This image appeared in cowboy Nat Love's privately published autobiography.
(Corbis)
By Katie Nodjimbadem smithsonian.com
One in four cowboys was black. So why aren’t they more present in popular culture?
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...http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=socialmedia
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