an old-time cowpuncher. What sets Teddy Blue apart from many who wrote about the frontier is not merely that he was there to see it, but understood the difference in opinion and knowledge. He was unafraid to tell you what he thought and why he thought it, or what he knew and how he knew it, but he never confused the two, so I considered anything he said he knew was absolutely what happened.
March 18, 2018
Not all Cowboys lived this way. If you want to read a book about a self-centred, no morals, shot at the hip with a temper, disregard for life(human or animal) then this is a book for you. Yes, life was hard for Cowboys but why make it worse for yourself with stupid choices? I don't feel sorry for people who do things that make them have to look over their shoulder or run most of their life for the things they have done. Hope I never come across a book like this one again, I will not make myself finish it like I did this one.
May 1, 2018
The overlap between this memoir and A Bride Goes West makes for a really interesting contrast in perspectives on pioneer life in the west during the late 1800's: male and female, drifter and settler. The two together paint a rich picture, full of surprising details and historical nuance.
March 16, 2020
This is a fascinating portrait of cowpuncher life in the 1860s-80s. Teddy "Blue" Abbot sure can tell a story, and writer Helena Huntington Smith wonderfully captures his voice. He overflows with a wealth of tales big and small-- a snapshot of a bygone era. He understands the evils wrought by colonizers on the American Indians, as is revealed through poignant musings and conversations ("we took [their lives] away from 'em for forty dollars a month." "the whlte man is such a damn poor loser he does not talk about the times when Indians were victorious.") He shares lost details of life in the wild west, including funny stories that got hours of telling and retelling on the trail. He was a brilliant mind: he wrote speeches and songs to entertain his friends and people living in the harsh spread-out world of 1860s western frontiers ("Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat. The Alamo had none. It had, however, an avenger, and the hour was at hand.") As he says, he "always had to be talking or singing or doing some fool thing."
A few vignettes:
-- an old parlor game had a rattlesnake trapped under a glass dome. The bartender gave you a chance to play for a dollar. You put your finger on the glass, and the snake inevitably strikes at you. If you can keep your finger there, you win! Teddy couldn't win- no one could- everyone jerks their hand away instinctively.
-- during lightning storms on the plains, Teddy describes riding about seeing little crackles and balls of electricity on the cattle's horns, the horses' mouths, and even on his own moustache!
-- cowpunchers would take turns over the course of a night, on night guard duty. As they lay there sleeping they could hear the return of the first guard-- hooves trotting on the earth-- from a mile away
-- cowpunchers endured unbelievable hardship-- including 1-3 hours of sleep!!
-- Here's his take on the buffalo slaughter: "That buffalo slaughter was a dirty business. ... It was all waste. All this slaughter was a put-up job on the part of the government, to control the Indians by getting rid of their food supply. And in a way i couldn't be helped. But just the same it was a low-down dirty way of doing the business, and the cowpunchers as a rule had some sympathy with the Indians. You would hear them say it was a damn shame.”
- and his take on buffalo hunters, including a literal usage of the word LOUSY: " ... The buffalo hunters didn't wash, and looked like animals. They dressed in strong, heavy, warm clothes and never changed them. You would see three or four of them walk up to a bar, reach down inside their clothes and see who could catchy the first louse for their drinks. They were lousy and proud of it."
-- funny stories got a lot of mileage among the cowpuncher community, because there wasn’t much else to do. When Teddy described a funny story about a man getting so drunk he asked his friends to shut his eyes for him so he could get some sleep, he added: "We laughed about it all winter and told the story around. A little thing like that was a big kick to us, you understand. a bunch of men out there by ourselves with no newspapers or anything else to read, and nothing to do but get up and feed the stove."
ON AMERICAN INDIANS:
Teddy understood, to come extent, the evils wrought upon American Indians by colonizers. His reflections in the book show the evolution of his own thoughts on the matter. A few stories that illustrate this:
-- "The fellow that had the ferry was rowing the Indians across in a little boat, and I sat down in the shade of a big cottonwood tree to watch them. Pretty soon along come a big Indian, and I said, "How," and he said, "How," and he sat down beside me. He knew a little English, and I toew some Sioux and some sign, and he had been drinking and wanted to talk. I asked him where they were going and he said they were going down the river with their women and fishing and drinking whisky. So we talked awhile about what they were going to do down there and then we got on the subject of the old days. I said: “You fellows used to have a pretty good time." He said, “Yes” and then he described the way they used to live before the white man came. They would go down a creek and camp where there was good grass and water, run a bunch of buffalo down and skin them and get the meat— then when the grass got a little short, they would just move on to a place where there was new grass, and keep that up, no troubles or worries, and when one wife got old, they'd marry another one. Coming back up Dog Creek, I met Russell. I said: "God, I wish I'd been a Sioux Indian a hundred years ago," and I told him the story. He said: “Ted, there's a pair of us. They've been living in heaven for a thousand years, and we took it away from 'em for forty dollars a month." That was the reason I liked Russell so much. We felt the same way about pretty nearly everything, and he could always see the funny side of things and so could I."
-- “I was always different from the general run of the white men because I liked the Indians and could see their side of things. Well, no, not always. But from the time I was old enough to know the facts. After I got some sense in my head and saw the way things really was in that country, I was sorry for the Indians and ashamed of the deal they got at the hands of the white men. But, as my mother used to say when she saw how I took to their way of living, I was pretty nearly one of them anyway. They can't show a place in history where the Indians ever broke a treaty. The white men always broke them because th-ey always made a treaty they couldn't keep and knew they couldn't keep it. And that is something I know, not just the way you know a thing you have read about, but the way you know it when you have seen it, and it stays with you always like a picture in your mind.”
-- Teddy attended a town gathering in which a Sioux chief named John Grass was advocating for the rights of his people in the face of shameful lying and treaty-breaking by the US government. John Grass described how after 1862, the government made a treaty "putting all the Sioux west of the Mississippi and promising them that the land would be theirs "for all time to come. Then John Grass pulled out another paper, and the government had moved them again, and cut the reservation down again." In this new parcel, the government again promised they could have that land "for all time to come." Teddy's narrative continues as John Grass speaks again: '"And now," he said, "you want the Black Hills." He said: "How would you like it if people go and take the land where you bury your dead?" He said: "I have been to Carlisle. I have as good an education as the white man will give me. And I still do not understand these treaties. I would ask some of you gentlemen to tell me what those words mean, for all time to come." I was standing at the back of the room with the other cowpunchers listening to all this, and I thought the deal was all right at the time. I don't think so now."
