{"id":182,"date":"2016-07-21T18:52:48","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T18:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wmreadinganthology\/?post_type=chapter&p=182"},"modified":"2016-07-21T18:54:34","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T18:54:34","slug":"rodeos-wild-west-shows-and-the-mythic-american-west","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-wm-readinganthology\/chapter\/rodeos-wild-west-shows-and-the-mythic-american-west\/","title":{"raw":"Rodeos, Wild West Shows, and the Mythic American West","rendered":"Rodeos, Wild West Shows, and the Mythic American West"},"content":{"raw":"
[caption id=\"attachment_822\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"501\"]\"American<\/a> American frontierswoman and professional scout Martha Jane Canary was better known to America as Calamity Jane. A figure in western folklore during her life and after, Calamity Jane was a central character in many of the increasingly popular novels and films that romanticized western life in the twentieth century. \u201c[Martha Canary, 1852-1903, (\u201cCalamity Jane\u201d), full-length portrait, seated with rifle as General Crook\u2019s scout],\u201d c. 1895. Library of Congress.[\/caption]<\/div>\r\n\u201cThe American West\u201d conjures visions of tipis, cabins, cowboys, Indians, farmwives in sunbonnets, and outlaws with six-shooters. Such images pervade American culture, but they are as old as the West itself: novels, rodeos, and Wild West shows mythologized the American West throughout the post-Civil War era.\r\n\r\nIn the 1860s, Americans devoured dime novels that embellished the lives of real-life individuals such as Calamity Jane and Billy the Kid. Owen Wister\u2019s novels, especially\u00a0The Virginian<\/em>, established the character of the cowboy as a gritty stoic with a rough exterior but the courage and heroism needed to rescue people from train robbers, Indians, or cattle rustlers.Such images were later reinforced when the emergence of rodeo added to popular conceptions of the American West. Rodeos began as small roping and riding contests among cowboys in towns near ranches or at camps at the end of the cattle trails. In Pecos, Texas, on July 4, 1883, cowboys from two ranches, the Hash Knife and the W Ranch, competed in roping and riding contests as a way to settle an argument and is recognized by historians of the West as the first real rodeo. Casual contests evolved into planned celebrations. Many were scheduled around national holidays, such as Independence Day, or during traditional roundup times in the spring and fall. Early rodeos took place in open grassy areas\u2014not arenas\u2014and included calf and steer roping and rough stock events such as bronc riding. They gained popularity and soon dedicated rodeo circuits developed. Although about 90% of rodeo contestants were men, women helped to popularize the rodeo and several popular women bronc riders, such as Bertha Kaepernick, entered men\u2019s events, until around 1916 when women\u2019s competitive participation was curtailed. Americans also experienced the \u201cWild West\u201d\u2014the mythical West imagined in so many dime novel\u2014by attending traveling Wild West shows, arguably the unofficial national entertainment of the United States from the 1880s to the 1910s. Wildly popular across the country, the shows traveled throughout the eastern United States and even across Europe and showcased what was already a mythic frontier life.William Frederick \u201cBuffalo Bill\u201d Cody was the first to recognize the broad national appeal of the stock \u201ccharacters\u201d of the American West\u2014cowboys, Indians, sharpshooters, cavalrymen, and rangers\u2014and put them all together into a single massive traveling extravaganza. Operating out of Omaha, Nebraska, Buffalo Bill launched his touring show in 1883. Cody himself shunned the word \u201cshow,\u201d fearing that it implied an exaggeration or misrepresentation of the West. He instead called his production \u201cBuffalo Bill\u2019s Wild West.\u201d He employed real cowboys and Indians in his productions. But it was still, of course, a show. It was entertainment, little different in its broad outlines from contemporary theater. Storylines depicted westward migration, life on the Plains, and Indian attacks, all punctuated by \u201ccowboy fun\u201d: bucking broncos, roping cattle, and sharpshooting contests.\r\n
\r\n\r\n\"William<\/a>\r\n

