What can you tell me about stampede strings, which helped keep a hat on a cowboy's head?
By: Marshall Trimble 09/01/2008
What can you tell me about stampede strings, which helped keep a hat on a cowboy’s head?
Gary Sheaf
Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom
A
Whether or not the Old West cowboys used such strings is still strongly debated by historians today. But in Trails Plowed Under, Charles M. Russell writes this description of the early cowpuncher: “...startin’ at the top, with a good hat—not one of the floppy kind you see in pictures, with the rim turned up in front. The top-cover he wears holds its shape an’ ... maybe to hold it on, he wore a buckskin string under the chin or back of the head.” Many of Russell’s paintings also show hat strings.
Stampede strings have been around for awhile, dating back to the days of the Texas vaqueros and Californios. Cowboys were a pragmatic breed, so the strings weren’t fancy. If conditions called for a stampede string, cowboys would improvise with buckskin thongs to hold their hats on. In high winds, they might also use their neckerchief to tie down their “war bonnets.”
Stampede strings have been called “wind straps” or “run-a-way string,” equally descriptive of purpose. But I can’t find any evidence that they were called stampede strings; that seems to be a modern term. The earliest strings were probably no more than thong or twine, poked through the brim of the hat and secured beneath the chin with a knot or slider of sorts.
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