ZEKE Fall 2019

Black
The American West
has been endlessly mythologized,
and of its many myths, one of
the most enduring is the idea of
the West as a space for white
Euroamericans. Indigenous peoples,
Mexican Americans, and
Asians all existed in the West, but
in popular memory and culture
their presence is either missing
or heavily circumscribed. Like the
West, “cowboy” has taken on
an image all its own: it evokes
a white man on horseback, probably
between 1870 and 1890. Of
those missing groups, however, one
is especially conspicuous: the African
American cowboy. In a February
2017 issue of Smithsonian Magazine,
journalist Katie Nomjimbadem
estimated that as many as one in four
cowboys was black.
Enslaved Cowboys
Before the United States had declared
its independence from Great Britain,
enslaved persons were working as
cowhands and ranchers in parts of
the Carolinas. Even before emancipation
and the end of the Civil
War, enslaved persons worked as
cowboys in parts of the American
South. Once Texas was added to
the union, enslaved persons working
as cowboys became normal there.
Historian Peter Wood notes that some
plantation owners went so far as to
request new slaves from the Gambia
River region in Africa because they
were accustomed to working with
cattle. Enslaved cowboys were often
treated better than people working
cotton in part because their skillset
was more specialized and they were
not easily replaced. They had access
to better food, though they remained
in bondage and were traded much
like the livestock they saw after.
24 / ZEKE FALL 2019