1 00:00:01,520 --> 00:00:06,520 Speaker 1: Famed cowboy artist Charlie Russell and fellow Montana photographer La 2 00:00:06,640 --> 00:00:08,000 Speaker 1: Huffman had. 3 00:00:07,880 --> 00:00:09,160 Speaker 2: A message for the future. 4 00:00:10,160 --> 00:00:10,879 Speaker 3: But what was it? 5 00:00:12,160 --> 00:00:34,519 Speaker 1: I'm Dan Flores and this is the American West. What 6 00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:38,400 Speaker 1: were Charlie Russell and La Huffman trying to tell us? 7 00:00:39,880 --> 00:00:43,200 Speaker 1: In nineteen oh eight, three years after the freshly minted 8 00:00:43,280 --> 00:00:47,440 Speaker 1: state of Montana had passed a law requiring its veterinarians 9 00:00:47,479 --> 00:00:50,360 Speaker 1: to infect any captured wolves that came their way with 10 00:00:50,560 --> 00:00:54,000 Speaker 1: sarcoptic mange and then released them to spread the disease 11 00:00:54,080 --> 00:00:58,120 Speaker 1: into the wild population in Great Falls, the cowboy artist 12 00:00:58,200 --> 00:01:01,960 Speaker 1: Charlie Russell sat down scribble a letter to his friend, 13 00:01:02,200 --> 00:01:04,320 Speaker 1: the writer Frank Byrd Linderman. 14 00:01:04,640 --> 00:01:06,399 Speaker 2: As Russell reflexively did. 15 00:01:06,280 --> 00:01:09,480 Speaker 1: When he wrote almost anyone, he appended a quick and 16 00:01:09,640 --> 00:01:12,880 Speaker 1: wonderful little watercolor sketch to the top of the page. 17 00:01:13,560 --> 00:01:17,280 Speaker 1: Knowing that Linderman's own sympathies were similar to his, Russell 18 00:01:17,360 --> 00:01:21,840 Speaker 1: drew a simple little ecological set piece about the West, 19 00:01:22,080 --> 00:01:25,920 Speaker 1: featuring a buffalo carcass with a wolf standing over it. 20 00:01:26,480 --> 00:01:27,679 Speaker 2: Then he added a. 21 00:01:27,680 --> 00:01:32,119 Speaker 1: Bit of doggerel, you sleeping relic of the past. If 22 00:01:32,200 --> 00:01:35,679 Speaker 1: I but had my way, I'd clothe your frame with 23 00:01:35,920 --> 00:01:38,440 Speaker 1: meat and hide and wake you up today. 24 00:01:38,920 --> 00:01:42,520 Speaker 2: In his classic work of mythology. 25 00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:46,440 Speaker 1: The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell once laid 26 00:01:46,480 --> 00:01:51,040 Speaker 1: out a template for how human myths tend to describe 27 00:01:51,040 --> 00:01:56,160 Speaker 1: their heroes. Minor details vary, but as Campbell's titles suggested, 28 00:01:56,360 --> 00:02:00,360 Speaker 1: there are some universals in our mythological stories. The hero 29 00:02:00,600 --> 00:02:04,000 Speaker 1: is a person of action, usually a raid against some 30 00:02:04,240 --> 00:02:09,840 Speaker 1: development the culture sees as threatening. The hero is kind, tolerant, 31 00:02:10,080 --> 00:02:13,960 Speaker 1: generous to a fault, therefore a defender of the underdog. 32 00:02:14,320 --> 00:02:18,799 Speaker 1: The hero ultimately becomes an emblem, a kind of personification 33 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:23,000 Speaker 1: of how the culture imagines itself. As the threat unfolds, 34 00:02:23,120 --> 00:02:28,120 Speaker 1: the hero often embarks on a journey, sometimes literal, sometimes mystical, 35 00:02:28,320 --> 00:02:32,600 Speaker 1: sometimes psychic, to some distant and dangerous place. The hero 36 00:02:32,800 --> 00:02:37,480 Speaker 1: then returns with special knowledge and makes it widely available. 37 00:02:37,840 --> 00:02:41,679 Speaker 1: At that point, the hero becomes a visionary of the future, 38 00:02:42,040 --> 00:02:53,720 Speaker 1: and the vision becomes synonymous with the wider culture. Charles 39 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:57,760 Speaker 1: Marion Russell would have never thought of himself as a hero, 40 00:02:58,200 --> 00:03:02,679 Speaker 1: although in Joseph Campbell's Churn, that sort of self abignation 41 00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:06,560 Speaker 1: would be one of the qualities of proper hero usually has, 42 00:03:07,200 --> 00:03:10,760 Speaker 1: but that's hardly the most compelling evidence for Russell's candidacy. 43 00:03:11,280 --> 00:03:15,160 Speaker 1: More than a century after his death, Charlie Russell continues 44 00:03:15,200 --> 00:03:18,680 Speaker 1: to come across as almost saintly, and that despite a 45 00:03:18,760 --> 00:03:22,320 Speaker 1: spate of fairly recent works on him, a steady output 46 00:03:22,360 --> 00:03:26,880 Speaker 1: from the Russell scholar historian Brian Dippy, a splendid Russell 47 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:31,120 Speaker 1: biography by John Tolliver, who has written about everyone from 48 00:03:31,320 --> 00:03:35,880 Speaker 1: Edgar Rice Burroughs Think Tarzan to George Byrd Grennell, and 49 00:03:36,080 --> 00:03:40,320 Speaker 1: even a recent catalog resmee of all of Russell's works 50 00:03:40,480 --> 00:03:46,120 Speaker 1: by historian Byron Price. Russell's cowboying friend C. J Ellis 51 00:03:46,280 --> 00:03:50,280 Speaker 1: summed up Charlie's endearing qualities as a friend or around 52 00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:54,320 Speaker 1: a campfire this way, straight as a string. Don't think 53 00:03:54,320 --> 00:03:56,880 Speaker 1: he ever did a man a dirty trick in his life, 54 00:03:56,920 --> 00:03:57,400 Speaker 1: And if he. 55 00:03:57,400 --> 00:03:59,720 Speaker 2: Ever had an enemy, I never met him. 56 00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:03,560 Speaker 1: As to heroic action, Russell may have been a little 57 00:04:03,680 --> 00:04:07,240 Speaker 1: less of an authentic frontiersman than we or he like 58 00:04:07,320 --> 00:04:10,440 Speaker 1: to think, but he got in close anyway. His hero's 59 00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:13,400 Speaker 1: journey to a distant and dangerous place, in his case, 60 00:04:13,480 --> 00:04:17,800 Speaker 1: Montana Territory. In the closing decades of the frontier wasn't 61 00:04:17,839 --> 00:04:22,240 Speaker 1: exactly Odysseus like. His trip was a three day train 62 00:04:22,360 --> 00:04:26,440 Speaker 1: ride from Saint Louis to Helena. And despite Frank Linderman's 63 00:04:26,560 --> 00:04:29,719 Speaker 1: argument that there had been but little change on the 64 00:04:29,800 --> 00:04:33,479 Speaker 1: plains when Russell came, as Linderman said, in fact, when 65 00:04:33,560 --> 00:04:36,840 Speaker 1: Charlie got up the Missouri in eighteen eighty, the Little 66 00:04:36,920 --> 00:04:40,719 Speaker 1: Big Horn Battle was four years in the past. Buffalo 67 00:04:40,920 --> 00:04:44,440 Speaker 1: and all the grand wildlife of the American Serengetti were 68 00:04:44,480 --> 00:04:49,760 Speaker 1: still there, but literally, as Russell watched, they became straggling remnants. 69 00:04:50,080 --> 00:04:54,720 Speaker 1: Russell never once saw his favorite scene, the Indian buffalo 70 00:04:54,800 --> 00:04:57,680 Speaker 1: hunt in the flesh. He did live with a genuine 71 00:04:57,680 --> 00:05:00,400 Speaker 1: mountain man, Jake Hoover, for a while, but he was 72 00:05:00,480 --> 00:05:05,599 Speaker 1: never won himself, and despite his lifelong love for portraying wolves, 73 00:05:05,839 --> 00:05:09,720 Speaker 1: Russell early on does seem to have poisoned a few 74 00:05:09,720 --> 00:05:14,159 Speaker 1: of them for ranchers. That name history has given him, 75 00:05:14,200 --> 00:05:18,160 Speaker 1: the cowboy Artist. Well, Charlie was something less than a 76 00:05:18,200 --> 00:05:22,200 Speaker 1: trail boss. Actually, he was for a time a horse wrangler, 77 00:05:22,240 --> 00:05:25,320 Speaker 1: a job usually left to boys, and as we now know, 78 00:05:25,680 --> 00:05:29,280 Speaker 1: Charlie never really spent that winter living with the Indians, 79 00:05:29,560 --> 00:05:32,839 Speaker 1: Although he did live in a cabin in Canadian Blackfoot 80 00:05:32,880 --> 00:05:35,320 Speaker 1: country with a buddy a couple of summer months in 81 00:05:35,400 --> 00:05:37,760 Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, and he may have had an Indian 82 00:05:37,880 --> 00:05:42,080 Speaker 1: girlfriend while there. The writer George Bird Grenell lived with 83 00:05:42,160 --> 00:05:46,919 Speaker 1: Western Indians, so did his ecologist cousin Joseph Barnell. The 84 00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:51,200 Speaker 1: Yale photographer Walter McClintock lived with Indians, in his case, 85 00:05:51,240 --> 00:05:55,720 Speaker 1: with the Blackfeet. Charlie Russell's ancestors, the Bents of Colorado, 86 00:05:55,960 --> 00:05:59,880 Speaker 1: spent most of their careers residing among Indians and married 87 00:06:00,120 --> 00:06:01,280 Speaker 1: women in the tribes. 88 00:06:01,640 --> 00:06:03,839 Speaker 2: Russell did most certainly visit. 89 00:06:03,680 --> 00:06:06,160 Speaker 1: And like Native people all his life, and he even 90 00:06:06,200 --> 00:06:08,320 Speaker 1: had a yen for dressing up as an Indian from 91 00:06:08,360 --> 00:06:11,200 Speaker 1: time to time. But to say he actually spent much 92 00:06:11,279 --> 00:06:14,719 Speaker 1: time living with the Indians is about like saying a 93 00:06:14,800 --> 00:06:18,320 Speaker 1: couple of trips to Yellowstone qualifies you as a Grizzly 94 00:06:18,360 --> 00:06:22,640 Speaker 1: bear biologist. If Russell was not so much a man 95 00:06:22,680 --> 00:06:27,200 Speaker 1: of action as a portrayer and active imaginer of action, 96 00:06:27,600 --> 00:06:29,839 Speaker 1: if in fact he had more in common with a 97 00:06:29,920 --> 00:06:33,599 Speaker 1: Hollywood star like Brett Hart than with a genuine frontier 98 00:06:33,680 --> 00:06:37,200 Speaker 1: rancher like Granville Stewart, he was at least where the 99 00:06:37,279 --> 00:06:41,800 Speaker 1: action was. Charlie Russell saw the West with all its 100 00:06:41,839 --> 00:06:45,600 Speaker 1: bark on That was unlike his dandified competition in painting 101 00:06:45,640 --> 00:06:49,200 Speaker 1: the West, the New Yorker Frederick Remington and the Hoboken, 102 00:06:49,279 --> 00:06:53,640 Speaker 1: New Jersey painter Charles Schreivogel. Russell was on the scene 103 00:06:53,720 --> 00:06:56,880 Speaker 1: in the West for forty six years. True enough, with 104 00:06:57,040 --> 00:06:59,960 Speaker 1: Chevrol winters back home in Saint Louis at the start, 105 00:06:59,800 --> 00:07:03,120 Speaker 1: and a bit of wintering in southern California thrown in 106 00:07:03,160 --> 00:07:06,279 Speaker 1: at the end, and Montana, at least by the standards 107 00:07:06,279 --> 00:07:09,440 Speaker 1: of the rest of the world, has always been synonymous 108 00:07:09,520 --> 00:07:12,400 Speaker 1: enough with remoteness and the menace of the wild to 109 00:07:12,560 --> 00:07:15,280 Speaker 1: serve as a dangerous land at the end of a 110 00:07:15,320 --> 00:07:18,720 Speaker 1: long journey. But maybe the most important thing about Russell's 111 00:07:18,720 --> 00:07:22,080 Speaker 1: time in the West was the change he witnessed. That 112 00:07:22,520 --> 00:07:31,960 Speaker 1: is what gave him his special insight. As to Charlie 113 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:36,280 Speaker 1: Russell's status as a Western cultural hero, no one could 114 00:07:36,400 --> 00:07:39,960 Speaker 1: argue with that. The northern Rockies and northern plains from 115 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:43,440 Speaker 1: Wyoming to Alberta, in some respects continues to see it 116 00:07:43,480 --> 00:07:47,400 Speaker 1: sailed through Russell's eyes. Everything imaginable in this part of 117 00:07:47,400 --> 00:07:50,640 Speaker 1: the West is named for him, including most significantly the 118 00:07:50,760 --> 00:07:51,360 Speaker 1: Charles M. 119 00:07:51,480 --> 00:07:54,240 Speaker 2: Russell National Wildlife Refuge on the Missouri River. 