What was really the life of this child of the wild region of America, and what were the conditions of the experience that bore him, can never be fully known by those who have not seen the West with wide eyes--for the cowboy was simply a part of the West.

He who does not understand the one can never understand the other.
If we care truly to see the cowboy as he was and seek to give our wish the dignity of a real purpose, we should study him in connection with his surroundings and in relation to his work.

Then we shall see him not as a curiosity but as a product--not as an eccentric driver of horned cattle but as a man suited to his times.
Large tracts of that domain where once the cowboy reigned supreme have been turned into farms by the irrigator's ditch or by the dry-farmer's plan.

The farmer in overalls is in many instances his own stockman today.

On the ranges of Arizona, Wyoming, and Texas and parts of Nevada we may find the cowboy, it is true, even today: but he is no longer the Homeric figure that once dominated the plains.