The Mammoth Book of the West

by Jon E. Lewis

The Western, though, hadn’t quite ridden off into the sunset. There were sporadic sightings (Silverado and Pale Rider in 1985, the “brat-pack” re-enactment of the Billy the Kid saga, Young Guns, in 1988) and then in 1989, the return of the Western was confirmed. On the silver screen’s poor sister, TV, a CBS mini-series based on Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove attracted 40 million viewers a night. Always a nose to the wind, Hollywood executives took note and stumped up the funds for the personal project of hot star Kevin Costner. Released in 1990, Dances with Wolves, a movie notably sympathetic in its portrait of Native Americans (complete with Lakota sub-titles) was a sure-fire hit and the first Western to win the Oscar for best picture since Cimarron. Any doubts about the Western’s comeback were quelled by the success of Eastwood’s Unforgiven in 1992, which featured the star as a reformed gunslinger (turned pig farmer) enticed out of retirement for the bounty on a cowboy who sliced up a prostitute. It also won Best Picture. And suddenly there were Westerns galore.

  What this new posse of Westerns had in common was a desire to debunk. So it was that Wyatt Earp was cut down to significantly human size in Tombstone (1993) and Wyatt Earp (1994). There were feminist takes on the West in The Ballad of Little Jo (1993), Bad Girls (1995, in which Andie McDowell, Drew Barrymore, Madeleine Stowe and Mary Stuart Masterson played saloon gals turned gunslingers) and The Quick and the Dead (1995, again with a woman as shootist). There was a Black revisionist West in Mario Van Peeble’s Posse, the first significant Afro-American Western since the blaxploitation oater pics of Jim Brown and Fred Williamson back in the early 1970s.

  Revisionist and debunking certainly, but all these movies made as much myth as they de-mythologized. After all, Belle Starr and Rose of Cimarron aside, woman gunfighters were as rare as blue moons in the historical West.

  Who cares? Everybody, after all, eventually gets the West-U-Like in the movies.

  It’s now almost 100 years since that ten-minute reeler, The Great Train Robbery, started the epic story of the West in cinema. Or put another way, the West has survived in Hollywood almost three times as long as the “Wild West” – classically defined as the mid-1860s to mid-1890s – survived in reality. That tells much about the Western. Some of this phenomenal longevity can be accounted for in sly shifting accommodation to the Zeitgeist, but there is something transcendental at work, too. The great theme of the Western is Civilization v Nature (played out in a score of variants such as Cowboys v Indians, Settlers v Gunslingers), where the conflict is resolved by a moment’s action by an individual with a smoking gun. Order is made from chaos. Not in a biblical, godlike way, but in an all too recognizably human way.

  When push comes to shove, when it’s time to reach for your gun, people go to the Westerns to find a place where things seemed simpler, where life has more meaning and excitement than industrial society (be it the din of Henry Ford’s conveyor belt, the “tap-tap” of the word processor in Silicon Valley), where a single person might have importance, be a hero, be their dream.

  Pretty much the same reasons, then, that folks went to the real West.

  The history of the Western never really comes to an end. There’s always a sequel.

  Appendix I:

  Chronology of the American West

  c. 30,000 BC First humans enter North America, via land bridge over the Bering Straits.

  AD 1400 Aboriginal population reaches 5 million.

  AD 1000 Pueblo communities of Acoma and Hopi established.

  1492 Columbus lands in the Bahamas.

  1513 Ponce de Leon discovers Florida.

  1521 Gregorio de Villalobos ships cattle from Caribbean to Mexico.

  1528 Survivors of Panfilo de Narvaez’s expedition to Florida blown ashore on the Texas coast – the first Europeans to see the American West. After numerous adventures four of the expedition, including Black Moorish servant Estevan, reach Mexico on foot in 1536.

  1534 Jacques Cartier explores Gulf of St Lawrence.

  1539–42 Francisco Vasquez de Coronado leads Spanish expedition from Mexico, penetrating as far into the West as Arizona and Kansas.