120 00:07:54,640 --> 00:07:57,920 Speaker 1: The buffalo skull design he added to his signature on 121 00:07:58,080 --> 00:08:01,960 Speaker 1: all his paintings after eighteen eighty seven, and then patented 122 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:05,160 Speaker 1: with the US Patent Office in nineteen o seven, adorns 123 00:08:05,280 --> 00:08:09,560 Speaker 1: every standard issue automotive license played in Montana. To this day, 124 00:08:10,040 --> 00:08:13,600 Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years after his arrival, Charlie Russell 125 00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:17,080 Speaker 1: is the patron saint of the Northern West. The only 126 00:08:17,160 --> 00:08:19,640 Speaker 1: other part of the West that takes an artist as 127 00:08:19,680 --> 00:08:24,280 Speaker 1: its patron figure is the Southwest, where Georgia O'Keefe holds 128 00:08:24,320 --> 00:08:27,920 Speaker 1: that honor with a very different vision of the world. 129 00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:32,600 Speaker 1: Part the twenty first century west into South and north. 130 00:08:32,880 --> 00:08:37,040 Speaker 1: In fact, the strange allure of the mystical desert versus 131 00:08:37,080 --> 00:08:40,079 Speaker 1: a man's world of big sky and animals. 132 00:08:40,320 --> 00:08:41,800 Speaker 2: That's an imagining that. 133 00:08:41,920 --> 00:08:46,080 Speaker 1: Still works, for which we largely have Georgia O'Keefe and 134 00:08:46,200 --> 00:08:50,360 Speaker 1: Charlie Russell to thank. Was Charlie Russell a hero in 135 00:08:50,400 --> 00:08:54,320 Speaker 1: the Joseph Campbell definition, then, I think he was. His 136 00:08:54,480 --> 00:08:57,920 Speaker 1: marks are high in all the categories, but especially so 137 00:08:58,160 --> 00:09:01,640 Speaker 1: I've come to believe in the most important one of all, 138 00:09:02,160 --> 00:09:07,080 Speaker 1: the vision. Russell left more than four thousand paintings and sculptures, 139 00:09:07,240 --> 00:09:11,280 Speaker 1: and many thousands more illustrations and sketches, since he appended 140 00:09:11,320 --> 00:09:14,680 Speaker 1: sketches to every letter he sent to friends, and there's 141 00:09:14,880 --> 00:09:19,800 Speaker 1: personal explanation to accompany the art letters verse, plus the 142 00:09:19,880 --> 00:09:23,680 Speaker 1: stories in the part fictional books he wrote like trails 143 00:09:23,800 --> 00:09:27,280 Speaker 1: plowed under. Almost everyone who has more than a passing 144 00:09:27,360 --> 00:09:31,160 Speaker 1: acquaintance with Russell, especially the biographers who've worked so hard 145 00:09:31,160 --> 00:09:34,600 Speaker 1: on him, believes there was a central theme in his 146 00:09:34,880 --> 00:09:38,200 Speaker 1: art and in his life. So in the end, what 147 00:09:38,600 --> 00:09:41,439 Speaker 1: is it that Charlie Russell was trying to tell us? 148 00:09:41,920 --> 00:09:45,959 Speaker 1: And equally important, are we still willing to pay attention? 149 00:09:46,320 --> 00:09:49,720 Speaker 1: Or do we just metaphorically pad him finally on the 150 00:09:49,800 --> 00:09:52,640 Speaker 1: head and then turn away. The art history of the 151 00:09:52,640 --> 00:09:56,240 Speaker 1: West has long lumped Russell in with other painters like 152 00:09:56,400 --> 00:10:01,000 Speaker 1: Frederick Remington and fame novelist Owen Wister and Zane Gray 153 00:10:01,280 --> 00:10:05,240 Speaker 1: to make up what's known as the Nostalgic West School, 154 00:10:05,679 --> 00:10:08,160 Speaker 1: every one of them, along with another figure I want 155 00:10:08,200 --> 00:10:13,120 Speaker 1: to introduce shortly experience the immediate aftermath of the Frontier 156 00:10:13,360 --> 00:10:16,959 Speaker 1: or the Old West, and subsequently reacted as if they 157 00:10:17,040 --> 00:10:20,480 Speaker 1: ought to hold a lifetime grudge against their parents for 158 00:10:20,600 --> 00:10:23,600 Speaker 1: waiting too long to give them birth. All of them 159 00:10:23,679 --> 00:10:26,600 Speaker 1: seemed to think they had gotten to graze the real 160 00:10:26,880 --> 00:10:30,400 Speaker 1: true thing, only to see it snatched from their grasp. 161 00:10:30,960 --> 00:10:33,040 Speaker 1: Most of them devoted the rest of their lives to 162 00:10:33,200 --> 00:10:37,480 Speaker 1: swatting at fading ghosts with pen and brush. Are begging 163 00:10:37,520 --> 00:10:41,200 Speaker 1: the Hollywood movie makers to capture the real true thing 164 00:10:41,440 --> 00:10:45,960 Speaker 1: in film before even the memory of it evaporated. In 165 00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:49,720 Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, I knew many people 166 00:10:49,760 --> 00:10:53,080 Speaker 1: who were nostalgic like this for the Sixties, for the 167 00:10:53,200 --> 00:10:58,720 Speaker 1: political engagement, the environmental awakening, the woodstock like music scenes, 168 00:10:58,880 --> 00:11:02,839 Speaker 1: the sense of liberal in that era. Sixties nostalgia is 169 00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:06,679 Speaker 1: pretty much evaporated by now, and even old West Frontier 170 00:11:06,800 --> 00:11:11,760 Speaker 1: nostalgia occupies a narrow niche these days. But it's still there, 171 00:11:11,880 --> 00:11:14,400 Speaker 1: and it might be useful to know why and to 172 00:11:14,559 --> 00:11:23,720 Speaker 1: understand how someone like Charlie Russell fits. If you take 173 00:11:23,800 --> 00:11:27,040 Speaker 1: the twenty thousand foot view of the story of the 174 00:11:27,080 --> 00:11:31,040 Speaker 1: American West, what seems to be true is that nostalgic 175 00:11:31,120 --> 00:11:35,440 Speaker 1: painters and writers and Hollywood directors made the Frontier West 176 00:11:35,720 --> 00:11:40,760 Speaker 1: and its pre twentieth century landscape sacred because they feared 177 00:11:40,960 --> 00:11:45,120 Speaker 1: it was one final reach for humanity's life in nature. 178 00:11:45,720 --> 00:11:49,839 Speaker 1: They were afraid that coming civilization in fact, was going 179 00:11:49,960 --> 00:11:54,000 Speaker 1: to be feminizing. In Owen Wister's case, the author of 180 00:11:54,080 --> 00:11:57,920 Speaker 1: The Virginian literally was in flight from his mother when 181 00:11:57,960 --> 00:12:01,480 Speaker 1: he went west. Zane Gray, who may have understood the 182 00:12:01,520 --> 00:12:05,960 Speaker 1: implications of Darwinism more than the rest, recognized what was 183 00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:09,800 Speaker 1: at stake more clearly than any of them. Gray wrote 184 00:12:09,840 --> 00:12:13,600 Speaker 1: that he believed his Western journeys and the reverie he 185 00:12:13,760 --> 00:12:18,120 Speaker 1: experienced while alone in the Western landscape were, as he wrote, 186 00:12:18,400 --> 00:12:23,480 Speaker 1: fleeting trances that belonged to the savage past. I was 187 00:12:23,520 --> 00:12:27,440 Speaker 1: a savage I could bring back, for a brief instant, 188 00:12:27,640 --> 00:12:31,960 Speaker 1: the sensitory state of the progenitors of the human race, 189 00:12:32,760 --> 00:12:36,080 Speaker 1: nostalgia for the loss of a place like the West 190 00:12:36,240 --> 00:12:39,720 Speaker 1: and a phase of history like the Frontier. Thus was 191 00:12:39,760 --> 00:12:43,600 Speaker 1: a shocked recognition of an existence that was falling behind 192 00:12:43,679 --> 00:12:47,480 Speaker 1: us in the passage of time, our ancient connection to 193 00:12:47,640 --> 00:12:51,920 Speaker 1: our life and nature. No wonder, there was cultural anxiety 194 00:12:52,040 --> 00:12:55,240 Speaker 1: about that the West had offered the world one last 195 00:12:55,360 --> 00:12:58,800 Speaker 1: chance to live as natural men. And women responding to 196 00:12:58,880 --> 00:13:02,319 Speaker 1: the rhythms of nature more than the strictures of society. 197 00:13:02,840 --> 00:13:05,480 Speaker 1: Then twentieth century America had. 198 00:13:05,360 --> 00:13:07,320 Speaker 2: Rudely withdrawn the offer. 199 00:13:07,960 --> 00:13:11,640 Speaker 1: The anxiety of that is a primary reason why half 200 00:13:11,720 --> 00:13:15,520 Speaker 1: the movies Hollywood made in the first sixty five years 201 00:13:15,520 --> 00:13:20,040 Speaker 1: of the twentieth century were Westerns, why early television was 202 00:13:20,120 --> 00:13:24,559 Speaker 1: carried by Westerns, why even modern art largely emerged when 203 00:13:24,760 --> 00:13:29,800 Speaker 1: Paul Gogan turned Pablo Picasso onto the possibilities of so 204 00:13:29,880 --> 00:13:34,280 Speaker 1: called primitive art. All these purveyors of knowledge and change 205 00:13:34,360 --> 00:13:37,560 Speaker 1: were close enough to the time to since the profound 206 00:13:37,640 --> 00:13:41,800 Speaker 1: psychological shock of eradicating in a few decades a world. 207 00:13:41,960 --> 00:13:46,520 Speaker 1: It had taken evolution in unwritten human history millions of 208 00:13:46,640 --> 00:13:51,360 Speaker 1: years in millennia to create, then exit that timeless phase 209 00:13:51,480 --> 00:13:57,480 Speaker 1: and inter a phase of cities, automobiles, radios, airplanes, and advertising. 