Where the West Begins: Debating Texas Identity

4. The "Garden of Eden" and the "Cowman's Paradise": Nineteenth-Century Myths Confront Twenty-First-Century Environmental Realities in West Texas

1 DrivingacrossWestTexas’sRollingPlainsandSouthPlainsregions,with acre after acre of cotton fields, one might form the impression of being in the American South. After all, cotton remains one of the South’s most enduring icons. Because of the Lone Star State’s diverse regional identities , however, such appearances can sometimes be illusory. In Texas west of the 100th meridian, the profusion of cotton, like racism and segregation , does not automatically indicate a southern identity. For example, Arizona is also a large producer of cotton, but few would claim that Arizona is part of the South. Ultimately, environment, like race, becomes an accurate indicator of regional identity. The American West is a place distinguished by a number of unique geographic and economic characteristics. For example, it is only west of the 100th meridian, says Donald Worster, that one finds both a “pastoral ” West (ranching) and a “hydraulic” West (irrigated farming). During the last 150 years, both the rancher and the farmer have become important Western icons, each for differing reasons. This chapter examines what happened in Texas beyond the 100th meridian when man’s idealized symbols confronted the region’s harsh environmental realities.1 In the nineteenth century, a number of national myths and symbols inspired settlers to move to the American West. The most famous myth was Manifest Destiny, which proclaimed that God had ordained Anglo 4 The “Garden of Eden” and the “Cowman’s Paradise” Nineteenth-Century Myths Confront Twenty-First-Century Environmental Realities in West Texas WHERE THE WEST BEGINS 100 Americans to conquer and settle the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. For many Americans the West represented a fresh start, a place of “rebirth” and “regeneration.” Period newspapers and books described the West as a “land of golden opportunity” with “limitless prosperity” and an “inexhaustible reservoir of natural wealth.” Western boosters characterized the region as the “Garden of Eden” and the “Cowman’s Paradise,” ideally suited for both farming and ranching.2 The main character in this “Garden of Eden” story was the farmer. Thomas Jefferson and Progressive-Era historian Frederick Jackson Turner believed that the educated, hard-working independent farmer embodied the essential characteristics necessary for sustaining a healthy American democracy. To Turner, the yeoman farmer represented the cutting edge of the nation’s “frontier democracy.” Even today, some still see the small, independent farmer as the backbone of America. Farm Aid, in its website and annual concerts featuring Willie Nelson and Neil Young, promotes those who till the soil as “the most resourceful, heroic Americans,” citizens who are “active in civic life,” “pillars of their communities ,” and “stewards of the land.”3 In another popular Western myth, the “Cowman’s Paradise,” the primary protagonists were the rancher and his cowboys. Theodore Roosevelt was convinced that the ranching life produced the ideal democratic role model for America, citizens whose experiences in the wild imbued them with “a capacity for [the] ‘strenuous’ life.” Roosevelt believed that those who worked cattle in the West were “a vigorous and masterful people” possessed of “energy, resolution, manliness, self-reliance, and a capacity for self-help,” characteristics “without which no race can do its life work well.” In 1902 author Owen Wister immortalized the cowhand in his classic western novel The Virginian. During the same period, artists Frederick Remington and Charles Russell celebrated cowboys in many of their paintings and sculptures. Beginning in the 1880s Buffalo Bill Cody popularized trick-riding, fast-roping trail hands in his immensely popular Wild West Show. In the twentieth century, Hollywood firmly cemented the cowboy’s place in the national mythology through hundreds of its western movies.4 101 MY THS CONFRONT ENVIRONMENTAL REALITIES While these narratives provided Americans with a sense of purpose and a national identity, they also did a great disservice to settlers moving westward. Because they were myths, these stories were not always grounded in reality, especially in western environmental realities. When settlers holding these popular notions encountered the often harsh and arid truths concerning life in the American West, the settler and the environment suffered. Today, both are still suffering.5 The State of Texas, where the legend of the rugged, free-spirited cowboy still rides tall in the saddle, proves an excellent case in point. For many, the cattleman remains an integral component of Lone Star identity . Those who work the range embody many admirable, defining traits, including self-reliance, bravery, loyalty, and a strong work ethic...