Cowboys, Indians, cattle-rustlin’, shootouts, sheriff’s posses, drinking, whoring and gambling! These are the sorts of things we think about when we imagine a time, and a place in American history known as the ‘Wild West’, also known as the ‘Old West’. But what was the Wild West? Where was it? How long did it last for? How wild did it really get? In this posting, we’re going to find out!
Before the ‘Wild West’
America in the first half of the 1800s was largely confined to the East Coast, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. From Florida in the south to northern states like New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, America was largely confined to the original “13 Colonies” that had been established by the British in the 1600s and 1700s. But with the end of the American Revolutionary War in the 1780s, America struck out to determine its own destiny. And part of that destiny was exploring the lands that existed beyond what was then called the “Proclamation Line” – an invisible barrier or border set up by the British to try and protect the land-rights of Native Americans back in colonial days.
The fastest way to explore this land without getting shot at was first – to buy it! This was achieved in the famous 1804 Louisiana Purchase, where France sold off its share of the North American continent (‘Louisiana’, named after King Louis) to the American republic, presided over by Thomas Jefferson at the time. From the western borders of the Louisiana Purchase, to the eastern limit of the original 13 Colonies, America had doubled in size! Explorers, hunters, trappers, cartographers and settlers seeking adventure and riches set out across this new land to find out what it contained.
The first government-sponsored expedition into this new land was the famous Lewis & Clark Expedition of 1804-1806 where Thomas Jefferson charged these two explorers with going west, both to map the area, find out what it contained, and also see if they could chart out a reliable route from the lands west of the Mississippi River, to the Pacific Coast of the continent. Jefferson also wanted these two explorers to get there first to stop foreign powers in the area (Britain and Spain, mostly) from trying to sneak in on their new turf!
It was with land-purchases and expeditions like these that America started gradually expanding westwards. By the 1830s and 40s, conflict with Mexico increased the United States’ grasp on the continent even further. The belief in “manifest destiny” was their justification to keep on going. This was the belief that their destiny was ‘manifest’ – or pre-determined and obvious, and that they should keep expanding if the means to do so were presented.
By the 1840s and 50s, America had established settlements on the West Coast, or else had taken over old Spanish and Mexican settlements. Cities like Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Francisco were established or expanded on during this period.
The California Gold-Rush
Oh my darlin’,
Oh my darlin’,
Oh my darlin’,
Clementine,
Met a miner,
49’er,
Excavatin’…
For a mine…
Yep. When gold was discovered in California, the Great California Gold Rush was on! Ships lay idle in San Francisco Bay, and thousands of sailors, immigrants and locals fled to inland to the cry that “there’s gold in them there hills!”.
The earliest miners were popularly nicknamed ’49ers’ or ‘forty-niners’, named after the year that they arrived – 1849. And from then on, people came. Shiploads of people from all over the world rushed to California. And those who didn’t come by ship came by long, torturous wagon-trains that were pulled across the midwest and through the mountains by oxen on the so-called ‘prairie schooners’, better known as the covered wagon.
As gold was discovered and cities like Sacremento and San Francisco started to grow, people seeking opportunities surged westwards.
Or rather…they walked westwards.
See the problem was that getting from the Eastern states to the Western states was extremely difficult. Every single yard had to be trekked on foot or by using a wagon train. It could take weeks and months to get there, and walking all the time. If you didn’t want to walk, then you could take a ship!…which meant a voyage all the way down to the bottom of South America, and all the way up the West Coast! The problem with this was that you had to go past Cape Horn, the most dangerous stretch of ocean in the world! There was a very good chance that you’d never be seen again!
Um…nice knowing you…!
The Transcontinental Railroad
To make traversing the bigger, better USA a much safer and faster prospect, Abraham Lincoln authorised the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s. Thousands of miles of track were laid by hand through the Midwest. Tunnels were blasted out of mountainsides using nothing but gunpowder, and thousands of trees were used in constructing dozens of bridges and viaducts to get the trains through. To pay for the gigantic cost of the railroad, the government came up with the brilliant idea of selling off land that spread out from either side of the track. That way, farmers, ranchers and settlers could buy the land from the government, and the money raised would be used to pay for the railroad.
