Huey: The difficult – and sometimes delectable – diet of old west cattle drives

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Along with the cattle drives of yesteryear came food. Next time you’re watching an old western and you see a cowboy sitting by a crackling campfire holding a tin plate of beans on his lap and silhouetted by a purple sunset, raking the last of those beans up with a spoon, stop and think: Maybe I did that in a previous life.

The reality of what cowboys ate on cattle drives was more a story of just trying to stay alive rather than one of folklore. They always had plenty of beans though.

The diet of the 1800s cowboy was about eating the same thing every day, and some of their staple foods would make folks of today gag, things like rattlesnake, skunk, and the always delectable Gila Monster. This isn’t a story of campfire meals, but rather a story of a diet that was built on the hope that it would be different tomorrow night.

It’s also a tale of how to feed cowboys as they drove cattle along the Oregon Trail, far from home and missing their families. Beef, beans, biscuits, and bacon were the Quad Bs on cattle drives because they never spoiled, and although cowboys were drowning in cattle they couldn’t simply cull one out and butcher it.

Those cows belonged to someone else, and slaughtering one was considered theft. They were for delivery only. The money from the sale of those cattle had to feed the owners and pay their bills for years until more calves grew into adulthood. Although rare, cowboys DID sometimes get beef when an animal was too lame to make the drive.

Typically though, the only beef they got was jerky, and although it wasn’t tender, it was something to chew on until suppertime. When a cow actually DID walk that last mile, no part of it ever got wasted. After frying the meat, the cook put flour in the tallow and stirred it, creating a thick meaty gravy that the cowboys spooned over their biscuits.

The true nature of cattle-drive cooking isn’t in the staple foods, but the creativity in the making of other foods. There was the standard son-of-a-gun stew, consisting of a calf that was too weak or sick to keep up, then simmered in a pot with vegetables. The dessert was red sorrel pie, a dish similar to cherry cobbler.

Overland trout was a nickname for salt pork or bacon, which the cowboys loved. Fatty meats were their favorite. Sliced thick and fried in a skillet, the resultant fat was used to cook everything else and even added to the beans or sopped up with bread, another thing they couldn’t live without. Sourdough bread was always available.

Cattle drives had a standing hierarchy, with the trail boss as leader. The cook was the highest paid man on the drive since food was necessary for good morale, although not near as good as having women along. The point riders stayed up front, setting the pace while swing riders kept the herd going straight. Flank riders kept cows from wandering, and drag riders at the rear kept those dogies moving.

The cook’s workday started early, grinding coffee beans and building a roaring fire, then before the sun came up he would have breakfast hanging over the campfire. After the herd left, he washed up the breakfast dishes and packed the wagon, then drove it as fast as he could so he could catch up before nightfall and start cooking all over again.

In the area around the chuckwagon, the cook had a strict code of conduct. A cowboy never rode his horse near the wagon for obvious reasons. The strictest rule was that no one could eat until the cook said so. The last rule is to fill your plate, get your coffee and get out of the way, but don’t leave any food on your plate because it would hurt the cook’s feelings.

Still a living part of history, these were the rations that cowboys dined on during cattle drives way back in the days of buggies, haylofts, wagon trains, and gunfights on Allen Street in downtown Dodge City, the wild west of yesteryear. These foods are still cooked and consumed to this day, the animals are still bought and sold, but the cattle drives and cowboys have been swept into the dustbin of history.