American Cowboys

One of the four topics in our modern-day exhibit, Picturing the American West, highlights artistic endeavors that depict the long-status narratives of Cowboys vs. American Indians. But as students have shown, the conflicts among "cowboys and Indians" are extra fable than reality, and had been frequently the made of creativeness from dime shop novels and popular "Westerns" of movie and television.
Many who joined the livestock drives of the past due nineteenth century had been of African, Mexican, and Indigenous descent. In fact, cowboy tradition can hint its roots to many special cultures from everywhere in the world. Michael Grauer - the McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture and Curator of Cowboy Collections & Western Art on the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum - currently explored the starting place memories of western horse cultures with Sid Richardson Museum audiences. In his presentation, Grauer confirmed how the evolution of the American cowboy is a coalescence of traditions, garb styles, and technology from round the arena.