The Vanishing Cowboy and the Unfading Indian: Manhood, Iconized Masculinity and National Identity in Larry Mcmurtry's Lonesome

The Vanishing Cowboy and the Unfading Indian: Manhood, Iconized Masculinity and National Identity in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and James Welch’s Fools Crow and The Heartsong of Charging Elk Beatriz Papaseit Fernández Ph.D. Dissertation Supervisor: Dr. Aránzazu Usandizaga Sáinz Department de Filologia Anglesa i Germanística Facultat de Lletres i Filosofia Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona January 2009 The Vanishing Cowboy and the Unfading Indian: Manhood, Iconized Masculinity and National Identity in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and James Welch’s Fools Crow and The Heartsong of Charging Elk By Beatriz Papaseit Fernández Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Barcelona, January 2009 This thesis is dedicated to my husband, Miguel Brand, whose support, patience, invaluable help and invigorating humour have allowed me to get through this work without losing my mental health ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Aránzazu Usandizaga, who has not only provided me with invaluable academic counselling but has also helped me in moments of disheartenment and self-doubt by showing constant faith in my work. I appreciate her as a reputed academic but, more importantly, I highly esteem her as a wonderful woman with whom I have shared much more than an academic project. This study would very likely not have been possible without the presence, support and enthusiasm of an exceptional friend, my dearest Pilar Escriche. Since the time we both decided to embark on our doctoral studies, we have shared moments of despair and pessimism but also hope, excitement and joy. I haven’t enough words to express my love and admiration for such a unique friend. My sincere thanks to my friend Josie Ponts for her faith in my work and for making it easier for me to carry my research in SDSU. Finally, my warmest gratitude to my family, to my mother Purita, my father Rafael and my sisters Pili and Carlota, who have had to put up with my extended periods of seclusion but have nonetheless always encouraged me to push forwards. CONTENTS Introduction 1 Notes 13 Chapter 1. Cowboys and Indians in the American West 15 The Cowboy, the Native American and the Lost Garden in the West 15 The White Male: Manhood, National Identity and the Evolution of the 26 Cowboy The Plains Indian Male: Blackfoot and Lakota Sioux Manhood and 54 Identity Notes 74 Chapter 2. Historical West and Fictionalized West 84 The White Men and Blackfoot Montana: Early Contacts, Lewis and 85 Clark and the Myth of the Journey of Discovery Larry McMurtry and James Welch’s Reconstruction of The Past: Great 103 Stories and Realist Stories Notes 135 Chapter 3. Masculinity and the Other in Lonesome Dove 140 The Huge Indian Haunting my Sleep: the Fetishished Indian 141 The Search For the Lost Self: the White Indian 166 Together We Ride towards the Sunset: the Idealised Buddy and the 177 Dream of Fraternity Notes 202 Chapter 4. Native American Identity, Masculinity and Mimicry in Fools Crow 206 and The Heartsong of Charging Elk Warrior Masculinity, Community-Focused Manhood and the 208 Reconstruction of Native American Male Identity The Darkness in the White Other: the Napikwan 234 I am François: Isolation, Acculturation and the Ambivalent Hybrid in 249 the Heartsong of Charging Elk Notes 273 Conclusion 278 Notes 289 Works Cited 290 1 INTRODUCTION He thought of his earlier attempts to create a past, a background, and ancestry –something that would tell him who he was. (Welch, The Death of Jim Loney 88) Call mounted up, feeling that he had begun to miss Ben Lily, a man he had never liked. Yet, a time or two in his life, he had even missed enemies: Kicking Bird, the Comanche chief, was one. Missing Gus McCrae, a lifelong friend, was one thing; missing Ben Lily was something else again. It made Call feel that he had outlived his time, something he had never expected to do. (McMurtry, Streets of Laredo 313) This study examines the representation of masculinity and national identity in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and James Welch’s Fools Crow and The Heartsong of Charging Elk . It particularly considers the meeting with the external Other and how this confrontation has shaped the construction of certain masculinity ideals for the Western hero and erased traditional notions of masculinity for the Native American male. My claims include firstly, that as long as the narrative of the Western cowboy sustains the collective dream of national identity, the white male will be trapped in the discourse of hegemonic masculinity. Second, that until this discourse is completely overcome, the myth of the Vanishing Indian will loom over the Native American male thus obstructing the configuration of his own identity. Third, that it is imperative to avoid an exclusive, essentialist definition of Native American identity which results in a hegemonic masculinity 1 similar to the one the Native American male is trying to escape from. 2 Written in 1985 and 