"Indian fighters, frontiersmen and gunfighters."Recall, you all, that 'gunfighter' is something literally created by the movies -- it was nothing out of real life. It's significant too, that Lemay agrees that Walter Scott's medieval protagonists are in this line, they too were created post the early American mythic prototypes, who were real, like Smith, Raleigh, Drake, Hawkins, all revered in Virginia.
From his book about Smith and the significance of his life and deeds:
"The major mythic hero of the Middle Ages and Renaissance -- and later, as numerous chapbooks, ballads, and Sir Walter Scott's novels testify -- was the chivalric kights, whose heroic battles sometimes occurred in great arenas, with the gentry and aristocracy looking on. America's indigenous heroes have been Indian fighters, frontiersmen, and gunfighters, such as John Mason, Thomas Church, Daniel Gookin, John Lovewell, Thomas Cresap, and Robert Rogers in the colonial period, and Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and Buffalo Bill Cody from the Revolution to the end of the nineteenth century. Their confrontations usually occurred in isolated wilderness areas or small towns. Captain John Smith fulfilled the heroic roles of both the European Renaissance and the American frontiersman. His life documents and illustrates the changing nature of heroic action. ...."It is of further significance that the images we hold of these heroes from the Revolution to the end of the century, are for the most part, fictional creations, rather than historical.
In this context re-reading Twain's "Essay on Chivalry" is even more illuminating.
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Both of us are feeling poorly still. El V's gums are all inflamed from the surgery, his sinuses ache, and he's suffering from allergies. I'm, well, I'm hurtin' like you know what. It's going to be a quiet holiday weekend here. Monday, we'll be with friends, but mostly it's going to be reading, writing = working. It could be worse.
