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Cattle Kingdom: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West
“The best all-around study of the American cowboy ever written. Every page crackles with keen analysis and vivid prose about the Old West. A must-read!” — Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America The open-range cattle era lasted barely a quarter century, but it left America irrevocably changed. Cattle Kingdom reveals how the West rose and fell, and how its legacy defines us today. The tale takes us from dust-choked cattle drives to the unlikely splendors of boomtowns like Abilene, Kansas, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. We meet a diverse cast, from cowboy Teddy Blue to failed rancher and future president Teddy Roosevelt. This is a revolutionary new appraisal of the Old West and the America it made. “Knowlton writes well about all the fun trail drives, rambunctious cow towns, gunfights and range wars . . . [He] enlists all of these tropes in support of an intriguing that the romance of the Old West arose upon the swelling surface of a giant economic bubble . . . Cattle Kingdom is The Great Plains by way of The Big Short.” — Wall Street Journal “Knowlton deftly balances close-ups and bird’s-eye views. We learn countless details . . . More important, we learn why the story played out as it did.” — New York Times Book Review “The best one-volume history of the legendary era of the cowboy and cattle empires in thirty years.” — True West
552 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 30, 2017
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2298 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Knowlton
3 books32 followersBUBBLE IN THE SUN is the winner of the 2021 Excellence in Financial Journalism (EFJ) Best Book Award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 158 reviews
July 24, 2017
This is one heck of a good book, so full of interesting historical facts and vignettes that you will be driving everyone around you crazy as you read by calling out repeatedly, “Listen to THIS!”
It tells the story of the open-range cattle era and the rise of the cowboy from the perspective of its economic origins. But if that sounds dry, don’t be deceived. Knowlton, a former magazine writer, understands how to hold your interest. As far as the story he wants to tell, it is one with contemporary relevance. He writes:
“One goal here is to shine light on the psychology and greed that drive an investment mania, and on the financial and human catastrophes that result from the bursting of a commodity bubble.”
He sees this history not only as a morality tale about those who devote all their dreams (not to mention money) on speculative financial bubbles, but as an opportunity to study the environmental disasters that were both caused by the cattle boom, and which contributed to its demise.
He also wants you to know the real story of the American cowboy, and how different the reality was from the iconic and heroic myth that has grown up around cowboys and that is portrayed in books and movies. He explains:
“The work was hard, dirty, and monotonous - hardly the exciting version depicted in the dime novels and the eastern press. . . ."
As one cowboy noted in his memoirs, it was “a continual round of drudgery, exposure and hard work which beggar description.” In addition, “the job of a cowboy entailed an astonishing number of ways to get hurt or killed: “You could fall from your horse, you could be kicked in the head while roping a steer; you could be gored by a horn, you could drown while crossing a river, you could be caught in quicksand,” etc. And there were many less-than-fatal perils of the job, such as the torment of insects, sunstroke, sun blindness, infections, lack of medical care, grueling hours, and the long winters with no work at all.
Furthermore, the stories about “cowboys and Indians” were exaggerated as well. Relatively few skirmishes took place between these two groups. In fact, by the time the cowboy movement began out West after the Civil War, the numbers of Native Americans had been drastically reduced by disease and starvation, and in any event most had been moved to reservations.
How and why did it get portrayed otherwise?
As it happens, the story of the cattle era is also a story of fake news; news manufactured to spur immigration to aspiring new states, to drive profits, to justify killing Native Americans and lynching rivals, and to build up the careers of those wanting to capitalize on this particular definition of the American character. Knowlton argues that the cowboy myth, so appealing to Americans, has even influenced America’s foreign policy.
Finally, this book focuses on three young men in particular who were drawn to participate in the cattle boom: a rich Englishman, a rich Frenchman, and a rich American, Theodore Roosevelt, who of course went on not only to become the U.S. President, but also to be one of the leading conservationists in American history.
When the Civil War was over, the Confederate economy was devastated, and the impoverished young men of the South had no way to make a living. It was in Texas, the author reports, that the era of the Cattle Kingdom was born. Thus, as the author reports, at the peak of the cattle boom a majority of cowboys were white southerners, many former Confederate cavalrymen.
In Texas, there was an abundance of cattle, although before the Civil War, cattle were not valued for meat, but rather for their hides and tallow. Americans ate more pork than beef, because pork was easier to preserve. But that was about to change, thanks to the incentives and innovations of the cattle ranchers.
At the peak of the migration, “the largest forced migration of animals in human history,” some ten million cattle would be driven north out of Texas, accompanied by half a million horses and some 50,000 cowboys.” (Knowlton also devotes space to the rise of prostitution out West. It was in fact in Dodge City, one of the cowboy towns that sprang up, that the term “red-light district” was first coined, derived from the name of the red glass panels in one of the brothels.)
And here’s a question for "Outlander" fans: What did the Highland Clearances after the Battle of Culloden have to do with developments of the American cowboy movement? The answer is surprisingly relevant, because the British were very big investors in the American West. But I’ll let readers discover the answer to that one by reading the book.
Some of the most interesting information in the book has to do with all the innovations and changes that the cowboy era brought, such as the rise of the meatpacking industry, and the influence of its automation innovations. In fact, as the author reports, meatpackers developed the first assembly lines, and it was from studying the process at Chicago slaughterhouses that Henry Ford came up with the idea of using a similar method to produce cars. The meatpackers also radically changed the American system of business procedures and management practices. Even the story about how Chicago got to be the epicenter of the meat business is fascinating.
And as refrigeration was developed to get all this beef to eastern markets, Americans began to switch their eating habits. A trio of restaurants in New York known as Delmonico’s helped popularize eating steak. Delmonico's is also credited with being the first American restaurant to allow patrons to order from a menu à la carte, as opposed to featuring fixed menus. Who knew?
Then there was barbed wire, which, invented to help solve the problem of wandering cattle, totally changed the husbandry of cattle. And, as the author points out, it would also come to play a significant role in the incarceration of people as well as livestock.
As for environmental disasters, perhaps the biggest one was the killing off of the bison. As Knowlton stated, “if the cattle were to come, the competing buffalo would have to go.” He declared:
“. . . nothing could match in numbers, poundage, and sheer waste the slaughter of the bison, or the speed with which this animal approached extinction. …in a stunningly short period of time, less than twenty years, the bison were forced to the edge of extinction, with no more than 325 surviving south of Canada.”
There were a number of contributing factors to the bison slaughter, not unrelated to the cattle boom. One was the expansion of railroads and telegraph lines, especially in response to the needs of the cattle business. Advances in firearms made killing these generally docile animals “the big-game equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.” The U.S. military also abetted the slaughter in their efforts to deprive Native Americans of food so as to facilitate their “herding” into reservations. Even the fact that female bison hides were preferred by hunters led to the animals’ rapid extinction.
And what about the demise of the cattle era and the bursting of its economic bubble? Overgrazing, drought, corruption, greed, incompetence, growing conflicts between cattle barons and cowboys, and absentee management all played a role. But the nail in the coffin came from the brutal winter of 1886-1887, later known as “the Big Die-up.” Temperatures in the Great Plains went as low as sixty degrees below zero in places, accompanied by high winds and deep snows. It was the coldest winter on record. When it was over, nearly a million head of cattle were dead, some 50 to 80 percent of the herds across the northernmost ranges. Knowlton describes it as “the greatest loss of animal life in pastoral history” - at least, from environmental, rather than human causes.