William Frederick \u201cBuffalo Bill\u201d Cody helped commercialize the cowboy lifestyle, building a mythology around life in the Old West that produced big bucks for men like Cody. Courier Lithography Company, \u201c\u2019Buffalo Bill\u2019 Cody,\u201d 1900.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nBuffalo Bill, joined by shrewd business partners skilled in marketing, turned his shows into a sensation. But he was not alone. Gordon William \u201cPawnee Bill\u201d Lillie, another popular Wild West showman, got his start in 1886 when Cody employed him as an interpreter for Pawnee members of the show. Lillie went on to create his own production in 1888, \u201cPawnee Bill\u2019s Historic Wild West.\u201d He was Cody\u2019s only real competitor in the business until 1908, when the two men combined their shows to create a new extravaganza, \u201cBuffalo Bill\u2019s Wild West and Pawnee Bill\u2019s Great Far East\u201d (most people called it the \u201cTwo Bills Show\u201d). It was an unparalleled spectacle. The cast included American cowboys, Mexican vaqueros<\/em>, Native Americans, Russian Cossacks, Japanese acrobats, and an Australian aboriginal.\r\n\r\nCody and Lillie knew that Native Americans fascinated audiences in the United States and Europe and both featured them prominently in their Wild West shows. Most Americans believed that Native cultures were disappearing or had already, and felt a sense of urgency to see their dances, hear their song, and be captivated by their bareback riding skills and their elaborate buckskin and feather attire. The shows certainly veiled the true cultural and historic value of so many Native demonstrations, and the Indian performers were curiosities to white Americans, but the shows were one of the few ways for many Native Americans to make a living in the late nineteenth century.\r\n\r\nIn an attempt to appeal to women, Cody recruited Annie Oakley, a female sharpshooter who thrilled onlookers with her many stunts. Billed as \u201cLittle Sure Shot,\u201d she shot apples off her poodle\u2019s head and the ash from her husband\u2019s cigar, clenched trustingly between his teeth. Gordon Lillie\u2019s wife, May Manning Lillie, also became a skilled shot and performed as, \u201cWorld\u2019s Greatest Lady Horseback Shot.\u201d Female sharpshooters were Wild West show staples. As many 80 toured the country at the shows\u2019 peak. But if such acts challenged expected Victorian gender roles, female performers were typically careful to blunt criticism by maintaining their feminine identity\u2014for example, by riding sidesaddle and wearing full skirts and corsets\u2014during their acts.\r\n\r\nThe western \u201ccowboys and Indians\u201d mystique, perpetuated in novels, rodeos, and Wild West shows, was rooted in romantic nostalgia and, perhaps, in the anxieties that many felt in the late-nineteenth century\u2019s new seemingly \u201csoft\u201d industrial world of factory and office work. The mythical cowboy\u2019s \u201caggressive masculinity\u201d was the seemingly perfect antidote for middle- and upper-class, city-dwelling Americans who feared they \u201chad become over-civilized\u201d and longed for what Theodore Roosevelt called the \u201cstrenuous life.\u201d Roosevelt himself, a scion of a wealthy New York family and later a popular American president, turned a brief tenure as a failed Dakota ranch owner into a potent part of his political image. Americans looked longingly to the West, whose romance would continue to pull at generations of Americans.\r\n

The West As History: the Turner Thesis<\/span><\/h3>\r\nIn 1893, the American Historical Association met during that year\u2019s World\u2019s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The young Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his \u201cfrontier thesis,\u201d one of the most influential theories of American history, in his essay, \u201cThe Significance of the Frontier in American History.\u201d\r\n\r\nTurner looked back at the historical changes in the West and saw, instead of a tsunami of war and plunder and industry, waves of \u201ccivilization\u201d that washed across the continent. A frontier line \u201cbetween savagery and civilization\u201d had moved west from the earliest English settlements in Massachusetts and Virginia across the Appalachians to the Mississippi and finally across the Plains to California and Oregon. Turner invited his audience to \u201cstand at Cumberland Gap [the famous pass through the Appalachian Mountains], and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file\u2014the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer\u2014and the frontier has passed by.\u201d\r\n\r\nAmericans, Turner said, had been forced by necessity to build a rough-hewn civilization out of the frontier, giving the nation its exceptional hustle and its democratic spirit and distinguishing North America from the stale monarchies of Europe. Moreover, the\u00a0style<\/em>\u00a0of history Turner called for was democratic as well, arguing that the work of ordinary people (in this case, pioneers) deserved the same study as that of great statesmen. Such was a novel approach in 1893.\r\n\r\nBut Turner looked ominously to the future. The Census Bureau in 1890 had declared the frontier closed. There was no longer a discernible line running north to south that, Turner said, any longer divided civilization from savagery. Turner worried for the United States\u2019 future: what would become of the nation without the safety valve of the frontier? It was a common sentiment. Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Turner that his essay \u201cput into shape a good deal of thought that has been floating around rather loosely.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe history of the West was many-sided and it was made by many persons and peoples. Turner\u2019s thesis was rife with faults, not only its bald Anglo Saxon chauvinism\u2014in which non-whites fell before the march of \u201ccivilization\u201d and Chinese and Mexican immigrants were invisible\u2014but in its utter inability to appreciate the impact of technology and government subsidies and large-scale economic enterprises alongside the work of hardy pioneers. Still, Turner\u2019s thesis held an almost canonical position among historians for much of the twentieth century and, more important, captured Americans\u2019 enduring romanticization of the West and the simplification of a long and complicated story into a march of progress.","rendered":"
\n
\"American<\/a><\/p>\n

