Outlaws and Lawmen in the Wild West
1867 United States purchases Alaska from Russia.
1868
1868 The practice of “transportation” is officially ended—sending convicts from other countries to America as a form of punishment is no longer allowed.
1868 President Andrew Johnson is impeached under the charge of high crimes and misdemeanors.
1869
1869 Transcontinental Railroad completed on May 10.
1870 Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution—Prohibits any citizen from being denied to vote based on their “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
1870 Christmas is declared a national holiday.
1876
1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
1877
1877 Great Railroad Strike—Often considered the country’s first nationwide labor strike.
1878
1878 Thomas Edison patents the phonograph on February 19.
1878 Thomas Edison invents the light bulb on October 22.
1881
1881 Billy the Kid, or Henry McCarty, is killed on July 14 at 21 years old.
1882
1882 Jesse James, an outlaw, gang leader, and bank/train robber, dies.
1886
1886 The Statue of Liberty is dedicated on October 28.
1890
1890 Wounded Knee Massacre—Last battle in the American Indian Wars.
1892
1892 Ellis Island is opened to receive immigrants coming into New York.
1896
1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson—Supreme Court case that rules that racial segregation is legal as long as accommodations are kept equal.
1896 Henry Ford builds his first combustion-powered vehicle, which he names the Ford Quadricycle.
1898
1898 The Spanish-American War—The United States gains control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.
Gold and Vigilantes in California
In January 1848, John Sutter discovered gold at Coloma, California, and over the next couple years more than a quarter of a million fortune hunters headed west. The New Yorker magazine described the lawlessness of the gold fields in 1851:
Miners were so greedy, treacherous and unreliable that no man’s life was safe. Law and order were unknown; fights occurred daily, and anyone who could not protect himself with his fists was unfortunate. Every man carried a gun, all types of weapons that could shoot, cut, or stab—plain pocket pistols, Colt revolvers, and double-barreled guns. . . . Robbery and murder were commonplace, because men still preferred to steal gold dust rather than work for it and did not hesitate to take human lives if necessary.
The law was not quite “every man for himself”—but it was close to that. Miners formed vigilante bands (unofficial citizens’ groups) to capture and hang the worst lawbreakers—at least they did so when they could pry themselves away from their diggings long enough to administer justice.
The Gold Rush also worsened Native-European relations in California. Mexican ranchers had once had a live-and-let-live approach to Native Californians. The miners, however, trespassed on Indian lands and killed Natives who stood between them and gold.
The gold miners’ lust for gold drove the Native tribes of California to reservations, where they were forced to live in poverty.
Author James Penny Boyd wrote this account of the gold miners’ wars with the Native tribes:
By 1853 the California tribes were pretty generally subdued and driven on to the five reservations set apart for them. These reservations were badly managed by the Government agents, who drew plentiful supplies from the Government but gave the Indians none. . . . Every Indian theft, every attempt on their part to scout and live, or to come back on their reservations to assert their rights, became a cause for war upon them, and it is quite probable that more perished in the difficulties which thus arose, than in all the prior effort to conquer them. Over 150 Indians were massacred by white settlers at Nome Cult in 1858, the only excuse being that they had driven off the cattle of the settlers from the reservation, because they were consuming the acorns on which the Indians depended for food. At King’s River, the Indians were shot down by scores, and driven away because the Government would not support them and they had become a nuisance. In these humanitarian efforts to exterminate the natives, the settlers had the support of the state militia and there was no sentiment against this kind of murder. At Mattole Station and Humboldt Bay, similar massacres took place and there was no mercy shown to a refractory Indian. The next morning after the massacre at Humboldt Bay, sixty corpses of Indian men, women, boys and girls, showed how impious had been their refusal to go off to the then secluded region of Mendocino.
The character of the California settlers, gathered from all the ends of the earth, inspired by greed, with a golden stake in hand, was such as to make Indian wars of California frequent, short and decisive. They were wars which involved excessive cruelty, wars of extermination. The miners were a society by themselves, and a unit in their own protection. There was, of course, a powerful necessity for protection, as was shown not only in their wars with Indians, but in those stern measures which became the code of justice of their “Vigilance Committees.” They were really at war with themselves, and peace and the reign of law came only after the rope had taught many of their own number, the same lessons their shotguns had impressed on the Indians.
