Historian Answers Wild West Questions | Tech Support | WIRED

[Music] I'm historian Mark Lee Gardner let's answer your questions from the internet This is Wild West [Music] support this question is from quora who is the most dangerous Outlaw in the old west well there's several candidates John Wesley Harden maybe killed as many as two dozen men he's the one you might have heard of that uh killed a man just for snoring he heard a loud snoring through the thin wall in this hotel and fired several shots and he stopped snoring but I just think Jesse and Frank James are a little scar here I would

vote for them is is the most dangerous Jesse and Frank had come out of a very vicious horrible Civil War one of their leaders was called Bloody Bill Anderson and he actually hung Union soldiers scalps from his Bridal and saddle and after the war because they'd become so numb to that violence it just didn't bother them to kill somebody and there were lots of innocent victims in their robberies you either opened up the safe or you got shot and they were serious one man who knew them said if Jesse said he was going to kill

you you could probably talk him out of it but if Frank said he was going to kill you he was going to kill you at made of dope WTF is a 49er gold is discovered in California in 1848 the news Russia Eastward and the very next year 1849 sees hordes thousands of potential gold Seekers traveling west to California and they got named the 49ers at Butch claz and ask Tombstone or why W which film did the okay Corral scene best I feel like the W her Kevin ker version is a little more accurate and that

it has the gunfighters much closer together they were literally within a few feet of each other the Tombstone movie with Kurt Russell it's it's a very big lot and actually that lot where the gunfight occurred estimates are as small as 15 ft across so it's very tight very compacted one thing that I liked about both films was that they did pull from the historical dialogue that was taken down in Witness testim after the OK Corral gun fight that one famous line where Doc Holiday tells one of the mlar he says you're a daisy if you

do well that actually was what he spoke at the time but the one thing it really stood out to me was that they have the hers in Doc Holiday pulling guns from holsters wer pulled his revolver from a coat pocket Doc Holiday pulled his revolver from a coat pocket it was very common at that time to have Taylor make pistol pockets in your coats it said that Wy Herb's pocket was actually lined with canvas to ease a revolver coming out of that pocket and not catching the hammer on your coat user 7149425940 all riding alone

his hat was throw back and his Spurs were a jingling as he approach me singing this song who get along little doggies it's your Misfortune none of my own up get along little doggies for you know why Omen will be your new home so in that song you hear the word doggy that was an orphan calf an orphan calf is eating you know kind of coarse range grass and their bellies get extended and they were called dough belli or dough guts and from that we get the word dogy here's another one for your playlist it's

Old Dan Tucker Old Dan Tucker down in town riding a go and leading a Hound the Hound gave a how the goat gave a jump throw Old Dan a Str stump get out the way get out the way get out the way old V Tucker he's too late to get his supper get out the way get out the way get out the way old V Tucker he's too late to get his supper thank you Vance thank you at chrisj Jarrett says watching a western the other day and they had to check their guns to come

into the city made me think did the old west have stricter gun laws than we have now they did have very strict gun laws in the towns or the cities places like like Tombstone Witchita and Dodge City these are big cattle towns are driving huge herds of cattle in the Cowboys are getting paid off they have guns it's dangerous so these communities had city ordinances preventing the wearing of guns preventing having concealed weapons only lawmen were able to carry their guns it's a very dangerous occupation for a lawmen to disarm drunken Cowboys so these Cowboys

when they came in with their guns they had to check them they had to drop them off at a certain location and then when they were leaving town they could pick their guns up and take them back with them but they could not be wearing Firearms while they were in these City Limits at least saxs did Old West saloons have anything else to drink other than whiskey and beer Cowboys must like a fancy drink every once in a while all these boom towns whether it was Dodge City or Deadwood or Tombstone they had well stocked

bars and we had lots of photographs and you can see all different types of bottles whether it's wine or champagne Brandy Jin in 1874 there was a book published the bartenders guide that gave you how to make cordeles julips the more elaborate bars and there were many could just make any drink that you had a had a hanin for JA Hugo asked what hats were really most common in the wild west the most famous hat maker actually made the hats in Pennsylvania his name was John B Stetson but he had gone to the West he

was part of the Pikes Peak gold rush in 1859 but in the 1860s he developed a hat called the trail boss and it had a flat crown and and just a a standard wide brim but it was very well made and uh he developed a reputation and I'm actually got a real ston hat here this is a John be Stetson it's got the wide brim nothing fancy with the crown this is called a pencil roll Rim here this is probably from like the 1920s or 1930s they weren't the only ones that made cowboy hats but

