Cherokee Outlet Cowboy: Recollections of Laban S. Records Review

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Very late in his life Laban Records decided to sit down and put to paper his recollections of his days as a Kansas cowboy some fifty years earlier. When he was done he had compiled about a thousand handwritten notebook pages of material that was then passed down through his family. Laban's son saw that parts of it were published in the "Chronicles of Oklahoma," but it wasn't until his granddaughter, Ellen Wheeler, presented the entire original manuscript to the Oklahoma Historical Society that the book (this book) was published; Ms. Wheeler also did the editing.
The memoir begins with the 14-year-old Records moving to Kansas with his family from Indiana; his father was a Methodist minister. He got a job bullwhacking and driving freight in SE Kansas, and from there went on to work as a cowboy on a number of ranches. The book recounts his experiences on cattle drives, in the bunkhouses, with other cowboys, and of course with the Indians (he survived a raid by Dull Knife). There is nothing exceptional about most of this, but it gives a good feel for the routine life of a cowboy. And Wheeler's annotations are very thorough and helpful. One complaint: Records refers to the ranches in the book by their brands, so a table of brands would have been useful. In 1892 he staked a claim in the Indian territory of Oklahoma and settled there with his wife, where they lived and ranched for the next 48 years. As cowboy reminiscences go, this book is quite good of its kind.

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At age fifteen, Laban Samuel Records (1856-1940), the youngest of twelve children, moved west with his family from Indiana to Kansas. About sixty-six years later, writing in pencil on Big Chief tablets, he remembered this move and his other western experiences through the year 1892, when he settled with his wife and children on the claim he had staked in the Cheyenne-Arapaho Run.

In the intervening years, Laban was a freighter with his brother on the Santa Fe Trail and a cowpuncher in the Dodge City stockyards. He first encountered Indians on the banks of the Verdigris River in southern Kansas, learned the Osage language, and become an agency cook at Pawhuska. Later he worked in the Cherokee Outlet as a line rider for the T-5 and Spade ranches, eventually becoming a foreman.

Because of Laban's firsthand knowledge of people and events, his account adds a new perspective to several infamous episodes. For example, he barely escaped the raid Dull Knife and other Cheyenne warriors in 1878, and he knew the participants in the Medicine Lodge bank robbery, the Talbot raid at Caldwell, and the Potts-Franklin shootout on the T-5 Ranch.

In addition, Laban recounted many affectionate and often humorous stories about Outlet ranchers such as Maj. Andrew Drumm, Outlet cowpunchers such as Charlie Siringo, Texas trail drivers such as "Shanghai" Pierce, and western writers such as Thomas McNeal of the Medicine Lodge Cresset, Scott Cummings (the "Pilgrim Bard"), and Pawnee Bill. But perhaps most memorable are Laban's stories of every day cowboy life: herding cattle with his dog Shep, riding his favorite horses, and surviving the rigors encountered by everyone on the western range-tornadoes, rattlesnakes, cold and snow, outlaws, and hard work.

Laban concludes, "The great open range that I know so well, worked on so hard, and loved so much ... [has] vanished, as have the signs of the old cow trail." Perhaps so, but thanks to Ellen Jayne Maris Wheeler's organization of these stories, and to Laban's colorful and entertaining writing, the readers of Cherokee Outlet Cowboy can still ride that range and see that old cow trail for themselves.