Western Tattoo Ideas: Cowboy, Desert and Rodeo

What a western tattoo means

A western tattoo is less one symbol than a working kit. Hat, boots, spurs, lariat, saddle, revolver and badge each belonged to a job on the open range, and most designs on this page are one thing drawn alone, a piece of gear, an animal or a figure, with the longhorn skull, the bison and the saguaro standing in for the country. People choose it because they ride or ranch, because they come from Texas, Wyoming or Sonora, or because the films got there first.

Each object has its own reading. The sheriff's star is the law and the skull in a paisley bandana is the outlaw it was pinned on to catch, an odd pair for one arm. The covered wagon is the journey out, and the lone rider in solid black, slumped with the reins hanging slack, is the end of a long day: endurance with nobody watching.

The horseshoe is pure folklore, and European. In the English legend Saint Dunstan, the tenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury remembered as a skilled smith, nailed a shoe to the Devil's hoof and pulled it off only when the Devil swore never to enter a house with a horseshoe over the door. Hung open end up it holds luck like a cup; in other households it hangs points down to pour luck over whoever walks beneath. The red shoe here grows a rose up through its open end.

Much of the rest is Mexican before it is American. The cowboy's trade came north with the vaquero, the cattle hand of the Spanish and Mexican ranchos, and the words came with it: lariat from la reata, lasso from lazo, rodeo from rodear, to encircle, and dally, the turn of rope round the saddle horn that holds a roped steer, from a Spanish phrase for taking a turn. The weathered vaquero in black and grey on this page is that ancestor.

Where the design comes from

The open-range era behind all this was short. For twenty years after the Civil War, Texas longhorns were driven north to Kansas railheads such as Abilene and Dodge City, until barbed wire and the killing winter of 1886 to 1887 ended it. Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell painted it, Buffalo Bill's Wild West toured it from 1883, and John Ford filmed Stagecoach in Monument Valley in 1939. Some props date exactly, Stetson's Boss of the Plains hat to 1865 and the Colt Single Action Army to 1873, and a bucking bronco with its rider, like the one sketched here, has been on Wyoming licence plates since 1936.

Choosing yours

• Pick one object and give it room. Tooled leather is what makes the saddle, the holster and the spur here, and its carved flowers and scrolls, the floral work known as Sheridan style after the Wyoming town, are fine lines packed close; below about 10 cm they close into grey. The single objects that survive small are the plain ones: the campfire, the flat tan hat, the star.
• If you ride, get the gear right, because riders check: a spur's rowel sits behind the heel, and a western saddle has a horn where an English one has none.
• Leave the feathered headdress out. The war bonnet belongs to particular Plains nations and is earned, not a costume, and none of the designs here uses it.

Common questions