Cattle, Sheep, Farms—and Violence
In Hollywood Western movies, good guys and bad guys draw guns from their holsters over issues of honor. In historical fact, greed motivated most of the shootings in the Old West, as competing factions defended their livelihoods at gunpoint. Typically, each side justified their actions as “justice” and cast parties that opposed them as “outlaws.”
In Lincoln County, New Mexico, in 1878, rival ranches engaged in what historians call “The Lincoln County War.” Billy the Kid, one of the most legendary outlaws, served as hired hand for one of the ranches. Both sides claimed to be in the right with the law, and the two cattle companies killed nineteen men in their conflict.
Then sheepherders joined the picture: their flocks competed for grazing rights with the cattle, and sheep chewed the grass clear away, destroying the land’s usefulness for cattlemen. As a result, cattle ranchers and sheep farmers fought bitter range wars.
Finally, the farmers staked out their claims, and protected their lands with barbed wire—hated by the old-style ranchers who were used to wide-open ranges for their cattle. Though the West seemed limitless, it quickly became clear that competing factions would have to settle their differences—by gun or by common agreement.
The Pinkerton Agency
The most efficient law enforcement in the post-Civil-War West was the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Allan Pinkerton migrated to the United States from Scotland in 1842, and then in 1850, established his private detective agency in Chicago. Its logo was an eye with the slogan “we never sleep”—hence detectives became known as “private eyes.” Officers of the Agency were involved in operations against the James Gang, the Wild Bunch, and other famous Western outlaws.
Billy the Kid died when he was only twenty-one, but his memory lives on. Some historians refer to him as the “Old West’s favorite outlaw.”
The Legacy of War—the James Gang
As young men, Jesse and Frank James witnessed the brutalities of their divided state of Missouri. In 1863, an anti-slavery militia group tried to hang the boys’ father, and they brutally whipped Jesse. The incident left scars in more ways than one: Jesse immediately joined Quantrill’s Raiders and contributed his own share of violence to the bloody war.
After the war, the James brothers continued to live by the violent skills they had gained from the conflict, riding and shooting. They robbed banks and railroads. At the time, many citizens (especially Southerners) viewed these businesses as unjust and exploitive: the James Gang played up on public opinion, claiming to be “Robin Hood” types who stole to help the poor.
In 1882, Bob Ford, a member of the gang, shot Jesse in the back. He expected fame and gain for doing so, but instead received only hatred and scorn, so great was Jesse James’ popularity.
Jesse James.
Sammy Saves the Farm
Oklahoma Territory, 1891 (Based on true events recorded in an old journal.)
“Remember, stay clear of those ranchers, I know they want us off this land.” Those were the parting words Sammy Houchen’s husband gave her, just before he left to do business in the city.
For the next few days, the young wife enjoyed her solitude, and immersed herself in caring for the chickens, crops, and livestock, along with the other duties of their farm. Then, on the third night of solitude, a thunderstorm broke. Sammy huddled by the fire in their sod house, avoiding a few spots where water dripped steadily through the makeshift ceiling.
Then, between the sounds of thunder and rain, she heard another sound: a low vibration that seemed to come from the ground itself. She threw on a canvas poncho and grabbed the shotgun and a pouch full of shells her husband had left by the door.
Cattle herds were huge—and ranchers were often ruthless in their refusal to let grazing lands be turned into farms.
As she stepped out into the downpour, lightning flashed, illumining the plain to the east of their farm, and what she saw made Sammy catch her breath. A herd of cattle stampeded across the plain toward her farm. The ranchers were driving them toward the Houchens’ land. The pounding hooves would destroy their crops, collapse their sod house, and—she realized with a flash of fright and anger—possibly take her life.
Another lightning flash: Sammy raised the double-barrel gun to her shoulder, leveled it, and pulled both triggers. It kicked hard, but it accomplished her purpose: a cow stumbled, then collapsed twenty paces ahead of her. The herd slowed.
Quickly, she shoved two more shells from the pouch into the chambers of the gun, took aim, fired again. Another cow came down. Sammy ran toward the fallen animals, to take shelter behind the bulwark of their bodies.
The herd began to move forward again, but they were divided now into two bellowing, pounding streams. One stream was heading past the Houchens’ sod house, then past the chicken coop, but the stream of cattle on the left was still running toward their crop fields.
Sammy had just swung the gun to her left when she heard a snort just in front of her. Through the darkness and rain, she saw a bull’s enormous horns just yards away. She barely had time to point the gun at its forehead and pull. The remaining barrel discharged, and the bull collapsed at her feet.