Evaluation: I can’t begin to tell you all the fascinating things you will learn in this book. It’s a book I never thought would interest me, and yet it is one of the most absorbing and even exciting books on history I have ever encountered. I can’t sing its praises enough. Highly recommended!
Rating: 4.5/5
It tells the story of the open-range cattle era and the rise of the cowboy from the perspective of its economic origins. But if that sounds dry, don’t be deceived. Knowlton, a former magazine writer, understands how to hold your interest. As far as the story he wants to tell, it is one with contemporary relevance. He writes:
“One goal here is to shine light on the psychology and greed that drive an investment mania, and on the financial and human catastrophes that result from the bursting of a commodity bubble.”
He sees this history not only as a morality tale about those who devote all their dreams (not to mention money) on speculative financial bubbles, but as an opportunity to study the environmental disasters that were both caused by the cattle boom, and which contributed to its demise.
He also wants you to know the real story of the American cowboy, and how different the reality was from the iconic and heroic myth that has grown up around cowboys and that is portrayed in books and movies. He explains:
“The work was hard, dirty, and monotonous - hardly the exciting version depicted in the dime novels and the eastern press. . . ."
As one cowboy noted in his memoirs, it was “a continual round of drudgery, exposure and hard work which beggar description.” In addition, “the job of a cowboy entailed an astonishing number of ways to get hurt or killed: “You could fall from your horse, you could be kicked in the head while roping a steer; you could be gored by a horn, you could drown while crossing a river, you could be caught in quicksand,” etc. And there were many less-than-fatal perils of the job, such as the torment of insects, sunstroke, sun blindness, infections, lack of medical care, grueling hours, and the long winters with no work at all.
Furthermore, the stories about “cowboys and Indians” were exaggerated as well. Relatively few skirmishes took place between these two groups. In fact, by the time the cowboy movement began out West after the Civil War, the numbers of Native Americans had been drastically reduced by disease and starvation, and in any event most had been moved to reservations.
How and why did it get portrayed otherwise?
As it happens, the story of the cattle era is also a story of fake news; news manufactured to spur immigration to aspiring new states, to drive profits, to justify killing Native Americans and lynching rivals, and to build up the careers of those wanting to capitalize on this particular definition of the American character. Knowlton argues that the cowboy myth, so appealing to Americans, has even influenced America’s foreign policy.
Finally, this book focuses on three young men in particular who were drawn to participate in the cattle boom: a rich Englishman, a rich Frenchman, and a rich American, Theodore Roosevelt, who of course went on not only to become the U.S. President, but also to be one of the leading conservationists in American history.
When the Civil War was over, the Confederate economy was devastated, and the impoverished young men of the South had no way to make a living. It was in Texas, the author reports, that the era of the Cattle Kingdom was born. Thus, as the author reports, at the peak of the cattle boom a majority of cowboys were white southerners, many former Confederate cavalrymen.
In Texas, there was an abundance of cattle, although before the Civil War, cattle were not valued for meat, but rather for their hides and tallow. Americans ate more pork than beef, because pork was easier to preserve. But that was about to change, thanks to the incentives and innovations of the cattle ranchers.
At the peak of the migration, “the largest forced migration of animals in human history,” some ten million cattle would be driven north out of Texas, accompanied by half a million horses and some 50,000 cowboys.” (Knowlton also devotes space to the rise of prostitution out West. It was in fact in Dodge City, one of the cowboy towns that sprang up, that the term “red-light district” was first coined, derived from the name of the red glass panels in one of the brothels.)
And here’s a question for "Outlander" fans: What did the Highland Clearances after the Battle of Culloden have to do with developments of the American cowboy movement? The answer is surprisingly relevant, because the British were very big investors in the American West. But I’ll let readers discover the answer to that one by reading the book.
Some of the most interesting information in the book has to do with all the innovations and changes that the cowboy era brought, such as the rise of the meatpacking industry, and the influence of its automation innovations. In fact, as the author reports, meatpackers developed the first assembly lines, and it was from studying the process at Chicago slaughterhouses that Henry Ford came up with the idea of using a similar method to produce cars. The meatpackers also radically changed the American system of business procedures and management practices. Even the story about how Chicago got to be the epicenter of the meat business is fascinating.
And as refrigeration was developed to get all this beef to eastern markets, Americans began to switch their eating habits. A trio of restaurants in New York known as Delmonico’s helped popularize eating steak. Delmonico's is also credited with being the first American restaurant to allow patrons to order from a menu à la carte, as opposed to featuring fixed menus. Who knew?
Then there was barbed wire, which, invented to help solve the problem of wandering cattle, totally changed the husbandry of cattle. And, as the author points out, it would also come to play a significant role in the incarceration of people as well as livestock.
As for environmental disasters, perhaps the biggest one was the killing off of the bison. As Knowlton stated, “if the cattle were to come, the competing buffalo would have to go.” He declared:
“. . . nothing could match in numbers, poundage, and sheer waste the slaughter of the bison, or the speed with which this animal approached extinction. …in a stunningly short period of time, less than twenty years, the bison were forced to the edge of extinction, with no more than 325 surviving south of Canada.”
There were a number of contributing factors to the bison slaughter, not unrelated to the cattle boom. One was the expansion of railroads and telegraph lines, especially in response to the needs of the cattle business. Advances in firearms made killing these generally docile animals “the big-game equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.” The U.S. military also abetted the slaughter in their efforts to deprive Native Americans of food so as to facilitate their “herding” into reservations. Even the fact that female bison hides were preferred by hunters led to the animals’ rapid extinction.
And what about the demise of the cattle era and the bursting of its economic bubble? Overgrazing, drought, corruption, greed, incompetence, growing conflicts between cattle barons and cowboys, and absentee management all played a role. But the nail in the coffin came from the brutal winter of 1886-1887, later known as “the Big Die-up.” Temperatures in the Great Plains went as low as sixty degrees below zero in places, accompanied by high winds and deep snows. It was the coldest winter on record. When it was over, nearly a million head of cattle were dead, some 50 to 80 percent of the herds across the northernmost ranges. Knowlton describes it as “the greatest loss of animal life in pastoral history” - at least, from environmental, rather than human causes.
Evaluation: I can’t begin to tell you all the fascinating things you will learn in this book. It’s a book I never thought would interest me, and yet it is one of the most absorbing and even exciting books on history I have ever encountered. I can’t sing its praises enough. Highly recommended!
Rating: 4.5/5
September 10, 2024
This is a good account of the history of the cowboy and the cattle baron, but the subtitle is misleading. I suppose that if the reader had not done much reading about the subject that the history would have been hidden, but if so it was nevertheless there in plain sight and the reader had never looked for it.
As mentioned, it is a good book, and the publisher, and not the author, may have included the overstated subtitle in an effort to generate interest in the book, which is a common occurrence.
As mentioned, it is a good book, and the publisher, and not the author, may have included the overstated subtitle in an effort to generate interest in the book, which is a common occurrence.
July 7, 2017
Not as much about cowboys as the cattle business, mostly in Wyoming and Montana, during the open range period that ended around 1887. Tedious at times and concentrating on historical figures who were just not that interesting.
