‘Deadwood Dick’ And The Fascinating Tale of This Black Cowboy
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2025
⏱️ 3 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nat Love, better known as Deadwood Dick, was a cattle herder and, if you heard him tell it, one of the most famous cowboys of the Old West. Was he just a legend in his own mind?
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Transcript
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| 0:29.9 | Nate Love, better known as Deadwood Dick, was a cattle herder, and if you heard him tell it, |
| 0:35.6 | one of the most famous cowboys of the Old West. Was he |
| 0:39.4 | just a legend in his own mind? I'm Len from Push Black, and this is two-minute black history. |
| 0:46.2 | What You Didn't Learn in School. |
| 0:52.9 | Born enslaved in Davidson County, Tennessee in 1854, Nate Love's origin was ordinary, but his life was anything but. |
| 1:02.0 | Nate learned to read and write as a child, which was rare for black folks. |
| 1:07.0 | At 15, he moved from Tennessee to Texas and from there traveled around the west where he became a legend. |
| 1:14.6 | Nate spent the next 20 years working as a drover, transporting cattle and horses around the Texas Panhandle, |
| 1:23.6 | the Arizona and Kansas territories, as well as the Deadwood Dakota Territory. |
| 1:29.5 | But unlike the characters in Bonanza and Gunsmoke, Love was a real-life cowboy. |
| 1:37.0 | A year after starting a family in 1889, Nate Love became a porter. |
| 1:42.7 | He worked for the next 15 years, regaling passengers and his coworkers with tales of his cowboy days. |
| 1:50.1 | Many of them encouraged him to write his life enslaved, but with the ability to read and write, he could tell his own story in his own way. |
| 2:18.5 | His 1907 autobiography, the Life and Adventures of Nate Love, better known in the cattle country |
| 2:25.2 | as Deadwood Dick, written by himself, told the tales of his cowboy exploits, his prowess |
| 2:32.3 | as a rodeo performer, meeting Buffalo Bill Cody, and |
| 2:36.6 | especially how he earned the nickname Deadwood Dick. Nate Love controlled his story without |
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