More Ghosts Than People

The cowboy of the Wild West has been a staple of American culture since his inception in the early 1800s. He represents old-world values of frontier justice and chivalry, ideas that have always been deeply American. He occupies the Wild West, thousands of miles of untamed wilderness untouched by modern civilization. The cowboy struts confidently toward any obstacle he may face, prepared to do whatever it takes to survive the ruthless West. Danger was common in the wild frontier, but tuberculosis and cholera were scarier and more realistic foes than any gunslinger could be. Legends and myths surrounding the cowboy have captivated the world for generations, but the true nature of the cowboys contain an anticlimactic resolution. Small truths were latched onto and sculpted into a more attractive version of the West. Sheriffs became god-like protectors of their small towns; outlaws became charming, mustache-twirling, train-robbing supervillains; and the humble cowpoke was crafted into the mythological hero status that he enjoys today. This canon of the American Wild West is an amalgamation of myths surrounding the legends behind famous gunslingers that gained such popularity due to inflated cowboy egos and America’s obsession with adventure and the fight between good and evil.

To most Americans, the West was a distant and mysterious place. It was a large empty frontier that most of them would likely never see in their lifetimes. This distant mysticism was similar to the old Greek myths of yore. These stories of gods and demigods enthralled generations of Greek citizens and served to explain why things were the way they were. The vast amount of time that surpassed between the reign of the gods and the existence of ancient Greek society was what gave these myths a leg to stand on. The American cowboy endured a similar mysticism, but at the hands of distance rather than time. Distance from the West to the American population served the same purpose that time did for the ancient Greeks and their own myths and legends. Great distances or lengths of time allow a certain myth to gain traction and popularity as it becomes accepted into its respective mystic canon. This conclusion was even reached by scholars who lived during the expansion of the West. In 1887, British journalist John Bauman wrote:

The Cowboy has at the present day become a personage; nay, more, he is rapidly becoming a mythical one. Distance is doing for him what lapse of time did for the heroes of antiquity. His admirers are investing him with all manner of romantic qualities; they descant upon his manifold virtues and his pardonable weaknesses as if he were a demi-god… (Baumann 516)

Like many myths of far-away lands, distance lended a firm hand in lifting the cowboy into the historically inaccurate mythological Valhalla; he stood alongside the likes of medieval knights, Norse vikings, and Japanese samurai. The spread of information during the age of the cowboy negated the effect that time may have on myths and legends. Stories of Greek gods were passed down mostly through word of mouth, but in the 1800s, information was able to be spread through the mail, by telegram, or through travellers who crossed great distances via modern marvels such as trains or boats. By the 1800s, information was being spread at speeds never before seen in human history to an extremely large number of people. But even still, physical distance made it difficult to differentiate what may have been true or false. The average American was unable to personally verify (or find verified information on) what was truly going on in the far-off West. This allowed the term “West” to become applicable to the amorphous area inhabited by cowboys and Native Americans.

What area does the Wild West really cover? What territories are included? Typically images of grassy plains or barren deserts flash before our eyes when we think of the West, but that still leaves room for interpretation. Do you count Texas? How about California? Oregon? How far west? Does Missouri count? What about Mexico?

Clearly “the West” is a poorly defined historical marker that leaves plenty to the imagination. Over time, popular culture and whatever truths cemented themselves into history have “paint[ed] the West with broad strokes, capturing Texas, California, Montana, and the points in between with the same historical interpretations and mythical truisms” (Mead 54). Often we forget the vast distances between famous western landmarks and the progress in technology that occurred over the span of even just thirty years. The United States in 1855 was a completely different place than the United States in 1885. Often the blanket of “the West” obfuscates not only the differences in landscape over large distances, but also the differences in society that occur throughout the years. The lazy categorization led to the West always being seen as some expansive, unknown territory that fascinated curious Americans up and down the East Coast.

What little Americans knew about the West mostly came from dime novels and popular travelling shows like the famous Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (445). These shows would go on to tour the world, spreading the tall tales of the West all around the globe. The purpose of the shows was rarely — if ever — to inform the audience about what really goes on in the West, but rather to entertain and captivate audiences with circus-like performances and spectacle:

The gala featured “Geronimo’s last bison hunt,” in which a party of cowboys and Indians, including the famed Apache warrior, chased a bison on horseback to the point of exhaustion. A Chicago businessman, riding in an automobile, then killed it with a rifle. Geronimo fired two additional shots into the dead animal. The event also showcased Lucille Mulhall, who became known as “America’s first cowgirl,” and Bill Picket [sic], an African American and Choctaw cowboy later famed for his “bulldogging” technique (taking a wild steer down by biting it on the lip). (Fields 444)

The collection of showy events was hardly an accurate representation of the West. Its purpose was to entertain and amaze audiences with western-themed tricks and gimmicks, not to provide true demonstrations as to what the West was really like.

