It has long been acknowledged that the American cowboy became a defining figure in the story of the greater Southwest. His rugged life herding cattle against the backdrop of a dramatic landscape provided the raw material for writers and filmmakers who created the cowboy's romantic image.

The reality, however, was somewhat different. As an editorial in a long ago issue of the San Francisco Chronicle put it: "The cowboy, after all, was never anything more than a hired man on horseback."

That was probably the view of many people a century and a half ago. Actually, in some quarters, cowboys were stigmatized as criminals, posing a threat to peaceful citizens.

Sister of Charity Blandina Segale, on her way to hospital service in Santa Fe, encountered one such person, or so she thought.

"From descriptions I had read, I knew he was a cowboy," she wrote. "A warning I'd heard came to me then: 'No virtuous woman is safe near a cowboy.' "

Despite her fears, based on occupational profiling, no harm came to Sister Blandina from this denizen of the range, and she continued on in safety to the capital.

Author and artist Will James, himself a cowboy for a while in the area around Cimarron, wrote approvingly of his fellow riders of the range.

He made no excuses for them, however, and claimed they were subject to as many human failings as men following other lines of work.

James was not alone, either, in pointing out the rough edges that typified the cowboy clan.

Edgar Bronson, a rancher in the high country of southwestern New Mexico, painted a word picture of 16 of his cowboys gathered at the chuck wagon after a dawn to dusk day of hard riding.

Eating off tin plates and cups, they bolted beef, beans and Dutch oven biscuits, washed down with lots of coffee thick enough to float an egg.

The men in age ranged from 15 to 60, "all grimy with dust, and several reeking with the blood of the long day's work in corrals."

While every member of the crew lived a life of privation and hardship, Bronson noted, they were constantly joshing one another and making light of each new difficult or tragic situation.

Devotion to duty and to the cattle in their charge was a common trait attributed to genuine cowboys.

An example from Union County in extreme northeastern New Mexico can be cited. During the early winter of 1889, a norther sliding down the Front Range from Colorado struck a cow camp at 4 a.m., where six or eight cowboys were bedded down in the open after rounding up 1,800 head of cattle.

A fierce wind drove the bawling animals southeast toward the Texas Panhandle line. The herders manfully struggled to stay with them through blinding snow and falling temperatures.

Late the next day, one of the hands staggered into the ranch headquarters, more dead than alive. A rescue party started forth and eventually found the bodies of three cowboys, frozen, and several others alive but badly frostbitten.

Adhering to the cowboy code, the crew had stayed with herd until it became hopeless. And some paid with their lives.

Such stories were not uncommon when big ranches were the rule. They support the belief that cowboys, at least the majority, were men of sturdy character. That conviction persists to the present day.

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.