All The Black Cowboys?

[WaddWatsonEllis]

Two of my favorite quotes:

"History is a pack of lies we play on the dead" was said by Voltaire

"History is a set of lies historians agree upon " Napoleon

Sorry if they seem a bit .... jaded ... but there it is ...*S*

[Tuolumne Lawman]

Another good quote:

"History is written by the winners.." unk. author

[Trailrider]

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend!" 

We do know there were four regiments of black soldiers! The 9th  & 10th Cavalry and 24th & 25th Infantry. No brag...just fact! The former are known as the "Buffalo Soldiers", and they were sharp troops.

[WaddWatsonEllis]

TrailRider,

Two of my favorite movies have relevance here ....

First, black soldiers were placed in any forts that had a high mortality rate .... hence, John Wayne would have been leading 'Buffalo Soldiers' in 'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon'... and it is kind of sad that they were so 'white-washed' (pun intended) in the movie ....

My second most favorite western, 'The Wonderful Country', is the exact opposite. Part of the film centers around a black U.S. Cavalry unit stationed on the border of the U.S. ... and to baseball fans, the top black soldier is Satchel Paige (who retired from baseball and did a few pictures ...).




http://www.julielondon.org/J/The_Wonderful_Country.html

[Justician]

I know that was my problem for some reason I was thinking he was a Texas Ranger but turned out he was a US Marshal as I posted named Bass Reeves. However with that aside it seems there was a pretty good percentage of cowboys that where of African decent. I do know that the Seminole indians also had a lot of African ex-slaves come to Florida with them when they fled the Texas area.

Actually it was the other way around. Many "Black Seminoles" were removed to Oklahoma from Florida during the Second Seminole War.  General Jessup (known for capturing Seminole leaders during white flag peace conferences) lied to them about being freedmen in Oklahoma and many fled to Mexico to escape possible enslavement. A lot of them served in the Mexican Army. In the 1870's the Army invited them to return to the US where a number became "Seminole Scouts" in the Texas-Indian wars. From what I have read, they rendered excellent service both in Mexico and in Texas.

[Thomas (Tom) Horn aka James Hicks]

One of the posts reads..."When the legend becomes fact, print the legend!"... In the "early" 1900s there was one known black cowboy in the Brown's Hole area of Wyoming. The black cowboy's name was Isam Dart. Dart was born in Texas in 1855 and his parents were slaves. Isam Dart on 26 September 1900 was named in a written complaint stating that Dart was a horse thief, the complaint was signed by Tom Horn.  On the morning of 4 October 1900, Dart died of a single gunshot wound as he and others filed out of a cabin toward a corral. The others barricaded themselves in the cabin until nightfall. The next day two 30-30 caliber shell casings were found at the base of a tree that had hidden the assassin.  Tom Horn packed a 30-30 Winchester. ¹
I have not done the research on "black cowboys" so I do not know how many there were in Wyoming during the late 1800s and early 1900. But from what research I have done in researching my "Alias" there were few to none in the area that witnessed the Johnson County War. Isam Dart was the only one I have read about, and he did not last very long after arriving there.

Footnote ¹ : Found in book Blood on the Moon by Chip Carlson pa. 120-121