Tales and Legends in Western American Literature

H E C T O R H . L E E California State College, Sonoma Tales and Legends in Western American Literature* Without intending any implication regarding contemporary persons of the female gender one might remark that on the American frontier and in the earlier phases of the Old West women were a very valuable asset, particularly those ladies of the so-called respectable variety. Typical of this shortage of a rare commodity is the story told in the old California mining town of Rough and Ready. Back in the 1850’s one lucky miner had a wife and several children; the rest of the town had none. Added to the miner’s good fortune was the fact that his wife was a gifted cook, and every Sunday afternoon all the other miners would drop in for a visit because they could always count on getting a generous sample of her very tasty pies. But fate took a hand in the game, and the miner died. With proper solemnity his body was carried up the hill to the graveyard, and after a few appropriate words he was duly shoveled in. On the way back to town one of the pallbearers sidled up to the widow and said, “I know it isn’t quite seemly of me to mention it now, but would you consider marrying me?” She twitched her black veil a little and said, “I’m sorry but you’re too late; the preacher has already asked me.” Such a yarn is native to the West and there were thousands like it —wandering tales which, like tumbleweeds, break loose and roll across the landscape scattering seeds for later yarn spinners to pick up. This is, of course, folklore. There were in fact lonely miners and loggers, sodbusters , cowboys and Indians, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, and fast-draw lawmen in the Old West; but we know them, not in their historical reality but as the folk, the story tellers, and the writers have imagined them to be. It is therefore the tales and legends of the West that give western literature its distinctive characteristics. *From a paper delivered at the Western Writers Conference, Utah State Uni­ versity, June 10-13, 1974. It is also issued as a cassette lecture in the Frontier Heritage series, 1974, by Everett/Edwards, Inc., Deland, Florida. 240 Western American Literature If we are to examine the cultural heritage of the American frontier, particularly as it is seen in the literature of the West, we must begin by reviewing our basic assumptions about cultural inheritance and how societal values are transmitted, and about the essential reality of what we call the West. Immediately we discover that we are dealing with traditional matter — the images of reality, the value systems born of both western idealism and pragmatism, and the romantic vision of a land bigger than life where peace and harmony of spirit could be fought for and won from a hostile environment. This is the substance of folk­ lore, and it is from the tales, legends and myths of a region or the societal enclaves within a region that the poet, novelist, or historian must draw if he is to reconcile the bare facts with the human truths that put flesh on the bones and beauty into the face of the image. In geography, time, and human life styles the Old West is like the amoeba: its form changes, its boundaries flow, its nucleus shifts, and yet it is always a living entity. Writers have declared that the Old West was and still is mainly a state of mind, that it became “a West that never was,” except in imagination. Its time span is elastic, dating perhaps from Lewis and Clark who started west in 1804, or the Alamo in 1836, or the gold rush of 1849-50, or the post Civil War expansion of the 1860’s; and its climax may have been the death of Custer in 1876 or the birth of the archetypal cowboy hero in Owen Wister’s The Virginian in 1902. No one cares to say for sure. Actually, time is of little matter here, for we are dealing with ideas that...