Cowboys of Color: The West's Hidden Half

A large share of the cowboys on the post-Civil War cattle drives were Black, Mexican, or Native American. The National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Fort Worth exists to tell those stories. Originally founded as the National Cowboys of Color Museum and Hall of Fame in two thousand one, it honors the vaqueros who invented ranching techniques adopted by Anglo cowboys, the Buffalo Soldiers who patrolled the frontier, and the Black rodeo champions like Bill Pickett who invented the bulldogging event now standard in every rodeo.

Pickett rode for the famous one hundred one Ranch Wild West Show. The museum reclaims the West as a multiracial story, one that the Hollywood western spent a century carefully editing out.