The Mythical West demonstrates how major western figures, events, and places have been depicted in folk legends, art, literature, and popular culture. Browsing the A-to-Z entries takes readers on a journey across a literary and cultural range.



Honored by the American Library Association and the Library Journal as a best reference source, this book has something for everyone who cares about the cowboy. It covers cowboy work, food, frolic, art, poetry, music--you name it. Better still it covers cowboys all over North and South America. A must for cowboy buffs, the book will be invaluable to students researching the history or culture of the American West. A great gift for cowboys, cowgirls, and would-bes.

Using a wide range of historical examples, this book shows you how an historian does comparative frontier history. One chapter compares the Native American equestrian cultures of the American West and Argentina. Another critiques Spanish colonial military policy on the frontier. Others look at saloon culture, Mexican cowboys, frontier images, and recent studies about frontiers--all in comparative perspective. Anyone interested in cowboy fact and fancy, in frontier life anywhere in the Americas, or in learning how to "do" and understand comparative history will enjoy this book.

RTW [ReadTheWest]: I understand The Mythical West is a sequel to your popular Cowboy Encyclopedia. Tell us a little more about what we can expect from The Mythical West.

Richard Slatta: Yes, I did find the reception to The Cowboy Encyclopedia (1994) encouraging, so I opted to take up a sequel. The first book won best reference awards from the American Library Association and from Library Journal. That meant that it met the criteria of the target audience: reference librarians. But then W. W. Norton picked up the paperback rights (1996) and thus the book already reached a much broader audience of general readers. I hope to do the same thing with The Mythical West: meet the needs of high-level researchers but also entertain the general reader. Fortunately, ABC-CLIO, the nations leading reference book publisher, was interested in a second project.

After doing several books in search of historical fact, I came to realize that western myth has shaped the vision of many, many more people than have the historical realities I pursued. Given the importance and widespread impact of myth, then, I thought, why not explore the histories of these powerful myths? Maybe by exposing and labeling many of these myths, I can lead a few more people toward a factual rather than a mythologized conception of western American history. This experience has also further sensitized me to the power of historical fiction, so Im at work on a cowboy novel called "Pampa Jack." The novel provides a flexibility that non-fiction does not, so I can explore issues, characters, and elements outside the boundaries of historical documents.

RTW: What are some of the topics that are among your personal favorites?

Richard Slatta: Oh, thats a very tough question. I absolutely loved researching and writing this book-and finding quality writers to take up some of the topics. Probably what I enjoyed most was learning the historical roots of some the western myths that I grew up with. As a little kid in Wyoming, I recall seeing stuffed "jackalopes," but I never knew who came up with the idea or when it started. Hint: Think Douglas, Wyoming. Likewise, when I visited Hoover Dam, I took as gospel the stories of workers who fell and became buried deep in the concrete. Guy Rocha, Nevada State Archivist, wrote a wonderful entry debunking this myth. Certainly one of the most impressive and least known figures in the book is cowboy Jerry Van Meter. As a teenager, he made an epic 50-day ride horseback from Oklahoma to Hollywood. Patti Dickinson captured the journey wonderfully in her great book Hollywood the Hard Way: A Cowboys Journey. She wrote up a delightful summary of this fascinating tale for my encyclopedia.

I also enjoyed a day in perhaps the most mythologized spot in Texas (after the Alamo)-Luckenbach. I had as my guide my friend, a genuine Texas cowgirl, Danelle Crowley. In researching the towns history I uncovered an even earlier myth than that created by "Willie and Waylon and the boys." Again, to quote from the encyclopedia:

"Supposedly a German-born school teacher named Jacob Brodbeck (1821-1910) built an airplane in the 1860s. Local legend insists that he flew his machine successfully in 1863, some four decades before the Wright Brothers. A large coiled spring supposedly powered the propeller that flew his ship-shaped airplane. According to one account, he successfully flew his craft from a field some three miles east of Luckenbach on September 20, 1865. He reportedly flew at an altitude of twelve feet for a distance of about one hundred feet before crashing. Alas, only stories, no artifacts or drawings, remain to confirm the tale. Brodbeck is buried on his farm near Luckenbach."

