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Blood and Thunder:

Academic and Public Perceptions of Violence on the American Western Frontier

Christopher George

HIS 320

Professor Tina Sheller

4/11/10
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The image that is often associated with the American western frontier in the

nineteenth century is that of the “Wild West.” This image is composed of many things,

chief among them the landscape itself and certain types of people. The frontier evokes

various people, particularly cowboys, Native Americans, gunmen, sheriffs, and bandits.

All of these images are linked by violence. As such, the idea of the “Wild West” is an

idea based around violence and death, in the popular imagination. This, ultimately, causes

a historical dilemma to arise. To what extent was the frontier actually the “Wild West,” a

place of violence and death? How have historians treated frontier violence, especially in

relation to this popular image of the frontier? How have these conceptions of the

historical frontier developed in the popular imagination, and to what extent does the

popular perception of the frontier relate to academic perceptions?

It is no doubt certain that the western frontier, which will be defined as the trans-

Mississippi region and referred to in this paper as the West or the frontier, was a violent

place in the nineteenth century. This paper will focus on the 1850s to 1900, in which

there was quite a bit of social, political, and economic conflict, which translated into

violent action. How this violence has been perceived historically has shifted with time.

Academic historians have, at times, underemphasized violence on the frontier, or focused

only on particular types of violence. As academic historical sensibilities changed, so too

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did perceptions of the West as a violent place and the place of violence in Western

history. In contrast, popular perceptions of the frontier, both historical and especially

imagined, often stressed violence above all else. However, the aspects of violence

emphasized have changed over time, and to an extent reflect the culture of the day. This

sometimes results in academic and popular treatment of frontier violence as being

similar, especially more recently.

First, one must consider the actual historical reality of violence in the West. It

must be discussed in order to provide a background for how conceptions of violence

change. The frontier did have quite a variety of violent activity. People were violent

generally for reasons related mostly to survival, warfare, economic/land conflict, and

ethnic conflict. However, people also engaged in personal violence that is more popularly

associated with the “Wild West.” As such, the violence on the frontier both confirms and

denies the popular conception of the West.

Murder as personal violence existed on the frontier. There were gunmen, as

popularly thought. However, their role has largely been exaggerated. It seemed to be

mostly contained in small locales. Essentially, these locales were areas in which there

were a lot of single men and alcohol, which were primarily mining and cattle towns.

These places saw murder primarily because of the lack of settlement and the abundance

of alcohol. The mining towns of Bodie and Aurora, for example, saw a great deal of

murder, mostly as a result of these factors. 1 While personal violence certainly existed in

other contexts, this combination of place and alcohol seems to be most common element

that results in the popular idea of the western shootout.

1
Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None My Own”: A New History of the
American West (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 329-32.
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Perhaps more important to consider is the legality of violence in the Old West,

and how average people thought about violence. First of all, in some areas in the Old

West, average law-abiding citizens were well versed in violence. An editor of a Texan

frontier newspaper noted in 1876 that Texas was afflicted by, “frequent raids by hostile

Indians and thieving Mexicans. This necessitated the carrying of deadly weapons. This

practice made our people familiar with the use of deadly weapons.” 2 Whether or not this

was actually legal did not stop otherwise law-abiding citizens from carrying guns.

In point of fact, they would attempt to change laws to allow for violence in order

to protect themselves while on the frontier. In 1879, a mass meeting in Albany, Texas

was held to discuss a statute against the carrying of side arms. The meeting ended with all

present, law-abiding citizens all, to oppose that statute.3 Protective violence was thusly

legalized for that particular county of Texas was. While this may have been a localized

occurrence, specific to that particular frontier town, it is quite possible that other towns

along the frontier adopted similar positions regarding the act of violence in self-defense.