October 22, 2017
The subtitle of Christopher Knowlton's excellent "Cattle Kingdom" is "The Hidden History of the Cowboy West". This is a first rate work of scholarship, describing the massive cattle drives from Texas to the massive western ranches. This is an origin story. How did the drives begin? Where did the ranches come from? What was it like to be a cowboy or a cattle baron? And how is this history "hidden"?
I didn't realize how important the late 1800s cattle trade was to the future of American industry. In fact, beef was king until the rise of the automobile. This was the beginning of massive scale animal husbandry, which drove and was driven by a new American taste for marbled beef--overturning the dominance of pork. For this to work, butcheries moved closer to the range, creating immense stockyards such as those in Chicago and Kansas City. This is one reason why Chicago overtook Saint Lewis as a major urban center. Meat packing, in fact, became one of the largest professions in the US. For THAT to work, refrigerated train cars were developed, changing how food was shipped from the range to the consumer. Driving cattle led indirectly to the "settlement" of the west, since homesteaders fenced off their property from cattle carrying Texas Fever, using the newly invented barbed wire. Texas Fever, in turn, led Theobald Smith to pioneer modern microbiology in the US, at nearly the same time it was being created by Koch and Pasteur in Europe. Even the cattle changed, from lean, mean longhorns to crosses with more palatable and controllable British breeds.
The cattle industry was capital intense. Large herds created economies of scale. To raise that kind of capital required new ways to join investors with entrepreneurs. This was the origin of joint stock companies and the modern corporation.
So, much of the history of the American West has been largely untold. But how was it "hidden"?
The cattle barons who owned those herds, and who owned much of the West, were British and Scottish nobility. Those that weren't were Harvard educated American "nobility". Foreign ownership was so dominant that there was serious concern that the British were buying back the colonies they lost in the American Revolution. But commodity booms always bust eventually. Overgrazing and poor management pushed the cattle Kingdom toward collapse. The "big kill off", a particularly brutal winter that killed millions of cattle, was the final nail in the coffin. The British cattle barons brought their upper class attitudes with them. They assumed the world was theirs to colonize and exploit. So they ignored the risk that nature might not cooperate.
They also assumed that the people who lived on "their" land, which was more than just the land they owned, could be treated like tenants in the old country. This included small ranchers, homesteaders, local politicians, and lawmen. This arrogance lead to the Johnson County Wars. The barons led individual lynching parties and eventually hired 25 gunmen from Texas to kill an entire town. But the plot failed (read the book for details). When it was exposed, the cattle barons buried it. They bought politicians and newspapers and literally rewrote history. Hence the "hidden" part.
There is so much more. I have not mentioned the fascinating history of Moreton Frewen (aka "mortal ruin"), a larger than life marquise who killed a grizzly by hand because it was more "sporting". Nor have I described the amazing history of Teddy Blue, a cowboy lived through it all. Nor have I mentioned one of the smaller ranchers who later went on to create the conservation movement, one Teddy Roosevelt. I suspect other reviews will highlight those biographies.
"Cattle Kingdom: the Hidden History of the Cowboy West" is a scholarly work (complete with detailed footnotes). This book is also a reflection on greed and hubris, innovation, and perseverance. It is also a gripping web of stories. This is the best and worst of American "rugged individualism" and exceptionalism.
I didn't realize how important the late 1800s cattle trade was to the future of American industry. In fact, beef was king until the rise of the automobile. This was the beginning of massive scale animal husbandry, which drove and was driven by a new American taste for marbled beef--overturning the dominance of pork. For this to work, butcheries moved closer to the range, creating immense stockyards such as those in Chicago and Kansas City. This is one reason why Chicago overtook Saint Lewis as a major urban center. Meat packing, in fact, became one of the largest professions in the US. For THAT to work, refrigerated train cars were developed, changing how food was shipped from the range to the consumer. Driving cattle led indirectly to the "settlement" of the west, since homesteaders fenced off their property from cattle carrying Texas Fever, using the newly invented barbed wire. Texas Fever, in turn, led Theobald Smith to pioneer modern microbiology in the US, at nearly the same time it was being created by Koch and Pasteur in Europe. Even the cattle changed, from lean, mean longhorns to crosses with more palatable and controllable British breeds.
The cattle industry was capital intense. Large herds created economies of scale. To raise that kind of capital required new ways to join investors with entrepreneurs. This was the origin of joint stock companies and the modern corporation.
So, much of the history of the American West has been largely untold. But how was it "hidden"?
The cattle barons who owned those herds, and who owned much of the West, were British and Scottish nobility. Those that weren't were Harvard educated American "nobility". Foreign ownership was so dominant that there was serious concern that the British were buying back the colonies they lost in the American Revolution. But commodity booms always bust eventually. Overgrazing and poor management pushed the cattle Kingdom toward collapse. The "big kill off", a particularly brutal winter that killed millions of cattle, was the final nail in the coffin. The British cattle barons brought their upper class attitudes with them. They assumed the world was theirs to colonize and exploit. So they ignored the risk that nature might not cooperate.
They also assumed that the people who lived on "their" land, which was more than just the land they owned, could be treated like tenants in the old country. This included small ranchers, homesteaders, local politicians, and lawmen. This arrogance lead to the Johnson County Wars. The barons led individual lynching parties and eventually hired 25 gunmen from Texas to kill an entire town. But the plot failed (read the book for details). When it was exposed, the cattle barons buried it. They bought politicians and newspapers and literally rewrote history. Hence the "hidden" part.
There is so much more. I have not mentioned the fascinating history of Moreton Frewen (aka "mortal ruin"), a larger than life marquise who killed a grizzly by hand because it was more "sporting". Nor have I described the amazing history of Teddy Blue, a cowboy lived through it all. Nor have I mentioned one of the smaller ranchers who later went on to create the conservation movement, one Teddy Roosevelt. I suspect other reviews will highlight those biographies.
"Cattle Kingdom: the Hidden History of the Cowboy West" is a scholarly work (complete with detailed footnotes). This book is also a reflection on greed and hubris, innovation, and perseverance. It is also a gripping web of stories. This is the best and worst of American "rugged individualism" and exceptionalism.
September 2, 2020
This book starts out a little earlier than you'd expect. It begins with the destruction of the bison. In the period from 1872 to 1875, the "southern herd" below the Union Pacific Railroad was hunted to extinction, largely to make leather belts out of their hides. The "northern herd" above the railroad sputtered along until 1883. Sporadic attempts to protect them, like a congressional act pocket vetoed by President Grant in 1874, came to nothing. The end of the bison opened up the range for cattle.
The real "cattle kingdom" began in 1866, when Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving drove 2,000 head of cattle from San Antonio to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. The Texas herds had swollen during the Civil War and the northern market and western army bases hungered for them. Goodnight pocketed $12,000 for his trip, Loving kept going north to Denver, where he was killed by Indians. As the author shows, Loving's luck was more common on the range than Goodnight's. Most often, European second-son aristocrats like Moreton Frewen of Britain, or the Marquis de Mores of France came to America to feed their homelands. A rinderpest epidemic in Britain had led to the Cattle Disease Prevention Act of 1866, which led to slaughtering thousands of cows, and a Contagious Animals Act three years later prevented people from importing American cattle to restock their herd, so they just needed the beef. John I. Bate created a cooled system to transport the beef in ships in 1875 and the boom began.