With shaking hands, she reloaded both barrels again and fired two shots off to her left. Two more steers down, and now she had formed a sizable wall of dead cattle. The stampeding herd, still moving forward, parted in two directions and thundered past her farm, leaving it intact.
Sammy collapsed into the mud, soaked through, gasping for breath. She had never dreamed that she was capable of such actions as this night’s work. Truly, her new life in the West had made her a new kind of woman.
Natives Fight for Their Homelands
European settlers rolled across the West like waves of the ocean, wagon train after wagon train—and the First Nations people who had lived in these lands for thousands of years strove to preserve their way of life. Between 1851 and 1871, the U.S. government forced the nations of the Oceti Sakowin Confederation—now usually called Sioux—onto increasingly smaller land holdings, where government agents pressured them to adopt European ways. Then, in 1871, trespassing miners discovered gold in the Black Hills, and the U.S. government took over this sacred land, an area known to the Native people as “the heart of everything that is.” Conflicts ensued, including the Sioux victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn, and, later, the terrible massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee.
The courage and determination of Chief Dull Knife (also called Morning Star) was in large part the reason why the Northern Cheyenne still possess a homeland in their traditional country (present-day Montana).
This photograph shows the U.S. forces standing beside the mass grave of the people they had slaughtered at Wounded Knee. Eighty-four men, forty-four women, and eighteen children were killed.
After Little Big Horn, the government forced the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, who had fought alongside the Oceti Sakowin, to relocate to Oklahoma, where many of them died from hunger and disease. In 1878, Chief Dull Knife announced to the government agent in Oklahoma, “I am going north to my own country. I do not want to see blood spilt about this agency. Let me get a little distance away. Then if you want to fight, I will fight you, and we can make bloody ground at that place.” Miraculously, a small number of the Northern Cheyenne outwitted and outmaneuvered thousands of government troops, relocating in their ancestral lands where they still live today.
Barboncito is credited with being a “peace chief” who laid the foundation for the long-term survival of his people’s culture.
Further west, the Diné people (Navajo) fought against Kit Carson and U.S. soldiers, who waged a war of extermination against them. Survivors were rounded up and taken to Fort Sumner. Gus Bighorse recalled the move: “The trip is on foot. People are shot on the spot if they say they are tired or sick or if they stop to help someone. If a woman is in labor with a baby, she is killed.” Conditions at the fort were little better. Diné chief Barboncito pled with General Sherman to let his people return to their own lands, in order to ensure their survival. His request was granted; and the people trekked by foot back to their homeland. When sacred Mount Taylor came into view, they sat down and cried from happiness and relief.
Reservation land looking toward Mount Taylor.
In the cattle towns and railroad and mining camps, gambling was the most popular form of entertainment. Claims of cheating (whether real or imagined) and testy tempers were a common risk at the card table, so gamblers typically carried tiny concealed pistols known as Derringers or small knives concealed in the palm of the hand, both useful for sudden self-defense.
Prostitution provided a way for destitute women to survive, and west of the Mississippi, most of the “soiled doves” (as these women were known) were recent immigrants, from China or Europe—women whose limited language and career skills doomed their chances of survival in the West. Though glamorized by Hollywood, the life of an Old West prostitute was cruel and short. Like the card sharks, they defended themselves with small, concealed arms.
Gamblers and prostitutes were not technically “outlaws,” as both professions were legal in the Western Territories for several decades after the Civil War. (Mormon communities were the exception to this.) However, while these trades were within the law, drunkenness, greed, and cheating often created violent situations where survival depended on first shooting—and then fleeing.
In this Old West town, the gallows stood next to the saloon, where it would be handy for dealing with the violence and crime that often occurred inside the building.
Chinese laborers helped build the railroad tracks across the nation, but they often faced violence and prejudice.
Railroad Hell Camps
Railroad lines, linking sides of the country together, were the greatest civilizing influence on the frontier—after they were completed. However, while companies laid the railroad lines, they created makeshift towns (actually just sprawling camps), the most violent and lawless parts of the West during their brief existence. Chinese and Irish workers labored under unsafe conditions for minimal pay; drinking, gambling, and whoring were common amusements, and often, there was no law in these temporary communities.