To be certain, the act of vigilantism was known throughout the West. People on

the frontier would sometimes take the law into their own hands. Vigilantism as a term

came around in the 1850s in San Francisco, relating to vigilance and vigilante

committees, and eventually described all such actions around the country.4 These actions

primarily consisted of hangings, lynching, and revenge killings, based around perceived

wrongdoing and lawbreaking. For example, in gold-rush era San Francisco (then

2
Cited by W.C. Holden, “Law and Lawlessness on the Texas Frontier, 1875-1890,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online 44, no. 2 (1941). <http://www.tshaonline.org/
Publications/journals/shq/online/v044/n2/contrib_DIVL3002.htm>
3
Holden, “Law and Lawlessness on the Southwestern Frontier.”
4
Robert Hine, The American West: An Interpretive History (Glenview, Illinois: Scott,
Foresman and Company, 1984), 42.
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essentially a frontier town), a vigilante committee attempted to purge San Francisco of its

“riff-raff”, with four people hanged in 1851 in the process. For this, they were applauded

all over the state. The committee existed for several years after, and continued to purge as

it saw fit, which included eliminating certain members of “untrustworthy” ethnicity

usually Irishmen, although other groups were persecuted as well.5 In Montana during the

1860s, another vigilance committee was set up in order to stop the violence of a gang of

outlaws led by a sheriff. Between twenty-four and thirty men were hanged in the

process.6

While these were localized events, clearly, vigilante committees existed

throughout the West, in various guises. This sometimes represented popular sovereignty,

as seems to be the case with the vigilante committee in Montana. Essentially, it involved

local and decentralized responsibility, which allowed for the use of violence. Often times,

these committees arose either in places where institutions of law were ineffectual,

corrupt, or nonexistent. However, it also reflected a tension between the rich and the poor

and ethnic tensions.7 Sometimes these vigilantes faced morally ambiguous, complicated

situations, but believed themselves in the right.8 This ambiguity, especially regarding

ethnic and class violence, was an ever-present and critical part of Western violence in the

nineteenth century.

This ethnic violence is reflected in the issue of social banditry in the southwest,

which was essentially an Anglo-Hispanic conflict. The majority of bandits in this region

from the 1850s to 1900 were Hispanic people who had been disenfranchised by the

5
Ibid., 133-34.
6
Ibid., 136-137.
7
Ibid., 137.
8
White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None My Own”, 332.
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government. This exclusion saw the rise of banditry and, therefore, increased violence.

Banditry was fairly common in this region, and perpetrated against mining towns. White

people were common bandits, but as previously stated, the majority of these bandits were

disenfranchised Hispanic people with relatively few other options to survive other than

violence.9

Some of these bandits, Hispanic or white, were figures that would take from the

rich whites and give to their poor relatives. These included legendary figures like Joaquin

Murieta and Juan Cortina. Social bandits (and normal bandits) also included white

people, such as Jesse James. All of these figures were well respected by their

communities 10. It is nevertheless important to view it in the context of ethnic violence. It

was clear that white people saw Hispanic people as violent, thieving bandits, as attested

by the opinion of the Texan newspaper editor earlier described.

These banditry conflicts were basically rooted in the result of disputes over land

and resources, which was the defining root of much of the violence in the latter half of

the nineteenth century. There was an increasing population of settlers, who wanted to

own small farms and ranches. There were also super-landholders, who essentially tried to

engage in land-enclosement. This saw a lot of violence between the two groups, whose

interests regarding the land were quite different.11

The West also experienced violence as a result of wars. During the latter part of

the nineteenth century in particular, the Civil War was responsible for both direct and

indirect violence in the West. There were several campaigns fought on the frontier, such
9
Ibid., 334-336.
10
Hine, The American West, 335.
11
Richard Maxwell Brown, “Historiography of Violence in the American West,”
Historians and the American West (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984),
244.
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as the New Mexico Campaign of 1862. As such, the frontier was soaked with the blood

of Union and Confederate soldiers, although not in levels comparable to the eastern

United States. More critically, however, violent crime rose as the result of the Civil War

as well as the earlier Mexican War. After the Civil War, there was a fifty percent increase

in violent crime. Additionally, an 1867 annual report of a Kansas State Penitentiary found

that the vast majority of its convicts were veterans. Sixty of the one hundred twenty six

convicts interviewed believed that the war was responsible for their turn to crime.12

Additionally, there was a long war between various tribes of Native Americans

and the American government during this period, between 1861 and 1890, over control of

the Great Plains. Raids occurred on both sides, with whites and Native Americans

perpetrating violence against each other. The American government, through the army,

initiated massacres against Native Americans, such as at Wounded Knee.13 This furthered

violence in the West, and therefore, the historical reality of violence in the west is further

based in warfare and ethnic tension, as opposed to just protectionism and vigilantism.

