Historian Answers Wild West Questions
Historian Mark Lee Gardner joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about the Wild West era. Who was the most dangerous outlaw in the old west? What did folks use for toilet paper way back then? How accurate is the depiction of life in the old west in "Red Dead Redemption 2?" Old west historian Mark Lee Gardner covers these questions and plenty more on Wild West Support.
Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey
Director of Photography: Josh Bane
Editor: Philip Anderson
Expert: Mark Lee Gardner
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Casting Producer: Nicholas Sawyer
Camera Operator: Freddie Ochoa
Sound Mixer: Brad Dunn
Production Assistant: Noelle Aguilar
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Jason Malizia
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Special Thanks: Vance Gardner
Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey
Director of Photography: Josh Bane
Editor: Philip Anderson
Expert: Mark Lee Gardner
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Casting Producer: Nicholas Sawyer
Camera Operator: Freddie Ochoa
Sound Mixer: Brad Dunn
Production Assistant: Noelle Aguilar
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Jason Malizia
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Special Thanks: Vance Gardner
Category
đ€
TechTranscript
00:00I'm historian Mark Lee Gardner. Let's answer your questions from the internet. This is Wild West Support.
00:11This question is from Quora. Who is the most dangerous outlaw in the Old West?
00:16Well, there's several candidates. John Wesley Hardin maybe killed as many as two dozen men.
00:21He's the one you might have heard of that killed a man just for snoring.
00:25He heard a loud snoring through the thin wall in this hotel and fired several shots, and he stopped snoring.
00:31But I just think Jesse and Frank James are a little scarier. I would vote for them as the most dangerous.
00:36Jesse and Frank had come out of a very vicious, horrible civil war.
00:40One of their leaders was called Bloody Bill Anderson, and he actually hung Union soldiers' scalps from his bridle and saddle.
00:47And after the war, because they'd become so numb to that violence, it just didn't bother them to kill somebody.
00:53And there were lots of innocent victims in their robberies. You either opened up the safe or you got shot, and they were serious.
00:59One man who knew them said, if Jesse said he was going to kill you, you could probably talk him out of it.
01:04But if Frank said he was going to kill you, he was going to kill you.
01:07At Made of Dope, WTF is a 49er. Gold is discovered in California in 1848.
01:15The news rushes eastward, and the very next year, 1849, sees hordes, thousands of potential gold seekers traveling west to California, and they got named the 49ers.
01:33I feel like the Wyatt Earp, Kevin Costner version, is a little more accurate in that it has the gunfighters much closer together.
01:39They were literally within a few feet of each other.
01:42The Tombstone movie with Kurt Russell, it's a very big lot, and actually that lot where the gunfight occurred, estimates are as small as 15 feet across.
01:50So it's very tight, very compacted.
01:52One thing that I liked about both films was that they did pull from the historical dialogue that was taken down in witness testimony after the O.K. Corral gunfight.
02:02That one famous line where Doc Holliday tells one of the McLaurys, he says, you're a daisy if you do.
02:08Well, that actually was what he spoke at the time.
02:10But the one thing that really stood out to me was that they have the Earps and Doc Holliday pulling guns from holsters.
02:16Wyatt Earp pulled his revolver from a coat pocket.
02:18Doc Holliday pulled his revolver from a coat pocket.
02:22It was very common at that time to have tailors make pistol pockets in your coats.
02:26It's said that Wyatt Earp's pocket was actually lined with canvas to ease a revolver coming out of that pocket and not catching the hammer on your coat.
02:35User 714943 says, please help me make a Wild West playlist.
02:40Well, I'd be happy to.
02:41I play lots of Wild West songs.
02:43You know, the Cowboys love all kinds of music, sentimental ballads.
02:47Here we have a couple of cowboy musicians in Texas, and they also like songs about the range.
02:52And we'll do one for you right now.
02:54Hit it, Vance.
02:55As I walked out one morning for pleasure, I spied a cow puncher all riding alone.
03:03His hat was thrown back and his spurs were a jinglin' as he approached me a-singin' this song.
03:12Whoopee tie, yi, yo, get along little doggies, it's your misfortune, none of my own.
03:19Whoopee tie, yi, yo, get along little doggies, for you know Wyoming will be your new home.
03:29So in that song, you hear the word doggie.
03:31That was an orphaned calf.
