American Old West
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The American Old West is comprised of the myths, legends, stories, and beliefs, many of which are true, that collected around the Western United States from 1865 to 1890.
As the setting for numerous works of fiction, the period and region quickly became so popular that it now defines its own genre, the "Western." These works often put forth a romanticized portrayal of the era characterized by isolated outbreaks of violence, but they have also promoted interest in its true history. Historical revisionism has noted that certain interests (notably cowboys, Indians, businessmen, and the United States government) repeatedly clashed in these conflicts, and a few accounts refer to them as a "western civil war of incorporation" that established United States authority over the region. Though the Old West is often seen as being unusually violent, some argue that the Old West was "a far more civilized, more peaceful and safer place than American society today."[1]
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[edit] Wild West: 1865-1889
While the Eastern United States was beginning to experience the Second Industrial Revolution (which started around 1871), the frontier was beginning to fill up with people. In the early days of the wild west, a great deal of the land was in the public domain, open both to livestock raising as open range and to homesteading. Throughout much of the Old West, there was little to no local law enforcement, and the military had only concentrated presence at specific locations. Buffalo hunters, railroad workers, drifters and soldiers scrapped and fought, leading to the shootings where men died "with their boots on."
In the towns, state houses, dance halls and saloons catered to the Texas cattle drive trade. The historic Chisholm Trail was used for cattle drives. The trail ran for 800 miles (1,290 km) from south Texas to Abilene, Kansas, and was used from 1867 to 1887 to drive cattle northward to the railhead of the Kansas Pacific Railway, where they were shipped eastward. Cattle rustling was a sometimes serious offense and was always a hazard for the expeditions. It could result in the rustler's lynching by vigilantes (but most stories of this type are fictional). Mexican rustlers were a major issue during the American Civil War, with the Mexican government being accused of supporting the habit. Texans likewise stole cattle from Mexico, swimming them across the Rio Grande.
[edit] Dodge City
Fort Dodge, Kansas, was established in 1859 and opened in 1865 on the Santa Fe Trail near the present site of Dodge City, Kansas (which was established in June 1872). The fort offered some protection to wagon trains and the U.S. mail service, and it served as a supply base for troops engaged in the Indian Wars. By the end of 1872, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad crossed Kansas. Dodge City acquired its infamous legacy of lawlessness and gun-slinging and its infamous burial place — Boot Hill Cemetery. It was used until 1878. Dodge City was the buffalo capital until mass slaughter destroyed the huge herds and left the prairie littered with decaying carcasses. Law and order came into Dodge City with such law officers as W. B. 'Bat' Masterson, Ed Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Bill Tilghman, H. B. 'Ham' Bell and Charlie Bassett. The city passed an ordinance that guns could not be worn or carried north of the "deadline," which was the railroad tracks. The south side was not as well regulated. Fort Dodge was closed in 1882 and a January 1886 blizzard ended the cattle drives there.
[edit] Wild Bill and Calamity Jane
After the Civil War, Wild Bill Hickok became an army scout and a professional gambler. Hickok's killing of Whistler the Peacemaker with a long range rifle shot had influence in preventing the Sioux from uniting to resist the settler incursions into the Black Hills. In 1876, Calamity Jane settled in the area of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills region where she was close friends with Wild Bill Hickok and Charlie Utter, all having traveled in Utter's wagon train. Jane later claimed to have been married to Hickok and that Hickok was the father of her child; however, this story is viewed with skepticism.
On August 2, 1876, while playing poker in Deadwood (then part of the Dakota Territory but on Indian land), Hickok could not find an empty seat in the corner where he always sat in order to protect himself against sneak attacks from behind, and he instead sat with his back to the door; unfortunately, his previous caution proved wise, since he was shot in the back of the head with a double-action .45 caliber revolver by Jack McCall. The motive for the killing is still debated. It is claimed that, at the time of his death, Hickok held a pair of aces and a pair of eights, with all cards black; this has since been called a "dead man's hand".
