During the years before the Civil War, American writers developed a new genre: Southwestern Humor. Following Augustus Baldwin Longstreet’s lead, Humorists (as writers of this period are called) included George Washington Harris, Johnson Jones Hooper, Joseph Glover Baldwin, Joseph Beckham Cobb, and Thomas Bangs Thorpe—among others. The works of Longstreet and Thorpe are the ones that are most commonly studied, analyzed, and criticized. It may be because their characters clearly exemplify the archetypes of Southwestern Humorist characters; or it may be because the narrators in their stories represent the typical narrators in Southwestern Humor; or it may be because the stories—or tall tales, as some choose to call them—are the epitome of what Southwestern Humor (also known as Colloquial Humor and Frontier Humor) was all about. Whatever the case may be, Longstreet and Thorpe definitely left their print in American Literature during the nineteenth century.
Southwestern Humor is the name given to a genre that includes a tradition of regional sketches and tales based in the “old” Southwest, comprised of Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia and Arkansas (Price). After the election of Andrew Jackson as president, the elevation of the “common man” was reflected in this new type of humor. These sketches ranged from tall tales to tales of ironic humor, all written with a thick regional dialect, which gave the story a certain spice that few pieces of literature had had before.
Written almost exclusively by white males, and intended for an audience of educated men, the character of the humorist (usually the narrator) almost always represents an educated elite. Longstreet uses a “narrative frame,” a southwestern trademark, to “accommodate the unfolding of the story by a typically aristocratic and composed narrative voice” (Price). In the case of “The Horse-Swap” (published in 1835), the narrator is a self-controlled narrator, and acts almost condescending towards the two seemingly uneducated men that are swapping horses.
During the session of the Supreme Court, in the village of –, about three weeks ago, when a number of people were collected in the principal street of the village, I observed a young man riding up and down the street, as I supposed, in a violent passion. [. . .] While he was performing these various evolutions, he cursed, swore, whooped, screamed, and tossed himself in every attitude which man could assume on horseback. In short, he cavorted most magnanimously (a term which, in our tongue, expresses all that I have described, and a little more), and seemed to be setting all creation at defiance. As I like to see all that is passing, I determined to take a position a little nearer to him, and to ascertain, if possible, what it was that affected him so sensibly. Accordingly, I approached a crowd before which he had stopped for a moment, and examined it with the strictest scrutiny. But I could see nothing in it that seemed to have anything to do with the cavorter. Every man appeared to be in good humour, and all minding their own business. Not one so much as noticed the principal figure. Still he went on. After a semicolon pause, which my appearance seemed to produce (for he eyed me closely as I approached), he fetched a whoop, and swore that “he could out-swap any live man, woman, or child that ever walked these hills, or that ever straddled horseflesh since the days of old daddy Adam.” (857-858)
The narrator—never named, never identified directly—acts as a know-it-all; perhaps, as the narrator, he has a right to be. However, the case of the “omniscient” and “arrogant” narrator (as in the previous excerpt) is characteristic of the frontier humor.
T.B. Thorpe’s narrator in “The Big Bear of Arkansas” (published in 1841) is similar to Longstreet’s, in that the narrator is a self-controlled gentleman as well. However, the narrator in “The Big Bear of Arkansas” is not condescending—on the contrary: he tells the story from the eyes of an educated, well-traveled outsider who watches—and most importantly listens to—the speaker, Jim Doggett, the “Big Bar” himself. The readers and listeners end up feeling sad at the end; a feeling of nostalgia looming in the conclusion:
He was the first one, however, to break the silence, and, jumping up, he asked all present to “liquor” before going to bed, a thing which he did, with a number of companions, evidently to his heart’s content.
Long before day, I was put ashore at my place of destination, and I can only follow with the reader, in imagination, our Arkansas friend, in his adventures at the “Forks of Cypress,” on the Mississippi. (871)
The difference in attitudes and moods is obvious when one reads the two different stories. Although both are meant to be humorous stories—and they both are—they elicit different kinds of feelings. The narrator does this (well, the author does this via the narrator) by being arrogant and condescending; he manages to make the reader feel detached from the story, enjoying it, nonetheless. On the other hand, by sharing his own emotions with readers (emotions like nostalgia), the narrator also manages to make the reader feel like he does, thus making the character loved.
The use of narrators enables the reader to live the circumstances “through a superior and disconnected vantage point, thus permitting the reader to laugh at savage or grotesque behavior and characters” (Price). These two types of narrators are typical throughout Southwestern Humorist tales, and they add that third, almost omniscient voice to the story. However, the characters of the humorist sketches are the ones that really differentiate this genre from any other.
