'The Purpose of this Creature Man' as Western

Throughout 'The Purpose of this Creature Man', hints that it can be classified as a western are present and sometimes quite obvious. However, as soon as one can visualize it as such, those western hints are contradicted.
The first striking hint of a western can be defined by the various settings throughout the story. There are mentions of Missouri and Illinois, as well as New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Although some of these states are techincally 'central' United States, I may be wrong, but a story set in New York or North Carolina, for example, are far from being considered westerns at all.
Another connection to a western story 'Purpose...' makes are the frequent descriptions of Native Americans; although I've seen a limited amount of westerns, once I imagine a western film, the image of Native Americans fighting cowboys instantly comes to mind.
The most obvious portrayals in this story that allow it to be classified as a western are the "hands up" at the banks for one, and the depictions of western clothing: the boots and leather laced vests just scream out western to me.
As mentioned before, many of these connections to the west are contradicted by the narrators education at the Newata (OK) School of Industrial Arts and Doc's statement while holding up the Washington & St. Louis Dial-Lock Drop Steel Safety Box: "I am a graduate of the Stillman Academy of Chiropractic Medicine of Peoria, Illinois...I can cure sciatica, the bloddy flux, etc." (p. 142). As far as I'm concerned, cowboys or westerners as the ones that I imagined while reading this story, didn't get much of an education. This too can be made apparent through their dialogue, which is quite informal.
'Purpose...' can be related to Chandler's 'Introduction to Genre Theory'. To sum up Chandler's confusing argument, according to him and many other scholars and authors, a story, poem, film, show, etc. cannot always be categorized as a certain genre because it may classify as many different genres all at once; the concept of a certain genre changes with time. It evolves according to the changes in media as well as society. This can be related to 'Purpose...' in that the story is not set in one time frame, but is set throughout an extended period of time. Although in the beginning it may have appeared to be more of a western than it did towards the end, this might have been so because as Chandler explained, the classifications of genres alter with the recurring changes in society.