Canyon Diablo, Arizona, began in 1880 when railroad construction slowed down to bridge the canyon. The makeshift town quickly became known as “the toughest Hellhole in the West.” The town lasted only fourteen months, but during that time it boasted seven marshals, one of whom served for only five hours before someone gunned him down. While sheriffs came and went, violence raged on in the railroad town—resulting in more than 2,000 deaths in slightly more than a year’s time.
The legendary Wild West was built on the idea of the Colt six-shot revolver and the “fast draw” gunman. Samuel Colt’s Patented Revolving Pistol was called “the great equalizer,” the firearm most prized by all who could attain one. Between 1866 and 1900, more than 20,000 men died from gunfire west of the Mississippi; it was truly the age of the gunfighter.
A man’s ability to pull his gun faster than his opponent meant he would live to fight again.
Wild Bill Hickok
“Wild Bill” Hickok was the first man to gain fame as a fast-draw gunslinger. Eastern novelists portrayed Hickok as one of the good guys—and Hickok himself claimed he “never killed a man except in self defense or official duty”—but in fact he led a checkered career as scout, sheriff, and gambler. Hickok died on August 2, 1876, in Deadwood, shot in the back while playing poker.
INCREDIBLE INDIVIDUAL
Orrin Porter Rockwell
Although he is little known today, Orrin Porter Rockwell was, in his time, as famous as any Western legend. A Mormon (Latter Day Saint), he served as bodyguard for the prophet and founder of that movement—Joseph Smith—and for Smith’s successor Brigham Young. Joseph Smith once declared: “I prophesy, in the name of the Lord, that you—Orrin Porter Rockwell—so long as ye shall remain loyal and true to thy faith, need fear no enemy. Cut not thy hair and no bullet or blade can harm thee.” The prophecy seemed to come true: over the following decades Rockwell was involved in as many violent altercations as any of his gun-slinging contemporaries, serving as a scout, bodyguard, and United States Marshal—yet he was never even touched by any opponent.
Cool under fire, and unerringly deadly with his guns, people called Rockwell the “Avenging Angel.” Historians attribute more than forty deaths to him, so Rockwell probably killed more men than any other Western gunfighter. Nonetheless, Rockwell claimed “I never killed anyone that didn’t need killing.”
GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL
Tombstone Daily Epitaph,
October 27, 1881
Wyatt Earp
Mr. Coleman says: I was in the O.K. Corral at 2:30 p.m., when I saw the two Clantons and the two McLowrys in an earnest conversation across the street in Dunbar’s corral. I went up the street and notified Sheriff Behan and told him it was my opinion they meant trouble, and it was his duty, as sheriff, to go and disarm them. I told him they had gone to the West End Corral. I then went and saw Marshal Virgil Earp and notified him to the same effect. I then met Billy Allen and we walked through the O.K. Corral, about fifty yards behind the sheriff.
On reaching Fremont Street I saw Virgil Earp, Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday, in the center of the street, all armed. I had reached Bauer’s meat market. Johnny Behan had just left the cowboys, after having a conversation with them. I went along to Fly’s photograph gallery, when I heard Virg Earp say, “Give up your arms or throw up your arms.” There was some reply made by Frank McLowry, when firing became general, over thirty shots being fired. Tom McLowry fell first, but raised and fired again before he died. Bill Clanton fell next, and raised to fire again when Mr. Fly took his revolver from him. Frank McLowry ran a few rods and fell. Morgan Earp was shot through and fell. Doc Holliday was hit in the left hip but kept on firing. Virgil Earp was hit in the third or fourth fire, in the leg which staggered him but he kept up his effective work. Wyatt Earp stood up and fired in rapid succession, as cool as a cucumber, and was not hit. Doc Holliday was as calm as though at target practice and fired rapidly. After the firing was over, Sheriff Behan went up to Wyatt Earp and said, “I’ll have to arrest you.” Wyatt replied: “I won’t be arrested today. I am right here and am not going away. You have deceived me. You told me these men were disarmed; I went to disarm them.”
INCREDIBLE INDIVIDUAL
“Doc” Holliday
John Henry Holliday (1852–1887) was a dentist and gambler who frequented the cattle and mining towns of the Wild West. When Doc was twenty-one, a doctor diagnosed him with tuberculosis and told him that he would live but a few months if he stayed in his native state of Georgia—so Doc headed west. Because of his coughing, few people trusted his dental skills, so Doc took up gambling instead. Living by the cards, Doc sometimes relied on deception and was involved in a number of deadly altercations. Though his reputation was unsavory, Doc was close friends with Wyatt Earp, and he stood and fought beside the Earp brothers at the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral.
