Frontier and Amer West

8/13/2019 Frontier and Amer West

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The Western History ssociation

Making Use of the Frontier and the American WestAuthor(s): Vernon CarstensenSource: The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Jan., 1982), pp. 4-16Published by: Western Historical Quarterly, Utah State Universityon behalf of The WesternHistory AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/969062.

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MakingUseofthe rontierndtheAmericanWestVERNONCARSTENSEN

When I suggested o our programchairman that I make a fewremarksbout omeof theusesthathave been madeand arebeing made of the frontier nd the American West, I wasreasonably ure I had a subjectso large and vague that therewas littlechance I coulddo morethanpointcheerfullyoa fewfamiliarandmarks.For two centuries r longertheimmense nd variedexperience f occu-pying hiscontinent,ll embracedwithin he terms rontierndAmericanWest, has served the differenturposesof Americanwriters,cholars,artists,ntertainers,oliticians,nd businessmen. ay Billington's elight-fulbook, Land ofSavagery,Land ofPromise, ellsus of themanyusesEuropeans have made of the Americanwestering xperience.The termsfrontiernd American West are, of course, pleasantlyimprecise. hey are sometimesnterchangeable,ometimeshey nlyover-lap, and sometimes hey trike ut on theirown,depending n who usesthem,forwhatpurpose, nd when. The frontiers an area of new landsettlementmovedfromJamestownnd Plymouth o thePacific,but theWest, as a termapplied to areas of new settlement,ame into use todescribe heregion eyond heAppalachians.Thereafter,s onedictionarymaker has it, the AmericanWest, "at any particulartime,"embraced"that part of the United States west of the earliersettledregion." Insomeminds,particularlyhosenurturedn the eastern artof thecountry,theregion f the Great Plainsand beyond eemsto be permanent rontiercountry.Thus, last JanuaryRobertLindsey,writing ortheNew YorkTimes, in offeringn explanationof the new "western"president, e-clared that "the West remainsa frontier." he metaphor,he wrote, sinevitable: "A cowboy n fullregalia movesto Washington rom ut of

theWest, ookinggrim nd readyforbattlewiththegangof looters hatVernon Carstensen, presidentof the Western HistoryAssociation, 1980-1981,is professorof historyemeritus,Universityof Washington,Seattle. He delivered thispaper as his presidentialaddress at the Twenty-first nnual Conference,held in SanAntonio,Texas, October 14-17, 1981.

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aI?VERNON CARSTENSENNineteenthresidentf theWestern istory ssociation



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6 THE WESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Januaryhas taken over the town." Mr. Reagan and his posse, he said, epit-omized "many of the realitiesof the modern West and many of themyths f the oldWest."The businessof occupying his continentwas one of thegreatad-ventures f moderntimes,but it was over much sooner than manyex-pected. When Thomas Jeffersonooktheoath as presidentn 1801, hecongratulated is countrymenn theirgood fortune. hey were shieldedfromthe turmoil f Europe and theypossessed a chosencountry,withroom enoughfor our descendantsto the thousandth nd thousandthgeneration."Whenhespoke, heboundaries f theRepublicextended nlyto the Mississippi.He underestimatedhe pull of the new lands, a pullno doubt enormouslytrengthenedy the new secular religionhe hadhelpedto shape-a religion hat ncludednotions f iberty nd equality,representativeovernment,nd belief n progress. e mayalso have over-estimated hechilling ffectn immigrantshatmighthavebeen expectedfrom hewarningof learnedmen of France thattheNew Worldwas aland whereplants, nimals, nd mendegenerated.mmigrantspparent-ly did not believe the warnings f theyread them.By mid-centuryheRepublic had expandedto thePacific, nd before heend ofthecenturythefrontierad all butdisappeared.The worldhad never eenanythingikethehasty, umultuous,ftenchaoticconquestof thisvast, ncredibly ich continent. ettlers ame inconstantlyncreasingnumbers.They came singly, heycame in families,sometimes s members f communitieso claim and use thefarmlands,the forests,he grasslands, he mineral ands, the waterpowersites, hetownsites r anything lse of real or imaginedvalue. By the early1840sthefirst aravansof land seekerswerecrossing heplainsand mountainsto make farms n the WillametteValley in Oregon, and by the end ofthatdecade gold drewmultitudeso California.The Indianscould delayencroachment,ut they ould notstopthe march.Wherever hese ettlersentered hewild lands tomaketheir arms nd plantations,obuild theirvillagesand towns, heyfaced dangers,hardships, rivation, nd almostendlessmanual labor.Theyweremostlytrangerso each other, uttheywere reasonably uick to establish nd maintain order, ided lightly ythe federalgovernment. heir politicians, reachers, nd editorsnevertiredofremindinghemthattheywere ayingthefoundations ora newcivilization.English nd Europeanappetite or nformationbouttheNew Worldwas insatiable,as the makersof books quicklydiscovered.The famousand theunknown ame to look and to write boutwhatthey aw on theeasternseaboard and in regionsof new settlement. rederickaBremerfromSweden invitedhercountrymeno colonizeWisconsin nd Minne-