The presentation of the history of violence in the west that has just been described

is a comparatively recent trend in academia. Generally speaking, there has been extensive

development among historians regarding the history of Western violence, particularly in

recent years. Historians have always struggled with how to incorporate violence into their

histories of the West, and how this has been done has changed over the years, and of

course, varies from historian to historian.

Contemporary historians took various positions on how to discuss violence in the

West. This is quite possibly due to the nature of historians of the period in America,

12
Hine, The American West, 336.
13
Ibid., 211-12.
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where there were quite a few amateur historians and journalists working in the same

period as more purely academic historians, trying to describe and analyze events as they

occurred (or at some point afterwards). For purposes of this paper, however, they will all

be included under the umbrella of academic history, as opposed to purely popular history,

because their goal is an attempt at truth, rather than entertainment, which is what much of

the popular history this paper of is describing. Usually, academic historians of the period

underemphasized violence, while amateur historians focused on it. This trend is best

explored through the differences between two contemporary historians, Thomas

Dimsdale and Frederick Jackson Turner.

Thomas Dimsdale was responsible for the history presented earlier regarding the

Montanan vigilantism of the 1860s. A former Oxford student from England, Dimsdale

was a singing teacher at a subscription school and a journalist in Virginia City, Montana.

He published an account of the vigilantes in the area in a book published in 1866 entitled

The Vigilantes in Montana, or Popular Justice in the Rocky Mountains, compiled from

his earlier journalistic writings about the vigilantism he witnessed.14 It is worth noting

that although he was not a historian by training, he nevertheless represents a certain facet

of academia due to his academic training. His account placed an emphasis on violence, as

is fitting for the events he described. Additionally, he maintained that these actions were

necessary and equitable, and that people the vigilantes attacked were miscreants. 15

Essentially, he glorified violence, but did so in an attempt at letting people know exactly

what had happened, as opposed to going into pure fabrication. It is history, but adulatory

14
Montana Newspaper Hall of Fame, “Thomas J. Dimsdale: 1831 -1866, ” The School of
Journalism at the University of Montana, http://www.umt.edu/journalism/special_
projects/hall_of_fame/dimsdale.html
15
Hine, The American West, 137.
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history. There were several other contemporary accounts of vigilantism that were similar

in tone, notably Hubert Howe Bancroft’s Popular Tribunals, published in 1887.16

Frederick Jackson Turner, one of the leading contemporary historians of the West,

did not emphasize violence at all in his history of the West. He presented his most

famous paper, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” in 1893—while

violence was still occurring in the West. In his paper, he created a conceptual framework

for western historiography, in which land was given a tremendous amount of emphasis. It

was land that essentially defined his history.17 Additionally, he argued that the American

experience as a whole was defined by the experience of the frontier.

Yet Turner ignored the amount of violence that was often centered around the

protection of land. He did not discuss the role of land in the wars between the Native

Americans and the American government, nor did he discuss the small wars that occurred

between settlers in order to try and get land—quite a lot of violence was ignored. He

simply emphasized the role of land in defining the American West.18 He did emphasize

conflict between the West and the eastern parts of the United States, but he did not

explore conflict, and by extension violence, in the West.19

In a later book developed from the thesis of his earlier paper, Turner did discuss

vigilantism. However, he did not spend much time talking about vigilantism or its larger

effects on the American character, which was a dominant theme in his earlier paper and

in the book. In a footnote for the book, he noted, “I have refrained from dwelling on the

lawless characteristics of the frontier, because they are sufficiently well known… the

16
Brown, “Historiography of Violence in the American West,” 238.
17
Ibid, 244.
18
Ibid, 244.
19
Ibid., 253.
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vices of the frontier in its worst aspect, have left traces on American character, language,

and literature, not soon to be effaced.”20 It is simply a footnote and not a defining

characteristic of his historical treatment of the West. While he does note that it is on some

levels significant, it is not relevant to his framework.

Turner took up a scholastic distance towards violence that would define much of

the historiography of the West during the first half of the twentieth century. Turner’s

frameworks praised the role of the West in promoting what he supposed was America’s

democratic and egalitarian character. Violence, accordingly, would have no place within

this framework. Serious historians began working within the confines of an imaginary

dichotomy, which defined the “Workaday West” as legitimate history, and the “Wild

West”, an intrinsically violent place, as the stuff of popular lore and unworthy of study.