  1542 Spanish explorer de Soto buried in the Mississippi.

  1598 Juan de Onate founds Spanish settlements in northern New Mexico.

  1607 English colonialists establish permanent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia.

  1608 Quebec founded.

  1620 English Pilgrims settle at Plymouth.

  1637 Pequots of Connecticut battle English colonialists in a failed bid to retain hunting grounds.

  1650 Captain Abraham Wood leads expedition along the Piedmont’s Roanoke Valley.

  1664 English seize New Amsterdam and rename it New York.

  1669 John Lederer explores Blue Ridge Mountains.

  1670s Tidewater in Virginia and Maryland almost fully settled.

  1671 Thomas Betts and Robert Fallum enter the Great Appalachian Valley via the Staunton River.

  1675 Uprising by Wampanoag chief King Philip kills 600 New Englanders, but Wampanoags and their Narragansett allies are then slaughtered and enslaved.

  1680 Revolt of the Pueblos.

  1681–2 Sieur de La Salle sails down the Mississippi to Gulf of New Mexico.

  1689–97 King William’s War between France and England.

  1700 Comanche established on Southern Plains.

  1702–13 France loses Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Hudson Bay to England in Queen Anne’s War.

  1744–8 King George’s War between England and France results in stalemate.

  1748 Jose de Escandon grazes the first cattle in what will become Texas.

  1750 Dr Thomas Walker leads surveying party into “Kentucke”.

  1754–63 French and Indian War ends in victory for Britain, and places a third of the American continent in her hands.

  1763 British Government issues Proclamation limiting White settlement to east of Appalachian crest in a bid to appease American Indians.

  1769 Daniel Boone explores the Bluegrass region of Kentucky.

  1775 American Revolution begins; Judge Richard Henderson purchases large tract of Kentucky from Cherokee; Daniel Boone clears the Wilderness Road from the Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River, founding Boonesborough at its terminus.

  1777 Shawnee raids against White settlements in Kentucky reach their peak.

  1779 Retaliatory campaign by Generals Clinton and Sullivan razes 40 Iroquois towns in the Mohawk Valley.

  1783 By the terms of the Treaty of Paris America is granted independence from Britain.

  1785 Congress approves Ordinance to survey the old Northwest as a prelude to the public auction of its land.

  1787 Northwest Ordinance passed by Congress, establishing process by which US territories can achieve statehood.

  1790 Miami chief Little Turtle inflicts defeat on US force under General Arthur St Clair, killing 900.

  1792 Kentucky enters the Union.

  1794 General “Mad Anthony” Wayne wins the Battle of Fallen Timbers against the Miamis.

  1795 Spain yields Yazoo Strip to United States in the Treaty of San Lorenzo.

  1803 Ohio becomes a state; President Thomas Jefferson purchases Louisiana from France for $15 million, doubling the size of the USA.

  1804–6 “Voyage of Discovery” led by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explores Louisiana Purchase.

  1805–6 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike leads expedition along upper Mississippi as far as Leech Lake.

  1806–7 Zebulon Pike explores Colorado and the Southwest; John Coulter becomes the first White man to see the Yellowstone.

  1809–11 Tecumseh of the Shawnee campaigns for Native American unity and independence but is defeated by General William Henry Harrison at Tippecanoe, Indiana.

  1811 The New Orleans journeys from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, inaugurating the great era of Western steamboating; the National Road links the East and the Ohio Valley; Astoria founded near the mouth of the Columbia River.

  1812–15 War of 1812 between Britain and USA en
ds with no clear advantage to either side, although a Creek uprising is decisively defeated by the Americans at Horseshoe Bend, in the Mississippi Territory.

  1819 The United States acquires Spanish Florida for $5 million.

  1820 Major Stephen Long leads expedition to the Red River country.

  1821 Mexico secures independence from Spain; William Becknell opens the Santa Fe Trail; Stephen F. Austin founds an Anglo colony in Texas.

