The American Cowboy
The white, American cowboy, romanticized through Hollywood Westerns, was anything but the typical cowboy during the westward expansion of the United States. Most often, cowboys were Latino or black, and constituted a lower economic class. With a decreasing amount of the "open range" for grazing in the 20th century, the number of cowboys began to shrink.
The popular concept of the American Cowboy is largely a creative myth. The earliest cattle herders bore little resemblance to the heroic, white Buffalo Bills of dime store novels or the rugged, enduring cowboys cast in dramatic and romantic light by artists like Frederic Remington and Charles Russell. With Owen Wister's 1902 novel The Virginian, the romantic image of the cowboy as a gallant loner with a strict code of honor was stamped on the mind of every American. The cowboy myth soon became the cornerstone of the Hollywood Western genre, celebrated by directors like John Ford, Howard Hawks and Anthony Mann, who cast the white cowboy as the pioneer of the great American frontier.
While it is true that cowboys were indeed an integral part of westward expansion and the early pioneer settlements of the 19th century, the reality is that the popular cowboy myth frequently leaves out the transplantation of Spanish herders into the American West. The American cowboy was often Latino or black, and if Anglo-American he was of a lower economic class. By the 1590s, the gaucho (Argentina), vaquero (Mexico), Ilanero (Venezuela) and huaso (Chile) were regularly hired by ranchers to drive livestock through much of the West, and for the next two centuries, they became an integral part of American cattle culture. It wasn't until the 1800s that the population began to diversify, with new railways bringing in immigrants from Europe, Africa, the Midwest and the South. As these newcomers tried their hands in the ranching industry, the original Spanish cowhands became a minority, though their slang, ways of dress and cattle-herding methods persisted.
As the United States continued to expand westward, the cowboys followed. Transporting their herds to markets around the country, the mostly young men would drive their cattle farther and farther west as new railroads were built. Up until the late 1800s, huge swaths of public land on the Great Plains were considered "open range," where white settlers or cowboys could freely lead animals to graze. But, around the turn of the 20th century, the land began to be privatized and the federal government expanded its powers. The "wild West" soon began to disappear, along with the freedoms that allowed for the ranching boom, leading many who sought work to do so on private ranches rather than the open range.
Today, true cowboys, in the original sense of the word, are few and far between, but they remain the quintessential symbol of the American Old West.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics does not collect figures for cowboys, but in 2003 there were fewer than 10,000 employees listed under "support activities for animal production," with most employees working on ranches and in stockyards and rodeos. One third worked in "spectator sports," primarily as livestock handlers at rodeos, circuses and other theatrical events.
Sources:
» Coffin, Tristram P. "The Cowboy and Mythology." In The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century, R.W.B. Lewis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.
» Holly George-Warren. "Cowboy: How Hollywood Invented the Wild West."
» Iber, Jorge. "Vaqueros in the Western Cattle Industry." In The Cowboy Way: An Exploration of History and Culture, Paul Howard Carlson, Lubbock, Tex.: Texas Tech University Press, 2000.
» U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "May 2010 National Industry-Specific Occupational Employment and Wages."
Increasing land legislation such as the Taylor Grazing Act and the Federal Land Policy Management Act limited the amount of land that could be used for grazing purposes, therefore increasing herding costs.
Ranching exploded throughout the Midwest and West during the 19th century, when low outlay and overhead costs meant high profits. Ranchers could make do with a couple of horses, a few cowboys and a small home base.
In 1870, there were 4.1 million beef cattle and 4.8 million sheep in the 17 western states. In 1900, the same area supported 19.6 million beef cattle and 25.1 million sheep. As a result of the boom, the lands quickly became overgrazed, overcrowded and depleted, and stakeholders began pushing for solutions to the problem.
Ranchers could acquire up to 1,120 acres of land under homesteading laws, but that acreage was insufficient for even small-scale farming. To protect their livelihoods, some ranchers used barbed wire (which, by 1880, had become accessible and inexpensive) to fence in public land areas they commonly used. They sometimes fenced hundreds of thousands of acres. Others would try to gain control or possession of much-needed water sources. Homesteaders often "squatted" on the land claimed by the cattle ranchers, leading to frequent disputes. Other parties also fought to be heard. Native American tribes who had lived on the Western lands for hundreds of years claimed the landscape as sacred and the railroad tycoons lobbied to extend their railroads across the countryside. Sheepherders became especially unwelcome as sheep grazed the precious grass to the roots. The battle for the West became one of clashing cultures and disparate views.