uh if you were a cowboy and you had the money uh you wanted to ston another popular style of hat was the Derby or what might be called the bowler hat there's that famous picture of the Wild Bunch The Outlaws Butch Cassidy and some of them are wearing the Derby hats and if you wore a certain kind of hat you might draw attention and get picked on there's a story from Tombstone Arizona whenever a dude came in wearing a top hat now a dude is like a a newbie City Slicker what have you Doc Holiday

if they spotted him would follow that dude around ringing a dinner bell drawing attention you know we've got a dude here we've got a newbie in town the next question is from the ask historian subreddit when did the old west officially end just saw Killers the flower Moon and it takes place in the 20s but still feels very much like the late 1800s well that's a great question some people might say the Buffalo when the Buffalo are no longer free ranging when barbwire fences are stretched across the plains they're no longer cattle drives that could

be the end of the old west but to me it's when the automobile takes the place of the horse maybe that's the 1930s or 40s but uh when there's no more horses on the streets then to me the old west is over Jed Houston wants to know how many Buffalo Roam this country before they were slaughtered to near Extinction before the horse was introduced to North America by the Spanish the estimates go from 28 to 30 million buffalo on the Great Plains in the early part of the 19th century the robe trade was very popular

the Indians hunted the Buffalo and the Indian women fully tanned these robes they were used in the East and Europe as lap robes but a good robe had to come from a cow or a calf it's easier to work the hive so that's the breeding population if you're just killing cows and Cales it's kind of a recipe for disaster in 1860 a newspaper reported that probably 800,000 Buffalo were slaughtered each year there are lots of examples of passengers on the uh steam trains shooting at the herds as they sped down the tracks you can see

an example of that in film in the movie dead man with Johnny Deb by 1884 then there's estimated just 324 buffalo in the United United States a lot of it was meat Hunters that's how Buffalo Bill Cody got his name he was hunting Buffalo and getting meat for the railroad cruise and interestingly enough Buffalo Bill later starts a wild west exhibition the same show that featured the famous Gun Woman known as Annie Oakley at Andy doodle 56 says wait Annie Oakley was real yes she was real Annie Oakley was the real deal too she was

an excellent Marksman she had a partner she would look at the mirror had the gun over shoulder he'd have a cigarette in his lips and she would shoot off the end of the cigarette seems very dangerous Buffalo Bill Cody the wild west exhibition traveled really around the world one of the big draws for Buffalo Bill Cody's show was these stage Recreations whether it was a buffalo hunt whether it was an Indian attack on a wagon train a robbers attack on a stage coach the Cavalry they got to see Sitting Bull one year Cal was well

known as a leader of the lakotas they actually could see this person they read about see In the Flesh I mean it was quite an experience very very popular and it went for decades at minono says what do you mean the only authenticated photo of the real Billy the Kid was only found in 2011 well there is only one authenticated and it existed a lot before 2011 it's this here this is a tin type that was made at Fort suar of Billy the Kid by a traveling photographer we don't know who the photographer was and

there's something you have to know about tin types 10 types are reverse images and if you look in this image you would think that Billy the Kid was left-handed in fact there's a movie with Paul Newman called the left-handed gun that's the story of Billy the Kid he's called the left-handed gun because of this image but because we know that 10 types of reverse images actually Billy has his pistol on his right hip so this is the image corrected the way that it should be and actually this is an enlargement of the 10 type the

actual tin type was the size of this tin type it's very small and the reason it's called a tin type is because the photo PHH is actually made on tin the Emulsion is on a very thin piece of tin technical name pherotype and the reason we know that this photo of Billy the Kid is authentic is because it was identified as Billy the Kid in his own lifetime it appeared in The Illustrated police news while he was still alive a few years ago this actual tin type the one that's in this image this sold it

auction for $2.3 million so that had a huge effect because when a small tin typee brings that kind of money people are going to start looking for other pictures of Billy the Kid so in recent years there have been a lot of photos they have a some kind of a resemblance to Billy the Kid but you just can't identify a photo based on resemblance you have to have some kind of Providence that links it to Billy the Kid there's a picture of supposedly Billy the Kid playing croquet these are wannabe images there's no connection with

that image to Billy the Kid at JC meal asked did Black Cowboys ever exist yes they did in fact as many as 25% of cowboys in the old west were black after the Civil War there were a lot of freed African-Americans they're looking for opportunity one place for opportunity is in the American West another Outlet uh for African-American men was the US Army the Buffalo Soldiers the ninth and 10th Cavalry were African-American units one very famous African-American in the West Was a law man his name was bass Reeves bass Reeves was noted for the many

