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Where the West Begins

By Dr. Todd Kerstetter

The masthead of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram proudly tells readers their news comes from "Where the West Begins." Fort Worth certainly has its share of western charm and characteristics, but does the West really begin here?Assuming it does, what does that mean and why does the paper brag about it on the front page? TCU students who take History 40733, "The American West," during the spring 2003 semester will address these and other questions while using some of Fort Worth's unique western resources.

Some notion of "the West" has floated around the American mind since before the United States of America existed as a nation. One could argue many of the first Europeans who came to the Americas sought the opportunity often associated with some Edenic paradise thought to exist to the west. The Puritans fled persecution in Europe to build a new society in America. Odd as it may sound to 21st-century ears, the East Coast used to be the West, at least for some people. In fact, one of the most famous and hotly debated theories of U.S. history claims that the process of western expansion made the nation and its people what they are. "The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development," wrote Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893. To Turner, the meeting point of savagery and civilization, what he liked to call the frontier, Americanized people and institutions as they adapted to new conditions. As settlers moved westward, the process repeated itself over the centuries. Innovation, adaptation, and invention characterized frontier life and influenced Americans and their institutions by giving them new and improved characteristics not shared by the rest of the world.

William Henry Jackson, _Chipeta Falls - Black Cañon of the Gunnison_, 1883, Amon Carter Museum.

Turner's frontier hypothesis has much to commend it; but, it also has shortcomings and raises questions. For one, Turner's West wasn't static--it kept moving with the frontier line. Historians such as Walter Prescott Webb provided solutions for that problem by attempting to define where the West actually began and by identifying clearly western characteristics. In The Great Plains, Webb identified an "institutional fault" at the 98th meridian. There, he argued, eastern civilization based on land, water, and timber broke down. People who moved west of the line, where water and timber became scarce, had to reinvent civilization to survive. This brings us closer to answering our question about the West. Fort Worth sits a little east of Webb's institutional fault, but making the short drive from Dallas to Fort Worth, motorists can notice a subtle change in vegetation and landscape. Those who continue driving west on the interstate to Weatherford can't help seeing they've entered what most would consider a typical western landscape. I would add a personal observation to strengthen Webb's argument. Years ago on a cross-country bicycle trip I felt a wave of exhilaration upon reaching the Jefferson National Expansion Monument at St. Louis--the Gateway Arch erected to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. My companion and I had reached the gateway to the West. Yet after cycling through Missouri, western Iowa, and part of Nebraska, the lush, verdant landscape told a different story. Not until we pedaled west of Norfolk, Nebraska, entered the Sand Hills region (arid, scrubby cattle country), and saw a tumbleweed did the landscape confirm that this was, indeed, the West. We had entered the neighborhood of the 98th meridian.

A bigger problem with Turner's hypothesis stems from its omission of North America's first settlers and the price they paid for "civilization." Free land? Hardly. During the 1980s and 1990s, growing numbers of historians of the American West focused on adjusting, in some cases attacking, Turner's idea. One of these historians carefully omitted "frontier" from his 644-page history of the West and others referred jokingly to the limits and dangers of the "f" word. So-called new western historians wrote about American Indians, women, the environment, and other people and factors that had been invisible in works written by Turner and his followers. As a result, we now enjoy a more complete understanding of how the West was made and how it contributed to the larger stories of U.S. history.

Enough with the historians-many people do not need some academic to tell them about the West. The West exists not only as a region on a map; it exists as a construct in people's minds. Thanks to Hollywood and the enduring popularity of the Western film genre, people around the world know something about the American West. Or at least they think they know something about the West. Western films make great entertainment, but they provide an incomplete understanding of history. Whatever shortcomings they may have, they say a lot about how popular culture embraced the West and used it to create an American mythology.

Frederic Remington, The Rattlesnake, 1909, Amon Carter Museum.

Typically, they involved poignant conflicts between good and evil where thegood guy wore a white hat and headed for a showdown with the bad guy wearing a black one. They also frequently told the story of U.S. expansion in Turnerian terms through conflicts between savagery (Indians) and civilization (cowboys, soldiers, or settlers). Even recent Westerns such as Dances with Wolves that told a story sympathetic to American Indians by using Indian actors speaking Lakota (thereby taking a step toward new western history), clung to a fundamentally Turnerian plot--civilization expanded westward erasing the frontier and with it Indian ways of life. Little Big Man lampooned stereotypical notions of the West and recent works by Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals, Skins) have taken significant strides toward changing stereotypes of American Indians.

Films, though, were not the first medium to use the West for entertainment. Wild West shows, most notably Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, tapped the West to appeal to crowds as early as the 1880s. Part circus, part morality play, part theater, Buffalo Bill's troupe toured the United States-and Europe-taking the drama of western expansion with it. William "Buffalo Bill" Cody lent the show an air of authenticity by hiring American Indian actors. Tatanka Iyotake, better known to you and me as Sitting Bull, appeared as himself night after night in a reenactment of Custer's Last Stand (or, as Sitting Bull probably knew it, the fight at the Greasy Grass). Hollywood, incidentally, frequently relied on white actors in makeup to play Indian parts. Authenticity aside, Cody and his imitators capitalized on a widespread fascination with the American West. In addition to portraying Indian battles, the show featured displays of marksmanship and exotic creatures associated with the West such as bison. Something about the West led crowds elsewhere to part with hard-earned money to see its stories and to soak up its atmosphere.

Even before Wild West shows, artists who traveled to the West found an eager market for the images they created. Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, and Karl Bodmer, to name just a few, capitalized on fascination with the region little known in the East. Their depictions of stunning landscapes, American Indians, and exotic animals gave many Easterners their first and only glimpses of the West. Through their paintings, these artists helped build an imaginary West in the minds of people who had never been there.

By almost any definition, Fort Worth lies in the West and during the spring 2003 semester TCU students will be able to take advantage of the city's unique location and resources to study the region. Fort Worth sits near Webb's institutional fault. Its creation dates to the establishment of a military camp built to facilitate the conquest of Indian Country. The famous cattle drives of the post-Civil War era passed through town boosting its economic development and inspiring the nickname Cowtown. Later, the trails ended in Fort Worth and it became a center of livestock processing. Thanks to visionary community leaders who celebrated and preserved the city's western heritage, students who enroll in History 40733, "The American West," will be able to exploit the city's unexcelled resources. A field trip to the Amon Carter Museum will allow students to examine firsthand some of the finest examples of Western art. In addition to works by Bodmer, Bierstadt, and Moran, the Carter holds anoutstanding collection of works by Charles Russell and Frederick Remington. The museum also holds a stunning collection of photographs by W.H. Jackson and others who captured stunning scenery and created a valuable documentary record of western expansion. In the stockyards, students can examine side-by-side museum representations of the area's past and ways popular culture has packaged the Old West for current consumption. Other Fort Worth museums offering insight to the city's and the West's past include the Sid Richardson Collection of Western Art, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, and the Cattle Raisers Museum. Students desiring an even deeper immersion into the West, or a different approach to the subject, can enroll in Professor Charlotte Hogg's English 20583, "The Western." Together, TCU and Fort Worth provide an unparalleled opportunity to begin studying the West where the West begins. Albert Bierstadt, Sunrise, Yosemite Valley ca. 1870, Amon Carter Museum.