03:33An orphaned calf is eating, you know, kind of coarse range grass, and their bellies get extended, and they were called doe-bellied or doe guts.
03:43And from that, we get the word doggie.
03:45Here's another one for your playlist.
03:46It's old Dan Tucker.
03:50Old Dan Tucker down in town, riding a goat and leading a hound.
03:54The hound gave a howl, the goat gave a jump.
03:56Those old men are straddling stump.
03:58Get out the way.
03:59Get out the way.
04:00Get out the way, old Dan Tucker, he's too late to get his supper.
04:04Get out the way.
04:05Get out the way.
04:06Get out the way, old Dan Tucker, he's too late to get his supper.
04:13Thank you, Vance.
04:16At Chris J. Jarrett says,
04:18Watching a Western the other day, and they had to check their guns to come into the city.
04:22Made me think.
04:23Did the old West have stricter gun laws than we have now?
04:26They did have very strict gun laws in the towns or the cities.
04:29Places like Tombstone, Wichita, and Dodge City, these are big cattle towns.
04:33They're driving huge herds of cattle in.
04:35The cowboys are getting paid off.
04:37They have guns.
04:38It's dangerous.
04:39So these communities had city ordinances preventing the wearing of guns,
04:43preventing having concealed weapons.
04:45Only lawmen were able to carry their guns.
04:48It's a very dangerous occupation for a lawman to disarm drunken cowboys.
04:52So these cowboys, when they came in with their guns, they had to check them.
04:56They had to drop them off at a certain location, and then when they were leaving town,
05:00they could pick their guns up and take them back with them.
05:03But they could not be wearing firearms while they were in these city limits.
05:07At Lee Sachs, did old West saloons have anything else to drink other than whiskey and beer?
05:12Cowboys must like a fancy drink every once in a while.
05:15All these boom towns, whether it was Dodge City or Deadwood or Tombstone,
05:19they had well-stocked bars.
05:22And we have lots of photographs, and you can see all different types of bottles,
05:25whether it's wine or champagne, brandy, gin.
05:28In 1874, there was a book published, The Bartender's Guide,
05:32that gave you how to make cordials, juleps.
05:36The more elaborate bars, and there were many, could just make any drink that you had a hankering for.
05:41Javert Hugo asks, what hats were really most common in the Wild West?
05:46The most famous hat maker actually made the hats in Pennsylvania.
05:49His name was John B. Stetson.
05:51But he had gone to the West. He was part of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush in 1859.
05:54But in the 1860s, he developed a hat called the Trail Boss.
05:58And it had a flat crown and just a standard wide brim, but it was very well made.
06:03And he developed a reputation.
06:05And I've actually got a real Stetson hat here.
06:08This is a John B. Stetson.
06:10It's got the wide brim, nothing fancy with the crown.
06:13This is called a pencil roll rim here.
06:15This is probably from the 1920s or 1930s.
06:18They weren't the only ones that made cowboy hats.
06:21But if you were a cowboy and you had the money, you wanted a Stetson.
06:25Another popular style of hat was the Derby, or what might be called the Bowler Hat.
06:29There's that famous picture of the Wild Bunch, the Outlaws, Butch Cassidy.
06:33And some of them are wearing the Derby hats.
06:35And if you wore a certain kind of hat, you might draw attention and get picked on.
06:38There's a story from Tombstone, Arizona.
06:40Whenever a dude came in wearing a top hat, now a dude is like a newbie, city slicker, what have you.
06:47Doc Holliday, if they spotted him, would follow that dude around ringing a dinner bell, drawing attention.
06:53You know, we've got a dude here. We've got a newbie in town.
06:55The next question is from the AskHistorian subreddit.
07:00Just saw Killers of the Flower Moon and it takes place in the 20s, but still feels very much like the late 1800s.
07:06Well, that's a great question. Some people might say the Buffalo.
07:09When the Buffalo are no longer free ranging, when barbed wire fences are stretched across the plains,
07:14there are no longer cattle drives, that could be the end of the Old West.
07:18But to me, it's when the automobile takes the place of the horse.
07:22Maybe that's the 1930s or 40s, but when there's no more horses on the streets, then to me the Old West is over.
07:28Jed Houston wants to know, how many buffalo roamed this country before they were slaughtered to near extinction?
07:34Before the horse was introduced to North America by the Spanish, the estimates go from 28 to 30 million buffalo on the Great Plains.
