Written and researched by Tobe Sweeney Jr., founder and creative director of DTOA Designs.
The Hollywood Western erased them, but historians estimate that as many as one in four cowboys who worked the great cattle drives was Black. The American Legends collection puts three of the greatest back in the saddle where they belong.
Bass Reeves — The Lawman Legends Are Made Of
Born into slavery, Bass Reeves escaped to Indian Territory during the Civil War and mastered frontier riding, tracking, and survival. Appointed a Deputy U.S. Marshal in 1875, he served for over three decades across some of the most dangerous territory in America — arresting thousands of fugitives, reportedly never wounded in the line of duty, and becoming one of the most effective lawmen of the Old West. Many believe his career helped inspire the Lone Ranger legend.
Nat Love — Born Into Slavery, Died a Legend
Born into slavery in Tennessee in 1854, Nat Love went west as a teenager and became one of the best-known Black cowboys of the era. His 1907 autobiography — full of cattle drives, rodeo victories, and frontier adventure — preserved a first-person record of Black life in the West that survives to this day.
Henrietta "Aunt Rittie" Williams Foster — Legendary Texas Cowhand
On the Texas coast, Henrietta Williams Foster rode, roped, and worked cattle alongside the men of the coastal ranches — remembered in local history as a fearless cowhand and a respected midwife who delivered generations of children. Women like Aunt Rittie built the West as surely as any trail boss.
Ride With Them
All three appear in the American Legends 2027 Black History Desktop Calendar, and Bass Reeves rides across our Old West & Cowboys custom designs — printable on a T-shirt or hoodie, canvas or poster. Introduce a young person to a cowboy history the movies left out.
Our history. Our heroes. Our legacy.
Sources and Further Reading
The historical details above are drawn from the following institutional and scholarly sources. Teachers, students, and researchers are encouraged to explore them directly.
- National Park Service, Fort Smith National Historic Site — Bass Reeves
- Library of Congress — African American Cowboys on the Western Frontier (includes the scholarly basis for the one-in-four estimate)
- Smithsonian magazine — The Lesser-Known History of African-American Cowboys
- Smithsonian National Museum of American History — Love on the Range: The Story of a Cowboy (Nat Love and his 1907 autobiography)
- Sara R. Massey, ed., Black Cowboys of Texas (Texas A&M University Press) — including Louise S. O'Connor's chapter "Henrietta Williams Foster, 'Aunt Rittie': A Cowgirl of the Texas Coastal Bend"