Cowboys were pretty diverse and idk how much the occupation itself was behind the expulsion of Native Americans. The white cowboy fighting Indians probably came out of a revisionist mythology of the old west and golden age of Hollywood.
Book recommendation is The Great Cowboy Strike: Bullets, Ballots & Class Conflicts in the American West by Mark A. Lause. Goes over how cowboys were often exploited and lower classes, and successfully organized strikes.
Also check out Black Cowboys of the Old West: True, Sensational, and Little-Known Stories from History by Tricia Martineau Wagner
The cowboys were quite diverse in reality. The mythological white cowboy defending his family from native savages came from German artists and revisionist Hollywood. That aside, why is the model wearing face paint in a style from Amazon rain forest tribes instead one of the body paint styles from a North American tribe?
Couldn't tell you but I could tell you that he can absolutely get it
Cowboys were just shepherds/farmhands. The idea that all of them were also secret bounty hunters/gunslingers is insane lol.
The idea that there weren't financial incentives ranging from literal bounties on Indian heads/scalps to "free" land for killing Native Americans and that cowboys were above taking avantage of these incentives is insane lol.
Fair actually. They weren't blameless, it just wasn't "cowboys vs Indians" like Hollywood would have you believe. It was the US Army doing genocide with financial incentives for settlers to assist. The "man with no name" gunslinger cowboy is a totally fictitious trope.
Cowboys as we know them today from movies are essentially fabricated. Originally they were just herding cows and whatever. I think it was Citations Needed that did an ep on it? Cool shirt tho haha
Nothing ever changes. The reason the US eats beef and almost no lamb is because white racism
The sheepherders were always considered the weaker, or lesser, of the antagonists. They were often advocates of free grazing on public land, while the cattlemen typically fenced off the territory whether it was public or private land.
Racism was also a factor, being that many of the shepherds were either Hispanic or Native American.
many cattlemen had close relationships with local government figures and they were able to use this influence to their advantage. According to one unnamed Texas historian, "In court action, the cowboy [cattleman] usually won."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_Wars
Same story for disco music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night
Unironically want a shirt like this that says “All My Heroes Were Killed by the State”
Most cowboys were fine. That's just history that's been colonized by Hollywood pedos.
