Feet in two worlds: The American Indian, cowboy hybridPosted in Anthropology, Articles, History, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, United States on 2015-12-27 23:18Z by Steven |
Feet in two worlds: The American Indian, cowboy hybrid
NonDoc
2015-12-26
The Native American is historically pedigreed. Its bloodlines bound through hundreds of years and generations, and lopes straight as I-40. Not so with the American Cowboy. Here, history zigzags, revealing how Spaniards and Native Americans formed the early American Cowboy: the Mestizos, the Criollos, the vaqueros. Russell Freedman says, “It is the cowboy whose fabled reputation we remember, while the vaquero has all but disappeared from history.”
The romantic icon we know today appears relatively new on the scene of humanity. What isn’t new to us is the historic conflicts, and Hollywood cinema, that deeply divided the American West into a split personality: Cowboys vs. Indians.
With respect to the fundamental fact that one set of cultures is rooted in bloodlines and the other in a lifestyle, the two identities share a vital commonality in the American West: the hybrid culture, the amalgamation of Indian and cowboy. We’re horses of a different color with feet in both worlds…
Read the entire article here.