In 1876, Jane nursed the victims of a smallpox epidemic in the Deadwood area. She married Clinton Burke in 1891 after the couple had been living together several years.
[edit] Lincoln County War
The Lincoln County War (1877) was a conflict between two entrenched factions in the Old West. The "war" was between a faction led by wealthy ranchers and another faction led by the wealthy owners of the monopolistic general store in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
A notable combatant on the side of the ranchers was Billy the Kid, the infamous 19th century American frontier outlaw and murderer. The Kid is reputed to have killed 21 men, one for each year of his life, but the figure is probably closer to nine (four on his own and five with the help of others).
[edit] James gang
The criminal Jesse James was infamous for his activities in the Old West, though he was often cast by the sensationalist media of the time as a contemporary Robin Hood. James and his compatriots robbed their way across the Western frontier targeting banks, trains, stagecoaches, and stores from Iowa to Texas. Eluding even the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, the gang took thousands of dollars. James is believed to have carried out the first daylight bank robbery in peacetime, stealing $60,000 from a bank in Liberty, Missouri. While James did harass railroad executives who unjustly seized private land for the railways, modern biographers note that he did so for personal gain — his humanitarian acts were more fiction than fact.
[edit] Western Indian Wars
The Apache and Navajo Wars had Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson fighting the Apache around the reservations in 1862. Skirmishes between the U.S. and Apaches continue until 1886, when Geronimo surrendered to U.S. forces. Kit Carson used a scorched earth policy in the Navajo campaign, burning Navajo fields and homes, and stealing or killing their livestock. He was aided by other Indian tribes with long-standing enmity toward the Navajos, chiefly the Utes. He later fought a combined force of Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne to a draw at the First Battle of Adobe Walls, but he managed to destroy the Indian village and winter supplies. On June 27, 1874 'Bat' Masterson and a small group of buffalo hunters fought a much larger Indian force at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls.
Red Cloud's War was led by the Lakota chief Makhpyia luta (Red Cloud) and was the most successful war against the U.S. during the Indian Wars. By the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), the U.S. granted a large reservation to the Lakota, without military presence or oversight, no settlements, and no reserved road building rights. The reservation included the entire Black Hills.
Captain Jack was a chief of the Native American Modoc tribe of California and Oregon, and was their leader during the Modoc War. With 53 Modoc warriors, Captain Jack held off 1,000 men of the U.S. Army for 7 months. Captain Jack killed Edward Canby, who was the only general killed during the Indian Wars (Custer was a lieutenant colonel).
The Black Hills War was conducted by the Lakota under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. The conflict began after repeated violations of the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) once gold was discovered in the hills. One of its famous battles was the Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which combined Sioux and Cheyenne forces defeated the 7th Cavalry, led by George Armstrong Custer.
The end of the Indian Wars came at the Massacre of Wounded Knee (December 28, 1890) where Tatanka Iyotake's half-brother, Big Foot, and some 200 Sioux were killed by the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment. Only thirteen days before, Tatanka Iyotake had been killed with his son Crow Foot in a gun battle with a group of Indian police that had been sent by the American government to arrest him.
[edit] Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was an event of legendary proportion in the Wild West. 'Bat' Masterson visited Wyatt Earp in Tombstone, Arizona, and left shortly before the famous event. The gunfight occurred on Wednesday afternoon, October 26, 1881, in a vacant lot, known as lot 2, in block 17 behind the corral in Tombstone. Thirty shots were fired in thirty seconds. Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Virgil Earp, and Morgan Earp fought against Billy Claiborne, Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, Billy Clanton, and Ike Clanton. Both McLaurys were killed, as was Billy Clanton.
[edit] Buffalo Bill Wild West Show
The frontiersman and showman Buffalo Bill (William Cody) toured the United States starring in plays based loosely on his Western adventures. His part typically included an 1876 incident at the Warbonnet Creek where he scalped a Cheyenne warrior, purportedly in revenge for the death of George Armstrong Custer.
