Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
These three unsuspecting inventions won the American Wild West – but did they destroy it too?
Historian Karen Jones reveals how barbed wire and other surprising inventions transformed the frontier, reshaping the lives of settlers, as well as the land and its peoples
Grit and gunfights. Cowboys riding under a relentless sun. Native Americans resisting conquest. Sheriffs and outlaws squaring off in dusty towns. These images of adventure and high drama still shape how we imagine the American 19th-century West – the so-called Wild West – as a place shaped by individual courage and personal struggle. And without such determination, the frontier might never have pushed so far. But what’s often forgotten is how profoundly the American frontier was reshaped by forces less dramatic than shootouts. As the industrial revolution swept across the 19th-century world, it was technological change that transformed the frontier more decisively than any single battle. “There are three inventions that come to mind when I think about what the technological transformations were; the objects that won the Old West and helped the expansion westward,” explains historian Karen Jones on the HistoryExtra podcast. Together, they opened the prairie to Euro-American settlement – and at the same time hastened the destruction of the old West forever. Barbed wire: fencing in the Wild West Before the 1860s, the American West was an open range. Cattle and wild bison roamed freely across grasslands that stretched for hundreds of miles. With timber a scarce resource, and the impracticality of stone walls on the plains, fencing land in was an incredibly difficult task. That changed in 1867, when Illinois farmer Joseph Glidden patented barbed wire. This invention suddenly, Jones says, “transforms the parcelling up of the west in a cheap and effective way.” Read more | 13 famous cowboys and gunslingers from the history of the American Wild West Barbed wire was simple: two twisted strands of wire with sharp barbs at intervals. But its impact was revolutionary. For the first time, settlers could cheaply fence land, excluding rivals and protecting crops from wandering cattle. Ranchers used it to control their herds; homesteaders used it to secure farms. Conflict quickly followed. “It becomes the method by which the ranchers with the cattle interests and the homesteaders come to blows,” says Jones. Cattlemen resisted the fencing of the open range they had once driven their herds across. Meanwhile, Native peoples saw traditional hunting grounds cut off. The so-called ‘range wars’ of the late 19th century – violent clashes between ranchers, farmers and vigilantes – were fought over strands of wire as well as over competing ideology. Barbed wire enabled the development of open prairies into parcels of private property, reshaping the landscape more permanently than any cavalry campaign. The Winchester rifle: firepower and mythology Being able to parcel up land isn’t much use if you can’t defend it. “The Winchester repeating rifle; the Winchester 73 is hugely important for the US Army as an efficient piece of technology that enabled them to manifest power in the West. It was also used by settlers, and by cowboys and is celebrated as part of the sheriff vs outlaw culture of the West too,” Jones explains. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-163552665-9f1dd38-e1757620392982.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This 1905 advertisement for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven, Connecticut promotes its line of hunting rifles. Sometimes called “the gun that won the West,” Winchester’s repeating rifles became iconic symbols of American expansion and frontier life." title="Ad For Winchester Rifles" /> The key to the rifle as an innovation was speed. Older muskets and rifles fired a single shot and then had to be reloaded – a slow process while in battle or on the hunt. The Winchester Model 1873, by contrast, used a lever-action mechanism that allowed multiple shots to be fired in quick succession. It gave soldiers and settlers an enormous advantage over opponents with traditional weapons or slower firearms. Read more | How wild was the Wild West? As Jones explains, for the US Army, the Winchester was a decisive weapon in campaigns against Native tribes. For settlers, it provided security against raids or rustlers. For outlaws, it offered firepower. And in popular imagination, it became the “gun that won the West”, celebrated in dime novels, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows and later 20th-century Hollywood westerns. “It becomes really important in the mythological West, which is often tangled up so closely with what’s happening at the time. It has a real power: even as the West is being made, it’s being imagined,” Jones notes. So, the revolutionary Winchester became both a practical tool of conquest and a powerful prop in the enduring myth of the frontier. The refrigerated railcar: the industrial frontier The third invention that Jones cites certainly lacked allure, but its impact was transformative. In the 1870s, Chicago meatpacking entrepreneur Gustavus Swift perfected the refrigerated railcar. “The refrigerated rail car doesn’t sound very romantic as a bit of technology”, explains Jones, but “it’s a symbol of the industrialised West, and the importance of industrialisation in this story.” Read more | Meet the forgotten women who upended gender norms to win the Wild West Until its development, cattle had to be driven hundreds of miles to railheads at towns like Abilene in modern Texas or Dodge City, Kansas. There they were shipped east alive – an inefficient and costly system. But when refrigeration became an option, slaughtered beef could be cooled, packed and sent directly to urban markets. This tied the frontier into the national economy. The cowboy drive remained an iconic image, but the real profits now lay in Chicago’s stockyards and the boxed beef arriving daily in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. The frontier became part of a vast industrial network – a meat factory for the rest of the US, as much as an untamed wilderness. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-101614028-5dab125-e1757618887984.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Wagons arrive in a newly established town in the American West, c.1870. Scenes like this marked the expansion of settler communities during a period of rapid westward migration, opportunity — and deep conflict with Indigenous peoples." title="Western Town" /> How technological change destroyed the old West Together, these technologies utterly reshaped the prairie, and in doing so, wiped out its most iconic animal. In the early 19th century, bison herds were so vast they sometimes stopped trains for days as they thundered past. By the 1880s, only a few hundred survived. “Bison roamed the West in their millions historically,” Jones says, “but they’re driven off the open range by the cattle kingdom, enthusiastically abetted by sportsmen and by market hunters who kill these animals to make them largely into fertilizer … and also by the army who see in the destruction of the bison a way to take the power and authority of indigenous tribes away.” Read more | Billy the Kid: the Wild West's most wanted gunslinger Barbed wire cut off grazing lands. Rifles made it easy to slaughter animals on a massive scale. Railroads and refrigerated cars created new markets for hides, meat and fertilizer. Meanwhile, the US Army, seeking to break the power of Plains tribes, actively encouraged the destruction. For Native peoples, a bison was a source of food, clothing, shelter and a spiritual cornerstone. Its eradication stripped them of sustenance and cultural identity, forcing dependence on government rations and confinement to reservations. An ecological and cultural catastrophe The loss of the bison wasn't just the end of a species, but the collapse of an ecological system and a cultural order. “Ecologically this changes the West because bison eat and graze in a really different way to domestic cattle”, Jones explains. “Their removal signals an entirely different cultural system and economic system: a system of Euro-American industrialized agriculture.” Replacing wild herds with cattle led to overgrazing, soil erosion and ecological imbalance. The Plains landscape was permanently altered, with scars that remain visible today. This article is based on an interview with Karen Jones, speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
13 famous cowboys and gunslingers from the history of the American Wild West
Saddle up and discover the most famous cowboys who shaped the American Frontier, exploring how their stories intertwined with the broader history of the Wild West
Through the lens of idealised romanticism, the Old West continues to capture the imagination as a wild and untamed frontier ready to be harnessed by those with the determination, courage and grit required to endure it. And despite the dangers – from an unforgiving terrain to the pervading lawlessness – there were great opportunities for a handful of big personalities to make a name for themselves. They robbed banks and stagecoaches, proved their speed and skill with a pistol in a gunfight, and embraced the chaos and change of an era marked by clashes between incoming settlers and Native Americans, farmers and businessman, the past and the future. They are some of the most famous figures in American history: cowboys. What was a cowboy? Symbols of the Wild West, cowboys could be all things, from frontiersmen, ranchers, farmers, wranglers, marshals and, of course, outlaws. It was an identity as much as it was an outright occupation. Beyond the bluster of the ubiquitous anti-heroes of Hollywood movies, their real-life stories provide insight into the broader forces underlying the expansion of the American frontier. Through their deeds, we can see the land disputes, the end of indigenous sovereignty, the rise of the railroad, and the slow march of federal law into a space once thought to be uncontrollable. 13 famous cowboys from the American Wild West Billy the Kid Jesse James Wyatt Earp Butch Cassidy Calamity Jane Wild Bill Hickok Doc Holliday Bass Reeves Belle Starr Black Bart John Wesley Hardin Bill Doolin Charles Goodnight Billy the Kid c1859–1881 Is there any name that evokes the outlaws of the Wild West more than Billy the Kid? Born Henry McCarty, the gunslinger was an orphan by his early teens and quickly turned to crime to survive. He went by a number of aliases, including William H Bonney and Kid Antrim (the latter a reference to his slight build and youthful features), before making his first recorded killing in 1877 at the age of 17. But it would be his involvement in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico Territory that earned him his reputation. This wasn’t just a feud between ranchers, which was common enough across the frontier: it was emblematic of the power struggles in the Old West as cattle barons, merchants and corrupt officials wrestled for control. Billy the Kid’s part in this violent conflict made him something of a folk hero, presented as a young man standing up against wealthy ranch owners and corrupt lawmen. He evaded capture and, even when he was caught and sentenced to death, pulled off daring escapes from jail. His outlaw career would be brief, however. By 1881, Billy the Kid was ambushed and shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett. Dead at just 21 – and having claimed that he had killed 21 men – his premature death arguably bolstered his legacy as a daring outlaw in a land where laws were still being written. Jesse James 1847–1882 Jesse James became a legend as the leader of the James-Younger Gang, along with his brother Frank, which committed audacious bank and train robberies. Born in 1847 in Missouri, James was still a teenager at the outbreak of the American Civil War, but he hastened to join a band of pro-Confederate guerillas. It was after the war his headline-grabbing career as an outlaw began in earnest. The two James boys led their notorious gang on a series of bank, train and stagecoach robberies across the Midwest, and despite their inclination towards violence and bloodshed they were hailed in the papers. James was regarded as a Robin Hood figure. Far from giving to the poor, though, his motivations were more self-serving. Read more | How historically accurate are film portrayals of Jesse James? Still, he could always rely on people hiding him and his gang from authorities. The post-Civil War era left many communities embittered and impoverished, and James capitalised on that sentiment by portraying himself as a Southern hero resisting the oppression of the North. Even when James was killed in 1882 – shot in the back of the head by one of his own men, Robert Ford – he was mourned, while his assassin was condemned as a coward. Wyatt Earp 1848–1929 Wyatt Earp may be one of the most recognisable lawmen of the Old West, but his record was far from clean. Over the years, he was a pimp, a thief and a con artist; he owned saloons and gambled; and he found himself on the other side of prison bars numerous times. From his first law enforcement job in 1870, Earp’s career as a sheriff and deputy took him on many adventures across dangerous frontier towns. But it was undoubtedly his time in Tombstone, Arizona, where his brother Virgil was town marshal, that cemented his place in history. Specifically, it was his role in the Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881. The Earps, joined by their other brother Morgan and friend Doc Holliday, had been feuding with a gang of cattle rustlers and thieves calling themselves the Cowboys. The resulting gunfight allegedly lasted only 30 seconds, leaving three men dead. In the 20th century, it became the stuff of legend. Read more | Was the gunfight at the OK Corral a major gun battle? The motivation behind the gunfight is still a matter of debate. Was Earp a righteous defender of law and justice or using his position as a means to further his own interests? There is no question that he could be bloodthirsty: after his brothers were attacked afterwards, Earp embarked on what has been called the ‘vendetta ride’, during which his posse killed at least two Cowboys. Either way, the famous shootout is a microcosm of the tensions between law and disorder that dominated the frontier at a time when the line between lawman and vigilante was far from distinct. Butch Cassidy 1866–1908 Butch Cassidy was a leader of the train and bank robbers calling themselves the Wild Bunch alongside his partner Harry Longabaugh, the so-called Sundance Kid. Unlike many outlaws of the time, he had a reputation for being relatively non-violent, preferring to use smarts instead of shootouts. Still, Cassidy (whose real name was Robert LeRoy Parker) found himself pursued by Pinkerton detectives across a landscape rapidly shifting and modernising. By the late 1800s, railroads, telegraphs and federal law enforcement were concluding the lawlessness that had defined the Old West. Read more | Allan Pinkerton: The eye that never slept Seeking refuge, Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fled