Short Stuff: Black Cowboys

Most people don't realize that around a quarter of the cowboys found in the Old West during the golden age cattle driving were African American. Let's meet some of them, shall we?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey you, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck who knows where Jerry is. But this
is short stuff, so it doesn't matter because we can
handle it ourselves with a little assist by our friend
Dave Kustan. Yeah, I don't think we We don't shout
out Dave enough, not nearly enough. As a matter of fact,
let's just make this episode us talking about how great
Davis right, the original Black Cowboy, that's right, um, but

(00:29):
totally wrong, but it was a it was a decent
attempt at a sea. Yeah, because we all know the
original black Cowboy was Sheriff Bart and Blazing Saddles. Oh yeah, yeah,
I forgot about that movie. That's a that's is that
a good one? I mean it's a classic. It couldn't
be made today, sure, but uh, you know, written by

(00:52):
mel Brooks and the great Richard Pryor and uh I
think there was one other co writer. But yeah, they
played that for comedy in that movie. But as it
turns out, there were a lot of black cowboys in
the United States, and you just don't see a bunch
of movies and TV shows where they're represented, shock, shock,
But they were I mean, there are some statistics that
say or more of al all cowboys, Um, after the

(01:17):
Civil War in the wild West, were these black men
out there like doing cowboy stuff, working hard rope and cattle,
doing all the things that you see in the movies. Yeah,
like that. The idea from what I can tell from
the research is that the popular conception of cowboys and
cowboy life and what cowboys did is fairly accurate. But

(01:38):
the the race of them is what was off that
that the just the fact that black people were not
at all represented among cowboys in the popularization of you know,
cowboy life back east. Um, it's just that's the historical
misunderstanding and that um apparently, even before or the Civil War,

(02:01):
most black cowboys, according to one historian of the American West, um,
most of them, most of the cowboys were black, and
that it was a job that was um open to
enslaved people basically, and that if you were white you
didn't want to be known as a cowboy, that that
job was potentially beneath you or whatever. Even though it

(02:22):
was all all about bronco busting and you know, hurting
cattle and lassoing and stuff like that, all the stuff
we think of with with cowboys today. Um, but that
the that transition between it being from something that me
that was like beneath a white guy out west, to
something that was a coveted title among white guys was

(02:43):
when back East people started to hear about cowboys and
say that's that's cool, what a cool life. And then
all of a sudden, white guys were like, oh, actually
I'm a cowboy, now you can count me in. Yeah.
I mean I think that that named uh, at least
according to this historian, is racist in nature because the
white workers wanted to be called cow punches or cow hands,

(03:04):
and the black men were called cowboys. And like you said,
once they once lor hit back East, they jumped on
that cowboy train because I guess that word took and
it sounded cool. Yeah. The thing is, I went and
tried to corroborate that elsewhere, because it makes sense if
you take it from that standpoint that oh is that
actually cowboy actually has um like a denigrading origin. But

(03:29):
I did not see that anywhere else, and I couldn't
find the difference between a cow hand and a cowboy.
They are completely interchangeable from what I can tell, definition wise,
but I don't know, maybe that just that etymology got
lost to history. You know. Well, Larry Kelly's runs the
Black Cowboy Museum in Texas and Rosenberg and uh, we

(03:50):
want to credit him with saying that since he's he's
where we got it. Yeah, here, Larry, here's the limb.
Let's go out on it. So the idea of UM
cowboys UM and cowboys in general really kind of came
out of this migration of UM Southerners, especially uh Southern whites,
moving out west to Texas for the chance for cheap land,

(04:15):
wide open spaces, the promise of a new chance for
a fortune because the South had had really become industrialized
as far as a grarianism is concerned, and Texas had
a lot of opportunity, especially if you were willing to
push UM Spanish settlers and indigenous people from Mexico off
of their land. You could really make make a name

(04:36):
for yourself in Texas. And a lot of those UM
white settlers brought enslaved people with them, UM, and they
were the earliest black cowboys out there. Yeah, because what
happened was, you know, you're in Texas, you get roped
into the Confederacy and then these uh white people who
moved out west go back east to fight in the

(04:58):
Civil War. They left the people that they enslaved behind
to you know, keep the ranch going basically, and those
that was sort of the beginning of the black cowboy movement,
it really was. What's interesting is that it was triggered
by the Civil War, that that the Civil War created
that kind of um niche and require and need sorry

(05:18):
that need for um cowboys of all stripes, but that
they that typically fell to African Americans, um, who who
were doing this work while the whites were off fighting
the war. And then um, when the war was over,
when the the white Confederates came back to Texas, they're like, hey,

(05:41):
I don't know if you heard or not, but we're
free now. So you have to pay us for this work.
And because a lot of herds had been broken up
and lost, there was a lot of work to be
done getting these herds back in order and getting Texas
back up and running, um economy wise, especially with cattle herding. Yeah,
so maybe let's take a break and we'll talk about
some of the more famous of these black cowboys right

(06:02):
after this. All right, So, if you look at the

(06:29):
history books and TV shows and movies. You hear a
lot about while Bill Hillcock and Annie Oakley and all
these sort of legendary wild West figures, Uh, you don't
hear as much about the black cowboys who were also
legendary figures, just in the same way like they would.
You know, some of them were bad guys who would
shoot up a saloon and have a gunfight in the

(06:50):
middle of the street at high noon. Uh. Many of them,
obviously were just regular cowboys who did hard work day
and night, wrestling cattle. Some of them also chuck or
even lawman too. There was a guy named um Bass
Reeves who was the first African American Marshal Us Marshall
west of the Mississippi. And he had a thirty two

(07:13):
year career and apparently was so um morally unimpeachable that
some people insist he was them the model for the
Lone Ranger. I know, and that crazy it is. And
I have to tell you I grew up on the
Lone Ranger of the two or three movie. Like the movie, okay, yeah, yeah,
it informed my childhood. I also watched the TV show Tune.