gun scrap and also the the many arrests that he made many people think that he was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger and according to some accounts he actually worked with Indian Scouts which might lead to this theory that he was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger at ads marketing 24 when did branding cattle start that's a great question actually The Branding of livestock goes way back in fact to ancient Egypt but as far as North America when the Spaniards arrive they're bringing their cattle and their sheep and they're also bringing the ways of running

livestock and we really have our first cowboys they were called the Vos this starts this whole cattle culture and a lot of the cowboying that still goes on today can be directly traced to these bakos and to the Spanish practices one of those practices of course is branding identifying your livestock this is really a Cool brand because uh we know that it's a Mexican or Spanish brand and the reason we know that is that the letters have seraps non-mexican or Spanish Brands generally don't have the seraps The Branding Iron can get very hot okay if

you're branding a lot of cattle so this is where you would put a wood handle in the end the fact that it's not one long handle makes it easier to transport out on the Range if you got something you can break down okay at guilded Santiago why was the 10 gauge shotgun so popular in the wild west did they just want things extra super duper dead or what well they did want things dead so if you've heard of the stage coaches if you heard of Wills Fargo the shotgun messenger he sat next to the driver

and he held a 10 gauge shotgun and that's where the phrase comes that you're riding shotgun it was also manufactured with a shorter Barrel when the gun goes off the shot is going to spread quicker at your target it's going to be very wide if you're riding shotgun and you got a couple of robbers up there you want a big pattern and hopefully knock them out of commission there were two other Firearms very popular one is the Winchester repeater you might have heard of the model 1873 it is a lever action weapon so it fires

several rounds each time you work the lever action the other weapon that also fired several rounds is the Colt Single Action Army revolver sometimes they called The Cult The Peacemaker uh because that ended any kind of arguments it has six Chambers you tried not to put a bullet in the chamber underneath the hammer because if the gun dropped or if you knocked it against something and the hammer went into the cartridge it could go off so most Cowboys most lawmen they rested the hammer on an empty chamber so that they wouldn't have any kind of

accidents at weed Mouse asked how accurate is Red Dead Redemption I think it's it's as accurate as an average to good Western one thing that always stands out to me in that game is the way the men wear their guns and their holsters it's the Hollywood holster rig they have the holsters really low down on the hips for the Fast Draw but in the actual old west they had them riding up very high I mean it's easier to get on a horse if you you got the olster up high on your belt it seems like

there's also a lot of action in a campground and a campground was actually kind of a common thing if you're just arriving at a location or town well you're going to be camping on the outside of town before you get settled in that's what the herbs did when they came to Tombstone they didn't initially have a place to live Epica asked what was literacy like in the old west did people on the froner generally know how to read and write yes they did maybe you've heard of the one room Schoolhouse even in the very remote

places in the west they hired teachers and some of your famous Outlaws could read and write we have existing letters written by William H Bonnie Billy the Kid when he was pleading for a pardon uh from the governor Jesse James wasn't a good speller or a good writer but he could read and write wrote letters to the newspaper love to see his name in the newspaper some of the dime novels were actually written about Outlaws there were dozens and dozens of dime novels about the exploits of Jesse James they were complete fiction but they were

very very popular some people at the time considered that uh they were a bad influence on the youth you know kind of like rap music a few years ago that's a bad influence the same with dime novels don't read those dime novels it's going to make you a criminal what's interesting about the dime novels especially these Jesse James James boys is that they're Heroes they're not Outlaws criminals murderers but they've been forced into this life where they have to kill to survive but but they have a good heart so it painted a different picture and

really helped boost this image image of the folk hero the Robin Hood hero which was completely bogus they did not steal from the rich and give to the poor and it it created a myth the myth of the Wild West that we in a way we live with today this next question is from quora what did they use for toilet paper in the old west Believe It or Not There was commercially manufactured toilet paper beginning in the 1850s if you're some Trading Post hundreds of miles you're probably not going to have a package of factory

made toilet paper you went out back and there was almost always an ouse and in the ouse would be your supplies to be used for wiping so it could be a dry corn cob probably more likely would be a catalog so Sears robu Montgomery Ward and also those pulp novels once you read them they were they were kind of trashy and you didn't need to read it again and there's a great story involving Wyatt her so there was a very famous stage robbery uh near Tombstone and Wyatt her suspected who it was and he had