the United States altogether and headed for South America. There, they operated a ranch in Argentina, but also slipped back into their outlaw ways. What happened to them remains something of a mystery. The most common story is that they got cornered by Bolivian soldiers in 1908 and were gunned down. Some less likely claims suggest they escaped and lived out their lives under assumed identities. Calamity Jane c1852–1903 Born Martha Jane Canary around 1852, the legendary Calamity Jane became a frontier icon. Not only was she highly skilled as a shooter and rider – in later life, she appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show – but she bucked the traditional role of women in the Old West. She wore men’s clothing and could take care of herself. Both her parents had died when she was still a teenager, leaving her to look after her fiver younger siblings as they travelled cross country. In adult life, Jane allegedly worked as a scout for the US Army, got involved in long-running conflicts with Native American tribes, and potentially shacked up with one of the frontier’s most revered gunslingers, Wild Bill Hickok. Their relationship would not last long: Wild Bill was shot and killed in 1876, while playing poker. Read more | From the real Calamity Jane to 'Madam Moustache': pioneer women of the Wild West Beyond that, separating fact from fiction when it comes to the life of Calamity Jane is a difficult task. Illiterate, she left behind no written records, but as a result of her fame she did dictate a small autobiographical account in the late-19th century. The stories within were often exaggerated, distorted or completely fabricated. One thing is known: for most of her life, Jane suffered from alcoholism. She spent her last months in Terry, in South Dakota, and died in poverty. Read more | “The motors of the wagon train”: meet the forgotten women who upended gender norms to win the Wild West Wild Bill Hickok 1837-1876 A gunslinger, scout, lawman, and showman, Will Bill Hickok was an emblem of the Old West. Born James Butler Hickok in Illinois, Hickok served in the Civil War working as a scout and spy for the Union Army, earning renown for his sharpshooting and bravery. Post-war, Hickok turned his talents to the wild frontier, where his exploits as a lawman and gambler in Kansas and Nebraska towns cemented his legendary status. As a marshal in Abilene, Kansas, Hickok was known for his steely nerves and deadly aim, but also for his preference to avoid violence when possible. Nevertheless, his career was punctuated by famous shootouts, including a deadly encounter in Springfield, Missouri, in 1865 where he killed David Tutt in what is often called the first “quick-draw” duel. Read more | How wild was the Wild West? Hickok’s fame spread through dime novels and newspaper stories, which painted him as the archetype of the Old West hero. But his personal life was tumultuous. His friendship and rumoured romance with Calamity Jane added to his mystique, as did his reputation as a gambler. Hickok met his untimely (but perhaps unsurprising) end in Deadwood, South Dakota, in 1876. While playing poker in a saloon, he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall, a drifter with a grudge. Hickok’s hand at the time (two black aces and two back eights) has since become known as the Dead Man’s Hand. Doc Holliday 1851–1887 John Henry ‘Doc’ Holliday was not a typical outlaw. He initially trained as a dentist in Pennsylvania, but moved to the Southwest after contracting tuberculosis. The hope was that the warm and dry climate would ease his symptoms. It was while drifting through the frontier towns that he met Wyatt Earp. He forged a friendship with the lawman after saving his life, and followed Earp to Tombstone, Arizona, where he was a major player in the legendary Gunfight at OK Corral in 1881. He would then join Earp on his vendetta ride against the Cowboys. While he maintained a deadly reputation as a gunslinger and canny gambler, much of Holliday’s life was ultimately shaped by his illness. His last years were spent receiving treatment in Colorado, before he succumbed in 1887 at the age of 36. Bass Reeves 1838–1910 The runaway slave who became one of the first black deputy US marshals in the Old West, Bass Reeves was no ordinary lawman. Born into slavery in 1838, Reeves managed to flee from his owners during the American Civil War and went to live among Native American tribes. There, he learned multiple languages and the customs of indigenous peoples, as well as the survival and tracking skills that would be so important in his career. Read more | From slave to real Lone Ranger? The incredible life of black Wild West lawman Bass Reeves In his 32 years as a federal officer, Reeves reportedly killed 14 outlaws and arrested more than 3,000 people all across Oklahoma and Arkansas. Perhaps most impressively, given how ruthless and violent many of the men were that he chased down over the years, he lived to see his retirement and ended his illustrious law enforcement career as a police officer in Muskogee. Belle Starr 1848–1889 Belle Starr, born Myra Maybelle Shirley, became infamous not for large-scale robberies or shootouts, but rather for her association with outlaws. Raised in a relatively prosperous family and educated in a classical manner, Starr’s path into criminality seems to have stemmed from choice rather than necessity. After the American Civil War, during which her brother had died fighting as a bushwhacker, she became involved with the outlaws who would form the James-Younger Gang. Belle, who was a skilled shooter, would wear black velvet and a plumed hat, giving her a strong image. Yet it was after her death that her reputation truly flourished, thanks to the sensationalised nature of her apparent murder in 1889 – shot while riding home on her horse, seemingly with her own gun. The circumstances of her death remain unclear. Was she ambushed and shot by a hidden rival while riding home? Or did her own shotgun misfire? Black Bart c1830–1917 Charles E Boles, better known as Black Bart, was a rather unconventional outlaw. His choice of weapon was not a revolver, shotgun or rifle, but poetry. He would leave behind little verses at the scenes of his crimes. Although he robbed dozens of stagecoaches across California and Oregon in the 1870s and 1880s, Bart earned a reputation as a ‘gentleman bandit’. He would be polite to his victims and never resorted to violence, which distinguished him from other more bloodthirsty outlaws. Read more | From murderous motivations to chivalrous reputations: the fascinating history of highwaymen That said, his prose proves that he could sometimes stray from gentlemanly behaviour. Perhaps the most iconic of his poems reads: “I’ve labored long and hard for bread / For honor and for riches / But on my corns too long you’ve tred / You fine haired Sons of Bitches.” Bart’s criminal career ended in 1883 when he was captured and imprisoned, following a botched robbery in which he dropped his handkerchief. This allowed Pinkerton detectives to track him down. The distinctive combination of his refined manners and poetic flair places him firmly as one of the Old West’s more eccentric figures. John Wesley Hardin 1853–1895 For John Wesley Hardin, violence seems to have been an inescapable part of life. He had been born into a turbulent post-Civil War Texas and killed his first man at just 15, setting the stage for a life defined by bloodshed. Hardin claimed to have killed over 40 men – the real figure is thought to be closer to 20 – often in situations that began as minor disputes, but quickly escalated. His volatile nature and talent for the quick draw made him both feared and hunted. His eventual capture in 1877 led to a 25-year prison sentence, of which he served 17. After his early release, Hardin, now 41, studied law and passed the oral Texas bar examination. His would-be career as a reformed lawyer never took off, however. In 1895, while in a saloon in El Paso, Hardin was shot in the back of the head, and then shot several more times after falling to the floor. His killer, John Selman Sr, had feuded with Hardin; he escaped punishment for the blatant killing. Bill Doolin 1858–1896 Bill Doolin was a founder of a gang of outlaws called the Wild Bunch (not to be confused by the gang led by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). Also known as the Doolin-Dalton Gang, they terrorised the Old West in the 1890s with a series of daring bank and train robberies. Unlike the more publicity conscious outlaws like Cassidy, Doolin was known for his proclivity for violence. He took part in numerous shootouts with lawmen and narrowly escaped capture multiple times. Read more | The fight for the American west: how myth obscures reality Eventually, he was caught and imprisoned while in a bathhouse, but managed to escape. Not long afterwards, however, he was confronted by a deputy US marshal and killed with a shotgun. The morbid photograph of his body shows him riddled with holes. Doolin’s story demonstrates how the misdeeds of cowboys evolved as the 19th century developed. Starting with skirmishes over land and horse theft, lawlessness became more organised and ambitious as the expansion of railroads promised bigger rewards. It was a brief period, though, before federal authority gradually imposed order. Charles Goodnight 1836–1929 Decidedly not an outlaw, Charles Goodnight was a legendary cowboy in the truest sense. He was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners for his shaping of the Old West. Most notably, he helped establish the Goodnight-Loving Trail, a major route for driving cattle from Texas to markets in New Mexico Territory. And his innovations, such as the chuck wagon (a mobile kitchen for cowboys on the trail) would transform the way that these drives operated. But not all of Goodnight’s life was peaceful. In his earlier years, he frequently fought against the Commanche both with local militia and as a member of the Texas Rangers, before serving in the Frontier Regiment during the American Civil War. Surviving into his 90s, dying in the late-1920s, Goodnight’s reputation stretched far beyond the era of the Wild West and into the modernity of the 20th century. Boston Tea Party: Igniting a Revolution Member exclusive | Discover the causes, tensions, and violent origins of the Boston Tea Party. Join leading experts as they explain the key players involved in the plan – and why tea was so important to the story. Listen to all episodes now
Billy the Kid: the Wild West's most wanted gunslinger
His lawless days only lasted four years, but he is still remembered as perhaps the most notorious outlaw of the Wild West. Jonny Wilkes asks whether he deserves his ruthless reputation
Atkins’ saloon is a typical crusty den of hard drinking and hard gambling in Arizona territory, where locals belch and grunt away their evenings after a day toiling on ranches or at the nearby military fort of Camp Grant. It’s where young ranch hand and small-time horse-and-saddle thief Henry Antrim – who could be no older than 16 or 17 – often rides with his wages jangling in his pockets in the hopes of getting lucky at poker. It is a parched and dusty 17 August 1877 when ‘Kid Antrim’ steps inside old George Atkins’ place, but his usually friendly and cheerful mood sours when he spots Frank ‘Windy’ Cahill, the big, burly blacksmith who has taken to picking on him for his youthful, scrawny looks. Windy takes particular pleasure in throwing the Kid to the floor, calling him names and smacking him around in front of everybody. Trouble erupts when Windy calls Antrim a “pimp”, before he gets violent when called a “son of a bitch” in return. He wrestles his much smaller opponent to the ground, pinning him down with his knees, and gleefully slaps the boy in the face. But the Kid has been humiliated for the last time. He squirms and frees his arm, reaches for his .45 pistol and sticks the barrel into the bully’s gut. Onlookers hear a “deafening roar”, then see Windy slump over as his shirt reddens with blood. The Kid leaps to his feet and bolts, stealing a prized horse to make his escape. It takes a day for Windy to die. Read more | How wild was the Wild West? Despite being found guilty of a “criminal and unjustifiable” killing, Antrim hightails it all the way to New Mexico so never faces arrest, jail time and possibly worse. Instead, the shooting of Windy Cahill marks the explosive start of his short but spectacular life as an outlaw – under the moniker Billy the Kid. Why is Billy the Kid famous? In a time of lawlessness and celebrity criminals, Billy the Kid’s notoriety towers over other train-robbing, pistol-twirling, posse-evading bandits of the Wild West. He appealed to writers of dime novels and editors of newspapers, thanks to his blue-eyed youth and silky sharpshooting skills. He continues to capture our imagination through countless depictions in film and television. Yet – despite his erroneous boast at the age of 21 of killing a man for every year of his life – he can hardly be described as the period’s most merciless and immoral outlaw, particularly when compared to men like Jesse James, Butch Cassidy or John Wesley Hardin. Read more | How historically accurate are film portrayals of Jesse James? It could be argued that Billy, more reckless than ruthless, was dragged from a law-abiding life by the old staples of falling in with bad crowds and unfortunate circumstances, beginning with his mother’s death. By all accounts, the strong and independent Catherine McCarty had been a loving mother to her two sons, Joseph and Henry (Billy became known by several names) so her succumbing to tuberculosis in 1874 hit them hard. Very little is known about Henry’s childhood – was he born in 1859 or 1861? In New York or Indiana? Who was his father and what happened to him? – but Catherine offered stability as they moved frequently, probably in the belief that warmer climates would benefit her health. The family lived in Indiana, Kansas and Colorado, finally ending up in New Mexico, where Catherine died. Orphaned, the boys were all but abandoned by their stepfather, William Antrim, and left with foster families, forcing Henry to work for room and board. With his mother’s supervision gone, he took his first steps into crime by stealing food. Was Billy the Kid left-handed? This famous photograph led some to believe that Billy the Kid was left-handed as his holstered pistol is on the left side. The image, however, has been flipped – the regular method for taking photos. How did Billy the Kid become an outlaw? It was another petty wrongdoing that made him a fugitive. After a friend, a drunkard nicknamed ‘Sombrero Jack’, robbed a Chinese laundry, Henry got caught hiding the loot. The local sheriff hoped a short spell in jail would teach the boy a lesson but instead, Henry escaped by shimmying up the chimney and went on the run to Arizona. He managed to eke out enough money as a roving ranch hand, and dabbling in horse rustling, but then came his fateful encounter with Windy Cahill, which secured his place on the wrong side of the law. Henry – known as Kid Antrim, or just the ‘Kid’, and also William H Bonney – was