Was the West Really Romantic?

What do people think of the old west? Most people think of cowboys, indians, saloons, the Oregon Trail, hunting buffalo, and sitting by a fire having a nice time in general. Well, the main instigator for those thoughts came a long time ago starting with “dime novels.”

What is a dime novel? According to Dictionary.com, “it was a cheap melodramatic or sensational novel, usually in paperback and selling for ten cents, especially such an adventure novel popular c,1850 to c,1920.” Most dime novels consisted of adventure and romance of the old west back in the 1800s. One of the main stories lines were about “Buffalo Bill.” Who was Buffalo Bill? Well, Buffalo Bill was a stage name for William Frederick. William Frederick was an American scout, bison hunter, and showman for “Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.”“Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show” was about William Frederick and his adventures. Most of his adventures were dumbed down so they were happy and good for the audiences. Did you know they also made a movie about Buffalo Bill? Wait All of those reasons are for the 1800s in the modern time period movies, “The Good the Bad the Ugly,” High Noon,” “Once Upon a Time in the West,”“Sweetgrass”,“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, and even more made the image of the romantic west for the 20 first century.a

Time to see how the west really was. Did you know about 10,000 to 30,000 pioneers died on the Oregon Trail? According to Cracked.com “1 to 4 percent of that was caused by Native American, and some pioneers even died from their own cows trampling them!” According to Frontiertrails.com Because of the heavy loads, many were forced to walk the 2,170 mile journey instead of ride in the wagon. During the same period settlers killed approximately 400 native americans.

Gunfights actually didn’t happen that much in the west. There's only been 31 accounts of gunfights happening between the time of 1865 to 1918. There also gun control in the west! The famous gunfight at the OK Corral kicked off because Wyatt Earp was trying to enforce that law about gun control. You hear a lot about bank robberies in the west, but there were only eight documented bank robberies across the old west in 40 years! There's been more bank robberies in 2010 with the amount of 5,600 bank robberies in one year! Cowboys did not start in America, it started before America was even a country. The original cowboys were Mexican cattlemen known as Vaqueros. Cowboys did not wear cowboy hats they mostly wore “bowler hats” or “top hats.”

R.C. Buley in 1951 won the Pulitzer Prize for history for his 2-volume work The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period 1815–1840. Here’s a description of the old west by him. "As the earlier settlers came into the region north of the Ohio, they were confronted with two sets of problems: the one concerned with shelter, food, health, and protection – things vital and immediate to the individual and his family; the other with ownership of land, transportation, and currency – things necessary for his economic advancement."

What do people think of the old west? Most people think of cowboys, indians, saloons, the Oregon Trail, hunting buffalo, sitting by a fire having a nice time in general. What do you think about the west now?

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