- "That time [the Northern Cheyennes] broke out in Oklahoma and fought their way north to this country up here was the greatest fight ever put up by any bunch of Indians in all history. And they were 100 per cent in the right all the time, because they were fighting to get back to their own country, that had been theirs for more years than the oldest Indian could remember. One U. S. Army officer who was out against them said it was the "greatest national movement ever made by any people since the Greeks marched to the sea." You can read about it in a very few books, the best account being in Reminiscences of a Ranchman by Edgar Beecher Bronson, in the chapter called "A Finish Fight for a Birthright." But except for that book and perhaps one or two others, you will seldom hear anything about the great fight made by Dull Knife and Little Wolf in '78, because the whlte man is such a damn poor loser he does not talk about the times when Indians were victorious."
- "I forgot to tell you about one thing that happened that morning on the Rosebud. While we were lying out there in the grass, half froze and waiting for all hell to break loose out of that tepee, I saw an old Indian go up a hill and pray to the sun. It was just coming up, and the top of the hill was red with it, and we were down there shivering in the shadow. And he was away off on the hill, and he held up his arms, and oh, God, but did he talk to the Great Spirit about the wrongs the white man had done to his people. I never have heard such a voice. It must have carried a couple of miles. I have noticed that what you see when you are cold and scared is what you remember, and that is a sight I will never forget. I am glad that I saw it. Because nobody will ever see it again."
- Teddy made up a speed about the Alamo which he would recite before launching into a song. "The Alamo had fallen. Brave Bob Travis, that drew the deadline with his sword, lay cold in death at the gate. Davy Crockett, with twenty dead Mexicans beside him and his trusted old Betsy in his hand, lay in the quadrangle. Upstairs Colonel Bowie, the mighty fighter from Georgia, had killed eleven with his terrible bowie knife, before crashing down to inevitable destruction like a giant of the forest before the axeman's repeated blows. Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat. The Alamo had none. It had, however, an avenger, and the hour was at hand. Sam Houston had been in retreat before Santa Anna's victorious army. Now he turned at the Buffalo Bayou and advanced towards the enemy. It was high noon, and the Mexicans were in siesta. Just before he ordered the charge, Deaf Smith galloped up and yelled in a voice of thunder: 'Fight for your lives! The bridges are burnt behind you.' The sun had went behind a cloud, and all Texas held its breath.“ Then, as Teddy sang, the little black bull came down the mountain.
-- "A fellow asked me one time where I got the line about "Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat"-- I guess he thought it sounded too educated for a cowpuncher. But I read a few books in my time."
********
I am so glad I read this fascinating narrative by Teddy Blue. I feel that I "saw" cowpuncher life, and saw into their minds. To borrow from his own words, I am glad that I saw it. Because nobody will ever see it again.
A few vignettes:
-- an old parlor game had a rattlesnake trapped under a glass dome. The bartender gave you a chance to play for a dollar. You put your finger on the glass, and the snake inevitably strikes at you. If you can keep your finger there, you win! Teddy couldn't win- no one could- everyone jerks their hand away instinctively.
-- during lightning storms on the plains, Teddy describes riding about seeing little crackles and balls of electricity on the cattle's horns, the horses' mouths, and even on his own moustache!
-- cowpunchers would take turns over the course of a night, on night guard duty. As they lay there sleeping they could hear the return of the first guard-- hooves trotting on the earth-- from a mile away
-- cowpunchers endured unbelievable hardship-- including 1-3 hours of sleep!!
-- Here's his take on the buffalo slaughter: "That buffalo slaughter was a dirty business. ... It was all waste. All this slaughter was a put-up job on the part of the government, to control the Indians by getting rid of their food supply. And in a way i couldn't be helped. But just the same it was a low-down dirty way of doing the business, and the cowpunchers as a rule had some sympathy with the Indians. You would hear them say it was a damn shame.”
- and his take on buffalo hunters, including a literal usage of the word LOUSY: " ... The buffalo hunters didn't wash, and looked like animals. They dressed in strong, heavy, warm clothes and never changed them. You would see three or four of them walk up to a bar, reach down inside their clothes and see who could catchy the first louse for their drinks. They were lousy and proud of it."
-- funny stories got a lot of mileage among the cowpuncher community, because there wasn’t much else to do. When Teddy described a funny story about a man getting so drunk he asked his friends to shut his eyes for him so he could get some sleep, he added: "We laughed about it all winter and told the story around. A little thing like that was a big kick to us, you understand. a bunch of men out there by ourselves with no newspapers or anything else to read, and nothing to do but get up and feed the stove."
ON AMERICAN INDIANS:
Teddy understood, to come extent, the evils wrought upon American Indians by colonizers. His reflections in the book show the evolution of his own thoughts on the matter. A few stories that illustrate this:
-- "The fellow that had the ferry was rowing the Indians across in a little boat, and I sat down in the shade of a big cottonwood tree to watch them. Pretty soon along come a big Indian, and I said, "How," and he said, "How," and he sat down beside me. He knew a little English, and I toew some Sioux and some sign, and he had been drinking and wanted to talk. I asked him where they were going and he said they were going down the river with their women and fishing and drinking whisky. So we talked awhile about what they were going to do down there and then we got on the subject of the old days. I said: “You fellows used to have a pretty good time." He said, “Yes” and then he described the way they used to live before the white man came. They would go down a creek and camp where there was good grass and water, run a bunch of buffalo down and skin them and get the meat— then when the grass got a little short, they would just move on to a place where there was new grass, and keep that up, no troubles or worries, and when one wife got old, they'd marry another one. Coming back up Dog Creek, I met Russell. I said: "God, I wish I'd been a Sioux Indian a hundred years ago," and I told him the story. He said: “Ted, there's a pair of us. They've been living in heaven for a thousand years, and we took it away from 'em for forty dollars a month." That was the reason I liked Russell so much. We felt the same way about pretty nearly everything, and he could always see the funny side of things and so could I."
-- “I was always different from the general run of the white men because I liked the Indians and could see their side of things. Well, no, not always. But from the time I was old enough to know the facts. After I got some sense in my head and saw the way things really was in that country, I was sorry for the Indians and ashamed of the deal they got at the hands of the white men. But, as my mother used to say when she saw how I took to their way of living, I was pretty nearly one of them anyway. They can't show a place in history where the Indians ever broke a treaty. The white men always broke them because th-ey always made a treaty they couldn't keep and knew they couldn't keep it. And that is something I know, not just the way you know a thing you have read about, but the way you know it when you have seen it, and it stays with you always like a picture in your mind.”
