I'm writing a lighthearted story about lady cowboys which will include queer and PoC rep. However, I know the concept of the Western frontier is colonialist because it was originally indigenous land, and I plan on having one or two Native characters (likely Cherokee). How do I address this as a white writer, without speaking over/for Native people and without detracting from the lightheartedness of the story? Would it be better not to address it at all, or would that be irresponsible?
Addressing Native Issues in Cowboy Story
Cherokee is probably the wrong tribe to pull depending on the time period. In the 18th century is when they switched from being a mostly Eastern tribe to a plains one, and the area is filled with a much different mix of tribes. You could be dealing with everything from Plains to Southwest, which is hundreds of potential peoples.
People pull from Cherokee because it’s popular in Hollywood, and because they’re the largest name, and I get a little sick of everyone pulling from Cherokee when there are so many other tribes to pull from. Especially for highly regional pieces in regions they didn’t always live in.
Cowboy history is interesting. It’s an intermingling of Mexican, Black, and Indigenous culture, and the reason it’s cowboys was infantization of the PoC involved.
I noticed you didn’t ask about the cowladies, which I take it to mean you planned on them being white—this is part of the colonialist narrative that is, at its core, at least partially ahistorical; you’re more likely to have Mexican, Indigenous, or Black cowladies than you are to have white. So changing the ethnicity of your leads will help add a different twist, from “colonizer exploiting” to “marginalized person trying to survive.”
I’d say it’d be irresponsible to not address Native issues if this story is meant to be grounded in history. Elaney has a guide on cowboys that you can start with. There are also sources such as this (which is unfortunate in its use of “Indians”, but this is an edu), this piece on African American cowboys, and another piece on Native cowboys for you to just get a basis on what the population was actually like.
Ranching provided some wealth. It provided a lot of land displacement. It provided hunting/raiding targets that helped offset the land displacement and created a lot of wars and feuds. If you want to keep it more lighthearted, I’d love to see the skills Natives had with the profession respected.
But, all of this advice is dependent on what time period within cowboy history you’re pulling from. Is it the 1500s, where it’s basically exclusively Hispanic and fairly contained to Mexico (where Texas now is) and the main conflict is Apache versus Mexican? Or is it in the late end of the period when the government is involved and outlaws and the typical Hollywood cowboy, but more Natives have started ranching for economic purposes/to keep land?
The advice will change wildly depending on where within that 350~ year period you’re dealing with. There are so many different contexts and pieces at play in the wild west that it’s impossible to narrow it down into something more useful.
So nail down a time period, do the appropriate research into the state of colonialism at the time, and come back with something more specific.
~ Mod Lesya
