If You Rode a Cattle Drive Across Texas in 1870

It's 1870. You're nineteen, it's five years after the Civil War, and Texas is full of longhorn cattle that are worth almost nothing at home and ten times more up north. So you sign on to drive three thousand of them eight hundred miles up the Chisholm Trail to the railroad at Abilene, Kansas, for about a dollar a day. This is what a cattle drive was really like, and why the real cowboy looked nothing like the one in the movies. Chapters: 0:00 Night guard 0:46 Where your steak came from 1:23 Texas, 1870 2:28 Hired for a dollar a day 3:32 The crew 5:03 A day on the trail 6:02 The real dangers 6:55 Crossing the Red River 7:52 Nights on the trail 8:49 Abilene 10:12 What happened to people like you A note on the story: "you" is a composite character based on the documented experience of trail-drive cowhands. Wages and prices are typical figures for the period. Scenes are illustrated reconstructions, not archival photographs. Sources: Wikipedia, Chisholm Trail Smithsonian Magazine, The Lesser-Known History of African-American Cowboys Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas: Cattle Trailing Andy Adams, The Log of a Cowboy (1903) #history #cowboys #texas