noticed part of a dime novel like torn in half and as they're trailing these stage robbers he continues to find a page or two at different points along the trail so these stage robbers are clearly using pages from the pulp novel as their toilet paper and that's that's one way he knew that he was on the right Trail it was that same novel that he'd seen back where they were living interesting side fact about ouses so an ow house wasn't just where you went to the bathroom but you also threw refuse or trash and archaeologists

and bottle hunters get old Insurance maps of these very various old western towns cuz the ouses are shown on the maps and they'll dig down and find real Treasures buried there where the ouse used to be they're very rich for learning about how people lived in the 19th century I am the driving wants to know if I was in the old west and was in standoffs I wouldn't wait to shoot I'd shoot right away why did they wait it's literally a contest to shoot the other guy first well they did not wait there were not

these Hollywood standoffs between gunfighters normally these guys are taking pot shots they're trying to assassinate or Ambush him if you're dealing with a a murderous individual who's Adept at Firearms you're not going to give him a chance to kill you perfect example is with Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Pat Garrett was not going to give Billy a chance to gun him down to draw his gun when Billy the Kid steps into the darkened room at Fort suar and says keness who is it Pat Garrett recognized his voice and he opened up he fired Two

Shots the first shot hit Billy in the chest and Outlaw Billy the Kid was no more the only time there was actually really a classic standoff was at the okay Corral at Morgan some comments I would not survive in the old west pork and beans is just Grim well you know it wasn't just pork and beans there was actually uh pretty fine dining in the boom towns cattle towns they actually had oyster saloons in Dodge City in the 1870s there was one Saloon that advertised fresh oysters daily these would be packed in barrels and actually

oysters could last for a few weeks before they spoiled so uh as long as you had a wagon train or stage coaches actually get fresh shipments in each day but if you're a cowboy and you're with the cattle herd out on the Range or driving the cattle from Texas up well you got fresh beef on the hoofs so you can have fresh beef but beans were popular cuz uh they stored well I mean they're dry if you're on the trail you want foods that are going to last quite a while so each cattle drrive had

a Chuck Wagon the Chuck box had flour dried beans the cooks you know he's got dutch ovens where he can make biscuits cornbread there was a little bit of variety there even on a cattle drive at Western online ask who is your favorite old west gunfighter now that's tough I always had liked the look of Wild Bill Hickock cuz he had this flowing long hair it's curly he was a snappy dresser and then he had those two pistols pointing forward what they call the cross draw and they're pearl handled or ivory handled but I think

he's edged out for me by Doc Holiday Doc Holiday had a dental degree he was a heavy Drinker uh he could be very belligerent and then he has this great friend the greatest law man in the west Wyatt her the reason they're friends is because Doc Holiday actually saved Wyatt her's life in Dodge City Optiplex 9000 ask what was there to do in a saloon in the wild west did people just drink was there any food served or activities hosted by the owner there were all kinds of things going on in Saloon some saloons of

course had eating establishments connected to them they actually had lunch counters in the 19th century lunch wasn't the standard noon day Day meal if you were having lunch it meant a a snack or a small meal in Tombstone Arizona there was a saloon called the Oriental and it had chandeliers and it had the Brussels carpets it had these elaborate carved wooden back bars with large mirrors some of these saloons actually had a reading area where they stock magazines and books and so you could enjoy that where you're taking a break from the Pharaoh table there

were actually broel uh that coexisted in these communities along with saloons and prostitution was going on you often had a situation where a gambler had a girlfriend or significant other who was a prostitute one of the unknown things about Wyatt her he actually worked in a broel he was a bouncer and he also might have been a pimp himself uh for a short time he did this in uh Peoria Illinois as a young man gracely wants to know what are some lesser known facts about the old west that might surprise most well one thing it

might surprise most is there actually was more than one Billy the Kid we always think of William H Bonnie Henry mccardy IUS the kid there was actually a Billy the Kid in Tombstone Arizona at the time of the OK carral if you look at the prison records you'll find a lot of people that had the nickname or went by uh Billy the Kid another thing it's not well known and actually kind of eerie involves the outlaw Jesse James Jesse James was very superstitious and he claimed to see a ball of light what we might call

or refer to as ball lightning some people call it swamp gas and they were kind of an omen something big was going to happen he saw this light uh before the Northfield raid where the gang was defeated and driven out of town by the town's people and he also saw it a short time before he was assassinated by the Ford Brothers at chanted X you ever wonder why the saloon doors in the old west were designed the way they were you know I've looked at lots of photos of saloon exteriors historic photographs and I haven't