There was a sort of an intellectual distancing from that topic, as historians feared

association with the popular image of the West.21 Historians ignored violence in the face

of what was seen as more realistic and less heroic endeavors, such as mining, farming,

ranching, and so forth. As a result, many textbooks or serious histories failed to discuss

violence for most of the first half of the twentieth century.

It is worth noting that there were some discussions of Western violence in

theoretically academic forms. Dane Coolidge published a book called Fighting Men of

the West in 1932, and Eugene Cunningham published Triggernometry: A Gallery of

Gunfighters in 1934. While they did discuss violence, they did not provide any sort of

analysis of violence in the West. They also focused heavily on the role of gunfighters

20
Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Frontier in American History,” (1893: Project
Gutenberg, 2007), 32. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22994/22994-h/22994-
h.htm#Footnote_32:2_49”
21
Brown. “Historiography of Violence in the American West,” 253-54.
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exclusively.22 In effect, they were writing histories for a mass audience consumed by the

idea of the gunfighter.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, an increasing shift towards

discussing violence in the West began to be considered by Western historians in a serious

sense. This shift arguably began with the publication of Henry Nash Smith’s book Virgin

Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth in 1950. It essentially was a comparative

study of myths regarding the American West and the actual historical reality. While

Smith did not focus too heavily on violence, he did discuss Kit Carson and the blood-and-

thunder dime novel, a tradition that will be discussed in more detail later. More

importantly, however, he gave other historians a better framework to consider violence,

given the sheer presence of the violent West in American popular culture.23

This opening of Western scholarship to the study of violence resulted in many

new historical perspectives on violence. One of the first issues that was redressed was the

idea of the gunman. C.L. Sonnichsen dealt with the idea of gunmen and feuding in four

books published in the 1950s and 60s. They were more complex analyses of personal

violence than earlier histories of gunmen in the west.24 Sonnichsen did focus on the idea

of personal redress (that is, personal violence and dueling), but he was nevertheless more

complex in his analysis.

Increasingly, historians were willing to posit the idea that Turner and other earlier

historians had largely avoided—the issue of land as a centerpiece of conflict. In 1961,

Jim B. Pearson published a study of the conflict between the Maxwell Land Grant

Company and smaller landowners, which resulted in the Colfax County War in New
22
Ibid., 242.
23
Ibid., 234.
24
Ibid., 241.
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Mexico. Helena Huntington Smith discussed the Johnson County War in 1966, theorizing

it as a conflict between rich ranchers and poorer, small time ranchers over land.25

Essentially, this trend was in exact opposition to earlier historical treatises, which had

avoided the discussion of land conflicts (even when discussing land, as Turner had).

Historians also increasingly explored ethnic conflict in the West. In 1975, Robert

W. Larson published an article regarding the conflict between rich American landholders

and poor Hispanic farmers resulting in the White Cap uprising (essentially a guerilla

banditry campaign) in 1890. Robert J. Rosenbaum discussed this episode, as well as

many others, in a thorough history of Anglo-Hispanic conflict on the frontier, Mexicano

Resistance in the Southwest: “The Sacred Right of Preservation” in 1981.26 This, too,

found itself in opposition to earlier historical treatises, which had virtually ignored

ethnicity, especially with regards to conflict.

Some historians began to do comparative, statistical studies of violent crime rates

in the West. There have been comparisons drawn between violence in the West and

violence in the East. W. Eugen Hollon found in his 1974 work Frontier Violence that,

instead of being higher, violent crime rates were in general lower in the West than in the

East during the nineteenth century. Other historians did comparative histories of towns

and their relations to violence. Robert R. Dykstra did a comparative study of Kansas

cattle towns during the post-Civil War era and reached the conclusion that western

violence had been previously exaggerated. In contrast, Roger McGrath compared the

crime rates of two frontier towns in Nevada and California in the nineteenth century and

the present day, and found that the murder rates were much higher in the towns during

25
Ibid., 244-45.
26
Ibid., 246.
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the nineteenth century, although other crime rates were lower.27

Additionally, historians around the same period of time began to look at Native

Americans’ roles in the creation of history differently. Historians began to emphasize the

necessity of Native American perspectives on their own history. As such, oral historians

began an attempt to record Native American perspectives on their own history.

