The Comancheria Becomes the American Frontier, By Force, of Course, Of Course.

“I think cowboys represent masculinity, bravery, courageousness, selflessness, rugged individualism. And it's those characteristics, I think, that draw people to the cowboy ideal, the cowboy image. Its appeal is especially strong during periods of national crisis and trauma, whether it'd be war or depression, because cowboys appeal to strength, stability and core values." Byron Price, interviewed on NPR.
Bill Watts is a living embodiment of the frontier culture of rugged individual manliness and therefore makes an excellent study in how the cult of the cowboy manifests itself in American culture. Frederick Jackson Turner crystallized the idea that the frontier developed the freedom-loving democratic character of the United States. In a famous 1893 essay, Turner claimed “that westward movement was central in American history and in the American experience. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating the American character.” (3)

There is a remarkable dual meaning in the phrase “in continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society.” For Turner he meant it as celebration of the idyllic and the virtue of rural life. The settlers fighting to establish an Anglo-American presence in the Comancheria, however, were in a wholly different continuous touch with a “primitive” society. They were at war.

Among the most searing and influential narratives in American history are the “captivity narratives” of women and children settlers who’d been taken by the Comanche during skirmishes or raids. These writings are part wartime propaganda, part ethnography, part adventure and survival story. The stories of Dolly Webster, Sarah Ann Horn, and Mary Jemison gripped white settlers like nothing else in the war and helped rouse national sentiment to defend the frontier from savage attack. Probably the most famous of these narratives is the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, which was turned into the celluloid cowboy classic The Searchers, a movie steeped in the ethic of “standing alone.” There are few men in America the age of Watts who didn’t want to be John Wayne growing up, and probably none in Oklahoma.

“I have honor, a real man fights his opponents head on,” Watts once said to Jim Cornette, as though morality and nobility have any place in war or wrestling. The wars against the Comanche helped codify the cowboy ethos. The Comanche didn’t fight with what the Anglo settlers considered honor: they raided at night, they never attacked alone, when faced with equal forces they retreat into the night, when they did attack they took the weakest and avoided the strongest, they raped women and mutilated the dead. Theirs was not a fight for honor; it was a fight to continue existing as a people.

That the settlers movement west through the Comercharia was unstoppable ensured this conflict would continue until one side no longer existed. The expansion of the Americans was unquenchable, part of their nascent national character. “The frontiersman… defined what it meant to be an American as he moved west and left European influence behind.” (4) Utah Valley College Professor Alice Dodwell makes a contemporary point here; so often we have heard nativist politicians deriding Obama for his “European socialism” and for “turning the American dream into a European Nightmare.” (5)

Most importantly, “frontier life developed the individualism that promoted democracy, and it created a buoyant American character that thrived on freedom, strength, inquisitiveness, invention, and expansion." (6) These are the ideals of the cowboy cult.

Authors Joe B. Frantz and Julian Choate describe the ideals of the cult of the cowboy in a book of somber essays on the morality of the iconic character. They say, “the good cowboy is brave and up for a challenge. He promotes justice and defends the honor of women; he is the implacable foe of the Indian; and a man to whom honor and integrity come naturally.” (7) John Wayne is the iconic good cowboy. Ronald Reagan played a good cowboy, both onscreen and in the White House. George W. Bush thought he was a good cowboy but he was all hat and no cattle.

Bill Watts in the UWF was the archetypical good cowboy; he and his heroes are obsessed with the justice and think nothing of imposing their vision of it on others, through loud talk first and violence after. As revolting as their attitudes towards their women are (an idea we’ll explore later) they are constantly fighting to defend “their honor.” And in the damning eyes of Watts, those without the requisite amount of physical bravery are the worst of the worst: they are “sissies.”

The other side of the same coin is the bad cowboy. This wild and roguish figure is associated with outlaws like Wild Bill and Billy the Kid. Wrestling has seen its fair share of these baddies, too; Terry Funk and Stan Hansen are notably merciless and hard-charging. Hell, Bill Watts himself played a heel cowboy at times in his career, turning on his longtime friend Bruno Sammartino in 1965. (8) As Frantz and Choate define, the bad cowboy is “a reckless ruffian, the bad cowboy is a pistol-shooting, merciless, hard-living man who roamed the boom towns of the Old West.” (9)

Professor Dodwell lays the foundation for this argument in writing, “scholars have critiqued the cowboy myth and called for abandoning it because the good and the bad cowboy become intermingled; they argue that the violent aspects of the bad cowboy are idealized as embodying the essence of the American character.” (10)

Over and over in UWF TV we see that this is true, that the violent aspects of the cowboy culture are twisted and corrupted and that the frontier mythos imposed a physical fascism and confused “standing tall” and violence for morality and bravery.

The brilliant cultural critic Richard Slotkin further explains why in a series of books focused on the cult of the cowboy and the damage it is capable of causing. Regeneration Through Violence (1973) and Gunfighter Nation (1992), are about “how the myth of the frontiersman and the cowboy have sanctioned local and national violence; he argues the U.S. needs to cast off the cowboy myth because of its advocacy of violence and because it idealizes “the white male adventurer as the hero of national history.” (11)

“A middle-aged white badass as the hero of the story” is a perfect encapsulation of UWF television during the Watts reign. How often did the Cowboy (or his handmade homunculus, Steve Williams) have to run to the ring and restore order? Damn near every show.

The frontier mythos and the cult of the cowboy it created is so prevalent in American culture that we cannot conceive of our politics without it.

Slotkin elucidates, writing, “the symbols [of the frontier mythos] are appropriate lauguage for explaining and justifying the use of political power. The exchange of an old, domestic, agrarian frontier for a new frontier of world power and industrial development had been a central trope in American political and historiographical debates since the 1890s.” (12) Oklahoma during from the start of Watts’ life through his booking run in the UWF was an agrarian frontier struggling with its role in the nation. It was the old country colliding with the new and a clash of cultures was taking place, just as had happened during the conquest of the Comancheria. As wheat and commodities prices dropped during a time of wildly fluctuating trade, the old, agrarian way of life was being challenged and usurped by new money from oil and overseas investment. In the UWF that manifested by the Arab Akbar and others, remember, Hotstuff Inc was an international conglomerate.