Free Response: Cowboys

Cowboys today are known as free, independent men that would ride around the west on their horses and would fight, and usually beat, the Indians whenever they came across them. In reality, this is not true. Cowboys were low-paid workers that would watch the cows all day. This job was not something that a person would usually be proud of. Cowboys also were not the ones to get into bar fights to impress women, basically if a women knew you were a cowboy then your chances were over. Cowboys also ran away from the Indians. Cowboys were only interested in watching the cows and that was it. No part of them wanted to get into with an Indian. If and when they saw an Indian they would run, and if they got caught by the Indians their reaction was not to fight them, it was to play dead and hopefully they would go away.

People think that they know everything about the history of the west just because they seen a movie with a cowboy in it. The west was not the same as the way it was portrayed in the movies and Buffalo Bill shows. One thing that was different was really the only people that fought the Indians were the United States army. Random cowboys would not go out and take out a whole community of Indians with a couple buddies, that just never happened.  Another thing that the movies are very good at is making the West look like a desert. Some parts of the west were desert but not all of it. The west also included mountains and forests. Some movies with cowboys in them get some things right, but a lot of it is staged and made up to picture the west as something it is not.

 Reasons why cowboys got their image of being courageous and independent was mainly because of the Buffalo Bill shows that were shown all throughout the United States. In his shows he would have bar fights and the cowboys fighting Indians. Later his shows inspired movies and shows that came out, which all of them influenced the way people saw cowboys, and that is why people have such a wrong vision of the west. Both movies and the Buffalo Bill shows were guilty of giving off the false impression of cowboys and everything that came with them.

Chapter 15 Reflection

Before we started this unit, I knew that after the war it was a very troubled time and there was a lot that had to be done so that the south could officially recover from the civil war. I also knew that the African Americans had a very hard time recovering because since they had just become free, life was very different for them. I didn't know details but I knew the basic idea of how it was in the south.

I found it very interesting about Jim Crow Laws. I thought it was unfair how people back then could give people a different Literacy test, which people had to take so they could vote, that was harder just based on the fact that they were black. I think people should know about the history of where they live so they can learn that times weren't always easy for everyone, especially dealing with the United States history. I found the Jim Crow laws very interesting to learn about, because even when you hear about how the blacks were treated, it was not put into perspective for me until I heard that it happened even when it came to being able to vote. I learned that white southerners would do everything possible to make sure the black could not get their way in any form.