When the two halves of the Transcontinental Railroad were joined at Promontory Point, Utah, a single word was transmitted down the telegraph line in Morse Code: “DONE”, signalling the official completion of the line. It was the first live telecommunications news broadcast in the world.
With a reliable and fast mode of transport now in place, the Transcontinental Railroad allowed for the creation of towns dotted throughout the American west. With easy transport and convenient telegraph lines, anywhere that was worth settling (usually because of easy access to water, and some sort of raw resource worth making money from, like silver, gold or some other metal or mineral), was settled. Farmers and ranchers set themselves up in business, miners and prospectors got to work, and everything else that came to characterise the typical Wild West town went along with it!
The Birth of the Wild West
The period known as the ‘Wild West’ lasted from roughly the end of the Civil War in 1865, until the early 20th century, up to about the time of the First World War, in 1914. During this approximately fifty-year period, a whole mythology of the West was formed. How did it come to be? What was it? And how much of it was true?
The ‘Wild West’ was defined as the area of the United States stretching from the Pacific coast through the Midwest, up to the Mississippi river. This vast expanse of land, encompassing states such as California, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and so on. These states were sparsely populated and far from any major centers of civilisation, such as the great coastal cities of San Francisco, Boston, and New York.
These states (or territories, as most of them were back then) which made up the ‘Wild West’ were newly opened to settlement due to land grants, the railroads and the discovery of gold, silver and other minerals buried in the mountains and rivers that flowed through these territories, but had little in the way of infrastructure or reliable communications networks and what few hubs of civilisation there were, were generally few and far between.
Such settlements and towns as existed in the Wild West were often thrown up very quickly. Many started out as tent-cities. Eventually, these were replaced by cheap, easily-erected buildings, many of them sold as prefabricated, flat-pack kits! It was easy to order an entire…cottage, general store, tavern, sheriff’s office, barbershop, or even your very own flat-pack whorehouse, from a company ‘back East’! Companies manufactured these buildings and advertised them for sale in catalogs and magazines specifically aimed at people who were heading ‘out West’ to seek their fortunes in some gold-rush boom-town or one-horse cow-town stuck in the boondocks.
To make the transition from bustling Eastern metropolis to dusty western plains easier and safer, such prefabricated buildings were created. The entire structure of the building was simply packed up in crates, loaded on a train and driven out to where-ever your town happened to be. With the help of a few friendly locals, the town’s latest watering-hole, hotel, assay-office, general store or draper’s shop could be thrown up in a matter of days. Everything you needed came with the package – doors, windows, roofing…all you did was slot it together – IKEA for buildings!
Why did the Wild West Exist?
The Wild West sprang into existence for a number of reasons. Chief among these were unemployment, mining, ranching and farming, and industry.
At the end of the Civil War, there were loads of soldiers from both the Union and the Confederacy that were looking for jobs. When jobs couldn’t be found, they had to turn their sights to something else. Many became workers and labourers building the Transcontinental Railroad, and other networks that snaked their ways across the West. They laid the groundwork for what was to come. Other men gained employment setting up telegraph stations, sinking poles into the ground alongside railroad tracks, and stringing electric telegraph wires to link towns and cities.
Towns were established where-ever it was deemed profitable to do so. Many Old West towns were mining boom-towns, digging out gold, tin, copper, silver and other raw resources. Others made money from lumber, cattle-rearing, or else grew out of way-stations and outposts set up to give aid to hunters, trappers and cowboys who handled cattle, beavers, oxen and other game and stock-animals that could be herded or hunted out west.
Apart from cattle and herding, a lot of wild west towns were established because of mining. Gold and silver mines sunk or dug into the hills and mountains of the Wild West brought in thousands of people who had probably never mined in their lives, but who were willing to risk death and destruction to have a chance at striking it rich. General stores, hotels, drapers, ironmongers, blacksmiths, farriers and moonshiners all set themselves up to do business with these miners, and turn a tidy profit while they were at it.
Getting to the ‘Wild West’
For many people, just the whole act of ‘going west’ was an adventure in and of itself. To say it was challenging was an understatement. Before the 1860s, it required a covered wagon-train, months of supplies, water, everything that you might possibly need, a team of oxen to drive the wagons, and a competent guide. There was a very good chance that you would never make it to Nevada, California, New Mexico, or Arizona – deaths from dehydration, disease, food-poisoning, and Indian attacks were common and trails through the West created by pioneers which went before you were often lined with crosses marking the graves of fallen explorers and hopefuls.