Unfortunately, as this relates to the Indian War and violence during the frontier period,

comparatively little has been gathered, due in large part to the lack of surviving

participants by the 1960s. Nevertheless, historians have leaned towards attempting to

present more balanced perspectives of Native Americans in general, and as such, have

worked towards debunking the myth of the perpetually violent savage. They have

discussed, in more realistic terms, the role of Native Americans on the frontier. There is,

however, still much work to be done in this field. 28 It is likely that this work will never be

completely finished.

The overall trends in historical scholarship towards frontier violence that began in

the 1950s and 60s have continued to the present, more or less unabated. Violence is

discussed in the context of economic and ethnic tension, in addition to the more popular

idea of personal conflicts. Therefore, there are more accurate, thorough histories of

violence in the West being discussed and created to this day. But what of that force which

almost deterred serious scholarship on violence in the West, popular culture? What have

its views on violence been, and how have they changed?

In general, popular culture has glorified and fixated on violence. This, as

previously stated, was partially responsible for the hesitancy of historians to discuss
27
Ibid., 256.
28
Robert C. Carriker, “The American Indian from the Civil War to Present.”Historians
and the American West (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press), 1984, 183-95.
 George 14

violence in their histories. However, like the historiography of violence, there have been

some changes to the way violence is portrayed in popular culture. For purposes of this

paper, only literature, popular theater, and film will be discussed as means of portraying

popular perceptions of the West.

The dime novel was the first mass media form to perpetuate the idea of the West

as a place intrinsically connected with violence. A dime novel was a cheap paperbound

work of fiction produced during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early part

of the twentieth. The Beadle and Adams publishing house produced the first book called

a dime novel, in 1860. Their first book, Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter,

set the tone of dime novels to come. Their publishing house would be dominated by such

Westerns, with two thirds of their publications taking place in the West. This trend

towards publishing western was practiced other publishing houses as well as popular

fiction magazines after 1900.29

Dime novelists often based their stories in historical reality. They focused on

writing about characters based on real types of people: trappers, hunter-scouts, outlaws,

soldiers, and especially cowboys. According to Hine, “the dime novelist seemed intent on

giving the impression of historical truth. He loved to use real people as subjects.” 30

However, Beadle himself once warned authors working for him to avoid, “repetition of

any experience which, though true, is yet better untold.” 31 Therefore, dime novelists

created heavily fictionalized and idealized accounts of real people. They did this to

several figures, including Calamity Jane, “Wild Bill” Hickok, and most legendarily,

Buffalo Bill.
29
Hine, The American West, 289-290.
30
Ibid., 290.
31
Cited in Hine, The American West, 290.
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These dime novels focused on violence, but on a particular sort of violence that

was viewed as justified and almost holy. Many characters were placed into situations that

were morally black and white. Violence was seen as a solution to their problems in these

situations. Cowboys, trapper-scouts, and soldiers would use violence to define

themselves as heroes. They were rough, tough, and ready to fight when necessary.

Perhaps more significantly, they were always willing to use violence to solve problems

with Native Americans, who were almost always demonized as barbarous defilers of

civilization. Interestingly, dime novels downplayed the violence of women, like Calamity

Jane, who were simultaneously demure in addition to violent (even if this was far from

the reality). Nevertheless, violence and roughness was key to the dime novel hero (or

heroine).

The dime novel began to ultimately define a popular image of the West. Henry

Nash Smith claimed that the dime novel was, “an objectified mass dream.” 32 People

outside of the West believed that this image of the West to be the historical reality, even

during the late nineteenth century. Therefore, because of the dime novel’s emphasis on

the violent hero, the lone gunman, and other such stock characters, this became the image

of the West. This would have massive repercussions on the development of the popular

perception of the West in years to come.

