THE LAST ROUNDUP
Cowboys, Cattle Drives, and the Closing of the American Frontier, 1865-1900By Arthur Keith Beaumont
Length5h 47m
About this audiobook
American West history — cowboys, cattle drives, the open range, Black cowboys, vaqueros, the frontier myth debunked: the complete narrative history of the cattle kingdom, 1865-1900.
For roughly two decades after the Civil War, the Great Plains were the most consequential economic frontier in American history — and the cowboys who worked them were not the blue-eyed Anglo heroes of the dime novels. A significant proportion were Black freedmen who found in the Texas cattle industry an opportunity the post-war South denied them. Many were vaqueros, Mexican horsemen whose skills predated the Anglo cattle industry by centuries. Some were women. Some were former Confederate soldiers working alongside former Union men on drives where old allegiances had no value. The open range lasted barely a generation. The mythology built on it has lasted more than a century.
In this narrative history of the cattle kingdom, historian Arthur Keith Beaumont follows the full arc from the five-dollar Texas longhorn to the blizzard of 1886-1887 that killed hundreds of thousands of cattle and broke the open range financially. He names the real figures: Nat Love, who published his autobiography as "Deadwood Dick" in 1907; Bill Pickett, who performed bulldogging before the Prince of Wales; Henrietta King, who ran one million acres of the King Ranch for thirty-six years; and Frederick Jackson Turner, whose 1893 frontier thesis shaped American self-understanding for a century.
Inside this American West history:
Texas longhorns and the Chisholm Trail — how five-dollar cattle became forty-dollar cattle at the Kansas railheads, the economics of the trail drive, and why the longhorn was bred out of existence once the railroad reached Texas (Chapters 1-2)
Black cowboys and the African American West — Nat Love's thirty-year riding career, Bill Pickett's bulldogging innovation, the Buffalo Soldiers' frontier service, and the all-Black towns of Indian Territory that Oklahoma statehood destroyed (Chapter 18)
The vaquero's erased legacy — every major cowboy skill, from the lasso (lazo) to chaps (chaparreras) to the rodeo, inherited from Mexican ranching traditions the mythology buried (Chapter 17)
The range wars and barbed wire — the Johnson County War in Wyoming, Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War, and how a single technology fenced 400 million acres of open range (Chapters 9-12)
The blizzard of 1886-1887 — the winter that killed cattle across the northern plains and broke the open range industry financially, ending in three seasons what the mythology said was timeless (Chapter 13)
The destruction of the buffalo herds — General Sheridan's strategy, 7.5 million animals killed in three years, and Hornaday's 1886 census finding fewer than 1,000 bison alive (Chapter 16)
Turner, Buffalo Bill, and the manufactured myth — how the frontier thesis, the Wild West Show, and the dime novel turned complex history into ideology (Chapters 21-23)
The last roundup ended in 1890. Who actually rode those drives — and who was written out — is more relevant to questions of land, race, and identity than the mythology that replaced it.
For readers of S. C. Gwynne's EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON and David Grann's KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON.
Audiobook details
GenreHistory
Length5 hrs 47 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
2Author’s Note
3Prologue: The Open Range
4PART ONE: THE CATTLE KINGDOM (1865-1880)
5Chapter 1: Texas Longhorns — The Cattle That Built an Industry
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6Chapter 2: The Chisholm Trail — The Long Drive North to the Kansas Railheads
7Chapter 3: Abilene and Dodge City — The Cattle Towns and Their Rough Justice
8Chapter 4: The Open Range — Free Grass, Water Rights, and the Cattle Baron
9PART TWO: THE COWBOY'S LIFE
10Chapter 5: Who Were the Cowboys — Veterans, Freedmen, Mexicans, and the Diverse West
11Chapter 6: The Work — Roundups, Branding, and the Skills of the Range
12Chapter 7: The Trail Drive — Daily Life on the Long Drive
13Chapter 8: The Frontier Town — Saloons, Violence, and the Mythology of the Wild West
14PART THREE: THE RANGE WARS
15Chapter 9: Barbed Wire — The Technology That Ended the Open Range
16Chapter 10: Sheepherders vs. Cattlemen — The Range Wars of the Plains
17Chapter 11: The Johnson County War — Wyoming, the Cattle Barons, and Hired Guns
18Chapter 12: Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War — Violence in New Mexico
19PART FOUR: THE DECLINE OF THE OPEN RANGE (1880-1900)
20Chapter 13: The Blizzard of 1886-1887 — The Winter That Ended the Open Range Cattle Industry
21Chapter 14: Homesteaders and Farmers — The Settlers Who Fenced the West
22Chapter 15: The Railroads Reach — How the Iron Road Changed the Cattle Industry
23Chapter 16: The Last Buffalo — The Destruction of the Plains Herds
24PART FIVE: THE WEST'S DIVERSE PEOPLES
25Chapter 17: The Vaquero — Mexican Ranching Traditions and the Cowboy's True Origins
26Chapter 18: Black Cowboys — Nat Love, Bill Pickett, and the African American West
27Chapter 19: Women of the West — Ranchers, Homesteaders, and the Female Frontier
28Chapter 20: The Chinese in the West — Miners, Railroad Workers, and Anti-Chinese Violence
29PART SIX: LEGACIES
30Chapter 21: Frederick Jackson Turner and the Frontier Thesis — The Idea That Shaped American History
31Chapter 22: Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show — The Manufactured Myth
32Chapter 23: The Western as American Art — Dime Novels, Film, and the Cowboy in Culture
33Chapter 24: The American West Today — Ranching, Public Lands, and the Living Frontier
34Epilogue: The Myth of the West
35Acknowledgments
36Selected Bibliography
37About the Author
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