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1982 VERNON CARSTENSEN 7sota and turn hatregion nto a newScandinavia,and they ried.GeorgeRuxton discovered he mountain men for the grateful nd enthusiasticreadersof Blackwood'sMagazine. There were scores nd scoresof otherswho came andwho wrote.Americans,too, made books about what was going on. TimothyDwight,once president fYale, visited he frontierf New York and NewEngland in the 1790s and characterized hepioneershe saw as men whocould not live in a regular ociety. They are too idle, too talkative, oopassionate,too prodigal and too shiftlesso acquire eitherproperty rcharacter."He rejoicedthatthe vast westernwildernesswas sufficientlyalluring o "draw themaway from he and of theirnativity," here heywould onlycause trouble f theyhad stayed. In strikingontrast, hosewho wrote the numerous ettlers' uidebooks nd the gazetteers iewedthepioneers s a stalwart,elf-relianteople,carriersfcivilization, orthyof thegreatopportunitieshe new lands offered.JamesFenimoreCooper was the firstAmerican novelist o exploitthe frontierwith dramaticsuccess. n 1823 he publishedThe Pioneers,thefirstftheLeatherstockingales. Englishpublishers romptly iratedthework, nd it was also translatedntothemajor European languages.In Russia there were thirty-twoditionsby 1927. Cooper's success en-couraged otherwriters o make use of the frontier.Washington rvingtouredthe prairies n the 1830s and published n accountof his experi-ences. He laterwroteabout Astoriaand Captain Bonneville.A decadelaterFrancis Parkman penta summer n theOregonTrail. His accountof his adventures, ublished n 1849, enjoyedenduringpopularity. heminingcamps of Californiabecame a sourceofdelight n literaryirclesin Bostonand London whenBretHarte publishedThe Luck ofRoaringCamp and OtherSketches.Thereafter,here ame a floodofgood books,both fiction nd nonfiction,hat used frontiermaterial. Some writerswrote about what theyhad seen; othersbased their work on carefulresearch.In the asthalfofthenineteenthentury rastusBeadle,printerndpublisher, nd his variousassociatesfound a new marketto be servedby the dime novel. In 1860 Beadle publishedMalaeska: The IndianWife ofa WhiteHunter, nd it soldbriskly,venthough t was a reprintof a book firstpublishedtwentyyears before.This was followedbySeth Jones,or the Captive of the Frontier.Success led him to hire anumberof writers o producewestern hrillershat dealt with almostallaspects of the real or imaginedexcitement nd dangersof life on thefrontier.herewerewildtalesabout Indians,trappers, raders,mountainmen,explorers, ackwoodsmen, afters,oldhunters,nd soldiers.Bythe1880s cowboys nd cattlethieves egan to take theirplace amongother



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8 THE WESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Januaryfrontierypes n the popularnovelsand thepulp magazinesoftheearlytwentiethentury.

