Essay by Martha Quillen
Western Life – July 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
RECENTLY, I READ A “Writers on the Range” syndicate piece about destructive weeds by Paul Larmer, executive director of High Country News. Paul is always a clear and interesting writer, but since we included plenty about plants in our May issue, I chose another “Range” piece.
A part of Paul’s article stuck with me, though. He started his editorial with an assertion that a myth he’d grown up with had been blown apart. As it turned out, the American West wasn’t untouched wilderness, it was full of noxious European weeds.
“As a youngster,” Paul wrote, “I believed the mountains, plains, and deserts of the West were the last intact remnants of unspoiled America. They were where the deer and the antelope still played, where the sheer majesty of the natural landscape dwarfed human efforts to tame it.”
This concept of western wilderness wasn’t new to me, of course. At Headwaters conferences I’d heard dozens of speeches about historical concepts of Western wilderness and the “Turnerian” thesis.
But Paul’s description of his childhood perceptions made me think about my own childhood. I was raised and nurtured on Western myths — Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Zorro, Rawhide, Wagon Train, Maverick, The Rifleman, Bronco Lane, Cheyenne, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke, Sugarfoot; movies starring John Wayne and Gary Cooper; and musicals featuring Molly Brown, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill. Indeed, this fare and Lawrence Welk were all I was allowed to watch. The Untouchables, The Roaring Twenties, Batman, Man From Uncle, Peyton Place and a host of sitcoms were banned in my home.
(Note, however, that I don’t include Bonanza in my Western lore collection — that’s not by mistake. My conservative Dad always claimed that Bonanza was a Hollywood propaganda vehicle created to insidiously brainwash unsuspecting viewers with dangerous, liberal attitudes. Curiously, when I finally saw Bonanza about ten years ago, I could see my dad’s point — although I still have trouble fathoming his politics.)
None of those Western myths I grew up with had anything to do with wilderness, however. From my early perspective, wilderness was the Last of the Mohicans; the forest primeval; deepest, darkest Africa; the jungles of Brazil; and the immense, forbidding woods where Hansel and Gretel got lost.
As a child, I didn’t associate the West with wilderness, but the 25-square-mile state recreation area near my house in Michigan qualified. Wilderness was beautiful, but overgrown, dark, wet, dank, dangerous, and full of flies, mosquitoes, snakes — and vegetation so dense it blocked your way. In essence, wilderness was where wild creatures triumphed and humans faltered.
MY MICHIGAN wilderness was a place of extreme heat and cold, a muggy marsh in summer, impassable in winter, a region where your feet were always wet and you sank hip deep in muck if you wandered off the beaten path. In the spring, it smelled sweet and earthy. In August, the hollows stank with rot and swamp gasses.
Cloaked in moss and awash with marsh, the place was reputed to be teeming with quicksand, sinkholes, and poison ivy, oak and sumac. Although adults admired the enormous trees and dense foliage from the vantage of the groomed parks on the perimeters, rational people avoided the region’s depths.
But I really loved that place. To me, that was wilderness: a place where worms and insects rained from the trees; where water snakes coiled around your ankles; where trails were never clear and you couldn’t possibly rest without being ravaged by mosquitoes, plagued by bees, or sucked dry by leeches. Wilderness was where people almost never went.
So how did the West fit into my youthful mythology?
In truth, I never thought about the landscape of the West until after I moved to Colorado when I was fifteen. But I did have notions about the region. My iconic West was an inhabited place, full of intriguing characters: mountain men, cowboys, ranchers, soldiers, gamblers, hustlers, outlaws, dance hall girls, prostitutes, and prospectors. I thought the West was where a person went if he wanted to be free — to escape the rules, laws, and stodgy, straight-laced spokesmen of civilization.
(Note, however, that I didn’t go west to escape anything, and was far too bookish to become an intriguing character; I merely enjoyed reading about them.)
