5 ridiculous myths everyone believes about the wild west. - from
Cracked
The Wild West, aka the Old West, was an astoundingly awesome
period in American history that every person who has ever played Red Dead
Redemption wants to emulate. Now, clearly pop culture has turned much of
the true West into bullshit legend -- there were never quick-draw artists
who could shoot a six gun out of your hand with another six gun. But the
basics were true, right? The lawlessness, the guns, the constant Indian
attacks?
Well ... not exactly. Some common myths you probably still
believe include .
5 Settlers Were Constantly Clashing With Indiansames
The Myth:
Old Westerns treat Native Americans kind of like The Walking
Dead treats zombies -- sudden, murderous ambushes could come from anywhere,
at any time. Any expedition into "injun" territory came with the warning
that you'd better go well-armed. When wagon trains saw a raid of Cherokee
or Sioux coming, they would "circle the wagons" to form a defense perimeter
-- and to this day, "circle the wagons" is shorthand for "hunker down and
fight back."
And all of this has to be true; we know that horrific
numbers of people died when settlers expanded West. Those frontiersmen
must have been firing bullets and dodging arrows on a daily basis, right?
The Reality:
Well, not really. Granted, between the United States cavalry
and, uh, pretty much every tribe you can name, things certainly got good
and massacre-y. But skirmishes between Native Americans and the typical
American settler trundling along in his covered wagon hardly ever happened.
Of the hundreds of thousands of pioneers who willingly trudged all the
way through Nebraska, only a few hundred died in clashes with Native Americans.
We repeat: not tens of thousands, not even thousands.
About 300 to 400. To put that number in perspective, the total number of
pioneer deaths on the Oregon Trail from all causes (including disease)
numbered 10,000 to 30,000, which means only 1 to 4 percent of all trail
fatalities can be attributed to Native Americans. Hell, we bet more settlers
were accidentally trampled by their own cows.
During this same period, settlers killed over 400 Native
Americans. Again, that's not zero, but it does mean that the vast majority
of settlers never got into a murderous conflict with hostile tribes. It
was far more likely that the average settler would trade with Native Americans
or hire members of various tribes as guides, rather than fight them. It
wasn't necessarily because they were open-minded and peace loving that
they abstained from violence, but rather that it's never good business
to kill your customers, or vice versa. Especially when you're talking about
someone providing a potentially life-saving service (a guide kept you from
getting lost, when getting lost meant getting dead).
Native American deaths caused by the U.S. government and
the military likely number in the millions. No one's disputing that one.
But deaths due to wagon train clashes were few and far between. As for
the "circling the wagons" thing, that ring formation was done each night
not to keep hostile Indians out, but to keep their absurdly expensive cattle
from wandering off. Hell, it wouldn't even be possible to "circle the wagons"
in an emergency -- these wagon trains typically traveled spread out in
a line several miles wide, rather than in the column that the term "train"
suggests, in an effort to avoid each other's dust, wheel ruts, and debris.
It would have taken hours to get everybody together and hooked up in circle
formation.
4 Bank-Robbing outlaws rules the west
The Myth:
Black Bart, the Dalton Gang, and Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid all were famous for their daring robberies. They could take
entire fortunes from banks that had slightly less security than a modern
hot dog stand.
And why not? Lawlessness ruled, vaults didn't exist, and
criminals didn't give a shit. The banks might as well have left their big
white bags of gold sitting out on the porch.
The Reality:
Research can find evidence of only about eight true bank
heists, and that's across 15 states in 40 freaking years. Eight. As a point
of comparison, bank robberies in 2010 amounted to 5,600. Hell, even if
we'd never seen a Western in our lives, that would seem like a low number.
But there are several things to consider. First, towns
back in those days were much smaller, with the sheriff's office, saloon,
general store, and bank usually clustered together for convenience. This
one-stop social-needs block usually made up the dead center of town. Being
that the sheriff's office was usually no more than a few doors down, you
were probably pulling your big heist within earshot of the law.
Second, the banks actually weren't that easy to get in
and out of. Old West buildings were usually built pretty close together,
meaning the bank would be flanked by other buildings, while a reinforced
back wall would keep anyone from intruding from behind (you can sort through
the Freudian implications of that). When you walk out the front door with
the loot, there's the sheriff waiting for you. Now, the most famous robberies
-- the jobs pulled by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- were actually
true. But that's the point -- they got famous for a reason. They were doing
what nobody else was crazy enough to do.
But for everyday criminals, common targets were often
trains and stagecoaches because they were more isolated, easier to get
into, and easier to escape. So why bother with a bank, which would be a
suicide mission in comparison?
