Broken Spear Cattle Co.
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Broken Spear Cattle Co. was a western-wear label produced under "The Wear of the West" line, based in Denver, Colorado, and made in the USA. Trademark records show the name was registered in 1991 as a brand of Miller International, Inc., covering jackets, dusters, sweaters and shirts, meaning the pieces sold under this name were part of a professionally produced western apparel line rather than an anonymous cottage maker.
Miller International traces its roots to 1918, when Philip Miller arrived in Denver with a sample case of cowboy hats and soon built a business selling gear to ranchers and cowboys across the region. He started the Stockman-Farmer Supply Co. and published his first catalog in 1923, later renaming the business Miller Stockman Supply Co. and, by the mid-1930s, manufacturing clothes for ranchers and cowboys as Miller Western Wear. Over subsequent decades the company grew into a full-fledged western-apparel conglomerate, eventually operating as Miller International, Inc. out of Denver, a firm still associated today with well-known western brands.
Broken Spear Cattle Co. items, such as the long canvas duster coats and denim jackets that circulate among vintage-western collectors, are prized for their heavy cotton canvas or denim construction, patch pockets, and sturdy hardware typical of authentic American-made ranch wear from the late twentieth century. Pieces bearing this label are sought after by collectors of vintage western wear both for their connection to a respected Denver apparel house and for the increasingly hard-to-find "Made in the USA" construction quality of that era's workwear-inspired outerwear.
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