In Omaha, Nebraska, in 1883, Cody founded the "Buffalo Bill Wild West Show," a circus-like attraction that toured annually: Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull both appeared in the show. In 1887, he performed in London in celebration of the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria and toured Europe in 1889.
- See also: Wild West Shows
[edit] Frisco Shootout
Elfego Baca became a legendary lawman near the end of the wild west. On December 1, 1884, in the town of Frisco (now Reserve, New Mexico), Baca arrested one of a group of cowboys who had been shooting up the town and had fired shots toward Baca. After threats from the cowboy's friends, Baca took refuge in the house of Geronimo Armijo. A standoff with the cowboys ensued, and a gang of 80 cowhands attacked the house.
The story has it that the cowboys fired more than 4,000 rounds into the house; not one of the rounds hit Baca. During the siege Baca killed four of the attackers and wounded eight others. After 36 hours, the attack ended when the cowboys ran out of ammunition. Baca walked out of the house unharmed. In May 1885, Baca was charged with the murder of one of the cowboys who had attacked the cabin, and he was jailed until his trial for murder. In August 1885, he was acquitted after the door of Armijo’s house was entered as evidence. It had over 400 bullet holes in it.
[edit] 1890 and beyond
[edit] Closing of the frontier
The eleventh U.S. Census was taken in 1890, and the superintendent announced that there was no longer a clear line of settlement; Frederick Jackson Turner concluded the frontier was over. His highly influential Frontier Thesis dealt with a much earlier period. With the discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1896, a new frontier was opened up in the vast northern territory. Alaska became known as "the last frontier."
[edit] Cross-border raids
Pancho Villa, after leaving his father's employ, took up the life of a banditry in Durango and later in the state of Chihuahua. He was caught several times for crimes ranging from banditry to horse thievery and cattle rustling but, through influential connections, was always able to secure his release. Villa later became a controversial revolutionary folk hero, leading a band of Mexican raiders in attacks against various regimes and was sought after by the U.S. government.
[edit] Johnson County War
The Johnson County War was a range war which took place in Johnson County, Wyoming, in the Powder River Country in April 1892. The large ranches were organized as the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (the WSGA) and hired killers from Texas; an expedition of 50 men was organized, which proceeded by train from Cheyenne to Casper, Wyoming, then toward Johnson County, intending to eliminate alleged rustlers and also, apparently, to replace the government in Johnson County. After initial hostilities, the sheriff of Johnson County raised a posse of 200 men and set out for the ruffians' location. The posse led by the sheriff besieged the invading force at the TA Ranch on Crazy Woman Creek.
After two days, one of the invaders escaped and was able to contact the acting governor of Wyoming. Frantic efforts to save the besieged invaders ensued, and telegraphs to Washington resulted in intervention by President Benjamin Harrison. The Sixth Cavalry from Fort McKinney was ordered to proceed to the TA ranch and take custody of the invaders and save them from the posse. In the end, the invaders went free after the court venue was changed and the charges were dropped.
[edit] Fiction and non-fiction
The Old West has had a lasting impression on the American psyche, and the fiction concerning the Old West has been a popular genre, featuring authors such as Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour. Movies such as those featuring John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, radio dramas, television, pulp novels and comic books all had popular Old West themes.
In German culture the genre was so popular that it spawned another genre, the Kraut-Western. Karl May is the best-selling German writer of all time. His Wild West adventure novels featuring the protagonists Old Shatterhand and Winnetou.
Non-western genre television and movies use the Old West as a setting occasionally as well, such as the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Enterprise.
The old west has comic book representation. Older Western comics include Tex Willer and the Two-Gun Kid. Jonah Hex is a Western hero that is a conscious subversion of the genre. Loveless is another comic.
Cowboy Action Shooting is one of the fastest growing American sports today, combining marksmanship with the theatrics of a historical reenactment of the gunslinging Wild West days.