07:42In the early part of the 19th century, the robe trade was very popular.
07:46The Indians hunted the buffalo and the Indian women fully tanned these robes.
07:51They were used in the East in Europe as lap robes, but a good robe had to come from a cow or a calf.
07:57It's easier to work the hide. So that's the breeding population.
08:01If you're just killing cows and calves, it's kind of a recipe for disaster.
08:05In 1860, a newspaper reported that probably 800,000 buffalo were slaughtered each year.
08:11There are lots of examples of passengers on the steam trains shooting at the herds as they sped down the tracks.
08:19You can see an example of that in film in the movie Dead Man with Johnny Depp.
08:23By 1884, then, there's estimated just 324 buffalo in the United States.
08:29A lot of it was meat hunters. That's how Buffalo Bill Cody got his name.
08:33He was hunting buffalo and getting meat for the railroad crews.
08:36And interestingly enough, Buffalo Bill later starts a Wild West exhibition,
08:41the same show that featured the famous gunwoman known as Annie Oakley.
08:47AtAndyDoodle56 says,
08:49Wait, Annie Oakley was real?
08:51Yes, she was real. Annie Oakley was the real deal, too.
08:54She was an excellent marksman.
08:56She had a partner. She would look at the mirror, had the gun over her shoulder.
09:00She'd have a cigarette in his lips, and she would shoot off the end of the cigarette.
09:04It seems very dangerous.
09:06Buffalo Bill Cody, the Wild West exhibition, traveled really around the world.
09:10One of the big draws for Buffalo Bill Cody's show was these stage recreations,
09:15whether it was a buffalo hunt, whether it was an Indian attack on a wagon train,
09:19a robber's attack on a stagecoach, the cavalry.
09:22They got to see Sitting Bull one year.
09:24Sitting Bull was well known as a leader of the Lakotas.
09:26They actually could see this person they'd read about, see him in the flesh.
09:30I mean, it was quite an experience.
09:32Very, very popular, and it went for decades.
09:34AtMinilNox says,
09:36What do you mean the only authenticated photo of the real Billy the Kid was only found in 2011?
09:41Well, there is only one authenticated, and it existed a lot before 2011.
09:46It's this here.
09:48This is a tintype that was made at Fort Sumner of Billy the Kid by a traveling photographer.
09:53We don't know who the photographer was.
09:55There's something you have to know about tintypes.
09:57Tintypes are reverse images.
09:59If you look in this image, you would think that Billy the Kid was left-handed.
10:02In fact, there's a movie with Paul Newman called The Left-Handed Gun.
10:05That's the story of Billy the Kid.
10:07He's called The Left-Handed Gun because of this image.
10:09But because we know that tintypes are reverse images,
10:12actually, Billy has his pistol on his right hip.
10:16So this is the image corrected the way that it should be.
10:20And actually, this is an enlargement of the tintype.
10:23The actual tintype was the size of this tintype.
10:26It's very small.
10:27And the reason it's called a tintype is because the photograph is actually made on tin.
10:31The emulsion is on a very thin piece of tin.
10:34Technical name, ferrotype.
10:36And the reason we know that this photo of Billy the Kid is authentic
10:40is because it was identified as Billy the Kid in his own lifetime.
10:44It appeared in the Illustrated Police News while he was still alive.
10:48A few years ago, this actual tintype, the one that's in this image,
10:52this sold at auction for $2.3 million.
10:57So that had a huge effect because when a small tintype brings that kind of money,
11:02people are going to start looking for other pictures of Billy the Kid.
11:05So in recent years, there have been a lot of photos.
11:09They have some kind of a resemblance to Billy the Kid.
11:12But you just can't identify a photo based on resemblance.
11:15You have to have some kind of provenance that links it to Billy the Kid.
11:18There's a picture of supposedly Billy the Kid playing croquet.
11:22These are wannabe images.
11:23There's no connection with that image to Billy the Kid.
11:26At JCMealAsks, did black cowboys ever exist?
11:29Yes, they did.
11:30In fact, as many as 25% of cowboys in the Old West were black.
11:35After the Civil War, there were a lot of freed African Americans.
11:38They're looking for opportunity.
11:39One place for opportunity is in the American West.
11:42Another outlet for African American men was the U.S. Army, the Buffalo Soldiers.
