This picture of a "Famous Jewish Champion of the Lariat and Saddle" once hung, according to Jerry Coyne, on a wall of the Eastern California Museum (town ofIndependence CA between Bishop and Lone Pine).
I first heard of Jewish cowboys when my sometimes-general-world-music and sometimes klezmer and Jewish music band Mappamundi played for a B'nai B'rith retreat week at the Wildacres Retreat in Little Switzerland (western North Carolina). In between playing and singing klezmer and Yiddish music for the "campers," we had a lot of time to walk and read.
In my room I found a wonderful little book called Jews on the Frontier (out of print but still available used). In the introduction I read: "The lone Jew, denied the companionship of others of his faith and married to a Gentile with little sympathy for his religious beliefs, simply disappeared into the emerging social order. This fate has denied Jewish frontiersmen the recognition they deserve for their role in the conquest of the West. Historians who read the records, unaware that many of the pioneers whose deeds they were chronicling boasted a Jewish ancestry, simply assumed that Jews were concentrated in Eastern cities and played no part on the frontier."
This is the record jacket of a promotional record made by the Manischewitz company in 1958 about a Jewish cowboy who lived in Centerville Texas on a 1300 acre ranch.
Thanks to Google, I now also know that this book exists: the English translation of a Yiddish novel written in 1942, "Der Yidisher Cowboy" - based on author Isaac Raboy's own life. In it an immigrant horse-lover escapes a New York City sweatshop and moves to North Dakota to work on a ranch.
And here (thank you, YouTube) is a video called "Song of a Jewish Cowboy."
My friend Roger Spears wrote a song called Hanukah Cowboy Style for our new album Mrs. Maccabee's Kitchen. Coming soon.