As previously mentioned, Buffalo Bill was a famous figure in the dime novel,

with nearly two hundred novels written about him (published by Beadle and Adams). 33

He was a trapper and scouter during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and

therefore, was an active participant in the West. However, he went beyond his actual

32
Cited in Hines, The American West, 290.
33
Hines, The American West, 292.
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activity in the West through creating a new form of entertainment that would change

popular perception of the West indelibly. Buffalo Bill catapulted himself into

superstardom by creating a brand of theater known as the Wild West show (his show

particularly being known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West). These shows, like the dime novel,

combined historical reality with the mythology of the hero, while adding in the flair of

showmanship. Additionally, these shows tended to emphasize conflicts and violence in

the same manner as dime novels. This tendency is best explained by Buffalo Bill’s Wild

West show itself.

In 1883, he created the Wild West show, with the express goal of making money

and becoming famous. Indeed, his partners promoted it as “America’s National

Entertainment.”34 It was essentially an exhibition of horsemanship and shooting

combined with theater and history. It was portrayed as being authentic, and indeed, was

based somewhat on reality. Nevertheless, it was a highly romanticized view.35 The image

of the West that Buffalo Bill focused on was the “Savage Indian”, which was a very

popular topic to focus on, judging by the topics of western dime novels of the time. Other

aspects of frontier life were focused on as well, but oftentimes these too were centered

around conflict and heroism.

The image presented in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was one based around heroic

and just conflict. Native Americans were portrayed as vestiges of a dying civilization that

the white man was right to eradicate when they opposed him, as in the Indian Wars.

Additionally, they were viewed as a critical part of American mythology. 36 Interestingly,

34
Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History
(New York: Farrar, Strouss, and Giroux, 2000), 41.
35
Ibid., 55-56.
36
L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians: 1883-933
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 12-13.
 George 17

many of the Native Americans portrayed in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show were not only

actual Native Americans but often times participants in the Indian Wars. They were

willing to portray themselves in such lights, and were in fact treated quite fairly and given

monetary compensation. Nevertheless, they were still portrayed in such violent terms,

under the orders of Buffalo Bill.37

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show reached huge audiences, resonating all over

American and reaching as far as England. These shows were performed both in small

towns in the West and in larger cities in the East, even at the Chicago’s Worlds Fair in

1893. Therefore, it had a tremendous impact on the way the public perceived the West.

Audiences, in fact did recognize that the show was fictitious, although had some

authenticity.38 Nonetheless, the portrayal of the West was tantalizing, and caused there to

be increased emphasis on frontier violence in the public mind. Wild West show, like the

dime novel it had roots in, affected the public in much the same manner.

Around the same time as the Wild West show came into prominence, the

technology of film came into being. Feature films did not yet exist, but by the turn of the

century, people were beginning to view films at nickelodeons in fairly substantial

numbers. It almost seemed inevitable that, given the popularity of dime novels in

America and Wild West shows worldwide, there would be films made in this era to cater

to the public’s demand for stories set in Western settings. Indeed, early Western films

were inextricably tied with the Wild West Shows. Buffalo Bill himself was involved in

the creation of several early films, and many personnel were involved with both Wild

West shows and Western films.39

37
Ibid., 21-42.
38
Kasson, “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West,” 221-22.
39
Ibid., 267.
 George 18

The first film in the Western genre, and arguably the most famous silent Western,

The Great Train Robbery, was released in 1903. The film depicts a train robbery by a

group of outlaws. These outlaws first tie up a man in a railroad telegraph office, then

proceed to stop a train and ransack it of all its goods, in the process killing several people.

They then take their loot off into the mountains. Several local men hear about the deed

from the telegraph operator and form a posse to recover their money. They find the

bandits in the mountains, have a showdown, and eventually recover the money after

killing all of the bandits. The film ends with a full-frame shot of the bandit leader firing

his gun at the audience.

Clearly, then, the film is based entirely around violence. It depicts bad men using

violence to take what they want, and good men using violence to enact justice on those

same bad men. Many people in the film carry and use guns. Violence, then, is depicted as

an essential feature of the fantasized West. One could not separate the wildness from the

West, even if landscape and other features did have a prominent role in the film’s

composition.

The Great Train Robber and other early silent Westerns were is in much the same

vein as the Wild West shows and the dime novels. This is especially in its tone towards

violence and its relative proximity in time to the actual frontier period. Due in some

additional part to the visual component of film, this might lead to, as with Wild West

shows, increased perceptions of authenticity among the populace. More critically,

however, these films furthered the idea of the Western hero. The West was essentially

embodied in the physical presence of men who had power and charisma.40 Naturally, this

power led them to some degrees of violence. These figures would be critical to later
40
Ibid., 269.
 George 19

Westerns.

