In 2001, Roger D. Hardaway, an associate professor at Northwestern Oklahoma State University, noted: "Perhaps the biggest discrepancy between the myth and the reality of the cowboy legend was that the black cowboys were almost totally ignored by the mythmakers of the Eastern publishing houses and the Hollywood movie sets."
Hardaway was right: Estimates suggest that as many as a quarter of 19th and early 20th century cowboys were African American. Nat Love was one of those overlooked legends, a man born into slavery in Tennessee in 1854, who was given the name Deadwood Dick after he won mustang riding, roping and shooting contests in that Dakota Territory town on July 4, 1876, just days after Custer's disastrous battle at the Little Bighorn.