Cowboy vs. Cowflop | Iconic America

Learn about the Black and Navajo rodeo athletes, and hear from historians who document the emergence of the American cowboy as an imprint of the Mexican vaquero. This clip from Iconic America examines a largely Black, Latino and Indigenous workforce that would be utterly transformed in dime novels, movies and TV, and traces the story of Annie Oakley and the many unsung women who homesteaded and rode the Chisholm trail.

Students compare and contrast popular images of the American Cowboy with actual history, and document how iconic images have represented (and misrepresented) who cowboys are and were.