The West is dead.

Not long ago I read a book titled Paper Talk. It is a collection of dozens of illustrated letters and other odds and ends by the late, great Western artist Charles M. Russell, edited and with commentary by Brian Dippie. Included in the collection is the above drawing and verse Russell inscribed in a book for a friend. It reads:

The west is dead my friend
But writers hold the seed
And what they sow
Will live and grow
Again to those who read.
—C.M. Russell, 1917

I like the short poem for a couple of reasons. There is Russell’s declaration that the West is dead. He made that statement in 1917, but he was not the first (nor would he be the last) to voice the sentiment. The West has died on numerous occasions, beginning in the nineteenth century. It died when the great trail drives out of Texas ended. It died with the end of the open range era and the invention of barbed wire fences. It died when the influence of women tamed the wild and violent towns. It died when historian Frederick Jackson Turner mourned the closing of the American frontier in 1890, and with it the westward movement that created the unique American character. And the West has continued to die, over and over again ever since, with the homestead act, with the regulation of public lands grazing, and you name it. The West is dead.

But the truth of it is, the West has never died. It has evolved and changed just as the North, South, East, and all the other points on the compass have adapted over the years, and will continue to do so. Still, through it all, the West managed to maintain much of its character as it aged.

And at least some of the reason for the truth that the West lives on is credited in Russell’s claim that writers “hold the seed.” The so-called Westerns created by writers—whether stories, poems, songs, radio plays, movies, television, histories, biographies—have also been declared dead on more occasions than anyone can remember. But Western writing is as prone to survival as the West that inspires it. It carries on and continues to “live and grow / Again to those who read.”

The West is dead. Long live the West.

Thank you for making it so, whether you are a Western writer or Western reader.