  1823 Mike Fink killed by Talbott after drunken shooting match.

  1825 William Ashley establishes a rendezvous for fur trappers on the Green River, Wyoming; the Creek Nation cedes remaining lands to Georgia; the 363-mile long Erie Canal between Albany on the Hudson River and Lake Erie is completed at the cost of $7 million; trapper Jim Bridger discovers the Great Salt Lake.

  1826 Stephen F. Austin organizes a corps of “watchmen”, the beginnings of the Texas Rangers.

  1827 Jedediah Smith makes first crossing of the Sierras.

  1828 Cherokee nation surrenders its lands in Arkansas and agrees to relocate west of the Mississippi; Andrew Jackson elected president.

  1830 John Jacob Astor secures agreement with the Blackfeet allowing his American Fur Company to trap beaver in their territory.

  1832 Nathaniel Wyeth and other emigrants make pioneering journey to Oregon; Andrew Jackson re-elected president.

  1834 Protestant mission established in Willamette Valley, Oregon.

  1835 Samuel Colt of Connecticut patents revolving gun. Texas Revolution begins.

  1836 Siege of the Alamo, February–March; Texas secures independence from Mexico after the 18-minute Battle of San Jacinto, April.

  1837 Michigan admitted to the Union, January; smallpox epidemic devastates Indian tribes of the West, including the Mandan, of whom only 39 survive; last great fur trappers’ rendezvous, Green River, June; Seminole nation defeated in Battle of Lake Okeechobee.

  1838 Some 38,000 Cherokee are driven from Georgia to the West along the “Trail of Tears”.

  1842 The Seminole, the last of the Indian tribes remaining in the Southeast, lose their long guerilla war and agree to removal from Florida, although a few bands remain hidden in the Everglades; Oregon Trail established, a 2,000-mile route from Independence, Missouri, to the Pacific Northwest; a branch of the route will take pioneers to California.

  1844 Telegraph invented by Samuel B. Morse; Joseph Smith killed by Illinois mob.

  1845 Texas annexed by United States.

  1846–8 United States declares war on Mexico, eventually gaining land in Texas and California.

  1846 “Bear Flag Revolt” led by John Frémont secures California from Mexico for the USA: pioneer party led by George Dunbar becomes trapped in high sierras and resorts to cannibalism.

  1847 Mormons arrive in Utah.

  1848 James W. Marshall discovers gold at Sutter’s Mill, California; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends Mexican–American War, and adds 1.2 million square miles to USA.

  1849 Gold rush of miners (dubbed “forty-niners”) to California begins; Mormons attempt to form theocratic state of Deseret.

  1850 California enters the Union.

  1851 San Francisco’s first vigilance committee formed.

  1852 California mines yield $81 million in gold.

  1857 So-called “Mormon War” sees nearly a sixth of the US Army dispatched to Utah; Fancher wagon train massacred by Mormons and Indians at Mountain Meadows.

  1858 Overland stage route opened by John Butterfield.

  1859 Gold rush to Pike’s Peak, Colorado; “the Comstock Lode” discovered in Nevada.

  1860–5 Civil War between North and South results in troops on Western frontier being recalled.

  1860 Smith & Wesson pioneer metal gun cartridges; Bannock and Shoshoni Indians attack Otter–Van Orman wagon train, killing 18 pioneers; the Pony Express commences service; transcontinental telegraph line completed.

  1861 Kansas admitted to the Union.

  1862 Battle of Apache Pass between California Volunteers and Apache under Cochise and Mangas Coloradas, July; Homestead Act gives citizens over 21 the right to 160 acres of public domain; Little Crow leads uprising of Santee Sioux in Minnesota, with the Santee eventually defeated by superior force of militia at Wood Lake, September.

  1864 Navajos make the “Long Walk” to Bosque Redondo; a punitive expedition led by Kit Carson is saved in a battle with the Comanche at Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle after deploying two howitzers; massacre of Southern Cheyenne at Sand Creek, Colorado, November; “road agent” Henry Plummer hanged by Montana vigilantes.

  1865 President Abraham Lincoln assassinated; John Batterson Stetson establishes shop in Philadelphia specializing in headware for the range country; James Butler Hickok duels with Dave Tutt in Springfield, Missouri, July.