[edit] Locations and characters
Some famous locations and characters originate in fiction such as the television shows Gunsmoke and Bonanza, and Western movies and fiction. For example, while Dodge City, Kansas, the setting of Gunsmoke, was briefly a wide-open town and Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp were lawmen there, Marshall Matt Dillon and the other regular characters of Gunsmoke are fictional characters. Likewise, while Virginia City, Nevada was a significant mining boomtown, the Ponderosa Ranch and the Cartwright family of Bonanza are fictional.
Considerable poetic license has been taken with numerous actual events and characters such as Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid as they have been portrayed in ways which reflect contemporary concerns more than the historical record. Certain books and movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Shane, High Noon, and the novel The Virginian stand out. The American Old West has recently experienced a renaissance period in entertainment via the television series Deadwood and the video games Red Dead Revolver and GUN.
[edit] Movies
While the Western has been popular throughout the history of movies, it has begun to diminish in importance as the United States progresses farther away from the period depicted. The western film genre often portrays idealized themes, such as the conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature (usually in the name of civilization) or the confiscation of the territorial rights of Native Americans.
A sub-genre of Western film, referred to as Spaghetti westerns, emerged in the mid-1960s. Spaghetti Westerns are so named because most of them were made in Europe, especially Italy. The Spaghetti Western removed many conventions of earlier Western films because of cultural differences and generally lower budgets. Typically, the cast and crew of Spaghetti Westerns hailed from the countries that were producing the film (such as Italy or Spain). Because of this, when Spaghetti Westerns were shown in the United States, they required large voice-overs for much of the cast. Poor lip-synching became synonymous of Spaghetti Westerns. However, American actors often took the lead roles in these films in order to boost publicity. Some well known actors who appeared in Spaghetti Westerns include Clint Eastwood, Henry Fonda, Yul Brynner, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson.
Western movie locations usually form the backdrop that identifies the genre. Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry and The Lone Ranger films were usually shot near Lone Pine, California, where since the early 1920s, over 300 movies have been filmed. It was director John Ford who first pioneered the "out of California" on-location western, when he began packing up the crew and heading out to Monument Valley, Arizona to film big budget movies like Stagecoach (1939). Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, southern Arizona became the new location for Westerns to be filmed. Hundreds of Westerns were filmed in and near the expansive Old Tucson studio in Tucson, Arizona.
While many Westerns were filmed in California and Arizona, most of them depicted Texas. This was done consistently, despite the fact that the landscapes of Arizona and California have distinguishing traits that make them very different from Texas. For example, the famous Saguaro cactus, with its characteristic "arms", is found only in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona and Mexico. Also, many westerns set in Texas show landscapes with Joshua trees in the background. Joshua trees only grow in California and Arizona.
Western films, until recent times, were loaded with anachronisms, especially in such things as firearms, with Winchester 1892-model rifles being used in movies set in the 1870s. One reason for this was that many actors portraying cowboys in cheaply-made, early films were hired with their own horses and gear. The Model 92 was far more popular in the early 20th century than were earlier repeating and single-shot rifles which would have been more appropriate, and this is what they brought to the set. A few moviemakers preferred accuracy and realism, but until audiences began to demand this in the late 1960s, the Winchester 92 was the rifle of choice in Hollywood, and the Colt Single Action Army-type revolver is known worldwide as the "cowboy pistol," despite the fact that the vast majority of revolvers carried in the Old West were of the cap-and-ball type. Since the late 1960s, however, films have shown more of the wide variety of arms used during the period. For instance, Arthur Hunnicutt carries a revolving rifle during part of El Dorado (1967).
[edit] Western literature
Cowboy poetry is a form of poetry that focuses on the culture, features and lifestyle of the West, both the Old West and its modern equivalents. It is not defined by any particular scheme or structure, but by subject matter. Western novels, or cowboy novels, portrayed the west as both a barren landscape and a romanticized idealistic way of living.
