The Frontier Club : Popular Westerns and Cultural Power, 1880-1924

From Hollywood films to novels by Louis L'Amour and television series like Gunsmoke and Deadwood , the Wild West has exerted a powerful hold on the cultural imagination of the United States. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt's founding of the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887, Christine Bold traces the origins and evolution of the western genre, revealing how a group of prominent eastern aristocrats-a cadre she terms "the frontier club" -created and propagated the myth of the Wild West to advance their own self-interest as well as larger systems of privilege and exclusion. Mining institutional archives, personal papers, novels, and films, The Frontier Club excavates the hidden social, political, and financial interests behind the making of the modern western. It re-reads frontier-club fiction, most notably Owen Wister's bestseller The Virginian , in relation to federal policies and cultural spaces (from exclusive gentlemen's clubs to national parks to zoos); it casts new light on key clubmen, both the famous and the forgotten-figures such as Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Silas Weir Mitchell, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Frederic Remington-while recovering the women on whom these men depended and without whom this version of the popular West would not exist; and it considers the costs of the frontier-club formula, in terms of its impact on Indigenous peoples and its marginalization of other popular voices, including western writings by African Americans, women, and working-class white men. An engaging cultural history that covers print culture, big-game hunting, politics, immigration, Jim Crow segregation, and environmental conservation at the turn of the twentieth century, The Frontier Club provides a welcome new perspective on the enduring American myth of the Wild West. Cover 1 Contents 8 List of Illustrations 11 Acknowledgments 14 Preface 18 The Frontier Club Western: An Introduction 22 FRONTIER CLUBMEN 23 VIGILANTE CLUBMEN 25 THE VIRGINIAN 27 CODA 33 1. Boone and Crockett Writers 35 THE BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUB, 1893 36 BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUBMEN 39 Theodore Roosevelt 40 George Bird Grinnell 43 Owen Wister 48 Winthrop Chanler 50 Madison Grant 52 Henry Cabot Lodge 53 Caspar Whitney 54 Frederic Remington 56 THE BOOKS OF THE BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUB 58 Shaping the Voice 58 Clearing the Enclave 61 Writing the Frontier Club Western 64 Lobbying the Federal Government 69 CONCLUSION 74 2. Cowboys and Publishers 76 A VERY PROPER PHILADELPHIAN 78 Frontier Club Neurasthenia 79 A Man’s Gotta Do... 82 ARISTOCRATS OUT WEST 86 Frontier Club Investments 87 The Cheyenne Club 89 Cowboys and Vigilantes 94 SHOWDOWN ON PUBLISHERS’ ROW 101 Frontier Club Investments 101 The Frontier Club Western and the Literary Marketplace 103 THE FRONTIER CLUB VS. ALKALI IKE 111 CONCLUSION 115 3. Women in the Frontier Club 117 FRONTIER CLUB WOMEN AND FAMILIES 118 THE WISTER WOMEN 126 MOLLY WISTER 132 WOMEN’S SPACE IN THE FRONTIER CLUB WESTERN 138 CONCLUSION 148 4. Jim Crow and the Western 152 WISTER: “WHITE FOR A HUNDRED YEARS” 154 ROOSEVELT’S ROUGH RIDERS 163 The Black Rough Riders 163 Whitening the Rough Rider 166 REMINGTON: WITH THE EYE OF THE MIND 173 BLACK ROUGH RIDERS REDUX 176 Tearing a Piece off the Flag 176 “These cats was the original posse” 183 CONCLUSION 187 5. Immigrants and Indians 190 VANISHING ACTS 190 IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION 194 Owen Wister 199 Madison Grant 202 AMERICAN INDIAN ASSIMILATION 209 George Bird Grinnell 212 CONCLUSION 226 6. Outside the Frontier Club 228 PRINCESS CHINQUILLA 230 CHEEK BY JOWL 237 REWRITING 1902 244 CONCLUSION 252 Conclusion: Frontier Club Fingerprints 254 Notes 264 Works Cited 284 Index 304 A 304 B 304 C 306 D 307 E 308 F 308 G 308 H 309 I 310 J 311 K 311 L 311 M 312 N 313 O 313 P 313 R 314 S 315 T 316 U 317 V 317 W 317 Y 319 Z 319 "From Hollywood films to novels by Louis L'Amour and television series like Gunsmoke and Deadwood, the Wild West has exerted a powerful hold on the cultural imagination of the United States. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt's founding of the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887, Christine Bold traces the origins and evolution of the western genre, revealing how a group of prominent eastern aristocrats -- a cadre she terms "the frontier club"--Created and propagated the myth of the Wild West to advance their own self-interest as well as larger systems of privilege and exclusion. Mining institutional archives, personal papers, novels, and films, The Frontier Club excavates the hidden social, political, and financial interests behind the making of the modern western. It re-reads frontier-club fiction, most notably Owen Wister's bestseller The Virginian, in relation to federal policies and cultural spaces (from exclusive gentlemen's clubs to national parks to zoos); it casts new light on key clubmen, both the famous and the forgotten -- figures such as Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Silas Weir Mitchell, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Frederic Remington -- while recovering the women on whom these men depended and without whom this version of the popular West would not exist; and it considers the costs of the frontier-club formula, in terms of its impact on Indigenous peoples and its marginalization of other popular voices, including western writings by African Americans, women, and working-class white men. An engaging cultural history that covers print culture, big-game hunting, politics, immigration, Jim Crow segregation, and environmental conservation at the turn of the twentieth century, The Frontier Club provides a welcome new perspective on the enduring American myth of the Wild West."--Publisher's website "From Hollywood films to novels by Louis L'Amour and television series like Gunsmoke and Deadwood, the Wild West has exerted a powerful hold on the cultural imagination of the United States. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt's founding of the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887, Christine Bold traces the origins and evolution of the western genre, revealing how a group of prominent eastern aristocrats-a cadre she terms "the frontier club" -created and propagated the myth of the Wild West to advance their own self-interest as well as larger systems of privilege and exclusion. Mining institutional archives, personal papers, novels, and films, The Frontier Club excavates the hidden social, political, and financial interests behind the making of the modern western. It re-reads frontier-club fiction, most notably Owen Wister's bestseller The Virginian, in relation to federal policies and cultural spaces (from exclusive gentlemen's clubs to national parks to zoos); it casts new light on key clubmen, both the famous and the forgotten-figures such as Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Silas Weir Mitchell, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Frederic Remington-while recovering the women on whom these men depended and without whom this version of the popular West would not exist; and it considers the costs of the frontier-club formula, in terms of its impact on Indigenous peoples and its marginalization of other popular voices, including western writings by African Americans, women, and working-class white men. An engaging cultural history that covers print culture, big-game hunting, politics, immigration, Jim Crow segregation, and environmental conservation at the turn of the twentieth century, The Frontier Club provides a welcome new perspective on the enduring American myth of the Wild West."--Publisher's website. The Frontier Club is Christine Bold's name for the network of eastern aristocrats who created the western as we now most commonly know it. At the turn of the twentieth century, they yoked this most popular formula to their own elite causes-from big-game hunting to conservation, immigration restriction to Jim Crow segregation-and aligned themselves with cattle kings and "quality" publishers. This book tells the story of that cultural sleight-of-hand. It delves into institutional archives and personal papers to excavate the hidden social, political, and financial interests in the making of the modern western. It re-reads frontier club fiction in relation to the federal policies and cultural spaces (from exclusive gentlemen's clubs to national parks to zoos) with which it was intimately connected; the centerpiece is Owen Wister's bestselling novel The Virginian. It casts new light on nine key clubmen, both the famous and the forgotten-in addition to Wister, the network included Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Silas Weir Mitchell, Henry Cabot Lodge, Madison Grant, Caspar Whitney, Winthrop Chanler, and Frederic Remington-while recovering the women on whom these men depended and without whom this version of the popular West would not exist. Bold also considers some of the costs of the frontier club formula, in terms of its impact on Indigenous peoples and its marginalization of other popular voices, including western writings by African Americans, white women, and non-elite white men. The book ends by briefly charting the frontier club's enduring impression on western movies