Cowboy Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
170 free Cowboy trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This cowboy trivia quiz is about the working cowboy rather than the gunfighter: where the word came from, how the Spanish vaquero became the American cowboy, and what life on a cattle drive actually involved, from the size of a herd and the miles covered each day to the jobs of the wrangler and the cook. You will get questions on the Chisholm and Goodnight-Loving trails, Abilene and Dodge City, Texas Longhorns, the chuckwagon, barbed wire and the winter that ended the open range. It also covers the gear (Stetson's Boss of the Plains, chaps, lariats, boots), the people history often leaves out (Black cowboys who made up a quarter of trail crews, Nat Love, Bill Pickett, the cowgirls of the Wild West shows), and cowboy cultures beyond Texas: Florida's cracker cowboys, Hawaii's paniolos, Alberta's ranchers, Australia's stockmen and South America's gauchos. Difficulty runs from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against a reference page before publishing, so the dates, numbers and names hold up.
30 of 170 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Spanish, vaquero is built on the word vaca, meaning what?
Cow
Cow: Spanish vaca plus the trade suffix -ero gives vaquero, the mounted herder, and English-speaking cowhands later bent that word into 'buckaroo'.
Q 02The vaquero traditions behind the American cowboy trace back to Spanish settlers from which region?
Andalusia
Andalusia, in southern Spain, had a tradition of working cattle from horseback that its settlers carried to Mexico, where it grew into the craft of the vaquero.
Q 03In 1598 Juan de Oñate's colonists drove their wagons and herds into New Mexico across which river?
The Rio Grande
The Rio Grande was forded in spring 1598, just after Oñate formally claimed New Mexico for Spain; his colonists' road north carried the Camino Real, the royal road from Mexico City, deep into New Mexico.
Q 04In the British Isles, long before the American West, the word 'cowboy' described whom?
A boy tending the family cows
A boy tending the family cows was the first 'cowboy': the word is recorded in English from the 1720s, more than a century before it came to mean a mounted cattle hand of the American plains.
Q 05Besides about ten cowboys, a typical Texas trail-drive crew included a cook and which other specialist?
A wrangler
A wrangler joined the cook to round out the crew: he herded the outfit's spare mounts, so that every rider could swap a tired horse for a fresh one through the day.
Q 06Barred from many rodeos as a Black man, Bill Pickett was often entered as what?
A Native American
A Native American: Pickett was often billed as an Indian so he could compete against white cowboys, yet in 1972 the sport that had shut him out made him the first Black honoree in its national hall of fame.
Q 07Which Kansas town became the main railhead for Texas herds after Joseph McCoy built stockyards there in 1867?
Abilene
Abilene, Kansas, drew some 35,000 Texas cattle in 1867 after dealer Joseph McCoy built stockyards beside the new railway and advertised them across Texas; the trail there took the name Chisholm.
Q 08Missouri and Kansas turned back Texas trail herds because the Longhorns carried which pest, whose fever killed local cattle?
Ticks
Ticks on the Longhorns spread Texas fever: the Texas cattle shrugged it off, but local herds died after a drive passed, so quarantine lines kept pushing the trails farther west.
Q 09On a cattle drive, the herd of spare horses was known as what?
The remuda
The remuda, from a Spanish word for an exchange, was the herd of spare saddle horses: riders swapped tired mounts for fresh ones through the day, which is why each man needed several.
Q 10Besides the food, what else was the trail cook in charge of, making him a respected figure?
Medical supplies and medicine
Medical supplies and medicine rode in the cook's chuckwagon, and he doctored the crew as well as feeding it; a good trail cook drew about twice a cowhand's pay.
Q 11Samuel Maverick, the Texan said to be behind the word 'maverick', famously neglected which ranch chore?
Branding his calves
Branding his calves was the chore Samuel Maverick let slide, so the story goes; an unmarked stray came to be called a maverick and, by range custom, belonged to whoever put a brand on it first.
Q 12The chuckwagon was built from a Civil War surplus wagon made by which manufacturer?
Studebaker
Goodnight built his chuckwagon on a Studebaker wagon, a sturdy Civil War army-surplus model; the South Bend firm later became famous for automobiles.
Q 13The sombrero is thought to take its name from 'sombra', the Spanish word for what?
Shade
Q 21What do cowboys call the small eye at a rope's end that forms the loop?
The honda
The honda is the small eye that the rope's other end runs through to form the loop, so that a pull on the rope draws the noose shut around whatever the throw has caught.
Q 22Which two early bootmakers set up shop in Olathe, Kansas, and Spanish Fort, Texas?
