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Collection Meeting of Frontiers

Cossacks, Cowboys, and Cavalry-Frontier Social Groups

This essay was published in 2000 as part of the original Meeting of Frontiers website.

Frontiers, distant from the cultures and economies of the metropolis, produced distinct occupations and societies.

In America, cowboys came to symbolize the economic penetration of the West, while the cavalry represented the military penetration. Cowboys drove cattle to market from the enormous free range that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. By the 1890s, cowboys were transformed into ranch hands as the day of the open range and the trail drive faded into the past.

The army in the West comprised cavalry, artillery, and infantry regiments, but thanks to the popular image, the cavalry is particularly associated with "the winning of the West." The army manned a chain of forts, guarded travel routes and settlements, and engaged in campaigns to force Indian tribes to settle on reservations.

In Russia, the Cossack—responsible for both economic colonization and military service—stood somewhere between the cowboy and the soldier. The Cossack hosts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were irregular military units that were granted land, tax privileges, salary and provisions, and a degree of political autonomy in exchange for service to the state. Cossacks staffed forts, patrolled towns, engaged in local campaigns against native peoples, worked as couriers, escorts, and border guards, and farmed their lands or rented them out to others to farm.