Dodge City as a “progressive” western

The film's historical subject is the modernization of the Frontier after the Civil War.

The coming of the railroad means the end of the old buffalo-hunting life of the Indians

and the development of the ranching and trail-driving business. The small Indian-fighting

outpost of Fort Dodge will become a city where vigorous western productivity meets the

Eastern capitalist and consumer. This nascent metropolis will also be the site of an ideological

confrontation: the overt antagonism between northern and southern veterans of the Civil War;

the political opposition between the forces of corruption and civic virtues; and the ideological

opposition between the frontier principles of rugged individualism and masculine violence,

and the refinements of a civilization presided over by women. Through the course of the

narrative these oppositions will be resolved and a new and more perfect western society created.

from Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: the Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 1993),

pp. 288-89.