mal and the heavy
Conestoga horse from the same breeding ground revolutionized inland
commerce.

The first American cow pony was not without his cowboy. Though the
drivers were not all of the same type and though the proprietors, so to
speak, of the trans-Alleghany pack-horse trade came generally from the
older settlements, the bulk of the hard work was done by a lusty army of
men not reproduced again in America until the picturesque figure of the
cow-puncher appeared above the western horizon. This breed of men was
nurtured on the outer confines of civilization, along the headwaters of
the Susquehanna, the Potomac, the James, and the Broad--the country of
the "Cowpens." Rough as the wilderness they occupied, made strong by
their diet of meat and curds, these Tatars of the highlands played
a part in the commercial history of America that has never had its
historian. In their knowledge of Indian character, of horse and
packsaddle lore, of the forest and its trails in every season, these men
of the Cowpens were the kings of the old frontier.

An officer under Braddock has left us one of the few pictures of these
people *:

* "Extracts of Letters from an Officer" (London, 1755).

"From the Heart of the Settlements we are now got into the Cow-pens; the
Keepers of these are very extraordinary Kind of Fellows, they drive up
their Herds on Horseback, and they had need do so, for their Cattle
are near as wild as Deer; a Cow-pen generally consists of a very large
Cottage or House in the Woods, with about four-score or one hundred
Acres, inclosed with high Rails and divided; a small Inclosure they keep
for Corn, for the family, the rest is the Pasture in which they keep
their calves; but the Manner is far different from any Thing you ever
saw; they may perhaps have a Stock of four or five hundred to a thousand
Head of Cattle belonging to a Cow-pen, these run as they please in the
Great Woods, where there are no Inclosures to stop them. In the Month of
March the Cows begin to drop their Calves, then the Cow-pen Master, with
all his Men, rides out to see and drive up the Cows with all their
new fallen Calves; they being weak cannot run away so as to escape,
therefore are easily drove up, and the Bulls and other Cattle follow
them; and they put these Calves into the Pasture, and every Morning and
Evening suffer the Cows to come and suckle them, which done they let the
Cows out into the great Woods to shift for their Foo