Wherein Moominmama learns about Black rodeos and gets back on her feet for a little hiking...

Moominmama returned to Cody this week to restock her larder on her day off. With my ankle on the mend, I ventured into the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. The museum prominently advertises itself as an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, perhaps for those of us worried about a Buffalo Bill-style show.

What caught my attention was a photography exhibit on Black rodeos and Black cowboys. I've been reading a book called "The Black West" by William Loren Katz, which looks at the history of Black people in the western U.S. starting with the Black men who traveled to the Americas with the Spanish explorers.

An estimated one in four cowboys in the American West were Black -- yet they're all but written out of the iconography. Black families were very much part of the westward expansion, especially after the Civil War, with many newly freed men who'd cared for horses and other animals able to transfer their skills to the ranches of the west.

They rode and wrangled cattle same as any cowboy, but Jim Crow laws kept them from competing in white rodeos -- and so a tradition of Black rodeos began. Oklahoma claims the oldest continuously held Black rodeo in the U.S. started in 1956. 

And that is only one of many, featuring traditional skills like calf roping, bull riding, barrel racing and a thrilling team sport called Pony Express, where horseback riders go pell mell around the ring passing a baton to a fresh rider who has to catch up, take the baton and circle ahead until the next rider takes the baton another round. Here's a link to a Youtube video so you can see what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNjZZRbXZhU

Photographer Ivan McClellan has visited many Black rodeos throughout the West to document modern-day Black cowboys and cowgirls. As he explains, he grew up in Kansas where Black people worked the land, cared for livestock and saw themselves as cowboys -- but he rarely saw this reality reflected in the media. Having discovered Black rodeo in 2015, his goal is to showcase this aspect of Black life and enlarge the American cowboy narrative.

His photographs are striking, both the images and how they are accompanied by details about the lives of Black horsemen and women. This includes photos and stories of a rider, Erin Brown, who's working to preserve a riding club in Philadelphia known as the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club. The club is featured in a new movie on Netflix: Concrete Cowboy.

McClellan calls his exhibit: "8/seconds: Black Cowboys In America." Why eight seconds? Because that's how long a bull rider has to stay on the bull to score in a rodeo. I invite you to visit his website since I don't want to appropriate his art on my blog! https://eightsecs.com/

This exhibit was by far the best thing in the museum in Moominmama's opinion! But a stronger ankle has also allowed me to spend more time in nature, with some easy hikes this week to see things off the beaten path, including this natural stone bridge.

It felt great to enjoy Yellowstone -- its woods and lakes and fields -- during the last warm afternoons before I leave. My final day will be Tuesday, unless Monday's forecasted snow prevents my departure! (Update: Moominmama is leaving today to avoid the snowstorm and should be facing only rain once I escape Yellowstone's elevation.)

I end here with a vista from my hike out to Shoshone Lake! Nothing steaming, bubbling or erupting, with the biggest hazard being stepping in bison poop.







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