Spectacle, Photography, and the National Imagination
HIST 102 — United States History Since 1877 Chapter 18, Lecture 2
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Why Myth Matters
🔑 Key Concept
Myth is not the opposite of history.
Myth is how societies organize meaning after upheaval and violence.
By the 1880s–1890s, the West was not distant history:
Dispossession, coercion, and violence were recent
Americans needed narratives that made this past feel:
heroic, orderly, meaningful
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Myth in Historical Analysis
In scholarly usage, "myth" doesn't mean "false story." It means a narrative structure that gives meaning to events and identity to communities.
Myths are:
Selective: They include some facts, exclude others
Purposeful: They serve present needs
Powerful: They shape how people understand themselves
The "Mythic West" isn't lies about the West—it's a carefully constructed narrative that organized violence into a usable national story.
Guiding Question
How do nations remember events that are too recent, too violent, or too unsettling to leave unexplained?
The West wasn't ancient history in the 1880s—it was yesterday.
The people who made the myths lived through the events.
Timing the Mythic West
1890Armed Indigenous resistance largely crushed
1890Wounded Knee Massacre
1890Census declares frontier "closed"
1883–1913Buffalo Bill's Wild West tours nationally and internationally
🔑 Key Insight
Myth follows conquest; it does not precede it.
Myth emerges when explanation becomes necessary.
Part I
Buffalo Bill's Wild West
The Performance of the West
Buffalo Bill Cody
IMAGE PLACEHOLDER 400x500px
Search: "Buffalo Bill Cody portrait" or "William Cody Wild West poster"
Sources: Library of Congress, Buffalo Bill Center of the West
William Frederick Cody (1846–1917)
Army scout, buffalo hunter, showman
Created Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1883
Toured for 30 years across U.S. and Europe
Performed for millions
Not fringe entertainment— mass culture phenomenon
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Buffalo Bill's Wild West
Not a "circus"—Cody insisted it was an educational exhibition depicting "actual scenes" from frontier life.
Featured acts included:
Reenactments of "Indian attacks" on settlers
Sharpshooting demonstrations (Annie Oakley)
Stagecoach robberies
Pony Express riders
Cavalry charges
At its peak, the show employed 500+ performers and traveled by train with hundreds of horses.
What the Shows Accomplished
Violence → Adventure
Brutal conquest recast as thrilling drama
Conquest → Drama
Policy and warfare become entertainment
Frontier → Complete
Presented as resolved, finished, safe
Analytical Point
This is not fabrication—it is selective narrative construction.
Real people and events reorganized into a usable national story.
The Critical Tension
IMAGE PLACEHOLDER 400x350px
Search: "Sitting Bull Buffalo Bill" or "Sitting Bull Wild West show"
Sources: Library of Congress, Smithsonian
Native performers appeared on stage...
But only within a script they did not control
Including figures like Sitting Bull
Playing "the Indian" for paying audiences
Presence without power. Visibility without voice.
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Sitting Bull (Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake)
c. 1831–1890 — Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led resistance to U.S. expansion.
Military leader: At Little Bighorn (1876), Sitting Bull was the spiritual leader whose vision predicted victory over Custer.
Wild West performer: In 1885, Sitting Bull toured with Buffalo Bill for one season. He reportedly earned $50/week plus bonuses. He gave much of his earnings to homeless children he encountered in cities.
Death: Killed by Indian agency police in 1890, just weeks before Wounded Knee, during the Ghost Dance crisis.
His participation in the Wild West show represents the complex, constrained choices available to Native leaders after military defeat.
Part II
Photography and the Authority of "Truth"
The Camera as Evidence
Photography's Power
If Buffalo Bill offers spectacle, photography offers evidence.
Sources: Library of Congress, Northwestern University Digital Collections
Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868–1952)
Massive project: The North American Indian (1907–1930)
20 volumes of photographs
Over 40,000 images
Documented 80+ tribes
Central thesis: The "Vanishing Indian"
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The "Vanishing Indian" Thesis
Curtis explicitly stated his goal was to document Native peoples before they "vanished." His introduction claimed:
"The information that is to be gathered... respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost."
The assumption: Native cultures were dying and would soon be gone entirely. Curtis saw himself as a salvage operation, preserving what would otherwise disappear.
The problem: Native peoples weren't actually vanishing—they were adapting, surviving, and changing. Curtis's framing treated living people as already part of the past.
Curtis's Constructed "Authenticity"
Staged scenes in controlled settings
Removed modern clothing, tools, and environments
Provided "traditional" costumes and props
Presented Native life as timeless and already past
🔑 Critical Distinction
Curtis is not simply documenting disappearance.
He is aestheticizing it.
Photography does not merely record reality. It structures how reality is understood.
📝 Check Your Understanding
Quick Question
When Edward Curtis removed modern clothing and provided "traditional" costumes for his photographs, he was:
Simply documenting historical accuracy
Constructing a particular vision of "authentic" Native identity
Following standard scientific photography practices
Respecting the wishes of his subjects
Part III
Shared Assumptions
The Logic of Preservation and Assimilation
Late-19th-Century Reform Logic
Reformers broadly believed:
Native cultures were disappearing
That disappearance was inevitable
The perceived moral task was therefore twofold:
Preserve the Past
Photography, museums, ethnographic records
Salvage ethnography
Reshape the Future
Boarding schools, allotment, assimilation
Assimilation policy
The Shared Assumption
"Authentic 'Indianness' belongs to the past, not the present."
Key distinction to maintain:
Curtis is not advocating boarding schools
Boarding schools are not using Curtis directly
This connection is ideological and temporal, not causal.
They share a worldview, not a conspiracy.
Part IV
Manifest Destiny Through the Lens
Landscape Photography and Empty Land
Landscape Photography
IMAGE PLACEHOLDER 500x350px
Search: "Carleton Watkins Yosemite" or "Timothy O'Sullivan survey photograph" or "William Henry Jackson Yellowstone"
Sources: Library of Congress, National Archives
Emphasis on:
Scale and grandeur
Emptiness
Land without visible history
Absence as argument
The Camera's Implicit Messages
"The land is unused"
"Indigenous presence is past"
"Expansion is natural"
🔑 Key Insight
The camera makes conquest look peaceful.
Disappearance appears organic rather than coerced.
Part V
Spectacle + Photography = National Memory
Synthesis
Two Tools, One Function
Buffalo Bill
Entertainment Spectacle Drama
+
Photography
Evidence Documentation "Truth"
Together they:
Translate violence into culture
Transform conquest into identity
Replace moral uncertainty with narrative closure
Myth Is Structure
Myth is not falsehood. Myth is structure.
The Mythic West provided:
A way to organize confusing, violent events
Heroes and villains in clear roles
A sense of resolution and completion
A usable past for national identity
Conclusion: Memory, Not Explanation
By the 1890s, Americans possessed:
Stories
Images
Heroes
Visual Proof
What they constructed was not analysis, but memory:
Selective
Comforting
Durable
The West becomes not a site of conflict, but an origin story.
Looking Forward
The myths created in the 1880s–1890s shaped American identity for generations—through dime novels, Wild West shows, Hollywood films, and beyond.
Next: The Industrial Transformation of America
How the same decades that mythologized the frontier also created modern industrial capitalism.