now a murderer. Facing prison, he fled the territory (making sure to return the prize horse first) and headed back to New Mexico, where he joined a gang of violent rustlers called the Boys, led by outlaw Jesse Evans. Back in familiar Silver City, it wasn’t long before he got recognised and his connection to the gang made the newspapers. The Kid really found fame, however, when he got embroiled in the Lincoln County War. Two powerful Irish businessmen, Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan, had a monopoly in Lincoln County called ‘The House’, with the one dry goods store, a beef contract with Fort Stanton and influence over the law. Yet they were under threat from a wealthy English upstart named John Tunstall. Murphy and Dolan needed hired guns and so the Boys came to town. It was not a job much liked by the Kid. He even switched sides when Tunstall offered him work, and he took to his new community happily. He made friends and was a well-liked personality (especially with the local women if that part of his reputation is to be believed). Before the Kid could get comfortable, though, this life was snatched away with the coldblooded murder of Tunstall on 18 February 1878. Tunstall had confronted a posse – sent by Sheriff William J Brady and including members of the Boys – as they attempted to seize some of his cattle, so they gunned him down. The Kid and his friend Dick Brewer swore affidavits against those in the posse and even managed to be deputised to issue out murder warrants. However, Sheriff Brady was having none of it, and had the Kid arrested. How many men did Billy the Kid kill? Billy the Kid was reputed to have killed 27 men. The actual number was probably eight. Billy the Kid and the Regulators When released, the Kid had just one thing on his mind – revenge. He joined a posse called the Regulators, with the aim of bringing Tunstall’s killers to justice – not by the courts but by the barrel of a gun. The posse captured two men and executed them, allegedly as they tried to escape. Then six Regulators, the Kid among them, ambushed Brady and his deputy George Hindman, although it’s unclear who fired the fatal bullets. The Kid proved a good shot, constantly practising with either a pistol or his trusty Winchester. He was a courageous fighter (albeit a reckless one, being clipped by a bullet in the leg) and loyal. “One of the best soldiers we had,” said his friend Frank Coe. But though he is by far the most famous name involved in the feud, he never led the Regulators. He was also on the losing side. Murphy and Dolan were always more powerful and eventually finished off the Regulators with a five-day siege of the home of Alex McSween, Tunstall’s partner and lawyer. The Kid and a handful of others barely made it out with their lives when the house was set on fire. Having survived the Lincoln County War, the Kid did a number of things that belie his reputation as a “vulgar low life cutthroat”, as one newspaper described him. He desired peace with the Murphy and Dolan faction and sought clemency from the new governor, Lew Wallace, which seems to suggest he wanted an end to his lawless days. On both occasions, he was left disappointed, even betrayed. Read more | From the real Calamity Jane to 'Madam Moustache': pioneer women of the Wild West Along with four other men, the Kid met with Dolan and a small group to discuss a truce on 18 February 1879, a year to the day following Tunstall’s death. Jesse Evans nearly ruined the meeting as he wanted to kill the Kid then and there, but an agreement was eventually reached and the two sides shook hands. They went out to celebrate but bumped into Huston Chapman, a lawyer working with McSween’s widow, who they taunted and shot, before dousing the body with whiskey and burning it. The Kid had been forced to watch. The Kid wrote to Governor Wallace on 13 March, offering to give information on Chapman’s murder in exchange for amnesty. “I have no wish to fight any more,” he said. The two met in person, where Wallace confirmed that if the Kid testified in court, “I will let you go scotfree with a pardon in your pocket for all your misdeeds”. For it to work, the Kid had to be ‘arrested’ so he could tell everything to the sheriff while staying safe. Yet when the time came for Wallace to hold up his end of the agreement, he backed out, leaving the Kid behind bars. He had no option but escape or face Dolan’s wrath. Pleas for a pardon: Billy the Kid's letters to Governor Wallace In the volatile aftermath of the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid began the most unlikely of correspondences – with the new governor Lew Wallace. In his letter, dated 13 March 1879, he offered to give information concerning a murder in exchange for a pardon from the charges against him. “If it is in your power to Annully those indictments I hope you will do so so as to give me a chance to explain,” he said, signing off “your Obedeint Servant”. Wallace, an American Civil War general, confirmed he had the "authority to exempt you from prosecution" and arranged a meeting, during which they agreed to stage an arrest so the Kid could be taken to safety and tell everything he knew. It all went as planned, but then Wallace went back on his word. As the Kid sat in jail, with his enemies closing in, the governor was in Santa Fe working on his latest manuscript – Ben Hur. That wasn’t the end of their communication, however. In late 1880, the Kid wrote several more times following his capture, pleading for Wallace to visit him. One letter read: “I have done everything that I promised you I would and You have done nothing that You promised me.” The Kid, unable to escape his life of lawlessness, stayed in New Mexico rustling cattle and staying out of sight of the authorities alongside fellow Regulators Charlie Bowdre, Tom O’Folliard and Doc Scurlock. In January 1880, he added another murder to his rap sheet by shooting Joe Grant in a saloon. According to some sources, the Kid discovered that Grant was there to kill him so, in a daring move, approached him and asked to see his revolver. The Kid then skilfully span the cylinder so the next shot would be on an empty chamber. Sure enough, when Grant later took aim, there was a harmless click, giving the Kid time to draw his own pistol and fire. He later described the killing as a “game of two and I got there first”. By late 1880, the law was closing in. A posse cornered him in November, which resulted in the death of deputy sheriff James Carlyle – pinned on the Kid, although it was unlikely he fired the shot. The places he could hide grew few and far between outside of Fort Sumner, made all the worse by the election of a new Lincoln County sheriff. His name was Pat Garrett and he was bent on capturing the nation’s most wanted outlaw, placing a $500 bounty on his head. Read more | Annie Oakley: the most famous sharpshooter in America It was on 23 December, after a tense standoff at Stinking Springs, that Garrett got his man, having also killed Bowdre and, earlier at Fort Sumner, O’Folliard. His posse trapped the Kid and a few others in a cabin, blocked the door, and removed the outlaws’ best hope of escaping – they shot the horse tied there. The Kid surrendered and was taken to Santa Fe for trial. Three further letters to Wallace seeking clemency went unanswered, so in April 1881, he was found guilty of murdering Sheriff Brady and sentenced to hang. It was the only conviction to come out of the Lincoln County War. That seemed to be the end of the Kid, but he had other plans. Having escaped from several jails already, he learned the routines and waited for the ideal opportunity. When there were only two guards watching him, he asked to be taken to the outhouse, slipped his cuffs and swiped Deputy James Bell’s revolver. Bell turned to run so the Kid shot him in the back. There were just a few moments for him to grab a shotgun and position himself at an upstairs window to take aim at the second deputy, Bob Olinger. Before firing, he got his attention by calling out, “Hello Bob!” How did Billy the Kid die? The Kid was free once again, but an infuriated Garrett was fast on his tracks. This time, Garrett was more subtle. He didn’t form a posse, knowing the Kid could be warned before they reached him, but quietly pursued the outlaw and questioned anyone who may know his whereabouts. That’s what led him to the home of the Kid’s acquaintance, Pete Maxwell, on 14 July 1881. Although the details of what happened next are strongly disputed, Garrett claims he was talking to Maxwell at around midnight when the Kid himself stalked into the room. With no boots on, he had been making his way to get something to eat, butcher knife in hand, when he saw two strange men – Garrett’s deputies – on Maxwell’s porch. He backed into the room asking who they were, only to see the silhouette of another man sitting on the bed. Read more | From slave to real Lone Ranger? The incredible life of black Wild West lawman Bass Reeves When he called out “Quien es? Quien es?” (‘Who is it?’) Garrett recognised his voice and supposedly saw the Kid raise his pistol (there are some who question whether he was armed at all). He fired two shots, the first piercing the Kid’s heart. “He never spoke,” Garrett later wrote in his controversial account of the events that took place that night. “A struggle or two, a little strangling sound as he gasped for breath, and the Kid was with his many victims.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2017/04/59c.GettyImages-3088431-0059ab8-e1674045785727.jpg" width="621" height="413" alt="Billy the Kid stands barefoot as he is fatally shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett, as another man looks on and three dogs run between them" title="Billy the Kid meets his end at the hands of Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)" /> In just four years of being an outlaw, the Kid established his name as one of the most infamous gunslingers of the Wild West, despite being no older than 21 when he died – and that’s without robbing trains, holding up banks or challenging everyone he met to a duel. Despite his fearsome reputation, it’s thought he killed eight men, several in self-defence. Did Billy the Kid survive? Sheriff Pat Garrett shot and killed Billy the Kid on 14 July 1881. Or did he? It’s been claimed that Garrett staged the whole thing, either to help the Kid escape or as a ruse to collect the $500 reward. In the mid-20th century, Ollie P Roberts, nicknamed ‘Brushy Bill’, declared he was the outlaw, backing it up with some impressive details about the Kid’s deeds and showing off his handcuffs-slipping skills. He even petitioned the governor for the pardon sought by the Kid decades earlier. Brushy Bill’s claims have been rejected by most historians, and his niece, but there’s still a Billy museum in Brushy’s hometown. There were far more brutal and terrorising outlaws, but there was something about him and his story that contemporary journalists latched on to, so he got more newspaper ink. The coverage in the popular press was followed by Garrett’s highly sensationalised biography, a key reference for historians in the 20th century. Yet the enduring image of the Kid they created – an all-shooting, callous killer – is suited to cheap Western fiction. “I don’t blame you for writing of me as you have,” he said in an interview after being caught in 1880. “You had to believe other stories, but then I don’t know as anyone would believe anything good of me anyway. I wasn’t the leader of my gang, I was for Billy all the time.” Greatest gunfights of the Wild West Beyond the dusty streets at high noon, tin stars, the clinking of spurs, and calls of DRAW! of Hollywood westerns, here are the real gunfights that made this lawless time so iconic OK Corral 26 October 1881 The most-legendary Wild West gunfight – although it didn’t actually take place at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona – saw the three Earp brothers (including the now-famous Wyatt) and friend Doc Holliday stand against a band of outlaws – the Cowboys. The shooting lasted just 30 seconds and, when the dust cleared, three Cowboys lay dead, while Wyatt and his buddies survived with a few injuries. The shootout has been immortalised in several films, notably Tombstone (1993). Wild Bill Hickok VS Davis Tutt 21 July 1865 Quickest-draw duels were much rarer than the films suggest. On this occasion, Tutt and Hickok had fallen out over a gambling debt, for which Tutt had taken Wild Bill’s gold pocket watch as ransom. The duo stepped outside into the town square of Springfield, Missouri, and each shot a single bullet. Tutt missed and Hickok blasted him in the ribs. Davis VS The Sydney Ducks 19 December 1854 While trekking along a miner’s trail, Jonathan R Davis and his two partners were ambushed by a 14-strong gang – almost half of which were Australian criminals, known as the Sydney Ducks. His friends were gunned down, but the army veteran kept his cool, pulled his guns and dropped seven in quick succession. He killed or fatally wounded a further four with his Bowie knife. Wild Bill and the Dead Man's Hand 2 August 1876 The infamous Dalton Gang got more than they bargained for when they tried to rob two banks on one street in the same day. A quick-thinking clerk convinced them that the safe had a time lock, giving the townspeople time to arm themselves. Four of the gang were shot dead but, despite being hit 23 times, Emmett Dalton survived. After serving 14 years in prison, he played himself in a Hollywood movie. Coffeyville Bank Robbery 5 October 1892 The infamous Dalton Gang got more than they bargained for when they tried to rob two banks on one street in the same day. A quick-thinking clerk convinced them that the safe had a time lock, giving the townspeople time to arm themselves. Four of the gang were shot dead but, despite being hit 23 times, Emmett Dalton survived. After serving 14 years in prison, he played himself in a Hollywood movie. Frisco shootout 1 December 1884 This is a true David-and-Goliath gunfight. The 19-year-old lawman Elfego Baca was holed up in a small house and withstood a 36-hour siege by as many as 80 shooters. According to legend, 4,000 rounds hit the building, but none touched Baca. The attackers gave up when they ran out of ammo. Long Branch Saloon 5 April 1879 Frank Loving had been quarrelling with Levi Richardson – who he caught making advances on his wife – for a while. Guns were finally drawn in the notorious Long Branch Saloon in Kansas’s even more notorious Dodge City, with the two men standing right in front of each other. Richardson went down with three extra holes but, despite the very close range, Loving somehow walked away with nothing more than a graze. Four dead in five seconds 14 April 1881 When El Paso’s marshal Dallas Stoudenmire heard a gunshot coming from a saloon, he burst in with his two .44 Colts raised and started firing. As the name of the shootout suggests, four men died in the flash of chaos, one of them an innocent bystander. And it was only Stoudenmire’s first week in the job. This content first appeared in the April 2017 edition of BBC History Revealed
The battle of Little Bighorn: what happened at 'Custer's last stand'?
