Why are Kentucky and Tennessee considered "the West" but the Industrial Midwest is not?

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

So Kentucky, Tennessee, and basically all Southern states west of Georgia are often portrayed in the Western genre as "the West." But no state in the "Industrial Midwest" is included in this category.

Both those states were indeed the Western United States when they were admitted and before the US successfully embarked on the Manifest Destiny. This is a pretty short period though, so I squint a little when I see Westerns (yes, RDR2) refer to Kentucky as "western" in 1899. Incidentally, 80% of Kentuckians live in the Eastern time zone.

Iowa, probably Wisconsin, and especially Minnesota have been prominent locations for Westerns. So why are Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan left out?

Perhaps I'm overthinking this because Westerns use a lot of clichés. Somehow everyone has a Southern accent despite the fact that homesteaders were coming from the North. There's a lot of mythos around the Old West - largely because of Buffalo Bill's promotion of it. But I'm interested as someone who's attempting an endeavor of writing a Western novel.

[Beet]

The West is not an army of lunch pails marching into the grey steel jungle of fire and smoke; it is not concrete phallus rising like the Tower of Babel. It is not Theodore Dreiser, or even Sinclair Lewis.

It is the cowboy, the wagon, the coonskin hat. It is Davy Crockett, it is Mark Twain and John Steinbeck, it is the tilling of the soil. By the way, many Texans originally immigrated from Tennessee.

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

The West is not an army of lunch pails marching into the grey steel jungle of fire and smoke; it is not concrete phallus rising like the Tower of Babel. It is not Theodore Dreiser, or even Sinclair Lewis.

It is the cowboy, the wagon, the coonskin hat. It is Davy Crockett, it is Mark Twain and John Steinbeck, it is the tilling of the soil. By the way, many Texans originally immigrated from Tennessee.

Okay but that doesn't explain how Kentucky is a Western state but Illinois is not.

[Vosem]

I think that 'Westerns' are attempting to celebrate a specific sort of culture, stereotypically macho and independent and marked by its closeness to the American frontier, and something like this culture actually first emerged in the early 19th century in Kentucky and Tennessee. Kentucky specifically had an extremely militarist culture and provided more soldiers to the War of 1812 than all other states combined, and a large number of future American leaders -- including both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis -- had their origins in early 19th-century Kentucky, while Tennessee also provided a disproportionately large number of militarist statesman, like the celebrated Davy Crockett but also more relevant figures like Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Sam Houston.

At least here in Ohio, the decisive conflict with Native Americans happened before widespread European settlement outside the Connecticut Reserve, while in Kentucky the Shawnee remained a very real threat to European power until the mid-1810s or so -- even though widespread settlement in Kentucky began earlier, with Kentucky granted statehood in 1791 and Ohio not till 1803. 'Conflict with Native Americans' is also a pretty integral part of the Western genre, and the culture that gave rise to the Western genre, and this seems to have been a larger part of the experience of settlers in Kentucky than it was in places to Kentucky's north.

Andrew Jackson's campaign song -- possibly the first campaign song on record, or at least the first one I'm aware of -- was "The Hunters of Kentucky", and not the hunters of anywhere to the north, so the distinction you're discussing already existed and was well-known in the 1820s!

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

-snip-

This is a good explanation. But it should be noted that the Plains States were much less religious and therefore culturally different. They probably weren't exactly 'up-to-date' on race issues, but they opposed the expansion of slavery whereas the South... was obviously different. Those are major cultural differences, especially for that time period.

But the cowboy is ultimately a symbol of self-reliance and courage, so there is a connection. I'd wager however that life in Arizona Territory or Kansas was different from life in Kentucky in many ways. (In either case, having money is helpful.)

[Blue3]

I never thought of Kentucky or Tennessee as Western. They're Appalachian, or the Southeast/South,

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I never thought of Kentucky or Tennessee as Western. They're Appalachian, or the Southeast/South,

Yeah, neither state is remotely Western in today's terms.  I also don't think that it's super accurate to call Tennessee Appalachian.  Only about a third of the state (both by land area and population) is in the Appalachians, and most of the people in that part of the state live in a broad valley, making the culture even there much less Appalachian than in places to its north or east.