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Writin' The River

My little space on the 'net  to discuss …

Magical Mogollon

12/10/2021

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PictureThe Main Street of Mogollon is highly reminiscent of Bisbee, Az - complete with arroyo
​One of the singular joys of trekking the back roads in a Jeep is the treasures one finds; some are small, others larger, and sometimes one encounters an entire township of them. Such it was this past summer when my wife and I were visiting relatives in New Mexico. Hwy 159 just north of Glennwood, NM leads to the old ghost town of Mogollon. 
 
The journey is half the adventure, as Mogollon lies a half-dozen vertical miles off of Hwy 180 and it’s a narrow windy bit that can give those of delicate constitutions the vapors, but once there the town itself is a quaint village nestled in a deep valley that reminded me of Bisbee, AZ – another late 19th century mining town.
 
Founded in 1889, Mogollon enjoyed the typical boom of a mining town, followed by the bust that folllows; in the early 20th century the mines were producing wealth for all, but by WW1 they had virtually all been shut down.  The mines reopened during WW2 for a time, and even the Little Fanny Mine hung on the longest, producing until the early 1950s when it too shut down forever.
 
Now a berg of scarcely over 25 souls, Mogollon seems to hang on out of sheer will and memory of its former glory. There is a museum, a few private homes, the Purple Onion Cafe, and not much more.
 
But its remains honor the history of the boomtown mining camps of a hundred plus years ago, and there are historic structures and a cemetery at the top of the canyon that bears witness to the struggles of our forebears.  There are no t-shirts, really, or trinkets to buy, only the experience of visiting, which in a town like Mogollon, is more than enough.

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Restored Pioneer cabin
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The cemetery is a highlight of the trip!
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A Real Frontier Shootin' Iron!

6/27/2018

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PictureThe 1860 in stock trim
In the mid-nineteenth century, Colt nearly had a corner on the revolver market.  They were the biggest seller of pistols to the Army in the Civil War and were a popular choice for civilians who needed a weapon.  But the winds of change were blowing.
Competitor Smith and Wesson had bought the rights to a patent for bored-through cylinders that allowed the use of fixed (what we would think of as “regular”) ammunition.  The pistol market was about to change in a big way, and Colt found itself on the wrong side of the power curve.*
Colt needed to offer a cartridge version, but they had to avoid infringing on the patent - the solution was a crazy front-loading cartridge named for its creator, F. Alexander Thuer.  It was a metallic cartridge that loaded from the front of the gun, just like then-standard paper cartridges did. A special cylinder was required which contained a firing pin and an ejector - once the gun was fired empties were ejected out the front.  It was kind of a nifty idea, but it was far from ideal.
Today there is no true Thuer conversion; they remain a historical oddity and they were so cumbersome to load and shoot that few would be interested in having a reproduction, so the reproduction market has focused on the slightly later cartridge conversions.
Until now.  Gary Barnes, a gunsmith in TX who specializes in cartridge conversions of the old percussion revolvers, developed what he terms a “Modern Thuer.”
Gone is the front-loading metallic cartridge that relies on an unreliable friction fit to stay loaded. Still there is the loading ring with the tab. Gary uses a rimless cartridge (45 in my case) that loads from the rear through a simple cut in the recoil shield - no formal loading gate.  He also modifies the original percussion loading lever so that it pops right out to use as an ejector rather than attaching an ejector rod as was done on later conversions. This creates a weapon that very closely imitates the look of a historical Thuer conversion while deftly avoiding all the untenable features of its actual design.  Pretty ingenious, really.
I love the Colt 1860 Army.  It is, in my opinion, the finest revolver produced. Ever.  It’s small and handy, but powerful. It has horrible sights, but makes up for that by having the best balance and most natural pointing of any other revolver before or since.  It is an elegant weapon, for a more civilized time (okay, that may be a stretch).
The downside of a percussion revolver is the percussion ignition system.  You must load loose powder into each chamber, then a ball, then grease it for lubrication, and finally cap each nipple.  If all goes well it takes a few minutes to reload . . . if all doesn’t go well you get misfires. You can load paper cartridges to speed things up, and this helps quite a bit, but it’s still a somewhat tedious process.  After twenty years with my Colt, I found myself not shooting it so much because of the hassle. So I sent it off to Gary Barnes. Here’s what I got:
The Good, The Bad, & The Upshot
The Good
The good thing about this conversion is that it works!  It’s easy and pretty user-friendly; you load your cartridges, switch the conversion ring to “fire” and away you go.   Once fired, you flick the conversion ring to the other side, dismount the loading lever and use it to dislodge the fired cases.
This conversion is unique in that it maintains the overall lines and beauty of the original 1860 Army Colt and retains fidelity to the image of the original Thuer conversions without all the additional hassle of their peculiar loading system.
For SASS and NCOWS shooters, this is a super cool option because it’s NCOWS approved for its historical authenticity.
The Bad
There are only a couple of downsides to this conversion system - the first and most important is its ammunition. Because it uses a rimless 45 Colt, users must grind down cases before they can load them (or ask Gary to supply some brass!). Now, grinding the rim off of 45 Colt cases is an inconvenient project, but that’s not all - because what it means in the long run is that you can no longer use your fancy Lee or Dillon press to reload your ammo - the shell holders won’t grip your cases anymore!
You’re back to the old Lee Loader. Now I used one of these as my primary reloader for literally years, and it’s not a big stinkin’ deal, but man, it is a tedious process.  Is it more tedious than making paper cartridges for a percussion revolver? I think not . . . but it’s close. The saving grace here is that a tediously loaded brass cartridge is still more reliable on the range than a tediously loaded paper cartridge and percussion cap.
If I had my druthers, I’d prefer to see this chambered in a more standardized rimless cartridge so that one could reload on a press rather than using the Lee Loader. But I see why Barnes chose not to do it this way; using a standard modern rimless cartridge lowers the historical authenticity and could impede its acceptance among NCOWS and SASS shooters, who are likely his primary client pool.  Also, only the largest, like the 45 Winchester Magnum, would hold the volume of black powder to equal the original 44 Colt loads, and this brass is neither “frontier” nor commonly available. Neither of which would please many of the clientele Gary serves.

