Cowboy history

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Most cowboys didn't wear cowboy hats. Even tumbleweeds didn't appear in America until the late 19th century.

Classic Westerns have cemented the image of cowboys as white Americans, but the first wave of horse‑riding cow wranglers in North America were Indigenous Mexican men.

Journal of A Gypsy Cowboy, July 2011

Britton (Britt) Johnson was a legendary black cowboy on the West Texas frontier after the summer of 1865. Britton traveled out onto the Llano Estacado in pursuit of Indians who had kidnapped his wife and two small children in the Elm Creek Raid of 1864. Johnson was a slave of Moses Johnson. Although he was a slave he served as a foreman on the ...

Actor Patrick Duffy poses for a portrait wearing a cowboy hat and chaps for a portrait session in circa 1980 in Los Angeles, California.

The Cherokee Kid is the most famous cowboy Indian known today. His real name was Will Rogers, and he was born in 1879 on a cattle ranch in the Cherokee

Cowboys posing for a camera at some town celebration.

Black cowboys in the American West accounted for up to an estimated 25% of cowboys "who went up the trail" from the 1860s to 1880s and substantial but unknown p...