The beef traveled East, the money, usually created in joint-stock companies, traveled West. The Scottish adventurer John Adair's JA Ranch in Texas totaled hundreds of thousands of acres and made him a rich man. Both Frewen and de Mores went West with the European money, found wealthy American brides to support their plans (Frewen's, Clara, was a sister of Jennie Churchill), and started over-ambitious cooling and slaughter-houses out in Wyoming and Montana to monetize their herds. Wyoming, in particular, and Cheyenne especially, became dominated by these aristocrats. American equivalents kept the tone high-falutin. The Porcellin club at Harvard provided ranchers from Herbert Teschemacher (son of a San Francisco real estate fortune and early vigilante, who himself went vigilante in 1892 to drive settlers from Wyoming in the Johnson County War) to Owen Wister (soon the most famous Western novelist) to Theodore Roosevelt. Others made their fortunes out there and became aristocratic. F.E. Warren, who started a dry goods store, became governor and then senator.
The whole system ended in the "Big Die-Up" in the winter of 1886-7, when a bitter drought and then bitter cold culled about at third of the herds. The over-expanded and over-leveraged aristocrats almost all went under. Many spent years escaping their creditors.
The problem is that the book is hardly a "hidden" history. It takes very well known facts and repeats them, sometimes a little circuitously. This might be a good place to begin on the cattle West, but don't expect any big surprises.
The real "cattle kingdom" began in 1866, when Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving drove 2,000 head of cattle from San Antonio to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. The Texas herds had swollen during the Civil War and the northern market and western army bases hungered for them. Goodnight pocketed $12,000 for his trip, Loving kept going north to Denver, where he was killed by Indians. As the author shows, Loving's luck was more common on the range than Goodnight's. Most often, European second-son aristocrats like Moreton Frewen of Britain, or the Marquis de Mores of France came to America to feed their homelands. A rinderpest epidemic in Britain had led to the Cattle Disease Prevention Act of 1866, which led to slaughtering thousands of cows, and a Contagious Animals Act three years later prevented people from importing American cattle to restock their herd, so they just needed the beef. John I. Bate created a cooled system to transport the beef in ships in 1875 and the boom began.
The beef traveled East, the money, usually created in joint-stock companies, traveled West. The Scottish adventurer John Adair's JA Ranch in Texas totaled hundreds of thousands of acres and made him a rich man. Both Frewen and de Mores went West with the European money, found wealthy American brides to support their plans (Frewen's, Clara, was a sister of Jennie Churchill), and started over-ambitious cooling and slaughter-houses out in Wyoming and Montana to monetize their herds. Wyoming, in particular, and Cheyenne especially, became dominated by these aristocrats. American equivalents kept the tone high-falutin. The Porcellin club at Harvard provided ranchers from Herbert Teschemacher (son of a San Francisco real estate fortune and early vigilante, who himself went vigilante in 1892 to drive settlers from Wyoming in the Johnson County War) to Owen Wister (soon the most famous Western novelist) to Theodore Roosevelt. Others made their fortunes out there and became aristocratic. F.E. Warren, who started a dry goods store, became governor and then senator.
The whole system ended in the "Big Die-Up" in the winter of 1886-7, when a bitter drought and then bitter cold culled about at third of the herds. The over-expanded and over-leveraged aristocrats almost all went under. Many spent years escaping their creditors.
The problem is that the book is hardly a "hidden" history. It takes very well known facts and repeats them, sometimes a little circuitously. This might be a good place to begin on the cattle West, but don't expect any big surprises.
August 9, 2017
A comprehensive study of the cattle barons, Theodore Roosevelt, the cowboy, demise of the bison population, conservation , natural resources and the mistakes that the wealthy cattle barons made by underestimating the weather conditions, getting stock to market , refrigeration and a general loose with cash attitude that did not bode well for anyone. He concentrates on two key areas - Wyoming - Cheyenne and Powder River and the North Platte River and Medora area with some info about Texas.
I have been to Cheyenne and the Medora, North Dakota areas and was glad to read about his take on the history. I had wished for more Texas Cattle Drive and ranches info. An excellent book in exploring so many aspects of this history.
I have been to Cheyenne and the Medora, North Dakota areas and was glad to read about his take on the history. I had wished for more Texas Cattle Drive and ranches info. An excellent book in exploring so many aspects of this history.
July 8, 2017
The history of the cattle industry in west along with cowboys, gunfighters, the good, the bad, the ugly and an American President throw in for good measure. You also get interesting facts like the Big-Die Up, new information on the Johnson County War and what started it (and just maybe the real reason why-hint it ain't human).
What is really interesting is the influence of the English and Scots, who managed to own thousands of acres of cattle landing create their own companies. How does one send American beef to England? On the hoof or slaughter them and then ship them over? How does one refrigerated the meat so it won't spoil in transit. Plus the success and failure rate of their ventures.
Just what the book, The Big Rich did for Texas oilmen, this book does for the cattlemen, and don't worry there are enough Texans involved with the longhorns to make it interesting.
A fine book . If you think you know the American West, you just might be surprised.
What is really interesting is the influence of the English and Scots, who managed to own thousands of acres of cattle landing create their own companies. How does one send American beef to England? On the hoof or slaughter them and then ship them over? How does one refrigerated the meat so it won't spoil in transit. Plus the success and failure rate of their ventures.
Just what the book, The Big Rich did for Texas oilmen, this book does for the cattlemen, and don't worry there are enough Texans involved with the longhorns to make it interesting.
A fine book . If you think you know the American West, you just might be surprised.
October 19, 2024
This book while not bad, was not at all what I expected, and as such, I was a little disappointed. There are interesting parts such as the story of the Johnson county war, or the disappearance of buffalo from the plains, but for the most part, it read like a textbook; not a history textbook either. More like an economics or business textbook. If you're more interested in the business side of the cattle industry in the nineteenth century, or you want to learn more about how already filthy rich British, Irish, and Scottish businessmen failed at getting richer in an industry none of them knew anything about this is the book for you. If you'd rather read about real cowboys or life on the trail I'd suggest Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman by J. Evetts Haley, Cow People by J. Frank Dobie, We Pointed Them North by Teddy Blue Abbott, and Wild Cow Tales by Ben K. Green.
July 24, 2017
A view of the settlement of the ranges that opens one's eyes.
I have been reading a lot of history recently as one needs to look back to help understand today and consider the future. This book helps understand the shaping of the national narrative. Reading about cattle as an industry and tying that to presidents in the last 50 years was at first a surprise, but helps put context to those personalities. The next surprise was the tie to many boom and bust cycles in our economy. Finally, Hollywood has yet to tell the real story of the west and the people who settled there.
I have been reading a lot of history recently as one needs to look back to help understand today and consider the future. This book helps understand the shaping of the national narrative. Reading about cattle as an industry and tying that to presidents in the last 50 years was at first a surprise, but helps put context to those personalities. The next surprise was the tie to many boom and bust cycles in our economy. Finally, Hollywood has yet to tell the real story of the west and the people who settled there.
September 20, 2017
A realistic history of the cowboy and the industry they worked in. In the 1870's and 1880's there was a rush to invest in the cattle business. Huge fortunes were invested, and lost. The destruction of the buffalo herds meant the herds of Texas cattle could be driven north to railroads and to Northern cities. But over grazing, drought and terrible winters killed off cattle and drove the investors into bankruptcy. Well written, with interesting stories of the people who were caught up in this cattle bubble."
