»Those Eastern Men of the West« Frederic Remington‘s The Fall of the Cowboy and the Aesthetic Reconstruction of the American West Stefan Brandt (University of Siegen/ Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) Visual Arts in the West – Annual Conference of the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Associations Albuquerque, New Mexico February 14-17, 2007
I. Mystification of the ›Old West‹ The Last Cavalier (1895) II. Progress and Crisis What an Unbranded Cow Has Cost (1895) III. Decline and Rebirth The Fall of the Cowboy (1895)
I. Mystification of the ›Old West‹ »It’s so very sad and so very near my private heart.« Owen Wister, August 1895 »The Evolution of the Cow-puncher« (Owen Wister, 1895) »You must do it again. Then we shall have a poem much better and much more national than Hiawatha or Evangeline.« Owen Wister, ibd. »The Last Cavalier will haunt me forever. He inhabits a Past into which I withdraw and mourn.« Owen Wister, ibd. Frederic Remington, The Last Cavalier (1895)
Literary Colonization The Bookman: An Illustrated Literary Journal (7, 1898)
Frontier-Thesis »The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.« Frederick J. Turner, »The Significance of the Frontier in American History« (1893) »The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West.« Frederick J. Turner, ibd. »The vast movement by which this continent was conquered and peopled cannot be rightly understood if considered solely by itself. It was the crowning and greatest achievement of a series of mighty movements, and it must be taken in connection with them. Its true significance will be lost unless we grasp [...] the past race-history of the nations who took part therein.« Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West (1889)
The Anglo-Saxon as Prototype of the Frontiersman »Viking portion« Owen Wister, »The Evolution of the Cow-puncher« (1895) »Throughout his career it has been his love to push further into the wilderness, and his fate to serve larger causes than his own.« Owen Wister, ibd. (1895)
The Anglo-Saxon as Prototype of the Frontiersman »In personal daring and in skill as to the horse, the knight and the cowboy are nothing but the same Saxon of different environments, the nobleman in London and the nobleman in Texas.« Owen Wister, »The Evolution of the Cow-puncher« (1895)
II. Progress and Crisis »Ah, progress is truly a wonder!« F. Remington, What an Unbranded Cow Has Cost (1895) »Ah, progress is truly a wonder!« F. Remington, The Last Stand (1890) »The cow-puncher’s playground in those first glorious days of his prosperity included battle and murder and sudden death as everyday matters. From 1865 to 1877 in Texas he fought his way with knife and gun, and any hour of the twenty-four might see him flattened behind the rocks among the whiz of bullets and the flight of arrows, or dragged bloody and folded together from some adobe hovel.« Owen Wister, »The Evolution of the Cow-puncher« (1895)
III. Decline and Rebirth F. Remington, The Fall of the Cowboy (1895) »These hermited horsemen would dismount in camp at nightfall and lie looking at the stars, or else squat about the fire conversing with crude sombreness of brands and horses and cows, speaking of humans when they referred to men. To-day they are still to be found in New Mexico, their last domain.« Owen Wister, »The Evolution of the Cow-puncher« (1895)
III. Decline and Rebirth F. Remington, The Fall of the Cowboy (1895) F. Remington, The End of the Day (1904) F. Remington, The Last March (1906)
»A Plea For Romantic Fiction« Frank Norris (1901) »Such is the story of the cow-puncher, the American descendant of Saxon ancestry.« Owen Wister, »The Evolution of the Cow-puncher« (1895) »A Plea For Romantic Fiction« Frank Norris (1901) »Three things swept him away, the exhausting of the virgin pastures, the coming of the wire fence, and Mr. Armour of Chicago, who set the price of beef to suit himself.« Owen Wister, »The Evolution of the Cow-puncher« (1895)