3 Cowboys are an American creation.
The Myth:
One reason Americans have always been so in love with
the Old West is that it's so distinctly American. Today, if you find a
political rally of people proclaiming themselves to be patriots, you can
damn well bet you'll find cowboy hats in that crowd. The more of a cowboy
you are, the more American you are. Even Cracked favorite Teddy Roosevelt
got in on the act by calling himself the
The Reality:
Cowboys weren't an American invention at all. In fact,
they precede Plymouth Rock by some 20 years, meaning they're older than
America itself. The original cowboys were Mexican cattlemen known as vaqueros,
and they are literally everything you imagine a cowboy to be.
They came up with all of the cowboy lingo, including "bronco,"
"lariat," and even "stampede." Vaqueros rode the long-haul cattle drives,
and their sombreros were probably the precursor to cowboy hats. They also
wore chaps, held rodeos, and lived the life of a cowboy in relative anonymity
for some 200 years.
When Americans moved westward, it was these vaqueros who
knew the land and wildlife enough to help teach the future American cowboys
everything they knew. The settlers in turn did the right thing and outright
stole the entire culture, including the title of "vaqueros," which was
turned into "buckaroos."
But it's not like vaqueros went the way of the cowboy
at the time, either. Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, not
every cowboy (or human being, for that matter) was a white male. One in
three cowboys were Mexican vaquero. One in four are believed to be black
men who were released from slavery but didn't have the ability to flee
far from their captors. Even the Native Americans would help move the cattle
with their white, Mexican, and black brethren. It was a rainbow cowboy
coalition! Except if you were Chinese. Then you were building railroads
in hellish conditions.
2 Cowboys Wore Cowboy Hats
The Myth:
The ultimate item of the cowboy outfit is of course the
Stetson hat, which most of us just call a cowboy hat. There's always the
boots, too, but they kind of go together as a pair.
The hats were practical, lightweight, and made with utility
in mind. They had curved edges that could defend you from both sun and
rain, and they made you look incredibly stylish while doing what amounted
to staring at cows for weeks at a time. The curved brim, those dips in
the crown, the band -- the Stetson is about as iconic as clothing gets.
So if you get in your time machine and set it for 1870, you'd damn well
better be packing one of these:
The Reality:
Lots of people wore hats back then, that part's true.
But they seemed to wear everything but what we think of as "cowboy" hats.
Billy the Kid wearing some kind of fucked-up top hat.
Wild Bill Hickok wearing a woman's flat pancake hat.
But what you would have seen mostly back then were bowler
hats.
They were more popular because they were a little more
versatile in various social situations, especially in a time when all men
wore hats all the damn time. In fact, famed Western historian Lucius "Clearly
a Fake Name" Beebe went so far as to call it "the hat that won the West."
Looking back on most portraits from the time, you can find that almost
every single major name in the West owned a bowler hat, at least if they
had class.
Even the cowboy hats that Stetson was making in the late
1800s didn't look like the Stetson hats we call "cowboy hats" today. Originally
known as "the Boss of the Plains," it looked more like modern Amish hats,
and may have been just a modified sombrero.
All of the curling and ornamentation came later, but this
hat is the granddaddy of every cowboy hat in the world today. And that's
not exactly what your mind jumps to when you think of cowboy hats, is it?
1 Guns Were Rampant in the Old West
Well, even if cowboys didn't have cowboy hats, we
sure as hell know they had six-shooters on their hip. Back then, every
man, woman, and child came pre-equipped with an old-timey revolver, which
was used for everything from personal defense and hunting to celebrating.
The Reality:
Regardless of the public's perception, gun control laws
may have actually been stricter back in the 19th and early 20th century
than they are now, especially in the West. In the beginning, there was
definitely gun violence, as there was neither standardized law nor a good
way to enforce it, but the Wild West didn't stay wild forever.
As towns formed and communities grew, the need for and
tolerance of handguns started to fall. Starting in 1878, some 25 years
into the westward expansion, action was finally taken -- even places as
wild as Dodge City started posting signs like this:
'The Carrying of Firearms strictly Prohibited"
In fact, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was caused by
one gang being unwilling to abide by the anti-firearm rule of Tombstone.
But it's not like the six-shooter of the time was very
dangerous anyway. They didn't even use regular bullets like they currently
do, instead opting for the so-called "cap-and-ball" system that was little
more than a marble launched by black powder. It had an effective range
of maybe 50 feet. The Adams, one of the first revolvers introduced at the
time and a hallmark weapon of the era, would burn the living hell out of
your hand while launching the bullet. So you had to be really sure you
wanted to shoot that dude.
That's why, even among those who used guns, six-shooters
weren't the favorite. They were little more than a weapon of last resort.
Shotguns and rifles were the preferred weapons, having both the power and
the range to put down a mountain lion or a card-cheating son of a bitch.
But who would ever want to watch a Western where cowboys were meeting at
high noon to shoot each other in the face with huge shotguns?
Well, actually ..
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