January 3, 2019
An interesting read that is easily digestible to mass audiences even though it is 350-pages. Knowlton writes clearly with section breaks and layman's terms. The main fault that I have with the book is that he tries to cover everything - the sock yards, the cattle barons, British aristocrats, Teddy Roosevelt, the conservation movement, the Johnson County War, and more. The book reads like one wild string of tangents. However, it is very informative.
Knowlton begins the book with the eradication of the Buffalo herds in the Great Plains. Then moves into the Texas cattle drives, the cow towns, the cattle bubble, the range wars, and finally an moving conclusion for the anti-heroes of the book - a failed British aristocrat and an individual cowboy. The time span is roughly 1860 - 1890. Knowlton begins the book with clear references to dates, times, and locations; but by the end, he has lost himself in the goings-on in Wyoming.
Although I learned a lot, and feel overwhelmed by the scale of his research, I also feel that parts of it are inadequate. The only knowledge I have of the Old West before reading this book was on the lawmen and gunfighters. In the brief chapters on the cowtowns, Knowlton glosses over everything with a wave of the hand saying 'they were really peaceful, now back to the British aristocrat...' Similarly, the chapter on the meat packers also appeared to be too superficial. It appears that Knowlton wants to write another book about the Johnson County Invasion; but expanded the material to make it more appealing to a broader audience.
I knew nothing about the Johnson County Invasion. After reading the book, I am just as astounded by the idea of Harvard men leading a collection of Texas gunfighters into rural Wyoming with the intent of killing 40-ish people for vague reasons. On the other hand, I am familiar with other cases where crimes were exaggerated to the point of absurdity. This is where other commentators focus on Knowlton's credentials as a banker and investor rather than a historian who analyzes their sources.
Overall, it is an interesting compendium tallied by an enthusiastic hobbyist. The writing is clear and crisp, if a bit repetitive. Readers will probably get bored with the focus on Moreton Frewen, Teddy Blue Abbott, and Wyoming.
Knowlton begins the book with the eradication of the Buffalo herds in the Great Plains. Then moves into the Texas cattle drives, the cow towns, the cattle bubble, the range wars, and finally an moving conclusion for the anti-heroes of the book - a failed British aristocrat and an individual cowboy. The time span is roughly 1860 - 1890. Knowlton begins the book with clear references to dates, times, and locations; but by the end, he has lost himself in the goings-on in Wyoming.
Although I learned a lot, and feel overwhelmed by the scale of his research, I also feel that parts of it are inadequate. The only knowledge I have of the Old West before reading this book was on the lawmen and gunfighters. In the brief chapters on the cowtowns, Knowlton glosses over everything with a wave of the hand saying 'they were really peaceful, now back to the British aristocrat...' Similarly, the chapter on the meat packers also appeared to be too superficial. It appears that Knowlton wants to write another book about the Johnson County Invasion; but expanded the material to make it more appealing to a broader audience.
I knew nothing about the Johnson County Invasion. After reading the book, I am just as astounded by the idea of Harvard men leading a collection of Texas gunfighters into rural Wyoming with the intent of killing 40-ish people for vague reasons. On the other hand, I am familiar with other cases where crimes were exaggerated to the point of absurdity. This is where other commentators focus on Knowlton's credentials as a banker and investor rather than a historian who analyzes their sources.
Overall, it is an interesting compendium tallied by an enthusiastic hobbyist. The writing is clear and crisp, if a bit repetitive. Readers will probably get bored with the focus on Moreton Frewen, Teddy Blue Abbott, and Wyoming.
September 11, 2017
Our town, Ellsworth, Ks., just celebrated our 150th birthday and I enjoyed reading about the cowtowns in Kansas. Also enjoyed the growth of the cattle industry and the difference it made in the settlement and development of the west. Overall, a very interesting and enjoyable book.
September 19, 2018
First off, as I suspected even before I began reading the book, the subtitle "The Hidden History of the Cowboy West" is a bit hyperbolic. Perhaps a more accurate subtitle would have been "An Economic History of the Cowboy West," but of course that wouldn't have sounded nearly as sensational. The history here is not "hidden" in the sense that the author makes any startling new discoveries or revelations, but rather turns the spotlight on aspects of Old West history that few Americans have read or heard much about.
The book opens with a few chapters on how the open-range era began—the post-Civil War demand for beef, the development of the big Texas drives to move the cattle to market, and the subsequent growth of the boom towns and railroads in consequence. But the book's main thrust is a fascinating look at the massive investments of capital (on the level of millions) in cattle ranches by wealthy stockholders from the East and across the Atlantic, with a particular focus on the investments made by English and Scottish aristocracy and nobility. And how a combination of too-rosy sales pitches, financial mismanagement, ignorance about ranching, and sheer overgrowth of the industry led to an ultimate collapse of the cattle boom, with the devastating winter of 1887 providing the death-blow. I found one theory of Knowlton's particularly interesting: that one reason for the eventual collapse may have been the industrialization of a livelihood that was in essence agricultural. The emphasis on mass-production, faster delivery, higher profits and so forth went along with overlooking the variables of weather, disease, natural predators, and what would happen if the projected herd growth didn't materialize—and in the end, the top-heavy cattle companies reaped the consequences.
It puts a thought-provoking new complexion on the concept of the range war that we're familiar with from fiction and film when you realize that the "big ranchers" fighting the small rancher or homesteader were not necessarily just tough individual men trying to strong-arm their way to prosperity, but rather multi-million-dollar corporations with millionaire industrialists and foreign aristocracy for its investors, trying to keep their profits from being cut in on.
I am glad that I came to this book already pretty well grounded in the history of the American West, because I do feel that Knowlton sometimes makes some sweeping generalizations when dealing with the era and the region as a whole. To take just one instance, on page 115 when discussing the types of ranching done in different parts of the country, he dismisses Arizona and New Mexico in half a sentence as "too hot and arid to provide suitable forage for cattle"—yet I've personally read a good deal of fiction and nonfiction set in those states that described cattle ranching being carried on there. Overall, though, it's an intelligently-written, readable look at an area of American history that could very much use more serious treatment, with expected streaks of more modernist thinking—e.g. Darwinism, contemporary views on environmentalism and so forth—showing through on occasion. (I had to snort at the suggestion that the eventual criminal behavior of wealthy Wyoming cattleman came about because the Cheyenne Club was a microcosm of an all-male society.)
The chapters on the Johnson County War were the most jaw-dropping for me, because I'd never really read up on that event in detail. If it's true that only recent scholarship has sifted out an accurate assessment of the facts, then I'm rather glad I came to it late and received my impressions fresh. Without being an expert on the subject, I can only say that the version of events presented by Knowlton has a strong ring of plausibility based on the character of the people and entities involved. (What? State and federal government officials helping Big Money frame and assassinate innocent people and escape punishment afterward? Why, whatever gave you that idea? #sarcasm) One thought I had: if the Johnson County War did indeed tarnish the reputations of the "big ranchers" ever afterwards, could it be that the PR campaign at the time trying to portray them as "honest Americans" helped, however inadvertently, to obscure the role of Eastern and foreign investors in the biggest ranches?
