The cowboy’s sleeping bag, unlike sleeping bags or sleeping bags used by modern campers, was much, much more than just a sleeping bag. The mat served as his “mini-home” on the range.
In its most elaborate form, a sleeping bag contained a large amount of personal belongings wrapped in canvas (when canvas could be found) or sometimes simply improvised heavy-grain sackcloth. Strapped or tied inside such a duffel bag could be a “sugan” (also spelled “sougan” or “suggan” and various other very creative ways) or two and the cowboy’s “war bag” or “possible sack”. In fact, a well-planned and well-provided sleeping bag, carefully wrapped and tied, could be slung over a horse’s back behind the saddle, or if it were too big and heavy and the cowboy was a working cowboy, his sleeping bag could hang from the chair side of a food truck or stuffed into the bed of the food truck along with all the kitchen utensils of the crew.
Smaller sleeping bags for “portability” may have been mounted on the cowboy’s horse, but not the true masterpieces of portable houses as a serious, adult sleeping bag. Which means we should ask: what were these mysterious “sugans” or “war bags” and how did they work for the average cowboy?
Sugans: These were heavy blankets, or more often quilts, containing some substance and, if possible, some padding that warmed them up for cover. The same term is sometimes used for a small tarp or canvas that can be draped over a tree branch or propped up with sticks to form a rudimentary one-man tent. So a sugar could be a tent, or you could think of it as a sleeping bag. The important thing in winters in the Texas countryside or on the Great Plains was that the sugars should provide both shelter and warmth as much as possible.
Warbags or possible sacks: If you think in those terms, you can figure this one out. These were canvas bags or often simply old grain or flower sacks in which the cowboy kept his most prized possessions. They could be grabbed and taken away in a hurry. Quoting from Winfred Blevins’s “Dictionary of the American West”:
“In the days of the open country, a snooper would probably have found some city clothes, the ingredients (for cigarettes), cartridges and maybe some letters from home in it. [the war bag].”
A modern backpack is much less colorful and exciting. In cowboy terms, “bedding” was equivalent to a single-person camping facility. In modern terms, a “sleeping bag” really refers to a good sleeping bag.
The old “cowboy ways” of using sleeping bags appeal to me more. Turn a duffel bag into a portable campsite, a portable home away from home.