-- Teddy attended a town gathering in which a Sioux chief named John Grass was advocating for the rights of his people in the face of shameful lying and treaty-breaking by the US government. John Grass described how after 1862, the government made a treaty "putting all the Sioux west of the Mississippi and promising them that the land would be theirs "for all time to come. Then John Grass pulled out another paper, and the government had moved them again, and cut the reservation down again." In this new parcel, the government again promised they could have that land "for all time to come." Teddy's narrative continues as John Grass speaks again: '"And now," he said, "you want the Black Hills." He said: "How would you like it if people go and take the land where you bury your dead?" He said: "I have been to Carlisle. I have as good an education as the white man will give me. And I still do not understand these treaties. I would ask some of you gentlemen to tell me what those words mean, for all time to come." I was standing at the back of the room with the other cowpunchers listening to all this, and I thought the deal was all right at the time. I don't think so now."
- "That time [the Northern Cheyennes] broke out in Oklahoma and fought their way north to this country up here was the greatest fight ever put up by any bunch of Indians in all history. And they were 100 per cent in the right all the time, because they were fighting to get back to their own country, that had been theirs for more years than the oldest Indian could remember. One U. S. Army officer who was out against them said it was the "greatest national movement ever made by any people since the Greeks marched to the sea." You can read about it in a very few books, the best account being in Reminiscences of a Ranchman by Edgar Beecher Bronson, in the chapter called "A Finish Fight for a Birthright." But except for that book and perhaps one or two others, you will seldom hear anything about the great fight made by Dull Knife and Little Wolf in '78, because the whlte man is such a damn poor loser he does not talk about the times when Indians were victorious."
- "I forgot to tell you about one thing that happened that morning on the Rosebud. While we were lying out there in the grass, half froze and waiting for all hell to break loose out of that tepee, I saw an old Indian go up a hill and pray to the sun. It was just coming up, and the top of the hill was red with it, and we were down there shivering in the shadow. And he was away off on the hill, and he held up his arms, and oh, God, but did he talk to the Great Spirit about the wrongs the white man had done to his people. I never have heard such a voice. It must have carried a couple of miles. I have noticed that what you see when you are cold and scared is what you remember, and that is a sight I will never forget. I am glad that I saw it. Because nobody will ever see it again."
- Teddy made up a speed about the Alamo which he would recite before launching into a song. "The Alamo had fallen. Brave Bob Travis, that drew the deadline with his sword, lay cold in death at the gate. Davy Crockett, with twenty dead Mexicans beside him and his trusted old Betsy in his hand, lay in the quadrangle. Upstairs Colonel Bowie, the mighty fighter from Georgia, had killed eleven with his terrible bowie knife, before crashing down to inevitable destruction like a giant of the forest before the axeman's repeated blows. Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat. The Alamo had none. It had, however, an avenger, and the hour was at hand. Sam Houston had been in retreat before Santa Anna's victorious army. Now he turned at the Buffalo Bayou and advanced towards the enemy. It was high noon, and the Mexicans were in siesta. Just before he ordered the charge, Deaf Smith galloped up and yelled in a voice of thunder: 'Fight for your lives! The bridges are burnt behind you.' The sun had went behind a cloud, and all Texas held its breath.“ Then, as Teddy sang, the little black bull came down the mountain.
-- "A fellow asked me one time where I got the line about "Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat"-- I guess he thought it sounded too educated for a cowpuncher. But I read a few books in my time."
********
I am so glad I read this fascinating narrative by Teddy Blue. I feel that I "saw" cowpuncher life, and saw into their minds. To borrow from his own words, I am glad that I saw it. Because nobody will ever see it again.
January 28, 2022
This is a book for those who enjoy, relish, and devour western history. Did I enjoy the book? Well, not as much as I was hoping for, but I was compelled to finish. It's a great western history account, but parts of it offended my modern-day sensibilities. The historical account was dictated by a cowpuncher, who lived the real life and times of a cowpuncher in the 1870s and 1880s, and that rates highly for historical relevance in my book. If you are from Wyoming, Montana, or live in any of those states "Teddy Blue" traveled through when driving herds of cattle north from Texas, then this book belongs on your must-read list.
I did not mind the grammatical errors and sometimes strange sentence construction because it did not interfere with understanding, probably made it seem more authentic. The ghost writer, who took notes verbatim (at least verbatim as much as possible), was so impressed by Teddy's recall of details that she emphasized she did not change the wording or add to Teddy's recollection of events as she organized and compiled the text for publication. In my opinion, if any events, as retold by Teddy, are not quite accurate, well, I would attribute that to Teddy's reputation for repeating these stories many times throughout his lifetime and excuse him for adding colorful descriptions.
Seemed to me that Teddy described his life as a cowpuncher authentically and that he did not elevate himself to any particular standard of morality; rather, he just related what he did, what he regretted, and what he felt he had or needed to do at a particular time in his life. For that, I give him high marks for honesty. I would not have liked Teddy back then, and maybe not even after he left these "wild days" behind him; but I sure do admire his skill as a cowpuncher, his grit to withstand pain and suffering, his dogged devotion to his profession, and his unabashed way of sharing his faults. I was offended by his offhanded comments describing "sporting women." Well, not really offended, that's a dumb way of describing my reaction to an historical account; but it is a feeling tht surfaced while I read his excerpts on partying with prostitutes or "sporting girls" as he oftentimes called them. It's kind of difficult to not judge Teddy's cavalier attitude toward prostitutes. In Teddy's account he used, discarded, befriended and, at least once, probably fell in love with a prostitute. I can appreciate his honesty because it provides a better historical understanding of human interactions and events during this period of western history. Teddy told his ghost writer that he had read some great books about trailing cows north that were all true, except that the words in those books sounded like they were being told by preachers instead of cowpunchers in the 1870s and 1880s. According to Teddy, those cowboys (he knew them) were wilder than he was and they left out the details of their "fun and wild times" in Ogalalla or Miles City.
By age of 12 Teddy was through with his formal schooling. So that would have been about 1872 as Teddy was born in 1860. My father left school at about that age, maybe 14, and went to work for several ranchers as a ranch hand/cowboy. It was not unusual for someone to leave school at this age during this period of history. Sometimes rural areas could not find a teacher or the community couldn't pay the teacher salary. To put Teddy's schooling attendance in perspective, it was not until 1900, that 31 states had compulsory school attendance for students from ages 8-14, and not until 1918, that every state required students to complete elementary school. Anyway, as late as early 1900s, in rural parts of America, lots of youngsters were not educated to age 18 as is expected in today in America.
