A giant geographical and psychological folk region stretching from Canada to Mexico
between the West Coast and the Midwest excepting metropolitan areas. The location of
this area was perhaps most pervasively and dramatically expressed by Bernard DeVoto in
his alternately lyrical, moving, and funny Foreword to BenjaminA. Botkins’ 1951
compilation, A Treasury of Western Folklore. DeVoto began by defming the folk West
very precisely and scientifically in terms of climate, placing the beginning of the West
where the annual rainfall drops below 20 inches, roughly the 100th meridian. “East of
100 degrees is something else,” he wrote, “but west of it is assuredly West.” After this
very exact description, however, he added that there were some places included by his
description—primarily urban and suburban areas—that should not be, and some areas
outside of his mechanical definition that should be within it.
In 1980, twenty-eight members of the Rocky Mountain Folklife Caucus of the
American Folklore Society identified the Rocky Mountain folk region very much as
DeVoto had earlier defmed the entire West. The region as drawn by the members of the
caucus rarely followed state lines. Portions of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New
Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming were included as a part of the region by twenty-five or
more of the twenty-eight folklorists; areas of Nevada, Oregon, and Washington were
included by ten to seventeen; and sections of California (six), Kansas (two), North
Dakota (five), South Dakota (seven), and Texas (nine) were also included by some of the
professional folklorists answering the survey. Those surveyed had as many exceptions as
DeVoto did. Some specifically excluded areas that others specifically included. Minor
differences aside, however, the survey indicated that the essence of the Rocky Mountain
folk region is its unique geography and geology and its low population density.
Cultural geographers use the term “ecumene” to describe that portion of the Earth
controlled and civilized—divided by roads and fields into right angles, a favorite design
of man precisely because they are rare in nature. The single most important geographical fact
about the Rocky Mountain area is that most of it is not a part of Earth’s ecumene in this
sense. Its immense canyons, interconnected mountain ranges, forests, deserts, wild rivers,
big skies, and sudden, fierce “natural” disasters are the reality through which all things
come in the folklore of and about the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps it is the sheer size of the
Rocky Mountain area that has caused there to be such extensive folklores both of the area
and about the various groups in the area. DeVoto said that the Westerner feels “his
personality shrunk to miniature size by the enormousness in which he lives.”
There are many ethnic, occupational, hobby, and religious folk groups that are, or have
been, a part of the Rocky Mountain folk culture through its long recorded history and
prehistory. Many of them and their traditions are a part of both the folklore of the area
and the folklore about the area. The “old ones,” the Native Americans of prehistory, are
regularly recalled in the area through their pervasive legacies. The old ones’ descendants
are many, and they are parts of many living tribes and vital cultures. “Coronado’s
children,” as well, still live in the Rocky Mountain area and militantly trace their lineage to Spain. Mexican Americans from different sections of the area speak similar but
different Spanish dialects reflecting the fact that they are a part of similar but different
subcultures. Men called vaqueros, “cowboys,” and “buckaroos” all work with stock, but
each word refers to a related but different subculture of the Rocky Mountain area. Rocky
Mountain Mormons, ranchers, miners, sheepherders, Basques, and loggers have all been
recognized as regional folk groups. Mountain men and ring-tailed roarers (braggers and
fighters) have been widely investigated by, respectively, scholars in American history
and American literature. Hunting, fishing, trapping, hiking, rock hunting, mountain
climbing, skiing, river running, horseback riding, and bird-watching are all popular
hobbies of Rocky Mountain folk, and there is a core few in each group who have made
their hobbies their lives and their primary cultural identification. The folklore of some of
these groups of the Rocky Mountain area has been collected, but the folklore of many has
not, and there has been little research concerning the widespread American folklore about
either category of groups.
The folk-cultural Rocky Mountain area is a way of thinking on the part of a great
diversity of folk groups who have lived with and, to some extent at least, become a part
of this land. There is great diversity of folk cultures of the Rocky Mountain region, and
there are some major differences between general American folklore about these groups
and their own traditions, but there are also some general regional characteristics of the
folklore of, and the folklore about, Rocky Mountain folk. Living with enormousness
DeVoto noted has produced a cross-cultural Rocky Mountain lore that emphasizes
humor, is eclectically mystical, and supports an unwritten code stressing freedom,
egalitarianism, and aesthetics.
Rocky Mountain folk place great emphasis upon laughter and talking well. Humor and
the artistic dimension of communication are positive values shared by many groups in the
region. From colorful folk speech to complex narrative traditions, and from practical
jokes to stories of practical jokes, Rocky Mountain folk enjoy performing.
Many Rocky Mountain folk also seem to have as a part of their lives a kind of crosscultural mysticism or natural religion in addition to, or in place of, their official religious
faith. While many are active members of formal, organized religions, many more are not,
although most of both groups profess an awareness of the supermundane and
acknowledge it with a fascinating blend of eclectic belief, ancient ritual, and perhaps
New Age ceremony.
Freedom is one of the most important values in the Rocky Mountain area,
romanticized and avidly sought in both the folklore of, and, the folklore about, the region.
