From exploitative prostitution to crime-infested communities.
With the West’s railways finally finished after the Civil War, formerly inaccessible places became viable for human habitation and economic growth. East Coast whites flooded west of the Mississippi River in search of mineral wealth and agricultural opportunity.
Also, many African-Americans moved westward from the South, having been convinced by advocates of black-only communities that they would be better off there. The incorporation of Chinese railroad employees significantly enriched the area’s population.
The Great Plains changed drastically as settlers arrived from the east. As farmers plowed the natural grasses to cultivate wheat and other crops, the vast herds of American bison that formerly roamed the plains were nearly wiped out.
The railroad became an integral part of the cattle business because it was a cost-effective and efficient way to transport livestock to consumers. Native Americans in the West suffered severe consequences as a result of the decline of bison populations and the expansion of European colonization.
Despite particular triumphs, American Indians generally felt outmatched by the higher numbers of settlers and the armed power of the U.S. government in the ensuing confrontations. Most American Indians were living on reservations by the 1880s, and those reserves were often located in parts of the West that were least appealing to European immigrants.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the cowboy became a cultural icon representing the American West. Some of the craziness of the Wild West era was mythical, but many tall tales and urban legends circulated about it were based on fact.
1. The Active Involvement of…Chinese Doctors
Chinese doctors were really common in the West, despite what you might think. The decision to use Chinese laborers to build the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento to Utah likely drew them there in the middle of the 1860s. Or maybe even earlier, when a large number of Cantonese joined the worldwide rush to the Gold Fields.
Peter Kwong and his wife, Dusanka Miscovic, read every western newspaper they could get their hands on and noticed that many of them had advertisements (in English) from Chinese doctors!
Western doctors were frequently charlatans or quacks peddling “snake oil” patent medications; thus, it appears that Caucasians preferred seeing these doctors, who were educated in Chinese medicine that had been in use for thousands of years, to treat their wounds, ailments, and conditions.
2. Shockingly Diverse Communities
White, all-American tough boys either band up with or face off against fellow white, all-American muscular guys in the traditional Hollywood depiction of the Wild West.
A few African-Americans, some Hispanics, and perhaps an Irishman or two might have been snuck in there for “comedic” effect, but the majority of the folks living there were 100% purebred Americans, right? In reality, this was not the case.
Much like New York City in the late 19th century, the Wild West was a melting pot of cultures and peoples. There was a massive migration of Slovaks, Finns, Norwegians, Germans, Ottomans, Swedes, and Chinese into the South and Midwest, and this trend further accelerated during the California Gold Rush.
Hollywood’s portrayal and its failings have much more to do with the stigma associated with employing actors of color than with a genuine lack of diversity in the Wild West. One in four cowboys was African-American, a fact that is rarely reflected in Hollywood films!
Slaves were transported to Texas by American ranchers, who eventually relied on them to tend to their herds while they fought in the Civil War. The need for cowhands spiked once slavery was abolished.
Bass Reeves, one of the first African-American U.S. deputy marshals west of the Mississippi River, was an incredibly celebrated African-American hero of the Old West. During his 30-year tenure, he is said to have apprehended more than 3,000 offenders!
3. The Normalized Genocide of Native Americans
Since Europeans first set foot in the New World, the frontier has been a place where vast, conflicting differences have been tolerated and even celebrated! This has led to the United States authorizing more than 1,500 wars, attacks, and raids on Native Americans — more than any other country has approved against its Indigenous people.
From an estimated 5–15 million people in North America when Columbus landed in 1492, just around 238,000 indigenous people were left by the end of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century.
A confluence of factors led to this act of racial cleansing. Most emigrants from Europe, who were not allowed to inherit property, traveled to the New World eager to take advantage of the Indians’ generous land and resource gifts. As a result of Indians’ cooperation with the British during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, American distrust and animosity toward Indians grew.
Native Americans were believed to be intrinsically incompatible with the dominant culture simply because of their skin color and speech patterns. Their spiritual ideas and worldview were also incomprehensible to most white men.
When settlers heard stories like Mary Campbell’s, it was easy for them to think that Indigenous people were pagan savages who needed to be killed. This made them even more racist and paranoid, leading to more violence.