11:47The 9th and 10th Cavalry were African American units.
11:50One very famous African American in the West was a lawman.
11:54His name was Bass Reeves.
11:55Bass Reeves was noted for the many gun scrapes and also the many arrests that he made.
12:01Many people think that he was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger.
12:05And according to some accounts, he actually worked with Indian scouts,
12:09which might lead to this theory that he was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger.
12:14At AdsMarketing24, when did branding cattle start?
12:18That's a great question.
12:19Actually, the branding of livestock goes way back, in fact, to ancient Egypt.
12:23But as far as North America, when the Spaniards arrive, they're bringing their cattle and their sheep.
12:28And they're also bringing the ways of running livestock.
12:31And we really have our first cowboys.
12:33They were called the vaqueros.
12:35This starts this whole cattle culture.
12:38And a lot of the cowboying that still goes on today can be directly traced to these vaqueros and to the Spanish practices.
12:44One of those practices, of course, is branding, identifying your livestock.
12:49This is really a cool brand because we know that it's a Mexican or a Spanish brand.
12:54And the reason we know that is that the letters have serifs.
12:58Non-Mexican or Spanish brands generally don't have the serifs.
13:02The branding iron can get very hot if you're branding a lot of cattle.
13:06So this is where you would put a wood handle in the end.
13:09The fact that it's not one long handle makes it easier to transport out on the range.
13:14You've got something you can break down.
13:17Why was the 10-gauge shotgun so popular in the Wild West?
13:21Did they just want things extra super duper dead or what?
13:25Well, they did want things dead.
13:27So if you've heard of the stagecoaches, if you've heard of Wills Fargo,
13:30the shotgun messenger, he sat next to the driver and he held a 10-gauge shotgun.
13:35And that's where the phrase comes that you're riding shotgun.
13:37It was also manufactured with a shorter barrel.
13:40When the gun goes off, the shot is going to spread quicker at your target.
13:44It's going to be very wide.
13:45If you're riding shotgun and you've got a couple of robbers up there,
13:48you want a big pattern and hopefully knock them out of commission.
13:51There were two other firearms very popular.
13:55One is the Winchester Repeater.
13:56You might have heard of the Model 1873.
13:59It is a lever action weapon, so it fires several rounds each time you work the lever action.
14:04The other weapon that also fired several rounds is the Colt Single Action Army Revolver.
14:09Sometimes they called the Colt the Peacemaker because that ended any kind of arguments.
14:14It has six chambers.
14:15You tried not to put a bullet in the chamber underneath the hammer
14:20because if the gun dropped or if you knocked it against something
14:24and the hammer went into the cartridge, it could go off.
14:26So most cowboys, most lawmen, they rested the hammer on an empty chamber
14:32so that they wouldn't have any kind of accidents.
14:34At Weed Mouse asks,
14:36How accurate is Red Dead Redemption?
14:38I think it's as accurate as an average to good Western.
14:41One thing that always stands out to me in that game
14:44is the way the men wear their guns and their holsters.
14:47It's the Hollywood holster rig.
14:49They have the holsters really low down on the hips for the fast draw.
14:53But in the actual Old West, they had them riding up very high.
14:56I mean, it's easier to get on a horse if you've got the holster up high on your belt.
15:00It seems like there's also a lot of action in a campground.
15:03And a campground was actually kind of a common thing.
15:07If you're just arriving at a location or town,
15:10well, you're going to be camping on the outside of town before you get settled in.
15:13That's what the Earps did when they came to Tombstone.
15:15They didn't initially have a place to live.
15:18Ebica asks,
15:19What was literacy like in the Old West?
15:21Did people on the frontier generally know how to read and write?
15:25Yes, they did.
15:26Maybe you've heard of the one-room schoolhouse.
15:28Even the very remote places in the West, they hired teachers.
15:31And some of your famous outlaws could read and write.
15:34We have existing letters written by William H. Bonney,
15:37Billy the Kid, when he was pleading for a pardon from the governor.
15:40Jesse James wasn't a good speller or a good writer,
15:44but he could read and write.
15:45Wrote letters to the newspaper.
15:47Loved to see his name in the newspaper.
15:48Some of the dime novels were actually written about outlaws.
15:51There were dozens and dozens of dime novels about the exploits of Jesse James.
15:55They were complete fiction, but they were very, very popular.