The Upshot
The upshot is that Gary Barnes has hit upon a brilliant new way to convert a percussion revolver to shoot cartridges that gives shooters a very authentic and historic looking weapon that closely imitates the original Thuer conversions without any of their liabilities in design.  Should you be in the market for such a conversion, drop Gary a line at his website http://cartridgeconversion.com/

​

*This is sort of funny, because Rollin White offered his idea to Colt in 1867, but Sam Colt turned it down.


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A "Modern Thuer" ready for action!
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Bowie & Battle Blades 4

9/19/2017

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​The Bagwell  (in honor of the anniversary of Bowie’s Sandbar Fight Sept 18, 1827)
 
Among Bowie knife enthusiasts, the name Bill Bagwell is uttered with a hushed reverence.  Bagwell is custom knifemaker in Texas who specializes in building large fighting bowie knives from scratch.  If one wants a bowie, especially a fighting bowie, and one wants the best money can buy, they call Bill Bagwell.
 
His most famous bowie is called the “Helles Belle,” and it’s a beauty.  Generally, it runs 11 -12” long in the blade, with a Spanish Notch, forward curved crossguard and a classic coffin-shaped handle.  If you order one from Bagwell, he will want to know a variety of things about you, including height and weight, and will ask for a tracing of your hand.  This will be your knife.
 
My Bagwell is not a custom job from The Man himself. Rather, it’s an authorized reproduction made by Camillus knives under his direction.  It’s no custom hand-forged knife by the Master, but it’s still a sweet blade.
 
This is the “Fortress” model, with a 10.5” blade.  The largest of the Camillus knives was the “Helles Belle,” named after its custom brethren, and each successive model got shorter in blade length.  Commonalities were a wooden coffin-shaped handle secured with exposed rivets and a wide crossguard that curves forward.  The shortest version, the Plainsman, sported a simple oval crossguard rather than the fighting quillions.
 
This is a single purpose fighting knife.  Upon holding this knife, one immediately feels the difference in balance - while the Cold Steel Natchez has a balance point around an inch forward of the crossguard, and the Musso’s is still further down the blade, the Fortress balances right at the crossguard - just immediately in front of it, actually.  This balance point is critical to how the blade handles in the hand, and with the point of balance this close to the user’s hand, it is lively and fast.  This is exactly the kind of quick handling knife one would want if one were to be dueling with blades.
 
The forward-curving crossguard is also built with blade-on-blade combat in mind.  The arms of the crossguard reach forward in a wide arc to enable its user to capture an opponent’s blade.  Rather than simply parrying an incoming cut, one could control the opponent’s blade and perhaps even wrest it away from him (or her). James Keating does a lot of such disarms in his bowie knife videos.  It takes a lot of practice and good timing, but it’s pretty slick when it works.
 
