Heritage DEPARTMENT
Cowboy
Cordon Bleu
BY LYNDEL MEIKLE “Mommy,”THE LITTLE GIRL ASKED, “DO COWBOYS EAT HAY?”
“NO DEAR,” HER MOTHER REPLIED. “THEY’RE PART HUMAN.”
That little exchange appeared as one of the jokes commonly scattered throughout newspapers of the late 1880s. It probably caused a chuckle or two. The readers might have been even more amused by our mod- ern idea of the old-time cowboy’s diet. Today, everyone knows cowboys lived on beans and sourdough biscuits, washed down with coffee so strong it could float a horse- shoe. As so often happens, everyone may be wrong. Letters, oral histories and even an old foreman’s supply list reveal a wider range of chuck wagon fare—and there wasn’t any range much wider than the roundup districts of Montana’s trail driving days.
The bit about the horseshoe may be true, though. First, let’s narrow the field a little. Back at the home ranch, a cowboy might eat in the bunkhouse or even with the rancher’s family. In that case, the diet often included cackleberries or hen fruit—commonly knows as eggs. There could be fresh bread, homemade jams of huckle- berries, or other wild fruits. A carefully tended kitchen garden might have provided potatoes, onions, and other hardy crops. However, during the spring and fall roundups and on trail drives, that warm kitchen was miles away and meals were often eaten off tin plates, with a dozen or so cowboys hunkered down near the chuck wagon. Why was it called a chuck wagon? It’s time to be skepti- cal. Certainly it is true that Charles Goodnight designed
56 DISTINCTLY MONTANA • SUMMER 2011
