'Boy
There is some evidence to suggest that the word cowboy indicates the original participation of Black men in the early cattle industry. Whereas there were many words for people who worked in ranching—ranch hand, cowhand, cowpoke, cowpunch—the word boy was mainly assigned to Black males, regardless of age or expertise. Typically, enslaved Africans were used for labour wherever it was needed, including ranches. While cow-hand may have been applied to anyone, cow-boy was likely a term reserved for the ranching labourers who were Black.
'Boy is a collection of poems and an original font
Black people participated in every period of colonial history on the Prairies, from fur traders to roughnecks and everything in between, including cowboys. 'Boy is a collection of poems that highlights the lives of historical Black cowboys on the Canadian Prairies from the 1880s to the 1910s.
For me, this is an important project of historical recovery in a nation that has so easily elided its various histories of Black people. The central language of this collection is that of cattle brands. These brands are not only a form of radical literariness, published evidence of Black design, Black ingenuity, they are the textual rejection of the common assumption of Black absence.
The culmination of this rejection is a font I designed based on these Black cattle brands. Several of the poems are presented using this font. In this way, the Black cowboys from the past have become my collaborators in their future. The poems are invested with their history and literally inscribed with their designs. I hope to make this font widely available and thus reencode the ubiquity of your texts with the resurrected lines of our forgotten Black cowboys.
The Poetry
The Font
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black cowboys and
ranchers in Alberta registered cattle brands of their own
designs. Then, like most of our Black history, they were
forgotten, their presence erased.
In the 21st century, I lifted their lines from the oblivion of
our national amnesia and reinscribed them into the font
you are now reading. This achievement marks the culmination
of many years work with, I think, profound consequence.
When you see 9, you are scrying John Ware, our most
famous cowboy. When you scry BW you are taking in
Benjamin Washington, a Black rancher from the UK. When
you take in DM, you are reading David Mills, the great Afro-
Indigenous Kainai ancestor.
Their marks live again, but now in a digital future reencoded by a lost past. These keystrokes mete out strokes of Black genius; their presence properly displaces history’s margins to the page’s centre stage.
This font is a prototype. Eventually, I will release a version
to be shared across the digital landscape. Meanwhile I am
inviting anyone who wants to beta-test the font for
themselves beforehand to give it a try. Those who are
interested can click here: Black Cowboy Prototype font.
This message also precedes a nearly-complete collection of poems that features the Black cowboys whose marks make up
these words: literally, a historic collaboration. In that work and this one, I swear, every stroke of the key feels like a defiant resurrection of long-lost forebearers. You can mark my words on that. But then, you don’t even have to.
They already have.
