http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005369
 
Go Ahead, Call Us Cowboys A visit to the Alaska-Canada border brings home the differences between the cultures.
 
BY ANDREW KLEINFELD AND JUDITH KLEINFELD Monday, July 19, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Everywhere, Americans are called "cowboys." On foreign tongues, the reference to America's Western rural laborers is an insult. Cowboys, we are told, plundered the earth, arrogantly rode roughshod over neighbors, and were addicted to mindless violence. So some of us hang our heads in shame. We shouldn't. The cowboy is in fact our Homeric hero, an archetype that sticks because there's truth in it.

Cowboys were of course plainsmen--Midwesterners operating from Texas to Kansas to the Dakotas. But their ideas and ideals spread across the continent to our Mountain West as well, even as far as the Alaskan West.

A few years ago, a Canadian anthropologist explained to us how different her countrymen are from Americans. She had a perfect comparison to illustrate this. She suggested that we go to the extreme western edge of Canada and have a look at two small towns named Stewart and Hyder. Stewart is situated in British Columbia, Hyder at the southeastern tip of Alaska. Though just two miles apart, these towns are very different in their "habits of the heart." If we visited them, our anthropologist friend implied, we would immediately understand the superiority of Canadian culture.

We decided to take up her challenge.