My West wasn’t a particularly natural place, though. I imagined Westerners in saloons, hotels, and mines, on riverboats, wagon trains, and railroads. I fancied them surrounded by herds of cattle, pounding spikes into ties, working flumes, manning military posts, and shooting it out at the OK Corral.
WHICH MAKES ME WONDER. Does this mythology we establish as children make a difference in how we see things as adults? And if it does, what about other viewpoints?
Do people who grew up dreaming of a “Spin and Marty,” “My Friend Flicka,” Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, horse-riding, dude-ranching model of the West see the real place differently?
And what about kids who grew up imagining grand Western adventures: climbing, rafting, kayaking, pack-backing, hang-gliding, skiing, and snow boarding?
Or would-be sportsmen, who dreamed of deer and elk and rainbow trout — and of living off of the land and bringing down the most ferocious grizzly?
Ed’s childhood vision of the West was similar to mine, but more industrial. His mythological West was bustling — and full of fun things like trains, mines and mills.
Personally, I think our cherished myths are probably a huge factor in determining who we are. In essence, I suspect our fantasies shape our identity. But I’m not entirely sure where our fantasies come from. Why was I fascinated with westerns, wagon trains, pirates, and tales of yesteryear when I was a kid? Why did I love reading, hiking, swimming, woods and seashores?
Why did my sister love clothes, parties, dances, and travel? Why did she prefer romantic movies?
I suspect our fantasies are probably pretty innate — and therefore not particularly mutable. They evolve as we evolve and are a part of us. But perhaps we should think more about those mythologies — because I suspect that they often lead us astray.
Revisionist historians seem to believe exactly that. According to revisionist wisdom, our triumphalist view of western settlement presented a howling wilderness, when it was actually already populated by Indians, Hispanics, and mountain men — whom we quickly displaced.
Then in a rush to civilize the West we disregarded the wildlife and the environment, hunted the game to extinction, tore up the hillsides, contaminated the water, and destroyed the grasslands.
Of course, not everyone liked this new version of history.
And personally, I view it as a myth. But then again, I regard all history as a type of mythology.
Myths are generally defined as 1) traditional stories of gods and heroes; 2) popular beliefs (especially those associated with morally edifying or culturally illustrative stories, eg. the pioneer myth, the prostitute with the heart of gold myth, the rags to riches myth, the Horatio Alger myth, etc.); or 3) fictions and half-truths.
And that pretty much describes history as I know it, although history is, of course, supposed to be a record of real events.
REAL LIFE is not so easily recorded, however. So I figure it’s a mistake — or a myth if you will — to ever think of history as accurate — because you can’t make a carbon copy of life.
For example, say someone was writing a biography of you, and he put in details about your family, including the birthdates of your grandparents, along with interviews of your childhood neighbors, teachers, and friends. Then he went on to include essays you’d written in grade school, junior high, and college.
Are those things you would necessarily remember? Is that how you look at your life?
Of course not. You can’t capture a life, a society, or a culture on paper; you can merely record some details, and let the reader surmise the rest.
Furthermore, to make an organized, readable narrative, historians have to pick and choose details that illustrate their themes — and the result is nothing like real life.
Or does your real life have a theme?
Mine doesn’t (but if anyone out there would like to write my biography, I’d definitely prefer the triumphalist version).
Historical accuracy does start to shine through when different accounts accumulate, though. A President writes his memoirs; his wife writes hers; a member of the President’s cabinet shares his impressions; an authorized historian produces the official biography; another historian examines the President’s political career; and a political adversary produces a critical best-seller. With all of that contradictory information, a multi-dimensional picture of the man evolves — just like in real life.
Yet history is certainly not the same as being there. In a court of law, they’d call a lot of the third-party testimony historians collect hearsay and toss it out. That’s the nature of history, though: It’s not an original; it’s a reproduction.
History is also profoundly influenced by the opinions of the historian — often conveying the bigotry and bias of the author’s culture rather than the ambiance of his subject’s era.
