Vanguards of the Plains A Romance of the Old Santa Fé Trail

It was not uncommon for bordellos in Western towns to operate openly, without the stigma of East Coast cities. Moore uses court records to show that on the sparsely settled Arkansas frontier lawlessness was common. He distinguished two types of crimes: Bandits, typically in groups of two or three, rarely attacked stagecoaches with a guard carrying a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun; it proved less risky to rob teamsters, people on foot, and solitary horsemen, [] while bank robberies themselves were harder to pull off due to the security of the establishment. When criminals were convicted, punishment was severe.

Law enforcement emphasized maintaining stability more than armed combat, focusing on drunkenness, disarming cowboys who violated gun-control edicts and dealing with flagrant breaches of gambling and prostitution ordinances. Dykstra argues that the violent image of the cattle towns in film and fiction is largely myth.

The real Dodge City, he says, was the headquarters for the buffalo-hide trade of the Southern Plains and one of the West's principal cattle towns, a sale and shipping point for cattle arriving from Texas. He states there is a "second Dodge City" that belongs to the popular imagination and thrives as a cultural metaphor for violence, chaos, and depravity. A contemporary eyewitness of Hays City, Kansas paints a vivid image of this cattle town:.

Hays City by lamplight was remarkably lively, but not very moral. The streets blazed with a reflection from saloons, and a glance within showed floors crowded with dancers, the gaily dressed women striving to hide with ribbons and paint the terrible lines which that grim artist, Dissipation, loves to draw upon such faces To the music of violins and the stamping of feet the dance went on, and we saw in the giddy maze old men who must have been pirouetting on the very edge of their graves. It has been acknowledged that the popular portrayal of Dodge City in film and fiction carries a note of truth, however, as gun crime was rampant in the city prior to the establishment of a local government.

Soon after the city's residents officially established their first municipal government, however, a law banning concealed firearms was enacted and crime was reduced soon afterwards. Similar laws were passed in other frontier towns to reduce the rate of gun crime as well. Carrying of guns within the city limits of a frontier town was generally prohibited. Laws barring people from carrying weapons were commonplace, from Dodge City to Tombstone. When Dodge City residents first formed their municipal government, one of the very first laws enacted was a ban on concealed carry.

The ban was soon after expanded to open carry, too. The Hollywood image of the gunslinger marching through town with two Colts on his hips is just that — a Hollywood image, created for its dramatic effect. Tombstone, Arizona was a turbulent mining town that flourished longer than most, from to In the newly arrived Earp brothers bought shares in the Vizina mine, water rights, and gambling concessions, but Virgil , Wyatt , and Morgan Earp obtained positions at different times as federal and local lawmen.

After more than a year of threats and feuding, they killed three outlaws in the Gunfight at the O. Corral , the most famous gunfight of the Old West. In the aftermath, Virgil Earp was maimed in an ambush and Morgan Earp was assassinated while playing billiards. Wyatt and others, including his brothers James Earp and Warren Earp , pursued those they believed responsible in an extra-legal vendetta and warrants were issued for their arrest in the murder of Frank Stilwell.

The Cochise County Cowboys were one of the first organized crime syndicates in the United States, and their demise came at the hands of Wyatt Earp. Western story tellers and film makers featured the gunfight in many Western productions. They solidified Earp's modern reputation as the Old West's deadliest gunman. The major type of banditry was conducted by the infamous outlaws of the West, including Jesse James , Billy the Kid , the Dalton Gang , Black Bart , Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch and hundreds of others who preyed on banks, trains, stagecoaches, and in some cases even armed government transports such as the Wham Paymaster Robbery and the Skeleton Canyon Robbery.

Many were misfits and drifters who roamed the West avoiding the law. When outlaw gangs were near, towns would occasionally raise a posse to drive them out or capture them. Seeing that the need to combat the bandits was a growing business opportunity, Allan Pinkerton ordered his National Detective Agency, founded in , to open branches out West, and they got into the business of pursuing and capturing outlaws. Banditry was a major issue in California after , as thousands of young men detached from family or community moved into a land with few law enforcement mechanisms.

To combat this, the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance was established to give drumhead trials and death sentences to well-known offenders. As such, other earlier settlements created their own private agencies to protect communities due to the lack of peace-keeping establishments. Similar vigilance committees also existed in Texas, and their main objective was to stamp out lawlessness and rid communities of desperadoes and rustlers.

