A little bit about my store, Horses, Cowboys and Indians Western Decor. Since I love the western decor theme and being artistically inclined, I needed an outlet for my Gourd Art and Horseshoe Art, so I opened this store. I looked around for other products to stock here since it is a bit difficult to find quality western decor. I think I have succeeded in this as I have a nice selection of reasonably priced items to offer for sale. You can't just visit my store once and say that you have seen everything because I am constantly adding new items from my suppliers, and occasionaly taking some items off because they are no longer available, but I am constantly creating new Gourd and Horseshoe Art too, and no 2 pieces are alike. Most of the horseshoe items we have you can purchase more than one of because we can make more of most of them. But the site is always changing so come back often to see what's new.

The latest thing we have added is a free certificate with every purchase to join a Travel Club that offers discounts on cruises and hotels, two for one airfares. We think it makes a great thank you gift.

So come by and check out the store often for new items and rest assured that your ordering is secure. www.horsescowboysandindians.com

The Real Face Of The American Cowboy

The high time of the American cowboy lasted a bare generation, from the end of the Civil War until the mid-1880's, when bad weather, poor range management and disastrous cattle-market prices forced an end to the old freewheeling ways. In that brief span the number of cowboys who rode the cattle trails across the Great Plains totaled no more than 40,000. As surviving photographs suggest, most cowhands were surprisingly young (their average age was only 24), and despite their steely gaze and the guns they may have put on especially for the camera, they seemed to have a lot of the bumpkin in them.

Yet neither flash impressions nor bare statistics can take the true measure of the cowboys or dim the elemental stage presence and the riveting appeal they generated in their own time and forever afterward. They were men of a particular time and place, living by a code compounded of hardfisted frontier desperation and Victorian-era social values, performing body-punishing and hazardous jobs, and pitting themselves against a land of sweeping grandeur that offered prodigious drafts of misery. For each man these harsh realities of range life manifested themselves in different ways. Yet they also emphasize the enduring quality and the acceptance of his lot that characterized virtually every cowboy.