Frederic Remington is remembered mostly as a painter, sculptor, and illustrator of western American subjects. His depictions of such figures as cowboys, frontiersmen, and Indians, many of which appeared in large national magazines such as Harper's Monthly and Collier's during his lifetime, continue to be popular. However, Remington was also a writer of essays, short fiction, and novels, which complement his paintings and sculptures, elucidating the darker side of Remington's complex thought. In these writings the settlement of the American West appears as a metaphor for diminishment and loss.

Remington was born at Canton, New York, a village not far from the St. Lawrence River, some six months after the beginning of the Civil War. His mother, Clara Sackrider Remington, was the daughter of a local hardware merchant. His father, Seth Pierre Remington, had founded the town's first newspaper in 1856, when he was about nineteen years old. Both...