The American Old West in its most represented manifestation in media, is a period of time that stretches roughly from the 19th to early 20th century. But, the related territorial expansion of the nation had begun shortly after America secured its independence from Great Britain and lasted until the most recent annexations of Alaska and Hawaii into the union in 1959. It provokes images of cowboys on horseback, stagecoach robberies and daring gunfights in dusty town streets. It is a common setting for fiction in various forms of media, most recently Rockstar Games’s Red Dead Redemption 2, set to release for players on PC next month. For most, these fictionalized accounts of history portray the Old West as a violent place where gunfights and outlaw desperados are a daily occurrence. However, the real history of the West may show that it is not so wild as one may think.
Despite it being a contentious issue today, towns on the American Frontier typically possessed strict gun control laws that would require gun-toting cowboys to disarm before wandering around town, according to Smithsonian Magazine. In fact, one of the most famous shootouts in the Old West at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz., on Oct. 26 , 1861 occurred as a result (among other reasons) of Marshall Virgil Earp, his brothers Wyatt, Morgan and Doc Holliday, attempting to disarm a group of cowboys.
“Tombstone has much more restrictive laws on carrying guns in public in the 1880s than it has today,” Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and specialist in American constitutional law and gun policy, said. “Today, you’re allowed to carry a gun without a license or permit on Tombstone streets. Back in the 1880s, you weren’t.”
One of the main sources of violence on the frontier, the Independent Institute asserts, is the conflict between American settlers and the American Indians who lived on those lands. After the conclusion of the Civil War, violence would erupt between native tribes and American settlers, frequently resulting in the intervention of the U.S. Army. The most famous of these clashes occurred at Little Bighorn River in southeastern Montana Territory in June 1876. It is frequently referred to as “Custer’s Last Stand” as it resulted in the death of U.S. Army Major General and Civil War veteran George A. Custer.
So, if you were to hop in your time-travelling DeLorean and travel back to 1885, leave your guns at the door before you go into a saloon. While the Old West has its place in American culture and fiction, the real faces and events behind the gun smoke are quite different than you may think.