The covered wagon or “Prairie Schooner’, a common sight on the roads westwards, until the Transcontinental Railroad took over in the 1860s and 70s.
The establishment of the Transcontinental Railroad by the start of the 1870s made travel west much easier. What once took months to traverse by covered wagon could now be done in a matter of a few days by faster, more reliable steam-trains – although that said, early railroads were notoriously dangerous. Derailments, boiler-explosions and head-on collisions with other engines were common. But assuming that you made it safely to the Wild West, what could you expect?
The classic wild west train of the 1860s and 70s. Early steam-trains were what the ‘old-timers’ liked to call ‘wood-burners’ – they burned wood in their fireboxes, not coal. The conical smokestack on top of the boiler was deliberately flared out as a spark-arrestor, to stop errant smouldering cinders from flying out the top and setting the grasslands on fire as the train moved along at high speed.
Typical Wild West towns were wild and rowdy places. Drinking, gambling, whoring and fighting were common occurrences. For the newly-arrived traveler, there were hotels or inns where you could stay, possibly a bank where you could deposit your gold or money, and if you were a miner or prospector, an assay-office where you could get any pay-dirt from your claim, processed and examined (‘assayed’).
The more ‘up-market’ Western towns had the latest technologies – their own railroad stations, water-pumps (usually windmill-driven screw-pumps that siphoned up groundwater), and maybe even one or two telegraph offices, usually near the town center, or the main railroad station.
Streets in Wild West towns were rarely, if ever paved – those covered wooden pavements and walkways weren’t just there to look good – they were to stop you from getting your boots or shoes slopped up with mud when it started to rain!
Regardless of size, every western town had the staples – a tavern or bar, an inn or hotel, a whorehouse, and a sheriff’s office. But were Wild West towns really as wild as we imagine?
Law and Order in the Wild West
The popular image of the Wild West is that it was a place where anything and everything goes. Do whatever, eat whatever, drink whatever, shoot whatever! And to hell with the consequences! I mean, that’s why it’s called the ‘Wild West’ to begin with, right?
Um…not so fast.
Don’t forget that a lot of Wild West towns sprung up because of the rich resources nearby. Cattle-ranching, farming and mining. No wild west town was going to last very long if they didn’t have at least some law and order to protect these vital industries which kept the towns viable and alive. If people expected labourers, farmers, miners and prospectors to make their home in their new fledgling community, then it had to be safe!
To protect the citizenry and the merchandise, materials or wealth that they brought to the town (or created while they were there), almost every western town of note had a sheriff, and if he was lucky, a few deputies (and if he was unlucky, then he’d have to raise a posse to do things for him). Either way, it was his job to enforce the laws, and one of the first laws on his list was one which might surprise you – gun-control!
Firearms in the Old West
When you think of the Wild West, you automatically think of guns! Revolvers like the Colt Single-Action Army, the Winchester lever-action repeating rifle, and the break-open dual-barreled coaching-guns, are the weapons which typically come to mind. By the 1860s and 70s, advances in firearms technology had done away with old muzzle-loading muskets and blunderbusses, to be replaced by sleek, smooth-actioned, fast-firing, fast-loading cartridge firearms which could be shot off and reloaded in a matter of a couple of minutes.
The Winchester Lever-action Rifle, various permutations of which, were popular in the Wild West from the 1860s up to the early 1900s. Pulling the lever discharged the spent shell and reloaded a fresh round from the tube-magazine underneath the barrel.
That said, the reality of firearms and the wild west isn’t nearly as rambunctious as you might imagine.
While the popular depiction of the West was that everybody in town was packin’ heat, with cowboys wavin’ six-shooters around and damsels hiding derringers up their garters, the truth is that in many Wild West towns – carrying firearms – or indeed, any kind of weapon at all – even a large knife – was actually illegal! The notion that there were crazy shootouts and gunfights every other day of the week, and that bodies stacked up faster than freshly-split firewood, simply isn’t true. In fact, the murder-rate in most Wild West towns would be disappointingly low for anybody looking to recreate a bloodthirsty Wild West boom-town.
