the West

Garrett Hagood
Contrast to the American Western Fantasy
Any American knows that what we hear on movies and in the news and what is in actuality are often times two completely different things. In the western era of the United States the history has been greatly distorted to be what Hollywood has made it out to be. We can see this in the contrast between the heroic cowboy that we all know and love and the real cowboy, the other western myths that have been proven to be fun, but yet untrue, and the contributing factors to how this idealization of the American cowboy came to be.
The word “cowboy” is one of freedom and adventure and brings to mind the image of a man dressed in all white defending a damsel in distress from the corrupted villains surrounding them. This is a fun image to behold in your mind, but there is a reason it sounds like it came from a children’s story book. Its not real. We are a country of dreamers and that’s a great thing, but you have to be able to discern the reality from the dream because a person living in ignorance cannot push progress forward. Most people believe that the cowboys of the west were freemen that did as they pleased, didn’t allow anyone to push them around, and altogether symbolized everything a hero should be. They are supposed to be decent folk that were respected and were respectful back. Looking at the historical evidence of the “cowboy” we know this is untrue. Cowboys were nothing special, they were simply men doing an honest day’s work most of the time for a wealthy rancher. Basically they were handi-men, the work they did was not glorious, and they defiantly did not carry around expensive white guns to fight off bandits. A cowboy was one of the lowliest professions a man could have. They did what they were told, got their hands dirty, and were paid very poorly for it. They were not a an embodiment of the American dream, unless the American dream was to be waist high in manure for hours on end in the sweltering sun getting paid barley enough to live off of. But I don’t think that’s what us dreamers had in mind.
The cowboy wasn’t the only thing wrong with the general knowledge about the western America; there is often a huge misconception about immigration and racism as well. The cowboy has managed to draw almost all the attention away from the other people who weren’t to terribly exiting. People didn’t often go to the fair to hear about the reality of the Chinese living conditions, no they wanted excitement, they wanted adventure. Now a days people don’t even realize how bad the Chinese had it. They were probably more hated at the time then black people were. I did not even know about the Chinese riots until this year. People actually rioted against the Chinese because they were willing to work for such low wages and stealing American jobs. Its fascinating to me when I found out about the Chinese exclusion act. I couldn’t believe that the Chinese were actually banned from America. That just goes to show how clouded the American knowledge of the west was.
With all these tall tales of the west one has to ask the question, “who started these?”, and a large portion of the stories came from buffalo bill. Buffalo bill was a man that was in love with the west and often visited and came back with marvelous stories. He was an entertainer that put on shows about the west. He often times portrayed the cowboy as the heroic adventurer that we all know and love today. The people of the time had nothing to compare his myth to, they just took it as fact. This became the birth of the great American cowboy.