(07:35):
I had like a place that and everything, But I
was a big time into The Lone Ranger. I watched
that movie within the last couple of months. It is
one of the most boring movies I've ever seen in
my life. I was like, my parents must have been like,
what is wrong with this kid? This movie is just
like watching paint dry. There's like five parts that are

(07:57):
that are interesting and the rest is like just slowly
stringing together those parts. It's really weird. And the chemistry
is like baking soda and more baking soda. Like nobody
has any chemistry, and like it means that there's nothing happening,
there's no reaction. I'll tell you what I love though

(08:17):
about that movie is that that color blue of his
uh outfit. It's the star of the movie. Basically the
color of his hat too, because it was white, but
it wasn't stark white. It was sort of this creamy white. Yeah,
he had a tinge of badness to him, maybe when needing,
but I guess not. Another famous black coup away from

(08:38):
back in the day was a man named Bow's I
card Um. He is in the on the Hall of
Fame at the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum and Hall
of Fame. God bless the people who founded that, I know.
And he was the right hand man to one Colonel
Charles Goodnight. He was a big, super successful cattleman in Texas. Apparently,

(09:00):
if you've ever read or seen Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry's
um sort of classic Western, the character of Joshua Deats
was based on him. Played by it none other than
Danny Glover, who was not too old for that? Dess
who is what? He was not too old for? That?
S getting too old for this? S oh man, that

(09:22):
was a great joke. I'm sorry I had to repeat it.
That's sight so um. There's another one named Bill Pickett
who was a very famous rodeo guy. He he was
one of the first African American rodeo uh man, I
guess um. And he invented the the sport of steer wrestling,
which is where you ride up alongside a steer and

(09:43):
grab him by the horns and drag him to the ground.
It's really awful, especially when you when you understand what
he came up with. It just called bulldogging, where it
was a technique that he would overwhelm the steer with
pain by biting its lip and he was inspired by
watching dogs heard cattle, so he tried it himself. He's like,
this really works. But he was a genuine trailblazer in

(10:07):
the rodeo world. And uh despite the fact that he
was barred from competing in a lot of rodeos, even
though he was among the best that um, the rodeos
were segregated for a very long time, and if you
were an African American rodeo cowboy, you had to compete
either late at night or early in the morning before
the actual rodeo started, or else you might have your

(10:28):
own rodeo altogether. I mentioned outlaws. There was a man
named uh isom or dart Uh. He was an enslaved
person who who went the other way, and he was
a horse thief. Like so many other horse thieves. He
would steal horses and cattle in Mexico, drive him across
that big old rio Grand River, sell him off in Texas,

(10:49):
and like so many outlaws he was he was shot
down by a hired gun in this case Tom Horn
And I'm thinking of movies. I think there have been
a couple of movies where they did represent these black cowboys,
but it always seemed like these movies were sort of
a not a trick, but just kind of like a
like stunt casting, like, oh, we're gonna make a movie

(11:10):
with black cowboys, how different? Instead of wealth, This is
just a movie like any other Western, because this is
how it was exactly. And I'm sure that they were
all just left out of the history books because of
some oversight. But I'm glad we're here correcting it today.
We're trying our best. There's also we would be very
terribly remiss if we didn't mention the most famous black

(11:30):
cowboy of all time, one Nate Love, also known as Deadwood.
Dick's not no, it's not I. I specifically saw in
a couple of places, and when I realified it, yeah,
his name was. He was born Nathaniel um and I
guess they just didn't feel like adding the e, which
is significant because he was taught to read and write.
Despite being born enslaved, his father taught him to read

(11:53):
and write, so he was educated enough that he actually
wrote his own autobiography in nineteen seven, teen oh seven.
I should have just kept at his nineteen seven. That
sounded kind of old timing, but Chuck, I think you
need to read everybody the title, and note that there
is not a single colon found in it. Yeah, it's
Life and Adventures of Nat Love, and it's spelled in

(12:16):
a t in his the autobiography title where it's Nate. Well,
I'm looking at the book cover. I know I'm telling
you it's pronounced Nate Okay, but there is no he.
I just want to point out to people Life and
Adventures of Blank Love, better known in the cattle country
as Deadwood Dick by himself colon A true history of

(12:37):
slavery days, life on the Great Cattle Ranges and on
the planes of the wild and Wooly West, based on
facts and personal experiences by the author. There is a colon.
I thought that was a semi colon. There's always a colon,
isn't there, And it seems to be. But he was,
like you were describing, like he would get and shootouts,
and he was kind of known as an abandon er

(12:57):
and outlaw in some circles. But from what I can tell,
he was just a legitimate, bona fide cowboy and he
led a cowboy life like any other cowboy would. Fantastic,
It really is fantastic, very very big self promoter like
so many of those cowboys back then. Yeah, for sure,
they say that they're not entirely certain where in fact.
Uh it departs from fiction in in his autobiography. But

(13:20):
it's apparently a heck of a read, So go check
it out. Um and I guess I said check it out,
which means that that short stuff is out. Huh, it's out.
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(13:41):
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