Talking about revolvers – here’s a little trivia question for you:
In the Wild West, revolvers were popularly called ‘six-shooters’, because almost every revolver was capable of holding six rounds. But how many rounds did the average gunslinger actually load into his revolver? Find out at the end of the article…
The Colt Single-Action Army Revolver, popularly known as the ‘Peacemaker’, was one of the most common firearms found in the Old West. Firing large-calibre 44 and 45-cal. rounds, the gun was introduced in 1873…and has been in near-constant manufacture ever since!
So how tight was gun-control in the old west? Well, let’s take one of the most famous wild west towns as an example – Tombstone, Arizona. In 1881, Tombstone passed a law that stated in no uncertain terms, the following conditions regarding local gun-ownership:
“Section 1. It is hereby declared unlawful to carry in the hand or upon the person or otherwise any deadly weapon within the limits of said city of Tombstone, without first obtaining a permit in writing.
Section 2: This prohibition does not extend to persons immediately leaving or entering the city, who, with good faith, and within reasonable time are proceeding to deposit, or take from the place of deposit such deadly weapon.
Section 3: All fire-arms of every description, and bowie knives and dirks, are included within the prohibition of this ordinance.“
So if you were planning on strutting around town, pearl-grips flashing in the sun, you’d have to do some pretty fast talking to get yourself out of a very sticky situation if someone called up the sheriff on you!
Another trope of the Wild West was that death – or more specifically – death from gunfire – was a common occurrence back then. Sorry to say it, but it’s not actually true. Remember all those gun-laws I mentioned? They weren’t limited to just Tombstone – many famous Wild West towns had them, including Deadwood, That’s not to say that people didn’t die out West, but that it was rarely due to instances of unbridled showdowns with guns-a-blazin’! Deaths from gunfire in Wild West towns were surprisingly few, given how common they are in films! To take the example of Tombstone, again, during the Wild West period from the 1850s up to the 1910s or 20s, the kill-count never went above five dead bodies a year!
Tombstone was not an anomaly, either. Similar laws also existed in Dodge City, and in Wichita, Kansas. In fact, carrying an illegal or unregistered firearm in the Old West was one of the fastest ways to get you arrested, and town sheriffs enforced this law rigidly.
This…never happened.
Because of this, you might be thinking about another cliche of the Wild West: the classic wild west duel! You know – two men standing in the middle of Main Street, facing each other…whoever fires first and hits the target is the winner! Right?
Nope.
Historical evidence shows that the ‘classic’ wild west duel never happened. For one, in many towns it would’ve been illegal anyway, because, as I said, firearms were not allowed to be carried around. secondly, if you did sneak a gun into town without the proper permits, then chances were, people were going to raise a hell of a stink about it! In fact, it was due to the violation of the above 1881 gun-control law, that Tombstone, Arizona, saw what was possibly the first, last, only, and most famous gunfighter duel in Wild West history! You might possibly have heard of it – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
A corral, for those who’ve never heard of the term, is a yard or fenced in open space, typically used for housing cattle or horses. The Old Kindersley Corral (the actual name of the ‘O.K. Corral’ of legend) in Tombstone, was the location, in October of 1881, of the most famous western shootout in history!
Right?
Sorry…wrong again.
The gunfight certainly did happen, and it did take place in Tombstone…but that’s as far as truth will take us. In real life, the gunfight took place outside a photography studio…six doors down the street from the actual corral! It took place between four lawmen and five outlaws, three of whom were killed in the duel.
On one side was Doc Holliday, and the famous Earp Brothers – Sheriff, Wyatt Earp, and his two brothers Virgil and Morgan Earp, who had come along to back him up in his defence of law and order.
On the other side were Thomas and Frank McLaury, Bill and Ike Clanton, and Billy Claiborne.
In essence, the Clanton-McLaury gang were up to no good. The Earp Brothers and their associates had tried over and over again to shut them down. Both Virgil and Wyatt had some experience, either as soldiers or lawmen, and represented law-enforcement in Tombstone for as much as it was possible for them to do so.
Fed up with the Clantons and McLaurys flagrant disobedience of the law, the Earps, along with Holliday, decided that enough was enough and went to shut them down. They decided to take advantage of the newly-introduced gun-control laws that had been enacted just a few months earlier in the year – open-carry of unlicensed firearms was an arrestable offence in Tombstone, and the Earps were ready to take them in. Unfortunately, the cowboys were never going to go quietly. In the space of just thirty seconds, dozens of shots were fired, including two massive shotgun-blasts at point-blank range.
