Why Cowboys and Not Cowmen?

I don’t know why cowboys are called cowboys in America. But it makes sense in the cattle country of Western Nicaragua.

There, most of the ranches produce beef. And almost all the cows are free-range. Which is to say that they are regularly herded from one grazing area to another almost every single day. This sort of herding is not what you see in the movies. It is slow and boring. It’s slow because those that do the herding don’t do it on horseback. (There aren’t enough horses for that.) And they don’t use lassos. They walk and move the cattle along by hitting them with switches.

And they’re young. When I say young, I mean 12 to 14 or 15.

It took me a while to figure out why the herding is done by boys instead of men. It’s because as soon as they get big enough to do the hard work of farming, their parents recruit them for that. Herding cattle, a much easier job, is left to their younger brothers.

I can’t explain why cowboys are called cowboys in this country. But I can share with you this interesting history of how the American cowboy came to be. Click here.