Volume: 4  Number: 1  Page: 53–60

Cowboys, Indians and Perky Waitresses: Contesting Tourist Myths of the American West

Jane Lancaster Visiting Scholar, Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University, Providence RI, USA

Emily Post, an upper-middle class American divorcée, not yet the byword for correct social behaviour, as her Blue Book of Etiquette was to be published seven years later, set off from New York in April 1915 to motor to San Francisco. Armed with many misconceptions about the Wild West, she took two evening dresses, a block and tackle and a solid silver picnic set, and planned to see how far she could go in comfort. Her attitudes changed dramatically as she drove west, and she wrote perceptively about the disjunction between myth and reality and the inherent theatricality of the tourist experience. This paper analyses three incidents in her journey: the meeting with a taciturn cowboy who hailed from Massachusetts, her assessment of the vaudeville nature of a Native American dance performance, and her sensation of being behind the scenes at a theatre as a trainload of passengers were served by the legendary Harvey Girls. The creation of the myth of the Old West was well under way in 1915; this micro-study of an elite traveller's reactions suggests that the myth did not go uncontested.

Keywords: American West, automobile, Harvey Girls, Native Americans, Emily Post, women travellers

© 2006 J. Lancaster

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