According to Angel Price, from the University of Virginia, there are four main character types in Southwestern Humorist literature: the ring-tailed roarer, the mighty hunter, the confidence man, and the durn’d fool.
The ring-tailed roarer is one of Longstreet’s most widely known characters, appearing as Ransy Sniffle in “The Fight” (published in 1840). Sniffle is “one of the first great clowns of Southwestern humor,” according to Price, and the “first in a line of ugly, violent and comical anti-heroes in the genre.” “The Fight” is about two men (who could be categorized as confidence men) who are the strongest men in the county of –. Sniffle proceeds to corrupt the friendship of these two men to have them fight and finally decide who the best hand is. While doing this, Sniffle stays true to himself, as the narrator describes him as having
had fed copiously upon red clay and blackberries. This diet had given to Randy a complexion that a corpse would have disdained to own, and an abdominal rotundity that was quite unprepossessing. Long spells of the fever and ague, too, in Randy’s youth, had conspired with clay and blackberries to throw him quite out of the order of nature. His shoulders were fleshless and elevated; his head large and flat; his neck slim and translucent; and his arms, hands, fingers, and feet were lengthened out of all proportion to the rest of his frame. His joints were large and his limbs small; and as for flesh, he could not, with propriety, be said to have any. Those parts which nature usually supplies with the most of this article the calves of the legs, for example presented in him the appearance of so many well-drawn blisters. His height was just five feet nothing; and his average weight in blackberry season, ninety five. (“The Fight”)
Although not the main character, Sniffle almost dominates the story due to his actions as a catalyst to incite the flames of fury between the two men, and his incessant intents to do so.
There was nothing on this earth which delighted Ransy so much as a fight. He never seemed fairly alive except when he was witnessing, fomenting, or talking about a fight. Then, indeed, his deep-sunken gray eye assumed something of a living fire, and his tongue acquired a volubility that bordered upon eloquence. Ransy had been kept for more than a year in the most torturing suspense as to the comparative manhood of Billy Stallings and Bob Durham. He had resorted to all his usual expedients to bring them in collision, and had entirely failed. He had faithfully reported to Bob all that had been said by the people in the upper battalion “agin him,” and “he was sure Billy Stallings started it. He heard Billy say himself to Jim Brown, that he could whip him, or any other man in his battalion;” and this he told to Bob; adding, “Dod darn his soul, if he was a little bigger, if he’d let any man put upon his battalion in such a way.” Bob replied, “If he (Starlings) thought so, he’d better come and try it.” This Ransy carried to Billy, and delivered it with a spirit becoming his own dignity and the character of his battalion, and with a colouring well calculated to give it effect. These, and many other schemes which Ransy laid for the gratification of his curiosity, entirely failed of their object. (“The Fight”)
At the end, Sniffle undergoes some kind of a change of soul:
“Now that’s what I always love to see,” said a bystander. “It’s true I brought about the fight, but I wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t o’ been on account of Miss (Mrs.) Durham. But dod eternally darn my soul, if I ever could stand by and see any woman put upon, much less Miss Durham. If Bobby hadn’t been there, I’d o’ took it up myself, be darned if I wouldn’t, even if I’d o’ got whipped for it. But were all friends now.” The reader need hardly be told that this was Ransy Sniffle. (“The Fight”)
After the fight, both men apologized and remained friends again. Seeing that there really was no man better than the other, Sniffle had no choice but to make up for his inciting of the fight. But, after reading the story and understanding Ransy Sniffle, it is easy to assume that he did not do this to be nice and do the right thing; he did this to keep both men on his side. The last thing this ring-tailed roared needed was two big men against him.
The might hunter is, according to Price, “the epitome of the braggart—full of tall tales and self glorification. His hunts are violent and always exaggerated. Although the most popular is “Davy Crockett,” Jim Doggett in Thorpe’s “The Big Bear of Arkansas” is an excellent example.
“The Big Bear of Arkansas” is the story of Jim Doggett, a “unique American hero” (Lemay 323) who hunts a bear for “two or three years” (867). The story seems simple enough—wildly exaggerated characters and events which appear possible in a narrative full of realistic details (Keller 565)—and it is hard to believe that there can be much to it; but Doggett elaborates with several tall tales within the larger tall tale itself, and it is this that makes him the quintessential mighty hunter.
Doggett’s first tall tale is about the bird he shot: “a bird anyway is too trifling. I never did shoot at but one, and I’d never forgiven myself for that, had it weighed less than forty pounds. I wouldn’t draw a rifle on anything less heavy than that; and when I meet with another wild turkey of the same size, I will crap him” (864).
And this is Doggett’s favorite “American technique,” according to Lemay, exaggerating the problem and boasting about it.
