JOHN WARE'S COW COUNTRY by Grant MacKewan (1973)

JOHN WARE’S COW COUNTRY by Grant MacKewan (1973)


Born into Slavery in South Carolina, John Ware eventually settled into a rancher’s life in what is now Alberta. Between the 1880’s and early 1900’s John Ware established himself as a legendary cowboy in the Canadian West. Although MacKewan’s biography is largely anecdotal – relying on stories retold by John Ware’s friends, family and colleagues – it is also provides a historical background to Ware’s time. To this effect, the book is not just a biography of Canada’s most famous black cowboy but also a detailed account of life in the Canadian West before Alberta and Saskatchewan had been carved out as provinces and before homesteads dominated the prairies.

Like most slaves emancipated during the American Civil War, John Ware had a freedom he hardly new what to due with, but unlike most of his comrades he had the opportunity to confront his former master one-on-one - and as a free man. This turned out to be a formative experience in Ware’s life. Ware bumped into his former master, Mr. Chuancey, who had been a moody and abusive man towards his slaves, on a road near the old plantation one evening. Ware took him aside, telling Chauncey that he had a few things to say before he left South Carolina to start a new life in Texas. To begin with Ware showed Mr. Chuancey the scars he still retained from the severe beatings he had received. Ware, who was well over six feet tall and is described by MacKewan as being a “human powerhouse”, then told Mr. Chauncey there was a few things he could do to him: punch his face in, tie him up to the old whipping tree and give him a taste of what it was like, or even outright kill him. However, instead of opting for violence, Ware simply told his old master (quoting MacKewan):

“Ah’m just goin t’ do nothing to’ you, Mistah Chauncey – just t’ show you that an ol slave can have mo man about him than you evah had. See, Mistah Chuancey? Yo can go home now, but don fo’get, mo man than yo evah had.”

Ware had proved that he was more of a gentleman than this former “gentleman” could ever be. Throughout his life Ware would not only earn respect for his skills with horses and cattle, but also for his gentle good-nature, honesty and friendliness. In fact, 35 years after his death the John Ware Society was formed by some old frontiersmen during the Calgary Stampede. Ware seemed to embody the finest qualities of a frontiersman.

Ware first learned to ride a horse while working in Texas for a family interested in turning wild horses into race horses. John eventually joined in on some cattle drives, taking wild Texas herds and selling them in the Northern States. Because of his skin colour Ware was never on an equal footing with the other cowboys and was always given the worst jobs – night watch, riding at the dusty rear of the herd, or even simply peeling potatoes. However, once Ware was given the opportunity to prove his talents – usually by riding an ‘untamable’ bronco into submission - he received the respect he deserved.

