Posted on 09/30/2020 2:59:43 PM PDT by rktman
In his 1907 autobiography, cowboy Nat Love recounts stories from his life on the frontier so cliché, they read like scenes from a John Wayne film. He describes Dodge City, Kansas, a town smattered with the romanticized institutions of the frontier: “a great many saloons, dance halls, and gambling houses, and very little of anything else.” He moved massive herds of cattle from one grazing area to another, drank with Billy the Kid and participated in shootouts with Native peoples defending their land on the trails. And when not, as he put it, “engaged in fighting Indians,” he amused himself with activities like “dare-devil riding, shooting, roping and such sports.”
Though Love’s tales from the frontier seem typical for a 19th-century cowboy, they come from a source rarely associated with the Wild West. Love was African-American, born into slavery near Nashville, Tennessee.
(Excerpt) Read more at getpocket.com ...
Headed to the coasts where lots of stuff was being given away?
I thought Blazing Saddles addressed that.
I met Emmit Smith in a Dallas bar once.
He was a famous black Cowboy.
One in four?
Skeptical about that number.
Seems high to me as well.
What are the requirements for being “a cowboy”?
One was Sherriff of Rockridge,
What percent of the western cowboys were black though? Popular culture centers on the Old West.
The Sheriff is near!
Quite true.
Whomever wrote this has never known any real life working cowboys, cattlemen, from Oklahoma or Texas.
And, they all get along with each other just fine, usually.
Probably because they’re too busy playing the main roles (and in many cases, all roles) in EVERY movie, TV show, commercial, comedy, PSA, etc. Not enough hours on the clock to be the stars of cowboy culture too.
Racism, I see racism....everywhere...in everything...
-Today’s Left
I’ve read several history books and historical fiction. It appears their were quite a few. If my memory serves me, a number of them went west following the Civil War, particularly those who fought in the war.
Ride a horse work hard for little money.
I am very skeptical when they use the term “experts estimate”. I know that if I were born in that time, I would have been a Cowboy, Ranch hand or Dirt Farmer. It is what people do who love to work, the harder the better. You are judged by your work ethics, strength, stamina and intelligence. Who would be attracted to that? Former slaves, and those who don’t care about ethnicity so much.
Boy I miss being a working stiff. Retirement just is not for some, and I am one of the “some”.
Why don’t African-Americans read more cowboy books? Where is the proof that this isn’t simple commercialization?
Publishers will generally publish what sells. If African-Americans don’t buy, publishers won’t publish.
Be in the Sun for hours, get super dehydrated, then swill whiskey like it’s water?
Study up. Buffalo Soldiers we’re black and good rodeo riders sometimes were black. Hell everyone came west to get free and live. Why wouldn’t black families do it too. Out in the West sometimes color didn’t mean shit. If you could ride the river with them, pull up and have some coffee pard.
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