Both McLaury brothers, and Billy Clanton (aged just 19) were shot dead. Ike Clanton (unarmed at the time) fled the scene, and later tried to get the sheriff’s posse arrested on the charge of murder. The local Justice of the Peace ruled that the Earp Brothers and Doc Holliday were only enforcing town laws, and cleared them of any wrongdoing.
Bank-Robberies in the Wild West
One of the reasons why the Wild West existed in the first place was because of gold and silver. Miners dug the gold and silver out of the ground in ore. The ore was assayed (tested), then crushed and refined, melted down and cast into either ingots (bars) or coins. This could either be kept as cash, exchanged for banknotes, or simply stored in a bank, or sent ‘back East’. But if you kept your gold or cash in town, then you would’ve kept it at the local bank. And that bank was being robbed every other week, right?
Um. No.
Believe it or not, but bank robberies were surprisingly rare in the Old West. Partially this was because of the aforementioned gun-laws, and also because banks and other similar institutions were well-guarded in those days. OK, fair point. But what about when the gold bullion or the dust or coins were being transported? What about train-robberies, didn’t they happen?
Robbers attacking shipments on the move certainly did happen, and they were a recognised risk. To deal with it, companies contracted to store and ship gold and other valuables took measures against them. One example is the Wells-Fargo Company. Recognised throughout the west thanks to its green postboxes, Wells-Fargo was a delivery company, shipping and transporting everything from Aunt Susie’s letter about her new cat, to the glittering results from Mr Donnovan’s latest claim! Because Wells-Fargo’s stagecoaches carried such valuables, they were a prize target for robbers and holdup-men. But holding up a stagecoach was no walk in the park.
A Wells Fargo stagecoach. The coach-guard with his double-barreled shotgun sat up the front (on the right) in the driver’s box, next to the coachman, giving ride to the term ‘riding shotgun’.
To protect their stagecoaches, their cargoes, and the passengers riding inside them, Wells-Fargo employed coach-guards – heavily-armed men who rode along the outside of the coach in order to keep the driver and passengers safe. Usually there was anywhere from one to three guards. Regardless of the number of them, one guard always sat up front, next to the driver. Across his lap would be a double-barreled shotgun, which he would happily deploy to deal with any would-be outlaws.
A break-open, double-barreled sawn-off shotgun, popularly called a ‘coach-gun’ for use on stagecoaches. The shorter barrel length made the gun easier to move around in a tight situation and lighter, although the lack of weight in the barrel meant that the recoil would be more powerful. While it only fired two shots at a time, the coach-gun’s widespread buckshot ammunition was unlikely to miss its target – useful when you’re on a rocking stagecoach going at speed.
Ever wondered why riding in the front seat next to the driver is called “riding shotgun”? This is where it comes from – the double-barreled shotguns carried by coach-guards in the Wild West!
Train Robberies in the Wild West!
OK, so we’ve looked at bank-robberies, but what about train-robberies? How common were they? Like bank-robberies, they did happen, but also like bank-robberies, not as frequently as you might think. Among the great train-robbers were Jesse James and his cohorts, and another famous Western outlaw – Butch Cassidy!
Trains made enticing targets for robbery because they were the fastest way to transport valuable goods. Trains were often loaded with gold, silver, coinage, banknotes, payroll-safes, and wealthy passengers. Although they were the fastest vehicles in the world at the time, they still did not go THAT fast – until the early 20th century, it was rare for a steam train to clock up over about 60 miles an hour.
That said, the typical Hollywood method of sticking up a train, by riding alongside it on horseback and jumping onto it, almost never happened. It was far easier to just get on the train at the station, and then hijack the damn thing once it was out of sight of civilisation, or else to quite literally hold up the train by creating some sort of roadblock across the tracks, forcing it to stop, or risk derailment.
To combat the risks of being robbed, train-staff often carried their own protection. Conductors and train-guards who rode along with trains carrying valuable cargo often packed some sort of firearm, either a shotgun or revolver, to discharge against would-be attackers. In one instance, a conductor and a guard even managed to call for help! Hopping out the back of their train, the two men used the latest technology to summon the police – an Ericsson field telephone!
