Demystify Far West
In Europe, we hear about Far West through popular culture : movies, westerns, comics, toys. The type of medium that build a myth because partially true and focus only on a few aspects of lifestyle of that time.
That was my case. My first insight of Indians and Cow-Boys was probably me playing with my Playmobil figurines and army fort when I was a little kid. Since then, I couldn’t stop wondering where all these movies and TV shows happened. When was it ? Was it real ? Did people really think they could make fortune finding gold ? Could we really find gold leaning in the rivers ? Were saloons really usual ? Did people really kill each other so easily ? Weren’t there some “normal” people with kind behavior or only wild cow-boys, bandits, sheriffs and bounty hunters ?
To find answers, I really looked forward to my trip. I didn’t really know where to look for answers. But once there, I looked at the map and said : “here, that’s here I have to go”.
So here I went. After exploring the industrial Midwest, I headed West. While driving away from Kansas City I recognized it straightaway. Cities became smaller et less numerous. Some asphalt roads turned to dirt pathways. We could feel the climate become drier and see fields getting yellow.
Here I was, in the Wild Wild West. I remembered seeing these sceneries in movies. Django Unchained, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West to only mention the most famous. Rocks, dry plains, deserted lands and wind.
Step by step I assembled the puzzle pieces. In Kansas, Nebraska, people came from the East to breed cattle in these great plains. Cows roamed and grazed grass without any fences, completely free, rebuffing bisons herds to the West.
These new settlers were the first Cow-Boys. Villages were spaced and small. In these areas, the authority was represented by the sheriff, elected to enforce the law. But so far from real civilization, people had to wear guns to defend themselves against bandits and vilains.
A that time, especially the more we go to the West, herds of bisons and numerous Indian tribes still occupied these territories. Indians had large reservations soon to be invaded by new settlers looking for new lands or just fleeing economic crisis or droughts.
Transcontinental railways began to spread to the West in the second half of the 19th century, bringing little by little civilization and trade, helping developing cities like Denver or Colorado Springs.
At that time, some population migrated massively to the West. Some monuments like Scotts Bluff National Monument testify of the route of thousands of pilgrims going to Oregon or California. The place is also a marker of the itinerary followed for years by Mormons emigrating to Utah and its Great Salt Lake from 1847.
But Far West wouldn’t be the Far West without the Gold Rush. Or should I say Gold Rushes because there were quite a few, in different locations and at different times of the 19th Century. California Gold Rush is maybe the most famous but Colorado Gold Rush or South Dakota one have also marked US history.
In Colorado, we can still find many ghost cities or mines from that literally golden age. Mine cities who rapidly promoted Colorado from territory to statehood in 1876.
West Colorado and the Rocky Mountains were part of that Far West but appear to be less famous in the Far West imaginary. It can be seen in some great movies like The hateful Eight though. Yes, snow is a big part of this Far West in winter and cover frequently those territories, from Kansas to Montana, through Colorado and South Dakota.
In South Dakota, one of the last gold rushes the Union experienced, it was not before 1876 that thousands of people converged to the Black Hills, the still Sioux reservation at that time. Not for long.
Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill, Calamity Jane are all real people who participated in the conquest of the West. I had vaguely heard of Calamity Jane. But this is only when I was in Deadwood, South Dakota, that I got to know her and her contemporary fellows. A weird drunk woman.
Deadwood is one these towns that grew in a few years from nothing to thousands of inhabitants. The kind of towns which experienced a time without state nor laws. The real Far West from the myths. A place where people who survived were either dominant or dominated. The kind of people that always wore a gun.
The murder of Wild Bill Hickock, the well known shooter of the West, shot dead in the back by Jack McCall while he was playing poker in a saloon, symbolizes perfectly that time when anything could happened. His hand, a pair of aces and a pair of eights, has been since then known as the Dead’s man hand.
Local newspaper wrote speaking of this murder and his murderer “trial” :
“Should it ever be our misfortune to kill a man … we would simply ask that our trial may take place in some of the mining camps of these hills.”
Saloons, alcohol, gold, prostitution, guns and poker were real in Deadwood in 1876. But it lasted barely two years though.
Deadwood testifies of that time when treaties sealed with Indian tribes were constantly challenged because of natural ressources on their lands. The Black Hills were once sacred mountains for the Sioux. But as soon as the news about gold seen in rivers spread to the East, Indians couldn’t struggle against the will of dozens of thousands of people to make fortune. Protecting its citizens, the United States soon won an easy war against Indians and reduced their reservations. “Civilization” had won.
Rapidly, industrialization of gold mining and arrival of train railroad marked the end of the Far West in that area.
I got my answers. Far West was as vast as half of the US, made from very varied landscapes, consistent with the myth but lasted for only a few decades from the mid 19th century to the 1890's, depending on the places. Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Oregon were the last Frontier of the Union.
Myth made its junction with History. I can now leave the Far West fully satisfied.