Meanwhile, s Billington as told us in richdetail, cores fEuropeanwriters urnedout an endless treamof frontierhrillers. arl May be-came, and stillremains, householdname in Germany, nd MayneReidin England saw his books appear as dime novels n America,while atthe same time hey ound vastand enduring ollowingn Russia. Indeed,Anton Chekhov has a shortstory bout two Russian schoolboyswho,underthespell of Mayne Reid, plan to walk acrossSiberiaon theirwayto the Californiafrontierwheretheywill fight igers nd savages, findgoldand ivory,nd drink in.There weremanyothersduringthe nineteenthenturywho soughtand foundways of makinguse of the frontier. here were artists ndphotographers hosepictures ounda ready ale, exhibitors ho collectedartifacts nd animalsfor howin the East and in Europe,and entertain-ers, ikeBuffaloBill Cody,who appeared in "The ScoutsofthePrairie"in 1872. The show,written y Ned Buntline,drewlarge audiences inChicago,New York,and Boston.There were also collectors f recordsof the westering xperience.For example,Lyman C. Draper, whilestill n his twenties nd withnosuremeansofsupport, ommitted imselfo gathering ecords nd recol-lectionsof pioneer life in the bordersettlementsfterthe Revolution.In 1854 hebecamesecretaryfthe Wisconsin tateHistorical ociety.Hisextensive ollectionsaid thefoundation orthegreathistoricalibrary fthe society.Hubert H. Bancroftwas a somewhatdifferentser of thefrontier. San Franciscoprinter nd bookseller, ancroft egan collect-ing Californiarecords nd books in the late 1850s and thenundertookto assemble the documentsand other recordsneeded to produce hishistoryf thePacificCoast states-which,youmayrecall, ncludesTexas.He organizeda staff o writethe accountshe publishedunderhis ownname. By the end of the 1880s he had publisheda thirty-nineolumeset,and accordingto JohnW. Caughey,he had made a profit fnearlya half-millionollars.Ultimately, e soldhisgreatcollection o theUni-versityfCalifornianBerkeley.Professional, hat is to say, academic, historianswere reasonablyquick to makeuse of thefrontiers a subjectfor

nstructionnd investi-gation.Historyn generalfound ittleroom n theAmerican ollegecur-riculumuntilthe late nineteenth entury.When theAHA was formedin 1884, onlynineof theforty-oneersonswho attended hefirstmeetingwere professorsf history.But a brighter ay was coming,as collegesand universitiesmultiplied, nrollmentsncreased and the professionaltraining fhistoriansook hape.



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1982 VERNON CARSTENSEN 9In 1888 JamesBrycepublishedhisgreatbook,The AmericanCom-nmonwealth.WesternAmerica,"he wrote, is one ofthemost nterestingsubjectsthemodernworld has seen. There has been nothingn thepastresemblingtsgrowth, nd probablytherewill be nothing n the future.... The West is the mostAmericanpart of America; that is to say,the partwherethosefeatureswhich mostdistinguish mericacome outin the strongest elief."Five years ater FrederickJacksonTurner readhis famouspaper. All of us recognize hesewords."Up to our own dayAmericanhistory as been in a largedegree hehistoryf thecolonizationof the Great West." Turner offered hypothesismore attractive han

anythinghen vailable. The place of the frontierxperiencen thegrowthofthenationprovidedone of thedominating hemes f Americanhistori-cal studies or henexthalfcentury.The nineteenthentury roducedmanyfrontierypes hatpromisedto assumea permanentheroic characterto serve iterarynd otherpur-poses.Daniel Boone and Davy Crocketted a parade that ncluded war-riors,both Indian and white,pathfinders,mountainmen, missionaries,prospectors, nd even a few outlaws and politicians.During the lastdecades of the century he cowboy emergedin the dime novels,butinitiallyhe was something f a roughneck.A few articleson cowboysappeared in literaryournals such as Harper's Magazine and Century.And then, n 1902, the cowboyfinallywon full iterary espectabilitynThe Virginian, book that was written y a Harvard man who hadmajored in music.The book was praisedby anotherHarvard man whowas hailed as the firstowboypresident ftheseUnitedStates.This eventisworth brief xamination.Theodore Roosevelt, friend f Owen Wister,was graduatedfromHarvard in 1880. With no career in mind, he launched several. Heenteredpoliticsas a refornnernd in 1882 got electedto the New Yorklegislature o begin his lifelongworkof city, tate,and nationalreform.He invested omeofhispatrimonyn cattleranchingn the Dakota Bad-lands.Ranchingpaid no dividends, ut hisexperience s cowboy, ancher,and big game hunter n the West providedmaterialfor his burgeoningcareer as journalist. n 1885 his book Hunting Trips of a Ranchmanappeared, and threeyears later, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail.Althoughhe left ranching,he continuedto be identified s cowboy,rancher, nd adoptedwesterner. e also foundtime to launchhiscareeras historian.n 1882 he publishedhisfirstook,The Naval Warof1812,and in 1889 thefirstwovolumesof The Winning fthe Westappeared.PresidentMcKinley broughthim to Washingtonto serve as assistantsecretaryfthenavy, utwhen he warwithSpainbegan,he teamedup with Leonard Wood to organizea volunteer avalryregiment hat