American frontierswoman and professional scout Martha Jane Canary was better known to America as Calamity Jane. A figure in western folklore during her life and after, Calamity Jane was a central character in many of the increasingly popular novels and films that romanticized western life in the twentieth century. \u201c[Martha Canary, 1852-1903, (\u201cCalamity Jane\u201d), full-length portrait, seated with rifle as General Crook\u2019s scout],\u201d c. 1895. Library of Congress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThe American West\u201d conjures visions of tipis, cabins, cowboys, Indians, farmwives in sunbonnets, and outlaws with six-shooters. Such images pervade American culture, but they are as old as the West itself: novels, rodeos, and Wild West shows mythologized the American West throughout the post-Civil War era.<\/p>\n

In the 1860s, Americans devoured dime novels that embellished the lives of real-life individuals such as Calamity Jane and Billy the Kid. Owen Wister\u2019s novels, especially\u00a0The Virginian<\/em>, established the character of the cowboy as a gritty stoic with a rough exterior but the courage and heroism needed to rescue people from train robbers, Indians, or cattle rustlers.Such images were later reinforced when the emergence of rodeo added to popular conceptions of the American West. Rodeos began as small roping and riding contests among cowboys in towns near ranches or at camps at the end of the cattle trails. In Pecos, Texas, on July 4, 1883, cowboys from two ranches, the Hash Knife and the W Ranch, competed in roping and riding contests as a way to settle an argument and is recognized by historians of the West as the first real rodeo. Casual contests evolved into planned celebrations. Many were scheduled around national holidays, such as Independence Day, or during traditional roundup times in the spring and fall. Early rodeos took place in open grassy areas\u2014not arenas\u2014and included calf and steer roping and rough stock events such as bronc riding. They gained popularity and soon dedicated rodeo circuits developed. Although about 90% of rodeo contestants were men, women helped to popularize the rodeo and several popular women bronc riders, such as Bertha Kaepernick, entered men\u2019s events, until around 1916 when women\u2019s competitive participation was curtailed. Americans also experienced the \u201cWild West\u201d\u2014the mythical West imagined in so many dime novel\u2014by attending traveling Wild West shows, arguably the unofficial national entertainment of the United States from the 1880s to the 1910s. Wildly popular across the country, the shows traveled throughout the eastern United States and even across Europe and showcased what was already a mythic frontier life.William Frederick \u201cBuffalo Bill\u201d Cody was the first to recognize the broad national appeal of the stock \u201ccharacters\u201d of the American West\u2014cowboys, Indians, sharpshooters, cavalrymen, and rangers\u2014and put them all together into a single massive traveling extravaganza. Operating out of Omaha, Nebraska, Buffalo Bill launched his touring show in 1883. Cody himself shunned the word \u201cshow,\u201d fearing that it implied an exaggeration or misrepresentation of the West. He instead called his production \u201cBuffalo Bill\u2019s Wild West.\u201d He employed real cowboys and Indians in his productions. But it was still, of course, a show. It was entertainment, little different in its broad outlines from contemporary theater. Storylines depicted westward migration, life on the Plains, and Indian attacks, all punctuated by \u201ccowboy fun\u201d: bucking broncos, roping cattle, and sharpshooting contests.<\/p>\n

\n

\"William<\/a><\/p>\n

William Frederick \u201cBuffalo Bill\u201d Cody helped commercialize the cowboy lifestyle, building a mythology around life in the Old West that produced big bucks for men like Cody. Courier Lithography Company, \u201c\u2019Buffalo Bill\u2019 Cody,\u201d 1900.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Buffalo Bill, joined by shrewd business partners skilled in marketing, turned his shows into a sensation. But he was not alone. Gordon William \u201cPawnee Bill\u201d Lillie, another popular Wild West showman, got his start in 1886 when Cody employed him as an interpreter for Pawnee members of the show. Lillie went on to create his own production in 1888, \u201cPawnee Bill\u2019s Historic Wild West.\u201d He was Cody\u2019s only real competitor in the business until 1908, when the two men combined their shows to create a new extravaganza, \u201cBuffalo Bill\u2019s Wild West and Pawnee Bill\u2019s Great Far East\u201d (most people called it the \u201cTwo Bills Show\u201d). It was an unparalleled spectacle. The cast included American cowboys, Mexican vaqueros<\/em>, Native Americans, Russian Cossacks, Japanese acrobats, and an Australian aboriginal.<\/p>\n

