American Western Show Essay

Many American’s dreamt of opportunity, salvation, and riches by expanding out to the American West. The region we refer to as the “American West” enveloped into the idea of freedom and became a catalyst for the minds of many Americans and immigrants throughout history to venture west. However, Historian John Mack Faragher observes that we often imagine the West as a place where Americans could become fully independent or “self-reliant individuals.” But, by the late nineteenth century, Westerners discovered that they were not self-sufficient and highly dependent on the federal government. The West found itself highly dependent on assistance from the federal government in the regulation of race relations, the management of natural resources,

Masculine’s definition is stereotypically twisted. The myth and reality of the cowboy shaped today’s definition of masculinity because they have this high and strong structure they need to uphold. Masculinity is having the traditional acts as a man, such as being strong and secure. In today’s world man and women have two different mindsets. Even though we are all humans, our gender defines the way we should act due to how society makes it. The myth has affected males physically, emotionally and mentally. The idea is that they are supposed to act accordingly. In reality, everyone wants to grow up differently, so why would they be forced to act/be a certain way?

Have you ever been in a place of green with forests and animals everywhere? Well, where some of the Native Americans lived, there were such things. Native American tribes such as the Crow lived in the Great Plains. The Crow tribe of the Great Plains were nomadic and followed the buffalo migrations which provided their food. This tribe spent a good part of the year living in camps that could easily be dismantled and moved to follow the buffalo migrations. Other tribes of the plains were more sedentary. These tribes lived in permanent villages year round.

One of the chief culprits, he concludes, is Wyoming's manufacture of a false history around cowboy mythology. While the bucking horse is one of Wyoming's most identifiable symbols (it's on every Wyoming license plate), Western notes that Wyoming's key early settlers were, in fact, wealthy merchants who, from the beginning, had an

From 1864s to the beginning of the 20th century the American economy was transformed from free-market to monopoly and became a typical imperialist country. The economy was quick growing in the new ranges in the nation.This period saw the settlement of Anglo-American in the western fields, which were unlimited unmoving grounds possessed by Indians through The Homestead Act of 1862. The western boondocks had the capacity bring various improvements through commercializing of mining, rail route transport, and cultivating and dairy cattle organizations.

Christine Bold’s article, “The Rough Riders at Home and Abroad: Cody, Roosevelt, Remington, and the Imperialist Hero,” tracks the contributions of three important historical figures: William Cody, Theodore Roosevelt, and Frederic Remington, to the image of the Rough Riders and the “packaged version of the American West” and its influence during the Spanish-American War (Bold, 324). After offering background on the conflict, she first considers the contributions of William Cody and his Wild West Show to the Rough Riders. She details how Cody constructed a narrative

Following the Civil War, many Americans chose to settle west of the Mississippi river and shaped a distinct culture in this region. Generations later, this fascinating culture was transformed into the Wild West, a romanticized version of the lifestyle, to entertain the masses. The romanticized perception of the Wild West differs extensively from the reality of western settlement, but in some aspects mirrors the true western lifestyle in the post-Civil War period. Native Americans and cowboys, for instance, are portrayed rather inaccurately in the romanticized adaptations of the West, while the images of towns and settlements are similar in both the mythological Wild West and the reality of the western experience.

Cowboys riding into the sunset, gun duels outside of dark saloons, dangerous yet heroic bank robberies: these are just a few of the many images that come to mind regarding the Old West. Often referred to as the Wild West, it encompasses the period after the Civil War, during the later half of the 19th century, in the territories west of the Mississippi River. During this time, thousands of pioneers made their way westward in search of gold and silver, land, and better lives. It was then that the image of the national frontier hero developed. Individuals such as Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson, and Calamity Jane came to characterize the “Wild West”, transcending into the national perception of the West’s persona.

Have you ever wondered who the cowboys were; how they lived; or what they did? The American Cowboy's way of life was interesting and unique, and they contributed more to society than one might think. Besides looking after stock and driving cattle, they had to round up huge numbers of cattle for ranchers. This paper will examine the American cowboy's character, what they wore, the everyday things they did like driving cattle and branding calves and the lawlessness of the old west.

It is commonly known that the American Wild West took place in the 1860’s and dragged on all the way to the early 1900’s. Through this time period there were gunslingers, prostitutes, and overall just a rough life for the people. They had to make money in any way they could, but movies about the Wild West often get that wrong. They glorify it, and make it seem like this time period was the best and easy to live in, but in reality nothing was the way that these films make it seem. The Wild West in the 1860’s is portrayed inaccurately in Hollywood’s films.

The southwest is a region of the United States that makes our country unique. Without the southwest, we would undoubtedly lack the spirit, hope, beauty, and truth that this vast region brings to the rest of the United States as a whole. The southwest represents many things, such as journeying, racism, violence, the clashing and cooperation of cultures, and spirituality, as well as primitivism and pastoralism. All of these elements that the Southwest is comprised of is perhaps the reason why the rest of the country feels so captivated by it; why the southwest is considered a place to “find yourself” or to “regenerate”; and why literature and film regarding the Southwest has been and continues to be of the most popular genres. The western film was one of the most popular during the first half of the twentieth century. Audiences far and wide were mesmerized by actors such as John Wayne and Roy Rogers, and their roles as heroes who fought to tame the American frontier. This very concept, ‘taming the frontier’, gives way to a larger theme that was prevalent in many western films and literature of the southwest: ubi sunt, or rather “where are those who came before us?”. Director Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue portrays this idea better than any other western film; the concept of ubi sunt is undeniably the film’s overarching theme, clearly seen through its components.

Western, a genre of short stories that are set in the American west, primarily in the late of the 19th century (“Western” 598), and still being told until today by films, televisions, radio, and other art works. The major of moving to the west was because of the Homestead Act, 1862 (“U.S. Statues at Large” 392) which would give lands to people who stayed there for five years. This lead to a huge wave of immigrants moved to the West, and they had to face to many hardships and conflicts such as Indian attacks, tornadoes, blizzards, and illnesses.

Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in

In order to make an iconic western film, directors and filmmakers need to have three very important characteristics in their films. These traits are having a cowboy who roams the western frontier, a conflict between multiple groups, and a shootout to end the film. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly by Sergio Leone is considered one of the greatest western films of all time. Another Sergio Leone film

Kolodny explains that the captivity narrative and Indian War narrative have “long been appreciated by Americanists as an ongoing literary vehicle through which successive generations of Americans played out the symbolic dramas of westward migration” (330). Americans saw their fears of the wilderness conquered in captivity narratives and could then move into the West with their new knowledge. The captivity narrative can serve as a tale of westward expansion because, as Kolodny continues to explain, the captivity narrative represents “the mythopoetic prototype of the white man’s fantasied intimacy with the red...[where] Americans came to displace the Indian with the figure of the Indianized white man as the proper hero of the American wilderness” (330). The Indianized white man holds special knowledge of the wilderness and can straddle both civilization and the wilderness. Though captivity narratives may be somewhat different in their content from the classic Western tale popular while Crane wrote, they share an important figure: the rough frontier hero who understands and controls the land. Jack Potter in depicts the same kind of desire for westward migration as he comes to represent both Eastern and Western culture.