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse’s defeat of the flamboyant Colonel George Custer at the Little Bighorn has become one of the most famous and controversial episodes in American military victory. Historian Julian Humphrys tells the story…
People in Washington were getting ready for a party. It was 4 July 1876 – the centenary of the birth of the USA – but news arrived that day that brought the celebrations to a halt. The US Army had suffered a devastating defeat in Montana at the hands of the Lakota Sioux and their Cheyenne allies. The Lakota called their victory the Battle of the Greasy Grass, but it would go down in history as the Battle of the Little Bighorn – or simply Custer’s Last Stand. Faced with a volatile situation following the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, the US authorities decided to force the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne to the reservations set aside for them. Colonel John Gibbon would head east from Fort Ellis in Montana, General George Crook would strike north from Fort Fetterman, Wyoming and General Alfred Terry would head west along the Yellowstone River from Fort Abraham in Dakota. The 7th Cavalry, commanded by Lt Col George Armstrong Custer, made up the bulk of Terry’s 900 men. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2016/10/101d.GettyImages-514877098-cac6656.jpg" width="825" height="1024" alt="Photo of George Custer and his scouts" title="General George A. Custer and some of his scouts in Montana territory. The man standing by the tent door is thought to be Curly, recorded as the only survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn where Custer's entire command was wiped out by the allied Indian tribes under Sitting Bull on June 26, 1876. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)" /> The government troops only had a sketchy idea of where their enemies were and had also underestimated their strength, which they reckoned to be no more than 1,000 warriors. But they had failed to take into account the fact that large numbers of warriors had left the reservations and joined Sitting Bull and his supporters. In fact, their main concern was that their enemies would scatter before they could be dealt with. But, encouraged by one of Sitting Bull’s visions that foretold the defeat of the white man, the Lakota were ready for a fight. On 17 June, Crook’s men were resting on the banks of Rosebud Creek on the present-day border between Wyoming and Montana when they were suddenly attacked by the Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse with nearly 1,000 Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. The fighting went on for some six hours and both sides suffered around 100 casualties before the natives drew off. Crook claimed a victory but he fell back and took no further part. What was the battle of Little Bighorn about? In 1874, an expedition led by George Custer confirmed that there were gold deposits in the Black Hills in South Dakota. The problem was that the hills were favoured hunting grounds and sacred territory to the Lakota and Cheyenne, and the ensuing influx of miners and entrepreneurs to the area was a direct violation of the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868. The government decided that it could only deal with the situation by purchasing the Black Hills, but the Lakota rejected the price that they offered. The US authorities responded by withdrawing their troops from the approaches to the Black Hills, allowing more miners to pour in. Some of the Lakota retaliated by attacking the miners, while others left their reservations and joined Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and their followers in the remaining buffalo hunting grounds in Montana. At the end of 1875, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs ordered the Lakota and their allies to report to a reservation by 31 January 1876 or be considered hostile. When the deadline passed, the army took action. Meanwhile Terry and Gibbon’s forces had linked up at the mouth of Rosebud Creek. On 22 June, believing that Crook was still on the move, Terry ordered Custer to take the 7th Cavalry south and west so that the Lakota could be caught between three converging columns. Significantly, Terry wasn’t too detailed in the instructions he gave to Custer, saying he had no wish “to impose precise orders which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy.” This was music to the ears of the impetuous Custer, who galloped away waving his hat excitedly. Read more | The massacre at Wounded Knee: why did the US Army attack the Lakota Sioux? Key players in the battle of Little Bighorn George Armstrong Custer A rather unruly West Point cadet who graduated last in his class, Custer displayed a reckless temperament, which meant he was frequently in trouble with his superiors. Yet his personal bravery was never in question, and the American Civil War suited his devil-may-care attitude. He rapidly won promotion, and by the end of the war was the youngest major-general in the Union Army. It was only a wartime appointment, and he was reduced to the rank of captain, but in 1866 he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the newly raised 7th Cavalry. His somewhat cavalier approach to his responsibilities earned him a year’s suspension, but he was soon reinstated, and in 1868 led a brutal attack on a Cheyenne settlement on the Washita River. In 1874, he led the expedition that discovered gold in the Black Hills, and set into motion the chain of events that would conclude with his death at the Little Bighorn. Even then he nearly missed the campaign, as he was temporarily relieved of command after accusing President Grant’s brother of corruption. Sitting Bull A holy man and leader of the Hunkpapa division of the Lakota Sioux, Sitting Bull was a courageous and charismatic defender of the Native American way of life and first came into conflict with American soldiers and settlers in 1863. He later supported Red Cloud in his campaign to keep control of the Powder River in Montana, but refused to live in the reservation established by the Treaty of Fort Laramie. This brought him and his followers into conflict with American settlers as well as other tribes. A spiritual rather than military leader during the Little Bighorn campaign, Sitting Bull escaped to Canada following the government backlash. In 1881, he returned to the US, gave himself up and was held as a prisoner of war for nearly two years before being transferred to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. In 1885, he briefly toured with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, where he was an instant hit and became a close friend of Annie Oakley, the famous sharpshooter. In 1890 fears that he might get involved with the subversive Ghost Dance movement led the authorities to attempt to arrest him, and he was shot and killed during the ensuing fracas. Two days after leaving the main column, Custer’s scouts gave him the news that he’d been itching to hear – they’d found evidence of large-scale movement to the west. Custer immediately set off in pursuit. It appears that his plan was to find where the Native Americans were camped, spend the 25th giving his saddle-sore troopers some rest, and then attack on 26 June, which was the day that Terry and Gibbon were expected to arrive in the area. At dawn on the following day, Custer’s Native American scouts climbed some high ground near the Bighorn River and looked down into the valley below. The encampment was there all right, but it was much larger than anyone had anticipated. Custer was unimpressed by his scouts’ claims that “there are more Sioux than you have bullets,” but what did worry Custer was the fact that it seemed his force had been spotted by a group of natives who had been riding outside the camp. In Custer’s eyes there was no time to be lost. If the news got back to the camp, his enemies would scatter and any chance of rounding them up would be lost. So Custer changed his plan. Abandoning the idea of a day’s rest, he resolved to attack as quickly as possible. After sending one group of men south under Captain Benteen to cut off any retreat in that direction, Custer ordered Major Reno to move up the valley along the Little Bighorn River to attack the lower end of the encampment. Custer himself took the rest of his command and moved north of the river to attack the other end. The 7th Cavalry: how were they armed? Although the troopers of the 7th Cavalry had been issued with sabres, they had left them behind for the campaign. In battle they were trained to ride into action, then dismount and rely on firepower, with every fifth soldier holding the horses of his comrades. Their standard weapons were the breechloading Springfield carbine and the Colt .45 revolver. The Springfield certainly packed a punch but the standard of marksmanship in the 7th Cavalry wasn’t high. Nor were matters helped by the fact that the Springfield was only a single-shot weapon, and this restricted the rate of fire the soldiers using it could achieve. Reno’s troops crossed the river about two miles south of the camp and began advancing towards its southern end. Those inside the village were taken completely by surprise (it was a scorching hot day and many had been bathing in the river), but soon hundreds of warriors were pouring out to confront Reno’s men who had dismounted and formed up in a skirmish line. Heavily outnumbered and in danger of being outflanked and surrounded, Reno pulled his men back to a line of trees on the river bank that offered better protection. Even so they were taking casualties. One of those killed was Reno’s scout, Bloody Knife. He was hit in the head by a bullet and his brains splattered all over Reno’s face and uniform. Before long the warriors were in the trees and Reno ordered his men to retreat again, this time to the bluffs across the river. The retreat turned into a rout as Lakota and Cheyenne warriors rode after the fleeing troopers, shooting them at close range or pulling them to the ground to be finished off by club, knife or lance. Those that made it across the river scraped out holes in the dusty ground for cover and opened fire to hold off their pursuers, but 38 men had been killed outright. Meanwhile Custer was in sight of the encampment. It appears that his plan had been to attack the rear of the camp where he deduced that the women and children would be gathered. He must have concluded that if the warriors thought that their families were under attack, there was a good chance that they would give up fighting in order to rescue their children or even lay down their arms. But Custer had reckoned without the sheer size of the camp and the numbers of warriors in it. Joined by some of those who had driven back Reno a little earlier, hundreds and hundreds of warriors swarmed out of the camp, intent on wiping out the men who were threatening not only their way of life but also their families. Had they been in a prepared defensive position, the soldiers would probably have had a chance of seeing them off, but caught in the open and hugely outnumbered, their fate was sealed. Custer's last stand: how did the colonel die? More words have been written about what happened next than possibly any other American military action in history, but we can only guess at the actual chain of events. None of Custer’s party survived to tell their story, but Native American accounts and archaeological finds do give us some clues. It appears that the five companies of Custer’s force were driven uphill away from the river and annihilated in a running fight that lasted for less than an hour. Eventually Custer and 40-50 of his men, the survivors of the original force of 210, were cornered on the hill where the US Cavalry monument now stands. This was Custer’s famous ‘Last Stand’. Many accounts suggest that their retreat had been blocked by warriors sweeping the battlefield. Some seem to have made a desperate attempt to break out and escape but all were killed in minutes. As the men under Custer’s immediate command fought and died, the rest of the 7th Cavalry held out on a hill two miles or so to the east. Reinforced by Benteen’s soldiers, Reno and his men dug in and for two days they repelled every attempt to dislodge them. The battle turned into a long-range sniping contest, and the Lakota were forced to abandon their ponies and rely on their bows and rifles. Finally, as the sun set on 26 June, the fighting petered out. With their supplies running out and little grass left for their ponies to eat, the Lakota and their allies began to disperse, scattering across the Plains in small groups. When Terry and Gibbon arrived on the battlefield a day later, the victors of the Little Bighorn were nowhere to be seen. Read more | How wild was the Wild West? What happened after the battle of Little Bighorn? Custer’s Last Stand was in many ways the last stand of the Lakota Sioux as well. His defeat came as a profound shock to the US authorities, and they responded by pouring troops and resources into the region. Led by Colonel Nelson Miles, the ensuing winter campaign broke the back of Lakota resistance – within a year most of the so-called ‘hostiles’ had either followed Sitting Bull across the border into Canada or given themselves up. One of these was Crazy Horse, who was subsequently killed while under arrest at Fort Robinson. The Black Hills were taken by the government, and the Native Americans received no compensation at all. This article was originally published in the October 2016 edition of BBC History Revealed
Annie Oakley: the most famous sharpshooter in America
From humble beginnings to performing for Queen Victoria, sharpshooter Annie Oakley's life was nothing short of extraordinary. BBC History Revealed examines how a self-taught crack shot from rural Ohio became one of the most recognisable figures of the Old West – and an advocate for female empowerment