The Spanish notch is something of an oddity, and its purpose has been debated.  According to Bagwell and Keating, the Spanish notch is designed to catch the opponent’s blade, presumably as it slides down the edge in a parry.  Now, I confess I haven’t trained in its use, and remain a wee bit skeptical.  But I’ve got one if I need it.
 
Another feature of a true fighting bowie is the sharpened top clip.  Bagwell actually asserts that a proper bowie will have the edge run around the tip, and the sharpened tip is used combatively in a flicking back cut.  In a woods blade such a sharpened tip is a recipe for cutting oneself, but it’s just the ticket in a fighting knife.  Sadly, Camillus no longer makes these blades, so if you want one you’ll have to scour ebay.  They’re worth the hunt.

If you're interested in learning how to wield your new fighting knife, check out James Keating's video series at:    ​http://www.jamesakeating.com

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Bowie and Battle Blades 3

9/18/2017

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Picture
​  The Natchez
 
In this third installment of Battle Blades I’ll turn my attention to something of a hybrid knife, a fairly recent production bowie from the guys at Cold Steel.  It’s the Natchez Bowie, and it’s everything a bowie ought to be - big, wide, and sharp.
 
Cold Steel named their knife the Natchez because of the history of bowie fighting in the area of Natchez, Mississippi, invoking a romantic frontier ethos for this knife.  It is styled generally like the “primitive” bowie and its overall lines echo the shape of the Musso Bowie.  Its blade is 11 ¾” long and 1 ¾ “ wide.  It’s a big blade, fully capable of swinging, chopping, slicing . . . or even paddling, if need be.
 
There are four major differences between the CS Natchez and the Musso bowie.  Firstly is the tip; the CS Natchez’ tip is not nearly as thin and vulnerable to lateral forces as the earlier Musso design.  The tip still narrows to a needle point, but it is not upswept as on the Musso, which has the dual benefit of keeping more mass in the tip for structural rigidity, and also keeping the point in line with the wrist when the blade is extended, thus making this knife a more effective point thruster than the Musso design.
 
The second difference is the hilt.  The CS version uses a simple and straightforward oval crossguard rather than the large “S” shaped crossguard of the Musso design.  It’s really six of one, and a half dozen of another, as hilt design only comes into play when one is anticipating duelling against another blade, but it’s worth noting that CS makes a big deal of marketing this knife as a “fighting bowie” and then puts a regular utilitarian hilt on it.  Things that make you go Hmmnn.
 
The third difference between the Natchez and Musso is in balance.  The Natchez’ point of balance is just about one inch forward of the crossguard; this is still a fairly weight-forward balance, but it’s a far cry from my Musso version, which balances right at three inches forward of the crossguard!  Both have a distinctly blade-heavy feel, but the Musso feels like a large, cumbersome saber, whereas the Natchez feels simply like a big knife.  The weight is forward, but not overly so, and it’s still maneuverable.  I like this balance point very much.
 
The fourth difference can’t be seen or even felt, but I know it’s there, and is the reason I called this a “hybrid” knife in my introduction.  This third difference is one of construction.  Cold Steel uses a full-tang construction on many knives, such as their Trail Master bowies, but their Laredo and Natchez bowies (both “fighters”) do not use full tangs.  These two models use a weirdly designed cable system, in which a twisted cable attaches to a stub tang and is then tightened by a screw in the base of the grip.  This provides sufficient tension to provide enough structural integrity to replace a regular tang, although its durability is not well tested so far as I know. If one listens to the legions of internet commandos, this system is a miracle of cost-cutting engineering, an overbuilt design intended to save an ounce or so of quality steel per unit.  I used to own a Laredo, and have used the Natchez and not found either wanting, so perhaps this design is suitably strong.  I’m something of a traditionalist, however, and knowing that my tang is really a wire cable under tension leaves me feeling a little suspect about its capabilities.  In all likelihood the knife is probably completely dependable for 98+% of what real users will ask of it .  . . but I’d still prefer a full tang, even if it were a lower quality steel welded onto the blade.

