ZEKE Fall 2019

Cowboys
BY ZEB
LARSON
Once the 13th Amendment
permanently ended chattel
slavery in the United States,
many of the freemen put
their skills to work by seeking
employment as cowboys.
Many of them remained with
their former masters out of
convenience, and compared to
freed persons who had worked
growing cotton, they enjoyed
far better circumstances. Their
labor was better compensated,
especially because of the
postwar demand for beef and
the absence of white labor in
places like Texas. In the Journal
of Blacks in Higher Education,
African American cowboys
were estimated to be anywhere
between a quarter and a third
of the men who worked the
famous Chisholm Trail. Part
of the cowboy lifestyle in the
South was born out of necessity:
Southern states actively
prevented freed slaves from
purchasing land, and it was
easier to work as a ranch hand
than it was to try and become
a farmer.
The Wild West
However, black cowboys did
not remain confined to the
South. The South was violent
and repressive, and it only
became more so with the end
of Reconstruction and the
return of white segregationist
governments to power. Many
cowboys headed out West to
escape the suffocating racial
mores of the South. To be sure,
the West was no guaranteed
safe haven for cowboys: plenty
of white settlers had moved
west precisely because they
didn’t want to compete with
African American laborers.
However, cowboys could still
leverage the skills that they
had, and because many parts
of the American West remained
poorly settled, accepting their
labor was a necessity.
Defying the World
The era of the Wild West
produced several noteworthy
African American cowboys,
many of whom filled the role to
the hilt. Nat Love, better known
as Deadwood Dick, was born
in Nashville, Tennessee into
slavery. In 1870, he headed
west and ended up in Dodge
City, where he worked on
cattle drives. He later headed
further out west to Arizona.
Like many cowboys, Dick liked
to tell tall tales of his exploits:
he claimed to have been an
expert gunfighter, participated
in cattle drives and
rodeos, and liked to
brag that he rode his horse into
a saloon to order whiskey for
the both of them.
Regardless of how much of
his life was the result of colorful
embellishment, it’s clear
he embraced the cowboy life
because it offered a degree of
freedom. In his autobiography
The Life and Adventures of Nat
Love, written in 1907, Love
spelled out why he liked being
a cowboy. “Mounted on my
favorite horse, my long horsehide
lariat near my hand, and
my trusty guns in my belt…I felt
I could defy the world.” He was
respected among his fellow
cowboys — black and white —
and his employers trusted him.
Rodeos and Riding
The cowboy era of the Wild
West was in decline after 1890
because much of the West had
either been settled or enclosed
through barbed wire: ranchers
no longer needed cowboys
to take cattle on long drives.
This did not mean the end
of cowboy work for African
Americans, however. Even as
the cowboy tradition declined,
its presence in the popular
imagination grew, partly
because of literature, music
and attractions like rodeos or
Wild West shows. The former
showcased cowboy skills like
riding and lassoing, while
the latter helped to create the
idea of the mythologized West
through staged gunfights and
trick shows.
African American cowboys
also helped to create the idea
of a cowboy in the public
imagination. Deadwood Dick
allegedly got his name from
participating in one such rodeo
in the town of Deadwood,
South Dakota (he also claimed
to be a record-holder for breaking
a horse in nine minutes).
The African American cowboy
Bill Pickett, also known as the
Dusky Demon, was responsible
for helping to invent
another rodeo tradition: steer
riding. Pickett was a cowboy
in Oklahoma who invented a
practice known as “bulldogging”
to wrestle steers to the
ground: he would jump from
a horse, grab the steer by the
horns, and bite it on the lip to
force it to the ground. Pickett
became famous and toured
with the likes of Buffalo Bill
Cody until his death in 1932.
Today, the tradition of
African American cowboys
survives through rodeos and
other public exhibitions. The
Bill Picket Invitational Rodeo is
an all-black touring rodeo that
is now entering its 34th year
of operations. Young cowboys
are drawn to it for a variety
of reasons. A young rider in
Charleston, Mississippi told
me how he got into riding:
he wanted to impress a girl
for prom by showing up on
a horse. For him, riding a
horse offers the same sense of
tranquility it offered Nat Love:
“It was kinda like a peace-ofmind,
it was a runaway place
from me. Just coming out of
high school, trying to figure out
life. It was a different feeling
and I still use it as a runaway
place. It’s just a peace place.
The horse will get your mind
out of whatever’s going on.”
ZEKE FALL 2019/ 25