Congress tried and failed to establish order in the West in the early 20th century. Then the drought and depression of the early 1930s presented another opportunity to enact change, and in 1934 the Taylor Grazing Act was passed, followed by the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. Ranching in the United States changed dramatically.
The Taylor Grazing Act
The Taylor Grazing Act, passed in 1934, created federally recognized boards to manage parcels of public land, divided into "grazing districts," in local communities.
According to the act, locals in the livestock industry could petition the Secretary of the Interior to have a local grazing district created. If the petition was accepted, a board would be formed that would manage permits, leases for land and improvements to the range.
The increased regulation of public lands encouraged operators to purchase or lease land -- leading to expenses that pushed some ranchers out of business. Those who received permits to graze on public lands were given stability and security, and the fees they paid went in part to improving fencing, water sources and vegetation on the land.
Overall, public grazing land was reduced to levels many considered sustainable and good for the recovery of the land, but the measures also reduced resources for migratory cowboys and other workers in the ranching industry.
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), passed in 1976 and amended in 2001, aimed "to establish public land policy; to establish guidelines for its administration; to provide for the management, protection, development and enhancement of public lands."
By the 1970s, predominant concerns regarding land use had changed. Population increase in the United States meant that people were trying to use the land for more diverse purposes -- including recreation, mining and hunting -- while growing concern about the environment led to new considerations, such as endangered species management and wilderness protection. As demands from all sides increased, grazing terms and conditions became increasingly restricted, with the FLPMA providing detailed guidelines on how land could be managed for multiple uses.
Overall, the decrease in grazing resources led ranchers to invest labor and funding in alternative grazing management practices, increasing operating costs.
Montana
In Montana, where Sweetgrass takes place, public lands issues are handled today by the Montana Grass Conservation Commission, a governor-appointed board whose mission is to conserve, protect, restore and facilitate the "proper" utilization of grass, forage and range resources. The board organizes and administers state grazing districts and promotes cooperation among the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and state districts.
About one third of Montana's area is dedicated public land, with about 30 million acres divided into 27 grazing districts.
Sources:
» Mapes, Lynda V. "Grazing on Public Land: Helpful to Ranchers, But Harmful to Habitat?" The Seattle Times, July 28, 2008.
» Minor, Joel. "Battle for the Wild West: Sacred Landscape or Exploitable Commodity?" Cipher Magazine, February 2011.
» State of Montana. "Montana Grass Conservation Commission."
» U.S. Department of the Interior. "History of Public Land Livestock Grazing."
» U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, and Office of the Solicitor. "The Federal Land Policy and Management Act, as Amended."
Due to increasing tensions between cattle and sheep herders, as well as the declining importance of sheepherding to the U.S. economy, sheep production has slowly diminished since the beginning of the 20th century.
Sheep and Cattle Wars
The establishment of public lands limited open grazing and led to conflict between cattle ranchers and sheepherders whose sheep were said to be depleting the grasses. Ethnic and religious prejudice added to the tension. In the Southwest, sheepherders were predominantly Mexican or Indian, while in the Northwest they were often Mormon or Basque immigrants from the Pyrenees region of Spain and France. (Today, most sheepherders are from Peru and Chile, while the herd owners are Basque.) Eventually, legal agreements were reached and sheepherders took their herds to marginal and high altitude ranges that were unsuitable for cattle, but suitable for sheep.
Basque immigrants' cultural background became significant in the battle over land-grazing rights. Some Americans complained that the sheepherders were not U.S. citizens and were sending their profits abroad rather than investing in the United States. The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, together with the Great Depression and the Immigration Act of 1924 (which limited the number of Spanish nationals who could enter the United States annually) slowed the influx of Basques.
That trend reversed after World War II, when a shortage of men available for agricultural labor led Congress to pass so-called "Sheepherder Bills" that allowed skilled laborers to enter the country to fill vacant positions temporarily. Eventually, they were allowed to apply for permanent residency.
