Black cowboys were common in the Old West. Here's a piece of their forgotten history. (2024)

The iconic image of the American cowboy is one of John Wayne riding out into the sunset.

Cowboys as portrayed in Hollywood were almost always gun-slinging heroes, and they almost always hadanother thing in common: They were white.

This is not how the West really was.

Really, the Western frontier in the late 1800s was as diverse as America is today, and maybe even more so.

Some people are familiar with vaqueros, or Mexican cowboys. But fewer know that many cowboys were black.

By the Smithsonian'scount, 1 in 4 cowboys was black.

The forgotten history of the black cowboy is slowly being revealedthrough the work of historians, scholars and nonprofits. But some experts say black cowboy history still is not portrayed accurately, and still not being taught enough.

Some Westerners, like Edward J.B.Keeylocko, a black rancher who created a small Western town southwest of Tucson, have been persistent in telling the untold stories of the contributions of black cowboys in the Old West.

The Arizona Republic took an expansive look at Keeylocko's life in a profile published this past week.

Here issome of what we know about black cowboys and how they contributed to the creation of the American West.

Black cowboys were there from the start

The cowboys who led the first cattle drives of the new frontier were from all different backgrounds.

In the colonial old south, black jockeys, trainers, and grooms handled quarter horses, according to research by Richard Slatta, a history professor at North Carolina State University.

During the Civil War, white Texans who fought in the war entrusted slaves to maintain their land and cattle herds, according to the Smithsonian.

This meant that slavesdeveloped the skills that were "invaluableto the Texas cattle industry in the post-war era," according to the Smithsonian.

After the war, many freed slaves were hired to help round up cattle.

Ranches east of the Trinity River in Texas often had all-black crews, Slatta wrote.

William Katz, a historian and scholar who has written books about black influence in the West,has traced part of black cowboy history to the Spanish colony of Hispaniola in the 1500s.

A Spanish colony at the time, many blacks were enslaved there. But many also escapedand were taken in by American Indian tribes.

After the Civil War, these formerly enslaved groups made up among 5,000 to 8,000 cowhands who migrated to the Western U.S., Katz said.

The meaning of the word cowboy

Keeylocko liked to tell visitors to his Arizona ranch the story of how the word cowboy came about.

Back then, people would never have called a white man or a Spaniard a “boy,” he explained.

Black people were the ones doing the work, he said, and black men were the ones they called "boy."

Katz' researchhas found that there was less discrimination in the pioneer areas of the West. "People had to depend on each other, and skin color didn't matter as much when you had problems to face."

Discrimination was more common in established towns,compared to the wide open plains, where "everyone was just trying to survive," said Gloria Austin, co-founder oftheNational Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

"If you were out somewhere alone, you were just happy to see someone else," Austin said. "What color they were might not be important to you."

Black cowboy history wiped clean in Hollywood

The story of the black cowboy has not been told nearly enough, Austin said, and that goes back to the prejudices and segregation that this country was built upon.

When the first Western movies came about, the U.S. was still segregated. When movies did show blacks, it portrayed them in a stereotypical fashion, Austin said.

That meant not acknowledging their contributionsto the creation of the West.

Hollywood was full of white producers who depicted cowboys as white, Katz said.

“This was the most American part of America, so you showed it as white,” he said. “This was a place we showed our great courage and freedom. None of that reconciled with what slavery meant to people. It didn’t fit into the storyline.”

One famous black cowboy wasBill Pickett, a Texas-born cowboy credited with inventing the practice of bulldogging, or steer wrestling, Slatta wrote.

Others include:

• Nat Love, the famous cowboy otherwise known as Deadwood Dick.
• Bose Ikard, who helped blaze the Goodnight-Loving trail in 1866.
• Charles Sampson,a 1982 world bull-riding champion and a member of the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame.
• Isom Dart, who was knownfor his skills as a horseman, and eventually bought his own horse ranch.
• Fred Whitfield, eight-time champion in tie-down roping.

Keeping the history alive

Across the country, organizations are trying to spread the history of black cowboys.

In Arizona, the Arizona Black Rodeo celebrates the traditions of black Western culture.

The rodeo came to Chandler earlier this month, attracting 9,000 fans.

Austin created theNational Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Texas as a way to educate future generations about multicultural accomplishments and achievements in western culture.

The museum features exhibits on topics such asAmerican Indian history, vaqueros, and Buffalo Soldiers.

Austin said she is hoping that school curriculumcan be changed to include more multicultural Western history.

As a black woman who grew up in Texas, she said, it would have been enlightening to knowall of the ways that diverse cultures contributed to the country's history.

More education, and more support for nonprofits like the museum, will be needed to maintain the history in the future.

"It is American history," she said,"It is not black history, or Native American history. It is the American story."

Reach the reporter at jen.fifield@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter: @JenAFifield.

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