The encounters Teddy had with Native Americans were described with eyes that were shaped by the times in which Teddy lived, and still, I was appalled, saddened, and sickened by cruelties Teddy described that were prepetrated against Indian braves and Indian villages. He told these stories from the position of a White man, a White man with bias, but even in 1939 as Teddy told the story, he said he always sided with the Indians and excused them for their sometimes murderous retaliations. Even when he was nearly murdered by Indians Teddy said, "if I had been in their shoes I'd have done the same thing." (This is not a verbatim statement said by Teddy, but these words convey Teddy's feelings toward the awful deal Indians got from White man.)
It was interesting to read Teddy's firsthand encounters with famed historical characters, such as Wild Bill, Calamity Jane, Charles M. Russell and all the various outlaws and horse thieves.
Teddy became a cowpuncher as a teen because he wanted adventure intead of the humdrum and back-breaking life of a Nebraska farmer. He remained proud of his time as a cowpuncher for all his years and was proud to call himself a darn good cowpuncher (maybe one of the best). He admitted that cowpunching was a tough life full of painful mishaps, long stretches of boredom, and deadly risks such as lightning strikes, accidents, sickness, long hours and sleep deprivation, and choking trail dust, but stated he wouldn't change one thing if he could do it over.
The trail-driving years only lasted about twenty-five years---from about 1866 to 1890, but stories describing this time in history continue to fascinate western history buffs. If you are a western history buff, then this is a must-read book.
I did not mind the grammatical errors and sometimes strange sentence construction because it did not interfere with understanding, probably made it seem more authentic. The ghost writer, who took notes verbatim (at least verbatim as much as possible), was so impressed by Teddy's recall of details that she emphasized she did not change the wording or add to Teddy's recollection of events as she organized and compiled the text for publication. In my opinion, if any events, as retold by Teddy, are not quite accurate, well, I would attribute that to Teddy's reputation for repeating these stories many times throughout his lifetime and excuse him for adding colorful descriptions.
Seemed to me that Teddy described his life as a cowpuncher authentically and that he did not elevate himself to any particular standard of morality; rather, he just related what he did, what he regretted, and what he felt he had or needed to do at a particular time in his life. For that, I give him high marks for honesty. I would not have liked Teddy back then, and maybe not even after he left these "wild days" behind him; but I sure do admire his skill as a cowpuncher, his grit to withstand pain and suffering, his dogged devotion to his profession, and his unabashed way of sharing his faults. I was offended by his offhanded comments describing "sporting women." Well, not really offended, that's a dumb way of describing my reaction to an historical account; but it is a feeling tht surfaced while I read his excerpts on partying with prostitutes or "sporting girls" as he oftentimes called them. It's kind of difficult to not judge Teddy's cavalier attitude toward prostitutes. In Teddy's account he used, discarded, befriended and, at least once, probably fell in love with a prostitute. I can appreciate his honesty because it provides a better historical understanding of human interactions and events during this period of western history. Teddy told his ghost writer that he had read some great books about trailing cows north that were all true, except that the words in those books sounded like they were being told by preachers instead of cowpunchers in the 1870s and 1880s. According to Teddy, those cowboys (he knew them) were wilder than he was and they left out the details of their "fun and wild times" in Ogalalla or Miles City.
By age of 12 Teddy was through with his formal schooling. So that would have been about 1872 as Teddy was born in 1860. My father left school at about that age, maybe 14, and went to work for several ranchers as a ranch hand/cowboy. It was not unusual for someone to leave school at this age during this period of history. Sometimes rural areas could not find a teacher or the community couldn't pay the teacher salary. To put Teddy's schooling attendance in perspective, it was not until 1900, that 31 states had compulsory school attendance for students from ages 8-14, and not until 1918, that every state required students to complete elementary school. Anyway, as late as early 1900s, in rural parts of America, lots of youngsters were not educated to age 18 as is expected in today in America.
The encounters Teddy had with Native Americans were described with eyes that were shaped by the times in which Teddy lived, and still, I was appalled, saddened, and sickened by cruelties Teddy described that were prepetrated against Indian braves and Indian villages. He told these stories from the position of a White man, a White man with bias, but even in 1939 as Teddy told the story, he said he always sided with the Indians and excused them for their sometimes murderous retaliations. Even when he was nearly murdered by Indians Teddy said, "if I had been in their shoes I'd have done the same thing." (This is not a verbatim statement said by Teddy, but these words convey Teddy's feelings toward the awful deal Indians got from White man.)
It was interesting to read Teddy's firsthand encounters with famed historical characters, such as Wild Bill, Calamity Jane, Charles M. Russell and all the various outlaws and horse thieves.
Teddy became a cowpuncher as a teen because he wanted adventure intead of the humdrum and back-breaking life of a Nebraska farmer. He remained proud of his time as a cowpuncher for all his years and was proud to call himself a darn good cowpuncher (maybe one of the best). He admitted that cowpunching was a tough life full of painful mishaps, long stretches of boredom, and deadly risks such as lightning strikes, accidents, sickness, long hours and sleep deprivation, and choking trail dust, but stated he wouldn't change one thing if he could do it over.
The trail-driving years only lasted about twenty-five years---from about 1866 to 1890, but stories describing this time in history continue to fascinate western history buffs. If you are a western history buff, then this is a must-read book.
June 13, 2023
A Larry McMurtry rec. Really lives up to the “recollections” part of the title; it reads like an old man is talking at you— summarizing stories mostly and giving just a few exchanges of dialogue, which he’s remembered because they are the funny, acerbic punchlines of the cowpunchers. I didn’t know them cowpunchers had a humor that was so dry, but that’s the west I guess.
The author preserves the Western dialect—as she says in the intro, “they will use ‘we was’ and ‘we were,’ ‘I done’ and ‘I did,’ interchangeably in a single sentence. I have simply followed their own no-system.”
This is also a historical perspective that sees both the open range frontier and the eventual take-over of industrialization. It’s ironic these cowpunchers brought about their own occupational demise in a way— leading cattle drives that led to population growth and urbanization.
It begins in post-Civil War TX, and so comments on and depicts the Southern racism towards Blacks and Mexicans. He lends the most empathy and depth, however, towards Indians, especially the Northern Cheyennes of Montana. He recounts their forced relocation by the US government after the Custer defeat, the losses of life that resulted from a new environment, and their subsequent battle to return to their homeland. It’s a story I’d like to research further. And that is emblematic of the whole book, it’s full of characters with their own stories too.
The author preserves the Western dialect—as she says in the intro, “they will use ‘we was’ and ‘we were,’ ‘I done’ and ‘I did,’ interchangeably in a single sentence. I have simply followed their own no-system.”