While cowboys in American popular culture wore either black or white hats in keeping
with their assigned roles, cowboys and other Rocky Mountain Anglo Americans at the
end of the 20th century dress in full, ethnographically accurate, 1880s buckaroo regalia or
contemporary blue jeans and sweat shirts. “Don’t Fence Me In” is an old, traditional,
frequently collected Rocky Mountain ballad. The fact that the song was originally written
by Robert H.Fletcher, a cowboy poet, rewritten by Cole Porter, featured in a Roy Rogers
movie, and passed into Rocky Mountain oral tradition says a lot about the ideals that cut
across the cultures past and present. Most Rocky Mountain folk relate to that old cowboy
ballad Cole Porter rewrote and celebrate and practice individual freedom—just like the
folklore about them says that diey do. In the land of the “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” lots
of folk have made the kind of freedom extolled by the folklore about these weeds a part of their lives. (That song, too, is popular culture, but the weeds are still real, they do
tumble, and Rocky Mountain folks catch them crawling over their fences, dip them in
white wash or spray paint them, and use them as Christmas trees—as well as chuckle
when a set blows by at eye level.) What the folk most often say is that the enormousness
of the land shows what a minuscule and minor part of creation is man, and that this
knowledge is liberating so that anyone who has known the land and his own
insignificance can never be anything but free.
Egalitarianism is also a valued part of the Rocky Mountain folk code. Botkin noted
that, “things being transient and conditions changing, it is the man that counts, judged not
by what he says but by what he is and does.” Women very early established their
importance as coequals with men in the Rocky Mountain folk area. Nowhere else in
America does a woman at the folk level so naturally enjoy the equality and power rightly
due her as a member of the human race as she does in the folk culture of the Rocky
Mountains. For example, Martha Arriol, a teenage German immigrant, who had read
about the derring-do of the great fictional Westerner “Old Shatter Hand” in popular
German Western novels, came to Nevada and became a ranch cook during the first
quarter of the 20th century. Many years later, she vividly recalled the equality of a land
where there were not enough ranch hands to go around. “I even helped on horseback,”
she said. “We had to help hold cattle and do things.” The clear Rocky Mountain folk
ideal, like all ideals in all cultures sometimes honored by its breach, is that people should
be judged by what they do rather than by who they are—or, by extension, regardless of
their gender.
A natural outgrowth of these dual emphases upon freedom and egalitarianism is an
extreme emphasis upon artistic expression. Many Rocky Mountain folk accessorize their
clothing with Native American traditional jewelry—and know its history and aesthetics—
and an unusually high number have tried their hand at making it themselves, or painting
pictures, or writing, or other arts and crafts. Other Rocky Mountain folklore forms and
values, also, stress a strong sense of, and concern with, aesthetics. Just as the Rocky
Mountain woman, in general, has a greater degree of social freedom than women in other
American folk areas, so the Rocky Mountain man is more free to be concerned with
color, form, and design than men in most other American folk regions. This emphasis
upon aesthetics coupled with an appreciation of performance has led to a long tradition of
performance art best described as leg pulling. The chief complaint made by the folklore
about the Rocky Mountain folks’ lives, tall tales, clothing, cedar smudges, and Indian
jewelry is not so much that they dress informally, are concerned with aesthetics, and are
aware of, and perhaps to some extent more accepting of, alternate realities than other
Anglo Americans, but rather that mentally and physically they are always costumed and
posturing and, as DeVoto noted, knowing at some level that they are getting away with
something—and enjoying it.
The folklore of the Anglo American Rocky Mountain folk-cultural area was called
into being partly by dichotomous metaphors that were a part of the folklore about the
area: garden and wilderness, noble savage and child of nature, boom and bust. In folklore
about their area, Rocky Mountain folk found international narrative themes, motifs, and
characters to develop and localize and to use to entertain themselves and others. Rocky
Mountain folk took the folklore about themselves and developed a richly diverse,
flourishing folklore of the area stressing reality and humor through an emphasis upon accurately presented geographic, cultural, and human detail. Rocky Mountain folklore
was further developed by the addition of local characters and local settings, gaining—
even in parody forms such as tall tales—verisimilitude by grounding folklore in
ethnographic and personal terms. Folklore about the Rocky Mountain area, in turn,
continued to view the area and its inhabitants as dichotomous metaphorical referents and
adopted and adapted the areas’ folklore to the same end, in the process creating a new
folklore about it by eliminating much of the emphasis upon accuracy and replacing living
persons with stock characters. Folklore of the Rocky Mountains took these stereotypes,
again, and revitalized them with realism and both folklore of, and folklore about, the
Rocky Mountain folk area have lives of their own with far-ranging consequences. Ringtailed roarers, Native Americans, cowboys, and the land itself all underwent a similar
process in their movement from folklore of to folklore about. In each of these cases,
folklore of the Rocky Mountains began as generalized stereotyped dichotomous themes
and values. These values and themes helped shape the developing folklore of the Rocky
Mountain folk-cultural area grounded in persons and places and then—so transformed—
were carried forward in images and ideas in new folklore about the Rocky Mountain folk
area again once more in terms of types. The interaction continues.
In effect, both the folklore of the Rocky Mountain area and the folklore about the
Rocky Mountain folk area exist simultaneously as mountains of the imagination. The
former serves as a broad, general metaphor, while the latter provides an experiential
account of reality. Like a whirling, three-dimensional universe of moons, planets, and
suns moving in their interrelated and interactive courses, the two Rocky Mountain
folklores (of and about) intertwine stories, objects, customs, thoughts, and unconscious
integrative principles, and shape and reshape them and each other in terms of freedom,
egalitarianism, and aesthetics.
Keith Cunningham
References
Attebery, Louie W., ed. 1985. Idaho Folklife: Homesteads to Headstones. Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press.
Botkin, Benjamin A., ed. 1951. A Treasury of Western Folklore, with Introduction by Bernard
DeVoto. New York: Crown