The Scalp

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.

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.

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.

after 1902

Decides to give up writing and illustration

After “John Ermine” Remington decides he will soon quit writing and illustrating — he has drawn over 2,700 illustrations — to focus on sculpture and painting.

26 December 1909

Dies after an emergency appendectomy

Remington dies after an emergency appendectomy leads to peritonitis. His extreme obesity — nearly 300 lbs, about 136 kg — had complicated the anesthesia and the surgery, and the postmortem examination cited chronic appendicitis as an underlying factor in his death.

26 december 1909

Died