Hyer and Justin
Hyer and Justin: Charles Hyer worked in Olathe, Kansas, and H. J. 'Daddy Joe' Justin at Spanish Fort, Texas, where trail drivers ordered boots heading north and collected them on the ride home.
Q 23Florida's 'cracker cowboys' historically herded cattle mainly with which tools?
Bullwhips and dogs
Shade is what the sombrero's wide brim was built to cast; Mexican vaqueros carried the style north, where it became one model for the cowboy hat.
Q 14The JA Ranch, founded in 1876 as the first ranch in the Texas Panhandle, sits in which landmark?
Palo Duro Canyon
Palo Duro Canyon sheltered the ranch Charles Goodnight and John Adair founded in 1876, branded with Adair's initials; Goodnight also kept a bison herd and later shipped animals to Yellowstone.
Q 15Doan's Crossing, where trail herds left Texas for Indian Territory, lay on which river?
The Red River
Doan's Crossing on the Red River, near Vernon, Texas, grew up around the trading post Jonathan and Corwin Doan opened in 1878 to sell supplies to drovers heading into Indian Territory.
Q 16Which invention let Western ranchers of the 1880s confine their cattle to designated areas?
Barbed wire
Barbed wire, patented by farmer Joseph Glidden in 1874, let ranchers enclose their pastures cheaply, and Texas saw fence-cutting conflicts in the early 1880s as the fences went up.
Q 17Texas Longhorns descend from Spanish cattle first landed in the Americas on which expedition?
Columbus's second voyage
Columbus's second voyage landed the first cattle on Hispaniola in 1493; their descendants ran half-wild in Texas for centuries and became the Longhorn, a breed nearly lost by the 1920s.
Q 18John B. Stetson founded his hat company in 1865 in which city?
Philadelphia
John B. Stetson, a hatter's son, founded his company in Philadelphia in 1865 after a health trip west, where he had made himself a broad-brimmed felt hat.
Q 19Which hat did writer Lucius Beebe call 'the hat that won the West'?
The bowler
Lucius Beebe called the bowler 'the hat that won the West'; it stayed on in wind better than wide-brimmed hats and was worn by settlers, lawmen and outlaws alike.
Q 20Chaps were created in Mexico to replace which gear?
The armas, leather flaps hung from the pommel
The armas, leather flaps hung from the pommel, covered a rider's legs from the saddle; chaparreras did the same job strapped to the rider himself, and English speakers clipped the name to chaps.
Bullwhips and dogs were the Florida cowhunter's main tools, which set him apart from the Western cowboy: dogs trained to work cattle gathered the herd, and long whips drove it along.
Q 24The Hawaiian cowboy is called a paniolo, believed to be a Hawaiianised pronunciation of which word?
Español
Español is the usual explanation: Hawaiian has no 's' sound and ends every syllable in a vowel, so the Spanish-speaking horsemen who taught islanders cattle work became paniolo, though other origins have been proposed.
Q 25Which British captain gave cattle to Kamehameha I in 1793, starting Hawaii's cattle story?
George Vancouver
George Vancouver presented cattle to Kamehameha I in 1793; the king put a kapu on killing them, and the protected animals multiplied into the wild herds that roamed the Big Island.
Q 26The mounted cattle herders of the French Camargue are called what?
Gardians
Gardians ride white Camargue horses to tend the black bulls that run half-wild in the Rhône delta's marshes, cattle bred for the course camarguaise, a bloodless bull game.
Q 27Which nickname did Black cowboy Nat Love claim to have won at an 1876 rodeo?
Deadwood Dick
Nat Love said he won the name Deadwood Dick at a Fourth of July 1876 contest in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, though local papers record no rodeo; workmates had earlier called him Red River Dick.
Q 28After his years on the cattle trails, Black cowboy Nat Love spent his later career in which job?
Pullman porter
Pullman porter: with the long drives over, Love took a railway job in 1890 and worked the sleeping cars until 1907, the year he published a memoir of his life in the saddle.
Q 29What job earned William F. Cody the nickname 'Buffalo Bill'?
Railroad hunter
Railroad hunter: Cody shot bison to feed the men laying the Kansas Pacific line in 1867, and he kept the name when he launched his Wild West show in 1883.
Q 30Rodeo cowgirl Fannie Sperry Steele rode rough stock like the men while wearing what?
A heavy split skirt
Fannie Sperry Steele rode broncs in a heavy split skirt, more cumbersome than men's trousers, yet rode 'slick' with untied stirrups; she was Lady Bucking Horse Champion at the first Calgary Stampede in 1912.