Red Dead Redemption 2’s story missions
provided a fantastic exploration of life in the United States in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries—and this exploration is only continuing through the game’s extensive
(and interesting) stranger missions. And with a few more strangers left to meet, there’s
even more historical connections to make. So, let’s take a look at the real
history of Red Dead Redemption 2. In Saint Denis, Arthur meets a professor. [Marko
Dragic: “Professor Marko Dragic.”] Dragic is almost certainly based on Nikola Tesla, who
was around 43-years-old in 1899. Interestingly, Tesla’s family name—some centuries before his
birth—was Draganić, which is strikingly similar to Dragic. Beyond this, the two have similar
appearances and are both inventors working with electricity. Both are European—Tesla was Serbian,
Dragic is from the Balkans (likely also Serbia). Both emigrated to the United States—Tesla in 1884.
Dragic complains about an American: [Dragic: “The one the silver-tongue American betray and not
pay the money to.”] Tesla had similar problems with Thomas Edison and his company doing the same.
Both Dragic and Tesla had problems with investors choosing not to invest, or outright abandoning
them. Dragic’s Doverhill also looks—and seemingly functions—just like Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower,
built in 1901. While Dragic is killed by his own creation during the events of the game,
though, Tesla died in 1943 at the age of 86. [Arthur: “Oh, it’s a toy boat!”] [Dragic: “Yes,
it is a toy boat that I can power remotely using electricity and waves you cannot see.”] This
is likely a reference to Tesla’s telautomaton, a radio-controlled boat that he demonstrated at
Madison Square Garden in 1898, and in Chicago in 1899. When he tried to sell the idea as a
radio-controlled torpedo, the U.S. military showed little interest in it—so not totally
dissimilar to Dragic’s rejection in the game. [Investor: “Think of those poor boys on the H.
L. Hunley. Eight of them perished to a mere five on the Housatonic.”] This is a reference to
the Confederate submarine, the H. L. Hunley, whose first and only enemy attack was against
the Navy’s USS Housatonic in February 1864. The Hunley rammed a torpedo into the hull of
the Housatonic, who sunk within three minutes with five crewmen. The Hunley and its eight
crewmen went missing, not to be discovered until 1976, verified in 1995 and raised in 2000.
[Dragic: “The steam train, the telegraph machine, the motorcar. They will all seem pedestrian in
comparison to this technology!”] These were, of course, all in operation by this time: the
first commercially successful stream locomotive in 1812, first working telegraph in 1816, and
first practical modern automobile in 1885. [Dragic: “He lives! My son lives!” (laughs)]
Dragic’s “son” is an automaton—a self-operating machine, which have existed for centuries, the
word itself being first used by Homer around the 8th century B.C. Perhaps the first to use
electricity was the Televox, the “electrical man”, whose patent was filed in 1927. The first to move
similarly to Dragic’s robot seems to be Elektro, who could walk by voice command. He could also
speak around 700 words using a record player, blow up balloons, and smoke cigarettes—and he
was often accompanied by a robot dog, Sparko, who could similarly move around, wag its tail,
and bark. Despite being ahead of time with his automaton, it seems Dragic unfortunately did
not have plans for the companion robot dog. Elsewhere in Saint Denis, Arthur meets
another professor—this one asking for some moonshine. [Arthur: “Well, as luck would have it,
you are in the legal hooch capital of America.”] The word “hooch” is said to have originated from
a group of indigenous Alaskan people, the Hutsnuwu (or Hoochinoo), who distilled their own liquor.