Criminals caught by these vigilance committees were treated cruelly; often hung or shot without any form of trial. Civilians also took arms to defend themselves in the Old West, sometimes siding with lawmen Coffeyville Bank Robbery , or siding with outlaws Battle of Ingalls. In the Post-Civil War frontier, over whites, 34 blacks and 75 others were victims of lynching.

VanGuards of the Plains; a Romance of the Old Santa Fé Trail by McCarter Hill (2009, Hardcover)

Pfeifer writes, "Contrary to the popular understanding, early territorial lynching did not flow from an absence or distance of law enforcement but rather from the social instability of early communities and their contest for property, status, and the definition of social order. The names and exploits of Western gunslingers took a major role in American folklore, fiction and film.

Their guns and costumes became children's toys for make-believe shootouts. Actual gunfights in the Old West were more episodic than being a common thing, but when gunfights did occur, the cause for each varied. Range wars were infamous armed conflicts that took place in the "open range" of the American frontier. The subject of these conflicts was the control of lands freely used for farming and cattle grazing which gave the conflict its name.

Feuds involving families and bloodlines also occurred much in the frontier. The end of the bison herds opened up millions of acres for cattle ranching. After the Civil War, Texas ranchers raised large herds of longhorn cattle. So once fattened the ranchers and their cowboys drove the herds north along the Western, Chisholm, and Shawnee trails. The cattle were shipped to Chicago, St.

Louis, and points east for slaughter and consumption in the fast-growing cities. The Chisholm Trail , laid out by cattleman Joseph McCoy along an old trail marked by Jesse Chisholm, was the major artery of cattle commerce, carrying over 1. The long drives were treacherous, especially crossing water such as the Brazos and the Red River and when they had to fend off Indians and rustlers looking to make off with their cattle.

By the s and s, cattle ranches expanded further north into new grazing grounds and replaced the bison herds in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska and the Dakota territory, using the rails to ship to both coasts. Many of the largest ranches were owned by Scottish and English financiers.

The single largest cattle ranch in the entire West was owned by American John W. Iliff, "cattle king of the Plains", operating in Colorado and Wyoming. Though less hardy and more disease-prone, these breeds produced better tasting beef and matured faster. The funding for the cattle industry came largely from British sources, as the European investors engaged in a speculative extravaganza—a "bubble". Graham concludes the mania was founded on genuine opportunity, as well as "exaggeration, gullibility, inadequate communications, dishonesty, and incompetence".

A severe winter engulfed the plains toward the end of and well into , locking the prairie grass under ice and crusted snow which starving herds could not penetrate. The British lost most of their money—as did eastern investors like Theodore Roosevelt , but their investments did create a large industry that continues to cycle through boom and bust periods. On a much smaller scale sheep grazing was locally popular; sheep were easier to feed and needed less water.

However, Americans did not eat mutton. As farmers moved in open range cattle ranching came to an end and was replaced by barbed wire spreads where water, breeding, feeding, and grazing could be controlled. This led to "fence wars" which erupted over disputes about water rights. Central to the myth and the reality of the West is the American cowboy. His real life was a hard one and revolved around two annual roundups, spring and fall, the subsequent drives to market, and the time off in the cattle towns spending his hard earned money on food, clothing, gambling, and prostitution.

During winter, many cowboys hired themselves out to ranches near the cattle towns, where they repaired and maintained equipment and buildings. Working the cattle was not just a routine job but also a lifestyle that exulted in the freedom of the wide unsettled outdoors on horseback. Many of the cowboys were veterans of the Civil War; a diverse group, they included Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and immigrants from many lands. Chaps, the heavy protective leather trousers worn by cowboys, got their name from the Spanish "chaparreras", and the lariat, or rope, was derived from "la reata".

All the distinct clothing of the cowboy—boots, saddles, hats, pants, chaps , slickers, bandannas , gloves, and collar-less shirts—were practical and adaptable, designed for protection and comfort. The cowboy hat quickly developed the capability, even in the early years, to identify its wearer as someone associated with the West; it came to symbolize the frontier.

Before a drive, a cowboy's duties included riding out on the range and bringing together the scattered cattle. The best cattle would be selected, roped, and branded, and most male cattle were castrated. The cattle also needed to be dehorned and examined and treated for infections.

On the long drives, the cowboys had to keep the cattle moving and in line. The cattle had to be watched day and night as they were prone to stampedes and straying. While camping every night, cowboys would often sing to their herd to keep them calm. It was grueling, dusty work, with just a few minutes of relaxation before and at the end of a long day. On the trail, drinking, gambling, and brawling were often prohibited and fined, and sometimes cursing as well.