The telephone came complete with long poles and cables. All you did was connect the cables to the poles. Then you hoisted them up into the air and hooked them onto the nearest telegraph line (which was usually alongside the railroad line). Then it was just a matter of cranking up the phone and putting a call through! Using this method, the conductor was able to contact the nearest sheriff’s office and have the train-robbers apprehended!
Cowboys and the Old West
Ah, the cowboy! Rough, tough and tumble. An iconic of hot-blooded All-American sex-appeal! Yeah?
Eh…maybe. Depends on what your sexual preferences are!
The truth is that most cowboys in the Old West, or at least a good proportion of them, were not the well-muscled, good-looking young hunks that you find plastered on the bedroom walls of teenage girls or frustrated housewives – in reality, a lot of cowboys weren’t even white!
See, being a cowboy was a hard, dirty, dangerous job with low pay. Herding hundreds or thousands of cattle long distances was a thankless, thirsty and exhausting job, and because of this, it was one that typically went to people who probably had no other choice but to drive cattle – typically Mexican immigrants, free blacks, or freed or former slaves. By some estimates, up to 25% of cowboys in the Wild West were black. Sure, white cowboys did exist, but they weren’t the only ones that you could find. On top of that, gay cowboys were far more common than you might think!
That’s right, you heard me. Gay cowboys.
Historical records show that homosexuality was pretty common ‘out on the range’. Cut off from civilisation…especially female civilisation…for weeks and months at a time, many cowboys tended to get a bit bored, and before long, even other guys started lookin’ pretty good.
But what about the attitudes to homosexuality back in the 1800s, surely that put a stop to this stuff, right?
Well…not as fast as you might think, if at all! Given that the job was so hard already (no pun intended, I swear to God!), ranchers and farmers were desperate to find good, solid men to drive their cattle long distances. The work was so demanding and difficult that they weren’t about to turn away someone just because he was more interested in what hung below than what rested on top – good help was just so hard to find that ranchers just couldn’t be so picky. And at any rate, sexual preferences, or even sexual encounters, only ever happened way out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. Given that – who was ever going to know? After all, knowing how, when and why to keep stuff under your hat was an important skill to learn in those days, if you expected to live a long life.
Speaking of hats – most cowboys did not wear the classic broad-brimmed Stetson center-pinch cowboy hat, either! Oh no. Although it might look very impressive and produce an alluring silhouette, the truth is that most cowboys actually wore the much more common standard, black bowler hat.
The bowler hat was extremely common in the second half of the 1800s and was worn by everybody from street-toughs to Wall Street bankers, shopkeepers and cowboys….especially cowboys!
Why? Well, one reason why the bowler hat was so popular was because its hard felt, dome-top design meant that it was pretty decent when it came to protecting the wearer from being whacked on the head. Unlike other hats such as top-hats, or the stereotypical cowboy hat, the bowler had to be rigid in order to maintain its characteristic curved shape. Because of this, it quickly became popular as a sort of ‘everyday hard-hat’, a useful feature when being thrown from your horse at full gallop was a real possibility!
Outlaws and Robbers!
The word ‘outlaw’ comes from England, and was originally an English translation of the original Latin phrase from the Middle Ages, which was “Caput Lupinum“.
‘Caput Lupinum’ translates literally as ‘wolf’s head’. Wolves, a menace in medieval England, were notorious for killing sheep and other farm-animals back in the day. Since England’s economy rode on the sheep’s back, anybody who could kill a feral wolf would not face any penalties (as opposed to say, killing deer or sheep or cattle unlawfully).
This same concept was applied to wanted criminals. Criminals who had evaded justice could be very hard to capture in the days before CCTV, squad-cars and two-ray radio. To capture these nefarious criminals, the easiest thing to do was to declare them ‘outlaws’. This meant that the wanted person was now ‘outside the law’.
This meant that they no longer had an obligation to follow the law. It also meant that the law had no obligation to protect them! Anyone who came across an outlaw could – perfectly legally – kill him, using whatever means necessary – and – just like killing a wolf – would face no punishment. Without regular police-forces to maintain order, it was up to ordinary people to observe the ‘Hue and Cry’ and maintain their own order.