I did disagree significantly with one argument in the concluding chapters. Knowlton, like so many others, follows the standard path of crediting Owen Wister with being the first author to write serious fiction set in the West. The statement on page 335 that in 1891 "no one" had yet made use of the West as a setting is ingenuous, as a number of writers not so well known today had been publishing novels and short fiction set in the American West since at least the early 1880s. (For a more in-depth look at this subject I recommend the first volume of Ron Scheer's How the West Was Written: Frontier Fiction, 1880-1906.) Wister's The Virginian was to Western fiction what John Ford's Stagecoach was to Western film: its commercial success helped elevate the genre from sensational kiddie fare to something worthy of serious adult notice. But within a few years of its publication there were numerous writers in print, many of them born or at least raised in the West, who were actively engaged in myth-busting with their stories and trying to present a more authentic view of Western life to the public. Yet Wister is still afforded more credit and authority than any of them in the literary world. It begs the question: did his lasting success owe anything to his own connections among the wealthy and influential?
In conclusion, I think perhaps the best aspect of Cattle Kingdom is the way it connects the story of the cattle boom to American life and history as a whole—its influence on things ranging from the invention of barbed wire to the development of refrigerated railroad cars and the introduction of the famous Delmonico steak. I've long wanted to see the Old West treated as an era of American history, and by and large Cattle Kingdom does that. I'd like to see others take it even further. There seems to be a good amount of material out there on the common people, the cowboys and the homesteaders; this book deals with the wealthy and powerful players involved—now I’d like to see someone turn their attention to the smaller ranchers, the men who started from the ground up and carved out a self-sustaining livelihood by ranching, without having empire as their goal. That’s another story I would like to read.
-------------------
A footnote: the "ranch near Lame Deer Creek" in Montana where the minor Indian uprising described on page 181 occurred was the Alderson ranch, and the cowboy named "Sawney Tolliver" who shot off the Indian's hat was actually Alderson ranch hand Hal Taliaferro, whose nickname was Old Sawney. The incident is described in Chapter 8 of Nannie Tiffany Alderson's memoir A Bride Goes West. (If the name Hal Taliaferro sounds familiar, Nannie's nephew Floyd Taliaferro Alderson later appeared in many Western movies under that screen name.) Interestingly, historian Helena Huntingdon Smith was the as-told-to collaborator on both Nannie Alderson's and Teddy Blue Abbott's memoirs, and Teddy Blue is Knowlton's source here—it's rather surprising nobody made the connection.
The book opens with a few chapters on how the open-range era began—the post-Civil War demand for beef, the development of the big Texas drives to move the cattle to market, and the subsequent growth of the boom towns and railroads in consequence. But the book's main thrust is a fascinating look at the massive investments of capital (on the level of millions) in cattle ranches by wealthy stockholders from the East and across the Atlantic, with a particular focus on the investments made by English and Scottish aristocracy and nobility. And how a combination of too-rosy sales pitches, financial mismanagement, ignorance about ranching, and sheer overgrowth of the industry led to an ultimate collapse of the cattle boom, with the devastating winter of 1887 providing the death-blow. I found one theory of Knowlton's particularly interesting: that one reason for the eventual collapse may have been the industrialization of a livelihood that was in essence agricultural. The emphasis on mass-production, faster delivery, higher profits and so forth went along with overlooking the variables of weather, disease, natural predators, and what would happen if the projected herd growth didn't materialize—and in the end, the top-heavy cattle companies reaped the consequences.
It puts a thought-provoking new complexion on the concept of the range war that we're familiar with from fiction and film when you realize that the "big ranchers" fighting the small rancher or homesteader were not necessarily just tough individual men trying to strong-arm their way to prosperity, but rather multi-million-dollar corporations with millionaire industrialists and foreign aristocracy for its investors, trying to keep their profits from being cut in on.
I am glad that I came to this book already pretty well grounded in the history of the American West, because I do feel that Knowlton sometimes makes some sweeping generalizations when dealing with the era and the region as a whole. To take just one instance, on page 115 when discussing the types of ranching done in different parts of the country, he dismisses Arizona and New Mexico in half a sentence as "too hot and arid to provide suitable forage for cattle"—yet I've personally read a good deal of fiction and nonfiction set in those states that described cattle ranching being carried on there. Overall, though, it's an intelligently-written, readable look at an area of American history that could very much use more serious treatment, with expected streaks of more modernist thinking—e.g. Darwinism, contemporary views on environmentalism and so forth—showing through on occasion. (I had to snort at the suggestion that the eventual criminal behavior of wealthy Wyoming cattleman came about because the Cheyenne Club was a microcosm of an all-male society.)
The chapters on the Johnson County War were the most jaw-dropping for me, because I'd never really read up on that event in detail. If it's true that only recent scholarship has sifted out an accurate assessment of the facts, then I'm rather glad I came to it late and received my impressions fresh. Without being an expert on the subject, I can only say that the version of events presented by Knowlton has a strong ring of plausibility based on the character of the people and entities involved. (What? State and federal government officials helping Big Money frame and assassinate innocent people and escape punishment afterward? Why, whatever gave you that idea? #sarcasm) One thought I had: if the Johnson County War did indeed tarnish the reputations of the "big ranchers" ever afterwards, could it be that the PR campaign at the time trying to portray them as "honest Americans" helped, however inadvertently, to obscure the role of Eastern and foreign investors in the biggest ranches?
I did disagree significantly with one argument in the concluding chapters. Knowlton, like so many others, follows the standard path of crediting Owen Wister with being the first author to write serious fiction set in the West. The statement on page 335 that in 1891 "no one" had yet made use of the West as a setting is ingenuous, as a number of writers not so well known today had been publishing novels and short fiction set in the American West since at least the early 1880s. (For a more in-depth look at this subject I recommend the first volume of Ron Scheer's How the West Was Written: Frontier Fiction, 1880-1906.) Wister's The Virginian was to Western fiction what John Ford's Stagecoach was to Western film: its commercial success helped elevate the genre from sensational kiddie fare to something worthy of serious adult notice. But within a few years of its publication there were numerous writers in print, many of them born or at least raised in the West, who were actively engaged in myth-busting with their stories and trying to present a more authentic view of Western life to the public. Yet Wister is still afforded more credit and authority than any of them in the literary world. It begs the question: did his lasting success owe anything to his own connections among the wealthy and influential?
In conclusion, I think perhaps the best aspect of Cattle Kingdom is the way it connects the story of the cattle boom to American life and history as a whole—its influence on things ranging from the invention of barbed wire to the development of refrigerated railroad cars and the introduction of the famous Delmonico steak. I've long wanted to see the Old West treated as an era of American history, and by and large Cattle Kingdom does that. I'd like to see others take it even further. There seems to be a good amount of material out there on the common people, the cowboys and the homesteaders; this book deals with the wealthy and powerful players involved—now I’d like to see someone turn their attention to the smaller ranchers, the men who started from the ground up and carved out a self-sustaining livelihood by ranching, without having empire as their goal. That’s another story I would like to read.
-------------------
A footnote: the "ranch near Lame Deer Creek" in Montana where the minor Indian uprising described on page 181 occurred was the Alderson ranch, and the cowboy named "Sawney Tolliver" who shot off the Indian's hat was actually Alderson ranch hand Hal Taliaferro, whose nickname was Old Sawney. The incident is described in Chapter 8 of Nannie Tiffany Alderson's memoir A Bride Goes West. (If the name Hal Taliaferro sounds familiar, Nannie's nephew Floyd Taliaferro Alderson later appeared in many Western movies under that screen name.) Interestingly, historian Helena Huntingdon Smith was the as-told-to collaborator on both Nannie Alderson's and Teddy Blue Abbott's memoirs, and Teddy Blue is Knowlton's source here—it's rather surprising nobody made the connection.
