Charles M. Russell was a writer, too
By JIM HOY
© Plains Folk
As with the vast majority of those who are drawn to the mystique of the cowboy and the Old West, I really like the paintings of Charles M. Russell.
Some critics think his work too colorful, too dramatic, too nostalgic to rise to the level of high art. I will admit that Russell's paintings do not reflect an entirely accurate picture of cowboy life because 90 percent of the time that life is routine, even boring.
But if he does tend to focus on what cowboys refer to as "wrecks," it's because the remaining 10 percent of cowboying often involves situations that are potentially (and sometimes actually) fatal.
Russell had natural creative talent and a deep love for the open range, of which he witnessed the final years. In 1882, two years after arriving in Montana and 18 years after his birth in St. Louis, Russell got his first ranch job as a horse wrangler with the Horace Brewster cow outfit.
Russell was no great shakes as a cowhand, an assessment supported by the men he worked with. One of them, Belknap "Ballie" Buck, said that Russell "couldn't ride a horse that bucked very hard," and Russell himself told his apprentice, Joe DeYong, "It makes me sore when they spring a lot of my talk that I never said. They tell what a bronc twister and roper I am and men that know me think I been filling them up."
Russell may not have had superior skills as a cowboy, but he did have excellent skills of observation and a strong desire to tell the story of the cowboy. What many admirers of his paintings don't know is that Russell also told that story in prose.
Once Russell joined up with Montana cow outfits, he had a wealth of stories for his repertoire. Being able to make the stories of a particular folk group accessible to a general audience, however, takes a degree of skill and sophistication not held by many of the storytellers themselves.
Baxter Black can do it today, just as Will Rogers did it for an earlier generation. Charles Russell's story telling is equally good, if not as well known to the public as his art. He began with submissions to the Montana Newspaper Association, which were collected in two books, "Rawhide Rawlins Stories" (1921) and "More Rawhides" (1925).
His best stories are found in "Trails Plowed Under," published in 1927, a year after his death. It has been in print continuously, and is currently available in paperback through a 1996 edition from the University of Nebraska Press.
Of the many and varied tales in "Trails Plowed Under," my favorite is an episode about a rough-string rider and a green colt. The bronc twister on a Montana ranch often got twice the wages of an ordinary cowboy, but he paid for it with bumps, bruises, and broken bones.
It took a special kind of hand to ride tough horses, and self preservation wasn't always high on the list of necessary attributes. In this particular instance the bronc twister was riding out with the rest of the crew in the rough Missouri breaks country. He rolled a cigarette and, without thinking, struck a match on the concha of his chaps. The scratch and hiss sound of the match spooked the colt, who ducked his head and began bucking wildly toward a canyon, the bronc rider spurring and quirting as horse and rider disappeared over the edge.
As the cowboys rode up and peered over, expecting the worst, they saw the colt firmly wedged among the top branches of a cottonwood tree, rider still firmly in the saddle. "Somebody toss me a match," the bronc rider called up to them, "Mine went out on the way down."
It's a true story, and I'm glad Charley Russell saved it for us.
corrections
and clarifications
The city of Lincolnville will place newspaper ads for permanent part-time help, not temporary summertime help as erroneously stated in the report of the July 5 council meeting. Also, the city plans to contact Tampa State Bank to negotiate a settlement on back taxes on a house deeded to the city from TSB.