This is also a historical perspective that sees both the open range frontier and the eventual take-over of industrialization. It’s ironic these cowpunchers brought about their own occupational demise in a way— leading cattle drives that led to population growth and urbanization.
It begins in post-Civil War TX, and so comments on and depicts the Southern racism towards Blacks and Mexicans. He lends the most empathy and depth, however, towards Indians, especially the Northern Cheyennes of Montana. He recounts their forced relocation by the US government after the Custer defeat, the losses of life that resulted from a new environment, and their subsequent battle to return to their homeland. It’s a story I’d like to research further. And that is emblematic of the whole book, it’s full of characters with their own stories too.
June 4, 2012
This book has been on my "to read" list for a couple years. I am glad I added it to the list; I am glad I read it. Life as it really was on the cattle drives of the Old West. Not much glamor. A hard life that saw a cowpuncher wintering in deep snows, falling asleep in his saddle from fatigue, blowing his hard-earned money on drink and fancy women. This is not a contrived novel or a John-Wayne-like Western. These are memories in rough chronological order. If you love the West and want to know the past intimately from the perspective of a cowboy who was at once hard bitten but perceptive, this is your book.
Things I never knew include: I found it interesting that cowboys didn't wear two guns like the Lone Ranger. One does not fire his revolver in the air to stop a stampede. Cowboys had a reverence for women which was touching. The cowboy had a code of honor. He rarely drew his six gun except to shoot at a jackrabbit. Fist fighting was considered beneath him. Loyalty to his fellows was a given. Cowboy EC "Teddy Blue" Abbott has a lot to teach us.
Things I never knew include: I found it interesting that cowboys didn't wear two guns like the Lone Ranger. One does not fire his revolver in the air to stop a stampede. Cowboys had a reverence for women which was touching. The cowboy had a code of honor. He rarely drew his six gun except to shoot at a jackrabbit. Fist fighting was considered beneath him. Loyalty to his fellows was a given. Cowboy EC "Teddy Blue" Abbott has a lot to teach us.
June 5, 2023
Well, this isn’t the most politically correct book, but given that it is a first-person (ish) account of life in the Old West, one can’t expect much along the lines of appropriateness. In fact, the voice from which this is told is clearly the charm of the tale. It is so stream-of-conscious based and we circle back to various events multiple times. However, it is a fun telling of life as a cowboy when it was nothing but hard work. Teddy Blue’s life wasn’t that different from others, but his story was still a fun one to read.
March 6, 2016
Fun. End to end.
January 20, 2018
Not as good as I was hoping for. Teddy Blue was quite a character though. It's a miracle any of them survived past the age of 18.
February 20, 2019
Interesting read
Interesting read because it is real life stuff. A few times I had to remind self that I wasn’t reading fiction
Interesting read because it is real life stuff. A few times I had to remind self that I wasn’t reading fiction
November 27, 2010
When I come across personal reminiscences of this nature (“We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a cowpuncher” by E.C. “Teddy Blue” Abbott and Helena Huntington Smith, drawings by Nick Eggenhofer, University of Oklahoma Press, 1955) I am immediately envious of my cousins south of the border because they have yet another window into their past.
Unfortunately, apart from Norman Lee’s journal [see: Norman Lee “Klondike Cattle Drive,” Touchwood Editions, 2005] I am unaware of any other first-hand account(s) of Canadian history that is/are currently: a) published, and b) still in print. I would be happy if someone were to correct me on that statement, but alas I doubt it will happen. Therefore, with each generation that passes our Canadian pioneer experience becomes more and more obscure. Therefore, I have the greatest admiration for Abbott and his patriotic notion to leave a legacy behind for our appreciation.
The early years
We Pointed Them North is without a doubt the most candid, and thereby the most ‘credible’ of any similar accounts I have read thus far. However, this is a personal observation to be taken for what it is worth. Nevertheless, by his own admission young Eddie Abbott was a bit of a free spirit—even a ‘renegade’ in his formative and teenage years. He attributes this, in part, to having an overbearing father:
“I never got on with my father and never pretended to. He was overbearing and tyrannical—and worse with me than with the others … And I resented it. But I got back at him. I remember one time the butcher wanted to buy some beef, and my father was going to cut them out of the herd for him, and he asked me to give him a horse. So I caught up little Pete, my cutting horse, for him … Father had rode all his life on one of these flat English saddles, and he thought he was a rider … And when he rode into the herd and started to cut out a steer, and the steer dodged … of course Pete turned right out from under him and left him on the ground.”
The other part was from growing up around the rugged Texans who came north with the very first cattle drives. As Abbott points out in clarifying the record, the cattle drives as we know them only lasted from about 1870-1886, and were almost completely gone by the 1890s. He also points out that the cowboy packin’ a gun on each hip was mostly a Hollywood embellishment.
“I punched cows from ’71 on, and I never yet saw a cowboy with two guns. I mean two six-shooters. Wild Bill carried two guns and so did some of the other city marshals, like Bat Masterson, but they were professional gunmen themselves, not cowpunchers.”
Nevertheless, Abbott carried a gun from the time he was fourteen, and even shot a man in a mêlée of drunken cowboys shooting out gas lamps. However, it was his contention that a gun was a necessary tool in frontier country. It enabled a man to protect himself against all manner of threats; to shoot food and signal if lost; and to avoid a robbery, etc.
The adventurous years
If Teddy Blue’s ‘hellion’ years had any benefit at all, apart from sewing his wild oats and gaining a reputation as a ‘wild one’—which he was immenselyproud of—it enabled him (at age nineteen) to take his place among some of the toughest crews on the trail. Among these were the Olive Brothers:
“The Olives were noted as a tough outfit—a gun outfit—which was one reason I wanted in with them. It would show I was tough as they were … They were violent and overbearing men, and it taken a hard man to work for them, and believe me they had several of those all the time.
Men had to be tough considering the life they led. Abbott describes one situation where they were camped near a large prairie dog ‘town’ when a big storm came up that resulted in a stampede. In the morning it was discovered that one of the men was missing, and a search was made.
“We found him among the prairie dog holes, beside his horse. The horse’s ribs was scraped bare of hide, and all the rest of horse and man was smashed into the ground as flat as a pancake … [T]he awful part of it was that we had milled [the cattle] over him all night … And after that, orders were given to sing when you were running with a stampede … After a while this grew to be a custom on the range, but you know this was still a new business in the seventies [1870s] and they was learning all the time.”
That was not an untypical circumstance for a teenager in the 1870s. Imagine, if you will, asking today’s counterpart to give up the BMW for a horse, or his TV remote for an evening of chasing a stampede! Yet, for the most part—and almost entirely in Canada—the rugged contributions of these pioneers are all but forgotten.