It’s a long way from log-cabin poverty in rural Ohio to being the toast of Europe and performing in front of well-nourished heads of state. But it’s a journey that Phoebe Ann Mosey – better known as sharpshooter Annie Oakley – took in her stride, deftly combining the roles of world-famous entertainer and firm advocate of women’s rights. Born in 1860 on a small farm in western Ohio, Annie and her family were plunged into hard times after her father died when she was just six years old. The eldest of her six siblings then contracted fatal tuberculosis, forcing Annie’s mother to sell the family cow to cover the funeral expenses. By the age of ten, to ease the burden at home, Annie found herself living with another family. Read more | How the Wild West was spun “All went well for a month,” she later wrote. “Then the work began to stack up. I got up at four o’clock in the morning, got breakfast, milked the cows, fed the calves, the pigs, pumped water for the cattle, fed the chickens, rocked the baby to sleep, weeded the garden, picked wild blackberries, got dinner after digging the potatoes for dinner and picking the vegetables.” Annie referred to this family as ‘the wolves’. “I was held prisoner. They wrote all the letters to my mother telling her that I was happy and going to school.” Returning home Eventually, Annie escaped and returned to her family, for whom she set about providing. Her hunting and trapping skills meant she could produce an unending supply of meat and game to a local grocer, who in turn supplied hotels and restaurants across the state. So lucrative was this arrangement, at least comparatively, that Annie, at just 15, was able to pay off the mortgage on the family home. Her growing reputation for the way she handled a gun led to a life-changing encounter in 1875 while visiting one of her sisters near Cincinnati. A local hotelier knew of the teenager’s talents and organised a competition between her and a professional exhibition shooter called Frank Butler. The contest was tight, but Annie prevailed. Butler was magnanimous in defeat; although he lost that day, he won in the long term. Eight months later, and ten days after Annie’s 16th birthday, the pair were married. (It should be mentioned that there is disagreement over when both the shooting competition and the wedding occurred. One school of thought believes both events to have happened six years later.) The life of the professional sharpshooter now beckoned. Changing her surname from Mosey to Oakley for the purposes of showbusiness – but, markedly, not taking her husband’s name – Annie and Butler made a rather formidable double act. Her star really ascended during the mid-1880s when the couple signed up to perform with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West travelling show. Standing five feet in her stockinged feet, Annie was billed as ‘Little Sure Shot’. Not that Annie’s place as one of Buffalo Bill’s most valued headliners was completely watertight. In 1886, the troupe were joined by the teenager Lilian Smith, described as “the champion rifle-shot of the world”. Annie, usually steadfast and impenetrable, felt under threat from the arrogant Smith, who claimed that “Annie Oakley was done for”. Well aware of the 11-year age gap between the two female shooters, Annie shaved six years off her age, an act that her young looks fortunately didn’t betray – and which may well be the source of the two wedding dates, the later one concocted to bolster the claimed younger age. World-wide fame Annie’s comparative modesty ensured her popularity with audiences never waned, especially when she incorporated some phenomenal horse-riding stunts into her act. This popularity extended to Europe in 1887, when the Wild West troupe crossed the Atlantic to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. More than half a million spectators witnessed the London show during the first three weeks of its run. Annie was the toast of the capital, her presence requested by former prime ministers and heirs to the throne alike. Annie went on to be a huge draw in continental Europe, too, where she often received proposals of marriage. A French count sent her one such proposal, along with a photograph of himself. Annie returned the photo, now with a bullet hole through his head and the words “respectfully declined” written on the reverse. Read more | What was it like meeting Queen Victoria? 6 royal encounters as told by famous Victorians In 1889, in Berlin, Annie even shot a cigarette out of the mouth of the Kaiser Wilhelm II. Later in life, she considered the stunt and how, had it gone wrong, World War I may have been prevented. “If I shot the Kaiser, I might have saved the lives of millions of soldiers. I didn’t know then that he would swing the iron fist and shake the universe.” Annie Oakley was far more than the sure-shooting entertainer. Throughout her life, her philanthropy was generous and widespread. “If I spend one dollar foolishly,” she once explained, “I see tear-stained faces for little children beaten as I was.” And she empowered and inspired every woman she met. She taught in the region of 15,000 women how to fire a weapon, explaining that she “would like to see every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as they know how to handle babies”. In fact, Annie even offered President William McKinley the services of a 50-strong unit of female sharpshooters who could be used in any future US-Spanish War. Annie spent her later years recovering from injuries sustained in train and car accidents, as well as fighting 55 libel cases against the popular press. Still a dead shot well into her 60s, she passed away from a blood disorder in 1926 aged 66. On her death, Frank Butler, her devoted husband of 50 years, reportedly never ate again and died 18 days later. The content first appeared in the November 2016 issue of BBC History Revealed
Emma Dabiri’s hidden histories: The Harder They Fall
"The film doesn’t engage with one of the main drivers behind the violence," writes Emma Dabiri
The recent Netflix movie The Harder They Fall – a black western, a rarity in the genre – tells a story featuring real-life characters including Rufus Buck and Cherokee Bill. Westerns almost universally depict cowboys and outlaws as white men, yet historians estimate that about 25 per cent were in fact African-Americans – including some of the most accomplished. Set in an almost entirely black context and starring black actors such as Idris Elba and LaKeith Stanfield, the film doesn’t show the mixed ethnicity of the historical figures behind the main characters – many of whom had mixed African, European and Native American ancestry – nor the multi-“racial” society in which they lived. Read more | From slave to real Lone Ranger? The incredible life of black Wild West lawman Bass Reeves As such, the film doesn’t engage with one of the main drivers behind the violent rampage it references: the imminent absorption of Indian Territory into the ever-expanding US. In the summer of 1895, in the Indian Territory that would shortly become the state of Oklahoma, a group of five teenage boys engaged in a two-week bout of robbery, rape and murder. Their leader, Rufus Buck, was – like most of the gang – of mixed African and Creek Indian heritage. Their attacks appalled local white settlers, Native Americans and African-American freedmen alike. On the podcast: Historian Tony Warner discusses some of the real historical figures depicted in the Netflix western The Harder They Fall Historians argue that the undoubtedly chilling and brutal violence wasn’t entirely random. By 1895, white people outnumbered Native Americans in Indian Territory, and the US government was rapidly absorbing that land for white settlement. Buck apparently harboured fantasies that his gang’s violence would incite a Native American uprising that would overrun the white settlers and eventually reclaim the whole territory. The author Leonce Gaiter, who has written extensively about Rufus Buck, says that “His dream was impossible, and he used the same violence to achieve it that he saw all around him.” Read more | How wild was the Wild West? The real Cherokee Bill (given name Crawford Goldsby), another character in The Harder They Fall, was also of mixed ancestry. His father, from Alabama, was of mixed heritage, while his mother was a Cherokee Freedwoman (one of the African-Americans who had been enslaved by the Cherokee before and after the removal of those Native Americans to Indian Territory, and who were emancipated after the Civil War. Many, including Bill’s mother, were of mixed ancestry.) After a troubled and unstable childhood that included spells in the notoriously abusive Indian Boarding Schools – which operated on the principle: “Kill the Indian to save the man” – Goldsby graduated to a life of robbery and violent crime. The number of people he killed is uncertain, but estimates range from 7 to 13. Unlike in the movie, Rufus Buck and Cherokee Bill were never in the same gang, though they may have met at the Fort Smith Jail, just outside Indian Territory in Arkansas. They certainly met an almost identical fate: both were hanged for their crimes aged about 20. Read more | From the real Calamity Jane to ‘Madam Moustache’: pioneer women of the Wild West Gaiter writes that situating these characters in an overwhelmingly black context “may serve the film’s purposes, but it strips Buck of his backstory. Ditto for removing him from Indian Territory. Most significantly, the movie omits Buck’s stated mission – the cleansing of whites from Indian Territory,” Gaiter adds. “He had lived his life there, and… was reportedly fascinated by pulp pamphlet tales of black and Indian outlaws. The characters in these were ‘free’ to do as they pleased, and took no guff from anyone – critical to a youth attending a mission school that punished him for speaking his native Creek language. His very exposure to the white world drove Rufus Buck.” Films are not documentaries, and their purpose is obviously not historical accuracy. And, though based only loosely on “truth”, the movie has undoubtedly introduced to a much wider audience a chapter of history that is little known and rarely spoken about. This article was first published in the February 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine
From slave to real Lone Ranger? The incredible life of black Wild West lawman Bass Reeves
Feared by felons and revered by his colleagues, Bass Reeves broke free from slavery to become one of the most successful lawmen in America’s Wild West. Now immortalised as a character in a new BBC One series, Nige Tassell explores Reeves’ incredible life story
It didn’t seem an unusual altercation among off-duty Confederate soldiers during the early days of the American Civil War. An after-dark card game, a sense of injustice or cheating, a swift dispensing of physical retaliation. It happened often and regularly. But this particular disagreement was unlike any other. It occurred between slave and ‘master’. The contretemps was brutal and speedy; the enslaved man, Bass Reeves, battered the man he’d been forced to accompany into battle – George R Reeves, the future speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. As Bass’ daughter Alice would later recall, her father “laid him out cold with his fist and then made a run for the Indian Territory north across the Red River”. For the next few years, Bass Reeves was the runaway slave looking over his shoulder. But the abolition of slavery, brought about by the resolution of the Civil War, would open doors for Reeves, ushering him towards a journey on which he would become a gun-toting public servant of the highest order. He would make history as a pioneering African-American US deputy marshal operating west of the Mississippi River, and one of the most feared lawmen charged with apprehending dangerous miscreants across the American West during the 19th century. He became known the ‘Invincible Marshal’. Some believe his life and times were the basis for the fictional Lone Ranger. Who was Bass Reeves? That Bass Reeves would become such a dedicated and celebrated lawman wasn’t abundantly obvious from his early life. He was born into slavery in Arkansas in 1838, his family working in servitude for George Reeves’ father, the state legislator William Reeves. When Reeves the elder moved to northern Texas, he took his enslaved people with him, among them eight-year-old Bass. At first, the youngster worked as a water boy before graduating to being a field hand. His skill with horses and mules then led to him becoming a blacksmith’s assistant. Read more | How wild was the Wild West? After passing into the ‘ownership’ of George Reeves, in his mid-twenties Bass found himself heading for the battlefields of the Civil War – and to the pivotal altercation at that card game. Having escaped to the Indian Territory, Bass lived among the Cherokee and the Seminoles, becoming fluent in their respective languages. When the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution abolished slavery in December 1865, Reeves could return to his home state of Arkansas a free man. (There is also a theory that, following his assault on George Reeves, he joined the Union army, rising to the rank of sergeant thanks to his translating skills.) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/12/GettyImages_1177465883-14c6ed0-e1640172812997.jpg" width="620" height="412" alt="An 1887 map showing the so-called Indian Territory" title="An 1887 map showing the so-called ‘Indian Territory’ west of the Mississippi – an area Reeves knew well (Photo by: Glasshouse Vintage/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> A tall, strong man, the free Reeves initially worked in farming, but was soon earning extra money as a scout and tracker for law enforcement agencies. His deep knowledge of the geography of the Indian Territory, along with his fluency in certain Native languages, made Reeves an excellent asset in the struggle to keep peace in the ever-turbulent West. He was said to know the terrain like a chef knows their kitchen. How Bass Reeves became the first African-American US deputy marshal Reeves’ work as a scout earned him such a reputation that, when the US marshal for the Indian Territory, James F Fagan, was charged with recruiting 200 deputy US marshals in 1875, Reeves was high on his list. He wouldn’t be the only African-American deputy in the region at this time, but he was the first and he did become the most famous. Reeves was appointed deputy US marshal for the Western District of Arkansas, a position that also carried responsibility for a portion of the Indian Territory. Here he would serve for the next 18 years, after which he transferred to the Eastern District of Texas, before serving at the Muskogee Federal Court. Serving as a lawman for more than three decades, his legend resonated loud and clear across the landscape. The felons that Reeves rode the badlands in search of were all well aware of the giant who was on their tail. Not that his fearsome reputation stopped these outlaws publicly goading him. Mainly wanted for horse rustling, bootlegging or murder, these unsavoury characters would issue warnings for deputy marshals in the form of small cards left on trails, cautioning particular lawmen that their lives were in danger if they proceeded with their pursuit. Unsurprisingly for a man of such repute, Reeves was a regular recipient of these threats; he collected a dozen cards that carried warnings for his particular personal safety. Read more | Netflix Western The Harder They Fall: "The film doesn’t engage with one of the main drivers behind the violence," writes Emma Dabiri He would, however, have required some assistance in reading the messages himself. Reeves remained illiterate throughout his life, a rare situation for a deputy, as the position required a fair degree of administration and record-keeping to be completed in the line of duty. But such was his untarnished standing as both hunter and detective that he resisted any attempts to be taught how to read or write. Over the course of his career, Reeves killed 14 felons in the line of duty, each in an act of self-defence. Rather incredibly, he never received so much as a flesh wound himself. The closest he came to being injured in his work was having his hat shot off once or twice. A man of great physical strength and who sported a distinctive, luxuriant moustache, Reeves’ marksmanship was impeccable. Although no slouch with a rifle, he was most adept when handling his two six-shooters. One observer likened the speed of his pistol skills to that of “a Methodist preacher reaching for a platter of fried chicken during Sunday dinner at the deacon’s house”. Read more | Billy the Kid: the Wild West's most wanted gunslinger Aside from his expertise with firearms, Reeves was also a tremendously gifted detective and arrested more than 3,000 suspects during his time as a deputy. Somewhat counterintuitively, his success was partly due to the fractured racial make-up of the American West at the time. The historian Daniel F Littlefield Jr has suggested that “the Indian Territory became his beat, in part, because of racism. The Indians, Indian Freemen and African-American criminals in Indian Territory preferred being taken in by someone who was not white to being taken in by someone who was.” Reeves’ dedication to public service was such that he didn’t even baulk at having to arrest his own son Bennie on suspicion of killing his wife. After being captured and arrested by his father, Bennie was subsequently tried and convicted of the murder – and then had to serve 11 years behind bars. That particular episode wouldn’t be the only time that a member of Reeves’ immediate family found themselves in the dock on a murder charge. In 1887, Reeves himself was in this position, having shot and killed a posse cook. He maintained his innocence, explaining that his gun had been accidentally discharged while being cleaned. Reeves’ impeccable record of public service went before him again and he was acquitted, although he had been forced to sell his house in order to afford his legal fees. His counsel was the former US attorney WHH Clayton. Read more | Was the gunfight at the OK Corral a major gun battle? That Reeves was able to detain so many suspects, to rack up captures in such high numbers, was down to his set-up on the trails. Like his fellow deputies, he wasn’t riding unaided; he wasn’t that mythical lone ranger. He travelled alongside a wagon, and with a posseman, a guard and a cook for company. The presence of the wagon allowed for multiple arrests, with the prisoners shackled to it on a long chain. As many as 30 outlaws could be detained and transported back to the relevant courthouse in this way. Reeves’ motivation in amassing such an impressive arrest record might not have been solely altruistic, for the wider good of the region. Deputies could make decent money. The government paid them 75 cents a day to feed each captured prisoner, along with a mileage expense of 10 cents for every mile that each was transported. Sometimes the expedition to catch a particular wanted list of outlaws wasn’t fleeting; the deputy and his entourage – plus the captured prisoners shackled to the wagon – might be on the trails for up to a month at a time. A deputy as professional and efficient as Reeves could expect to earn a minimum of $400 for such a trip. On one notable expedition, Reeves banked a cool $900 after capturing 17 outlaws and transporting them back to the courthouse at Fort Smith in Arkansas. Was Bass Reeves the real Lone Ranger? The stories emanating from Reeves’ highly impressive arrest record has drawn comparison with those of another immensely productive lawman – the fictional (and white) Lone Ranger. Indeed, a number of observers have posited the notion that Reeves was actually the prototype of the one-time television hero. The main proponent of this school of thought is Reeves’ biographer Art T Burton, who presents the connections between the two marshals in his book Black Gun, Silver Star, citing that they both rode light-coloured horses and that many of Reeves’ captives were sent to the Detroit House of Corrections – the same city where the Lone Ranger radio series was first broadcast on a local station. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2021/12/GettyImages_140801529-084be00-e1640172748589.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Film still of Clayton Moore (right) as the title character in The Lone Ranger, with co-star Jay Silverheels." title="Clayton Moore (right) as the title character in The Lone Ranger, with co-star Jay Silverheels. The TV show, and the radio series from which it spawned, may have been inspired by Reeves’ exploits – although this is disputed (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)" /> Whether or not Burton’s hypothesis is correct, he is almost certainly accurate in his claims that “Bass Reeves is the closest real person to resemble the fictional Lone Ranger on the American western frontier of the 19th century”. Indeed, no other real-life deputy enjoyed the awe in which Reeves was held, nor the widespread circulation of the near-mythical tales of his captures. And now, in the 21st century, his legend is currently enjoying a double dose of exposure. In The Harder They Fall, a just-released film portraying a predominantly African-American cast of cowboys, outlaws and lawmen, Reeves is played by Delroy Lindo. Reeves also appears in the BBC adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. Portrayed by the British actor Gary Beadle, Reeves unexpectedly encounters Phileas Fogg and his travelling companions on board a stagecoach, and ends up drawing them into his fight to bring a criminal to justice. More than a century after Reeves’ death in 1910, his legend continues to grow in strength. And for good reason. His life story remains an irresistible one; the tale of a man who escaped a life of servitude and rose to become a public official who both controlled the lawless frontiers of his country and shaped their future. As such, Bass Reeves will always be one of the first great post-slavery African-American heroes. A Wild West hero, indeed. On the podcast: Historian Tony Warner discusses some of the real historical figures depicted in the Netflix western The Harder They Fall, in which Bass Reeves appears, and tells us more about where the film sits in the genre of black westerns. More than a century after Reeves’ death in 1910, his legend continues to grow in strength. And for good reason. His life story remains an irresistible one; the tale of a man who escaped a life of servitude and rose to become a public official who both controlled the lawless frontiers of his country and shaped their future. As such, Bass Reeves will always be one of the first great post-slavery African-American heroes. A Wild West hero, indeed. Nige Tassell is a freelance journalist specialising in history This content first appeared in the January 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed
From the real Calamity Jane to 'Madam Moustache': pioneer women of the Wild West
The adage “Go west, young man”, reputedly popularised by New York Tribune founder Horace Greeley, conjures a vivid impression of the 19th-century American frontier as a place of masculine action and opportunity. But this wasn't necessarily the whole picture. Here, Karen R Jones reveals why the 19th-century American frontier story needs to be rewritten with an expanded cast of tough, enterprising women who flouted gender norms – from the real 'Calamity Jane' to a gambling entrepreneur known as ‘Madame Moustache’...
In 1854, a card sharp from the east of the United States, going by the name Dumont – possibly from New Orleans – arrived in the gold-mining town of Nevada, California. Having found success as a professional gambler in San Francisco, this entrepreneur of the American West opened a gambling parlour in this new location that, by all accounts, was highly profitable. But the settlement dwindled and Dumont moved on, spending time in Utah, Idaho and Arizona, testing the waters of brothel management in various spots during the 1860s. In 1872, in Nevada, Dumont was double-crossed by a partner, losing everything. So this inveterate gambler came to the table again, latterly in the gold-mining town of Bodie, California. In 1879, after a disastrous loss, the game was up. On 8 September, Dumont’s body was found outside town, having apparently taken a morphine overdose. What makes this tale of frontier life unusual is that the protagonist was a woman: Eleanor Dumont, later known as ‘Madame Moustache’ and probably born Simone Jules around 1829. The adage “Go west, young man”, reputedly popularised by New York Tribune founder Horace Greeley, conjures a vivid impression of the 19th-century American frontier as a place of masculine action and opportunity. As portrayed in cowboy movies – think John Wayne, Clint Eastwood – this world of tough-talking, gun-toting macho swagger has often been seen as the exclusive domain of men. But, as recent research (and Dumont’s Women stretched the limits of convention, changing their costume, habits and daily activities to fit the needs of the trail story) has shown, this was also a place of women’s agency, social latitudes and the stretching of established gender boundaries. As such, the history of ‘how the West was won’ (or lost) was much more variegated than the vision presented in traditional historical readings and countless Hollywood westerns. As a place of new starts, economic possibility and social freedom, in the 19th-century the American West represented a realm very different from the east. Travellers on the overland trails in the middle of that century were faced with unfamiliar and challenging terrain. Vast expanses of prairie, the soaring peaks of the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, and the forbidding deserts of the far west separated Independence, Missouri (from where many wagon trains departed) from the shores of the sparkling Pacific. Matching this exceptional topography was an equally monumental imagined landscape of manifest destiny, national dreams and personal aspirations in the making. Read more | How the Wild West was spun Expanding empire Over the first half of the 19th century, the US claimed vast swathes of territory through the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the annexation of Texas (1845), the Oregon Treaty (1846), and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848). When Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1801, the US counted 864,000 square miles of territory. By 1862, when the Pacific Railway Act was signed, paving the way for a true transcontinental railway line, and President Abraham Lincoln was grappling with thorny issues around slavery and secession, that figure had mushroomed to close to three million square miles. Involved in this dynamic story of territorial conquest and associated political, economic, social and environmental transformation were thousands of women – migrants from across the world, who made the West their home. In the traditional telling of the frontier story, female characters were either invisible or consigned to the role of supporting player and gender stereotype: sun-bonneted helpmates, school ma’ams or sassy saloon girls. A glance at the ‘women’s West’, however, presents a much more complex story – one of resilience and adaptation, loosened social conventions, inventive directions in female empowerment and a ‘hidden history’ of gender unorthodoxy. Although the decision to travel west was typically made by men, many women, too, greeted the possibilities of overland migration with excitement and interest. Some were fearful of the unknown, their fears fed by a contemporary literary digest rich in tales of damsels in distress taken captive by Native Americans, and of a savage landscape roamed by hungry wolves and angry bears. Others, though, relished the adventure and embraced the ethos of westering possibility. Read more | How wild was the Wild West? On the road, women routinely stretched the limits of convention, either by necessity or inclination, changing their costume, habits and daily activities to fit the needs of the trail. For some, the casting off of etiquettes and the assumption of new roles and duties provoked fears about losing feminine identity in the uncivilised wilds. However, for others, abandoning long petticoats and gloves in favour of riding astride horses, driving wagon trains and shooting game was to be relished. One such woman was Sarah Raymond Herndon, who was 24 or 25 when she emigrated with her family to Virginia City, Montana, in 1865. In her 1902 memoir Days on the Road: Crossing the Plains in 1865, she wrote effusively of trailside foraging, fishing, riding out on her horse and dispensing with her long skirts. Read more | “The motors of the wagon train”: meet the forgotten women who upended gender norms to win the Wild West For many migrants, the objective was land, and many women travelling within family units aimed to claim territory under the auspices of the Homestead Act (1862). Significantly, one in 10 homestead claims were filed by single women (including widowed and divorced women) who, under the rules of the federal distribution, could receive title to 160 acres of land as heads of household as long as they were over 21, paid the registration fee, lived on the site and proved that they had ‘improved’ that land. Diaries and journals written by homesteading women reveal their lot to be a hard one: they endured challenging environments, social isolation and a seemingly never-ending litany of domestic chores. One woman on the