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10 THE WESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Januarywas promptly ailed as theRoughRiders, rbettertill,Roosevelt'sRoughRiders. You can substitute owboysfor Rough Riders in the context.Although originally imited to under eighthundred,thismighty rmygrewto a thousandand consisted f,to use Roosevelt'swords, thewildriders nd riflemen romthe Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains."Theywere tohave beenrecruited romNew Mexico,Arizona,Oklahoma,and Indian Territory,utyoungmenfromHarvard,Yale, and Princetonsought o join and somewere admitted.Although heRough Ridersdidnot ride theirhorses nto battle,and theyhad help in winning he warin Cuba, many persons eemed not to notice.Rooseveltbecame a na-tionalhero,and hisenormous opularity elpedhimwinthenominationforgovernorof New York. He campaigned with an escortof RoughRidersand wontheelection.A year aterhewasnominated s McKinley'srunningmate despitehis privateprotest hathe would ratherbe a pro-fessor fhistoryhanvice-president.hen, in September1901, followingthe assassination f McKinley,"thatdamned cowboy,"as Mark Hannacalled him,became president.Meanwhile,Owen Wister, Philadelphianwho had switchedfrommusicto law and writingnd who had spent ummersn Wyoming,washard at workfinishing he Virginian, book in whichhe hoped to re-capturethe West thathad been. In May 1902 thebookburstupon theworld. It was dedicatedto Rooseveltand the dedication uggested hatthepresident ad had a hand in shapingthestory. Some of thesepagesyou have seen, some you have praised,one standsnew written ecauseyou blamed it; and all, mydear critic, eg leave to remindyouoftheirauthor's hangeless dmiration."Wister'sview of the cowboy and the West would have startledTimothyDwight.Listentohisdescriptionfcowboysn a MedicineBowsaloon. "City saloons rose intomyvisionand I instantly referredhisRockyMountainplace. More deathit undoubtedlyaw, but lessof vice,than did itsNew York equivalents.And death is a thingmuch cleanerthanvice.Moreover, twas bynomeansvicethatwas written ponthesewild manlyfaces ... Daring, laughter, ndurance-these were what Isaw on the countenances f the cowboys.And thisveryfirst ay ofmyknowledgeof themmarksa date withme. For something bout them,and theidea ofthem, motemyheart, nd I have neverforgottent,norevershall, as long as I live. In theirfleshour naturalpassionsran tu-multuous;but often n their pirit at hidden a truenobility,nd oftenbeneath tsunexpected hining heirfiguresooka heroic tature."Wisterbrought ogetherhevitaland durable ngredientsf theAmericanmorali-typlay: a western andscape,the cowboyhero,wrong-doers ho would



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1982 VERNON CARSTENSEN 11have to be destroyed iolently o assure the establishment f law andorder in the new land.

