An estimated one in four cowboys on the legendary cattle drives of the 1860s–1880s was Black. The Chisholm Trail, stretching from South Texas to Abilene, Kansas, was walked by thousands of self-liberated and formerly enslaved Black men who became skilled vaqueros and cowboys. Figures like Bose Ikard, Daniel Webster Wallace ('80 John'), and Bill Pickett — inventor of bulldogging — represent a vast, systematically erased Black presence in the American West.