Cowboys Were More Diverse Than in the Movies. The image of the gunslinging, freewheeling cowboy — strictly, a man on horseback that drives cattle to and from pasture — is burned into the American cultural experience, but it’s missing a few historic truths. For example: As many as one out of four cowboys in the Wild West were Black. When wealthy American enslavers moved to Texas (first part of Spain, then Mexico) in the early 1800s to start cattle ranches, they brought enslaved people with them in droves. Even in 1825, when Texas was still part of anti-slavery Mexico, enslaved folks made up around 25% of the settler population. These ranch owners, many of whom eventually fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, relied on slave labor to keep their cattle contained. After the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 made slavery illegal (Texas had joined the U.S. in 1845), these ranchers started having a lot of trouble with runaway cattle. Recently freed Black Americans who had been enslaved on cattle ranches were highly skilled in wrangling, and suddenly, paid cowboys were in extremely high demand — so many of them took up the cowboy trade. While they faced high levels of discrimination at the ranches, in towns, and on the plains alike, they forged tight bonds with their white and Mexican colleagues in cowboy crews.

Whiskey in the Old West Was Not Very Good High-end whiskey brands often use Old West imagery to sell their products, but if they were really selling what the cowboys drank, you’d definitely want to save your money. Absent copyright laws and regulation, the quality of “whiskey” varied wildly from saloon to saloon. Something labeled as an aged, straight Kentucky bourbon could actually just be neutral grain alcohol, often distilled from low-grade molasses, re-distilled with a variety of additives that could include burnt sugar, glycerine, prune juice, iodine, tobacco, or even sulfuric acid. Of course, good whiskey existed — but the Wild West is not known for being particularly refined. In the late 19th century, whiskey producers that did not want their name slapped on bottles of boozy tobacco juice made some attempts to self-regulate, and separating real bourbon from the fake stuff led to the “bottled in bond” label that manufacturers still use today. More labeling laws came with the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act

One “Gentleman Outlaw” Left Poetry After Robberies In his ordinary life, Charles Boles was a well-dressed businessman, sporting a silky white mustache and living in luxury. But he didn’t earn his fortune in the mining business, as he claimed to his San Francisco social circles. In reality, he was robbing stagecoaches, which he took up in middle age. He may have ripped his moniker, Black Bart, from the pages of a thriller about, appropriately, a stagecoach robber, focusing exclusively on Wells Fargo routes — and covering up his well-groomed visage with flour sacks. Keeping with the literary theme, he wrote poetry to leave behind at the scene, although he did so in only two of at least 28 suspected robberies. “I’ve labored long and hard for bread/For honor and for riches,” reads his best-known one, “But on my corns too long you’ve tred/You fine haired Sons of B****s.” His gentlemanly life would ultimately be his undoing. During his last robbery in 1883, he was injured and attempted to flee the scene. In the process, he dropped a handkerchief marked with the number he was supposed to use to pick up his laundry, which Pinkerton detectives used to trace him. Ultimately, he was convicted of just one robbery, and served four years in San Quentin before slipping into obscurity.

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