Ned Buntline, known for his grand plays about the wild frontier, became partners with “Buffalo” Bill Cody and wrote Buffalo Bill: King of the Border Men as a dime novel series throughout the 1870s. The Buffalo Bill of Buntline’s novel “bore no resemblance to Cody's experiences but made him a celebrity” (Hoogenboom). In order to sell his stories, Buntline chose to embellish Bill Cody’s real life to entertain audiences rather than tell true stories in order to inform them.

The greatest stereotype that emerged from the popularity of dime novels and Wild West shows was that of the laconic macho man cowboy. He could be seen with a cigar in his mouth and the brim of his hat covering his eyes, poncho optional. His face would be covered in bristly stubble and sweat. He would grumble out a slick catchphrase or one-liner and sink six rounds in his antagonist before he could even reach for his pistol. Americans (and the rest of the world) fell in love with the western American hero. The cowboy stereotype continues on to this day, with movies like the Coen brothers’ 2018 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs or Sergio Leone’s groundbreaking 1966 western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The enormous popularity of western novels and movies have further solidified the terse cowboy played by the likes of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne.

In Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, Cormac McCarthy’s 1985 gruesome western novel provided a narrative of stereotypical outlaws posed against a horrifyingly grisly western backdrop. His writing style reflects the spirit of the West more than the events that unfold within the narrative. As the story goes along, it sounds more and more like a campfire story being spoken out loud to a group of cowboys out in the open frontier. By page three, you are already reading the novel in the voice of Sam Elliott. The reader has no access to the feelings or thoughts of the protagonist or the other characters, all the reader knows is what events unfold and the dialogue of the characters. McCarthy tells his story with a third person limited point of view, so limited that the reader does not even have access to the protagonist’s thoughts. This choice serves to separate the reader from the narrative, it appearing almost conversational rather than a formal retelling of a story. As it goes for most forms of storytelling, the greatest stories are not the ones with the most gunfights or most action, but instead are the ones that say what they have to say the most efficiently. McCarthy uses his words sparingly, but effectively. After being knocked unconscious by a club to the head, the protagonist wakes up to a man standing over him:

[The kid] looked at the sky. Very high, very small, a buzzard. He looked at the man. Is my neck broke? he said.

The man looked out over the lot and spat and looked at the boy again. Can you not get up? (McCarthy 10)

Here it can be seen that even after such a brutal injury, the audience is only privy to the actions of the kid rather than what he may be feeling or thinking. This kind of narration is common when listening to orally-delivered stories about other people. Narration of this kind feels more conversational, as if Sam Elliott is speaking directly to you rather than narrating the story out loud. In Blood Meridian, it reads as if the reader is listening to somebody tell a story that they were not there to experience. At this moment, all the reader knows about the kid is that he is laying on his back looking at a buzzard and has reason to believe that he broke his neck. The man hunched over him receives the same treatment; the only things that the reader knows about him are his actions and his words. These literary choices reflect the way that tall tales of cowboys and outlaws were typically told back in the day: around a campfire.

To simplify McCarthy’s strategy further, the lack of quotation marks for dialogue serves to streamline the narration to include actions only. McCarthy does not include quotation marks when characters are speaking, reducing the act of speaking to a simple action rather than its own independent piece of the story. Quotation marks are used to indicate when a character speaks, so the removal of them negates their individual contribution to the narrative. This removes the voice from each character, lending further to the idea that the story could be read as if it was being spoken orally by one voice. Each character’s words are being repeated by the narrator rather than the narrator allowing the characters to speak the words themselves. This passive reading experience allows the narrative to unfold within a unique framework. Regardless of what context the narrative may be spoken in, the lack of dialogue and extremely limited third person point of view are evidence that the story is being told in its own context, separate from that of the cowboys being described.

This writing technique is used again in the popular children’s book series The Series of Unfortunate Events. Daniel Handler, author of the books, assumes the pen name Lemony Snicket, and includes details of Lemony Snicket’s own life, thoughts, and actions throughout the series. This is a more obvious example of McCarthy’s narration style, as Snicket sometimes speaks directly to the reader, clearly indicating that the story is being fed to the reader secondhand. McCarthy takes this style more seriously, as he removes quotation marks and tells the story through a very removed point of view.

This type of storytelling reaches back to what makes a cowboy: a story of gruesome adventure being told with no emotion or flair. Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name could be telling the story with his own words and it would sound nearly identical to what McCarthy has already written.

The rule of efficiency is not the only piece of the storytelling puzzle. There must be some substance to a story in order for it to be entertaining, and the West provided a perfect sandbox for all sorts of stories: romance, action, revenge, heists, or to a degree even road trip stories. The stories of the West resonated with people so much because they touched the audience’s personal values. The struggle of man against the outdoors is a tale as old as time, but the western genre has given fresh life to an age-old archetype.