210 00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:00,880 Speaker 1: Russell was one of those on the setne who saw 211 00:14:00,920 --> 00:14:06,520 Speaker 1: this and captured it. But he was not the only one. 212 00:14:06,800 --> 00:14:11,040 Speaker 1: Another was a contemporary, yet another Midwesterner come to Montana 213 00:14:11,240 --> 00:14:15,720 Speaker 1: named L. A. Huffman, the Flinty, Texas historian of the 214 00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:16,960 Speaker 1: Old School. 215 00:14:16,920 --> 00:14:17,600 Speaker 2: Jay EVITTS. 216 00:14:17,720 --> 00:14:21,800 Speaker 1: Hayley, for whom sentiment was something to be nailed irritably 217 00:14:21,880 --> 00:14:25,400 Speaker 1: between the eyes with a sidelong squirt from that reservoir 218 00:14:25,440 --> 00:14:29,600 Speaker 1: between cheek and gum. Once observed of La Huffman that 219 00:14:29,880 --> 00:14:35,120 Speaker 1: for sheer versatility of significant and historic subject matter close 220 00:14:35,200 --> 00:14:40,440 Speaker 1: to the range of grass, Huffman's photography surpasses them all. 221 00:14:40,880 --> 00:14:44,160 Speaker 1: An endorsement by Jay EVITTS. Haley is nothing to be 222 00:14:44,240 --> 00:14:49,440 Speaker 1: sniffed at. Many Westerners regard Haley's biography of Charles Goodnight, 223 00:14:49,640 --> 00:14:54,640 Speaker 1: the real life inspiration for Captain Kall in Larry McMurtry's 224 00:14:54,680 --> 00:14:59,000 Speaker 1: Lonesome Dove, as the best biography anyone has written of 225 00:14:59,080 --> 00:15:03,440 Speaker 1: a frontier ran. When Jay Ebbatt's Hayley waxed diffusive about 226 00:15:03,640 --> 00:15:07,800 Speaker 1: La Huffman being authentic, the sensible thing is to pay attention. 227 00:15:08,800 --> 00:15:12,120 Speaker 1: Anyone interested in the Old West has been paying attention 228 00:15:12,520 --> 00:15:17,720 Speaker 1: to Leyton Alton Huffman's photographic work all along. Actually, his 229 00:15:17,960 --> 00:15:21,040 Speaker 1: images of the Montana planes in the late nineteenth and 230 00:15:21,120 --> 00:15:25,680 Speaker 1: early twentieth centuries are among the most widely reproduced photographs 231 00:15:25,720 --> 00:15:30,359 Speaker 1: of the Frontier anyone made. The range of Huffman's photographs 232 00:15:30,560 --> 00:15:35,960 Speaker 1: was remarkable, Famous Indians, famous pioneers, Buffalo still wild on 233 00:15:36,000 --> 00:15:39,680 Speaker 1: the planes and buffalo hunters and Skinner's elbow deep in 234 00:15:39,760 --> 00:15:44,400 Speaker 1: the grizzly business of eradicating them, ranch houses in every 235 00:15:44,520 --> 00:15:49,520 Speaker 1: conceivable picturesque Montana setting, the coming of sheep to the Badlands, 236 00:15:49,760 --> 00:15:54,120 Speaker 1: cattle overspreading the former buffalo planes. And since Myles City 237 00:15:54,320 --> 00:15:58,000 Speaker 1: was his headquarters and the location of several of his studios, 238 00:15:58,200 --> 00:16:01,920 Speaker 1: Huffman also turned his care on the roundups of wild 239 00:16:01,960 --> 00:16:05,640 Speaker 1: horses and their hasty breakings, which went on in frenzied 240 00:16:05,680 --> 00:16:09,840 Speaker 1: fashion as military buyers descended on Montana during the Boer 241 00:16:09,880 --> 00:16:14,080 Speaker 1: War and World War One. Huffman even left us shots 242 00:16:14,120 --> 00:16:16,440 Speaker 1: of the plows and the wheat that seemed to bring 243 00:16:16,480 --> 00:16:19,280 Speaker 1: the Old West to an end. As early as eighteen 244 00:16:19,320 --> 00:16:24,200 Speaker 1: eighty three, Huffman had eighty three thousand prints in his inventory. 245 00:16:24,520 --> 00:16:26,440 Speaker 2: He was also fully capable. 246 00:16:26,560 --> 00:16:29,920 Speaker 1: Javid's Haley no doubt nodded an approval of a photo 247 00:16:30,040 --> 00:16:34,320 Speaker 1: like his, A good Indian, A picture of some unfortunate 248 00:16:34,480 --> 00:16:39,640 Speaker 1: native soul who acquired his admirable qualities by becoming deceased. 249 00:16:45,400 --> 00:16:49,000 Speaker 1: Born in Iowa in eighteen fifty four and growing up 250 00:16:49,080 --> 00:16:52,680 Speaker 1: the sun of an Ohio photographer, Huffman seems to have 251 00:16:52,800 --> 00:16:56,960 Speaker 1: arrived in Montana Territory in eighteen seventy eight, two years 252 00:16:57,000 --> 00:17:00,400 Speaker 1: after the Little Big Horn and two years before Charlie Russell. 253 00:17:00,800 --> 00:17:03,880 Speaker 1: Huffman was twenty four and landed in the West with 254 00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:07,840 Speaker 1: an idea of how it all worked already programmed into 255 00:17:07,880 --> 00:17:11,200 Speaker 1: his brain. To Huffman, the West was not a particular 256 00:17:11,280 --> 00:17:14,840 Speaker 1: geographic place, but it was the frontier, the place any 257 00:17:14,880 --> 00:17:19,920 Speaker 1: place in America where settlers were encountering while nature, Indians, 258 00:17:20,080 --> 00:17:23,560 Speaker 1: and all the country's original animals. This cat of West 259 00:17:23,760 --> 00:17:27,679 Speaker 1: had the uncanny ability to recede across the continent, like 260 00:17:27,720 --> 00:17:30,879 Speaker 1: the setting of the sun, taken down to its final 261 00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:35,080 Speaker 1: glint of light by a successful ending to it by 262 00:17:35,280 --> 00:17:38,960 Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies, a Midwesterner like Huffman was going to 263 00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:42,800 Speaker 1: have to chase it down out where the frontier still existed, 264 00:17:42,920 --> 00:17:47,560 Speaker 1: the Yellowstone flowed and the buffalo roamed. So Huffman's chase 265 00:17:47,800 --> 00:17:53,040 Speaker 1: landed an unsalaried position as post photographer at Fort Kill, 266 00:17:53,440 --> 00:17:57,200 Speaker 1: just outside present day Miles City, and with a certain urgency, 267 00:17:57,320 --> 00:18:01,040 Speaker 1: took out after the frontier before it did its inevitable 268 00:18:01,119 --> 00:18:05,040 Speaker 1: vanishing act. His first photographs, appropriately, were of bison still 269 00:18:05,160 --> 00:18:09,160 Speaker 1: ranging across what Huffman gave the name which we still use, 270 00:18:09,400 --> 00:18:13,600 Speaker 1: the Big Open. He then went along as photographer on 271 00:18:13,800 --> 00:18:18,879 Speaker 1: various military explorations of the surrounding country, photographing the Black 272 00:18:18,960 --> 00:18:22,080 Speaker 1: Canyon of the Big Horn in eighteen seventy nine and 273 00:18:22,119 --> 00:18:26,359 Speaker 1: what in youthful optimism the Frontier. At last he called 274 00:18:26,400 --> 00:18:30,560 Speaker 1: his first Grizzly. Anxious to photograph some of the Indian 275 00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:34,720 Speaker 1: leaders made household names by the planes wars, Huffman commenced 276 00:18:34,760 --> 00:18:37,720 Speaker 1: with Rain in the Face and spotted Eagle, and eventually 277 00:18:37,720 --> 00:18:41,399 Speaker 1: proceeded to record some of the great classics of Western portraiture, 278 00:18:41,520 --> 00:18:45,320 Speaker 1: with stunning shots of Red cloud sitting Bull, Plenty Coup, 279 00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:49,719 Speaker 1: Joseph of the Nez Perce, the Salish sam Resurrection, Curly 280 00:18:49,760 --> 00:18:52,879 Speaker 1: Bear of the Blackfeet, and a galleries worth of others. 281 00:18:55,960 --> 00:18:58,760 Speaker 2: By eighteen eighty, Huffman opened. 282 00:18:58,359 --> 00:19:01,639 Speaker 1: The first of a series of studios in Miles City. 283 00:19:02,080 --> 00:19:04,760 Speaker 1: He had the common sense of the self made man, 284 00:19:04,880 --> 00:19:08,719 Speaker 1: and apparently never worried overmuch about being a part of 285 00:19:08,800 --> 00:19:13,760 Speaker 1: Montana's first service economy. He advertised his establishment with ads 286 00:19:13,760 --> 00:19:18,240 Speaker 1: for so called Indian portraits, Northern Pacific views, bad Lands, 287 00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:22,240 Speaker 1: Yellowstone and Big Horn scenery from time to time he 288 00:19:22,280 --> 00:19:25,119 Speaker 1: would pack up his prints and head for the already 289 00:19:25,160 --> 00:19:29,000 Speaker 1: civilized West Portland and Seattle to cater to taste for 290 00:19:29,040 --> 00:19:34,560 Speaker 1: the vanished frontier. But Huffman always returned to Miles City. Indeed, 291 00:19:34,600 --> 00:19:38,800 Speaker 1: he died in Montana in nineteen thirty one. He hobbnob 292 00:19:38,880 --> 00:19:42,720 Speaker 1: with the history makers and photographed everybody who was anybody, 293 00:19:43,080 --> 00:19:48,439 Speaker 1: including Conrad Corrs, Granville Stewart, and Calamity Jane among his 294 00:19:48,600 --> 00:19:52,679 Speaker 1: pioneer portrait classics, and he corresponded with many other famous 295 00:19:52,760 --> 00:19:59,119 Speaker 1: souls Hamlin, Garland, George Grinnell, William Hornaday between eighteen ninety 296 00:19:59,200 --> 00:20:02,919 Speaker 1: eight and nineteen teen oh five, though Huffman did a 297 00:20:03,160 --> 00:20:07,919 Speaker 1: very interesting thing brought west on the railroads by cheap 298 00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:13,800 Speaker 1: and liberal federal homesteads, farmers with their plows, fences, wives 299 00:20:13,840 --> 00:20:17,920 Speaker 1: and small children were arriving on the scene in hoardes, 300 00:20:18,119 --> 00:20:21,640 Speaker 1: and at that pregnant moment when you'd think a photographer 301 00:20:21,720 --> 00:20:24,960 Speaker 1: would have exulted in the possibilities of new subjects, in 302 00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:30,440 Speaker 1: Huffman's eyes, history had ratcheted to that inevitable and far 303 00:20:30,560 --> 00:20:36,640 Speaker 1: less intriguing stage, no more frontier. So starting in eighteen 304 00:20:36,760 --> 00:20:40,840 Speaker 1: ninety eight, he began to offer only views of the 305 00:20:40,960 --> 00:20:45,000 Speaker 1: past for sale. He stopped shooting new work, and instead 306 00:20:45,040 --> 00:20:48,119 Speaker 1: he spent all his time printing his old negatives and 307 00:20:48,280 --> 00:20:51,800 Speaker 1: selling to the new arrivals his photos of Montana and 308 00:20:51,840 --> 00:20:55,520 Speaker 1: Wyoming from the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties, when in 309 00:20:55,600 --> 00:21:00,080 Speaker 1: his mind the real West still existed. Huffman, the photographer 310 00:21:00,119 --> 00:21:04,639 Speaker 1: of the Frontier, found himself now stranded, presumably back in 311 00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:07,040 Speaker 1: the Midwest, where he had started and which he had 312 00:21:07,119 --> 00:21:08,040 Speaker 1: left in disgust. 