{"id":1641,"date":"2017-09-26T08:38:38","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T13:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=1641"},"modified":"2017-09-26T08:39:57","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T13:39:57","slug":"rude-and-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2017\/09\/26\/rude-and-beautiful\/","title":{"rendered":"Rude and Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frederic Remington was a late 19th<\/sup> century artist whose goal was to study the \u201cWild West.\u201d Born into the Civil War and reconstructionist America, Remington\u2019s age was one of \u201cmodernized\u201d westward expansion including rail roads, telegraph, and other modernizing technology. \u00a0Consequentially, the \u201cOld West\u201d was starting to die out and Remington wanted to preserve it with \u201ca romantic fascination\u201d (Remington, F. (2010)).<\/p>\n

In an attempt to chronicle the American West, Remington was assigned by newspapers and publishers to accompany cowboys, Indians and cavalrymen (Remington, F. (2010)). This resulted in extensive time spent with many different types of individuals on the frontier. The result? Beautifully sketched images of the grand \u201cOld West\u201d of American folklore. Below, is an image from an 1897 book titled Drawings <\/em>by Frederic Remington. The caption below the image is \u201cThe Pony War-Dance\u201d (Remington, F. (1897)).<\/p>\n

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This sketch shows an unidentified group of Native Americans riding their horses in a choreographed dance. These war-dances were often common of the Plateau region, the Plains region, and the Eastern nomadic region of Native Americans (Bruno Nettl, et al.). Often the war dances were accompanied by instruments like \u201crattles incorporating deer-hooves\u201d (Bruno Nettl, et al., Plateau region) or \u201cstrips of rawhide to which deer-hooves were attached\u201d (Bruno Nettl, et al., Plain region) for the purpose of imitating the sound of horses. Whereas Remington\u2019s sketch shows a unique development of this tradition that includes the actual horses in a choreographed celebration. Such an act must have taken incredibly skill and control over the horses.<\/p>\n

What is perhaps most surprising about Remington\u2019s quest to chronical the \u201cOld West\u201d is his utter lack of descriptive documentation and context. There is no way to know which tribe is sketched in \u201cThe Pony War-Dance.\u201d The description at the start of Remington\u2019s Drawings<\/em> indicates that the dance is a<\/p>\n

\u201cwild fury of religious, that splendor of savagery crashes down to us from the Stone Age. If you will open the Old Testament where Joshua delayed the course of the sun, or they blew down a city wall with a trumpet, you will come upon the same spirit\u2026 time and the present world have no part here!\u201d (Remington, F. (1897)).<\/p>\n

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Stone Age savagery!? Are you kidding me? Horses were not introduced into the continent until 1519, at which point they had to escape from their owners and radiate up throughout the American Great Plains before the Native Americans could get to them (\u201cWild Horses and Native North American Wildlife\u201d). This tribe is a group who has found, captured, tamed, and then mastered horses to the point of being able to choreograph them into a<\/em> dance.<\/em> It is surprising how Remington and his commenter can see this sketch as anything but advanced.<\/p>\n

Of course, Remington\u2019s audience in 1897 was one who wanted to picture the folklore of a west that was rough and wild. For them, \u201ctales of the American frontier [began] to assume a haziness, an unreality, which makes them seem less history than folklore.\u201d (Remington, F. (2010)). It is understandable, considering Remington\u2019s goal and his audience\u2019s attitudes to American Indians possessing western land, that they would be portrayed in a uncivilized light. Nevertheless, one would think that Remington, having spent enough time with Native Americans to be able to sketch beautiful images like the Pony War-Dance, would have grown to respect the beauty and adaptability of their culture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–Brock Carlson<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Bruno Nettl, et al.\u00a0“Amerindian music.”\u00a0Grove Music Online<\/em>.\u00a0Oxford Music Online<\/em>.\u00a0Oxford University Press, accessed\u00a0September 26, 2017,\u00a0http:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/subscriber\/article\/grove\/music\/45405.<\/p>\n

Remington, F. (1897). Drawings<\/em>. R. H. Russell, New York.<\/p>\n

Remington, F. (2010).\u00a0Remington<\/em>. Retrieved from https:\/\/ebookcentral.proquest.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Wild Horses as Native North American Wildlife. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https:\/\/awionline.org\/content\/wild-horses-native-north-american-wildlife<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frederic Remington was a late 19th century artist whose goal was to study the \u201cWild West.\u201d Born into the Civil War and reconstructionist America, Remington\u2019s age was one of \u201cmodernized\u201d westward expansion including rail roads, telegraph, and other modernizing technology. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-qt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1641"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1647,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions\/1647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}