The struggles of the common man against a large antagonistic entity have been told through stories around the world for centuries. Quite often, that entity is either the protagonist’s fellow man or Mother Nature. The modern era brought with it new tropes of man versus society and man versus self, but during the time of the cowboy, nature was a classic archenemy for man to square off against.

Audiences during the reign of the cowboy were fascinated in these stories, as the West served as a fantastic antagonist for man. In Blood Meridian as well as countless other western stories, characters wander across enormous deserts in search of civilization or a source of water, at the very least. The great unknown western frontier is winning over man. As the protagonist and his temporary companion, Sproule, trek through the desert, the desert offers no respite. “They waited all day. The kid made sorties down into the canyons in search of water but he found none. Nothing moved in that purgatorial waste save carnivorous birds” (McCarthy 66). Man is pitted against nature, and nature is winning. In this example, the harsh desert is breaking down the protagonist, forcing him to lose the prehistoric battle against Mother Nature. Nature did not always win against man, and man also was not always up against nature. Variations of opponents and outcomes are common within the western genre, and man typically found himself pitted against a fairly new opponent: the corporation.

Whether it was a humble farmer fighting the government from taking his land or a robber pillaging bank vaults, man and the corporation were very common enemies. Bandits robbed trains, train companies exploited immigrant workers, and immigrant workers and Native Americans were being driven off of their land by the government. This primitive man versus society trope is another reason why the cowboy myth of heroes and outlaws is so prevalent. Audiences were eating up underdog stories of the “little guy” coming out on top. That “little guy” did not even necessarily have to be a good guy, either. Gangs and thieves that stole from big corporations “have often enjoyed comparisons to romantic figures such as Robin Hood,” while other less-generous criminals “prove[d] so glamorous or their stories so captivating that the public overlooks the otherwise objectionable nature of their crimes” (Watts). Audiences preferred stories of frontier justice and gunfights over more typical entertainment of the time, such as Shakespeare or other classic literature. International audiences were infatuated with the cowboy, and preferred more fantastical stories of the Wild West over more classic Greek or Elizabethan literature. In “as early as 1833, ‘Western Monthly Magazine’ published a plea for a national literature that reflected American struggle and triumph in the West” (Sell 29), signifying the rapid shift into consumption of action and adventure literature over tried-and-true classics. The cowboy prevailed over all sorts of classical heroes. Wyatt Earp was replacing legends like Odysseus or King Arthur because he was so new. Both American and international audiences could not get enough of the gritty cowboy battles between good and evil.

Nowadays in the modern American political sphere, gun rights are a hot button issue. Some subscribe to the belief that “a good guy with a gun will always stop a bad guy with a gun.” This logic, whether one agrees with it or not, can find roots in old cowboy stories. Frontier justice (which sometimes was just frontier violence with extra steps) is a staple of the Wild West mythos. The appeal of taking matters into your own hands strikes patriotic chords of independence and mutiny in the hearts of Americans. Our forefathers dumped British tea in the Boston harbor so that future Americans would be able to defend their homes tooth and nail from intruders. Independence and frontier justice is deep within the American spirit, but can be seen most prominently in the western genre. Both during the time of the cowboy and today, “‘cowboy justice’, [is] more admired than questioned by most Americans, [it] meant swift, sure, reflexive action through the barrel of a gun” (Slatta 85). The long term survival of the American cowboy rested upon the foundation of the American spirit: independence.

This battle between independence and tyranny has raged on since the beginning of civilization; this craving for justice is not new. With every revolutionary hero must come a good villain. When it comes to the West, the lines between hero and villain were often blurred, and legends of lawmen and cowboys have been distorted over time. Most of the historic dissonance is due to grand claims from both sides of the historically ambiguous coin.

Gunslingers, who were very real figures, were also few and far between. For example, Wyatt Earp, made especially famous by John Wayne’s charismatic portrayal on the silver screen, was not the western hero that he claimed to be. On the topic of duels, he once claimed that:

‘going into action with the greatest speed of which a man's muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick shooting involves.’ Earp's detractors, on the other hand, insist the controversial lawman seldom if ever lived up to those words, engaging instead in what amounted to cold-blooded murder without giving his opponent a chance… (Sifakis)

Like many other famous gunmen of the time, cowboy hero Wyatt Earp was not much more than a conman. Lawmen and outlaws during this time would often inflate their past achievements (or straight up fabricate them) in order to appeal bigger and badder than they really were. Folks like Wyatt Earp would lie about their levels of experience out on the frontier in order to boost their reputation and inflate their ego. Earp made empty claims that he had plenty of experience hunting buffalo, but conflicting stories over the years point to him not ever hunting buffalo as a profession (Gatto). Lies like these were told in order to offer evidence to a gunslinger’s reputation and cowboy grit. Outlaws on the other hand would often lie about their escapades and run-ins with the law in order to build street cred with other gangs.