313 00:21:08,320 --> 00:21:09,600 Speaker 2: So he devoted the rest of. 314 00:21:09,560 --> 00:21:13,520 Speaker 1: His life to reprising through his images that magic time 315 00:21:13,680 --> 00:21:15,360 Speaker 1: when the West truly. 316 00:21:15,080 --> 00:21:15,840 Speaker 2: Had been alive. 317 00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:24,800 Speaker 1: Both Huffman's work and his ideas about what he had 318 00:21:24,800 --> 00:21:28,439 Speaker 1: witnessed as Frontier Montana gave way to a state dominated 319 00:21:28,440 --> 00:21:31,880 Speaker 1: by railroads and mining companies were similar to the motives 320 00:21:31,880 --> 00:21:35,919 Speaker 1: that drove Charlie russell Fair ideas, in fact, strike at 321 00:21:35,920 --> 00:21:38,600 Speaker 1: the heart of something very critical about the West, not 322 00:21:38,960 --> 00:21:43,639 Speaker 1: just then but now. Huffman and Russell were unfortunate enough 323 00:21:43,680 --> 00:21:48,520 Speaker 1: to experience the great change the West, disconnection from the 324 00:21:48,560 --> 00:21:52,280 Speaker 1: Frontier as he looked back on it. Here is how 325 00:21:52,440 --> 00:21:58,439 Speaker 1: Huffman described that experience. Kind fate had it that I 326 00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:02,680 Speaker 1: should be post photograph with the army during the Indian campaigns. 327 00:22:02,920 --> 00:22:07,440 Speaker 1: Close following the annihilation of Custer's command. This Yellowstone Big 328 00:22:07,480 --> 00:22:10,359 Speaker 1: Horn country was then unpinned. 329 00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:11,760 Speaker 2: Of wire and unspoiled. 330 00:22:12,359 --> 00:22:16,800 Speaker 1: I made photographs with crude homemade cameras from saddle and 331 00:22:16,840 --> 00:22:21,240 Speaker 1: in log shack. I save something. One looked about and said, 332 00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:23,480 Speaker 1: this is the last West. 333 00:22:24,119 --> 00:22:28,080 Speaker 2: It was not so. There was no more West after that. 334 00:22:28,760 --> 00:22:33,400 Speaker 1: It was a dream and a forgetting a chapter forever closed. 335 00:22:34,920 --> 00:22:37,119 Speaker 2: What did this mean to him? Here is how he 336 00:22:37,200 --> 00:22:39,960 Speaker 2: described that everywhere I. 337 00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:43,119 Speaker 1: Go now in the Yellowstone Country, my travels tell me 338 00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:46,520 Speaker 1: this that soon if I am to gallop the little 339 00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:50,679 Speaker 1: gray air, it must be in a lane that makes 340 00:22:50,720 --> 00:22:54,359 Speaker 1: me sad. I would that there were yet a few 341 00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:59,120 Speaker 1: waste places left untouched by the settler and his cursed 342 00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:02,280 Speaker 1: wire fence, good in its way, but not for me. 343 00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:07,040 Speaker 1: Huffman remained in Montana into the early nineteen thirties, when 344 00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:10,760 Speaker 1: he passed away, still convinced he had seen America with 345 00:23:10,880 --> 00:23:13,639 Speaker 1: the bark on it, still depressed by what the West 346 00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:17,280 Speaker 1: was turning into in the twentieth century, but eventually he 347 00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:21,120 Speaker 1: did hold tight to an idea he had that made 348 00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:26,160 Speaker 1: him optimistic about the Great Change. Two of Huffman's biographers, 349 00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:30,560 Speaker 1: Mark Brown and W. R. Felton right that Huffman came 350 00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:34,719 Speaker 1: up with a scheme to make a great pasture of 351 00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:38,919 Speaker 1: the flat Iron country between the Yellowstone and Missouri, to 352 00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:43,400 Speaker 1: fence it with a great woven wire, to banish forever 353 00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:48,280 Speaker 1: the skin hunters, maybe even enlist them in an army 354 00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:53,000 Speaker 1: of wardens. He fantasized how and where the great park 355 00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:56,399 Speaker 1: gates would be guarded, how tame the bison, antelope and 356 00:23:56,560 --> 00:24:00,840 Speaker 1: Elkin's side would get, and how splendid twould be, as 357 00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,440 Speaker 1: he wrote, when the yellow green carpet of spring had 358 00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:15,080 Speaker 1: come to see it all teaming with life again. What 359 00:24:15,320 --> 00:24:18,879 Speaker 1: Charlie Russell felt about the Great Change led him in 360 00:24:18,960 --> 00:24:23,919 Speaker 1: a different direction, but Russell's premise was strikingly similar to Huffman's. 361 00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:28,280 Speaker 1: Despite being toodcast as a cowboy artist, Russell spent most 362 00:24:28,320 --> 00:24:31,919 Speaker 1: of his career a champion of the wilderness West, a 363 00:24:32,119 --> 00:24:36,920 Speaker 1: place in his life he referred to as dream time Montana. 364 00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:40,320 Speaker 1: If Russell was merely trying to tell us that I 365 00:24:40,359 --> 00:24:43,560 Speaker 1: saw the end of what you can never imagine, his 366 00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:47,960 Speaker 1: message for the future isn't very useful. For subsequent generations. 367 00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:52,040 Speaker 1: A more imposed reading of Russell's message is perhaps what 368 00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:53,080 Speaker 1: we could call. 369 00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:54,920 Speaker 2: Charlie Russell commodified. 370 00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:59,320 Speaker 1: In other words, cowboy hats and boots, bandanas and wrangler jeans, 371 00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:03,840 Speaker 1: saddle and bridles and hackamores, colts and winchesters. All the 372 00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:07,439 Speaker 1: Russell gear he painted and celebrated, all of that is 373 00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:08,399 Speaker 1: still marketable. 374 00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:10,240 Speaker 2: Maybe Russell would have winked. 375 00:25:09,960 --> 00:25:13,080 Speaker 1: At this, and at interstate tourist snake pits and wall 376 00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:16,600 Speaker 1: drug billboards, but I like to think not Neither of 377 00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:19,200 Speaker 1: these interpretations of Russell would likely. 378 00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:20,080 Speaker 2: Make him very happy. 379 00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:24,040 Speaker 1: As for cashing in on the West, during his late years, 380 00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:28,840 Speaker 1: he did hobnob amongst the new Hollywood celebrities in California, loved. 381 00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:31,080 Speaker 2: Meeting and dining with the new movie idols. 382 00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:35,439 Speaker 1: But Russell had an agenda, and it wasn't cash. After 383 00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:39,080 Speaker 1: he and Nancy met Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, he 384 00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:44,240 Speaker 1: wrote Fairbanks, Doug, don't forget our old West. You and 385 00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:46,600 Speaker 1: others have done the West and showed it well, but 386 00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:49,679 Speaker 1: there's lots of it left, from Mexico to the Great 387 00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:53,720 Speaker 1: Slave Lakes. I think he was earnest about keeping the 388 00:25:53,800 --> 00:25:57,040 Speaker 1: idea alive of the natural world he had seen in 389 00:25:57,080 --> 00:26:00,560 Speaker 1: the West in eighteen eighty. Russell left a lot to 390 00:26:00,680 --> 00:26:02,840 Speaker 1: sift through to figure out his message. 391 00:26:02,480 --> 00:26:05,000 Speaker 2: And like every life, his was full of contraditions. 392 00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:07,680 Speaker 1: But I think he was dead serious all his life 393 00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:10,800 Speaker 1: about the motivation that seems to track through every piece 394 00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:15,240 Speaker 1: of his art. Russell once wrote a patron, I am glad, 395 00:26:15,359 --> 00:26:19,280 Speaker 1: mister Kilmer, I knew the West before nature's enemy, the 396 00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:23,080 Speaker 1: White Man, invaded and marred its beauty, which must have 397 00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:25,560 Speaker 1: been a precursor to one of the most famous Charlie 398 00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:29,120 Speaker 1: Russell quotes of all, delivered as a banquet speaker late 399 00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:30,040 Speaker 1: in his life. 400 00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:33,960 Speaker 2: I have been called a pioneer in my book. 401 00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:37,400 Speaker 1: A pioneer is a man who comes to a virgin country, 402 00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:40,880 Speaker 1: traps off all the fur, kills off all the wild meat, 403 00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:44,240 Speaker 1: cuts down all the trees, grazes off all the grass, 404 00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:48,200 Speaker 1: and strings ten million miles of bob wire. A pioneer 405 00:26:48,320 --> 00:26:52,320 Speaker 1: destroys things and calls it civilization. I wish to God 406 00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:54,480 Speaker 1: that this country was just like it was when I 407 00:26:54,600 --> 00:26:56,720 Speaker 1: first saw it, and none of you folks were here 408 00:26:56,720 --> 00:27:05,520 Speaker 1: at all. As the perceptive Western writer J. Frank Dobie 409 00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:08,399 Speaker 1: said of him, Russell probably was not inclined to be 410 00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:13,560 Speaker 1: a hard thinker, but evaluated life out of instinctive predilections. 