15:58Some people at the time considered that they were a bad influence on the youth.
16:04Kind of like rap music a few years ago, that's a bad influence.
16:07The same with dime novels.
16:08Don't read those dime novels.
16:09It's going to make you a criminal.
16:10What's interesting about the dime novels,
16:12especially these Jesse James, James boys, is that they're heroes.
16:16They're not outlaws, criminals, murderers,
16:18but they've been forced into this life where they have to kill to survive,
16:22but they have a good heart.
16:24So it painted a different picture.
16:27It really helped boost this image of the folk hero,
16:30the Robin Hood hero, which was completely bogus.
16:32They did not steal from the rich and give to the poor,
16:34and it created a myth, the myth of the Wild West,
16:37that in a way we live with today.
16:39This next question is from Quora.
16:44Believe it or not, there was commercially manufactured toilet paper
16:47beginning in the 1850s.
16:49If you're some trading post hundreds of miles,
16:51you're probably not going to have a package of factory-made toilet paper.
16:55You went out back, and there was almost always an outhouse,
16:58and in the outhouse would be your supplies to be used for wiping,
17:01so it could be a dry corncob.
17:04Probably more likely would be a catalog,
17:07so Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, and also those pulp novels.
17:11Once you read them, they were kind of trashy,
17:13and you didn't need to read it again.
17:15And there's a great story involving Wyatt Earp.
17:17So there was a very famous stage robbery near Tombstone,
17:21and Wyatt Earp suspected who it was,
17:23and he had noticed part of a dime novel, like torn in half.
17:26And as they're trailing these stage robbers,
17:28he continues to find a page or two at different points along the trail.
17:34So these stage robbers are clearly using pages from the pulp novel
17:38as their toilet paper,
17:40and that's one way he knew that he was on the right trail.
17:43It was that same novel that he'd seen back where they were living.
17:46Interesting side fact about outhouses.
17:48So an outhouse wasn't just where you went to the bathroom,
17:51but you also threw refuse or trash.
17:54And archaeologists and bottle hunters get old insurance maps
17:58of these various old Western towns
18:00because the outhouses are shown on the maps,
18:02and they'll dig down and find real treasures buried there
18:05where the outhouse used to be.
18:07They're very rich for learning about how people lived in the 19th century.
18:11I Am the Driving wants to know,
18:13if I was in the Old West and was in standoffs,
18:16I wouldn't wait to shoot.
18:18I'd shoot right away. Why did they wait?
18:20It's literally a contest to shoot the other guy first.
18:22Well, they did not wait.
18:24There were not these Hollywood standoffs between gunfighters.
18:27Normally, these guys are taking potshots.
18:29They're trying to assassinate or ambush him.
18:31If you're dealing with a murderous individual who's adept at firearms,
18:35you're not going to give him a chance to kill you.
18:37Perfect example is with Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
18:40Pat Garrett was not going to give Billy a chance to gun him down,
18:43to draw his gun.
18:45When Billy the Kid steps into the darkened room at Fort Sumner
18:48and says,
18:49Who is it?
18:50Pat Garrett recognized his voice and he opened up.
18:52He fired two shots.
18:54The first shot hit Billy in the chest and outlaw Billy the Kid was no more.
18:57The only time there was actually really a classic standoff
19:01was at the OK Corral.
19:03At Morgan's some comments,
19:04I would not survive in the Old West.
19:06Pork and beans is just grim.
19:08Well, you know, it wasn't just pork and beans.
19:11There was actually pretty fine dining.
19:14In the boom towns, cattle towns,
19:16they actually had oyster saloons.
19:18In Dodge City in the 1870s,
19:19there was one saloon that advertised fresh oysters daily.
19:22These would be packed in barrels
19:24and actually oysters could last for a few weeks before they spoiled.
19:28So as long as you had a wagon train or stagecoaches,
19:32actually get fresh shipments in each day.
19:35But if you're a cowboy and you're with the cattle herd out on the range
19:38or driving the cattle from Texas up,
19:40well, you got fresh beef on the hoof,
19:42so you can have fresh beef.
19:43But beans were popular because they stored well.
19:46I mean, they're dry.
19:47If you're on the trail,
19:48you want foods that are going to last quite a while.
19:51So each cattle drive had a chuck wagon.
19:53The chuck box had flour, dried beans.