Sheep Production Today
The number of sheep in the United States today is roughly the same as it was in 1800, about 7 million, following a spike up to 56 million in 1945. Given the dramatic population increase in the same time period, 7 million marks a sharp decline in sheep production in the United States. Several factors have contributed to the decline, including a reduced market for lamb, mutton and wool; increasing production costs; and a decrease in ranch size.
In the United States, the markets for lamb (and mutton -- the meat of animals older than 14 months) and wool are linked; one's price affects the other. Wool demand spiked during World War II, when wool was heavily used by the military, but plummeted thereafter as a result of reduced need and the increased popularity of more inexpensive synthetic fibers. Before World War II, animals were allowed to produce more wool before they were slaughtered and their meat was sold as mutton. Today, the value of the meat relative to the value of wool has increased, so animals are slaughtered earlier to be sold as lamb, meaning they also produce less wool over their lifetimes.
As wool use declined, so did lamb and mutton consumption. While the U.S. consumption of most kinds of meat has increased or at least held steady in the past several decades, lamb and mutton (the least popular meat in the United States) account for a much smaller fraction of the market than beef. In the 1960s, the average American ate 4.5 pounds annually; by 2002, that had decreased to 1.1 pound. Consumption is predominant within certain ethnic minorities, including Middle Eastern, African, Latin American and Caribbean populations, which are focused in urban areas on the coasts, while more than two thirds of Americans eat no lamb or mutton at all. The highest quality cuts are most frequently consumed, meaning that the remainder of the animal is hard to sell. Some of the excess meat ends up in pet food, while some is exported to Mexico.
When there have been slight increases in consumption of lamb and mutton in the interim years, the additional needed meat has often come from imports. Australia and New Zealand, in particular, have succeeded in restructuring their sheep and wool industries to meet the new demands, and both countries now provide significant imports to the United States. The United States, meanwhile, has never been a significant exporter.
As the wool and sheep industries decline, research and development are being conducted in hopes of reviving the industry. The Montana Sheep Institute at Montana State University, for example, is looking into ways to increase local producers' role in world markets, as well as to initiate local action, such as increasing cooperation among small wool producers in order to increase sales, and using sheep in weed management programs by allowing them to graze on noxious weeds that threaten native grasses.
Further suggestions for reviving the industry include improving marketing of lamb meat both at home and abroad, finding new outlets for lower-end cuts, developing worldwide export markets and reevaluating the joint wool-and-meat production model.
Sources:
» Jones, Keithly G. "Agriculture Information Bulletin Number 787: Trends in the U.S. Sheep Industry." United States Department of Agriculture, January 2004.
» Montana Sheep Institute.
» The Oregon History Project
» Russ, Anne Marie. "Sheepherding Remains A Lonely Life." NPR, July 10, 2005.
» Totoricagüena Egurrola, Gloria. "Ethnic Industries for Migrants: Basque Sheepherding in the American West." Eusko News.
Since the early 20th century, the Allestad family ran sheep in Sweet Grass County. In 2004, they sold their ranch as well as their grazing permits, marking the end of an era of running sheep in Sweet Grass County, Montana.
The Allestads sold their 6,000-acre ranch near Rapelje, Montana, and their grazing allotments in the wilderness in 2004, marking the end of an era for sheep grazing in Sweet Grass County. Lawrence Allestad's family had run sheep in the area since the early 1900s, and as many as 30 bands of sheep once grazed in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness at one time. Under a public grazing permit that had been handed down in his Norwegian-American family for generations, Allestad was the final rancher to drive his herds into Montana's rugged Absaroka-Beartooth range north of Yellowstone to fatten on sweet summer grass.
The family members and their hired hands conducted the drives much as their pioneer forebears had -- on horseback, with dogs for herding and guarding, and armed with rifles to frighten away bears and wolves. Over the years, better gear -- walkie-talkies, four-wheelers and cell phones -- took some of the edge off a hard life, but still the work remained exhausting and dangerous for both men and animals.