[edit] Semi-Western
Certain fictional works, while not Westerns in of themselves, have undeniable influences of the romanticized old west. These include television series Firefly and its movie sequel Serenity, along with the role-playing game Deadlands, the Dark Tower fiction series by Stephen King, and the video game series Wild Arms. However, because the definition of a "Western" is somewhat ambiguous, it can be difficult to define what does and does not include western elements. Some works, such as anime television series Cowboy Bebop, and role-playing game Deadlands have been noted by fans as having elements similar to those in Westerns, though such claims have generally not been substantiated by their creators.
It is a common misconception that Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo was influenced by certain spaghetti westerns, though quite the reverse is true. Yojimbo is influenced most directly by the works of Dashiell Hammett. A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood, was a remake of Yojimbo in a western setting; this was not credited until Kurosawa sued the filmmakers. Similarly, Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, became The Magnificent Seven.
In a mix of Western and modern societies, the 1950s radio and television series Sky King covered the exploits of "America's favorite flying cowboy." Skyler King, who owned the Flying Crown Ranch, his niece Penny, nephew Clipper, and various townspeople of Grover City, Arizona, lived in the post-World War II transitional period of the American West, and dressed in the appropriate Western garb of the time. In some episodes, Sky was shown using his airplane, Songbird, to perform some ranch chore. Sky generally did not wear a pistol but kept one in his plane, and when needed would take a long gun from the rack near the door to his home. The series plots were generally some form of the classic Western theme of "making the wrong things right."
Some "Westerns" are not set in the West at all (such as most of those involving riverboats, which were rare west of the Missouri River), or even in North America. The 1990 film Quigley Down Under is the tale of a cowboy who goes to Australia. Though not set in the American West, MGM includes this in their "Western Legends" line of videos.
[edit] See also
General
- National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum : museum and art gallery, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, housing one of the largest collections in the world of Western, American cowboy, American rodeo, and American Indian art, artifacts, and archival materials.
- Cowboy action shooting is a competitive shooting sport which originated in the early 1980s that requires shooters to compete using firearms typical of the mid to late 19th century including single action revolvers, lever action rifles (chambered in pistol calibers) and side by side double barrel shotguns or pump action shotguns with external hammers.
- Historical reenactment : an activity in which participants recreate some aspects of a historical event or period.
- Rodeo : a traditional folk North American sport.
- The Oregon-California Trails Association preserves, protects and shares the histories of emigrants who followed these trails westward.
- Wanted poster : a poster, popular in mythic scenes of the west, let the public know of criminals whom authorities wish to apprehend.
Fiction
- Notable figures in Westerns : figures in Western style motion pictures and/or television series, some of whom have been voted into the Hall of Great Western Performers.
- Karl May : best selling German writer of all time, noted chiefly for wild west books set in the American West.
- Winnetou : American-Indian hero of several novels written by Karl May.
- Deadlands : an alternate history western horror roleplaying game.
- Dust Devils : a western roleplaying game modeled after Clint Eastwood films and similar darker Westerns.
- list of Western computer and video games: a list of computer and video games patterned after Westerns.
- Wild West Shows : a following of the wild west shows of the American frontier
[edit] Notes
- ^ Hollon, W. Eugene. Frontier Violence: Another Look. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974, p. x
[edit] References
- Lamar, Howard, ed. The New Encyclopedia of the American West (1998); this is a revised version of Reader's Encyclopedia of the American West ed. by Howard Lamar (1977)
- Lee Clark Mitchell. Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (1998)
- Jules David Prown, Nancy K. Anderson, and William Cronon, eds. Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West (1994)
- Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (1998)
- Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (1960)
- Jane Tompkins. West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (1993)
[edit] External links
Culture
History
- "New Perspectives on 'The West'". The West Film Project, WETA, 2001.
- Dodge City, Kansas 'Cowboy Capital'
- Fort Dodge, KS History by Ida Ellen Rath, 1964 w/ photos
- Old West Kansas
- WWW-VL: American West History
- Western Mining History
Media and literature