411 00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:19,160 Speaker 1: To instinct, we can add his hero sized generosity of spirit. 412 00:27:19,560 --> 00:27:23,080 Speaker 1: As Nancy wrote about their first meeting, in time, I 413 00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:26,439 Speaker 1: came to know that he could not see wrong in anybody. 414 00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:30,400 Speaker 1: He never believed anyone did a bad act intentionally. 415 00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:32,280 Speaker 2: It was always an accident. 416 00:27:33,080 --> 00:27:37,560 Speaker 1: Despite Russell's occasional rant at the Pioneer, by which like 417 00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:41,879 Speaker 1: la Huffman, he may have primarily meant farmers, Russell's art 418 00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:46,040 Speaker 1: treats the heartbreaking environmental history of the West almost as 419 00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:47,840 Speaker 1: if it were accidental too. 420 00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:51,200 Speaker 2: Look for example, at his painting. 421 00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:55,960 Speaker 1: Cowboy Sport Roping a Wolf, done in eighteen ninety. Russell's 422 00:27:55,960 --> 00:27:59,440 Speaker 1: paintings are full of wolves. They're in four grounds backgrounds, 423 00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:03,400 Speaker 1: even the narrative of the little piece that made him famous, 424 00:28:03,760 --> 00:28:07,679 Speaker 1: Waiting for a Chinook. Wolves were an essential part of 425 00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:10,479 Speaker 1: the Old West that he loved, and he used them 426 00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:14,240 Speaker 1: as symbols for it. Yet in this painting Cowboy Sport 427 00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:18,160 Speaker 1: Roping a Wolf, the cowboys and ranchers, at whose instigation, 428 00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:22,560 Speaker 1: wolves are being entirely erased from the West. During Russell's time, 429 00:28:22,840 --> 00:28:27,760 Speaker 1: are not actually engaged in obliterating every last vestige of 430 00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:31,280 Speaker 1: the diverse ecology that had once made the West so exciting. 431 00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:35,640 Speaker 1: In Russell's painting, they're just having a little fun, some 432 00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:40,400 Speaker 1: good natured cowboy hijinks, even if it does look suspiciously 433 00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:44,160 Speaker 1: like the precursor of the modern so called sport in 434 00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:50,440 Speaker 1: the West of running down coyotes with snowmobiles. Similarly accidental, maybe, 435 00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:55,040 Speaker 1: but by Russell's own admission, certainly malevolent in its effects 436 00:28:55,360 --> 00:28:59,440 Speaker 1: was the ransacking of the West fur bearers by mountain men. 437 00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:03,120 Speaker 1: Trapped yet at the height of his powers and maturity, 438 00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:09,320 Speaker 1: Russell still portrayed mountain men as regional heroes, the romance makers, 439 00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:13,600 Speaker 1: he called them in a nineteen eighteen oil and look 440 00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:17,120 Speaker 1: at his painting Salute of the Robe Trade, done in 441 00:29:17,240 --> 00:29:21,880 Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, for which Nancy Russell wrangled the stupendous sum 442 00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:25,800 Speaker 1: of ten thousand dollars in nineteen twenty one. It's a 443 00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:29,959 Speaker 1: masterful painting, with all the elements of light action and 444 00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:34,360 Speaker 1: Missouri River square butted scenery that russell patrons and Western 445 00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:37,960 Speaker 1: realism of ficionados could ever want, but no hint or 446 00:29:38,040 --> 00:29:41,760 Speaker 1: even irony that the market hunt for buffalo robes was 447 00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:45,600 Speaker 1: a death knell for the same West that Russell found 448 00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:51,080 Speaker 1: so sacred. Nothing devastated dream Time Montana as much as 449 00:29:51,120 --> 00:29:54,120 Speaker 1: the arrival of the global market for wildlife. 450 00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:56,360 Speaker 2: We had our reasons, of. 451 00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:59,800 Speaker 1: Course, along with our excuses and our bravado about how 452 00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,560 Speaker 1: we were doing it all for civilization, but for the 453 00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:05,560 Speaker 1: wild animals of the Old West, the march of civilization 454 00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:08,920 Speaker 1: was a meat grinder. Plenty of Americans noticed what was happening, 455 00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:11,720 Speaker 1: knew it was the destruction of one of the ecological 456 00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:14,760 Speaker 1: wonders of the world. Yet on the American planes, the 457 00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:17,800 Speaker 1: nation allowed it to proceed in a time when the 458 00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:21,920 Speaker 1: colonial powers did not permit such a thing to happen 459 00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:31,800 Speaker 1: in Africa. We ought to understand every time we fly 460 00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:34,720 Speaker 1: at twenty thousand feet over the Great Plains that the 461 00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:39,160 Speaker 1: flyover country of our own time derives much of its 462 00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:44,120 Speaker 1: forgettability from being a slate white, almost clean of its 463 00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:47,840 Speaker 1: original figures. Maybe the kinds of scenes I've been telling 464 00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:52,200 Speaker 1: about in these American West podcasts all fall into the 465 00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:57,520 Speaker 1: Charlie Russell explanation of good people doing bad things accidentally. 466 00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:02,320 Speaker 1: Maybe such paintings so well Russell's white male patrons who 467 00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:06,720 Speaker 1: tended towards the corporate conqueror type anyway, or maybe Russell 468 00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:09,600 Speaker 1: really did believe and many people do believe this that 469 00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:13,240 Speaker 1: trapping off all the fur bears, killing all the big animals, 470 00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:16,320 Speaker 1: cutting down all the trees, grazing off all the grass 471 00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:20,400 Speaker 1: I'm using his phrases here, obviously, really was a heroic, 472 00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:25,040 Speaker 1: romantic enterprise. That's hard to square with what he wrote 473 00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:26,200 Speaker 1: about pioneers. 474 00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:28,240 Speaker 2: But then Charlie was generous. 475 00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:32,280 Speaker 1: It's possible, maybe not probable, but possible that he could 476 00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:35,160 Speaker 1: mourn the loss of all the natural splendor of a 477 00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:38,040 Speaker 1: West that had been ten thousand years in the making, 478 00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:41,400 Speaker 1: yet at the same time admire and celebrate all the 479 00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:46,120 Speaker 1: colorful characters who perpetuated the destruction and had been his friends. 480 00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:50,040 Speaker 1: What I think Charlie Russell was trying to tell us, 481 00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:54,600 Speaker 1: however tolerantly forgiving, or maybe just muddled he might have 482 00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:57,680 Speaker 1: been about cause and effect, was that it's a far 483 00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:00,840 Speaker 1: better thing to have a West where native cultures are 484 00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:04,320 Speaker 1: healthy and Indians are respected and admired for who they 485 00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:08,000 Speaker 1: are than one where racism and a culturation threaten them. 486 00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:11,600 Speaker 1: And to me, Russell's voice was a loud and clear 487 00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:18,040 Speaker 1: amen for a West populated with his beloved buffalo, wolves, grizzlies, 488 00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:22,240 Speaker 1: even wild horses, whose rights on the prairies he defended 489 00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:26,560 Speaker 1: vigorously just before he died. In my opinion, his most 490 00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:31,840 Speaker 1: spectacular painting, nineteen fourteen's When the Land Belonged to God, 491 00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:36,680 Speaker 1: leaves no doubt about the version Russell considered the best 492 00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:37,840 Speaker 1: of all West. 493 00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:41,720 Speaker 2: So what I've been preparing to say is that I believe. 