When I Was a Cowboy Nat Love One of the most famous western black cowboys -- because he wrote his memoirs -- was Nat Love. Born a slave in Tennessee in 1854, Love headed west at the age of 14 to seek adventure. He found it as a cowboy working for large cattle operations in Texas and Arizona. Love drove cattle and horses all over the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains and even down into Mexico. His autobiography recalls many trail drives to Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota that took him through such states as New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Utah. In addition, he mentions many exciting experiences he lived through on the cattle frontier of the late-nineteenth century. He recounts being captured by Indians, surviving storms and Indian attacks, participating in and witnessing gunfights, and meeting many famous western characters like Billy the Kid, Buffalo Bill Cody, Jesse James, and Kit Carson. Written with an air of braggadocio, Loves story is, in places, of questionable veracity. Nevertheless, it is a charming first-hand account of the life of one cowboy that emphasizes the necessity of cooperation and camaraderie in the performance of work on the trails, ranges, and ranches of the cattle kingdom. In 1890 Love, who had married the year before, quit the cowboy business, moved to Colorado, and became a Pullman porter on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. He later worked as a bank guard before his death in 1921 in Los Angeles, California.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 20:17:28 +0000
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