Another of his tall tales concerns his estate:
“. . . you will appreciate my place. I can give you plenty to eat; for beside hog and hominy, you can have bear-ham, and bearsausages, and a mattress of bear-skins to sleep on, and a wildcat-skin, pulled off hull, stuffed with corn-shucks, for a pillow. That bed would put you to sleep if you had the rheumatics in every joint in your body. [. . .]
“Then look at my ‘pre-emption’ the government ain’t got another like it to dispose of. Such timber, and such bottom land, why you can’t preserve anything natural you plant in it unless you pick it young, things thar will grow out of shape so quick.
“I once planted in those diggins a few potatoes and beets; they took a fine start, and after that, an ox team couldn’t have kept them from growing. [. . .] As I had expected, the crop was overgrown and useless: the sile is too rich, and planting in Arkansaw is dangerous.
“I had a good-sized sow killed in that same bottom land. The old thief stole an ear of corn, and took it down to eat where she slept at night. Well, she left a grain or two on the ground, and lay down on them: before morning the corn shot up, and the percussion killed her dead. I don’t plant any more: natur intended Arkansaw for a hunting ground, and I go according to natur.” (866-867)
But these are all minor examples: the real reason why Jim Doggett is considered the mighty hunter is because of his tale of “the Bar of Arkansaw.”
Doggett gives the bear supernatural characteristics, not only by stating that the bear can only die when hit in a specific place (in his side, “just back of his foreleg,” which makes one think of Achilles, werewolves or vampires…): “A greenhorn friend of mine, in company, reached shooting distance before me, and blazed away, hitting the critter in the centre of his forehead. The bear shook his head as the ball struck, and then walked from that tree, as gently as a lady would from a carriage” (869); but also by comparing him to supernatural beings: “I would see that bear in everything I did: he haunted me, and that, too, like a devil, which I began to think he was” (869).
At the end, however, Doggett pays proper respect to the bear, saying that is was “an unhuntable bear, and died when his time come” (871). A braggart, yes, but a good man deep inside.
The confidence man appears throughout Southwestern humor—as a gambler, a doctor, a horse trader—any occupation which he can mimic and convert for his own benefit, according to Price. “The confidence man is a performer in every sense of the word and takes full advantage of a pose of naïveté. The confidence man is created during a time in history when the individuals of American society are suffering from identity crises,” says Price. The best example of the confidence man is presented by Johnson Jones Hooper, who invents a character of some complexity to which the reader feels an oddly disinterested attraction in his story “Simon Becomes Captain” (published in 1846).
Another good example of the confidence man is presented by Longstreet in “The Horse-Swap,” in both the Yallow Blossom from Jasper and Peter Ketch. The Yallow Blossom from Jasper is the new man in town, who claims he can “out-swap any live man, woman, or child that ever walked these hills, or that ever straddled horseflesh since the days of old daddy Adam” (858). When he asks the narrator is he had ever heard of the Yallow Blossom, the narrator replied that he had, and the Yallow Blossom said, “I’m the boy, [. . .] perhaps a leetle, jist a leetle, of the best man at a horse-swap that ever trod shoe leather” (585). His confidence might seem intimidating, but in the village of –, he finds his match: Peter Ketch, “a man somewhat advanced in years, who stepped up and began to survey the ‘Yallow Blossom’s’ horse with much apparent interest” (858).
Both men want a swap; both men claim to have the best hoss in the area; both men claim to be the best hoss-swappers in the area; both men end up trading hosses; and both men end up being tricked by the other.
Knowing that each of their horses was defective (Yallow Blossom’s hoss, Bullet, had a sore “that seemed to have defied all medical skill. It measured six full inches in length and four in breadth, and had as many features as Bullet had motions” (861); Ketch’s horse, Kit, was “both blind and deef, I’ll be dod drot if he eint” (862)), but not knowing that the other man’s horse was, both men were confident that they were making a great swap, and called themselves “a leetle the best man at a horse-swap” (862). In the end, however, the confidence man (or men, in this case) end up defeated, mocked, and with as bad a horse as he had before.
George Washington Harris created the best durn’d fool ever in his sketch “Sicily Burn’s Wedding” (published in 1867). Price says that “Harris’ great achievement was his creation of Sut Lovingood, ‘a nat’ral born durn’d fool.’ Sut is one of the cruelest characters encountered in Southwest humor. He grossly exaggerates the qualities of conniving, cruelty, brutish behavior and coarse speech—the qualities that enable men to survive the harsh life of the frontier. In turn, respectability, kindness, and brotherhood are characteristics for derision, as they constitute the personalities of the weak.” (I will not go any deeper into this, since my research was focused on Longstreet and Thorpe.)