American trappers and traders knew the drink to be called hoochinoo or hooch, first published in
1897—a few years before the game. By the early 20th century, the word hooch was used for any
improvised spirits, like Arthur’s usage here. As for being the country’s “legal hooch
capital”: New Orleans, the real-life equivalent of Saint Denis, was apparently
dubbed the “liquor capital of America” during Prohibition some decades later—this wasn’t
quite “legal hooch” at the time, of course, but it seems the “capital” nickname being applied
to Saint Denis is likely accurate as well. After Arthur obtains some moonshine, the
professor reveals that he intends to use it for a new invention: [Professor Bell: “The
electric chair.”] In real life, the electric chair was invented by Alfred P. Southwick,
a dentist from New York. In the early 1880s, he advocated that electricity was a more humane
method for executing humans than hangings. His early designs used a modified version of a dental
chair. The first person to be executed by electric chair was William Kemmler in New York in 1890—so
a little earlier than the game implies, but still roughly the same time period. Like the execution
in the game, Kemmler’s execution did not go well: it apparently took two attempts to kill him, and
the impacts on his body were unpleasant, to say the least. The electric chair was later adopted in
other states and became prevalent in the country. The professor’s patent document, which can be
found on his body, matches the formatting of real patent documents, with the date, witnesses,
and model number—though the professor’s model number is very different from the one on the
real-life patent of the electrocution chair. Further northwest in New Hanover, Arthur meets
a palaeontologist named Deborah MacGuinness. She might be partly inspired by Mary Anning,
an English palaeontologist and fossil collector. Firstly, her clothing colour matches
a known portrait of Anning. Like MacGuinness, Anning was also overlooked and uncredited; she
was ineligible to attend university or join the Geological Society of London and struggled
financially for most of her life. That being said, Anning’s work was uncredited and overlooked
because she was a woman in the 1800s; this may be partly the case with
MacGuinness, of course, but I suspect there may have been other reasons as well.
[Deborah: “Are you quite certain you’re not a spy?”] Interestingly, there were similar
accusations by palaeontologists of having spies sent to disrupt their work around this
time. It was known as the Bone Wars, wherein two palaeontologists—Edward Cope and Othniel
Marsh—consistently attempted to outdo each other, using theft, bribery, and destruction of bones
to do so. This mostly took place in the 1870s to 1890s; Cope died in 1897, and Marsh in 1899.
[Deborah: “Here. Just as I thought. Totalisaurus West Elizabethus.”] Like this one, several
early palaeontology discoveries were incorrect, usually based on assumptions of few fossils.
For example, early Megalosaurus reconstructions presented it as a quadruped, whereas modern
reconstructions depict it as a biped. Similarly, early Iguanodon restorations are inaccurate,
depicting a horn which was later discovered to be a thumb. Sadly, I think Totalisaurus
West Elizabethus can be added to this list. In one of the game’s most cryptic missions,
Arthur meets a man named Francis. [Francis: “What’s eating you, partner?”] [Arthur:
“Eating me?”] [Francis: “Oh I’m sorry, I’ll dry up.”] If this accent sounds out
of place in Red Dead Redemption 2—well, there’s a reason for that. This is a Mid-Atlantic
or Transatlantic accent. A blend of American and the British RP accents, it’s typically associated
with the entertainment industry (film, television, and radio) and therefore the American
upper class; some well-known speakers include Katharine Hepburn and President Franklin
D. Roosevelt. Interestingly, it’s a purely learned accent—it’s said that “no Americans actually
spoke it unless educated to do so”. It was mostly used in the 1930s and 40s, largely fading
in the 50s after the Second World War following some cultural changes in the United States.
Another interesting feature of Francis is his clothing, particularly his trousers (or pants)
with a loop for his belt. Around this time, belts were often worn as part of military
uniforms—during the Civil War and World War I—and sporting uniforms like baseball.
But the more distinctive modern belt rose in popularity around the 20th century—the 1920s
and 30s. That’s not to say that it’s impossible in 1899, of course, but perhaps unusual.
[Francis: “Hey, can I ask you a strange question? I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but I’m
on the level.”] “On the level” is an American colloquialism thought to have originated in the
late 19th century—so around this time—assumed to originate from freemasonry, in which the level
of a carpenter is thought to symbolise integrity. [Francis: “I know, it sounds ridiculous,
but I’m on the up and up.”] This phrase has a bit of a mysterious origin. Some date it
to 1863, while others say it originated around the 1920s, 30s, or 40s. In any case,
certainly an interesting usage here. [Francis: “You’ll think I’m jazzed if I
tell you.”] [Arthur: “What?”] [Francis: “Drunk.”] This one also has contested dates,
but all seem agreed that it seemingly originated after the game—around 1920, perhaps even 1955.
