No! I’m sure there are, but that’s sadly outside my range of historical geekdom. I have heard nineteenth century cowboy culture was pretty well populated by gays, like theater, art, and piracy, and pretty much any fringe profession. This is one of my favorite articles on the subject, although some of the quotes are quite cruel:
"Homos on the Range" . | True West Magazine Old West Homosexuality "Homos on the Range" - The most surprising thing about homosexuality in the Old West is not that it was rare in the r True West Magazine(Click on the image or here to go to the article.)
It talks about cowboy culture, rural comfort with queer intimacy, Abraham Lincoln’s first boyfriend, saloon lesbians, the range of Native gender identity and queer expression, and the shift in culture that took place around the turn of the century, toward repression. Some good bits:
I remember reading somewhere there are love songs between cowboys still extant, too. But I’ve forgotten the source.
Can anyone else add to this, and help my nonny?
This is outside my own chronological/geographical expertise, so the best I can do for LGBTQ+ identities in the American West is to point you towards the articles/syllabi of Jordan Biro Walters, who’s kindly made them available online here. A quick search of C19 cowboy songs I have access to didn’t turn anything out, and apparently the history of queer identities among cowboys was still treated as something that needed doing 15-20 years ago, though 1973 is the publication date on the first modern scholarly treatment I can find referenced.
Thank you! That’s a great resource. I also just now found a song written to mourn a partner, quoted in this article. And it references cowboy marriages, the male equivalent of the 19th century sapphic “Boston marriage”:
And here’s a review of a book on queer gender expression among cowboys, journeymen and soldiers:
I need to read this book!
Personally I’m still glowing over the fact that pirates entered gay marriages all the time and had laws protecting their spouses rights. Go pirates!
GO PIRATES
Originally posted by figmentof
(If anyone hasn’t watched Black Sails yet—watch Black Sails!!)