Myths of the West part I

Depending on where you grew up, you may or not realize a number of later-day myths about the West.  Many came from Hollywood.  Indians weren’t ‘bad guys’in the eyes of many settlers but of widely differing culture. Both groups struggled for existence in the wilderness.  Indians could be feared for their savagery but admired for their ethics. Ultimately, they were seen as simply impoverished neighbors in need of the Gospel.  But the Cowboy vs. Indian diorama was cast by early New York movie producers who were trying to portray the world as a larger version of NY problems, namely immigration.  East Coast Protestants after 1900 were nervous about large numbers of Catholic and Orthodox Southern Europeans invading their cities.  And eastern cities were where the nickelodeon movies (10 minute silent films) were popular. Needing a villain, the producers cast the Indians.  In actual fact, Indians had a stark choice—join the modern world of farming or stay as a tribe.  And since Indian hunter-gatherers had thin population, the government was somewhat baffled about a solution.  Let them live in a tribe on the reservation, a fly-in-amber preservation with few benefits? Or assimilate? The majority assimilated, beyond which they were not counted as Indians. The two main hurdles of assimilation were that Indians considered women to be responsible for agriculture and tribes were small fragmented groups (spawning an us-them mentality. ‘Them’ was also any other tribe.) “Religion” was often just a loose agglomeration of stories. Christianity had much appeal and the leading church that evangelized was Presbyterian, with Methodists, Catholics and Baptists close behind. Pan-Indian religion did not exist until 1918 when it was first preached in Oklahoma. Like Black Muslims, Indian religion practitioners have a ‘constructed belief.’

            How appealing was Christianity? Very.  It had social aspects too. When I ran across carefully-kept Army statistics of 79,000 killings of Indians from colonial times to 1890, compared to 2 million part-Indians in the 1890 census, it became apparent that romance overwhelmingly outdid warfare. I asked an employee, a member of the Ponca Tribal Council, if she knew any romantic Cowboy-Indian stories.  She immediately responded as if she was elated that someone finally asked.  “My Grandparents!” she said gleefully.  Grandfather was a young 15 yr-old cowhand who saw her 12 yr-old grandmother in the trading post one day.  He taught her English, to say “bacon” so she wouldn’t have to make snorting pig sounds to the grocer.  Her father and mother were delighted with the love affair and her dad gave her hand in marriage for a bride price of just 2 horses, all the young cowboy owned. When she found out, she was insulted.  Everyone should know that a good wife should bring 3 or more horses! But when Grandad told her he wanted to borrow his sister’s dress and get married at the Methodist church, she threw her arms around him and all was forgiven.  She and other girls had often hidden shyly behind bushes just to get a glimpse of the white brides coming out of the church in those fabulous gowns, treated like princesses who lived in dry and warm houses.  As it turned out, he did indeed build her a house which was just recently torn down next to US 177.  They were lovingly married over 60 years, attending that same Methodist church.

            Surely stories like this were played out all over our state, all over the United States for 400 years.  Of those who claim “white” on the census in Oklahoma, 30% have 1/16 or more Native American blood.