1986 respectively, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove and James Welch’s Fools Crow mark a turning point in the novel of the American West. Both novels set forth a process of historical and mythological revision that expose simplistic stereotypes about pre-industrial America, national identity and masculinity ideals. In Fools Crow , this process starts with the erasure of white fabrications about Native American culture and the retrieval of Blackfoot oral history and culminates with the creation of a valid mythological model for the Native American population. McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove dives into the intricate network of historical, mythical and narrative constructions of the white West but produces quite a different result. Neither mythical nor antimythical, the novel reaches an inconclusive end of open wounds where the American male is shown in all his frailty and confusion. Both Lonesome Dove and Fools Crow are set in the decade of the 1870s, a time marked by the military defeat of the Native American tribes of the West and the rise of industrial white America. Although the Heartsong of Charging Elk is set two decades later and takes place out of the American context altogether, it is equally a product of this same historical background. At the core of the three stories lies the primeval encounter between the white American and the Native American male. This study examines this historical and narrative encounter in order to expose the pervasiveness of a particular Great Story about manhood as well as to bring to light the ensuing conflict between hegemonic masculinity and multi-layered male identity. According to historian and critic Robert F. Berkhofer, a “Great Story”, is the “whole past conceived as history”, and rests on the assumptions laid by a “Great Past”, or a “total past that can be understood and constituted as a history” ( Beyond 38). The narrative of the American cowboy and the Vanishing Indian is a Great Story and, as such, relies in a Great Past. The mythical cowboy appearing in this Story is a creation of the white Euramerican who partially shaped him from appropriated Native American manhood. Whilst 3 this hegemonic model contributed to create the American national identity, it also aggravated the inner conflicts of a saturated and conflicting male identity. Outside the scope of this Great Story, the Native American met the white man under completely different circumstances. The consequences of this encounter for the Native American male were the sudden collapse of the manhood model based on the warrior and the shaman, which forced the individual either towards acculturation or nihilism. McMurtry and Welch’s novels provide an excellent ground to analyse the complex interplay of the historical and cultural factors leading to the representation of American male cultural identities, since their gaze into the 19 th century male role models springs directly from late 20 th century male anxiety. Published in consecutive years, Lonesome Dove and Fools Crow appeared during the second term of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. On the international scene, that term was marked by the Iran-Contra scandal, the summits with newly elected Soviet Union president Gorbachev, and the rise of tensions in the Middle East. Domestic policy rested on Reagan’s reliance on the free market, the free individual and on his reticence against any intervention that would limit that freedom. Direct consequences of his policy were tax cutting regulation – since less taxes would encourage entrepreneurial activity- and a reduction of the welfare state system –since under welfare programmes the individual became a dependent subject, an “object of pity” (Diggins, Ronald Reagan 341). President Reagan’s profile and policy rebooted values like determination, hard-work, ambition and perseverance which are also to be found in the old masculinity model of the Self-Made Man. As Susan Jeffords sustains in Hard Bodies. Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era , amongst the most popular Hollywood films at the times figured those displaying the masculine hard body, the tough and defiant male figure that stood for fierce individualism. This hard body stood in direct confrontation with the soft body belonging to a debased and weaker male and often labelled as feminized or gay. The 80s also provided another masculinity model that had little to do 4 with this version of the masculine primitive. The Men’s Movement led by Robert Bly, Shepherd Bliss or Michael J. Meade advocated for a male prototype that rescued the virile qualities of the male without rejecting qualities like emotion, sensitivity or warmth. As Michael S. Kimmel noted in Manhood in America. A Cultural History, the 1980s search for a male role model and the expansion of a rigid masculinism set against a threatening feminized other –Latino, Asian, Native American, women themselves and any other “threatening” group- bore clear resemblance to late 19 th century attempts to define masculinity against the rise of a feminine force.

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