The Myth of the Cowboy
stick em up, partner
Many nations have a historical genre of hero from whom they derive some of their current cultural identity. These archetypes serve as mascots for an entire people group, and I have always been fascinated by them. While these mascots certainly don’t fully define that nation’s people, they provide a type of national heroic ideal. This ideal has less to do with the actual historical reality of that character and more to do with the myths that sprung up around them as they were given their specific hues of heroism by the poets, writers, and movie directors who honored them.
England, of course, has the knight in his suit of armor. Chivalrous, brave, ordered, competent, and intelligent.
While France has plenty of the same medieval material to derive their own mascot, no one can overstate the cultural power that Dumas wielded with his three musketeers. They are more frivolous than knights, but also more free, driven by bonds of relationship and emotion instead of honor and duty.
The Spanish have their misguided conquistador, the Greeks their morally duplicitous but heroic-without-even-trying-hard demigod and the Italians still try to hark back–somewhat disingenuously–to their Roman centurion. The Dutch have their daring ship captain on the high seas, Norwegians have their viking housecarl, and the Swiss, unfortunately, have a block of cheese.
But what of the United States? The optimist who sees a history of exploration, collaboration, and a love for a diverse geographic land would point to the first western settlers, trail guides, explorers and trappers as fitting mascot representatives of a people who believe in themselves, strike out in search of something greater, are extraordinarily self-sufficient, and operate to create the greatest benefit for themselves (even at the cost of others, i.e. native americans). Think Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Simon Kenton. I loved reading about these historical characters as a young kid in Ohio living right where these legends used to roam.
But, of course, the settler does not get the title as another stands far above him as the nation’s folklorish cultural identifier. Americans are cowboys. As solitary individualists, they have none of the cultured niceties of their English or French counterparts but a far greater embrace of that sense of freedom which is best defined by the confident cowboy riding out into a lawless unknown. Lately, I picked up a new leather-bound anthology: Western Classics. In it, I have rediscovered the heart and soul of my nation’s cultural heritage.
The cowboy lives boldly. They take risks, even when the odds are not in their favor, and they pull out the win through hard work and suffering, not by achieving an easy victory. They are stylish, but only as a side-effect to the functional utility of their outfit and equipment. They are deeply romantic, but do not entangle themselves in complicated schemes of love like a Jane Austin character. Rather, they pronounce their love clearly and in straightforward terms. The cowboy is mobile; as long as they have their horse and their sidearm, they can drift anywhere in total comfort. I still see the modern incarnation of the cowboy everywhere, especially in New York City.
Each of these national mascots have their strengths and weaknesses. We can praise the cowboy’s boldness while also looking skeptically at his selfishly individualistic lifestyle. If you must know, the knight in shining armor is certainly the overall best of the entire group as well as the most righteous (as can be seen here).
Yet, there is something of the spirit of the American cowboy that I am always drawn to. There is something in that spirit that I want to inhabit and experience my own life through. God has given us many good examples to follow, but he has given us even more mixed examples. They require a bit of effort on our part in order to apply their revelations well. There is certainly something valuable in the American cowboy spirit, and that's worth thinking about.
I will now ride off into the sunset.
I actually took a class in college on history and literature about the American West and cowboys particularly lol. Have you ever read The Virginian by Owen Wister? It’s the ultimate cowboy novel! Written by an author who was a close friend of Teddy Roosevelt and the book is dedicated to him, I believe.
Thought-provoking! I also grew up on Davey Crockett et al., and with all of the classic Clint Eastwood/John Wayne movies. My go-to accessory was a coonskin cap that my grandpa made me. (My grandpa was in what seems to me as the last generation of proper cowboys in Colorado; he was a horse rancher, a gunsmith, and a jeweler, on top of his day job of being a surgeon.)
What do you think about vigilantism? The cowboy has a lot in common with other hero-adventurer types (like the Dutch ship captains), but only when I think 'cowboy' do I think 'avenger' or something like that. Much of the cowboy media I consumed growing up tended to be focused on cowboys bringing various villains to justice, partly because the context of the Wild West didn't have functional police forces.
Did cowboys give us Marvel? When our police forces as a country got sophisticated enough to not need vigilantes, Marvel simply made the villains worse; again, it's the Wild West where some solitary, skilled individual needs to work outside of the law to save the day.
On that line of thought, I think Batman is the closest modern interpretation to the cowboy. Have you seen "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"? (Spoiler if so!) Let me cite Ross Douthat's gloss: the movie's "theme is the Old West’s transition into political modernity, passing from the rule of the gun (embodied by John Wayne’s Tom Doniphon) to the rule of the lawbook (embodied by Jimmy Stewart’s Ransom Stoddard).
In the movie, the transition can’t happen without a dose of chaos, a mixture of violence and deception. Lee Marvin’s outlaw, Valance, challenges the peaceable lawyer Stoddard to a duel; Doniphon saves the lawyer by shooting the outlaw from the shadows — and then the killing is mistakenly attributed to Stewart’s character, who is lionized for it and goes on to be a great statesman of the New West while the cowboy and his vigilante code recede."
"The hero [this town] deserves", destined to be a drifter, the one holding society back from chaos but often getting no credit - that seems to be a line running through pretty much everyone from the squeaky-clean Lone Ranger to the more dubious Stranger or Doniphon, with varied levels of anti-hero.
Which, not to oversimplify, also seems to be a rough type of Jesus (and to some extent the prophets). "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head"; the world's rejection, even now, and so forth.
To come full circle, and to get at what you're gesturing at here Micah - it might very well be the case that there's something uniquely Jesus-like in the type of the cowboy. Maybe God wants me to be more cowboy-like than I am now. I'm reminded of how John Wayne called everyone "pilgrim". We're not in this land for long, and we won't find what we're looking for here. Clint Eastwood's character was famously "the Stranger". We don't need a name here; we're given one in Christ, and it's just as well if the world thinks little of us (or not at all).
Two other lines of thought - why does no one in our culture actually live like a cowboy, if we claim to value it so much? and what about the cowboy ethic is tainted by sin? But this comment is too long as it stands, I'll stop there!