RooseveltwroteWister hathe was delightedwith the book. HenryJamesapproved,withsome reservations. he book was enthusiasticallyreceived.The reviewer n theAtlanticMonthly ame very lose to sayingthat thiswas a thinkingman's western. he book wentthrough ifteenreprints uringthefirst ear,and itwould retain tspopularity vertheyears s a book,a play,a number f movies, nd serials n radioand TV.Wister's uccesscalled forth mighty lood ofwestern,mostly ow-boy books that found an apparently nsatiablemarketwhile carryingreaders farther nd fartherway from he West thatreallywas. Of thescores of successfulwriters, want to mentiononlythree: Zane Grey,Louis L'Amour, and Kjell Hallbing. Each in his own way managed tofind mass market.Ohio-bornZane Greytrained s a dentist utwantedtobe a writer.After long apprenticeship uringwhich he wroteand wroteand nevermanaged to sell verymuch-his detractors laim he neverfinished isapprenticeship-he visitedArizona and turned to writingwesterns. n1912 he publishedRiders of the Purple Sage-a book that would sellover two millioncopies. Thereafter, e turned out a constant treamofwesterns,lmostall best-sellers.Whenhe died in 1939, he had publishedsome sixtybooks,most of themwesterns,with anotherthirtyn manu-script.His works, lthough argelygnoredbythecritics, ad been trans-lated into the major European languages.The total numberof copiespublishedvariessomewhataccordingto whosereportyou read, but theessay by EverettCarter n theDictionaryofAmericanBiography tatesthat by 1958 nearly twenty-eight illionhad been sold in the UnitedStates,another four millionabroad. Gross sales by the end of the 1950shad passed thethirty-six illiondollar mark-more thantwicewhat theU.S. had paid forLouisiana.Greyhad manycompetitors,ut no one appeared to challengehisdomination fthe market ntilthe 1970swhen Louis L'Amoursurpassedhim.Bornin NorthDakota, L'Amour,a highschooldropout, laimedtohave followeda large numberof occupations-farmlaborer, ongshore-man, umberjack, ailorandminer mongthem-beforehe turned owrit-ing westerns.n 1977 theLondon Times Literary upplement ook sar-donicnoteof the workofthisman whosebookshad sold overfifty illioncopies. In 1979 alone, Bantam Books shipped ut 7.8 millionL'Amourbooks,and he had been translatedntotenforeignanguages.A year aterit was reported hat he had seventy-sixooks n print, ixty-fivef whichhad each sold a millionor morecopies.To celebrate100 million opiesin print,Bantam arranged autographingpartiesat truckstops in the



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12 THE WESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY JanuarySouthwestbecause truckdriverswere his mostardentfollowers.At theend of the year,Time hailed him as "the Homer of the Oater" andclaimed he was the "mostfamous obscure author n America." "Truckdrivers,"Time declared, "pass up centerfoldmagazines at diesel stopsto buy a copyof his latestpaperback."Many Europeans,such as Karl May and Mayne Reid, made profit-able use of the pioneerWest,but I want to call yourattention o theastonishingKjell Hallbing. A Norwegianbank clerk,Hallbing wrotewesternsn his spare time,finally othis first ublishedunderthenameof Louis Masterson, nd quickly ttainedgreatpopularityn Scandinavia.Like othersuccessfulwriters f westerns, e turnedout a large numberof books in a shorttime. By 1972 he had sixty-one ooks in print nNorwayand over 1.5 millionhad been sold. In 1970 hisfirst esternwastranslatedntoEnglishfora London publisher nd twoyears ater ixteenwere in print.They have beenmarketed n England,Canada, Australia,New Zealand, and SouthAfrica.So far,theU.S. has been spared.There was an even largeraudience waitingto be discovered ndserved, n audience thatpreferredo look and listenrather hanto read.BuffaloBill had led theway in the tradition f P. T. BarnumwithhisWild West show,launched in the 1880s. He playedbefore udiences nEngland thatreachedfortyhousand nd includedQueen Victoria.Thenthe new technology,ncludingthe motionpicturecamera, radio andtelevision, rovidedan unlimited pportunityo reach new and distantaudiences.Cody had triedto make a movieor two,but he failed.Earlyin the twentieth entury he westernmovie was successfullyaunched.The story unsfromWilliam S. Hart to JohnWayne and involvesthegrowth f a multi-millionollar,earth-spanningndustry ithhardly nypart of the world so remoteas to escape fromthe Americanwestern.Radio provided heopportunityorediscoverr nvent ewtypes,ncludingHopalong Cassidyand theLone Ranger,and thenTV opened thegatesstillwider. Cowboys, ndians, and outlawswere the principalfare,butWalt Disney got into the act withDavy Crockett.That TV serieswasenormously opular in the UnitedStates, nd whenexported o EnglandCrockettexcitedsuch a demand for coonskincaps as to threatenthedomesticcat population.At the end of the 1950s it was claimed thateightof thetoptenTV showswerewesterns,nd theexport fGunsmokemade it possiblefora quarterof thepopulationof theworldto viewit.Althoughwesternswere much denigratedn manyquarters, stablishedactors,both American and foreign,willingly ppeared in them. Suchforeignerss Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov,Marlene Dietrich,andLiv Ullman showedup a timeor twoto help conquertheWest.