494 00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:46,520 Speaker 1: Charlie Russell spoke for rewilding in our time. True enough, 495 00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:50,800 Speaker 1: along with resisting blaming his frontier friends for what had happened, 496 00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:53,800 Speaker 1: he wasn't a hard thinker about history, and when he 497 00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:55,640 Speaker 1: thought about a grander West, he. 498 00:32:55,680 --> 00:32:56,840 Speaker 2: Mostly looked backward. 499 00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:00,920 Speaker 1: Huffman obviously had in mind a future that's Montana that 500 00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:03,719 Speaker 1: looks something like today's American prairie. 501 00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:05,240 Speaker 2: But both Charlie. 502 00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:08,719 Speaker 1: Russell and la Huffman tried mightily to tell us that 503 00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:11,920 Speaker 1: the West they saw in the eighteen eighties was the 504 00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:15,720 Speaker 1: real thing, and a version at least as admirable as 505 00:33:15,840 --> 00:33:21,360 Speaker 1: anything that came after. I infer then that Rewilding pieces 506 00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:24,440 Speaker 1: of the West to a close facsimile of what they 507 00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:28,120 Speaker 1: along with Zane Gray and others saw ought not to 508 00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:31,680 Speaker 1: be merely something we look back on with nostalgia or regret, 509 00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:36,160 Speaker 1: but a vision for our future. Charlie Russell's own Western 510 00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:39,760 Speaker 1: rewilding sentiments seem pretty clear to me in those lines 511 00:33:39,800 --> 00:33:43,760 Speaker 1: to Frank Linderman, you sleeping relic of the past. If 512 00:33:43,840 --> 00:33:46,920 Speaker 1: I but had my way, I'd clothe your frame with 513 00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:51,000 Speaker 1: meat and hide and wake you up today. Our truth 514 00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:55,320 Speaker 1: from that message is this something like the West that 515 00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:59,760 Speaker 1: la Huffman and Charlie Russell saw and then dreamed about 516 00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:01,480 Speaker 1: for the rest of their lives. 517 00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:12,759 Speaker 4: We could live, all right, Dan, I want to begin 518 00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:16,280 Speaker 4: this one as you do in the in the script 519 00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:21,799 Speaker 4: with Russell, Who's it would be easy to sum up 520 00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:27,279 Speaker 4: Russell as a sort of an epic Western painter, but 521 00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:29,600 Speaker 4: as you point out and here, he's really hard to 522 00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:31,520 Speaker 4: put into a box. 523 00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:35,200 Speaker 3: We were just up last. 524 00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:39,680 Speaker 4: Weekend at the New Montana Historical Society Museum in Helena, 525 00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:43,120 Speaker 4: and they have a huge gallery of Russell and his work, 526 00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:47,120 Speaker 4: and they have some of the most iconic paintings on 527 00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:49,560 Speaker 4: like when the Land Belongs to God is kind of 528 00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:55,000 Speaker 4: the centerpiece. But there's there's there are all these notes 529 00:34:55,440 --> 00:35:00,840 Speaker 4: and and doodles and the little pencil sketches, and it 530 00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:04,640 Speaker 4: was like he just couldn't stop trying to put the 531 00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:08,319 Speaker 4: West on paper in whatever form he could. It was 532 00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:12,120 Speaker 4: like back of the napkin kind of sketches. And it 533 00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:14,799 Speaker 4: really made me appreciate as you as you get to 534 00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:18,040 Speaker 4: in this piece. It really made me appreciate how prolific 535 00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:21,960 Speaker 4: he was on so many different scales as an artist. 536 00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:28,120 Speaker 1: Yeah, he you know, I began this script with one 537 00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:30,640 Speaker 1: of those little doodles that he did. He was writing 538 00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:34,880 Speaker 1: a letter to his friend, the writer Bird Linderman, and 539 00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:39,000 Speaker 1: Russell could not help himself. I mean he did this 540 00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:43,160 Speaker 1: and there is actually a volume that's devoted to these 541 00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:46,720 Speaker 1: little pieces, and he couldn't help himself. Anytime he wrote 542 00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:50,279 Speaker 1: one of his friends, he would doodle in. I mean, 543 00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:53,920 Speaker 1: he would do a self portrait of himself dressed as 544 00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:57,000 Speaker 1: an Indian or something in his cabin on the shores 545 00:35:57,040 --> 00:35:59,520 Speaker 1: of Lake McDonald, or he would, you know, he would 546 00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:03,160 Speaker 1: do something thing like this particular one where he does 547 00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:08,680 Speaker 1: this sketch of a sort of a rotting collapsed buffalo 548 00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:12,680 Speaker 1: carcass with a wolf standing in the background standing over it. 549 00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:17,280 Speaker 1: And as I said, because he knew that Frank Bird 550 00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:23,520 Speaker 1: Lindermann's own passions and thoughts were similar to his. He 551 00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:28,279 Speaker 1: pinned this little piece of doggerel to go with it 552 00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:31,240 Speaker 1: where he says, you know, if I but had my way, 553 00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:34,840 Speaker 1: you know, i'd clothe your hide and flesh and bones 554 00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:38,319 Speaker 1: and wake you up today. And I mean, that was 555 00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:42,920 Speaker 1: this kind of I think probably it was the discovery 556 00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:47,200 Speaker 1: of that that set me on to tracking down this 557 00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:50,359 Speaker 1: idea or I was trying to figure out, Okay, here 558 00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:54,640 Speaker 1: is a guy who is clearly of heroic stature in. 559 00:36:54,680 --> 00:36:55,600 Speaker 2: The northern West. 560 00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:58,960 Speaker 1: I mean in places like Wyoming, in Montana and Alberta 561 00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:05,080 Speaker 1: and Saskatchewanay, Charlie Russell. He's everywhere, everything inside is named 562 00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:07,400 Speaker 1: for him. And you know, as I was walking through 563 00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:10,120 Speaker 1: the parking lot coming over the studio today, I was 564 00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:13,960 Speaker 1: glancing at the regular issue state license plates which still 565 00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:17,120 Speaker 1: carry the buffalo skull that he patented in nineteen oh 566 00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:22,280 Speaker 1: seven on the Montana license plates. And so the question 567 00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:25,600 Speaker 1: that came to me when I was working on this 568 00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:31,040 Speaker 1: was what was Russell trying to get to us as 569 00:37:31,080 --> 00:37:35,480 Speaker 1: a message to the future. I mean, if anything, And 570 00:37:35,560 --> 00:37:38,040 Speaker 1: I think he was trying to get something and so 571 00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:41,439 Speaker 1: that's what this was an effort to come to terms with, 572 00:37:41,600 --> 00:37:44,520 Speaker 1: is what was Charlie Russell trying to tell us about 573 00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:48,560 Speaker 1: this world that he experienced and the great change that 574 00:37:48,640 --> 00:37:53,360 Speaker 1: he also lived through, and that seemed to be well 575 00:37:53,440 --> 00:37:59,200 Speaker 1: buttressed by his contemporary, the photographer La Huffman in Miles City, 576 00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:03,200 Speaker 1: who was going through the same thing and having a 577 00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:08,600 Speaker 1: lot of the same kind of pangs of regret about 578 00:38:08,640 --> 00:38:12,880 Speaker 1: what he had actually seen and what now was happening 579 00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:16,279 Speaker 1: in the West. And so looking at those two men 580 00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:20,720 Speaker 1: and what they imagine for a future of the West 581 00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:23,560 Speaker 1: is sort of what my motivation was and trying to 582 00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:26,400 Speaker 1: answer this question, what were they trying to tell us? 583 00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:28,120 Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to get into that. 584 00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:33,160 Speaker 4: I do think for those who think to themselves who 585 00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:35,160 Speaker 4: might be listening to this, and they think, I don't 586 00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:36,799 Speaker 4: really know who Charlie Russell is. 587 00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:37,160 Speaker 3: I don't know. 588 00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:40,680 Speaker 4: If I've seen a Russell painting, if you've seen any 589 00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:45,920 Speaker 4: sort of Western art, it's Russell or it's derivative of Russell. 