The notorious outlaw Jesse James is remembered as a cowboy Robin Hood who stole from the big bad banks and gave to the poor. To repeat a quote from earlier, popular history has “invest[ed] him with all manner of romantic qualities; they descant upon his manifold virtues and his pardonable weaknesses as if he were a demi-god” (Baumann 516). Jesse James was an outlaw who rose to fame due to his frontier justice methodologies, redeeming Robin Hood mythos, and (alleged) dexterity with a pistol. However, this character tends to be more myth than truth. History tends to favor the spectacular, and Jesse James and his brother, Frank, were surely spectacular figures; or at least they are remembered as such. The pair were “intelligent men who exhibited a dashing, romantic style in their crimes. But there is no evidence that their robberies benefited anyone but themselves” (Walker). In order to make themselves more intimidating to fellow outlaws at the time, the James brothers built a mythology around themselves that ensured their names would remain permanently in the history books.

Sensationalized stories did more than just boost the ego of the subject. It also made for good entertainment. The tall tales spread by such cowboys would be intercepted by aspiring authors looking to make a quick buck or journalists looking to cover a hot story. In order to sell their product, events would be romanticized and remembered as something much greater than they really were. For example, the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a measly thirty second gunfight in a back lot behind a boarding house (Rule). There was no grand showdown that spanned the length of the town. There were no heroic sacrifices or Mexican standoffs. Words were exchanged, shots were fired, and men were killed; it took not much longer than thirty seconds. But that story does not sell. The story was decorated with stereotypical cowboy language, highly dramatized in order to liven up the disappointingly uneventful story that really took place. Seasoned reporter Richard Rule covered the gunfight in an article aptly titled “A FIERCE FIGHT Particulars of a Terrible Affray in an Arizona Town — Thirty Shots in Twenty Seconds.” In this article, Rule’s style is representative of the stereotypical cowboy vernacular that would be parroted in Clint Eastwood catchphrases years later. He writes:

If there is such a thing as ‘sand’ the shooting yesterday bore evidence that some men pack around enough of the gritty substance to start a grindstone quarry. Everybody engaged knew that their lives were liable to be put out by the pulling of a trigger, and no man winced or wavered a hair. (Rule)

Rule utilizes metonymy when comparing the toughness and ruggedness of the participants in the shootout to sand. The precise word choice “gritty”, “pulling of a trigger”, and “no man winced or wavered a hair” all serve to perpetuate the archetype of the gruff articulate cowboy who always gets the final word.

McCarthy uses the same tone throughout Blood Meridian. His descriptions are often short and succinct, but still articulated well enough to remain poignant and impactful. He describes a sunset as “a crimson dawn” and the horizon as “where sky and earth closed in a razorous plane” (52). McCarthy’s word choice evokes a vague sadness typically seen in the loneliness that a lone cowboy faces out in the Wild West. His words are flowery, but not fancy. McCarthy describes places, people, and events with a very specific, stereotypical cowboy dialect that reinforces the mythological cowboy.

As well-crafted as McCarthy’s diction may be, it still serves to perpetuate an unrealistic cowboy. Not all cowboys were wise frontier men who always knew what words to say at the right times. The Gary Cooper cowboy was the type that would be heard repeating McCarthy’s airy words out into the setting sun, gazing off into the distance with a glimmer in his eye and a cigar hanging out of his mouth. But Gary Cooper was not a real cowboy. Despite how it may have appeared, he was not representing a real cowboy, either. He was representing a romanticized folkloric version of a very real, very grounded personality. Cowboys were tough, but not John Wayne tough.

The American cowboy very quickly became a beloved figure within the American canon. His grit, frontier wisdom, and strong sense of justice fingered the strings of patriotism that lie in the heart of the American spirit. His roots stem back to the first days of revolution in the young United States, and his values remain relevant and meaningful today. This cowboy, however, is not the cowboy that really occupied the West throughout the 1800s. The real cowboy was merely a ranch hand who herded cattle. He rarely ever participated in gunfights, and spent most of his days out on the range, overlooking his livestock. This cowboy was abandoned in favor of a romanticized version that appealed to mass audiences. The new marketable cowboy was one that was quick on the draw, had spent countless nights out in the bare wilderness, and was never seen without a hat casting a powerful shadow across his brow. Americans’ obsession with frontier justice and adventure caused the real, human cowboy to morph into a caricature of the tough men who really tamed the West. The humble ranch hand began to fade into the past, and thanks to the perpetuation of the imaginary cowboy hero, the masculine gunslinger prevailed as the face that history would remember the Wild West by.

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