plains wrote in her diary of a pressing personal dilemma: whether to eat her last chicken for sustenance or preserve it as a companion. Their stories, though, were also full of female camaraderie, resilience and ingenuity – sharing home remedies for illnesses, building gardens to enliven sod houses, and taking command of households when faced with absent, dead or useless husbands. Read more | Annie Oakley: the most famous sharpshooter in America In fledgling towns, meanwhile, women found themselves rare commodities: in early mining settlements, men outnumbered women nine to one. Sarah Herndon described the Virginia City mining camp as an energetic and sprawling community where men scrambled for claims like “bees around a hive” and left the ground with “great deep holes and high heaps of dirt”. Services such as boarding, laundry and prostitution were prized in these frenetic, rapidly developing settlements. Fortunes were there to be made and lost, not only by prospectors but also by female entrepreneurs – though such women were also vulnerable to abuse. Women on the 19th-century frontier made steps towards political suffrage. The territory of Wyoming gave women the vote in 1869, the same year the National Woman Suffrage Association was founded (though this reflected not only the campaigning of early female suffragists but also a sentiment to cancel out the votes of African-American men with white women). The next eight states to grant suffrage to women were all in the West: Colorado (1893), Utah, Idaho (both 1896), Washington (1910), California (1911), Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona (all 1912). This indicates how the racial fissures of frontier geopolitics, the aptitudes of pioneer women and ideas about the ‘civilising’ female voice conspired to change suffrage laws. The real Calamity Jane Elsewhere, women redefined gender norms in all sorts of ways. Martha Jane Cannary – popularly known as Calamity Jane, depicted by Doris Day in a 1953 musical – became known for flouting female conventions. A child migrant to Montana in the mineral rushes of the 1860s, Canary made a name for herself working in male-dominated occupations (driving mules, travelling with the army) and, especially, for her habit of wearing men’s clothes. An enigmatic figure who emerged as a frontier celebrity playing in ‘Wild West’ shows at the end of the 19th century, Calamity Jane played on her reputation as a ‘female scout’ with aplomb, regaling journalists and saloon-goers with tales of how she might have saved General Custer, her routing of Native American outlaws of the Deadwood Stage, and her capture of ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok’s killer with a meat cleaver. A raconteur and storyteller who played fast and loose with the truth for popular appeal, she ably advertised the West as a place of grand adventuring and tall tales. Read more | Billy the Kid: the Wild West's most wanted gunslinger Meanwhile, her lived experience, as an itinerant, butch woman on the margins of society, who was at home in the company and performance routines of men, speaks in important ways to modern understandings of fluid sexual and gender identity. Calamity Jane, though, attracted notoriety as much as acceptance: though she garnered attention for her personification of the ‘wild and woolly’ eccentricities of pioneer days and her lively invocation of western spirit, she was also lambasted by critics for her wayward and ‘unfeminine’ attributes. Different ways of being ‘Passing’ as a man brought various opportunities – work, freedom of movement, safe travel – for independent women in an age of considerable gender restrictions. The West was particularly appealing as a place to experiment with different ways of being – politically, legally and socially permissive, with a mobile demographic and inhabited by plenty of people looking to start afresh. Take One Eyed Charley (Charlotte Parkhurst). Orphaned in Vermont, she began dressing as a boy, sought her fortune in the California Gold Rush in 1849, voted in the presidential election of 1868, and became a well-known west-coast stagecoach driver. After “thirty years in disguise” (as reported in the New York Times), her sex was discovered only after her death in 1879. The Civil War cross-dressers: the women who swapped dresses for breeches The wearing of masculine costume, then, could be a pragmatic recourse: a way to find sustenance or work and claim the fruits of the frontier. Reflecting on the common practice of women passing as men to claim mining rights, the Colorado Central City Weekly Register went as far to assert that a “mania for females to appear in male attire has struck”. The decision to ‘pass’ as a man was also deeply political in nature, and making one’s way ‘in a man’s world’ an important performance of gender liberation. As female rights campaigner Elizabeth Cady Stanton proselytised in an 1869 article in The Revolution: “If, by concealing our sex we find that we, too, can roam up and down the earth in safety, we shall keep our womanhood a profound secret” until such a day when “we shall dress as we please”. For some, adopting a manly disguise facilitated the tracking down of errant lovers, escape from abusive relationships, or the successful execution of criminal heists. The latter, on occasion, backfired – as in the case of Pearl Hart, ‘the girl bandit’, whose trademark disguise eventually abetted her capture. For others, meanwhile, the possibility of masculine masquerade allowed for the expression of a non-binary gender identity or the pursuit of romantic relationships with women. This important ‘hidden history’ of gender unorthodoxy is only now being excavated. Women detectives: meet the Victorian female super sleuths Long written out of the historical record, the voices of frontier women are vividly evoked by a richly textured corpus of diaries and period accounts, though the voices of non-white, non-literate and nonconformist figures are still poorly represented – for example, women with non-binary gender identities, or who enjoyed same-sex relationships. Of course, the experiences of indigenous women during this period are also absent from this narrative. Horace Greeley had an up-close encounter with these variegated gender dynamics. Riding a stagecoach in 1859, he shared a carriage with a young prospector headed for the mineral fields, full of conversation and dreams of fortune. When the argonaut (the nickname for gold-rush hopefuls) left the train, the conductor pointed out to Greeley that the plucky young lad was, in fact, a woman. “Go west, young man” may have been a catchy invocation, but it overlooked a large chunk of the story. Karen R Jones is reader in history at the University of Kent. Her new book Calamity: The Many Lives of Calamity Jane will be published by Yale University Press in 2020 This article was taken from issue 18 of BBC World Histories magazine
The Wild West: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Was the American west really as wild as the movies suggest? Karen Jones responds to listener questions about frontier life
Historian and author Karen Jones responds to listener questions and popular search queries about the mass movement of settlers into the American west, from the hardships of homesteading and the violence of frontier life to Hollywood’s obsession with the grizzled gunslinger. Explore more episodes in our ‘Everything you wanted to know’ podcast series
Tales of a lawless frontier are ingrained in American culture, but, as Pat Kinsella explores for BBC History Revealed, the West had to be tamed
The most famous shootout in the history of the Wild West – the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona – lasted just 30 seconds. In that half-a-minute of mayhem and murder at around 3pm on 26 October 1881, three outlaws from a gang known as the ‘Cowboys’ were shot dead when they faced off against the Earp brothers and their friend Doc Holliday. That the brief and bloody shooting happened isn’t in doubt. But the real gunfight little resembled the way it has been portrayed in numerous films and books. Aside from the brevity of the action, the shooters were extremely close together, standing about six feet apart when the exchange of bullets began. It hadn’t been prearranged, almost all of the 30 shots were fired from handguns, and it didn’t even happen at the OK Corral, but in a vacant lot on the side of a photography studio nearby. The dead Cowboys have been largely greyed out of the collective memory of the event, reduced to anonymous villains when compared to town marshal Virgil Earp and his deputies. But in the aftermath, and amidst a swell of sympathy in Tombstone for the dead, the Earps and Holliday were arrested on charges of murdering brothers Tom and Frank McLaury and 19-year-old Billy Clanton as they tried to surrender. They were put on trial and spent time behind bars before ultimately being acquitted. In the grand scheme of things, the gunfight was a minor, albeit lethal, scuffle. It was borne from a simmering feud involving ageold themes – jealousy, power, money, mistrust and machismo – which, in the febrile booze-and bullet-filled atmosphere of the time, got out of hand. That year, 1881, was one of the wildest 12 months in the American Old West, at least as big-name shootouts go. Three months before the OK Corral, on 14 July, Sheriff Pat Garret gunned down Billy the Kid, while earlier, in April, the ‘Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight’ had taken place in the infamously lawless town of El Paso, Texas. Annie Oakley: the most famous sharpshooter in America How the Wild West was spun What was it like meeting Queen Victoria? 6 royal encounters as told by famous Victorians Wild stories The Wild West was being mythologised before the era even ended, with gunslinging cowboys and lawmen representing freedom and tough justice; living the original American Dream. The gunfight at the OK Corral didn’t became widely known until 1931, when Stuart N Lake published a. biography of Earp. It was long after the West had been tamed. Yet for years already, ‘dime westerns’ – cheap and popular, pulp fiction-style booklets – had been transforming the gritty, hard-bitten, weapon-wielding characters into legends. The Earp biography inspired the classic films My Darling Clementine and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. That was nothing unusual. In every decade since its inception, the film industry has delighted in the antics of trigger-happy cowboys, bandanna-wearing bandits, vigilante posses, and justice-serving sheriffs and marshals, which now define the Wild West. And so, albeit belatedly, the names of Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp and his brothers joined the like Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – a cast of characters who transcend the genre. Well over a century since they bit the dust, they remain familiar to multiple generations of people, many of whom know little else of the frontier. They have become icons of American culture and their acts of violence and thievery are celebrated. But have the spaghetti westerns fed us a load of baloney? These famous names were active in the 1880s, or later, when in many respects the West was not as wild. The outlaws of the Wild West Billy the Kid William H Bonney, who also went by the name Henry McCarty – but will always be best remembered as Billy the Kid – had a short career as an outlaw. By the time of his death at the age of 21, he is reputed to have killed eight men. He had become a fugitive after shooting dead a blacksmith who had been bullying him in a bar fight. Then after some cattle rustling, he took part in a violent feud known as the Lincoln County War in New Mexico, in which he sided and fought with a gang called the Regulators. Accused and later convicted of killing Lincoln County sheriff William J Brady during the conflict, the Kid remained at large for some time and famously shot and killed Joe Grant at Hargrove’s Saloon in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Grant had allegedly come after him, but after the Kid asked to admire his would-be assassin’s gun and surreptitiously ensured it wouldn’t fire, he shot him first. Sheriff Pat Garrett captured the Kid in December 1880. He was sentenced to death, only to escape, killing both of his guards in the process, and remain on the run for two months until Garrett tracked him down again at Fort Sumner. The Kid died on 14 July 1881 in a shootout with the sheri , who then collected the bounty of 00. Garrett later wrote a book called The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid. Butch Cassidy Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, was born in 1866 in Beaver, Utah, the eldest of 13 children in a Mormon English immigrant family. He began a life of crime by stealing a pair of jeans, and quickly moved to larger-scale robberies. Around 1896, Butch formed the Wild Bunch along with a group of his friends. He would go on to recruit Harry Alonzo Longabaugh – the Sundance Kid. The gang enjoyed immense success with train robberies, until they came to the attention of the Pinkerton Agency. In 1901, Butch fled to South America with Sundance, travelling to Argentina and ultimately on to Chile and Bolivia. They led a relatively quiet life, probably punctuated by a couple of bank jobs, but both are believed to have been killed in anshootout with police in November 1908, after robbing a courier carrying the payroll for a silver mine. During his entire criminal career, Butch claimed never to have killed anyone. The Sundance Kid Born into a Baptist family in Pennsylvania in 1867, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh worked as a ranch hand and drover until he began a life of crime by stealing a horse. He took the name Sundance after the town where he was jailed for the crime – his only time behind bars. After joining Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch in 1896, his career took off with audacious robberies. Along with long-term partner, Etta Place, and Cassidy, he was pursued to South America by Pinkerton agents. He probably died alongside Cassidy in Bolivia in November 1908. Jesse James Jesse James and his brother Frank were graduates of the Quantrill’s Raiders in the American Civil War, a pro-Confederate militia responsible for various atrocities. After the war, the brothers turned to violent crime and were among the most feared outlaws in the south from the 1860s to 1882. His James-Younger Gang committed more than 20 bank and train robberies, and stole an estimated