Life was not all hardship, however, for the average cowpoke played almost as hard as he worked. One episode that Teddy Blue relates took place at a ‘parlor house’ owned by a Mag Burns:
“Three of us was in the parlor of Maggie Burns’ house giving a song number called “The Texas Ranger.” John Bowen was playing the piano and he couldn’t play the piano, and Johnny Stringfellow was there sawing on a fiddle, and I was singing, and between the three of us we was raising the roof. And Maggie—the redheaded, fighting son of a gun—got hopping mad says: ‘If you leather-legged sons of bitches want to give a concert, why don’t you hire a hall? You’re ruinin’ my piano.’
“So I got mad, too, and I says: ‘If I had little Billy [his horse] here’—well, I told her what I’d do to her piano. And John Bowen said: ‘Go and get him, Teddy, go get him.’ … I went across the street and got Billy … and rode him through the hall and into the parlor … And as soon as I got in the parlor, Maggie slammed the door … and called the police.
“But there was a big window in the room, that was low enough to the ground , and Billy and me got through it and got away. We headed for the ferry on the dead run, and that is the origin of the story that Charlie Russell [noted artist and writer] tells in ‘Rawhide Rawlins,’ about me telling that jack rabbit to ‘get out of the way, brother, and let a fellow run that can run.’ I got to the ferry just as it was pulling out, and jumped Billy a little piece onto the apron. The sheriff got there right after me and he was hollering at the ferryman to stop. And the ferryman hollered back at him: ‘This fellow has got a gun the size of a stovepipe stuck to my ribs, and I ain’t agoing to stop.’”
In his time Teddy Blue also socialized with some legendary characters synonymous with the Old West. These included Charles Russell—already mentioned—who ranks with Frederick Remington as one of the West’s most outstanding artists; “Wild Bill” Hickock, for whom Teddy Blue worked for a while; also Teddy Roosevelt, later President of the United States; and Martha “Calamity Jane” Canary-Burke. Perhaps not as well known was Granville Stuart whose DHS spread was one of the largest such operations in Montana. He was also known for leading a pack of vigilantes that brought swift justice to a number of cattle rustlers and horse thieves in that frontier country.
Teddy Blue was a great admirer of Granville Stuart’s, and even more so of his pretty, young daughter Mary, whom Abbott married in 1889.
Another side of Teddy Blue … A male lover, perhaps?
One of the characteristics I particularly admire about Teddy Abbott is his candour. Not once does he back off, or back down from ‘telling it like it was.’ For example, he describes himself in his younger days as “A damn fool kid.” And with regard to his first girl, “I was a fool on a list of fools.” Therefore, I believe he truly meant to convey the fact that he had a male lover at one point in his career, i.e.:
“And there I claimed this young Indian, Pine … He was one of the best looking Indians I ever saw, six feet, one or two inches tall and as straight as a string. And he was brave—he fought for his knife—and I was sure stuck on him.
“We all ate there [Rose station on the Northern Pacific], while we was waiting for the train I handed Pine the grub and water first, but he always handed them to the chief. And after they had eaten they all wrapped up in blankets and laid down on their stomachs and went to sleep. And so did I—right beside Pine. [166]
“While they [the Indians] were all in jail, I went to see Pine ever day, and took him presents of tailor-made cigarettes and candy and stuff. And I told him I’d get him out of it, and luckily he did get out of it, and he was my friend for life. The last day he took a silver ring from his finger and gave it to me.” [167]
Moreover, he casually relates that he and some of his girlfriends exchanged clothes and paraded around Miles City for a lark. Such an example can be seen in the above photo of him–wearing a woman’s bonnet–with Calamity Jane in the background.
In conclusion
Considering that Teddy Blue was relating all this to Helena Huntington Smith in 1938-39, including the ‘Pine episode,’ it speaks volumes about this truly delightful character; one of the last of a kind, and for that reason I highly recommend it as a rollicking read and a slice of endangered history.
Unfortunately, apart from Norman Lee’s journal [see: Norman Lee “Klondike Cattle Drive,” Touchwood Editions, 2005] I am unaware of any other first-hand account(s) of Canadian history that is/are currently: a) published, and b) still in print. I would be happy if someone were to correct me on that statement, but alas I doubt it will happen. Therefore, with each generation that passes our Canadian pioneer experience becomes more and more obscure. Therefore, I have the greatest admiration for Abbott and his patriotic notion to leave a legacy behind for our appreciation.
The early years
We Pointed Them North is without a doubt the most candid, and thereby the most ‘credible’ of any similar accounts I have read thus far. However, this is a personal observation to be taken for what it is worth. Nevertheless, by his own admission young Eddie Abbott was a bit of a free spirit—even a ‘renegade’ in his formative and teenage years. He attributes this, in part, to having an overbearing father:
“I never got on with my father and never pretended to. He was overbearing and tyrannical—and worse with me than with the others … And I resented it. But I got back at him. I remember one time the butcher wanted to buy some beef, and my father was going to cut them out of the herd for him, and he asked me to give him a horse. So I caught up little Pete, my cutting horse, for him … Father had rode all his life on one of these flat English saddles, and he thought he was a rider … And when he rode into the herd and started to cut out a steer, and the steer dodged … of course Pete turned right out from under him and left him on the ground.”
The other part was from growing up around the rugged Texans who came north with the very first cattle drives. As Abbott points out in clarifying the record, the cattle drives as we know them only lasted from about 1870-1886, and were almost completely gone by the 1890s. He also points out that the cowboy packin’ a gun on each hip was mostly a Hollywood embellishment.
“I punched cows from ’71 on, and I never yet saw a cowboy with two guns. I mean two six-shooters. Wild Bill carried two guns and so did some of the other city marshals, like Bat Masterson, but they were professional gunmen themselves, not cowpunchers.”
Nevertheless, Abbott carried a gun from the time he was fourteen, and even shot a man in a mêlée of drunken cowboys shooting out gas lamps. However, it was his contention that a gun was a necessary tool in frontier country. It enabled a man to protect himself against all manner of threats; to shoot food and signal if lost; and to avoid a robbery, etc.
The adventurous years
If Teddy Blue’s ‘hellion’ years had any benefit at all, apart from sewing his wild oats and gaining a reputation as a ‘wild one’—which he was immenselyproud of—it enabled him (at age nineteen) to take his place among some of the toughest crews on the trail. Among these were the Olive Brothers:
“The Olives were noted as a tough outfit—a gun outfit—which was one reason I wanted in with them. It would show I was tough as they were … They were violent and overbearing men, and it taken a hard man to work for them, and believe me they had several of those all the time.