If a lot of these dates appear out of place for the game’s setting—well, there’s a reason for that
too. After Arthur finds all of the rock carvings, he meets Francis again—this time as a one-year-old
child—and finds a mural on the wall. Essentially, the mural seems to suggest that Francis might
be a time traveller, and the fact that he’s a one-year-old child in 1899 suggests that the
adult Francis who Arthur met was from the 1920s or 30s—so perhaps some of these apparent
inaccuracies aren’t so inaccurate after all. As for the mural itself, visually it appears to be
inspired by Diego Rivera’s mural Man, Controller of the Universe from the 1930s, a recreation of
his unfinished earlier work Man at the Crossroads. Rivera’s mural represents politics—namely
socialism and capitalism—whereas the in-game mural mostly appears to represent time travel, showing
different stages in history. The original mural was painted in the new RCA Building at Rockefeller
Center in New York City. After a newspaper called the mural anti-capitalist propaganda, Rivera added
a portrait of Vladimir Lenin, the former leader of the Soviet Union. Nelson Rockefeller—the director
of the Rockefeller Center—requested the removal of Lenin’s portrait, but Rivera declined,
and the mural was later destroyed. Rivera recreated it in Mexico on a smaller scale based on
photographs of the original, with some additions. Back in Saint Denis, Arthur catches up with
Algernon Wasp, who tasks him with tracking, among other things, flowers. Based on this
information alone, there’s a possibility this mission is inspired by the novel Flowers for
Algernon—though the comparisons mostly end there. Algernon gives Arthur a cup of tea. [Algernon:
“Be careful with the china.”] In this context, “china”, of course, refers to porcelain.
Unsurprisingly, based on its name, porcelain was invented in China. Its quality
led to it being known as china or China-ware; the latter ultimately decreased in
usage but the former clearly did not. [Algernon: “It is French.”] [Arthur: “Not
Belgian?”] [Algernon: “No, no, no, no, no, no. They are philistines in that area.”] This
word was certainly accurate around this time, having been a common British term for almost
a century. It’s essentially referring to someone being “uncultured”—averse
to intellectualism or aesthetics. When Arthur later returns with the requested
feathers and flowers, Algernon explains who they are for. [Algernon: “You did? The Duchess of
Sorrento will be most happy with you.”] There’s an Italian town by the name of Sorrento. When
it was more of an independent state—the Duchy of Sorrento—it had an elected duke (and therefore
duchess) around the 7th to 10th centuries. It was, however, annexed by the Normans after
their conquest in the 12th century, quite some time before the events of the game.
[Algernon: “I cannot believe the pressure this woman puts me under.”] [Arthur: “Which woman?”]
[Algernon: “The Baroness, of course. She writes the most dreadful missives from Baden Baden.”]
Baden-Baden is a spa town in south-western Germany. There are several other places, including
in Germany, known as “Baden”; this one essentially means the town of Baden within the territory
of Baden, hence its double usage. The town itself apparently got its name formally
in 1931—several decades after the game—but the name was used for the territory generally
sometime earlier, so it’s not inaccurate here. [Algernon: “She’s asked me to summer
with her there next year, but, well, I find the whole thing a little gaudy. Italy
is just so overrun with Americans just now, don’t you find?”] [Arthur: “Yeah, it’s a real
problem.”] Apparently, it was considered cheap to be in Italy in the 19th century—one author in
1847 estimated that she could live comfortably in Rome for six months for a total of $400 (around
$15,000 today), and another author in the 1830s said he was renting lodgings that made him feel
“like a prince” in Florence for $3 a month (a little more than $100 a month today).
Several Italians, meanwhile, went the other way—more than a million emigrated to
the United States between 1871 and 1900. It was thought that most planned to work
for a few years before returning home, and around 46% who entered the U.S. between 1899
and 1924 ultimately returned to Italy permanently. Some time later, Algernon is quite
upset. [Algernon: “I want you to kill me.”] [Arthur: “Huh?”] [Algernon: “I have a
gun!”] [Arthur: “Quite a gun.”] [Algernon: “These are Tahitian pearls.”] [Arthur:
“Tahiti?!”] Tahitian pearls—cultivated, of course, in French Polynesia, including
Tahiti—are known for their beauty and highly sought-after. Oysters in the region were
harvested to the point of near-extinction until around the 1960s, before regulations were
implemented. In the 1970s, American jeweller Harry Winston was struck but the beauty of the
pearl and was able to sell a strand—for quite a price—within a week. The jewels were perhaps
less sought-after in the United States in 1899, but no less beautiful, really, so Algernon’s
interest in them is entirely unsurprising. A little further south in Saint Denis,
Arthur meets an artist in a mission titled “The Artist’s Way”. Interestingly, this
is also the name of a self-help book about artistic inspiration and creative recovery,
written by Julia Cameron and published in 1992. Whether or not the mission’s name was
based on the book title is difficult to say, but it’s an interesting comparison, nonetheless.