The subjects of Southwestern humor varied widely, according to Mark Keller, author of “The Big Bear of—Maine???” Topics ranged from such action-filled sports as hunting (Thorpe’s “The Big Bear of Arkansas”) and horseracing, to village fights (Longstreet’s “The Fight”), to horse-trading (Longstreet’s “The Horse-Swap”). Some characteristics are typical of all frontier humor literature, though: 1) at least one of the characters is either a ring-tailed roarer, a confidence man, a mighty hunter, or a durn’d fool; 2) the story includes regional dialects and slang; 3) conflicts with nature are described in humorous ways; and 4) it is a sketch which includes anecdotes.
The three stories analyzed (“The Big Bear of Arkansas,” “The Fight,” and “The Horse-Swap”) all have these 4 characteristics in common. Each of the stories contains a character archetype: “The Big Bear of Arkansas” portrays the mighty hunter with Jim Doggett; “The Fight” depicts the ring-tailed roarer with Ransy Sniffle; and “The Horse-Swap” illustrates the confidence man with the Yallow Blossom and Peter Ketch.
All three stories include dialect and slang terms. In “The Big Bear of Arkansas” this is most obviously noted, since Thorpe initially wrote the story with the word “bar” instead of the word “bear*.” It was not until Thorpe’s publisher, William T. Porter, edited the story for publication in a “popular anthology of humorous stories” (Lemay) in a collection entitled “The Big Bear of Arkansas and Other Sketches” in 1845, that the word “bear” appears properly spelled. According to Lemay, this was done to, perhaps, make the story “more suitable for a general audience.”
Other examples of regional dialects, used only to illustrate Doggett’s speech patter, include Arkansaw (Arkansas), prehaps (perhaps), plentifuller (plenty more), perty (pretty), natur (nature), larning (learning), jist guv (just give), and ain’t (am not, is not).
In “The Horse-Swap,” similar examples of regional dialects appear: Yallow (yellow), jist (just), leetle (little), hoss (horse), dod drot (some kind of interjection), deef (deaf), eint (ain’t; am not, is not), jist as leve go agin (just as leave go again), and oughtn’t (ought not).
Conflicts with nature are best seen in “The Big Bear from Arkansas,” throughout the whole story. Doggett says that “natur intended Arkansaw for a hunting ground, and I go according to natur” (867). However, according to Lemay, Doggett is the “ultimate violator of nature, a man whose primary function is to kill.”
Finally, all three stories are sketches (descriptive writings which try to represent a subject), and all three are the retelling of a character’s anecdotes. In “The Horse-Swap,” for example, the narrator is telling the story of two men who swapped two bad horses; in “The Big Bear of Arkansas,” the narrator is telling the story of a man who hunted an unhuntable bear; and in “The Fight,” the narrator is telling the story two men who got into a fight.
Longstreet and Thorpe are both very important to American literature. With their humorist sketches about “exaggerated characters and events,” as Keller said, in full narratives with “realistic details,” they managed to immortalize a period, a region, and a way of life.
Works Cited
Keller, Mark. “‘The Big Bear of—Main???’: Toward the Development of American Humor.” The New England Quarterly. Vol. 51, NO. 4. 1978. JSTOR. The New England Quarterly, Inc. 25 Nov. 2003. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-4866%28197812%2951%3A4%3C565%3A%22BBOTT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L
Lemay, J. A. Leo. “The Text, Tradition, and Themes of ‘The Big Bear of Arkansas.’” American Literature. Vol. 47, No. 3. 1975. JSTOR. Duke University Press. 25 Nov. 2003. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9831%28197511%2947%3A3%3C321%3ATTTATO%3E2.0CO%3B2-N
Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin. “The Horse-Swap.” Georgia Scenes. Atlanta: 1835. Rpt. in The American Tradition in Literature, vol. 1. Eds. George Perkins and Barbara Perkins. New York: McGraw Hill, 2002. 857-862.
Price, Angel. “The Fight.” By Augustus Baldwin Longstreet. Southwestern Humor and Mark Twain. 25 Nov. 2003. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/projects/price/southwes.htm
—. “Southwestern Humor and Mark Twain.” 25 Nov. 2003. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/projects/price/southwes.htm
Thorpe, Thomas Bangs. “The Big Bear of Arkansas.” The Hive of “The Bee Hunter.” New York: 1854. Rpt. in The American Tradition in Literature, vol. 1. Eds. George Perkins and Barbara Perkins. New York: McGraw Hill, 2002. 862- 871.
* The version in The American Tradition in Literature, vol. 1, writes “bear.” To provide for an easier writing of this paper, I have simply written “bear.”
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