 Stanley K. Schultz and William P. Tishler |
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Today we want to talk about the Old West, as the Time/Life books [TV] commercial will have it. The Old West that is so much a part of our popular culture in this country so that we sell cigarettes by the Marlboro Man riding across the Montana ranges. The Old West-the gunslingers and the battles and dusty streets, the myth and legend of the Old West: the great gunfighters about whom the truth is somewhat less romantic. For example, one of the great figures to enter in the lore and legend was John Wesley Hardin, supposedly killed 35-40 men. The best historians can discover is that he did shoot one man perhaps and kill one man, and that totally by accident. Hardin was in a hotel room, he was cleaning his six-gun, he didn't realize there was a bullet in the chamber, it went off and killed the poor character in the room next door.
1) Space. Where was the Old West? 2) Time. When was the Old West--over what period of years? 3) The images that crowd our minds when we hear the phrase "the Old West." Let's
turn to the first of these--space--and here we have to make our initial
distinctions when talking about the Old West, for the Old West actually
consisted of three separate regions. The first region ran from
about 98 degrees longitude, from the Canadian border down to the Gulf
Coast, down through Texas. It ran westward from 98 degrees longitude
to the front of the Rocky Mountain ranges. Eventually in this portion
of the United States would be included the states of Minnesota, Iowa,
Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, here shown in the map as Oklahoma
territory, Kansas, Nebraska, the two Dakotas (North and South Dakota),
a good portion of Montana, a good portion of Wyoming, and the eastern
half of Colorado. This entire area covers about one-fifth of the land
space of the continental United States. |
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The second principle region is known as the Far West. This is the area westward of the Pacific Mountain ranges, the Sierra Nevadas all the way up through the Cascade range into Washington territory. The Far West would include most of the western portion of California, it would include the western most portion of the state of Oregon, and a good part of Washington territory. The third region was the area that lay between the Pacific Mountain ranges and the back of the Rocky Mountain ranges. This included a portion of Montana, a good amount of Idaho, most of eastern Oregon, Nevada, portions of Utah, and down into Arizona territory. These three areas--three separate terrains, three separate kind of climates--have been lumped together, both in the nineteenth century and in the present, as the "space" of the Old West. And about a good amount of this space, particularly the area of the Great Plains, there was a legend that had grown up in the nineteenth century, a legend that took on the dimensions of a myth, a myth that came to be known as the "Great American Desert." |
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Or
Wild Bill Hickock, about whom there have been movies and television
series. Wild Bill Hickock may have shot two men in his life, one of
those a special deputy whom Hickock shot by mistake. Or Marshall Wyatt
Earp about whom a senator from the state of Kansas introduced a resolution
on the floor in the capitol some years ago to honor this great man.
Marshall Wyatt Earp was, in point of fact, never a Marshall and he may
have shot one man in his career. So we have a host of these myths and
legends that surround the Old West. Our questions today are: Which Old
West are we talking about, and whose Old West, and how old was the Old
West? If we are to deal with these issues, there are, I think, three
significant ways of answering our questions. 
