True Grit

After Tom Chaney kills Frank Ross, he flees into the night. He has committed murder, but Mattie is shocked to discover that the authorities in Fort Smith have no real inclination to pursue him. He has fled into Indigenous territory, the name given to the regions in the United States which were governed by the Indigenous tribes. These territories had their own law enforcement and, due to the complex web of jurisdictional authorities and legal permissions, certain officers and agents could not pursue men like Chaney across this border. In the conventions of the Western genre, the invocation of the Indigenous territory creates a sense of otherness. The border between the territory and the rest of the United States is, for the white American characters, the border between law and chaos, between the known and the unknown. Chaney has fled into this wild unknown, a place where only a select few United States marshals are permitted to follow. Mattie recognizes the biblical precedent of this issue, claiming that “the wicked flee where none pursueth” (117). Chaney’s wickedness is defined, for Mattie, by his willingness to cross the border into the place where most people will not go.

For people like Mattie, the Indigenous territory is an alien place. The border that separates her from the territory is likened to a border between civilization and chaos, an attitude that is reflected in the townspeople of Fort Smith. They recognize the otherness of the place across the border, even as they criticize Fort Smith itself. This sense of otherized violence, however, is shown to be hollow. Even in Fort Smith, a small town that is one of the supposed last bastions of civilization before the border, is beset by violence. Chaney killed Frank Ross in Fort Smith because gambling and drunkenness were permitted in the town. The entire town gathers to watch a hanging, in which the execution of three men (including an Indigenous man) is turned into a public spectacle. Rooster Cogburn, a supposed agent of law and order, rages against the bureaucracy of the same legal system that he represents. He makes a mockery of the court by willfully lying while the public defender pridefully attempts to defend a man who is shown later to be a brutal criminal. Every legal institution that supposedly defines American civilization in contrast to Native chaos is, in reality, soaked in blood and hypocrisy. 

The apparent violence beyond the border is more of a mirror, reflecting back the true brutality of American existence in the late 19th century. To emphasize this, the novel names real people. Judge Isaac Parker was a real man, known as “the Hanging Judge,” for his tendency to sentence men to death. Likewise, Frank James and Cole Younger were historical outlaws who reflect the brutality of the era. In contrast to these brutal men, some of whom are backed by the government, the Indigenous characters are quiet and benign. The Indigenous territory is talked about as though it is a lawless place, but the novel presents the real men of the world as the most violent and the most brutal. It is the violence within the borders of so-called civilization that is to be feared most, violence which then crosses over into the rapidly diminishing Indigenous territory by savage men like Rooster Cogburn.

Rooster is one of the few men legally permitted to traverse the border between the known and the unknown. In spite of his many faults, the so-called civilization imbues him with the authority to kill in the Indigenous territories. Rather than represent the court, Rooster is a law unto himself. He represents an ill-defined, guttural interpretation of right and wrong, a system of morality that is fraught with contradictions, lies, and falsehoods. Rooster’s power is that he is able to cross the border within himself, locating a primal violence and brutality that is not constrained by civilization. His true grit is, in effect, his ability to denude himself of the constraints of civilization. In the Indigenous territories, free from society’s judgment but invested with so-called society’s power, he is free to enforce the law as he sees fit. The novel rarely portrays actual Indigenous culture or law. Rather, the Indigenous territory is a staging ground for social critique, a place in which American society can be stripped bare to its most brutal, self-aggrandizing truth.