In Big Timber, the film discovers the seasonal work-a-day world of sheep ranching. Under the watchful eyes of family patriarch Lawrence, his wife, Elaine, and son, Billy, in winter the herd nuzzles through the snow in search of feed. In spring, the sheep are shorn of their thick winter coats. Lambs are born and ewes have to be enticed to nurse offspring that are not their own. Other lambs have to be hand-fed. Raising sheep remains an intense, hands-on business.
Until summer arrives, the work is a family endeavor, with kids, grandparents, neighbors and even passersby all pitching in. But after the Fourth of July, when rodeos, dog trials, shooting competitions and haying contests break out all over Sweet Grass County, the hard and lonely work of an old-time drive into the mountains begins in earnest for hired hands Ahern and Connolly. It's a grueling 150-mile round trip, climbing high into the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness -- on hoof the whole way -- and it lasts from July until September.
The grass is sweet, but getting a herd of sheep to it while staving off predators is no picnic. For Connolly and Ahern, who are escorting a virtual buffet on hooves, encounters with bears or wolves are inevitable. The team's dogs often bark at night, as coyotes and wolves howl, keeping the herders awake and bringing them out of their tents to fire rifles to scare off the wild animals. One night the dogs fail to bark, and the herders begin to lose sheep.
The last Old West sheep drive -- a family's hundred-year tradition of work -- comes to a simple conclusion, with only a hint of nostalgia. In a pickup truck on the way back to the ranch, Ahern is asked what his plans are. "I wasn't going to worry about it for a week or two," he replies. In fact, the ranch and most of the sheep were sold in 2004.
The Absaroka-Beartooth Mountain Range located in Sweet Grass County, Montana, is not only home to grazing lands, but also fishing areas and wildlife migration routes.
Sweet Grass County, located in south central Montana, is home to the Crazy Mountains and the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains. Between them lie grasslands and the Yellowstone and Boulder River valleys. South of the mountains is Yellowstone National Park.
The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, designated in 1978, comprises a total of 943,626 acres, 23,283 of which are located in Wyoming. The wilderness boasts glaciers, areas of tundra, canyons, streams and hundreds of alpine lakes.
The Beartooth portion, named for a peak that resembles a bear's tooth, is rather sparsely vegetated, with vast treeless plateaus and canyons, while the Absaroka section, named for local Native Americans (also called the Crow Indians), is lush, with dense forests, streams and meadows.
The Absaroka area supports bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk, deer, moose, marmots, coyotes, black bears, wolves and grizzly bears. Much less wildlife is found around the Beartooth Mountains.
The area as a whole is home not only to grazing land, but also to wildlife migration routes and hunting and fishing areas, all of which Montanans aim to protect from development.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the population of Sweet Grass County to be 3,667 in 2009, with a population density of 1.9 people per square mile.
Sources:
» French, Brett. "Environmental Group Proposes Protections for Absaroka-Beartooth Front." Billings Gazette, December 28, 2010.
» Sweet Grass County
» U.S. Census Bureau. "State and County Quick Facts: Sweet Grass County, Montana."
» Wilderness.net. "Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Fact Sheet."
Sweetgrass recordist Lucien Castaing-Taylor directs the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, which aims "to support innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography" with original nonfiction media practices in both the visual and acoustic realm.
Sweetgrass recordist Lucien Castaing-Taylor is a leader in the field of sensory ethnography, which involves combining the research methods used in anthropology and ethnography with media or other artistic tools to document the lives of real people.
Associate professor of the humanities and of the social sciences at Harvard University, Castaing-Taylor also directs the school's Sensory Ethnography Lab, a collaboration between the departments of anthropology and visual and environmental studies. He is also director of the Film Study Center, and director of graduate studies in Critical Media Practice at Harvard.
The Sensory Ethnography Lab aims "to support innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography" with original nonfiction media practices in both the visual and acoustic realm. The lab draws from sciences, arts and the humanities, seeking to represent human realities and social experiences more richly than is possible with words alone. The field is informed not only by the disciplines of anthropology -- study of human beings -- and ethnography -- study of human cultures -- but by the traditions of documentary cinema, sound art and the visual arts.
Sources:
» MacDougall, David. Transcultural Cinema. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.
» "Sensory Ethnography." Harvard University Gazette, December 14, 2006.
» Sensory Ethnography Lab