"We Made the West": How African American Cowboys and Buffalo Soldiers Interacted with the Landscape During Western Expansion

Cowboys and military regiments are understood as having been key symbols and occupations of the latter half of Western Expansion in the United States. Both occupations have steadily started to become recognized as having been performed by a diverse range of peoples, including African Americans. Black Cowboys were most commonly wranglers on cattle drives; the black military regiments that patrolled the remote western landscape and the first national parks became to be known as Buffalo Soldiers. African Americans in these roles engaged with the environment through the land and animals they worked on and saw the western landscape as both a place full of danger and opportunity.