4. Prostitution was a Vicious Cycle of Exploitation
Prostitution in those times was just as exploitative, demeaning, and traumatic as it is now, with the added advantage that local newspapers would identify, disgrace, and hound you to suicide!
The gloomy concept of the high rates of suicide, addiction, violence, and rape among frontier prostitutes is compounded by the callous reporting of it in local newspapers, as Anne Butler observes in her book “Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery.”
Annie Proulx argued that the brothels were poverty traps that kept the women and girls there in a state of constant competition for the few meager meals they were given. Put another way, it was a job for the hopeless and desperate, and certainly no way for a human being to live.
5. The Avid Use of Camels
John Wayne never rode a camel in any of his films, but it would have been perfectly legal and legit if he had! In the past, hundreds of wild camels called the Southwest United States home, all because of government interference.
To fund the acquisition and transportation of camels from Egypt, Congress allotted $30,000 in 1855. The thinking behind this was that long trips and strenuous journeys would be much simpler if they were led by a group of surly dromedaries rather than horses. Seventy camels had been acquired by the army by the time the American Civil War broke out in 1861.
During the subsequent anarchy, some camels ventured into the wild and proceeded to breed like crazy. Feral camels were a common sight in Texas for over a century, with the last confirmed sighting occurring in 1941.
6. Widespread Homosexuality and its Acceptability
In most cases, when you use the term “gay cowboy,” people automatically think of Brokeback Mountain, the 2005 film starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, based on a short story by Annie Proulx. An underappreciated aspect of frontier culture was brought to light in the Oscar-winning drama that takes place between the 1960s and the 1980s.
The presence of gay and transgender people in the American West, however, is far older than the movie makes it seem, as a new series at the Autry National Center demonstrates.
Consider the story of One-Eyed Charlie as an illustration of this. Charlie was one of the best stagecoach drivers in the wild West, but he was also known for drinking a lot and being quick with a gun. His nomadic life took him from Oregon to California, and legend has it that he earned his moniker after losing an eye while trying to shoe a horse.
Charlotte Darkey Parkhurst, known as Charlie, had really spent a significant portion of her adult life passing as a male! There was a lot of buzz around town once they figured out her actual gender. Moreover, her story continues to captivate U.S. historians, with some contending that she was the first woman to cast a ballot in a presidential election decades before the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.
It was unfeasible for landowners to be picky about who they employed in the early days of the West, according to historian and author Patricia Nell Warren, who claims that this was one of the main reasons why same-sex relationships between cowboys were routinely accepted. However, viewpoints shifted once the advent of mechanical agriculture made human labor less necessary. She claimed that “tolerance largely vanished” after that.
7. The Peculiar Pony Express
Despite being an iconic representation of the Wild West, the Pony Express only ran for 18 months, from April 1860 to October 1861. In the volatile time leading up to the Civil War, this service was established to speed the dissemination of national news to the West.
Between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, almost 1,900 miles apart, a group of 80 or more riders traveled day and night to deliver the mail!
As a result of stopping every 10 to 15 miles or so at strategically situated station houses to switch horses and keep up a full gallop, the usual 24-day delivery period was reduced to only 10 days. However, with the invention of the telegraph, this service was phased out as it became unnecessary.
8. The Terror and Violence of the Wild West
Dodge City, Kansas, was a central station along the Great Western Cattle Trail; thus, it naturally became a hub for wealth and lawlessness.
If you lived in Dodge City between the years 1876 and 1885, you had a 1 in 61 chance of being murdered since the annual documented murder rate was 165 adults slain per 100,000 inhabitants. In comparison, the murder rate in 2021’s most dangerous city, Tijuana, Mexico, was 138 per 100,000 adults!
The cyclical atmosphere of violence led to the creation of many infamous criminals. During his own lifetime, few were as well-known as Jesse James. Though he settled down in Kearney, Missouri, once his bank robbing days were finished, his former associates and adversaries never forgot him.
Jesse was buried in his farm’s front yard to prevent grave robbers from stealing his body, and his relatives reburied him in a Kearney cemetery when his enemies had died!
Evidently, the American Wild West was not as simplistic and dull as depicted in popular media; instead, it was far more nuanced and fascinating.