Hugh Anderson and the Archetypal West

The Old West has been mythologized to the point of triteness. The most famous outlaws and peace officers have become clichés for the most part. So, who is left to carry on the elemental work of metaphorically excavating the American frontier?

Why is it that I find Hugh Anderson so interesting? It is certainly not a very specific interest, since all I know of him comes from reading various books in which he is mentioned, and not from a deep study of primary sources, a thorough knowledge of the era and places where he lived, or an abiding obsession with the minutia of life in the American West.

I suppose it stems in large part from an interview with Michael McClure that I was reading once. At this point I do not really remember what McClure himself said exactly, and my understanding of his point was probably imperfect as well. At any rate, he was discussing his thoughts on Billy the Kid, whom he called, if I recall correctly, a “prophet of death.” As I say, I may have completely mistaken his meaning, but I got the sense of Billy the Kid as somehow symbolic of a certain kind of violence, or attitude toward violence. This is a part of Anderson’s appeal to me. In the poem “The Day Hugh Anderson Died” (published in Timber Creek Review, Vol. 12 No. 4, Winter 2007), I saw in him the last vestige of a time when violence and death were a personal matter. It would behoove us to keep in mind that the Old West is not at a very great remove from the modern world we know. Custer died at the Little Bighorn the same year Major League Baseball came into existence. Wyatt Earp lived long enough to see World War I, the Jazz Age, and the beginning of Hollywood romanticizing his exploits. What most people think of as the Old West was dying out even as it began. Much like the chivalric world of Arthurian romance, in many ways it never really existed. History versus myth, fact versus fiction, all the contradictions which make up America’s collective vision of the place and time are explored time and again in the popular culture.

For me, the story of Hugh Anderson is another tool for digging into the theme. He does not have the stature of Billy the Kid, or Wes Hardin, or Wyatt Earp. He is not cloaked in the dark mythic mystique of John Ringo. His image has not been used to symbolize some aspect of the time as those of so many of his more famous contemporaries have. In essence, Hugh Anderson is a blank. There are no preconceptions at the mention of his name. In the gallery of gunfighting greats, he is relatively unknown, yet his exploits can be every bit as useful at coming to grips with our perceptions of his time as those of his more illustrious company.