Indian Cowboys and Cowboy Indians

Passage One

[By the 1960s] cattle ranching had become ensconced in many western American Indian communities. On nearly all northern plains reservations and in many of the southwestern reservations, it ranked as a major pastime. [Many reservations] included cattle ranching as a major element of their economy. . . .

Grazing lands remained by far the most significant type of land on Indian reservations. Effective use of this resource continued to be a central question for future Native development. In both 1950 and 1966, for example, income from grazing lands provided the biggest single source of income for Indian communities. . . .

[One historian] witnessed the emergence of ''a new Navajo idealâ—the cowboyâ—and," he added, ''the cowboy serves as a platform from which new and non-traditional aspirations can be formed. [The young Navajo man] views himself as basically a cowboy who can rope, ride and participate in rodeo, a man who knows something of cattle and cattle lore, who dreams of owning cattle and becoming a rancher or cattleman.''

When we move beyond cowboy versus Indian, we see that cowboys are Indians, that Indians are cowboys. . . .

^{Source: Iverson, Peter. When Indians became Cowboys. University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. 167, 185, 216}

Passage Two

Indian cowboys and ranchers in the modern era face many of the same challenges and problems that their parents and grandparents encountered when cattle were first introduced onto northern Plains reservations. Indian cattle –raising ventures continue to be modest family-run operations. . . . Herds are generally small in size. . . . Many of these small ranchers, consequently, had to find additional employment to make a living. . . .

Financial restraints also help account for the fact that most modern Indian stock-raisers on the northern Plains attempt to graze their herds on pastures year-round. . . . The result of inadequate feeding practices have been disastrous to Indian cattle ranchers. . . . Indian ranchers who run cattle on pasture grasses year-round, consequently, often suffer lower cow-calf yields and higher cattle mortality rates.

An even greater obstacle to Indian cattle ranching (and hay-raising for that matter) remains the issue of leasing. Non-Indian lesees, carrying on a tradition dating back to the 1891 leasing act, continue to run cattle on the majority of reservation lands on the northern Plains. On the Pine Ridge reservation, for example, nearly two-thirds of the reservation in 1963 was devoted to ranching, but only one-third was controlled by Indian ranchers. . . .

Thus, cattle ranching on the northern Plains continues to exert tremendous influence and pressure on native peoples. . . .

^{Source: Britten, Thomas. ''Indian Cowboys of the Northern Plains.'' In The Cowboy Way. Ed. Paul Carlson. Texas Tech University Press, 2000. 55-59.}