Cowboys are basically pilgrim stock grown bolder as circumstances and wide ranges demanded.
It speaks well of adaptability and survival.
Not so. The culture of the Appalachian Highlands and the frontier, including cowboys, derives from the Scotch-Irish immigrant culture, not the Puritan.
Between 1715 and 1775 perhaps 250,000 people from the northern parts of the British Isles came to British America. Most were Scotch-Irish (Scots settled in Northern Ireland--Ulster--after 1603), but there also were Irish as well as people on both sides of the Scottish- English border. They shared a heritage of living in disputed, unstable regions wracked by violence that bred warrior cultures. Not welcomed in eastern settlements, they hurried on their way west and began settling the Shenandoah Valley after 1740. Theirs became the dominant culture of the Appalachians from Pennsylvania to Georgia, partly by weight of numbers, but mostly because Old World border culture was exceptionally well suited to New World frontier conditions.
Much of what Americans today regard as frontier culture is really Scotch-Irish culture. Their dialect survives in the speech of country and western singers and cinematic cowboys. Their field services (which mixed preaching with fighting and drinking) were precursors of the American camp meeting. Sports emphasized martial arts. Social order focused on retribution.