Thus people write revisionist histories. Revisions are inevitable. Times change, new facts come to light — and you can’t just leave the smiling darkies in your history book (unless you want to sound hopelessly obsolete).
So scholars rewrite history.
In the 1960s, America integrated its schools. Then historians integrated our history. Revisionists added all sorts of things that traditional historians neglected: including feminism, minorities, and the environment.
WHEREUPON A LOT of college students — no doubt thrilled to study books that weren’t just compendiums of dates and thumbnail sketches of statesmen — disparaged “those rich white guy histories.”
And traditional historians — who were often the authors of those “rich, white guy histories” — lambasted the revisionists, claiming that they were insulting and disrespectful toward our founding fathers.
Then, several Republican politicians jumped on that band wagon, clamoring for text that would inspire our children — which pretty much proves that history is a myth.
But the revisionists set the record straight — kind of. Many of the best known revisionist historians live in and write about the West, and they added minority perspectives and environmental information to Western histories — plus a lot about oppression and exploitation on the part of white settlers.
But they tended to gloss over tribal differences, internecine fighting between Native Americans, and the like. And their emphasis was still on white Europeans. Although revisionists examined the relationships between minority groups and European settlers, minority culture, accomplishments, ideas, and individuals didn’t get much ink on their own.
Revisionist historians have introduced important new perspectives on history — and should probably be given some credit for the surge in wannabe Indians, prayer circles, Aztecan poetry and self-help books on how to assert yourself — but they’ve definitely left plenty of room for the post-revisionists.
HISTORY, POLITICS, AND LIFE: they’re all entangled in myth. You can’t just squeeze the myth out; you can’t even be sure what’s myth and what’s real.
The West has been a champion myth-maker, generating dreams of unspoiled wilderness and unprecedented opportunity, of freedom, settlement, and industry, of heroism, courage and adventure, of wealth and self-sufficiency.
And mythical or not, some Western accomplishments were real — and perhaps even glorious and heart-warming enough to satisfy a Republican congressman. But as the success of revisionist history clearly indicates, contentiousness also played a huge role in Western mythology. There were good guys and bad guys, cowboys and Indians, cattlemen and sheepherders.
But what kind of villains were Indians, cattlemen and sheepherders?
In our mythology, villains are every bit as important as heroes — or maybe even more important. But are they real? Or do we merely cast our rivals as villains?
Right now, Americans seem to be fighting over nearly everything, and I can’t help but wonder: Are we at it again?
Recently, I’ve read a lot of indictments of “peaceniks,” but if you ask me, pacifists make pretty questionable villains.
Right about now, however, I’ve got to admit that I’m starting to see Republicans as nefarious scoundrels. What are they thinking censoring lawful demonstrations, giving themselves tax breaks, and running up the deficit? And some of them are so war-struck, they want to bomb France. How are you supposed to live surrounded by angry, gun-loving, warriors who think everyone’s trying to tax them to death?
But then I read the Mountain Mail and realize that a lot of Republicans are just as upset with Democrats.
How did we get so polarized?
Well, one explanation does come to mind. When I listen to people talk, it doesn’t sound as if Republicans and Democrats are getting the same information.
Thus the overall intended moral of this letter/myth/history is that people have got to integrate a lot of accounts if they want to get the big picture.
BUT THAT’S HARDLY a new message. A letter from Dan Bishop in this very issue recommends several alternative sources to standard news, and Slim Wolfe has repeatedly recommended Democracy Now.
I concur. Read them all. But please don’t totally cut out the nightly news, FOX, or MSNBC (even if they turn your stomach). And by all means read The Wall Street Journal. (Although their editors have got some scary imperialist ideas, they sure can write.)
My point, though, is that Democrats should keep apprised of mainstream Republican discourse, and Republicans should listen to some of the alternative news programs. Otherwise there’s a real danger that Republicans and Democrats are going to end up incapable of communicating or negotiating with one another.