Men had to be tough considering the life they led. Abbott describes one situation where they were camped near a large prairie dog ‘town’ when a big storm came up that resulted in a stampede. In the morning it was discovered that one of the men was missing, and a search was made.
“We found him among the prairie dog holes, beside his horse. The horse’s ribs was scraped bare of hide, and all the rest of horse and man was smashed into the ground as flat as a pancake … [T]he awful part of it was that we had milled [the cattle] over him all night … And after that, orders were given to sing when you were running with a stampede … After a while this grew to be a custom on the range, but you know this was still a new business in the seventies [1870s] and they was learning all the time.”
That was not an untypical circumstance for a teenager in the 1870s. Imagine, if you will, asking today’s counterpart to give up the BMW for a horse, or his TV remote for an evening of chasing a stampede! Yet, for the most part—and almost entirely in Canada—the rugged contributions of these pioneers are all but forgotten.
Life was not all hardship, however, for the average cowpoke played almost as hard as he worked. One episode that Teddy Blue relates took place at a ‘parlor house’ owned by a Mag Burns:
“Three of us was in the parlor of Maggie Burns’ house giving a song number called “The Texas Ranger.” John Bowen was playing the piano and he couldn’t play the piano, and Johnny Stringfellow was there sawing on a fiddle, and I was singing, and between the three of us we was raising the roof. And Maggie—the redheaded, fighting son of a gun—got hopping mad says: ‘If you leather-legged sons of bitches want to give a concert, why don’t you hire a hall? You’re ruinin’ my piano.’
“So I got mad, too, and I says: ‘If I had little Billy [his horse] here’—well, I told her what I’d do to her piano. And John Bowen said: ‘Go and get him, Teddy, go get him.’ … I went across the street and got Billy … and rode him through the hall and into the parlor … And as soon as I got in the parlor, Maggie slammed the door … and called the police.
“But there was a big window in the room, that was low enough to the ground , and Billy and me got through it and got away. We headed for the ferry on the dead run, and that is the origin of the story that Charlie Russell [noted artist and writer] tells in ‘Rawhide Rawlins,’ about me telling that jack rabbit to ‘get out of the way, brother, and let a fellow run that can run.’ I got to the ferry just as it was pulling out, and jumped Billy a little piece onto the apron. The sheriff got there right after me and he was hollering at the ferryman to stop. And the ferryman hollered back at him: ‘This fellow has got a gun the size of a stovepipe stuck to my ribs, and I ain’t agoing to stop.’”
In his time Teddy Blue also socialized with some legendary characters synonymous with the Old West. These included Charles Russell—already mentioned—who ranks with Frederick Remington as one of the West’s most outstanding artists; “Wild Bill” Hickock, for whom Teddy Blue worked for a while; also Teddy Roosevelt, later President of the United States; and Martha “Calamity Jane” Canary-Burke. Perhaps not as well known was Granville Stuart whose DHS spread was one of the largest such operations in Montana. He was also known for leading a pack of vigilantes that brought swift justice to a number of cattle rustlers and horse thieves in that frontier country.
Teddy Blue was a great admirer of Granville Stuart’s, and even more so of his pretty, young daughter Mary, whom Abbott married in 1889.
Another side of Teddy Blue … A male lover, perhaps?
One of the characteristics I particularly admire about Teddy Abbott is his candour. Not once does he back off, or back down from ‘telling it like it was.’ For example, he describes himself in his younger days as “A damn fool kid.” And with regard to his first girl, “I was a fool on a list of fools.” Therefore, I believe he truly meant to convey the fact that he had a male lover at one point in his career, i.e.:
“And there I claimed this young Indian, Pine … He was one of the best looking Indians I ever saw, six feet, one or two inches tall and as straight as a string. And he was brave—he fought for his knife—and I was sure stuck on him.
“We all ate there [Rose station on the Northern Pacific], while we was waiting for the train I handed Pine the grub and water first, but he always handed them to the chief. And after they had eaten they all wrapped up in blankets and laid down on their stomachs and went to sleep. And so did I—right beside Pine. [166]
“While they [the Indians] were all in jail, I went to see Pine ever day, and took him presents of tailor-made cigarettes and candy and stuff. And I told him I’d get him out of it, and luckily he did get out of it, and he was my friend for life. The last day he took a silver ring from his finger and gave it to me.” [167]
Moreover, he casually relates that he and some of his girlfriends exchanged clothes and paraded around Miles City for a lark. Such an example can be seen in the above photo of him–wearing a woman’s bonnet–with Calamity Jane in the background.
In conclusion
Considering that Teddy Blue was relating all this to Helena Huntington Smith in 1938-39, including the ‘Pine episode,’ it speaks volumes about this truly delightful character; one of the last of a kind, and for that reason I highly recommend it as a rollicking read and a slice of endangered history.
February 17, 2024
What a great book! Fantastic account of being a real cowboy out west during the late 1800's. Very interesting and dispels a lot of what we see in the movies and television about those days.
September 27, 2024
What a life
October 29, 2016
I thought I would like this book more than I did. It's clear we are looking at a first person account of history. Many of the anecdotes make for very good reading. I don't think most of us have any idea of how tough you had to be (and a little bit lucky) to survive and prosper through those years. Teddy Blue gives us an idea of what it was like. And here comes the but, but at times his voice became slightly droning and monotonous ( I had no idea the early day cowboys spent so much time courting prostitutes). And as far as all of it being the strictest truth--Medora is in North Dakota not South Dakota. If the fact checking wasn't any better than that perhaps some other things slipped through the cracks also.
January 9, 2019
First heard of this book by way of a mention in a nonfiction work of Larry McMurtry’s. In the stories of Teddy Blue Abbott, I can clearly see inspiration for the storylines and cast of characters in the Lonesome Dove saga; bits and pieces of what Teddy Blue tells us here can be found across all four books of that series.
The tales Abbott tells in We Pointed them North may or may not be entirely true, but I think they are certainly well-told, and I found them interesting, and their Abbott himself endearing. Helena Huntington Smith does an excellent job of conveying Abbott’s voice, and integrates these separate stories, told to her over many days, into one fairly seamless presentation.
The tales Abbott tells in We Pointed them North may or may not be entirely true, but I think they are certainly well-told, and I found them interesting, and their Abbott himself endearing. Helena Huntington Smith does an excellent job of conveying Abbott’s voice, and integrates these separate stories, told to her over many days, into one fairly seamless presentation.