Cody and Lillie knew that Native Americans fascinated audiences in the United States and Europe and both featured them prominently in their Wild West shows. Most Americans believed that Native cultures were disappearing or had already, and felt a sense of urgency to see their dances, hear their song, and be captivated by their bareback riding skills and their elaborate buckskin and feather attire. The shows certainly veiled the true cultural and historic value of so many Native demonstrations, and the Indian performers were curiosities to white Americans, but the shows were one of the few ways for many Native Americans to make a living in the late nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

In an attempt to appeal to women, Cody recruited Annie Oakley, a female sharpshooter who thrilled onlookers with her many stunts. Billed as \u201cLittle Sure Shot,\u201d she shot apples off her poodle\u2019s head and the ash from her husband\u2019s cigar, clenched trustingly between his teeth. Gordon Lillie\u2019s wife, May Manning Lillie, also became a skilled shot and performed as, \u201cWorld\u2019s Greatest Lady Horseback Shot.\u201d Female sharpshooters were Wild West show staples. As many 80 toured the country at the shows\u2019 peak. But if such acts challenged expected Victorian gender roles, female performers were typically careful to blunt criticism by maintaining their feminine identity\u2014for example, by riding sidesaddle and wearing full skirts and corsets\u2014during their acts.<\/p>\n

The western \u201ccowboys and Indians\u201d mystique, perpetuated in novels, rodeos, and Wild West shows, was rooted in romantic nostalgia and, perhaps, in the anxieties that many felt in the late-nineteenth century\u2019s new seemingly \u201csoft\u201d industrial world of factory and office work. The mythical cowboy\u2019s \u201caggressive masculinity\u201d was the seemingly perfect antidote for middle- and upper-class, city-dwelling Americans who feared they \u201chad become over-civilized\u201d and longed for what Theodore Roosevelt called the \u201cstrenuous life.\u201d Roosevelt himself, a scion of a wealthy New York family and later a popular American president, turned a brief tenure as a failed Dakota ranch owner into a potent part of his political image. Americans looked longingly to the West, whose romance would continue to pull at generations of Americans.<\/p>\n

The West As History: the Turner Thesis<\/span><\/h3>\n

In 1893, the American Historical Association met during that year\u2019s World\u2019s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The young Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his \u201cfrontier thesis,\u201d one of the most influential theories of American history, in his essay, \u201cThe Significance of the Frontier in American History.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turner looked back at the historical changes in the West and saw, instead of a tsunami of war and plunder and industry, waves of \u201ccivilization\u201d that washed across the continent. A frontier line \u201cbetween savagery and civilization\u201d had moved west from the earliest English settlements in Massachusetts and Virginia across the Appalachians to the Mississippi and finally across the Plains to California and Oregon. Turner invited his audience to \u201cstand at Cumberland Gap [the famous pass through the Appalachian Mountains], and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file\u2014the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer\u2014and the frontier has passed by.\u201d<\/p>\n

Americans, Turner said, had been forced by necessity to build a rough-hewn civilization out of the frontier, giving the nation its exceptional hustle and its democratic spirit and distinguishing North America from the stale monarchies of Europe. Moreover, the\u00a0style<\/em>\u00a0of history Turner called for was democratic as well, arguing that the work of ordinary people (in this case, pioneers) deserved the same study as that of great statesmen. Such was a novel approach in 1893.<\/p>\n

But Turner looked ominously to the future. The Census Bureau in 1890 had declared the frontier closed. There was no longer a discernible line running north to south that, Turner said, any longer divided civilization from savagery. Turner worried for the United States\u2019 future: what would become of the nation without the safety valve of the frontier? It was a common sentiment. Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Turner that his essay \u201cput into shape a good deal of thought that has been floating around rather loosely.\u201d<\/p>\n

The history of the West was many-sided and it was made by many persons and peoples. Turner\u2019s thesis was rife with faults, not only its bald Anglo Saxon chauvinism\u2014in which non-whites fell before the march of \u201ccivilization\u201d and Chinese and Mexican immigrants were invisible\u2014but in its utter inability to appreciate the impact of technology and government subsidies and large-scale economic enterprises alongside the work of hardy pioneers. Still, Turner\u2019s thesis held an almost canonical position among historians for much of the twentieth century and, more important, captured Americans\u2019 enduring romanticization of the West and the simplification of a long and complicated story into a march of progress.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t

Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t
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CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div>