Europeans were still more attracted by Indians

Cowboy did become a frequent hero of tabloid novels and large-circulation newspapers in the 1870–80s, but, as Lonn Taylor convincingly showed, his image, although heroic, was not uniform. In the 1880s, he turns out to be more antisocial: “a rude, dangerous, recalcitrant and daring individualist,” in any case, when fate confronts him with a sedentary urban population. The new image was created by the middle class of Eastern America, where farming was very strong, and this image was very literary. This can be seen not only from a comparison of the cowboys with the medieval knights of Thomas Malory and the popularity of the one-on-one duel at exactly noon, like a knightly duel, but also from the European origin of some “western” topoi. Continue reading →