Pecos Bill: The Greatest Cowboy of All Time

The American legend of Pecos Bill was supposedly handed down by early settlers of the Southwest, however more recent research has shown this is probably apocryphal. The stories were largely invented as "fakelore" by Edward O'Reilly in 1923 for The Century Magazine, soon after collected in the book "Saga of Pecos Bill". Later writers then borrowed or expanded on O'Reilly's stories. Although O'Reilly created the legend, probably the most well known and best written collection of Pecos Bill stories is by James Cloyd Bowman, who won the Newbery Honor for "Pecos Bill: The Greatest Cowboy of All Time" (1937). In the 1937 Preface, Bowman does not discuss his sources, except to say "This is a volume of genuine American folklore", and that he collected from "original documents left by the early adventurers into the open range country." This sounds suspicious today, and it is unfortunate the publishers of this 2007 re-print did not include an updated literary history Introduction that examines Bowman's sources in more detail. It now gives the appearance of a buried literary crime waiting to be uncovered. Still, this is a beautifully written and re-produced book with original illustrations by Laura Bannon. It is exactly the children's book my parents would have read and fits perfectly with the 1940s and 50s image of the American cowboy hero, or something out of the movie A Christmas Story. I was first introduced to Bowman's work in a non-fiction biography of Robert Louis Stevenson and was impressed by his down to earth, easy to read and factual prose and thus sought out more. He's not that well know today, in particular for his literary criticism, but considering his generation (born 1880) his writing is unpretentious and modern yet gentle and easy to read. As for Pecos Bill himself, readers of Kiplings The Jungle Books will recognize the story of the orphaned human baby raised by wolves, mastering the natural world around him, then returning to his human folk to do the same. Many of the stories describe the origins of various cowboy related things: the roundup, branding, roping, the rodeo, etc.. along the way you learn about cowboy life and culture. One thing to note, although this is an illustrated children's book it is still a lot of text, about 20 chapters it took me about 4-5 hours to read, it is more in the young adult category, some of the vocabulary is fairly advanced and specialized.