590 00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:49,360 Speaker 3: You point out the license plates. 591 00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:52,399 Speaker 4: I mean in Missoula, there's the Russell Elementary School, right, 592 00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:58,000 Speaker 4: there's the Russell Museum, there's the CMR, the National Wildlife 593 00:38:58,000 --> 00:38:58,960 Speaker 4: Refuge out East. 594 00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:00,400 Speaker 3: I mean, he's sort of. 595 00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:07,719 Speaker 4: He's an ever present figure in Montana's culture. And I 596 00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:09,640 Speaker 4: was trying to come up with a good analog, and 597 00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:11,920 Speaker 4: I'm not really sure what it would be. And it's 598 00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:16,000 Speaker 4: like Michelangelo in Italy, although they have more than a few. 599 00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:20,279 Speaker 1: Artists, more choices, that's right, and this part of the 600 00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:23,719 Speaker 1: world has few choices, and Russell stands above head and 601 00:39:23,719 --> 00:39:27,719 Speaker 1: shoulders above everybody else. As I mentioned, the only other 602 00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:30,480 Speaker 1: part of the West that has an artist as his 603 00:39:30,640 --> 00:39:34,480 Speaker 1: patron saint is the Southwest, particularly in New Mexico, with 604 00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:40,400 Speaker 1: Georgia O'Keeffe, who you know, for listeners who may not 605 00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:45,600 Speaker 1: know who she is, she's an Eastern artist married to 606 00:39:45,640 --> 00:39:49,239 Speaker 1: a very famous photographer in New York named Alfred Stieglitz, 607 00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:52,640 Speaker 1: who was sort of a prime mover and shaker in 608 00:39:52,680 --> 00:39:56,680 Speaker 1: the early twentieth century of American art. And she O'Keeffe 609 00:39:56,680 --> 00:40:01,120 Speaker 1: moved to New Mexico, bought a little seven acre piece 610 00:40:01,160 --> 00:40:04,080 Speaker 1: at the foot of a set of cliffs about seventy 611 00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:07,120 Speaker 1: miles to the northwest of Santa Fe called Ghost Ranch, 612 00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:11,600 Speaker 1: and lived there for more than fifty years and basically 613 00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:17,360 Speaker 1: painted the world around her, and she too in that 614 00:40:17,480 --> 00:40:21,839 Speaker 1: part of the world occupies a similar kind of kind 615 00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:26,400 Speaker 1: of place where schools are named after. There's a famous 616 00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:30,440 Speaker 1: Jersey with Keith Museum and downtown Santa Fe, there's I mean, 617 00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:34,359 Speaker 1: people do epic trips out to Ghost Ranch, you know, 618 00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:36,319 Speaker 1: to see where her house was and. 619 00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:37,120 Speaker 2: Where she painted. 620 00:40:37,160 --> 00:40:40,919 Speaker 1: And so she and Charlie Russell are the only two 621 00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:45,200 Speaker 1: sort of painters of the West that I know about 622 00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:51,760 Speaker 1: who stand in this kind of rarefied space as emblems 623 00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:56,200 Speaker 1: of their particular parts of Western America. 624 00:40:56,840 --> 00:40:58,680 Speaker 2: And I think Charlie. 625 00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:01,759 Speaker 1: If people don't know who Charlie Russell is, my guess 626 00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:05,680 Speaker 1: is they've probably seen his paintings actually a lot. Yeah, 627 00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:07,960 Speaker 1: And I sort of feel that way. And I think 628 00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:10,080 Speaker 1: I said as much about La Huffman. You may not 629 00:41:10,160 --> 00:41:12,800 Speaker 1: know who La Huffman is, but I'll bet you've seen 630 00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:17,520 Speaker 1: his photographs, because nobody's shot as many photographs of famous 631 00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:21,120 Speaker 1: Westerners Calamity Jane and people like that, for example, as 632 00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:22,320 Speaker 1: he did, right. 633 00:41:22,160 --> 00:41:30,280 Speaker 4: And I think with Huffman, it's interesting that photography arrived 634 00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:33,200 Speaker 4: on the scene in the West when it did, in 635 00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:37,920 Speaker 4: the form of Huffman and Evelyn Cameron and other folks. Yeah, 636 00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:45,280 Speaker 4: because photography sort of fixes things visually as if they're 637 00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:49,239 Speaker 4: almost eternal. Right, there's a sort of sense of timelessness 638 00:41:49,239 --> 00:41:54,640 Speaker 4: to photography, but the world that they're capturing is very transitory, 639 00:41:55,520 --> 00:42:00,600 Speaker 4: and it's this moment of extreme change. I think about, 640 00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:03,840 Speaker 4: you know, photography in the eighteen seventies, eighteen eighties, and 641 00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:07,600 Speaker 4: you think about what Montana was like in eighteen sixty 642 00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:12,319 Speaker 4: versus nineteen hundred. Right, they're very different places. But photography 643 00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:16,560 Speaker 4: sort of very auspiciously arrived on the ground when it did, 644 00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:21,520 Speaker 4: in a way that made this fleeting moment sort of 645 00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:27,960 Speaker 4: become the dominant I don't know, touch point culturally for 646 00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:29,920 Speaker 4: people when they think of the West. 647 00:42:30,680 --> 00:42:31,680 Speaker 2: Yeah. 648 00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:35,839 Speaker 1: You know, some people who who write about photography think 649 00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:39,239 Speaker 1: hard about photography, say that what photography basically is is 650 00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:44,160 Speaker 1: the attempt to catch the ephemeral moment and freeze it 651 00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:50,960 Speaker 1: in time. And Huffmann very definitely froze this ephemeral moment because, 652 00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:53,919 Speaker 1: as I mentioned in this strip, even by the early 653 00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:58,279 Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, by eighteen eighty four, he shot eighty thousand photographs, 654 00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:01,800 Speaker 1: And so I mean he is out there just firing 655 00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:06,520 Speaker 1: away at everything that he sees, and that preserves a 656 00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:09,759 Speaker 1: kind of an imagery of a time period, and it's 657 00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:12,719 Speaker 1: the last couple of decades of the so called frontier 658 00:43:13,560 --> 00:43:20,040 Speaker 1: that he captures that absolutely sort of dominated the rest 659 00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:21,920 Speaker 1: of his life. I mean, he by the time he 660 00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:25,840 Speaker 1: got to nineteen oh five and Montana was being settled 661 00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:30,480 Speaker 1: and there were railroads and mining companies and homesteaders and 662 00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:34,319 Speaker 1: all that, he basically kind of stopped shooting photographs and 663 00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:36,960 Speaker 1: just printed up the things that he had shot of 664 00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:40,399 Speaker 1: this moment in time. And it was that moment in time, 665 00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:45,560 Speaker 1: that ephemeral moment that I think both Huffman