yet come across one with these Swinging Doors usually it's just a regular door or large door my suspicion is is that these swinging doors were very convenient for Movie Makers because you can see someone coming in and out the swinging door you can see right away that's whyatt her that's Wild Bill Hickock so I'm I'm guessing that's kind of a a Hollywood thing those Swinging Doors fun fact some of these old west characters figures made it out the Hollywood and some of these early silent films had these Western Legends these Western characters on set advising

in fact some of these individuals even appeared in the background scenes of some of these films Carl 2K1 asked which Native American tribes were the most fearsome and formidable foe the US government faced and why so there are several nations in the American West in the southwest we have generally the the Apaches on the central plains we have the cheyen and arapahos down here in Texas and the Southern Plains the commanches and then up here on the Northern Plains we have the Crow and the Lakota the crows became allies of the US government or the

military but you know that question which is the most fearsome or more formidable you have to remember they're all fighting for their culture for their lifeways for their people who wouldn't be formidable or ferocious if you're trying to protect uh your families and that's certainly the case with Crazy Horse in Sitting Bull they refuseed to sign treaties and that put them on a collision course with a man named George Armstong kuster and his seventh Cavalry here's another question from quora what went wrong that led to the decimation of kuster troops at Little Big Horn well

I think I would phrase that what went right for the lotas and cheyen who were fighting George Armstrong kuster so what went right for them is that George Armstrong kuster divided his regiment he had about 556 fighting men 30 some officers he splits his regiment into three battalions he sends one under Captain bentin off in this direction to look for more Indians he sends the second in command under another Battalion under major Marcus Reno up the valley towards the village and so kuster takes five troops in his Battalion and goes across these Hills in this

direction well immediately as Reno gets to the Village these Indians are massing he halts his charge he doesn't charge into the village he ends up retreating and the thing to keep in mind with this battle is that these Warriors are fighting to protect this Village it's their wives it's their mothers it's their sisters and they're also very accomplished masterful horseback Fighters they really know their business and they have a reason to fight and because George Armstrong kuster divided his regiment they can attack them peac meal so first they defeat Reno force him to retreat to

the Bluffs then they can concentrate on kuster over here on kuster hill and his five companies and they decimate all 210 men under kuster's command and kuster himself dies with his men on what known today as Last Stand Hill way over here on a hill that overlooks this Village at f1st I didn't realize how wellmade Navajo blankets were in the 1800s that history of living off the Earth with Bare Essentials was amazing well it truly was and we've got a Navajo blanket right here the navajos were making blankets as early as the 1600s they learned

to make blankets apparently from the PUO Indians who had long been making blankets they're made on a vertical Loom it's a very tight weave the navajos eventually raised their own sheep so they could have their own wool and it became an industry that exists to this day so this is a a pipe bag but this tells us that the North American Indians on the plains were involved in a global market economy this decoration or glass beads that were made in Italy they were transported here in trade with the Plains Indians for their buffalo robes the

Buffalo robes are being shipped to Europe the North American Indians are getting brass kettles they're getting Firearms I mean they're tied into the entire world and it's reflected in this they learned to live off the land what nature provided them they made very good use of of and at the same time they made it beautiful at IO Rich ask when does the old west start and he's got a poll so one option here is Lewis and Clark 1803 to 1806 the core of Discovery Lewis and Clark are sent out west by Thomas Jefferson to really

explore the Louisiana Purchase that they've just acquired from France they're looking for a Transportation Route we've got mountains Plains there's an unexplored country is there a way to get across it they're introducing some of these indigenous populations these Indian nations to the United States Lewis and Clark brought with them peace medals the Indians were used to getting peace medals because of Great Britain France and Spain and so the United States well we have to have our peace medals to impress these leaders of these Indian nations as well another is the Treaty of Guadalupe hiago in

1848 and that is how the United States acquired from Mexico what we now call the American southwest this is the whole chunk of land that's acquired through that treaty so that's another option is the beginning of the west or at least according to the poll we also have the end of the Civil War you have a lot of Civil War veterans uh that go west but we also have here the Transcontinental Railroad the Transcontinental Railroad stretches all across the Plains and across the Rocky Mountains and it allows a migration of people passengers to take the

trains all the way across the country in a way this term you hear Manifest Destiny that the United States was destined to expand from Ocean to Ocean the railroad completes that that idea that theory so those are all really good suggestions I kind of like the the end of the Civil War for that classic period of the old west well that's all the questions for today they were good questions enjoyed answering them thank you for watching wild west support turkey and the straw turkey in the hey he hey