牛仔何以成为美国神话 英文

How did cowboys become myth in America?

——analysis about the character of American cowboys

Abstract: What is the reason why cowboy, a character that only exists in American history for about 30 years, became classic and permanent after it disappeared till now? This article tells us the deep effect by the spirits including freedom, heroism and the courage of starting careers, of cowboys on the Americans in these aspects of the cowboys’ generation, development, historical significance and influence. So that we can know how it becomes myth.

Key word: Cowboy culture, Short-lived, Far-reaching influence

When it refers to cowboys, a huge strong and heroic character who wears broad brimmed(宽边的) hat on the head, wears neckerchief around the neck, dresses with doublet（紧身上衣）and wears leather boots. He can ride horse into the troop of robbers and shoot them with no miss. When every robber fell down dead, he will slightly blow the smog coming out from the gunpoint and turned about, leaving. This usual and short-lived image accompanied with every generation of Americans, became the epic character, raised the deep emotion of American and caused lots of mentality campaigns.

It raised an interesting question for us that what make cowboy, a character only existing 30 years, become the strongest backbone of American and what make cowboy enduring myth. We can solve the problems in the aspect of history first.

A、the background of cowboy’s coming into being

American cows were firstly brought to western Indies by Columbus, and then they expended to northern America. Another part of American cows were brought to Mexico by a explorer Coronado（科罗纳多）in the exploration and then expended to the northern America. With the expending of the American territory, cows were everywhere in America. Beef price in the northeast America is ten times much than that in south and west America. The high price attract many people to do cow business, in the meantime, the accomplishment of pacific railway promote the fast development of cow business. To make much profit, the landlord began to transport the cow toward the railway to tread them. In the process of transporting cows, cowboys came into being.

Because of wining the two wars between America and Mexico in 1846 and 1853, America bought about 1 million square kilometers land that in the east of Mississippi from Mexico, so that there were a lot of cheap land in the south and west America. Because of the cheap land, many landlords came here to raise cows. The fertile soil and flat landform accelerate the development of cow business. The amount of cows even reached 50 million in 1886, because of which，lots of cow boys were required. It is easy to be found that people’s longing for cowboy is based on the need of money and survival and it is this need that promotes the development of cowboy and became the original energy of epic cowboy.

Howeve r, after several years’ flourishing, cowboy had to quit their job. Because the fast increasing of cows caused the surplus and the competence with other countries, the price dropped quickly, which made many landlords quit raising cows. Convenient transportation not only promoted the development of cow business but also brought many farmers there doing farming as well as many goatherds（牧羊人）. They competed with cow raisers for fields, which made less