The True American Cowboy

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Athletic, rugged men were needed to settle the West. However, these men also needed inborn courage and quick thinking to utilize these skills effectively. The general public, however, under the influence of decades of "Western" movies and television shows have created an imagery of these "men of the west" or "cowboys" that is extremely inaccurate. American society has come to regard these settlers as the purest and noblest Anglo-Saxons. In reality, a great portion of the work contributed towards the settling of the western frontier was performed by minorities, largely consisting of African Americans.
Kenneth W. Porter has devoted his life to researching the truths about African-Americans in the West. He chronicles his findings in his book, The Negro on the American Frontier. Porter proves that the role of the black man during the settling of the of the land west of the Mississippi River that stretched from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border was crucial not only to the ...

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of the cattle-industry employees, from the usually low wrangler through ordinary hand to top hand and lofty cook. However, it would never be tolerated to give the distinguished honor of ranch or trail boss to a man with colored skin.
Although the Black cowboys seem to have been treated much more fairly than their relatives in other regions of the country, it must be understood that at this point in history the United States was rebounding from a traumatic Civil War. This left a bitter taste in the mouth of many Americans and hostile feelings towards Negroes were still inundating the country. These conflicts could be seen the West. These feelings were simply blurred by the ...

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