Hey everyone,

Over the past couple of years I've gotten really into cowboys and Westerns (and Red Dead II), so I decided to try my hand at something other than fantasy for the first time. I'm about 30,000 words into writing this book now, and it's VERY rough so far, but essentially it's about a transgender cowboy who goes up the trail to make some money and be able to live freely as a man. I feel like I've got a good idea of where I want my plot to go, and it's following the trajectory I want.

HOWEVER, I'm really struggling with how I want to include people of colour in this book. I've been reading Chas. A. Siringo's A Texas Cow Boy recently, which has been really insightful as far as the general attitudes of the day, the cost of goods, what living on the trail was like, etcetera. Obviously, it isn't without its (period-typical) flaws: native people as "red skins" or black people as "negroes" or "coons"—or worse. I don't want to use language like that, even if it is typical of the period, because I'd rather sacrifice a little historical accuracy to make it less alienating. However, I'm struggling to find a happy medium between "the stark reality of being a person of colour immediately after the Civil War" (which I don't feel is appropriate for me to write anyway) and "completely neglecting the marginalizing experiences that continue to affect people of colour in America to this day." I'm hoping by the time I am done this book I will be able to afford to pay some beta-readers to make sure that my portrayals of Black and Indigenous people are appropriate.

What I'm looking for right now is advice: language to use, tropes to avoid, what of history to include...?

TL;DR: How to write an antiracist T4T Western?