Along with the outlaw was his counterpart – the sheriff! The word ‘sheriff’ is a corruption of the original words ‘Shire Reeve’ – an elected official whose job it was to maintain law and order on a lord or baron’s lands and keep the peace. The ‘shire’ was the area of land which the ‘reeve’ oversaw. Eventually, the two words melded into one – Sheriff.
Wild West Outlaws
The Wild West is famous for its outlaws. Jesse James and his gang, John Wesley Hardin, Butch Cassidy, and Billy the Kid were all real people, and they all committed real crimes and real murders! But not everything about these larger-than-life characters is what they seem. Much of what they did, or didn’t do, has been shrouded in tall tales, half-truths and retellings that stretch back over a hundred years. Billy the Kid’s first name wasn’t even Billy! He got the name ‘Billy the Kid’ from the name William H. Bonney…which wasn’t even his real name…in fact, it was Henry McCarty.
Although Billy the Kid was often portrayed as a dangerous and reckless outlaw who killed nearly two dozen people, the truth is that by the time he was shot and killed…at the age of just 21…he’d only murdered four men. And if you believe the stories, he probably shot them with his revolver, which he held in his left hand! Well…that’s not true, either!
The belief that Billy the Kid was lefthanded came from this:
Henry McCarty, AKA Billy the Kid.
Taken in 1880, the year before he died, this is the only confirmed photograph of Billy the Kid known to exist. It’s an old tintype snapshot. In the photograph, he’s carrying two weapons – a revolver on his left hip, and a Winchester lever-action rifle in his right hand. Since the revolver was on the left side of his body, it was always assumed that Billy the Kid was lefthanded. Right?
Wrong.
The photograph is a tintype. This primitive method of photography, while effective, was deceiving. A tintype camera does not produce an exact copy of what it sees – it produces a mirror image of what it sees. That means that any photograph produced from a tintype camera has been flipped the other way around. The error was only discovered when historians examined the weapons in the photograph. The distinctive outline of the Winchester rifle made researchers realise that they’d made a vital error!
See…the Winchester has a tube-magazine underneath the barrel. To load this magazine, you feed rifle-cartridges into the gun from the breech through a spring-loaded hatch above the trigger, known as a loading-gate. If you look at the photograph of the Winchester rifle further up the page, you’ll notice that the gate is (and always has been) on the RIGHT side of the gun.
But in the photograph above of Billy the Kid…the gate is on the LEFT side of the gun – which is an impossibility because Winchester never made guns like that. When the error was finally realised and the photograph was flipped around, it was revealed that Billy the Kid was actually righthanded and that his revolver was actually on his right hip, and the rifle was on his left!
These are just a few examples of how even the outlaws of the Wild West were mythologised, and made out to be bigger, badder and meaner than they really were.
The End of the Wild West
From the early and mid 1800s, the Wild West grew and expanded. It reached its peak in the 1870s, 80s and 90s, up to the turn of the 20th century. As modern technology entered the towns, and the industries that once gave wild west towns their livelihoods, such as mining and cattle-herding, started to die away, the Wild West was consigned to history. Even as early as the turn of the century, it was becoming mythologised as a time gone by, with larger-than-life characters like Buffalo Bill Cody putting on his ‘Wild West Shows’ and touring the world with his famous act. By the end of the First World War, the Wild West had already become the stuff of myths and legends. Those who had lived their lives in the Old West moved on with their new lives. Some of them, like lawman Pat Garret, who killed Billy the Kid, wrote down their memoirs and life-stories in the 1920s and 30s. These twilight reminiscences are what give us the truth, and some of the myths, of what the Wild West was really like.
Finding out More?
If you want to know more, I can strongly recommend the documentary series “Wild West Tech”, if you can find it. Entertaining and educational all in one!
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So, did you figure out how many rounds were loaded into a revolver?
The answer is FIVE.
Although revolvers could hold six rounds, most cowboys and outlaws who carried revolvers usually only loaded five rounds into their guns (especially if they were older-style cap-and-ball blackpowder revolvers). The reason for this practice was so that the firing pin at the end of the cocking hammer always rested on an empty chamber.
When you were bouncing around in the saddle of your horse, there was a very big risk that the jolting and vibrations could cause the gun to go off accidentally! To ensure that you didn’t shoot yourself…or your horse…due to a sudden jerk that set the firing mechanism off…one chamber was always left empty, as a safeguard against accidents.
