The picture painted of cowboys' lives out West in dime novels of the 1860s and 1870s was far detached from the actual reality of it. The books depicted cowboys with a different lifestyle than they really had.

Owen Wister's hero in The Virginian, was an honest, strong, and benevolent man who was always quick to help the weak and fight the bad. It portrayed cowboys as ill-educated and unrefined but honest, unruffled, and sincerely moral; that they were the Christian knights of the Plains, unresponsive to material gain as they defended virtue, pursued justice, and attacked evil. Dime novels presented them as down-to-earth, virtuous, and innocent, and free from a corrupt social order. They created an idealized hero who is an influential force for morality and social order as he drives off deceitful Indians and rounds up horse thieves and no-good cattle rustlers. These novels inspired Wild West...