​So in the end, I bought this knife thinking it might easily become my favorite user, and yet I find myself hesitating to really put it through its paces due to its tang design.  Another snag with this is the grip is not ideal for me; it’s comfortable enough, but if I had my ‘druthers I would replace the grip with a wooden one of a different shape . . . however, that’s not as easy as it sounds given the complicated tang design (grrr!).  So in the end, I love this knife, but it’s not my favorite.
Picture
Cable tang in the buff
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Bowies & Battle Blades pt. 2

6/18/2017

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Some time ago (geez, almost a year ago?!) I posted a blog entry about my bowie knives, promising to cover the group individually in some detail.  So here we go with the second installment as I go through my “collection” (I can’t bring myself to call it that without the ironic quotations), beginning with the most “frontier” of my knives.

Firstly is the largest of the group, a semi-custom by Plowshare Forge.  I say “semi-custom” because it’s a standard catalog item for the maker, but it’s also a handmade item that isn’t made until you order it, and you can make specific requests, so in that respect it’s custom. Plowshare Forge specializes in the rough and tumble world of “frontier” blades, blades that recreate the knives that our cowboys, or our doughboys and GIs would have had made for them by local smiths and actually carried into battle.  No high polish sheen here; these are hard core working blades, and he intends them to look the part.

This knife is a Musso Bowie, so named because the original upon which this is based was owned by a Joseph Musso.  He claimed this knife was THE knife owned by Bowie himself, which nearly all scholars dispute, but it’s still a super cool knife, which, in the world of Bowie knives, counts for at least as much as historical authenticity.  As they say in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”  The Musso bowie is almost certainly not the blade that James Bowie actually carried in his famous Sandbar Duel . . . but it’s what he should have had.

For those of you keeping score, this is the knife Emmett carries in my novel The Ballad of the Laurie Swain.  It’s big and bold, just like Emmett himself.  The blade is nearly 13 inches long, and almost 3 inches wide.  It has a large “S” guard and a strip of brass which runs almost the full length of the spine of the blade.  This brass strip has been the subject of some discussion in Bowie circles; I originally heard that it was supposed to be for parrying in knife dueling, with the idea that the soft brass would “catch” the opponent’s blade and open him up to a counter attack.  I don’t buy the “blade catcher” story, but I do think the brass strip is designed for parrying; the softer brass would absorb the shock of the blow and protect the more brittle (and more expensive) steel beneath.  Higher end knives often have a differential temper, in which the spine is softer than the edge, to accomplish the same thing, but that’s an awful lot to expect of a frontier blacksmith.

Do you remember the Bowie quote about what his knife should do?  Sharp enough to shave, broad enough to use as a paddle, heavy enough to chop like an ax, long enough to cut like a sword . . .  when one thinks of all those requirements, this knife embodies it all.

This blade is impressive.  It’s large and feels heavy.  The blade is not unduly thick, but the point of balance is far forward, about a solid 3 inches from the crossguard. This balance point makes the knife feel very blade-heavy, and it handles like a saber in the hand.  This is neither good nor bad, just an idiosyncrasy of the blade that differentiates it from others.   As a woods blade, a frontier knife depended upon to do camp chores (or row a small boat!) such a weight forward balance is an asset - it makes the knife a better chopper for cutting kindling or even making a shelter - this is the chopping like an ax part of Bowie’s famous recipe.  As for a fighting knife . . . well, such a forward balance point makes it slower in the hand.  Whether or not that would be a liability would depend heavily on what sort of weapon one were facing. If it were a saber, spear or lance, then not so much.  If it were a lighter, faster knife, it could be a problem.

One issue I have with the design is the tip.  It is SO thin and narrow! In some respects this is perhaps not a problem, and it is certainly an intentional design.  The tip has a dramatic upward sweep the terminates in a narrow tip that rises above the center line.  Combatively, this is designed to facilitate a back cut, as the top swedge of the blade is sharpened.  This is purely a combat feature; not only is not necessary in a field knife, but it could actually be a liability, as it creates an additional edge that can cut the user if one is inattentive.  Small, fine woodcraft cutting tasks become more complicated when the upper edge is sharp.  Also from a combative perspective, the tip is swept too far up to make an effective thrusting design; the actual tip only works when thrust along an arcing line, as in a back cut. In a straight thrust the point doesn’t pierce as effectively as it could, leaving it to the belly of the blade to cut its way in.  It’s certainly capable of a straight thrust, but this would force the knife to work against its own natural edge geometry and it wouldn’t pierce with nearly the efficacy that it could if the tip were positioned differently.

So my beef with this design centers on that narrow, narrow tip.  It is, in my opinion, structurally weak. While such a narrow tip ought to be good for thrusting, this one really isn’t because the tip is pointing up and off the center line. And  I can’t imagine trusting this skinny tip to hold up under any sort of hard use, especially lateral forces on the tip, whether that force is from prying dead wood from a log for kindling, or getting one’s tip stuck in the ribs of a human adversary (not that this is an issue for me).

