The Heirs of Buffalo Bill: Performing Authenticity in the Dime Western

Abstract

This article examines how the dime-novel western is affected by the predominance of performance westerns such as film, Wild West, and stage drama. The dime western compulsively describes the bodies of its characters to establish their social meanings within both particular dime stories and larger narratives of frontier history. Dime-western bodies are marked so that audiences can scrutinize their authenticity, assessing quickly where each body fits in the pantheon of western history and comparing each body's actions to the historical “script.” The dime-novel western is assiduous in its devotion to revealing the truth of the body; whether disguised, mistaken, lost, unknown, or de-racialized, the dime western renders visible the authentic body, and each body is invariably rewarded or punished according to its ideological role in promoting or impeding popular notions of frontier history.