The Wild West: Was It Really That Wild?

 For many years, Americans have been presented with the wild west videos of violent Native Americans and men dueling; but how true is this portrayal?  How violent was the old west? By looking at the violence in towns and in the plains one can determine how truly violent it was: the battles, the massacres, the fights, and the numbers will all tell.

The violence on the plains was anything BUT mild.  The map in Document A shows railroads and cattle trails.  As time progressed, the amount of distance that the trails went through Oklahoma decreased.  The “Goodnight Loving Trial” even goes as far to intentionally avoid it.  Oklahoma was inhabited mainly by Indians.  So one can only ask, “why would people go a couple hundred miles out of the way just to avoid the Indians?”  Perhaps the Battle of Beecher’s Island will help to understand this.  In this battle, thirty volunteers, many of them teens, were sleeping.  During their sleep they were approached by six-hundred Native Americans.  The Americans only shot at the last minute when their lives depended on it.  All of their horses were killed, many were wounded, and they were being starved out by the Indians.  If it had not been for US Calvary, every single man would have died.

Then to show the other side; the US was just as violent.  At Sand Creek, two-hundred Americans slaughtered a sleeping village of Cheyenne Indians.  They killed every single one, including children, mothers, and those who surrendered.  They removed the genitals of the chief and some of the higher warriors and hung them in town for the people to see.  This was nothing more than a massacre.  Also, in the Battle of Beecher’s Island (previously mentioned) the thirty men were sent to go “lesson teaching” to the Indians.  In the sum up of deaths and injuries, ten US men died, and twenty wounded (all thirty were wounded or killed); about 45 Indians were killed, and 200 wounded (250 out of 600).

But how much violence was in towns?  Was it a duel a day that keeps the bad guys away?  When looking at the graph in Document C, you see a comparison between murders in the Western towns compared to murders in the Eastern towns.  The rates in the Western towns are approximately ten to twenty times larger than the East.  The likeliness of someone being killed who lived in a western town shown was ten times greater.   It was not safe, as a result, for anyone to walk alone through towns.  They did not believe in due process.  When a murdered man was found on the railroad tracks, and they suspected a man, they searched his house.  When they found something incriminating they immediately took him out and hung him.  When the children came out of school, they excitedly ran over and swung him back and forth by his toes.  This goes to show that they were very used to the violence.   In the community of Benton Wyoming, more than 100 graves were on that plot for the numbers that were buried.  By day, disgusting; by night, dangerous.  They averaged a murder-a-day, they gambled and drank, they had the few girls there dance and perform sexual commerce.  It was surely a corrupt town and lived only a sixty-day life.

While the portrayal of the West shown in movies may not be true, the violence was surely there.  In the plains, the Indians killed many Americans, and in response, the Americans slaughtered many Indians.  The West’s killing rates were many times higher than the East’s.  They weren’t safe, and were very used to daily violence.  In cities like Benton, the crime rate was so high, that within sixty days, the city was gone.  One can only deduce that the violence on the plains was very present and very wild.  It is an indisputable fact.