>I wouldn't put any stock in anything that comes out of Texas Monthly, it's usually just race-bait...

I've been reading TM since the 1970's. Anyone who characterizes their reporting as race-baiting is playing to an agenda. They have always reported on stories, events, personalities, etc that have a connection to Texas with no regard for who they might offend in the process. They roast politicians from the left and right and offer the most unvarnished accounts of events in the state. They are about as middle-ground as you'll find anywhere. I don't always agree with things they write but they do honest reporting.

With that said, I agree with you about the origins of the term "cowboy" and how it has never been associated with nor has it ever been explained historically as a term first applied to black slaves in Texas who found themselves tending cattle. That is as I have been known to say periodically, bullshit of the purest kind.

It is quite true that black men in the southern slave states were denigrated by referring to them as "boys" regardless of their ages but it is not accurate historically for anyone to connect "cow" and "boy" as in the article in such a way that would imply the that the term "cowboy" was first used in that county to describe slaves who tended cattle. Those black slaves who helped tend the cattle learned that trade from Mexican vaqueros (Spanish for "herder of cattle") employed to tend cattle or from the white owners of those cattle.

I found one article that makes a similar claim to the one made in the article - that black cowhands were referred to as "cowboys" and white cowhands were referred to as "cowmen". [0] There is no merit to this claim. The author's byline implies to me, a bit of bias on the subject and cements in my own mind a perception of this claim as bullshit.

[0] https://medium.com/@ronaustin/the-true-origin-of-the-histori...

In fact if you have ever read a biography of someone who actually was a black cowboy, born as a slave, who later rode the cattle drives you would find that the term was applied equally to all who shared that dust regardless of race. [1] This is Nat Love's biography. He was a notable black cowboy whose exploits became the basis for the Deadwood Dick stories in the late 19th century.

One passage describes his own experiences riding the range with other cowboys: -

Love recalled the camaraderie of cowboys with admiration. “A braver, truer set of men never lived than these wild sons of the plains whose home was in the saddle and their couch, mother earth, with the sky for a covering,” he wrote. “They were always ready to share their blanket and their last ration with a less fortunate fellow companion and always assisted each other in the many trying situations that were continually coming up in a cowboy's life.”

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21634

To me the thing that makes it so unlikely that "cowboy" was a derogatory term invented locally and used to describe black cowhands is the fact that during and after the Civil War in the heyday of cattle drives and up until today the term "cowboy" was applied to those men who drove the herds to the rails to feed the eastern appetite for steak. By all accounts 25% of the cowboys were black, 30% were hispanic, and 45% were white. If the white men were so racist that they used that term to insult the black men they rode with and shared trail dust with, then why did they accept the term when it was used contemporaneously by others to describe themselves? Why did it historically become okay for a white guy to be called a cowboy? As they say down around where I'm from here in Texas - "sumpum ain't raht" or "that dog won't hunt".

With all that said, I agree with you that the term cowboy was already in use in one form or another to apply to men and boys who worked cattle in Texas and did not carry any racial connotations related to the 'boy' ending. That's bullshit.

In Texas, by the time Anglos settled Ft Bend County and started plantations with their imported slaves providing most of the labor, there was already a culture of cattle working from horseback with roots in the original Spanish settlers in the 17th century and the Spanish term vaquero became anglicized to cowboy as white settlers moved in during the early 19th century.