The Western was one of the most prominent genres of films from its introduction

into the 1950’s. There were many Western films produced during this period, and would

survive both the introduction of sound and color into filmmaking. Indeed, this period of

film tends to be referred to as the period of the classic Western. These films were, on

many levels, similar to earlier silent films, dime novels, and the Wild West shows. They

emphasized the hero and his just violence. They tended to portray violence as a just tool

for cowboys and righteous gunmen, and as malicious weapon when in the hands of

bandits, Native Americans, or Hispanic people.

Some films were also based on authentic carefully selected, entertaining source

material, thus leading to increased confusion of history and entertainment. This source

material was usually material which confirmed the idea of the West as a violent place,

and often focused on shootouts (such as the numerous films based around the shootout at

OK Corral), cowboys, or the Indian Wars. Arguably, the only major difference was that

these films were made when the West was not as fresh in popular memory, which only

increased the stature of the hero.

One of the most prominent directors of westerns during this period was John

Ford. He directed many westerns during this period, particularly in the 40’s and 50’s.

One film that is particularly worth noting is 1938’s Stagecoach, which was his first film

to use sound. The film was set in a semi-historical West, taking place sometime after the

Civil War and during the Indian Wars. The film depicts the journey of several people by

stagecoach through dangerous Apache territory. They are accompanied by a detachment

of Army cavalry. Violence is at the center of the film. The Native Americans are
 George 20

portrayed as a major threat. They are potential dangers at every corner when traveling.

The characters sit and tremble at the Apache, despite a Mexican’s insistence that they are

not all that bad. Despite that scene, which may have depicted a desire on Ford’s part to

not demonize Native Americans, the Apache are violent. The film’s most famous scene is

an ambush by an Apache warband. In this scene, the warband is depicted as fairly

competent and fearsome warriors, although it is ultimately defeated by the film’s hero,

the Ringo Kid, and the US Cavalry.

Portrayed by John Wayne, the Ringo Kid is a sympathetic character, despite being

an outlaw. He is more complex than other heroes, and is based on a certain level of

humility unseen in earlier Western heroes.41 Nevertheless, he does conform to the hero’s

use of violence for just means, such as saving the stagecoach from the Apache, or to seek

revenge, as he does in the film’s final scene. At the end of the scene, once the stagecoach

has reached its ultimate destination, he has a duel with several “bad men” who had killed

his brother. After he kills them, he is ultimately able to lead a stable life with the woman

he loves. Therefore, the film portrays violence as a means for positive change in the West

when wielded by the right people, whether for the purpose of protection or for revenge.

These Western films were, as previously stated, very popular during that era. This

popularity in America ultimately reached other parts of the world, as had the Wild West

shows. Europeans particularly began to be fascinated with the West, as depicted in films,

and this led to increased production of Westerns in Europe. Italy, in particular, was

inundated with Westerns during the 1960s, thus leading to the somewhat pejorative term

“Spaghetti Western” in America. This was tied to the way that the Italian film industry

41
Peter Cowie, John Ford and the American West, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004),
80.
 George 21

worked, in addition to the actual demand for Westerns. These Westerns, however, were

quite different. Rather than being celebrations of the West, they depicted the West in a

more cynical, gritty way. Oftentimes, these films were politically motivated. Failing a

political message, these films were more critical of human nature than the classic,

American Western.42

What these films did hold in common with earlier, American Westerns was the

emphasis on violence. Violence was absolutely central to many of these Westerns.

Gunfighters and outlaws were the most common character in Spaghetti Westerns. Their

violence was not viewed as heroic, however, and was simply portrayed as a gritty reality

or something stylish. There is no clear hero in the Italian western. There are anti-heroes,

morally complex and oftentimes ambivalent figures who are often cruel, strong, and

intelligent. Even if these figures are interested in justice, they are often depicted not

necessarily as sympathetic characters who use violence, but violent men who are seeking

revenge.

Sergio Leone is the name most commonly associated with the Italian Western,

due in large part to his critical and commercial success in both Europe and America. His

films have entered into the American pop culture landscape, both because of being a

response to American popular culture and because of their entertainment and artistic

values.43 As such, have indelibly affected the perspective of Americans on the West. All

of his Westerns emphasize violence and the moral complexity of the West.