19:56The cooks, you know, he's got Dutch ovens
19:58where he can actually make biscuits, cornbread.
20:00There was a little bit of variety there,
20:02even on a cattle drive.
20:03At Western Online asked,
20:05who is your favorite Old West gunfighter?
20:08Now that's tough.
20:09I always had liked the look of Wild Bill Hickok
20:12because he had this flowing long hair.
20:14It's curly.
20:15He was a snappy dresser.
20:16And then he had those two pistols pointing forward,
20:19what they call the cross draw,
20:21and they're pearl handled or ivory handled.
20:23But I think he's edged out for me by Doc Holliday.
20:26Doc Holliday had a dental degree.
20:28He was a heavy drinker.
20:29He could be very belligerent.
20:31And then he has this great friend,
20:33the greatest lawman in the West, Wyatt Earp.
20:35The reason they're friends is because
20:36Doc Holliday actually saved Wyatt Earp's life in Dodge City.
20:40Optiplex 9000 asked,
20:42what was there to do in a saloon in the Wild West?
20:44Did people just drink?
20:46Was there any food served or activities hosted by the owner?
20:49There were all kinds of things going on in saloons.
20:51Some saloons, of course,
20:52had eating establishments connected to them.
20:54They actually had lunch counters.
20:56In the 19th century,
20:57lunch wasn't the standard noonday meal.
21:00If you were having lunch,
21:01it meant a snack or a small meal.
21:03In Tombstone, Arizona,
21:04there was a saloon called the Oriental,
21:06and it had chandeliers,
21:07and it had the Brussels carpets.
21:09It had these elaborate carved wooden back bars
21:12with large mirrors.
21:13Some of these saloons actually had a reading area
21:15where they stocked magazines and books,
21:17and so you could enjoy that
21:18while you're taking a break from the pharaoh table.
21:20There were actually brothels
21:22that coexisted in these communities
21:24along with saloons,
21:25and prostitution was going on.
21:27You often had a situation where
21:29a gambler had a girlfriend
21:31or significant other who was a prostitute.
21:33One of the unknown things about Wyatt Earp,
21:36he actually worked in a brothel.
21:38He was a bouncer,
21:39and he also might have been a pimp himself
21:41for a short time.
21:43He did this in Peoria, Illinois,
21:45as a young man.
21:46Grace Lee wants to know,
21:47what are some lesser-known facts
21:49about the Old West that might surprise most?
21:51Well, one thing that might surprise most
21:53is there actually was more than one Billy the Kid.
21:56We always think of William H. Bonney,
21:57Henry McCarty, Alias the Kid.
21:59There was actually a Billy the Kid
22:00in Tombstone, Arizona,
22:02at the time of the O.K. Corral.
22:03If you look at the prison records,
22:04you'll find a lot of people that had the nickname
22:06or went by Billy the Kid.
22:08Another thing that's not well known
22:10and actually kind of eerie
22:12involves the outlaw Jesse James.
22:14Jesse James was very superstitious,
22:16and he claimed to see a ball of light,
22:18what we might call or refer to as ball lightning.
22:21Some people call it swamp gas.
22:23And they were kind of an omen.
22:24Something big was going to happen.
22:26He saw this light before the Northfield Raid,
22:29where the gang was defeated
22:30and driven out of town by the townspeople.
22:32And he also saw it a short time
22:34before he was assassinated by the Ford brothers.
22:37At Chanted X,
22:38you ever wonder why the saloon doors
22:40in the Old West were designed the way they were?
22:43You know, I've looked at lots of photos
22:45of saloon exteriors, historic photographs,
22:47and I haven't yet come across one
22:49with these swinging doors.
22:50Usually it's just a regular door or a large door.
22:53My suspicion is that these swinging doors
22:56were very convenient for movie makers
22:58because you can see someone coming in and out.
23:01The swinging door you can see right away.
23:02That's Wyatt Earp, that's Wild Bill Hickok.
23:04So I'm guessing that's kind of a Hollywood thing,
23:07those swinging doors.
23:08Fun fact, some of these Old West characters, figures,
23:11made it out to Hollywood.
23:12And some of these early silent films
23:14had these Western legends,
23:15these Western characters on set advising.
23:18In fact, some of these individuals
23:19even appeared in the background scenes
23:22of some of these films.
23:23Carl2k1 asks,
23:25Which Native American tribes
23:26were the most fearsome and formidable foe
23:29the U.S. government faced and why?
