Nat Love: The Life and Legacy of the Former Slave Who Became the Wild West's Most Famous Black Cowboy

*Includes pictures *Includes a bibliography for further reading 'Mounted on my horse my ... lariat near my hand, and my trusty guns in my belt ... I felt like I could defy the world.' - Nat Love The American mountain man, with his myriad of practical skills, could endure isolation in a way most could not. He lived in constant peril from the extremes of nature and from the hostilities of cultures unlike his own. In an emergency, assistance was rarely available, and he rarely stayed in one place long enough to build even a simple shelter. Travel in the American West relied upon a specific calendar, and to ignore it could be fatal, as many discovered, to their misfortune. Winter in the mountainous regions of the Rocky Mountains and Cascades was lethally cold to explorer and settler alike, but desert areas and grass plains presented difficulties as well. The network of rivers flowing west of the Mississippi on both sides of the continental divide served as early highways to the Wyoming