Researchers dig homestead site to reveal details about legendary Black cowboy John Ware
CBC
Researchers from the University of Calgary spent the weekend trying to uncover more details about trailblazing Black cowboy John Ware, who carved a path for himself against all odds as a respected Alberta rancher in the 1880s.
A team of experts from the University of Calgary's department of anthropology and archaeology dug around at the site of the Ware family homestead near Millarville, Alta., in a bid to learn more about the day-to-day challenges faced by Ware and his family.
Ware, considered to be one of Alberta's first Black residents, was a former slave who established his reputation as a skilled cowboy after moving to Alberta from the United States.
"He was an incredible cowboy and rancher and just [an] all-around person. A Black cowboy who came to southern Alberta in 1882 and he never left. He made this place his home for the rest of his life," said author and filmmaker Cheryl Foggo, who made the 2020 documentary film, John Ware Reclaimed.
"Why are we here today? Well, we've never lost curiosity in him. He's been a person of such inspiration for so many for 120-odd years since he died in 1905."
Foggo admitted she has related to Ware's story for years.
"I personally have connected with his story very strongly from a pretty young age because I, like him, was a black person from this part of the world who loved horses and this beautiful, beautiful land. And so I have been curious about him, and working on projects about him."
Foggo joined the U of C researchers during the excavation project, which is a more elaborate followup to a dig that was undertaken to aid the filmmaker's 2017 film.
"John Ware's life connects to so many people for so many different reasons. People who live in rural Alberta, in southern Alberta, connect very strongly to his story because he was so smart and he was so innovative," Foggo said.
"He was a formerly enslaved person who often people did not have high expectations for, and yet he blew everyone's expectations out of the water in a million different ways."
Dr. Lindsay Amundsen-Meyer is an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Calgary.
"There's two pieces I think to it that are really important from a purely archaeological, historic sense … he's got this longevity to him, right? Everybody talks about John Ware. You hear about Alberta's first Black cowboy all the time," she said, citing examples such as the school that's named after him, John Ware Junior High in Calgary.
"But we don't actually know that much about him, right? So most of what we know comes from stories that were written in the 1930s and later. And he himself died in 1901. So how much of those remembrances and those stories really reflect his day-to-day [life]?"
WATCH | Uncovering details on John Ware's life:
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