Historians have remembered Doc as both a hero and a villain; he showed marks of deep loyalty for his friends and cold callousness toward his enemies, and he employed his skill in whichever direction paid best. In these respects, he was like many of his peers in the violent Wild West.
Someone once asked Doc if his conscience bothered him over the men he had gunned down; he replied, “No, I coughed that up with my lungs long ago.”
By the 1880s, rule-of-law became more common in the West. The rapidly growing towns from Kansas to California realized that their future prosperity depended on a lessening of vice, so communities turned to hiring peace officers to enforce justice. At the same time, there was still enough violence that any peace officer had to be willing to face down his opponent and shoot to kill when necessary. It wasn’t easy to get “squeaky clean” gunmen, so, to quote Western historian R.L. Wilson, “the line separating lawman from criminal was sometimes faint.”
Virgil Earp (Wyatt’s brother) was City Marshall in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881, when a group of cowboys came into town defying the “no guns in town” ordinance. The miscreants were members of the Clanton and McLaury families, who had previously engaged in verbal threats against the Earp brothers. The Earps and Clantons stood on opposite sides of political and economic factions in the town.
A modern-day reenactment of the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone.
The town of Tombstone, Arizona, saw more than its share of violence—but law and order finally prevailed.
Virgil quickly appointed his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and their friend Doc Holliday as assistant marshals, and they walked over to the OK Corral where their opponents waited. Minutes later, the McLaurys and Billy Clanton were mortally wounded, and Virgil and Morgan Earp were injured, but the Earp faction had clearly gotten the upper hand. Tombstone’s two newspapers disagreed on the justice of the gunfight, reflecting the town’s divided loyalties between the dueling parties.
For the next several years, there were a series of reprisal killings between the two groups, with Wyatt Earp and friends prevailing. This battle for control of Southern Arizona was typical of the way justice came to the West: bloody, controversial, but tending toward enforcement of the law in the long run.
A HANGING
The New Mexican,
December 15, 1875
Before mounting the platform, the condemned man, Mr. Wilson, shook hands with several whom he recognized, and mounted the scaffold calm and collected. The escort was drawn in line fronting the gallows, whilst four men dismounted and kept back the crowd, which by this time had increased considerably.
Whilst on the scaffold the death warrant was read first in English and then in Spanish, after which the dying declaration written and signed by Wilson was read and translated. He then received the extreme unction and the merciful sheriff declared that the execution would be stayed for half an hour. However, the leading men of the town, actuated by pity for the poor unfortunate, entered such a vigorous protest against such barbarous proceedings that the sheriff went ahead with the execution.
The priest descended from the scaffold, the black cap was adjusted, and the prisoner, with hands tied behind and the noose around his neck, awaited his doom.
The sheriff descended from the scaffold, and in an instant justice, so long outraged, was avenged, and the perpetrator of one of the foulest murders which ever disgraced a civilized community was no more.
After hanging nine and a half minutes, the body was cut down and placed in the coffin, when it was discovered that life was not yet extinct. A rope was fastened around his neck, and the crowd drew the inanimate body from the coffin and suspended it from the gallows where it hanged for twenty minutes longer. It was then cut down and placed in the coffin and buried.
Led by dapper Butch Cassidy, the Wild Bunch rustled cattle, held-up banks, and robbed trains throughout the west in the final years of the 1800s. At the turn of the century, they held up the Great Northern Express train near Wagner, Montana, where they looted $40,000.00. Pursued by Pinkerton detectives, the gang split up. The most famous members—Butch and the Sundance Kid—fled to South America, where they faded into history.
The Wild Bunch; Butch Cassidy is seated at the right.
With the demise of the Wild Bunch, the historical era of the Wild West came to an end. Shortly after that, the new technology of motion-picture filmmaking began to immortalize the gunslingers. Wyatt Earp and a few others lived to bridge the gap between the West of Hollywood and that of history.
At the same time that Hollywood immortalized the violence of the 1800s, a new breed of criminal rose up. They replaced the six-shooter with automatic weapons and turned big-city streets once again into centers of violence. First alcohol (during Prohibition), then illegal drugs fueled criminal activities. Gangs and drug wars continue to claim lives today.
Judges like Roy Bean dispensed justice and gradually tamed the Wild West.
