Be transported into the wild and wooly past of the American Wild West. It featured all sorts of people from pioneers and scouts to lawmen, outlaws, gangs and gunfighters (gunslingers), to the American cowboy, and legendary pioneering women on the frontier. You'll find history, lore and biographies of the lives and times of those who populated the American West. Meet Billy The Kid, Jesse James, the Clantons and the Dalton gang and the lawmen who stopped them, famous sheriffs and their deputies. You'll also learn of the adventures of pioneers and American Indians (Native Americans) and interesting western facts and inventions like barbed wire and denim blue jeans.
Explore the life of the cowboy who spent up to four straight months in the saddle, often in the same clothes every day. He ate every meal at the chuck wagon, drinking nothing but coffee and water. At night, if a storm came and the cattle started running, it was the cowboy's job to jump on his horse and get out there in the lead to head them off and round them up safely. It was a dangerous job riding through the dark, with prairie dog holes all around, not knowing if the next turn would be your last. And did you know that cowboys really did sing to their cattle? The singing was supposed to soothe the cattle and it did. Two men on guard would circle around with their horses on a walk. If it were a clear night with the cattle bedded down and quiet, one man would sing a verse of a song, and his partner on the other side of the herd would sing another verse. They would go through a whole song that way, right through the night.