November 27, 2021
This is a good look at the cattle industry's place in American history. We tend to look at it from the perspective of the archetypal cowboy whom Americans know so well. But, seeing this industry placed in it's worldwide arena of economics puts a whole new slant on the subject.
September 10, 2018
Spectacular. Loved every minute of this history of the cattle boom, involving much of my home state of Wyoming. I especially loved the way Knowlton followed specific individuals through the times. Great detail and texture. An incredible story.
July 5, 2023
In as much as the author's book about the Florida real-estate boom of the 1920s really impressed me, I was expecting rather a lot from this book, and Knowlton delivered quite handsomely. The sub-title of this work is a bit of a misnomer, as Knowlton's topic is really the great cattle-ranching boom that basically stretched from the close of the American Civil War, until the mid-1880s, when the whole ranching industry had a catastrophic bust. Before that though, the investment money poured in and men with aristocratic antecedents, such Moreton Frewen (from a very-well-to-do English gentry family), the Marquis de Mores (from a French military family), and eminent Harvard man Hubert Teschemacher (who sold Teddy Roosevelt on the notion of coming west), sought to carve out personal empires, only to see their dreams collapse in a very ugly fashion.
The ugliness of it all culminated in the so-called Johnson County War, wherein the most important men in the state of Wyoming tried to run the "little" men in the Powder River Region off their land, after first killing the local political leadership. The self-supposed great men saw their hired-gun mercenaries suppressed by the proverbial county posse, and the rump leadership of the Cheyenne Club were lucky to obfuscate matters enough that no one was ever actually prosecuted; though reputations were destroyed. That a lot of the facts about this incident have only come out rather recently is what justifies the word "Hidden" in the title.
And what of Teddy Roosevelt, who is the exemplar of this book. Unlike his friend Teschemacher, he handled his financial reverses in a responsible fashion, and came out of ranching experience a better man. Though maybe he was just lucky not to be a close crony of the gang in Cheyenne; let's just say that there was a lot of "performative masculinity" taking place. It probably also didn't hurt that Roosevelt was mostly just looking to run a business and engage in some self-therapy; not build a personal empire.
Apart from that, Knowlton considers numerous other issues, up to and including how the meat-packing industry wound up being the dominant players in cattle industry. Highly recommended.
The ugliness of it all culminated in the so-called Johnson County War, wherein the most important men in the state of Wyoming tried to run the "little" men in the Powder River Region off their land, after first killing the local political leadership. The self-supposed great men saw their hired-gun mercenaries suppressed by the proverbial county posse, and the rump leadership of the Cheyenne Club were lucky to obfuscate matters enough that no one was ever actually prosecuted; though reputations were destroyed. That a lot of the facts about this incident have only come out rather recently is what justifies the word "Hidden" in the title.
And what of Teddy Roosevelt, who is the exemplar of this book. Unlike his friend Teschemacher, he handled his financial reverses in a responsible fashion, and came out of ranching experience a better man. Though maybe he was just lucky not to be a close crony of the gang in Cheyenne; let's just say that there was a lot of "performative masculinity" taking place. It probably also didn't hurt that Roosevelt was mostly just looking to run a business and engage in some self-therapy; not build a personal empire.
Apart from that, Knowlton considers numerous other issues, up to and including how the meat-packing industry wound up being the dominant players in cattle industry. Highly recommended.
July 31, 2020
This study of the short period of the Western cattle drives and the nationalization of the meat-packing industry is generally well-written and interesting, but doesn't quite live up to Mr. Knowlton's revelatory promise. In fact, as I read it, much of the information seemed oddly familiar and I realized I'd read an earlier account of the period. That turned out to be The Cattle Kings by Lewis Atherton (1961) which I read in late 1986 after watching the six-part PBS documentary The West of the Imagination (broadcast in six parts during September and October). Knowlton's book is more detailed than Atherton's and much more politically correct. Whether the latter is an improvement is a matter of opinion. The story of the industrialization of beef production in America is fascinating and worth reading, but Mr. Knowlton's attendant social commentary is less compelling. Business cycles are like weather. They dominate popular conversion at the time, but are quickly forgotten when conditions improve. This leads to a tendency to accept the present as volatile but perceive the past as calm and stable. Knowlton is at his best when he addresses all the varying factors that drove growth in the meat industry including concerns about safety and health that culminated in the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (FMIA) but he struggles to balance his desire to condemn the meat industry for 'destroying' the West with its unquestioned positive impact on the diet and health of eighteenth-century America. Even more problematic is a constant effort to minimize or dismiss the influence of ranchers in the nascent conservation movement. The strongest point of this book is its exploration of the American love-affair with steak. Its weakest point is an unstated theme that the Federal Government can somehow 'save' the West from businessmen in spite of the actual record of its efforts-major missteps by a succession of agencies created for the task. That sad story continues to this day. All in all, this is a good book for anyone interested in the subject.
October 27, 2020
Knowlton does an admirable job of relating the region-warping dramas by which the great Western U.S. cattle range was cleared of the buffalo, seized by cattlemen, transformed under the pressure of rapid technical and market changes, and then crashed and burned after little more twenty years. He vividly paints the actual lives made and wrecked, the fortunes made and blown, and the environments almost ruined in a brief period later enshrined as the classic cowboy West. In describing how the cattle business changed into modern fence-bound, somewhat more sustainable ranching (with some allowance for biodiversity on the land), Knowlton reflects on the mindset that drove the cattle kingdom. Those adventurers and financiers simply assumed that Old World cattle “functioned better than the wild bison as a machine for converting grass into hide and meat.” That, as modern bison ranchers demonstrate, was never the case.
July 12, 2022
Excited for this book but it left me a little wanting. The author loses focus too many times. By the end of the book, you realize that Theodore Roosevelt and other Europeans who invested in large cattle ranches in the west were meant to be sort of the heroes of the book. The author fails to have the reader invest in these characters (Roosevelt was as much of a rancher as he was an Amazonian explorer ... sure, he did it ... once). Unsure if these were the best examples to focus on often going into unrelated biographical narratives about these individuals.
He later delves into how the "cowboy" myth was used in modern political stages and foreign policy. All of this was unnecessary.
Ironically, included are two things that could make pretty good books: The 1892 Johnson County War and actual ranching techniques from the 1880s compared to what modern ranchers do, if nothing else, to be more efficient. But, alas, these are just small chapters in a clumsy book.
He later delves into how the "cowboy" myth was used in modern political stages and foreign policy. All of this was unnecessary.
Ironically, included are two things that could make pretty good books: The 1892 Johnson County War and actual ranching techniques from the 1880s compared to what modern ranchers do, if nothing else, to be more efficient. But, alas, these are just small chapters in a clumsy book.
March 6, 2024
A very enjoyable read. The author does a nice job laying out the history of the cattle boom in the United States while still keeping the story digestible and fun to read. Some of the most fascinating portions of the book involved the "boom towns" that the cattle industry (with the help of the railroads) created from nothing.
It is incredible to read about this era in American history because nearly every industry was controlled by some sort of trust or monopoly. Meatpacking, steel, oil, petroleum refinement, railroads, and many more. While these trusts no longer exist, hence why it is such an interesting historical period to study, corporations wield similar amounts of power in modern America. Cattle played an intrinsic part in defining the American west and slightly less so the "Gilded Age".
