Western Heritage: A Selection of Wrangler Award–winning Articles
edited by Paul Hutton, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2011, $19.95 paperback.
For the past half-century in the Western niche, National Cowboy &Western Heritage Museum Wranglers have been part Oscars, part Grammys, part Pulitzer Prizes and part down-to-earth Oklahoma City gems. The dozen selected essays/articles in this 305-page work are all Wrangler winners, representative of the prestigious group of honorees since 1961 (an appendix contains the full list). Editor Paul Andrew Hutton, a distinguished professor of American history at the University of New Mexico with six Wranglers under his belt, divided the volume into three sections: The Native West, Cowboys and Cattle Country, and Battles Lost and Won. “All of these authors,” he writes, “bring a deft hand to historical analysis combined with a graceful literary style. This combination has always been the primary criterion for winning a Western Heritage Award.”
Wild West has published four Wrangler winning articles, three of which are in this volume (the fourth, Frederick J. Chiaventone’s “Taking Stock of the Pony Express,” from the April 2010 issue, won the 2011 Wrangler for best magazine article). The 1997 winner, Greg Michno’s “Lakota Noon at the Greasy Grass,” a look at the Battle of the Little Bighorn from the Indians’ points of view, appeared in the June 1996 Wild West and led to the 1997 book Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer’s Defeat. The 1998 winner, Dan L. Flores’ “When the Buffalo Roamed,” an examination of why the bison herds nearly died out in North America, was the April 1997 Wild West cover story. The 2005 winner, Hutton’s “‘It Was but a Small Affair’: The Battle of the Alamo,” published in the February 2004 Wild West, examines how Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna underestimated the importance of the Texas blood that fell at the old Spanish mission. Other subjects handled adeptly include the Texas Rangers, by Robert M. Utley; Geronimo, by the late C.L. Sonnichsen; Charles M. Russell, by Raphael Cristy; the Mountain Meadows Massacre, by Sally Denton; Crazy Horse, by Jeffrey V. Pearson; and Theodore Roosevelt, by Hutton.
Originally published in the October 2011 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