  1866 Thieves (including Jesse and Frank James) raid bank at Liberty, Missouri, February; the Reno brothers rob a train at Seymour, Indiana; Fort Laramie Council between Government and Northern Plains tribes, June; Texan ranchers Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving begin blazing the cattle trail to the Northern Plains which will bear their name; Red Cloud’s Sioux ambush 80 officers and men near Fort Phil Kearny on the Bozeman Trail in the Fetterman Massacre, named after the arrogant army captain who led the command.

  1867 More than 35,000 cattle driven up the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas; Alaska purchased by USA from Russia.

  1868 Government to abandon forts along the Bozeman Trail, tacitly admitting that the Sioux are the victors in “Red Cloud’s War”; Roman Nose of the Cheyenne dies in a skirmish with volunteer scouts at Beecher Island; Colonel George A. Custer and the 7th Cavalry massacre Black Kettle’s Cheyenne near the Washita River, Indian Territory.

  1869 Transcontinental railroad completed; Wyoming extends franchise to women.

  1871 Mass shoot-out in a saloon in Newton, Kansas, leaves five dead; Marshal Wild Bill Hickok kills gunfighter/gambler Phil Coe in Abilene, Kansas.

  1872–3 Modoc War, northern California, sees 165 Indians led by Captain Jack stand off vastly superior force of US Army until a series of pitched battles forces the Modoc to capitulate.

  1873 Joseph Glidden invents barbed wire.

  1874 Apache chief Cochise dies; buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls rebuff Comanche attack; Custer leads expedition to determine whether gold exists in the Black Hills of the Sioux.

  1875 President Grant appoints Judge Isaac Parker (the “Hanging Judge”) to the Western District Court, the jurisdiction of which includes Indian Territory (Oklahoma); Quanah Parker, chief of the Quahadi Comanche, agrees to accept reservation life.

  1876 Custer and 7th Cavalry defeated by Sioux and allies at Little Big Horn, June; “Wild Bill” Hickok assassinated in Deadwood, August; the James–Younger gang routed by citizens in their attempted robbery of the First National Bank in Northfield, Minnesota, September.

  1877 Black American “Exodusters” found Nicodemus in north-west Kansas; after a relentless army campaign Sioux war leader Crazy Horse surrenders in May but is killed two months later; Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce surrenders after fighting for nearly 1,000 miles in his attempt to flee to Canada.

  1878 Lincoln County War in New Mexico; Texan outlaw Sam Bass killed by Rangers at Round Rock; Marshal Ed Masterson mortally wounded attempting to disarm drunken cowboys in Dodge City, Kansas.

  1880 Cattle ranching established throughout the Great Plains; California gunfighter Walter J. Crow kills five men in the “Mussel Slough Shoot-out” on behalf of Southern Pacific Railroad.

  1881 James S. Brisbin publishes The Beef Bonanza, or How to Get Rich on the Plains; outlaw Billy the Kid is shot by sometime friend Pat Garrett at Fort Sumner in New Mexico, July; gunfight near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, between Earp brothers (with Doc Holliday) and Clanton gang, October; Sitting Bull, the Sioux victor of the Battle of Little Big Horn, surrenders after leaving sanctuary in Canada.

  1882 Jesse James assassinated by Bob Ford, April.

  1883 Cowboys in Tex
as Panhandle strike for higher wages; Buffalo Bill Cody begins his Wild West show; bison hunted almost to extinction.

  1884 Vigilantes led by grandee rancher Granville Stuart virtually clear Montana range of horse and cattle thieves.

  1885 Fifty-one Chinese massacred by miners at Rock Springs, Wyoming.

  1886–7 Blizzards decimate cattle on the northern ranges; the “Beef Bonanza” ends.

  1886 General Nelson A. Miles accepts the surrender of Apache warrior leader Geronimo; feud between Graham and Tewksbury families sparks off the Pleasant Valley War, Arizona.

  1887 Dawes General Allotment Act begins break-up of reservation lands.