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1982 VERNON CARSTENSEN 13Naturally herewereforeignmitators. fter heSecond WorldWarcame thespaghettiwesternsngreatnumbers. ome came from pain and

a few otherpartsof the world. It had longbeen claimed that therewasno way a producer ould losemoneyon a cowboyor western ilm rTVshow,butapparentlyUnitedArtists as managedtodisprove hatancienttruthwiththetwice-released,45-million icture alled "Heaven's Gate,"somethingvaguelyrelatedto the JohnsonCountyWar and advertisedas a "seriouswestern." n spiteof a muddledstory ine,some dramaticwesterncenery, eedlessbrutality, orses, attle,muchshooting, lood inlivingcolor,nudity nd rape, thismovie was a disaster t thebox office.Could it be thatHollywoodhas at last managed to produce a westernso bad and so expensiveas not to make a profit nd thusbringmoviewesterns o an end? But all is not lost. Warner Brothers ecently e-leased a film alled "Outland," inwhichthemining rontiern theplanetJupiter rovides hesetting. t will be hard to bringhorses nd cowboysinto the space frontier,ut special effects xpertsmay manage.Childrengrowingup almostanywhere-in America,Europe, Asia,Africa-read westerns,istenedto radio and watched movies and TV,and played at beingcowboys, ndians,and outlaws.Nobodyknowshowmany carried the pictureof heroic frontiersmennd the heroiccowboyintotheir dultyears.Manyfamousmen, ncludingNabokov,Hitler, ndEinstein, onfessed o readingKarl May, Mayne Reid, and Zane Grey,or followingwesternmoviesand TV. Kruschev rememberedhatJosephStalin liked western nd cowboymoviesfor his eveningentertainment,and althoughhe alwaysdenouncedtheir deologicalcontent,he alwaysordered more. Only recently he secretary f commerce s reported ohave instructed ersons n hisdepartmento getmore ife nto theirgov-ernment roseby striving orsomething etweenZane Greyand ErnestHemingway.In 1972 Henry Kissinger, hensecretary f state,explained to anItalian newspaperwomanhis image of himself. The main pointstemsfrom hefact,"he said, "that I've alwaysacted alone. Americans dmirethatenormously. mericans dmire hecowboy eadingthe caravanaloneastridehishorse, hecowboy entering villageor city lone on hishorse.Without even a pistol,maybe,because he doesn't go in forshooting.He acts,that'sall: at theright potat theright ime.A Wild Westtale,if you like." But the cowboy, t should be noted, s not universallyd-mired. In August of 1981 the Libyan governmentccused the UnitedStatesof aggression based on thelaw of the gun and on cowboy ogic,which s theonly anguagetheU.S. understands."A centurynd a halfago Alexisde Toquevilleobserved hat"Amer-icans of all ages, all conditions,nd all dispositionsonstantlyorm sso-



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14 THE WESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Januaryciations.They have not onlycommercial nd manufacturingompanies,inwhich ll takepart,butassociationsf a thousand therkinds-religious,moral,serious,futile, xtensive, r restricted,normousor diminutive."That is stilltrue about manywho make use of thefrontier. wnersofdude ranches,managers frodeos, nd rodeo entertainersave formed s-sociations, s well as thosewho collectbarbedwire ndsix-shootersr buildsod housesforshow.The practicehas been carriedabroad,where t hasappeared in scoresof clubs and societieswhosemembersmeetregularlyto practiceor parade what theybelieveto be frontier,ndian,or cowboycrafts. n 1973 The GermanTribunereported herewereat least sixty-threeWild Westclubs thenoperatingn WestGermanywitha member-ship of fifteenhousand.Membersmetfrom ime to timetopretend heywere trappers,frontieroldiers, ndians, or cowboys.Garments,tools,weapons,and conductwere all supposedto be trueto theusagesof theAmericanfrontier. ay Billington as described numberof other uchassociations n Europe. Of similar organizations n this country, heNational Muzzle-LoadingRifleAssociationdeserves ttention. aunchedin 1933, now claiming membershipfnearly wenty-fivehousand, heassociationattractedmore than two thousandto the annual shoot atFriendship,Ohio, last May. At the shootsthe memberswear buckskinand use black powder,and theykeep alive theskillsrequired o use themuzzle-loading ifle.No brief isting fvoluntaryssociationshatmakeuseofthefrontierand theAmericanWest should concludewithout salute to thosethatseek to deal seriouslywiththe history fthefrontier. hese includetheWesterners,orn n Chicago in 1944 and nowclaimingnearly hundredcorrals n citiesacrossthe country nd abroad, and of course,our ownWesternHistoryAssociation,now enteringts third

