Bryan Burrough is out with a new book on June 3, and I aim to work it in amongst my Ranger-reading. I’m hoping that it’s actually on-mission with that, since there is a clear through line from the guerrillas of the Civil War to the gunfighters of the Wild West. Dig the caper:
The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.
Texas was born in violence, on two fronts, with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north. The Colt revolver first caught on with the Texas Rangers. Southern dueling culture transformed into something wilder and less organized in the Lone Star State. The collapse of the Confederacy and the presence of a thin veneer of Northern occupiers turned the heat up further. And the explosion in the cattle business after the war took that violence and pumped it out from Texas across the whole of the West. The stampede of longhorn cattle brought with it an assortment of rustlers, hustlers, gamblers, and freelance lawmen who carried a trigger-happy honor culture into a widening gyre, a veritable blood meridian. When the first newspapermen and audiences discovered what good copy this all was, the flywheel of mythmaking started spinning. It’s never stopped.
Texas Monthly is running an except this month, and I love this cover:
For decades gunfighters crowded to the center of American popular culture, on the page and on the screen. Today their legacy is more complicated. There are those who believe that telling their stories amounts to glorifying violence. And yet, love them or hate them, gunfighters are a part of our shared history, our culture. And if you study these events long enough, something jumps out at you about the participants. In Kansas, in Wyoming, in New Mexico, in Arizona, and all across the frontier, a startling number of these deadly encounters involved a certain type of person: a Texan.
I’ve read Burrough’s Public Enemies: and Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence and thought they were both excellent.
Burrough makes a connection between The Gunfighters and Public Enemies:
In 1934, FBI agents were chasing the legendary bank robber John Dillinger. After one was gunned down, J. Edgar Hoover ordered his deputy to find him some good marksmen, and he did—in Texas. That warm summer evening when FBI agents finally cornered Dillinger outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater? One of those Texans likely fired the fatal shot.
So, there’s that. I’m really looking forward to this one, especially after reading the length TM excerpt. One thing though…
I’m not gonna quibble with a book I have yet to read — and I make no argument with the thesis that Texas made the West wild. But I am going to make a case for my old home state as an equal partner in the makin’-it-wild enterprise. The California Gold Rush bred violence on an epic scale, and Los Angeles bowed to no town when it came to gunplay and general mayhem. Revisit the Frontier Partisans Podcast Once Upon A Time In Los Angeles…
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Speaking of gunfighters… I just received my graphic novel Fargo: Hell On Wheels, adapted from the original John Benteen story by Howard Chaykin. This thing is quite badass, and I’m glad I backed the crowdfunding campaign.
Neal Fargo — Conan of Cimmeria transported to the turn-of-the-20th-Century frontier. Pulpy goodness.
Neal Fargo by Butch Guice.
Neal Fargo by Doug P’Gosh.
Neal Fargo by Jordi Bernet.
But wait, there’s more. Volume Two — Fargo: Panama Gold is in the works. Again adapted by Chaykin, but illustrated by Butch Guice.
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This month’s edition of True West Magazine is dominated by coverage of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in the wake of the extraordinary success of Netflix’s American Primeval. I liked the limited series well enough, though I wouldn’t say I was blown away.
In any case, it’s great to see True West take on this dark moment in frontier history in a serious manner. One of the features is a matched pair of essays, one arguing that Brigham Young ordered the massacre and one arguing that he didn’t. We oughta take a Frontier Partisans poll on that…
Here’s publisher Bob Boze Bell’s video blog on the subject. Worth your time.
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Yellowstone Fever …
No, it ain’t some ailment you get from binge-watching Taylor Sheridan dramas. It’s that lure of the wild country that turned enterprising young men into legends. And it’s the first single off of Hawken Horse’s forthcoming Teton Tapes.
Matthew says
Texas does have a very violent history. A lot probably had to do with the fact it was contested between three powers the Texas, the Mexicans, and the Comanche. It also has to do with a lot of scotch-irish immigration. The scotch-irish are a historically violent culture. I say that as a scotch-irish Texan.
I tend to think violence is part of human nature. The violence in our nature is often decried and obviously there is a good reason for this. Human history is full of awful acts. That said I’m not sure violence is always wrong. I mean to me there’s a world of difference between a home invade and the man who fights the home invader.
In the frontier partisans sci-fi movie Serenity, the crew discover a planet where the government released a gas that removed all aggression from its citizens. As such they just sat around until they starved to death because they were so unaggressive (except for the ones who became psychotic predators.) That is kind of true.
basketball superstars says
I’m a descendant of the Bakers from my dad’s side of the family.i also know the Fanchers ,they now own the land my grandfather grew up on .also the Mormons still deny it but Brigham Ypung gave the orders for that massacre.ive studied this enough to know the Mormons didn’t do anything without BY telling them to