For fans, this pattern of  knife is offered under the general title “primitive bowie” from places like Atlanta Cutlery and its ilk.  More recently, a highly polished version of this knife is featured in the film series The Expendables.  It is thrown to great combative effectiveness (don’t even get me started… perhaps I’ll write a separate blog just about throwing knives).  Still, this knife represents what a combat blade ought to be to a large percentage of the (probably male) viewership, and it certainly represents the epitome of a large frontier bowie knife.

To get your own:
Plowshare Forge:
http://plowshareforgeknives.blogspot.com/2009/07/musso-bowie.html
 
Expendables Bowie:
http://www.budk.com/Gil-Hibben-Expendables-Bowie-Knife-with-Sheath-16631
 


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Is Forsaken the Best Western Ever?!

4/22/2017

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Okay, so this title is a bit grandiose and frankly a cheap titillation to get you to read my review.  I’m leery of superlatives like this anyway, but the upshot is that Forsaken is a damned fine western, and I will say it’s one of the best of the breed.  It helps that it has some fine actors, most notably Keifer Sutherland playing the son of real-life father Donald Sutherland.  This made news as the first film in which both men acted opposite one another, and their performances make me hope they do so again.  Also notable are Demi Moore in the role of Mary Ellen, and Micheal Wincott as Gentleman Dave.

The action opens with John Henry Clayton returning to his old home to a cold reception by his father Reverend Clayton.  His mother has passed away, and the Reverend doesn’t take pains to hide his opinion of his “gunman” son.  John Henry left for the Civil War with promises to return to his family, and to his love Mary Ellen, but has been gone for years, with nothing but dramatic tales of his violent exploits returning home on his behalf.  Here is already a classic western motif, the Civil War soldier who was so scarred by battle that by the war’s end he knows no other life than one of violence.

John Henry claims to have put his guns away, which is also a standard motif for the gunfighter in many films.  His father has doubts, as do we, because of course, a peaceful man does not a western movie make.

As you might expect, there is a greedy rancher named James McCurdy (played by Brian Cox) who is forcefully buying up all the nearby properties, offering reasonable (or less so) payments, and bullying and forcing sales through violence when necessary.

Early in the film, John Henry meets his antagonists in the saloon, where he has gone to get a soft drink.  This scene plays out very similarly to the classic western Shane, which features a soda-drinking hero.  As an aside, Eastwood reprises this to a smaller extent in Unforgiven with the shootist who has given up drinking.  Here he meets Gentleman Dave, played by Michael Wincott.  The other gun hands think John Henry is going to be a pushover, but Gentleman Dave recognizes John Henry for who he is, and is not distracted by his apparent nonviolence. The Gentleman Dave character seems to me to be modeled on a Doc Holliday mold, and I am eager to see what else Wincott has played, or may play in the future.  Gentleman Dave is a hired gun, and is not afraid to shoot people, but he also distinguishes himself as being a businessman rather than simply bloodthirsty.

Forsaken follows a fairly genre standard approach in which John Henry stands up for a homesteader who is being bullied in town by McCurdy’s men.  He is beaten, but refuses to become violent himself.   This nonviolence will be tested, of course, and when McCurdy’s mean stab Reverend Clayton John Henry straps his guns on again.  He carries a Colt (of course), but before he heads to the saloon to confront McCurdy and his men he also stops in a gunshop and buys a second weapon.  Forgive my geeking out here, but he buys a LeMat, which was a French-made revolver that was used by the Confederacy during the Civil War.  It’s an impressive piece, with a nine shot cylinder and a 20 gauge shotgun barrel underneath the primary barrel. The inclusion of this piece is something of a historical anomaly, as these pistols were fairly rare and by the time of this film it would’ve been a highly unlikely choice for a secondhand purchase - but I’ll give it to them just because seeing one on film delighted me.

The fight ensues, and it’s a top-shelf, bar-jumping, table flipping movie gun battle. I won’t spoil too much, except to say that before it’s all over, only McCurdy himself (barricaded upstairs) and Gentleman Dave remain.  Gentleman Dave and John Henry find themselves on the street in what is shaping up to be a classic “high noon” kind of showdown.  John Henry tells Dave that he has no fight with him, that he could just walk away. Gentleman Dave counters that he accepted a contract with McCurdy, and his reputation would be ruined if he abandoned a client.  John Henry notes that he’s down to his LeMat, which is heavy and gives Dave an unfair advantage; he asks leave to go fetch his Colt.  Dave assents, and John Henry goes inside to get it. While there he encounters McCurdy and kills him, leaving only Gentleman Dave standing.