Stories of cattle rustlers, ultra-wealthy ranchers, the now non-existent open range, and the eventual economic bust of the industry were great. The rise and fall of the cattle kingdom is really an understudied aspect of the American West and its ramifications are still felt today, according to the author.
I wish the author had explored the effect of open-range cattle driving on the Native American population a little more but this is a small complaint and the source material on this subject may be limited.
Maybe Kevin Costner used this book as inspiration for one of the many terrible Western television shows and movies he has been making for the past five years but I doubt it. As an aside, Dances With Wolves was one of the worst movies to ever win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and My Left Foot should have won as it is a much better movie (just saying). There seems to be a new wave rising where the West and the ranching lifestyle of old are praised and viewed as honest, decent work. While this true in a sense, anyone who reads this book will realize that the actual history itself is defined by violence, dishonesty, theft, greed, and vigilantism. Today, the lifestyle is glorified by rich guys playing dress up and running around pretending to be ranchers (Taylor Sheridan) which is probably a bad thing!
Strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the American West and a very unique aspect of it.
It is incredible to read about this era in American history because nearly every industry was controlled by some sort of trust or monopoly. Meatpacking, steel, oil, petroleum refinement, railroads, and many more. While these trusts no longer exist, hence why it is such an interesting historical period to study, corporations wield similar amounts of power in modern America. Cattle played an intrinsic part in defining the American west and slightly less so the "Gilded Age".
Stories of cattle rustlers, ultra-wealthy ranchers, the now non-existent open range, and the eventual economic bust of the industry were great. The rise and fall of the cattle kingdom is really an understudied aspect of the American West and its ramifications are still felt today, according to the author.
I wish the author had explored the effect of open-range cattle driving on the Native American population a little more but this is a small complaint and the source material on this subject may be limited.
Maybe Kevin Costner used this book as inspiration for one of the many terrible Western television shows and movies he has been making for the past five years but I doubt it. As an aside, Dances With Wolves was one of the worst movies to ever win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and My Left Foot should have won as it is a much better movie (just saying). There seems to be a new wave rising where the West and the ranching lifestyle of old are praised and viewed as honest, decent work. While this true in a sense, anyone who reads this book will realize that the actual history itself is defined by violence, dishonesty, theft, greed, and vigilantism. Today, the lifestyle is glorified by rich guys playing dress up and running around pretending to be ranchers (Taylor Sheridan) which is probably a bad thing!
Strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the American West and a very unique aspect of it.
December 12, 2025
I would have given this book a four star review but for the last three chapters. The history is well told and well researched. You can see this from the extensive bibliography and notes.
However, the last few chapters wrap things up with the author’s leftist and Darwinian viewpoint well on display. Some of his criticisms of the period are warranted and valid, but his worldview undermines his conclusions.
For example, in criticizing the decline in size of trophy animals in hunting, he suggests that man has interfered with natural selection by eliminating the best and strongest specimens from the gene pool. This ignores the fact that man is himself a part of the environment. If hunting has played such a drastic part in changing, for example, the elk population, and if natural selection is true, then the whole thing is as natural as can be. Man is as much a part of nature as plants and animals.
My point is to critique the author’s thinking. I think wise stewardship and conservation are wise ideals. But to make a Darwinian critique as if man is not part of nature undermines the argument.
On the history part, the book contributes a good deal of information about cowboys, their lifestyle, and the history of the west. That part was good, though Darwinian comments pop up even there from time to time.
However, the last few chapters wrap things up with the author’s leftist and Darwinian viewpoint well on display. Some of his criticisms of the period are warranted and valid, but his worldview undermines his conclusions.
For example, in criticizing the decline in size of trophy animals in hunting, he suggests that man has interfered with natural selection by eliminating the best and strongest specimens from the gene pool. This ignores the fact that man is himself a part of the environment. If hunting has played such a drastic part in changing, for example, the elk population, and if natural selection is true, then the whole thing is as natural as can be. Man is as much a part of nature as plants and animals.
My point is to critique the author’s thinking. I think wise stewardship and conservation are wise ideals. But to make a Darwinian critique as if man is not part of nature undermines the argument.
On the history part, the book contributes a good deal of information about cowboys, their lifestyle, and the history of the west. That part was good, though Darwinian comments pop up even there from time to time.
July 27, 2021
I don't like economic books. Yet I seem to keep finding economic books disguised as other books. This is an Econ book disguised as a book on the American west. Now that that is out of the way this is an outstanding overview of how the west became what it was. It gives you an overview of the conditions that established the period and how it was ended.
This is a great place to start on understanding the American West in the 1800s. Its a high level overview that is almost always lost compared to the exciting stories of gamblers, outlaws, and sheriffs that usually make up tales from this period.
Highly recommended.
This is a great place to start on understanding the American West in the 1800s. Its a high level overview that is almost always lost compared to the exciting stories of gamblers, outlaws, and sheriffs that usually make up tales from this period.
Highly recommended.
December 14, 2020
An interesting look at the boom and the bust of the open range cattle business and the origin of the American cowboy, during the period from the end of the Civil War through the crash of the beef market in the mid 1880s, and the aftermath.
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To read my complete book review, download the pdf file from my online folder at FilesAnywhere.com using this link:
.
https://personal.FilesAnywhere.com/fs...
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To read my complete book review, download the pdf file from my online folder at FilesAnywhere.com using this link:
.
https://personal.FilesAnywhere.com/fs...
September 18, 2020
Excellent book. I'd heard of the Cheyenne Club, but not its details.
I'd heard of TR, gentleman cowboy, but had not read the full picture on his fellow Harvard swells going out west, besides Wister.
I'd read of British investments in Texas cattle, but not in Wyoming or Montana. Had not heard of John Clay.
Had definitely not heard of Moreton Frewen or the Marquis de Mores.
Had heard of cowboy strikes, but read the first details on two main ones here.
An epilogue traces the "cowboy president" from TR through Reagan and Shrub Bush.
I'd heard of TR, gentleman cowboy, but had not read the full picture on his fellow Harvard swells going out west, besides Wister.
I'd read of British investments in Texas cattle, but not in Wyoming or Montana. Had not heard of John Clay.
Had definitely not heard of Moreton Frewen or the Marquis de Mores.
Had heard of cowboy strikes, but read the first details on two main ones here.
An epilogue traces the "cowboy president" from TR through Reagan and Shrub Bush.
June 19, 2021
The cowboy plays an outsized role in American culture. Knowlton offers a history of the open range cowboy era. He touches on topics from the mania of financial bubbles to environmentalism to what it means to be American in a book that still manages to be breezy and engaging.
January 29, 2025
I'm always fascinated by the lure of the American West and what it must have felt like for young men and women in those early days. I also loved how much a young and eager Teddy Roosevelt was mentioned in this.
August 10, 2021
I chose this book as a quick read while driving on a trip not expecting a lot. However, I was pleasantly surprised at all there was to learn about the cattle business and especially the development of the West. There was much more history of this era that I wasn't expecting. I may even read it again!
April 12, 2024
Cattle Kingdom
WOW... great read
4 stars
Happy Reading!
WOW... great read
4 stars
Happy Reading!
February 6, 2025
I learned a lot. And not just about cowboys and cattle barons. Well-paced and kept my interest the whole time.
August 25, 2024
A tad drawn out at times, but generally great story telling about a wild time in American History.
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