The Cow Country

"The Plains in the day of the cowboy are well described in F. L. Paxson, 'The Cow Country.'" -Since the Civil War (1920)
"Of particular interest to students of western history is Frederic L. Paxson's excellent article on 'The Cow Country.'" - The Iowa Journal of History, 1917
"Frederic L. Paxson won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize in History." -Who's who of Pulitzer Prize Winners, 1999

The cow country stretched unbroken from the Texas rivers to Manitoba. Its stock, their tenders, their owners, and their yearly habits caught the American imagination as the Santa Fé trade had done a half-century earlier, notes Pulitzer-Prize-Winning author Frederic Paxson in his 20-page, 1917 article "The Cow Country." [Republished here from: The American Historical Review, Vol. XXII, pp. 65-82, Oct.-July 1917].

Paxson describes the growth and decline of cattle raising on the western range between 1866 and 1887. It was capitalized by Colonel Cody, who opened with his Wild West Show at Omaha in May, 1883, after gathering his Indians and cowboys together on his North Platte ranch; by Colonel Roosevelt, whose ranches on the Little Missouri attracted his attention and the public's for many years; by John Lomax, who has collected the songs of the cowboys; by Owen Wister, who has preserved the spirit of the country in his Virginian; and by Frederic Remington, whose pencil sketched its figures. The cow country endured while the open range lasted, and gave way before the attacks of physical enclosure and legal obstruction.

In commenting on market forces at work in the cattle industry, Paxson writes:

"The cattlemen and the packers were soon in keen competition for the profits of beef; with the latter having the same advantage in ownership of plant and conveyance that the Standard Oil Company had over the producers of crude petroleum during the same years. It was in vain that the cowmen tried to combine. Great cattle companies succeeded individual owners, with gigantic enclosed herds replacing the small droves on the open range, yet the packers retained their strategic position in the trade."

Paxson's "The Cow Country" remains one of the best accounts of the origin, growth, and disappearance of the "long drive."

Frederic Logan Paxson (18771948) was an American historian. He had also been President of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association. He had undergraduate and PhD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a master's from Harvard University. He taught at Wisconsin (1910 to 1932) as successor to Frederick Jackson Turner and the University of California-Berkeley from 1932 to 1947.

As a historian he was an authority on the American frontier. His 1925 Pulitzer Prize was for History of the American Frontier, 1763-1893.

Other works by the author include:

The Independence of the South American Republics, 1903.
The Last American Frontier, 1910.
The Civil War, 1911.
"The Rise of Sport", Mississippi Valley Historical Review, (Sept. 1917).
War Cyclopedia: A Handbook for Ready Reference on the Great War, 1918 (ed.).
The New Nation, 1919.
History of the American Frontier, 1763-1893, 1924.
American Democracy and the World War, 1936-1948.
The Great Demobilization, Dec. 29, 1938.
America at War, 1917-1918, 1939.
Postwar Years, Normalcy, 1918-1923, 1948.

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