total of 00,000. There is no evidence of them distributing wealth, but they were popular and even celebrities of the day. Communities in Missouri protected them despite the allure of huge bounties. Ruthless killers, the gang was responsible for the murders of multiple innocent civilians – infamously, Jesse shot a banker in the heart at close range on 7 December 1869 – and two Pinkerton operatives. The agency’s inability to take down the James brothers was its biggest failure. Jesse was eventually shot in the back on 3 April 1882 by a new recruit to his gang, Robert ‘Bob’ Ford. Life on the edge For large periods of the preceding 200-plus years, ever since pioneers began exploring inland from the English settlement at Jamestown in Virginia, the rolling western frontier was a more dangerous place than it was towards the end of the 19th century, when many westerns are set. There were many factors contributing to this. The huge swathes of unforgiving natural terrain and the resistance put up by aggrieved indigenous occupants of the land made any attempts at travel a serious risk. Then there was the fact that the newcomers would be transient, overwhelmingly single males, tooled up with increasingly affordable firearms bought with gold-rush cash. Typically, they were fiercely protective over what was theirs, brutalised by conflicts such as the American Civil War, and concentrated in lawless boomtowns. Would-be settlers heading out west in wagon trains were thus vulnerable to everything from severe weather to Native American raiding parties, bandit attacks and opportunistic crime. As the colonists, immigrants and prospectors travelled with all their possessions and whatever money and gold they owned, they made for easy targets to desperadoes, such as Jack Powers. The Irish highwayman terrorised a section of El Camino Real, a long road in California, and dominated the city of Santa Barbara in the early 1850s, until he was chased out of town by a band of vigilantes. Such community-led justice was evident all over. Many of the frontier settlements adopted their own code of honour and methods of policing, so that when warned that gangs of outlaws were nearby, they genuinely would raise a posse to drive them away. !eft within the community would be punished harshly, and vigilantism and lynchings became commonplace. Just behind the frontier, a unique culture evolved around the cattle industry. The term ‘cowboy’ back then was considered derogatory as it was associated with criminality, so honest men working with cattle were called herders. It was a rough and ready life, which could easily see them embroiled in feuds with their rivals and neighbours. Some men – including Billy the Kid, who was never known as a thief and killed more men in self-defence than out of malice – became outlaws simply by backing the wrong side or getting in with the wrong people. Gold and war For much of the era, official law and order was almost entirely absent as authorities struggled to keep up with a restless and ever-expanding landscape. Things only got worse when a carpenter named James W Marshall struck gold at Sutter’s Mill on 24 January 1848. In the California Gold Rush that followed, hundreds of thousands of (mostly) men from all over the world arrived in the hope of getting rich. This created a social situation where the only recreational outlets were brothels, saloons and gaming houses. Mexican laws no longer applied in the embryonic state, and American rules were loose – with few lawmen to enforce them. The American Civil War (1861–65) had a major impact on the West too. While predominantly fought in the east, it left young communities splintered and spat out a generation of experienced killers, heavily armed and desensitised to violence. Once the war was over, some of these men, among them Jesse James and his brother Frank, put their skills to work robbing banks. On the rails For the rise in lawlessness, however, the late 1860s also saw an explosion of investment in the West. Just four years after Civil War hostilities had ended, the ‘golden spike’ was hammered home at Promontory Summit, Utah, which symbolically connected two rail tracks, Central Pacific and Union Pacific, to create the First Transcontinental Railroad. Several bridges had to be built before this Atlantic–Pacific line was truly operational, but by the end of the 1870s, travel across the breadth of the expanding United States had become relatively easy. The journey took a matter of days on a train, compared to weeks or even months by wagon – and that came with the threat of attack at any moment. Migration went up enormously, with many women and young families among the new arrivals, and goods and resources could be transported coastto- coast like never before, which fuelled the economy of the West. Yet during the laying of the track, the rail companies decimated wild bison numbers on the plains, employing men like William Frederick ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, to hunt them by the thousand. Ostensibly this was to provide meat for the rail workers or remove the threat the large animals posed to trains, but the practice removed a chief source of food and clothing for the Native American populations. Simultaneously, the government forced tribes onto reservations. The railroad heralded major changes – so much so that some historians have argued its completion marks the beginning of the end of the true Wild West – but there were still opportunities for outlaws. Huge expanses of land meant they could easily disappear by heading through remote passes or into the badlands to hide out. Famously, the Hole-in-the-Wall pass in the Big Horn Mountains of Johnson County, Wyoming, was used by gangs throughout the era, including by Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, and was never penetrated by lawmen. For most outlaws, though, their crimes were petty and opportunistic, driven by drink, gold fever and an absence of controlling factors, such as family and effective authority. Posses and pinks The state of law enforcement in California, where the population and crime rate had risen rapidly after the gold rush, led to the creation of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance in 1851. The 700-strong citizen mob dealt with alleged indiscretions immediately, passing judgment on suspected criminals without trial and dishing out justice, including death by hanging and shooting. Similar committees sprouted up in Texas and elsewhere, and many were active for decades. Private agencies assumed the role of law enforcers and property protectors too. The best-known of these was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, established by Scotsman Allan Pinkerton, a pioneering detective and spy. He had been appointed Chicago’s first detective in 1849 then launched the North-Western Police Agency, which became the Pinkertons. In the mid 1850s, Pinkerton was engaged by the Illinois Central Railroad to protect their trains. It was after solving a number of robberies that he met the company’s lawyer, one Abraham Lincoln. Once elected president and with the American Civil War clouds gathering, Lincoln chose Pinkerton to head his personal security and run the Union Intelligence Service (precursor to the US Secret Service). It proved to be a wise move, as Pinkerton successfully saved Lincoln’s life by foiling a planned assassination attempt as the president travelled to his inauguration. After the war, Pinkerton established a private law-enforcement agency in the West, where gangs were running amok, robbing banks and trains. His agents – known derisively as ‘Pinks’ by their prey – were unrestrained by state borders in their relentless hounding of outlaws, from the Reno Gang to the Wild Bunch. They chased Butch and Sundance right down into South America, but Pinkerton famously failed to catch Jesse James. Draw your gun Despite vigilante groups and the pursuit of the Pinkertons, some settlements were notorious as ‘outlaw towns’. Yet as time went on, even the wildest started introducing some rules. Tombstone, Dodge City and Deadwood were some of the places that banned the carrying of concealed weapons by civilians within town limits. There were later prohibitions on the open carrying of guns too, so cowboys couldn’t necessarily swagger the streets and drink in saloons with six-shooters hanging at their hips. That didn’t stop gunfights taking place, of course. The first recorded quick-draw duel was between ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok and Davis Tutt in 1865, fought in the town square of Springfield, Missouri. There was bad blood between the former friends over a woman, which worsened until a duel was called over a gambling debt. Unlike portrayals of such fights in westerns, the men stood sideways to present a smaller target and about 70 metres apart, before drawing their guns and shooting. Tutt missed – Wild Bill’s bullet pierced his opponent’s heart. Hickok was arrested two days after the duel and tried for murder, but the judge advised the jury that, while he was undoubtedly guilty of manslaughter, they could apply the unwritten law of the ‘fair fight’. He was acquitted and later worked in Kansas as marshal of Hays, sheriff of Ellis County and then city marshal of Abilene. Hickok would be involved in many more fatal gunfights while a lawman until he was eventually relieved of his duties after accidentally shooting dead one of his deputies. The west's fluid frontier From the early 17th century, when British colonists first laid down roots on the east coast of the New World, the wide western horizon beckoned and teased with promise. Over the next three centuries, hunters, explorers and prospectors pioneered the way, battling over frozen mountain passes, across arid deserts and through hostile terrain. Not far behind were settlers and farmers in wagons – and then desperados and bandits often lurking on the trail. The original borders of the sovereign United States were set in 1783, with the Treaty of Paris at the end of the American War of Independence. The new nation was bounded by Canada to the north, Florida to the south and the mighty Mississippi River to the west, but this last line was fluid and constantly being pushed outwards. The territory around and beyond the western frontier was enormous, but far from empty. Native American tribes had long lived on the land and many fought back ferociously against the encroaching colonists, but they were decimated by European firearms and diseases. The survivors were gradually hounded onto reserves. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 added another 828,000 square miles of territory, acquired from France, which instantly doubled the size of the country. Texas joined the union in 1845 and Mexico ceded California and huge swathes of other future states to their rapidly expanding northern neighbour in 1848 and 1853. The American Civil War interrupted US expansion, but after the hostilities ended a railroad was laid right across the continent, making coast-to-coast transportation and travel easier, quicker and safer. In 1890, the US Census declared there was no longer a clear line of advancing settlement. Manifest Destiny – the belief that Christian settlers were divinely ordained to control the whole of North America – seemed fulfilled. The era of the Wild West was effectively over, if not in American popular culture. Rogue lawmen Often, the only discernible difference between an enforcer of the law and a gun-toting outlaw was the star on their chest. It needed grit in the guts to wear that badge, plus a flexible attitude to due process. On 11 April 1881, the noted gunslinger Dallas Stoudenmire was sworn in as El Paso’s sixth town marshal in eight months, and three days later, he was caught up in the ‘Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight’. With a hail of bullets, he caused three of the fatalities. Then, during a botched attempt at revenge, Stoudenmire shot the testicles off his would-be assassin and watched as he bled to death. Such a life could only end one way – on 18 September 1882, he was shot by the Manning brothers. Another feared gunman, ‘Longhair Jim’ Courtright, carved out a successful career as a lawman in Fort Worth, Texas, halving the murder rate (mostly by shooting repeat offenders). But he notoriously used his badge and deadly reputation to extort money from business owners, a practice that came to an abrupt end when Luke Short killed him in 1887. Both Short and Courtright were friendly with Wyatt Earp, a rambling gambling character who worked for a while as a lawman in Dodge City, before moving to Texas. There, his life was saved by a cowboy dentist named John ‘Doc’ Holliday and the two became close. In 1879, Earp moved to the silvermining boomtown of Tombstone with his brothers James, Morgan and Virgil, who was city marshal and Deputy US Marshal. A little under two years on, their conflict with the Cowboys spilled over in that most famous of gunfights at the OK Corral. That was not the end of the feud, though. Surviving members of the Cowboys gang ambushed Virgil and Morgan, maiming the former and killing the latter. In response, Wyatt, despite now being a Deputy US Marshal after taking over from his injured brother, decided to take the law into his own hands. He gathered his brothers Warren and James, and, together with Holliday, led a posse in pursuit of the Cowboys across Arizona. His extra-judicial vendetta ride resulted in the deaths of four outlaws, and arrest warrants being issued for the rogue lawmen. End credits Perhaps the gunfight at the OK Corral and its violent aftermath have been so celebrated because the saga not only epitomised many elements of the Wild West, but came at a time when the era was coming to an end. Soon afterwards, policing became more professional in the western states, as encapsulated by the careers of a trio of legendary lawmen known as the ‘Three Guardsmen’: Deputy US Marshals Bill Tilghman, Chris Madsen. and Heck Thomas. Between 1889 and the turn of the century, they effectively cleaned up the Indian Territories and future state of Oklahoma. They pursued the Dalton and Doolin gangs, which ended in the deaths of Bill Doolin, ‘Dynamite Dan’ Clifton, Richard ‘Little Dick’ West and William ‘Little Bill’ Raidler. And they were credited with the arrest of more than 300 outlaws within a decade, leaving the West a place much less wild. Pat Kinsella specialises in adventure journalism as a writer, photographer and editor. This article first appeared in the July 2019 issue of BBC History Revealed