On a more serious note, a talented history graduate student, Michael Smith, explored why so many massacres of Indians by soldiers come down to us in the history books as battles. I also explore the myth of the gun-toting cowboy. In fact, many ranchers and most towns enforced strict gun control laws-often extending to the confiscation of weapons at the city limits. Thus the book explores a wide range of topics, from the humorous to the very serious and contentious. So we try to cover the vast scope of the west from Aztlán, the mythical Aztec homeland in the Southwest, to Area 51.

RTW: Why is mythology so important to a culture?

Richard Slatta: Thats the first thing I try to lay out in the book. Let me quote a bit from the books introduction.

"This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, we print the legend. A newspaper editor delivers this famous line to Senator Ransom Stoddard (played by James Stewart) in the 1962 classic film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Stoddard, of course, did not actually kill the notorious gunman, but in the film the facts of history becomes less important than the legend that gives rise to his celebrity and political career. The Mythical West takes a contrary view, insisting that we should, as best we can, disentangle and distinguish between western fact and myth. Everyone from national politicians and lobby groups to corporate advertisers invokes western myth and imagery. Thus broadly held but faulty assumptions about the nation's historical past can shape real outcomes and have real consequences. Myth can even influence public policy, just as legend shaped the career of the fictional Ransom Stoddard. The overarching goal of this book is to identify, describe, and analyze many myths of the Old West and the New, so that readers can distinguish them from historical fact.

"The deaths of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry in 1998 made front page news and saddened millions of fans around the world. The grief over the passing of these singing cowboy heroes reminds us forcefully that the West has been Americas most potent source of myth and legend, since the days of the 49ers, George Armstrong Custer, and Buffalo Bill Cody. Furthermore, thanks to film, television, and other electronic mass media, including the Internet, western myths and legends now reach a worldwide audience.

"Myth is more powerful, pervasive, and alluring than history. Recognizing this reality, this encyclopedia focuses not on historical events but rather on the plethora of legendary, mythical images, events, people, and places associated with the Old West and the New. This book traces myths through folk legends, art, literature, and popular culture. For example, the discussion of Billy the Kid only briefly sketches the facts of his life as we know them. Rather it concentrates on the many myths and depictions that come down to us through novels and films."

RTW: Is there a defining characteristic among the heroes of the mythical West that sets them apart from legends found in other cultures?

Richard Slatta: Ah, what a great topic for another entire book!! The distinctiveness of the American West has long preoccupied me. Back in 1990 (Cowboys of the Americas), I compared cowboys of the American West, South America, Mexico, and Canada. In that research, I found important transnational similarities among the heroic characteristics attributed to cowboys: rugged individualism, loyalty (like Red Steagalls "Ride for the Brand"), bravery, patriotism, hard work, and a propensity for violence. Oh, all the cowboy heroes of all these countries are also white, even though in Latin America, most real cowboys were mestizos, blacks, and Indians. I continued the comparisons by profiling many different groups in The Cowboy Encyclopedia (1994).

Let me end with something of a paradox (yes, thats still two ducks, Groucho). On the one hand, I think that we do see similar transnational characteristics attributed to frontier heroes in many different cultures-I listed some of those above. However, each culture tends to consider their frontier heroes sui generis, unique to country X. Thats probably because a healthy dose of nationalism overlays the creation of national heroes in any country. Thus, while we usually consider our western heroes as unique, they are really very similar to those of other cultures of the Americas-and probably from other parts of the world as well-but thats well beyond my expertise.

I do think that the western American landscape is among the most mythologized regions of the earth. From the "Great American Desert" to a "Rocky Mountain High" to "Death Valley" and "Monument Valley," the awesome grandeur of the western landscape has inspired all sorts of mythical aspects and images. However, anyone visiting any of these places quickly falls under the same spell that inspired the myths. So, I do believe that "The Mythical West" as a place has a strong basis in reality. Recognizing the power of the western landscape, the encyclopedia opens with a photoessay of images that Ive taken all over the West that conveys this fundamental truth.