The artist Arthur meets, Charles Châtenay, is likely inspired by French artist Paul
Gauguin, who was 51-years-old in 1899 and died four years later at the age of 54.
Like Châtenay, Gauguin painted nude women, likely deemed scandalous at the time—though he and
his work are considered more controversial now, considering his sexual relations with young
girls and the fact that his work reflects his “patriarchal, colonialist” position. Châtenay
says that he left Paris for Saint Denis—and, at the end of this mission, he leaves Saint
Denis for the South Pacific. Gauguin’s travels were similar, leaving France for several places
but eventually Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, where he died. A lot of
Châtenay’s work bears a striking resemblance to Gauguin’s as well, in subject and art style.
[Châtenay: “Buy me a drink, mon ami.”] [Arthur: “Two brandies, bud.”] [Bartender: “It’s two
dollars a glass.”] About a hundred years before this, in Natchez and New Orleans, peach
brandy cost around $1 to $1.15 per gallon. By the late 1890s, some brandies cost $2 per gallon
in Louisiana and $3 per gallon in Virginia. So, at $2 per glass, this brandy is either
very overpriced or—as the bartender claims—very good. [Bartender: “It’s the best.”]
[Arthur: “You paint?”] [Châtenay: “Not according to the salons of Paris.”] Today, “salon” generally
refers to beauty salons, which actually began to pop up around the United States around this time.
Châtenay, though, is more likely referring to a type of gathering, known as a “salon”, which
became regular around the 1730s in France. There was also an art exhibition known as the Salon in
Paris, which started in 1667 and became prominent in the 18th and 19th centuries, featuring
dozens of painters, sculptors, and engravers, among other professions. As Châtenay suggests, its
jury often rejected paintings—in 1863, there was a failure rate of almost sixty percent—so
Châtenay was not alone in this, at least. [Châtenay: “Here.”] [Arthur: “What is
it?”] [Châtenay: “It’s just a little doodle.”] Interestingly, the word “doodle” has
meant several different things over the years: in the 17th century, “a fool or simpleton”;
in the 18th, “to ridicule or make a fool of”; in the 19th, to “do nothing”. The meaning of an
“aimless scrawl” apparently originates in 1937, quite some time after Châtenay’s
usage here—but he’s nothing if not ahead of his time, if his art is any indication.
Later in the mission, Arthur visits Châtenay’s art exhibition. In addition to Châtenay’s work,
the gallery houses at least five art pieces from Charles Willson Peale, and one each from his sons
Rembrandt and Rubens Peale, all painted between the 1770s and 1860s. Charles Peale is well-known
for his portraits, especially of “leading American figures”. His 1779 portrait of President George
Washington sold in 2006 for $21.3 million, thought to have been “the highest price ever
paid for an American portrait at the time”. [Châtenay: “Like Buddha said, you know, we
are all just here to fuck.”] [Woman: “Well, that explains the decadence of those Hottentots.”]
This is historically a racial term used, typically by Europeans, in reference to the Khoekhoe, an
indigenous people of South Africa. It’s generally considered offensive in this context and was
later used as a more generally abusive term, not necessarily related to any particular
race or ethnicity. It actually re-entered the cultural conversation recently due to its
usage in the 1964 film Mary Poppins, which had its age rating lifted in the UK as a result.
[Châtenay: “Up here. She is my ship.”] The tradition of using “she” and “her” pronouns for
a ship dates to at least 1375, apparently based in the idea that a ship is a goddess or mother
figure who will help to protect its inhabitants. [Arthur: “If they don’t like you in the islands,
keep on going to the South Pole.”] Nobody had actually verifiably made it to the South Pole by
this point. The first successful expedition was led by Roald Amundsen in a ship, who, alongside
a crew, arrived in December 1911. Amundsen was also among the first to verifiably reach the
North Pole, this time by aircraft, in May 1926. [Phineas T. Ramsbottom: “Cigarette cards
… The value is in completing the set … And the amount of money. A veritable fortune, sir.”]