In 1882, Ware hooked up with his old friend Bill Moodie on a cattle drive led by Tom Lynch and Fred Stimson which would take them across the international border into Canada. The Canadian grass was considered prime grazing land, particularly after the disappearance of the millions of buffalo which had once roamed the prairies. Ware was apparently infatuated with the possibilities here.
John would never return to his homeland and settled in Western Canada. It was a land far removed from the Deep South and its cultural baggage of slavery, but also one of extreme weather. Cattle and fortunes were lost in early winter blizzards and Ware found himself caught in a few during his lifetime. Once he was thought to be dead after losing contact with the other cowboys during a blizzard, only to be found four days later with his herd intact, driving them through the snow. Later in his life, he apparently walked seven and a half hours through a snowstorm in order to deliver medicine to his wife, Mildred. He opted not to ride a horse because he reckoned it would not survive the journey.
To say that Ware left racial prejudice behind when he arrived in the prairies would be far from the truth. Although he had many friends amongst the rancher and cowboy community who treated with equality and respect, racial discrimination was something he had to continually over come throughout his life. His two experiences of Calgary exemplified this. In his first visit to Calgary Ware faced a racism that he had not seen since leaving South Carolina. Another black man had been convicted of murder not long before Ware showed up, and the city was quick to judge Ware by his colour. Suffering verbal abuse and feeling generally unwelcomed, Ware left Calgary with a bitter taste. His second visit didn’t start off any better. This time Ware was with some of his friends who were celebrating in the city after another cattle drive. Ware had refrained from any drinking, but soon found himself under arrest. A friend advised him not to resist and to sort it out in the morning. And he did – in what was becoming his typical style. The magistrate, realising that Ware was completely innocent, was more interested in the fact that he had a black cowboy in front of him. The whole incident ended with Ware proving his credentials by breaking in the magistrate’s most wild horse, in front of the officers who had arrested him without reason the night before.
While MacKewan’s biography is a testimony to one man’s overcoming of racial prejudice, it is also unintentionally testimony to the inherent racism towards the natives of Canada who were not only marginalized in John Ware’s time, but are also excluded from any of the discussion on racial prejudice in the text itself. This is in despite of the fact that the natives feature in the life of the cattlemen and in the historical background to the biography. The language MacKewan writes with comes from a time before any notion of political sensitivity. The natives are continually referred to as “savages” or “Indians” and play a periphery role in the text, usually as agitators – liable to shoot or steal a few cattle or start a stampede in the dead of night in order to disrupt a cattle drive. The Metis Rebellions are referred to as the “Half-breed Uprisings”. For a book that is so heavily invested with overcoming racism, it has little to offer in regards to native issues. For instance, no matter how high a regard we can hold for John Ware, he was still a participant, albeit unwittingly, of the colonisation of Western Canada. This would have certainly brought an interesting dynamic to the text, if it had been discussed. MacKewan does leave us with a small clue though. The natives did know John and had been witness to his strength – he once tore down a teepee and ripped a “stout branch” from a tree in order to clear a path for the cattlemen during a stand off with the Sarcee. To the Sarcee, although Ware was a different colour, he was similar to the white men in all other respects. MacKewan writes, “Understandably, John Ware became known to them as Matoxy Sex Apee Quin, meaning “bad black white man”.

However, we have to keep in mind that MacKewan's book was published in 1973, and a lot of the terms he uses may seem out of date to us, not "politically correct". Other than this it is difficult to criticise MacKewan's writing style. With metaphors and analogies that walk through the pages with a certain loose swagger, it is a language that can only come from someone out of the prairies. Here are a few examples:
“Cattle fortunes rose and fell like a chorus girl’s legs”
“The early 90’s were dry – dry as a treasurer’s annual report”.
“The first months of the twentieth century found the Canadian ranchland in an unsettled state, like beef calves at weaning time”.

Beyond an account of Ware’s life, the biography also provides valuable insight into prairies at the turn of the twentieth century. What was once a landscape used freely for cattle drives and grazing was increasingly being sectioned off to make room for homesteads and family farms. An animosity erupted between the settlers and the cattlemen, as the cowboys were encountering more and more barbed wire fences which limited the movements of their cattle. In John Ware’s lifetime there was a tectonic shift in how the land was being used. What was once range land was now farmland and the cattlemen were soon outnumbered by farmers and settlers.
Ware’s life isn’t notable simply because of his skin colour, but because it takes us back to a time in Canadian history – a prairie history – that has long since disappeared. It is telling that John Ware died in September 1905, after falling off a horse and breaking his neck. This was only a few days after Alberta and Saskatchewan were carved out of the North West Territories to become Provinces in their own right. He passed away just as the most symbolic and significant changes were taking place.
But to speak of Ware as representing a past way of life can only remind us of changes to the prairies in our own times. The late twentieth century saw the systematic removal of the grain elevator – that icon of the small town skyline and prairie landscape. Family farms are gradually disappearing, with the emergence of much larger conglomerate farms. To this extent, reading John Ware’s Cow Country today highlights the seismic shifts in our own time – another reason to have a look at this book.