It was monotonous and boring work, with food to match: Anchoring the booming cattle industry of the s and s were the cattle towns in Kansas and Missouri. Like the mining towns in California and Nevada, cattle towns such as Abilene , Dodge City , and Ellsworth experienced a short period of boom and bust lasting about five years. The cattle towns would spring up as land speculators would rush in ahead of a proposed rail line and build a town and the supporting services attractive to the cattlemen and the cowboys.

If the railroads complied, the new grazing ground and supporting town would secure the cattle trade. However, unlike the mining towns which in many cases became ghost towns and ceased to exist after the ore played out, cattle towns often evolved from cattle to farming and continued on after the grazing lands were exhausted. Concern with the protection of the environment became a new issue in the late 19th century, pitting different interests. On the one side were the lumber and coal companies who called for maximum exploitation of natural resources to maximize jobs, economic growth, and their own profit.

In the center were the conservationists , led by Theodore Roosevelt and his coalition of outdoorsmen, sportsmen, bird watchers and scientists. They wanted to reduce waste; emphasized the value of natural beauty for tourism and ample wildlife for hunters; and argued that careful management would not only enhance these goals but also increase the long-term economic benefits to society by planned harvesting and environmental protections.

Roosevelt worked his entire career to put the issue high on the national agenda. He was deeply committed to conserving natural resources. Roosevelt set aside more Federal land, national parks , and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined.

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Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. The third element, smallest at first but growing rapidly after , were the environmentalists who honored nature for its own sake, and rejected the goal of maximizing human benefits. Their leader was John Muir — , a widely read author and naturalist and pioneer advocate of preservation of wilderness for its own sake, and founder of the Sierra Club.

Muir, based in California, in started organizing support to preserve the sequoias in the Yosemite Valley; Congress did pass the Yosemite National Park bill In President Grover Cleveland created thirteen protected forests but lumber interests had Congress cancel the move.

Muir, taking the persona of an Old Testament prophet, [] crusaded against the lumberman, portraying it as a contest "between landscape righteousness and the devil". Biographer Donald Worster says, "Saving the American soul from a total surrender to materialism was the cause for which he fought.

The rise of the cattle industry and the cowboy is directly tied to the demise of the huge herds of bison—usually called the "buffalo". Once numbering over 25 million on the Great Plains, the grass-eating herds were a vital resource animal for the Plains Indians, providing food, hides for clothing and shelter, and bones for implements.

Loss of habitat, disease, and over-hunting steadily reduced the herds through the 19th century to the point of near extinction. Conservationists founded the American Bison Society in ; it lobbied Congress to establish public bison herds. Several national parks in the U. The exploration, settlement, exploitation, and conflicts of the "American Old West" form a unique tapestry of events, which has been celebrated by Americans and foreigners alike—in art, music, dance, novels, magazines, short stories, poetry, theater, video games, movies, radio, television, song, and oral tradition—which continues in the modern era.

Religious themes have inspired many environmentalists as they contemplate the pristine West before the frontiersmen violated its spirituality. The Frontier Thesis of historian Frederick Jackson Turner , proclaimed in , [] established the main lines of historiography which fashioned scholarship for three or four generations and appeared in the textbooks used by practically all American students.

The mythologizing of the West began with minstrel shows and popular music in the s. During the same period, P. Barnum presented Indian chiefs, dances, and other Wild West exhibits in his museums. However, large scale awareness really took off when the dime novel appeared in , the first being Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter. Millions of copies and thousands of titles were sold. The novels relied on a series of predictable literary formulas appealing to mass tastes and were often written in as little as a few days.

The most successful of all dime novels was Edward S. Ellis' Seth Jones He presented the first "Wild West" show in , featuring a recreation of famous battles especially Custer's Last Stand , expert marksmanship, and dramatic demonstrations of horsemanship by cowboys and Indians, as well as sure-shooting Annie Oakley. Elite Eastern writers and artists of the late 19th century promoted and celebrated western lore. Russell , and others. Readers bought action-filled stories by writers like Owen Wister , conveying vivid images of the Old West. I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever I saw the living, breathing end of three American centuries of smoke and dust and sweat.

In the 20th century, both tourists to the West and avid readers enjoyed the visual imagery of the frontier. The Western movies provided the most famous examples, as in the numerous films of John Ford. He was especially enamored of Monument Valley. Critic Keith Phipps says, "its five square miles [13 square kilometers] have defined what decades of moviegoers think of when they imagine the American West.

