452
Over the next three years, Love served with outfits
that drove cattle to grazing ranges and markets through-
out the West (see the map on p. 451). Every spring and fall
the ranchers staged a great roundup, driving in all the cat-
tle to a central place, separating them by the brands, and
culling steers for shipment to market. Love specialized as a
brand reader. He “cut out” those belonging to his employer
and drove them back to that herd.
Disputes over horse and cattle ownership often led to
gunfights. On Christmas Day, 1872, an argument over a
horse in Holbrook, Arizona resulted in the deaths of several
of Love’s friends. In 1876, while Love was driving 500 steers
from the Rio Grande to a ranch in the Shoshone mountains
of Wyoming, Indians attacked and stampeded the cattle.
The battle raged through the night. By morning, several
score Indians were dead, most of them trampled by cattle.
Several nights later, a buffalo stampede tore through the
camp, scattering cattle and killing another cowboy. Another
time, Love broke up a robbery of a Union Pacific railroad
station. After he won a roping and riding competition in
Deadwood, South Dakota,“Red River Dick” became known
as “Deadwood Dick.” Shortly afterward, while hunting
strays, he was shot by Indians and captured. When he recov-
ered, the chief offered him his daughter in marriage along
with 100 ponies. Dick pretended to go along with the mar-
riage, but then stole a horse and escaped.
By the late 1880s, however, the heyday of the cowboy
had ended. Now railroads hauled cattle from the grazing
ranges to slaughterhouses in Kansas City, Omaha, Chicago,
and St. Louis. In 1889, Dick went to Denver and got married.
The following year he found a job as a porter on the Pullman
Railroad cars. He died in 1921.
This account of the life of Nat Love is based largely on his
1907 autobiography. In that book, Love claimed that he was
the inspiration for the popular “Deadwood Dick” dime novels
by Edward L. Wheeler, first published in the 1870s. Love also
insisted that he had been shot fourteen times, could drink
enormous volumes of whiskey without impairment, and had
befriended “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Kit Carson, and Jesse James. His
most surprising claim was to have never been a victim of
racial prejudice. Perhaps that was because about a third of all
cowboys were African Americans or Mexican vaqueros.Many
of the rest were white Texans, Civil War veterans, former min-
ers, and, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt,“wild spirits from
every land.” Love’s life, like so much about the frontier West,
was the stuff of legend. (Nat Love’s autobiography is available
online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/natlove/natlove.html)N
at Love, a slave, was born on a plantation in Davidson
County, Tennessee sometime in 1854. Nat’s father was a
foreman on the plantation; his mother milked cows, cooked,
and operated a loom. Although Love described his master as
“kind and indulgent,” his earliest memories were of begging
for scraps “like a pet dog” from his master’s table.
After the Civil War, Love’s father rented twenty acres
from his former master. Nat spent Sundays at a horse farm,
where he learned how to ride. Soon he was earning ten cents
for every colt he “broke.”
When Nat’s father died, the family’s circumstances
became dire. When they weren’t working in the cornfield or
garden, they collected nuts and berries. He and his siblings
went shoeless and their clothes were in tatters. Nat longed to
escape from it all and see the world. His opportunity came
when he won a horse in a raffle. He sold the horse and
bought clothing and food for his family. In February 1869, he
set out for the frontier. He was fifteen years old.
Months later, he arrived in Dodge City, Kansas,“a typical
frontier city, with a great many saloons, dance halls, and gam-
bling houses, and very little of anything else.” At a camp outside
of town, he asked a group of cowboys for a
job. Eager to have some fun with the
black “tenderfoot,” they agreed if he
could prove he could ride; then they
put him on the wildest horse in camp.
Love clung to the bucking bronco,
much to everyone’s astonishment. The
boss hired him at $30 a month. He
also gave Nat a saddle, a Colt 45 pis-
tol and a new name—“Love” being
unsuitable for a cowboy. Nat was
now “Red River Dick.”
Three days after the
cowboys left Dodge, they
were attacked by scores of
mounted Indians.“When I saw
them coming after us and heard
their blood curdling yell, I was
too badly scared to run,” Love
recalled. Before the Indians were
driven away by gunfire, they
had killed one cowboy and
made off with most of the
horses and provisions. The
cowboy was buried in a
blanket beneath a pile of
stones. Love and the
others walked to Texas.
AMERICAN LIVES
Nat Love
Questions for Discussion
■Which factors perhaps promoted racial equality among
ranch hands?
■Which elements of Love’s story ring true and which
seem improbable?Nat Love, posed here with the requisite implements, claimed to have
been the “Deadwood Dick” on whom a series of novels was based.
Source:Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as
“Deadwood Dick,” by Himself; a True History of Slavery Days, Life on the Great Cattle
Ranges and on the Plains of the “Wild and Woolly” West, Los Angeles 1907.