[Arthur: “Fortune?”] [Phineas: “Oh sure, sure. A complete set of any series is worth a fortune.”]
We spoke about cigarette cards back in chapter 1, but Phineas here is talking about them as
collectibles. At the time, they were mostly used as a way to advertise cigarette brands—and while
they might have been worth something at the time, they’re definitely worth a lot more now. There
are more expensive cards generally, but the most expensive cigarette card is the T206 Honus Wagner,
of which approximately 50 to 200 were distributed before Wagner refused for production to continue.
In 2022, the card sold for $7.2 million. In the game, there are 12 series with 12
cards each; in real life, there were often plenty more within a set—30, 50, even 100.
By collecting every card and sending them to Phineas, Arthur earns a collective total of
$1,000—equivalent to more than $37,000 today. The game’s only epilogue-exclusive
stranger mission is led by Evelyn Miller, who we met in chapter 4 and discussed
even earlier in chapter 2. To reiterate: it seems highly likely that Miller is inspired by
the American philosopher and essayist Henry David Thoreau. They have similar appearances; Thoreau
had different beard lengths throughout his life, but in one famous photograph, he has a similar
beard to Miller (albeit longer). They also have similar interests, like education; Thoreau taught
at a school in Massachusetts and opened a grammar school with his brother in the 1830s, while
Miller was a professor at Princeton University. They both discuss and advocate for nature,
neither of them truly rejecting civilisation nor bringing themselves to fully embrace
a life of wilderness, and they both lament and resist the overrule of governments: Thoreau
famously in his Resistance to Civil Government, written in part because of his disgust
by slavery and the Mexican-American War, and Miller as shown in chapter 4 when he
advocates on behalf of Rains Fall and Eagle Flies. In this mission, Miller discusses how he
quit Princeton to live in an isolated cabin in Tall Trees to work. Thoreau did something
similar for two years in the mid-1840s, moving to a small house he had built near Walden Pond,
leading to one of his best-known works, Walden. As for Evelyn Miller’s name:
it could be completely random, of course, but if it was inspired by anyone,
a likely candidate might be Ernest Hemingway, whose middle name was Miller. While not exactly an
isolated cabin, Hemingway did buy a house outside of Ketchum, Idaho, in 1959, overlooking Big Wood
River. He died there two years later, in 1961. In the second part of this mission, Miller
takes us to see some hunters—not Big Foot, much to our disappointment. Interestingly, many
different cultures—perhaps most—have some folk tales of a human-like giant or a sasquatch
in their history. The name “Bigfoot”, though, was apparently first used in 1958, after a
bulldozer operator for a logging company in California discovered mud footprints that were
16 inches (or 40 centimetres) long—a claim that was apparently corroborated by his coworkers.
At the end of this mission, you find Miller dead in his cabin, slumped over his work—so you burn
down the cabin. While his body likely burned, there’s a good chance that his death was
eventually discovered, assuming there were records of the cabin. That being said, there are
several examples of famous authors disappearing throughout history, like Ambrose Bierce, an
influential journalist and Civil War veteran, who was last heard from on December 26, 1913, at
the age of 71, before vanishing without a trace. Barbara Newhall Follett, a child prodigy novelist,
reportedly left her apartment on December 7, 1939, at the age of 25, after quarrelling with her
husband, and was never seen again. Weldon Kees, who had apparently had episodes of manic
depression, was least heard from on July 18, 1955, at the age of 41, and his car was found near the
Golden Gate Bridge. So, while Miller’s death was perhaps under different circumstances than many
other famous authors, it’s not uncharacteristic for one to get entirely lost in their work,
or for the work to overcome them entirely. Red Dead Redemption 2’s 100-plus story missions
and dozens of stranger missions have allowed a unique and interesting look at the history
of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and beyond—from the lives of individuals to
the development of nations. Using the words, actions, and objects of the game world
provides a useful jumping-off point to discuss so many different elements
of history—not just to determine the historical accuracies or inaccuracies present
within the game, but to explore history more broadly and discover what happened in the
past to shape the lives we live today. But while the missions of Red Dead Redemption 2
may be over, our journeys with history are most certainly not. There are so many more games to
play—in this series and beyond—more individual aspects to discuss, and, most importantly—and
most obviously—more history to uncover.