Here’s where the film subverts the audience expectations - now that his boss is dead, Gentleman Dave is free to walk away from the fight, and he does exactly this.  I think this is a brilliant twist on the genre and elevates this film above many others who simply tick off genre staples in predictable ways.

Finally, there is Mary Ellen, played by Demi Moore.  She plays this nicely, with understated makeup - while she is still a beautiful woman, she very much looks the part of an older frontier woman; the film resists the impulse to make her too beautiful.  She is married, having tired of waiting for John Henry to return, and the couple dance with the romantic tension that remains between them throughout the film.  Theirs is a beautiful story of unrequited love.

So Forsaken may not be the best western ever, but it’s certainly one worth watching, and if you’re a fan of the genre, probably owning. Go to Amazon and buy it now!

amzn.to/2ppjxPH​

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Death in the Western

2/16/2016

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​Westerns are back, in full force this year, and critics can’t stop talking, not only about the individual films, but also about the cultural phenomenon of westerns making (yet another) comeback.  “Back from the dead,” they all cry, as though this is an astounding feat.
 
It gives me some pause, as though the western genre is some redheaded stepchild that no one thought would amount to much, and everyone is amazed when one makes a good showing of itself.  But there is a history to this narrative, and part of the answer to why everyone is so surprised lies in the very nature of the genre itself.
 
Way back in the mid 1970s, a literary critic named John Cawelti wrote The Six-gun Mystique (1975), and part of his work was to declare the western dead – he writes that once a genre has been spoofed, it can no longer be taken seriously, and it will no longer resonate with audiences as it had previously.  He wrote this shortly after the brilliant Mel Brooks had done Blazing Saddles (1974), and if one watches this film and considers the historical moment in which Cawelti made this prediction, it makes perfect sense. But … he was wrong.  So wrong.  In fact, he was proven wrong almost immediately with the release of The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976), a film that much of Hollywood thought would tank because everyone knew the western was dead, and yet it became an instant classic, and remains so today. Oh, great film. He was also wrong in a larger sense, because Mel Brooks went on to spoof the horror genre with Young Frankenstein (1974) as well as the sci-fi genre with Spaceballs (1987), which had zero affect on the success of the continuing Star Wars franchise.  So the lingering question is why do so many critics, critics who likely have not read what is now an obscure reference work, seem to fall in line with his thinking?
 
I believe the answer lies in the very nature of the western genre and its attitude toward, and treatment of death.  The western invites ruminations on death and the transience of our worldly existence, and is in fact largely self-reflective about such matters by the very nature that the mythologized “West” was contained inside a historical period of roughly one generation.  The heroes of our frontier were born on the cups of a created West, and lived to see it decline and be taken over by civilization – indeed; many of the frontier icons were active agents in the civilization of the west, which is perhaps one of the genre’s best ironies.  The world that made people like Buffalo Bill Cody, William “Bat” Masterson, and Wyatt Earp famous was already gone long before their own deaths.  Masterson died as a newspaperman in NYC, and Earp positioned himself as a Subject Matter Expert in early films, following the mythologizing example of Buffalo Bill Cody, who became a caricature of himself and turned his own biography into a commodity for Eastern consumption.  In some ways, one might argue that he sacrificed his own actual history for the creation of a mythic history of the western frontiersman.
 
 
The West was never meant to live on.  Its demise was always already deeply embedded within its own story, and this is seen even in some famous examples of the genre.  Movies like Tom Horn (1980) and Monte Walsh (1970, 2003) explicitly address the passing of the frontier and the necessity or resistance of characters to change with the times.  Sometimes the movies eulogize the passing of a way of life, like the cowboy culture in the aforementioned films, or the codes of the gunfighter in The Shootist (1976), or even an entire way of life, as in Dances With Wolves (1990).
 
So it makes some sense that the progressivism that superceded the frontier, and even appears in many of the western films that acknowledge it, would be embraced by critics. Surely, the story goes, our contemporary culture is far too sophisticated to bother with such horse operas.  And yet, as critics ranging from Slotkin to White  have demonstrated, the western is a highly variable genre that manages to both remain true to its benchmark traits while also reinventing itself for new audiences. So ride on, cowboy, ride on.
 
 
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