The Life and Adventures of Nat Love

By Nat Love

Book Overview

Thousands of black cowpunchers drove cattle up the Chisholm Trail after the Civil War, but only Nat Love wrote about his experiences. Born to slaves in Davidson County, Tennessee, the newly freed Love struck out for Kansas after the war. He was fifteen and already endowed with a reckless and romantic readiness. In wide-open Dodge City he joined up with an outfit from the Texas Panhandle to begin a career riding the range and fighting Indians, outlaws, and the elements. Years later he would say, "I had an unusually adventurous life." That was rare understatement. More characteristic was Love's claim: "I carry the marks of fourteen bullet wounds on different parts of my body, most any one of which would be sufficient to kill an ordinary man, but I am not even crippled." In 1876 a virtuoso rodeo performance in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, won him the moniker of Deadwood Dick. He became known as DD all over the West, entering into dime novels as a mysteriously dark and heroic presence. This vivid autobiography includes encounters with Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid, a soon-after view of the Custer battlefield, and a successful courtship. Love left the range in 1890, the year of the official closing of the frontier. Then, as a Pullman train conductor he traveled his old trails, and those good times bring his story to a satisfying end.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803279558
• ISBN13: 9780803279551
• Release Date: September 1995
• Publisher: Bison Books
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A pleasant surprise, worth the read

I actually had this assigned to me in a western literature class, so I didn't have a choice but to read it. Fortunately it was one of those pleasant surprises you come along in school every now and then. It's a quick read, fun and interesting. The main character is one you'll love.

A worthy read.

The Life and Adventures of Nat Love is the narrative of a former slave who went west first to become a cowboy in Texas and across the plains during the American Reconstruction period and then to retire as a Pullman Porter in Oklahoma (I believe). It is a culturally significant work because there are obviously very few such stories and it highlights the fact so many cowboys in the latter part of the 19th century were, in fact, black. It would probably be inaccurate, however, to read Nat's narrative as the gospel truth. Rather, it reads more like a dime novel romp with a heavy dose of Horatio Alger and Booker T. Washington's 'Up from Slavery' philosophy. Which seems strangely fitting for a former slave during Reconstruction who believed himself undeniably American. Nat became a cowboy because he was a free spirit, despite slavery, and the order of the day for Americans was to 'go west.' Thus, like other Americans at the time, he has (at first, at least) no sympathy for marauding Indians (the best one being a dead one) and no cultural identification with non-Americans (i.e., Mexicans). Like other American cowboys (and dime novel heroes) he was a crack shot and superior horse-man, eventually earning the name of Deadwood Dick for these talents (notably on July 4). The narrative is definitely an intriguing read and anyone with an interest in slave or cowboy narratives, or dime store novels, should be interested in looking deeper into this one.