The Diary of a Cowboy

The Wild West as a territory of the United States of America has often been portrayed as a rather misunderstood and even much-maligned region of this country. People from throughout the world have based their misconceptions on tall tales and on old cowboy movies. Many of us have grown up thinking that it was nothing but a desolate, rootin’-tootin’ area, dotted with cactus, where the fastest gun was the law of the land and where the worth of a person was measured by his or her ability to handle a pistol. They were kept in check by the Texas Rangers and by the Buffalo Soldiers. We even came to believe that every cowboy had a smart horse with unconventional talents who took care of him and that every other cowboy would sing to his cattle in order to calm them down for the night.