"A Touchstone book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 336-346) and index.

The explorers (Pioneer Maroon settlements -- Stephen Dorantes or Estevan -- Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable -- York -- Florida's black explorers) -- The fur traders (Bonga (Bonza) family -- James P. Beckwourth) -- The early settlers (Colonial life -- Early black settlements -- Western colorphobia -- Black laws -- Lucy and Abijah Prince -- Greenbury Logan -- John Jones -- Dred Scott -- George Washington of Centralia, Washington -- George Washington Bush -- Aunt Clara Brown -- The black jockeys -- The black pioneers of British Columbia).

Slavery in the West (The Constitution -- Slavery escalates frontier conflict -- The Mexican War -- Slaveholder efforts at new frontiers -- Western abolitionism -- The western stations of the underground railroad -- Bleeding Kansas) -- California (Under Spain and Mexico -- Gold rush days -- Fugitive slave days -- Early civil rights campaigns -- Mifflin W. Gibbs) -- The cowboys (Nat Love--"Deadwood Dick" -- Cherokee Bill -- Mary Fields -- Ben Hodges -- Isom Dart -- Bill Pickett) -- The homesteaders -- (Barney Ford and Henry O. Wagoner -- The black western press).

The black infantry and cavalry (The Ninth Cavalry -- The Tenth Cavalry -- The 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments -- Black officers from West Point -- At the Little Big Horn -- Frederic Remington's black west -- The Seminole Negro Indian scouts) -- Oklahoma : A black dream crushed (Protecting Oklahoma -- Exodus to Oklahoma -- Edwin P. McCabe) -- The Spanish-American War (Glory abroad, lynching at home) -- Black women of the last frontier (Women of the migrations to Kansas -- Black pioneer women -- Education and progress -- The Black towns -- Elvira Conley) -- The Black west in white America : conclusions.

Looks at the history of Blacks in the American Western frontier.

The American West: no period in our history has defined and shaped us more as a nation. Unique to the U.S., the Old West exerts a power on the American imagination that can still be seen in almost every aspect of our culture. Sadly, as is the case with most other periods, historic acknowledgment of the African American contribution to the West is either totally nonexistent or nowhere near complete. In The Black West, historian William Loren Katz corrects the record in words and pictures, showing that, from the journeys of Lewis and Clark to the charge at San Juan Hill, African American men and women exerted an influence beyond their numbers in the discovery and definition of the American West. - Back cover.

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