This Was a Fatal Embarkation

1890s

From chronicler of the West to its historian

Gradually he transitions from the premier chronicler-artist of the Old West to its most important historian-artist. He forms an effective partnership with Owen Wister, who becomes the leading writer of Western stories of the time, and, more confident of his craft, writes that his drawing is done entirely from memory and that he no longer uses a camera: the interesting never occurs in nature as a whole but in pieces, and it is more what he leaves out than what he adds. He rarely depicts the gambling-hall and dance-hall scenes typical of Western movies and avoids frontier women; A Misdeal (1897) is a rare instance of indoor cowboy violence.

January 1897

To Cuba as a correspondent for Hearst's paper

His association with Roosevelt, then New York City Police Commissioner, pays off: the artist is hired as a war correspondent and illustrator for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and sent to Cuba with the celebrity journalist Richard Harding Davis. Cuba's apparent peacefulness leaves them nothing to report; in a famous but probably apocryphal exchange of telegrams, Remington says there will be no war and he wishes to return, and Hearst replies that the artist should furnish the pictures and he will furnish the war. Remington returns to New Rochelle while Davis remains.

12 February 1897

The “Olivette Incident”: a sensational illustration

Shocked by the story of Clemencia Arango, who said she had been deported from Cuba for her revolutionary activities and strip-searched before boarding the Olivette, Davis dispatches the news to Hearst. The front page of the Journal for 12 February is dominated by Remington's sensationalist illustration, run across five columns, of Arango stripped naked on the ship's deck, surrounded by three Spanish officials; Hearst dubs it the “Olivette Incident”. The issue sells a record number of copies, almost a million, and the next day Arango calls Remington's version largely a fabrication, saying that only a single female police matron had inspected her, in a private setting.

1898

At war in Cuba: a heroic image shattered

As the Spanish–American War takes shape, he returns to Cuba to see military action for the first time and goes through the most wrenching, disillusioning experience of his life. Witnessing the assault on San Juan Hill by American forces, including those led by Roosevelt, he sees his heroic conception of war shattered by the actual horror of jungle fighting and the deprivations of camp. His reports and illustrations on his return focus not on heroic generals but on the troops.

1898

A bronze “Bronco Buster” as a gift to Roosevelt from the Rough Riders

When the Rough Riders return to the US they present their courageous leader Roosevelt with Remington's bronze statuette The Bronco Buster, which the artist calls the greatest compliment he ever had — after this everything will be mere fuss; Roosevelt replies that there could have been no more appropriate gift from such a regiment.

1900

Harper's drops him; he writes a novel

As an economy move, Harper's drops Remington as its star artist. To compensate for the lost work he writes and illustrates a full-length novel, The Way of an Indian, intended for serialization by a Hearst publication; his protagonist, a Cheyenne named Fire Eater, is a prototype Native American as viewed by Remington and many of his time.