The New World and the West

Question for Discussion: What does the power
and popularity of the "Cowboys and Indians"
West in the twentieth century tell us about
Americans' popular understanding of the West?

Reading: Holthaus, pp. 81-82

Video: Images of Indians in Hollywood Films

Turner and the Frontier West: What
happens when the Frontier is settled?
Limerick's West: The West as Place
undergoing Conquest.
The Modern West: The West as Place
that actively carries the "legacy of conquest."
The "Cowboys and Indians" West: Why do
we still carry this romantic myth today?
The West as California? Is California the
future of the West?

"the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to
overspread the continent allotted by
Providence for the free development of our
yearly multiplying millions....)...is too evident
to leave us in doubt of the manifest design of
Providence in regard to the occupation of this
continent. "

John Sullivan, "Manifest Destiny" (1845)

"It would seem that the White race alone
received the divine command, to subdue
and replenish the earth! for it is the only race
that has obeyed it-the only one that hunts out
new and distant lands, and even a New World,
to subdue and replenish.....

Civilization, or extinction, has been the fate of
all people who have found themselves in the
track of the advancing Whites, and civilization,
always the preference of the Whites, has been
pressed as an object, while extinction has
followed as a consequence of its resistance."

Thomas Hart Benton, "The Destiny of the Race"
(1846)

"The most powerful aspect of that recollection
was that the West was a place that had been,
that it wasn't a place thatreally was anymore,
that by the 1950s it had essentially disappeared,
or what we Floridians really knew, it had turned
into California"

Charles Middleton, "The Elusive Quality of the
West"

Western Novel Writers

Louis L'Amour

Max Brand

Mike Blakely

Ned Buntline

Zane Grey

Larry McMurtry

Jack Schaefer

Owen Wister

Western TV series

Rawhide

Bonanza

Gunsmoke

The Virginian

Maverick

Have Gun will Travel

Riflemen

The Lone Ranger

Roy Rogers

Gene Autry

Daniel Boone

Davy Crockett