and Charlie 666 00:43:45,640 --> 00:43:49,239 Speaker 1: Russell and a whole host really of sort of the 667 00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:55,480 Speaker 1: nostalgic school writers and painters about the West and in 668 00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:59,240 Speaker 1: the West tried to tried to freeze in time. Frederick 669 00:43:59,280 --> 00:44:01,920 Speaker 1: Remington tried to do that, Owen Wister tried to do 670 00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:05,720 Speaker 1: that with the Virginian, and as I mentioned, Zane Gray 671 00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:12,560 Speaker 1: probably provided the best written description of what they were 672 00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:16,560 Speaker 1: what they were thinking, and what Zain Gray basically said 673 00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:22,440 Speaker 1: was that they realized that that moment, that ephemeral moment, 674 00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:28,080 Speaker 1: was the last time, probably on Earth for most people, 675 00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:32,719 Speaker 1: that humans were going to get to live in a 676 00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:36,560 Speaker 1: state of nature that everything was going to be changed 677 00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:39,279 Speaker 1: after that. And for Zane Gray, I mean, and he 678 00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:43,800 Speaker 1: put it very well. He said it was this fleeting 679 00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:49,200 Speaker 1: sensitory moment where he could sort of recreate in his 680 00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:51,640 Speaker 1: mind what it was like to be one of the 681 00:44:51,680 --> 00:44:57,080 Speaker 1: progenitors of humanity extending back through time and now knew 682 00:44:57,120 --> 00:44:58,680 Speaker 1: that that was going to be. 683 00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:00,000 Speaker 2: Lost to the future. 684 00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:06,040 Speaker 1: And I think that's why they were so moved by it. 685 00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:09,560 Speaker 1: That's why Charlie Russell referred to this period for the 686 00:45:09,560 --> 00:45:13,480 Speaker 1: rest of his life as dream time Montana and would 687 00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:16,400 Speaker 1: do a painting like that when the land belonged to 688 00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:21,240 Speaker 1: God where I mean, they're in fact no humans in it. 689 00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:23,520 Speaker 1: It's just a buffalo herd coming up out of the 690 00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:28,080 Speaker 1: Missouri Breaks, flanked by gray wolves on either side, as 691 00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:32,000 Speaker 1: that herd mounts over the crest of the valley of 692 00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:37,040 Speaker 1: the Missouri River. And it moved them in a way 693 00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:41,400 Speaker 1: that nothing else they ever experienced did. And I think 694 00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:46,160 Speaker 1: it moved a lot of people. And it's probably one 695 00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:52,200 Speaker 1: of the reasons why so much filmmaking and movies and 696 00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:58,200 Speaker 1: television shows in America up through the nineteen seventies or 697 00:45:58,239 --> 00:46:02,759 Speaker 1: so were actually about the West. I mean, we were 698 00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:07,040 Speaker 1: still trying to grapple with this moment where we had 699 00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:10,600 Speaker 1: stepped out of that kind of past and into a 700 00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:15,239 Speaker 1: more modern world. And so you know, that's part of 701 00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:17,920 Speaker 1: how I think these guys came up with a vision, 702 00:46:17,960 --> 00:46:20,359 Speaker 1: at least as I see it, as I infer what 703 00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:21,759 Speaker 1: their vision was for us. 704 00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:27,000 Speaker 4: Yeah, there are two observations that you make in this 705 00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:29,640 Speaker 4: that really stuck with me. One as I'm not sure 706 00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:32,760 Speaker 4: I've encountered this before, but the parallels between the nineteen 707 00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:35,160 Speaker 4: sixties and this period. 708 00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:38,320 Speaker 3: Of Western history. Yeah, where there's a sort of hope that. 709 00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:43,680 Speaker 4: The people in the moment can do something new and 710 00:46:43,719 --> 00:46:46,640 Speaker 4: then history sort of falls into its same old patterns 711 00:46:46,680 --> 00:46:49,760 Speaker 4: and there's a sense of a lost opportunity. 712 00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:53,560 Speaker 3: That really stuck with me. I don't know if that's something. 713 00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:56,600 Speaker 4: You've seen elsewhere, if that's something that struck you. But 714 00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:01,360 Speaker 4: the other is, and this gets to your broader point, 715 00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:06,160 Speaker 4: Charlie Russell is an anti pioneer, and the tension between 716 00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:11,480 Speaker 4: sort of the marketability of his imagery versus sort of 717 00:47:11,520 --> 00:47:17,759 Speaker 4: the maybe harder to sell sort of bitter undertone. 718 00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:19,000 Speaker 3: Yeah, to a lot of. 719 00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:24,480 Speaker 1: It, what he actually thought versus what was what was syllable, 720 00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:28,080 Speaker 1: what Nancy could turn a profit on, you know, and 721 00:47:28,120 --> 00:47:31,480 Speaker 1: she's able to She's able to sell you know, things 722 00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:36,840 Speaker 1: like the romance makers about the fur trade and for 723 00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:40,160 Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars yeah, I mean, which was an enormous 724 00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:40,960 Speaker 1: sum of money. 725 00:47:41,040 --> 00:47:43,759 Speaker 4: And she's the business and she's the mind behind all 726 00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:44,160 Speaker 4: of it. 727 00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:46,640 Speaker 1: And she's the one who is telling him, this is 728 00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:48,920 Speaker 1: what you have to paint, because this is what the 729 00:47:48,960 --> 00:47:54,160 Speaker 1: patrons and your buyers want from you. And meanwhile, Charlie 730 00:47:54,239 --> 00:47:58,000 Speaker 1: is being invited to be a banquet speaker and saying, 731 00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:03,800 Speaker 1: you know, people call me aer. That ain't what I am. 732 00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:07,080 Speaker 1: Pioneer as far as I'm concerned, as somebody who comes 733 00:48:07,360 --> 00:48:10,040 Speaker 1: to a virgin country and kills off all the meat 734 00:48:10,080 --> 00:48:12,600 Speaker 1: and cuts down all the trees and grazes off all 735 00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:16,640 Speaker 1: the grass and puts up bob wire everywhere, And by god, 736 00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:19,560 Speaker 1: I wish the West was just like I found it 737 00:48:19,600 --> 00:48:22,760 Speaker 1: when I arrived here and all you people were gone. Yeah, 738 00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:26,759 Speaker 1: And I mean that's what he really thought about it. 739 00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:32,680 Speaker 1: And so, you know, sort of taking this complex person 740 00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:37,400 Speaker 1: and the complexity of his life and his ability and 741 00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:42,160 Speaker 1: his wife's ability to market his work and set that 742 00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:45,920 Speaker 1: in opposition to what he would reveal with things like 743 00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:48,400 Speaker 1: if I had my way, I'd clothe your hide and 744 00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:53,919 Speaker 1: meet and clothe your corpse, your corpse. 745 00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:54,799 Speaker 2: And meet and hide and wake you up. 746 00:48:54,800 --> 00:48:59,160 Speaker 1: Today, that kind of thing is sort of what I 747 00:48:59,239 --> 00:49:01,840 Speaker 1: think human contradiction. 748 00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:02,600 Speaker 2: In lives are really all about. 749 00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:09,319 Speaker 1: But for me it becomes I think the vision that 750 00:49:09,360 --> 00:49:12,880 Speaker 1: he and Huffman both had for us was this vision of, 751 00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:17,440 Speaker 1: at least in some parts of the West, we still 752 00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:21,879 Speaker 1: have the opportunity to live what those guys saw if 753 00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:25,319 Speaker 1: we can recreate it and if we're willing to do that, 754 00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:30,480 Speaker 1: and I think at least I hope in some instances 755 00:49:30,520 --> 00:49:30,799 Speaker 1: we are. 756 00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:33,319 Speaker 3: Thanks Dan, appreciate it, you bet. 757 00:49:33,400 --> 00:49:33,680 Speaker 1: Randal