Offers twenty-four essays about African American men and women who worked in the Texas cattle industry from the slave days of the mid-19th century through the early 20th century.

“I am Shanghai Pierce, Webster in Cattle, by God, Sir.” And, in truth, he was. Part rascal, part gentleman, part poseur, part just himself—of all the colorful Texas figures following the Civil War none was as loud, garish, and funny as Shanghai Pierce, who left Rhode Island penniless and became one of the Big Pasture Men of southern Texas. At six foot, four, Shanghai Pierce was big, rich, and selfish, but he could also be kind. His cunning was seldom matched, and business, whether it involved a quarter-million-dollar loan or a twenty-five cent pair of socks, was his lifeblood. In recreating the life of Abel Head (“Shanghai”) Pierce, Chris Emmett unfolds the entire dramatic spectacle of the time and place in which Pierce lived. An arresting figure, Pierce was a symbol of his era. His statue, which he himself erected in Hawley, Texas, is still a perfect memorial to, and a reminder of, westward-moving America. Shanghai Pierce was a man who pulled up his roots and fled to the West, where he found there was ample room and opportunity. First published in 1953, Shanghai Pierce: A Fair Likeness won the 1953 Summerfield G. Roberts award of the Texas Institute of Letters for the best book on the Republic of Texas.

Charlie Siringo (1855–1928) lived the quintessential life of adventure on the American frontier as a cowboy, Pinkerton detective, writer, and later as a consultant for early western films. Siringo was one of the most attractive, bold, and original characters to live and flourish in the final decades of the Wild West. His love of the cattle business and of cowboy life was so great that in 1885 he published A Texas Cowboy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony—Taken From Real Life, which Will Rogers dubbed the “Cowboy’s Bible.” Howard R. Lamar’s biography deftly shares Siringo’s story within seventy-five pivotal years of western history. Siringo was not a mere observer but a participant in major historical events including the Coeur d’Alene mining strikes of the 1890s and Big Bill Haywood’s trial in 1907. Lamar focuses on Siringo’s youthful struggles to employ his abundant athleticism and ambitions and how Siringo’s varied experiences helped develop the compelling national myth of the cowboy.

Records the reminiscences of the old-time cow people of Texas and the bygone days of the open range.

Includes biographical information on 4,500 individuals associated with the frontier

Dust and Determination After the Civil War, emancipated slaves who didn't want to pick cotton or operate an elevator headed west to find work and a new life. Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving drove two thousand longhorns across southern Texas blazing a trail to Bosque Redondo in New Mexico. In 1866, the new Goodnight-Loving Trail was crowded with cattle headed for a government market. By the 1870s, twenty-five percent of the over thirty-five thousand cowboys in the West were black. They were part of trail crews that drove more than twenty-seven million cattle on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, Western Trail, Chisholm Trail and Shawnee Trail. They were paid equally, and their skill and ability brought them earned respect and prestige. Author Nancy Williams recounts their lasting legacy.