October 4, 2018
I enjoyed this book. Having grown up on a ranch in Idaho in the 50's and 60's and seeing our hired men work several months and then go to town with their wages and a week later be so broke that my dad had to buy them a pair of Levis or papers and Prince Albert. They would be so hungover that their first day back at breakfast their hands shook so bad they needed both of them to raise a cup of coffee to their lips. Teddy Blue's lifestyle choices, whether you agree with them or not, were the real deal. It is an authentic look at the past.
August 22, 2018
This was a very good first person history of the cattle drives from Texas to Montana in the 1860’s, 70’s and 1880’s. This is a unvarnished account of that time with a lot of detail about life on the trail and just what being a cow puncher was all about. Teddy armed with his diary tells a vert factual account of this life. This was a good book and sounded much like the stories my grandfather told about being a cowboy. Their is a lot of good Montana history in here.
Bill Pace
Bill Pace
August 8, 2019
Good story telling! I always felt like I was sitting in a chair next to Teddy Blue listening to him tell a story.
Just finished a book you and Keith would like called “We Pointed them North” written by Abbott and Smith copyright 1939. It is a nonfiction recount by E. C. Abbott of the days of the open range. The authenticity alone makes it worth the read, never mind the colorful stories and delivery.
Just finished a book you and Keith would like called “We Pointed them North” written by Abbott and Smith copyright 1939. It is a nonfiction recount by E. C. Abbott of the days of the open range. The authenticity alone makes it worth the read, never mind the colorful stories and delivery.
April 5, 2014
For authenticity, it's hard to beat this first-person account of cowboy life during the era of huge cattle drives. Teddy Blue was quite a raconteur, however, and there's no telling how much exaggeration there is here for the sake of the stories. The voice gets a little wearing after a while. Still, if the goal is to get a feel for the life of a cowboy, this book won't disappoint.
October 11, 2017
Excellent! The language,the feelings of the times. A rough and uncertain era. Life was fast and unforgiving. Got a real feel on how the times were for these frontier people. Teddy Blue is a walking book of cowboy songs.
Great 👍 this is one outstanding account of what it took to live in the rough and uncertain time when America was young and free.
Great 👍 this is one outstanding account of what it took to live in the rough and uncertain time when America was young and free.
September 12, 2019
An excellent account from the man who rode the miles!
Teddy gets real. He exposes exaggerations that movies and novels told the world. He tells of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
There are some sentences that aren’t worded quite right, but when you’re reading about cowboys it seems right in a way.
A wonderful true account!
Teddy gets real. He exposes exaggerations that movies and novels told the world. He tells of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
There are some sentences that aren’t worded quite right, but when you’re reading about cowboys it seems right in a way.
A wonderful true account!
January 20, 2022
The BEST western I have ever read!
August 11, 2018
Alright, to some extent, these are tall tales. There's a lot of bullshit here. But there's charm in that and I'd wager most of the stories are grounded in real events, though who they happened to and when could be anyone's guess. The co-author does make occasional attempts to back things up with supporting texts and once or twice even calls Teddy out on something. So I feel good approaching it as that ... good stories rooted somewhere in reality. Enough for us to take some meaning and enjoyment out of them. It's 'grain of salt' historical record stuff.
There's not much rhythm or narrative arc (why would there be? Life doesn't work that way for most people) but the chapters are compact enough that you can dip in and read a bit when you have time without ever losing the thread. Overall, it's a really fun book written by one of the few people who could tell the story of the real cowboys. Here's a few bits I liked:
"I first took to drinking and then to card-playing -- and they'd all be drunk when they was singing it, most likely. Cowboys used to love to sing about people dying; I don't know why. I guess it was because they was so full of life themselves."
"I have noticed that what you see when you are cold and scared is what you remember, and that is a sight I will never forget. I am glad that I saw it. Because nobody will ever see it again."
"After you come in contact with nature, you get all that stuff knocked out of you--praying to God for aid, divine Providence, and so on--because it don't work. You could pray all you damn pleased, but it wouldn't get you whatever where there wasn't water. Talk about trusting in Providence, hell, if I'd trusted in Providence I'd have starved to death."
There's not much rhythm or narrative arc (why would there be? Life doesn't work that way for most people) but the chapters are compact enough that you can dip in and read a bit when you have time without ever losing the thread. Overall, it's a really fun book written by one of the few people who could tell the story of the real cowboys. Here's a few bits I liked:
"I first took to drinking and then to card-playing -- and they'd all be drunk when they was singing it, most likely. Cowboys used to love to sing about people dying; I don't know why. I guess it was because they was so full of life themselves."
"I have noticed that what you see when you are cold and scared is what you remember, and that is a sight I will never forget. I am glad that I saw it. Because nobody will ever see it again."
"After you come in contact with nature, you get all that stuff knocked out of you--praying to God for aid, divine Providence, and so on--because it don't work. You could pray all you damn pleased, but it wouldn't get you whatever where there wasn't water. Talk about trusting in Providence, hell, if I'd trusted in Providence I'd have starved to death."
September 14, 2025
The ghostwritten autobiography of a cowpuncher sharing his memories of his life on the range as a cowboy is exactly what I hoped it would be. Pictures of the men and women, brands used in this period in Teddy Blue’s area of the West, and even drawings by the great Charlie Russell. Stories upon stories upon stories; what a life!
The book even includes some of the songs sung by the men while on the range, with musical notes to learn the tune!
Cowpuncher is the old time word used as we would now use cowboy. The description of cowpuncher is as follows: “The name cowpuncher came in about this time, when they got to shipping a lot of cattle on the railroad. Men would go along the train with a prod pole and punch up the cattle that got down in the cars, and that was how it began. It caught on, and we were all cowpunchers on the northern range, till the close of range work.” Pg5.
The book even includes some of the songs sung by the men while on the range, with musical notes to learn the tune!
Cowpuncher is the old time word used as we would now use cowboy. The description of cowpuncher is as follows: “The name cowpuncher came in about this time, when they got to shipping a lot of cattle on the railroad. Men would go along the train with a prod pole and punch up the cattle that got down in the cars, and that was how it began. It caught on, and we were all cowpunchers on the northern range, till the close of range work.” Pg5.
February 6, 2024
This book was outstanding: a first-hand account of what it was like being a cowboy and a trail driver from someone who was one. He tells his unvarnished version of the West in a very relatable and humorous way. I found it valuable, fascinating, informative, and quite entertaining. Extremely useful for information on what the West was really like.
December 2, 2020
Enjoyed this true account as told by cowpuncher Teddy Blue. Have read it was inspiration for McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove”, a book I’ve read several times over the years. Glad I stumbled upon Teddy Blue!
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