Content warning: An image included in this post is of a newspaper article that references two suicides and misgenders the subject, but it is not discussed elsewhere in the post. Growing up in an interracial family that loved the genres of Western television and film and Country music eventually became a source of conflict for me. Though I actually liked a lot of the country music and still do, as I got older, I became more and more critical of what I was watching and found that a lot of it wasn’t relatable at all to me as a queer Black person. Many films and series showed a main cast of white, heterosexual men and glorified “Manifest Destiny.” James Baldwin’s remarks in “The American Dream and the American Negro” resonated with me well as a teenager, particularly when he said, “It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.” However, with figures like Lil Nas X coming to prominence a few years ago with his single that mixed the genres of Rap and Country, many discussions were prompted about how he as a gay, Black man was not out of place from the history of the American Cowboy. Of course, I was surprised and skeptical. The most I knew on the topic was in regard to the film Brokeback Mountain, which I believed was just a hypothetical situation made for entertainment and was about two white men. However, it is pop culture that truly only skims the surface of how intersectional the history of the American West truly was, or obscures it entirely. According to Rebecca Scofield, the author of the book Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West, Lil Nas X in particular would have fit in well into the demographics of most cowboys. She attributes the culture to nineteenth century working-class men of color, most either being Indigenous, Creole, Mexican, and either enslaved or free Black men. They were rarely solitary and instead lived with each other intimately both for safety and companionship as they supplied meat for industrialized cities. Due to the remote living situations many found themselves in, sexuality and gender identity were often expressed more openly in the West than they were in the East. For instance, in Queer Cowboys: And Other Erotic Male Friendships in Nineteenth‐Century American Literature, Chris Packard dedicates an entire chapter to “All-Male Interracial Families in the Wilderness.” According to Sabrina Imbler, many people went West to find their fortunes, escape the law, or start a new life, and there is at least one example who did all three in Seattle. Though he was not called the term at the time, Harry Allen is recognized today as a transgender man. He was described as having “refused to wear women’s clothes, and instead dressed as a cowboy, kept his hair trim, and spoke in a baritone.” He was covered often in The Seattle Sunday Times with very sensationalist headlines. Imbler claims that one publication branded him as “’the scum of the West’ for his active career of saloon brawling, bootlegging, bronco busting, and horse stealing.” Though he was well-known, Allen was certainly not the only transgender or gender nonconforming person living in the West. According to Imbler, many lived out their entire lives on the frontier and their “assigned sex was most likely to be discovered upon death or serious illness.” George Washington Bush was another good example of the diversity and collectivism that could be observed in the West. He was a biracial man who established the first American settlement in Washington Territory with his family when it was still disputed between Great Britain and the U.S. Though he ultimately left Missouri with his white wife, Isabella (nee James), and their five sons to escape discrimination, he was a very successful cattle trader while living there. This success is attested to in how he was not only able to buy enough provisions for his family for the Oregon Trail, but also for two other families in the party. Ultimately, upon reaching Oregon, the party made the decision to proceed north to Washington due to Oregon’s legislation excluding Black settlers. His farm, Bush Prairie, provided for his family very well once established and they maintained friendly relationships with the Squaxin Island and Nisqually tribes, British traders, and white American settlers alike, helping many in times of need. Though he did not remain what one would define as solely a cowboy, it is possible that being one in Missouri may have shaped his collectivist and accepting outlook.
Scofield asserts that the reason that many people do not know this history of cowboys is in part due to the Cold War promoting “the idea that a cowboy was and had always been a white, heterosexual [man].” Though this has affected the perceptions of the general public, she also shares the contributions of many groups that have challenged this singular image for decades, including the International Gay Rodeo Association since 1985. For this reason, Scofield claims that Lil Nas X and people like him shouldn’t feel alone because “the history of the cowboy is the history of black, gay cowboys.” Of course, erasure of marginalized people is an incredibly disheartening aspect of studying history, but one great part is doing research to uncover more of what actually happened. This is, of course, just the beginning of my research and I look forward to what the future holds in terms of learning and educating others about the American West. - Bek Sources: Baldwin, James. "The American Dream and the American Negr." 7 Mar. 1965, archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-dream.html?_r=1. Green, Frank L. "Bush, George Washington." 1 Dec. 2006. Oxford African American Studies Center, doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.40545. Imbler, Sabrina. "The Forgotten Trans History of the Wild West." Office for Institutional Equity, Duke University, 21 June 2019, oie.duke.edu/forgotten-trans-history-wild-west. “John Taylor and Dick Charlie.” Denver Library, https://digital.denverlibrary.org/digital/collection/p15330coll22/id/23289. Packard, Chris. Queer Cowboys And Other Erotic Male Friendships in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Palgrave McMillan US, 2016. Scofield, Rebecca. "Lil Nas X is in Good Company: Cowboys Have Always Been Black and Gay." University of Washington Press Blog, University of Washington, 14 Oct. 2019, uwpressblog.com/2019/10/14/lil-nas-x-is-in-good-company-cowboys-have-always-been-black-and-gay/.
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January 2024
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