The cowboy has for over a century been an iconic American image both in the country and abroad; recognized worldwide and revered by Americans. Roosevelt conceptualized the herder cowboy as a stage of civilization distinct from the sedentary farmer—a theme well expressed in the Hollywood hit Oklahoma! Will Rogers, the son of a Cherokee judge in Oklahoma, started with rope tricks and fancy riding, but by discovered his audiences were even more enchanted with his wit in his representation of the wisdom of the common man.

Others who contributed to enhancing the romantic image of the American cowboy include Charles Siringo — [] and Andy Adams — Cowboy, Pinkerton detective, and western author, Siringo was the first authentic cowboy autobiographer. Adams spent the s in the cattle industry in Texas and s mining in the Rockies. When an play's portrayal of Texans outraged Adams, he started writing plays, short stories, and novels drawn from his own experiences.

His The Log of a Cowboy became a classic novel about the cattle business, especially the cattle drive. His writings are acclaimed and criticized for realistic fidelity to detail on the one hand and thin literary qualities on the other. The unique skills of the cowboys are highlighted in the rodeo. It began in organized fashion in the West in the s, when several Western cities followed up on touring Wild West shows and organized celebrations that included rodeo activities. The establishment of major cowboy competitions in the East in the s led to the growth of rodeo sports. Trail cowboys who were also known as gunfighters like John Wesley Hardin , Luke Short and others, were known for their prowess, speed and skill with their pistols and other firearms.

Their violent escapades and reputations morphed over time into the stereotypical image of violence endured by the "cowboy hero". Historians of the American West have written about the mythic West; the west of western literature, art and of people's shared memories. Such hazardous work in isolated conditions also bred a tradition of self-dependence and individualism, with great value put on personal honesty, exemplified in songs and cowboy poetry. Following the eleventh U. Census taken in the superintendent announced that there was no longer a clear line of advancing settlement, and hence no longer a frontier in the continental United States.

Historian Frederick Jackson Turner seized upon the statistic to announce the end of the era in which the frontier process shaped the American character. Fresh farmland was increasingly hard to find after —although the railroads advertised some in eastern Montana. Bicha shows that nearly , American farmers sought cheap land by moving to the Prairie frontier of the Canadian West from to However, about two-thirds of them grew disillusioned and returned to the U.

These contained plenty of unoccupied land, as did the territory of Alaska. Nevertheless, the ethos and storyline of the "American frontier" had passed. Scores of Turner students became professors in history departments in the western states, and taught courses on the frontier. It avoids the word "frontier" and stresses cultural interaction between white culture and groups such as Indians and Hispanics. It is easy to tell who the bad guys are — they are almost invariably white, male, and middle-class or better, while the good guys are almost invariably non-white, non-male, or non-middle class However, by , Aron argues, the two sides had "reached an equilibrium in their rhetorical arguments and critiques".

Meanwhile, environmental history has emerged, in large part from the frontier historiography, hence its emphasis on wilderness. The first group emphasizes human agency on the environment; the second looks at the influence of the environment. William Cronon has argued that Turner's famous essay was environmental history in an embryonic form. It emphasized the vast power of free land to attract and reshape settlers, making a transition from wilderness to civilization. Journalist Samuel Lubell saw similarities between the frontier's Americanization of immigrants that Turner described and the social climbing by later immigrants in large cities as they moved to wealthier neighborhoods.

He compared the effects of the railroad opening up Western lands to urban transportation systems and the automobile, and Western settlers' "land hunger" to poor city residents seeking social status. Just as the Republican party benefited from support from "old" immigrant groups that settled on frontier farms, "new" urban immigrants formed an important part of the Democratic New Deal coalition that began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt 's victory in the presidential election.

Since the s an active center is the history department at the University of New Mexico , along with the University of New Mexico Press. Leading historians there include Gerald D. The department has collaborated with other departments and emphasizes Southwestern regionalism, minorities in the Southwest, and historiography.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Wild West disambiguation. For cultural influences and their development, see Western genre. The cowboy , the quintessential symbol of the American frontier, circa Fur trade in North America. Fur trade in Montana. History of Mexico and Texas Revolution. Land Rush of History of Hispanic and Latino Americans. Gunfighter and Range war. Cattle drives in the United States.

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Vanguards of the Plains A Romance of the Old Santa Fe Trail

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