Cowboy Soldiers

End of the Frontier• Social-cultural context• Nervous exhaustion

(neurasthenia)• Fears of race suicide• Hope of reinvigorated

Anglo-Saxon race & nation– an ideal represented by and

promoted by Roosevelt and his friends the

“the over civilized man” (Strenuous Life, 2-3)

Ernest Thompson Seton (1902, Woodcraft Indians),  Daniel Carter Beard (1905, Sons of Daniel Boone), and Robert Baden-Powell (1907, Boy Scouts)

“when the children are trained” (Strenuous Life, 1-2)

“When men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, that nation is rotten to the heart’s core.” (Strenuous Life, 2)

“We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease.” (2)

Sarah Watt, Rough Rider in the White House

“We must build up our power without our own border. We must build the isthmian canal, and we must grasp the points of vantage which will enable us to have our say in deciding the destiny of the oceans of the East and the West” (Strenuous Life, 3)

“[Chorus in background]'Those pious Yankees can't throw stones at us anymore.'"

"A man is thrown down on his back and three or four men sit or stand on his arms and legs and hold him down; and either a gun barrel or a rifle barrel or a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin, -- that is, with an inch circumference, -- is simply thrust into his jaws and his jaws are thrust back, and, if possible, a wooden log or stone is put under his head or neck, so he can be held more firmly. In the case of very old men I have seen their teeth fall out, -- I mean when it was done a little roughly. He is simply held down and then water is poured onto his face down his throat and nose from a jar; and that is kept up until the man gives some sign or becomes unconscious. And, when he becomes unconscious, he is simply rolled aside and he is allowed to come to. In almost every case the men have been a little roughly handled. They were rolled aside rudely, so that water was expelled. A man suffers tremendously, there is no doubt about it. His sufferings must be that of a man who is drowning, but cannot drown. ...“

— Lieutenant Grover Flint during the Philippine-American War (May 1900, testifying before a Philippines Senate Committee)

Quoted in Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, Stuart Creighton Miller (1982)

A picture of a “water detail,” reportedly taken in May, 1901, in Sual, the Philippines. “It is a terrible torture,” one soldier wrote.

Soldiers of the 35th U.S. Volunteer Infantry Regiment either demonstrating or administering the “water cure” during the Filipino-American War (Philippine Insurrection) of 1899-1902.