Arguably, Leone’s film that does portrays moral complexity and violence best is

1968’s Once Upon a Time in the West. The film that depicts two conflicts—a conflict
42
An Opera of Violence/The Wages of Sin/Something to Do With Death, DVD, directed
by Lancelot Narayan, (2003: Hollywood, CA: Paramount Home Entertainment, 2003).
43
Ibid.
 George 22

over the ownership of a place where a railroad is being built, and a conflict of vengeance.

As a result of these conflicts, the central characters use violence ubiquitously. The main

characters themselves are quite different from earlier stock characters in Westerns, due in

large part to their social origins and their moral complexity: Frank, a land grabbing bandit

and murderer who is attempting to legitimize himself; Cheyenne, an outlaw leader on the

run; Jill McBain, a widowed prostitute who controls a piece of land which could be

developed into a town; and Harmonica, a gunman seeking vengeance on Frank.

Like other characters in earlier Westerns, they are defined by their relationship

with violence. Unlike earlier westerns, however, their violence is not romanticized.

Gunfights are short, quick, and brutal, and thusly more realistic. There is more emphasis

on the rituals preceding violence, rather than the violence in and of itself.44 Essentially,

this perspective kills the idea of the hero, which are shown to be a dying breed of men.

Indeed, Harmonica tells Frank before a climatic duel that they are not businessmen, like

another character, but simply a breed of men who were dying out. Harmonica’s

statement, combined with depiction of violence, turns the earlier Western on its head.

Many other Italian westerns in general tended to turn earlier Western conventions on

their heads. In essence, this tendency represented a shift in popular perceptions of the

West.

Partially as a result of the popularity of the Italian western in America, films made

in America after the 1960s began to reexamine themselves and their conceptions of what

the West was and should be, as a setting. They went through a period of relative

unpopularity, perhaps because popular tastes had changed. The western remains largely

unpopular today, although there has been a revival of sorts occurring since the 1990’s.
44
Ibid.
 George 23

This reexamination made films quite different. More modern American westerns tend to,

for example, place Native Americans in sympathetic and realistic roles, such as in the

film Dances With Wolves. Violence is nevertheless still emphasized, but it is portrayed

differently. Like the Italian western, violence is portrayed as gritty business. Characters

use violence, but are much more complex and anti-heroic characters than earlier

westerns. Earlier films, such as 3:10 to Yuma were remade to fit within these paradigms.

Interestingly, some of these new films are attempting to reach better standards of

historical accuracy, particularly with regards to violent episodes in the West.

To what extent, then, are academic and popular perceptions of violence in the

West related? Arguably, the two have responded to each other throughout the nineteenth

and twentieth century. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, violence was

emphasized and mythologized in the popular perception of the West. As a result,

historians avoided seriously discussing violence in the West, because they viewed it as

corrupted by popular enthusiasm. Historians tended towards, and still tend towards

balance, which the popular perception lacked for a long time.

Historians did reexamine violence in the West, however, around the same time

that the popular imaginings of the West began to change. Arguably, this occurs for

multiple reasons. Politics were changing, and this affected all spheres of life. The changes

in the political landscape led to reexaminations of history and culture, both by academics

and by the public as a whole. This change is shown by the manner in which Italian and

later American Westerns discuss and depict violence, and how historians have begun to

place violence in their perceptions of the West. Arguably, the two have responded to each

other more at present, as trends in academia are reflected in popular conceptions of the
 George 24

West. This shift is particularly relevant in the context of Native Americans and violence

in both historians’ accounts of the Indian Wars and the treatment of Native Americans in

more recent Western films.

Ultimately, the West had quite a violent history, but how people have responded

to that has changed. Violence, perhaps because of its very nature, leads to mythologizing

by a large portion of society, which led to the manner in which the populace in general

conceived of the West, which further led to the creation of the Wild West. Arguably, this

mythologizing also affected how historians responded as well, but in the exact opposite

manner, leading to the creation of the workaday west. Increasingly, though the violence

of the West remains mythologized and avoided respectively, people on both sides are

attempting to approach violence rationally. Gone are the days of the blood and thunder

dime novel, and here is the day of a more balanced perception of Western conflict.