decade.Manufacturers nd merchantshave also foundmanyways to usethereal or imaginedfrontiernd theAmericanWest.Here I have timeto mention nlytheirfavorite igure-theheroiccowboy.He has becomea kindof icon whosepresence n an advertisements a testamento thehigh qualityofwhatevers beingoffered, hether ickuptruck, igarette,liquor,or evenmen'sperfume. ven moreconspicuouss themanufactureand saleofcowboygear--hats,boots,pants, elts, ndhugebuckles.Russiahas no dude ranches, ut westerneans are eagerly oughtbytheyoung.

The contestforthe businessof supplying owboygear is serious.LastFebruarya long articleappeared in theNew YorkTimes telling f thecampaignbythemanufacturerfWranglereans tocapture larger hareof themarket."We wanteda campaignthat reflectedhe values of theAmericanFrontier," he head of marketing xplained.They soughtanimagethatwas "honest, obust, ndependent, ith little lement frisk."



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1982 VERNON CARSTENSEN 15A sellerofcowboyhatssolemnlytatedthatthecowboyhat has become"part of America's dress code. It's the only true American look. It'spatriotism."Apparentlyhe knew what he was talking bout. Last Maya Texan at Annapoliswroteto his senatorto complainthatordershadbeen circulated n theacademydeclaring hatcowboygarbwas inappro-priate eisureattireformidshipmen. here was a promptprotest nd anexplanation.The orderhad been misread.Only "torn,frayed, nd dirty"cowboygear was frownedupon. Clean cowboyhats and boots are asacceptable eisurewearforfuture dmirals s forthecommander-in-chiefin theWhite House.

We Americans ike the AmericanWest with tscowboys nd cowboygear, but we also love frontiersf all kinds, ven thoughtheyno longerdivide settled romunsettled ountry. hevron,we are told,was bornonthe frontiernd never eft t. The announcementf a new ournaldevotedto high technology romises o keep abreastof "all frontiersfnew tech-nology," rom enetic ngineeringo robotics. herearefrontiersnscience,space, religion, ducation, ven n cookery.Whereverwe go there renewfrontiers. hey are beckoning, hallenging nd promising. n January1979 Science publishedan articleentitled Information:The UltimateFrontier." To crossthe old frontiermeant risk,danger,and hardship.That now seems changed. To crossany of the new frontiersromisessomething ew,something etter, nd without isk.Politicianshave made use of the term.F.D.R. declared in 1932that thenationneeded a New Deal because theold frontier ad passed.WhenJohnF. Kennedy aunchedhiscampaignfor hepresidencyn 1960,as many of us remember, e discovered hatAmericastoodon a NewFrontier.He warned that "the times demand invention, nnovation,imagination nd decision," and he invited each citizen "to be a newpioneeron thatnew frontier"nd enjoythe "fresh ir ofprogress." heextensive ublicity hataccompaniedKennedy'sNew Frontier bscured,I am afraid,PresidentEisenhower's ttachment o the old frontier. ehad grownup in Abilene,Kansas, and was an avid readerof westernnovels.When GeneralMotorsdedicateda new research enter n Detroitin 1956, Eisenhowerdeclaredthatthe centerwould be "a new adventureforfrontiersmen." eneral Motors,he said, "was foundedby frontiers-men, people who were not satisfiedwithwhat we had and were deter-minedtomake tpossible ormen totravel aster nd better nd in greatercomfort... The history f America is a history f frontiersnd eachfrontier as been a challenge oAmericans o daremore, o do more, ndgo forwardfaster nd on a broaderfront."I suppose there s no way I can draw a conclusion rom hese cat-tered remarks about how travelers,writers, ntertainers,usinessmen,



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16 THE WESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Januaryand politicians ave made use ofwhatthey all thefrontier,heAmericanWest. It has been obvious fora longtimethat our real or imaginedpastas a pioneeringpeople has excitedgreatinterest nd has actually nflu-enced behaviorhere and abroad. It maybe that Zane Greywillprovidea model to change, perhapseven improvegovernmentrose; and itmaybe, in thisday ofimagesand image-making,hata clean cowboyhat andclean bootshelped turnthe tide in the last presidential lection.

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Frontier and Amer West