23:32So there are several nations in the American West.
23:35In the Southwest, we have generally the Apaches.
23:39On the Central Plains, we have the Cheyennes
23:42and Arapahos.
23:43Down here in Texas, in the Southern Plains,
23:46the Comanches.
23:47And then up here on the Northern Plains,
23:49we have the Crow and the Lakota.
23:51The Crows became allies of the U.S. government
23:54or the military.
23:55But you know, that question,
23:56which is the most fearsome or formidable,
23:59you have to remember,
24:00they're all fighting for their culture,
24:02for their life ways, for their people.
24:04Who wouldn't be formidable or ferocious
24:08if you're trying to protect your families?
24:11And that's certainly the case
24:12with Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.
24:14They refused to sign treaties.
24:16And that put them on a collision course
24:18with a man named George Armstrong Custer
24:20and his Seventh Cavalry.
24:22Here's another question from Quora.
24:23What went wrong that led to the decimation
24:26of Custer's troops at Little Bighorn?
24:28Well, I think I would phrase that,
24:30what went right for the Lakotas and Cheyennes
24:33who were fighting George Armstrong Custer?
24:36So what went right for them
24:37is that George Armstrong Custer
24:39divided his regiment.
24:41He had about 556 fighting men,
24:4330-some officers.
24:45He splits his regiment into three battalions.
24:48He sends one under Captain Benteen
24:50off in this direction
24:51to look for more Indians.
24:52He sends the second in command
24:54under another battalion,
24:55under Major Marcus Reno,
24:56up the valley towards the village.
24:58And so Custer takes five troops
25:00in his battalion
25:01and goes across these hills
25:03in this direction.
25:04Well, immediately as Reno gets to the village,
25:07these Indians are massing.
25:08He halts his charge.
25:09He doesn't charge into the village.
25:10He ends up retreating.
25:11And the thing to keep in mind
25:13with this battle
25:14is that these warriors
25:16are fighting to protect this village.
25:18It's their wives.
25:19It's their mothers.
25:20It's their sisters.
25:21And they're also very accomplished,
25:23masterful horseback fighters.
25:25They really know their business
25:27and they have a reason to fight.
25:29And because George Armstrong Custer
25:31divided his regiment,
25:32they can attack them piecemeal.
25:34So first they defeat Reno,
25:35force him to retreat to the bluffs.
25:37Then they can concentrate on Custer
25:39over here on Custer Hill
25:41and his five companies
25:42and they decimate all 210 men
25:44under Custer's command.
25:46And Custer himself dies with his men
25:48on what's known today as Last Stand Hill,
25:51way over here on a hill
25:53that overlooks this village.
25:56At F1ST,
25:58I didn't realize how well-made
26:00Navajo blankets were in the 1800s.
26:02That history of living off the earth
26:04with bare essentials was amazing.
26:06Well, it truly was.
26:07And we've got a Navajo blanket right here.
26:10The Navajos were making blankets
26:12as early as the 1600s.
26:13They learned to make blankets, apparently,
26:15from the Pueblo Indians
26:16who had long been making blankets.
26:18They're made on a vertical loom.
26:19It's a very tight weave.
26:21The Navajos eventually raised their own sheep
26:23so they could have their own wool
26:25and it became an industry that exists to this day.
26:28So this is a pipe bag.
26:31This tells us that the North American Indians
26:33on the plains were involved
26:34in a global market economy.
26:36This decoration are glass beads
26:38that were made in Italy.
26:40They were transported here in trade
26:42with the Plains Indians
26:43for their buffalo robes.
26:44The buffalo robes are being shipped to Europe.
26:46The North American Indians
26:47are getting brass kettles.
26:48They're getting firearms.
26:49I mean, they're tied into the entire world
26:52and it's reflected in this.
26:53They learned to live off the land.
26:55What nature provided them,
26:57they made very good use of.
26:58And at the same time,
26:59they made it beautiful.
27:00At Ico Rich asks,
27:01When does the Old West start?
27:03And he's got a poll.
27:04So one option here is Lewis and Clark.
27:071803 to 1806, the core of discovery.
27:10Lewis and Clark are sent out west
27:11by Thomas Jefferson
27:12to really explore the Louisiana Purchase
27:14that they've just acquired from France.
27:16They're looking for a transportation route.
27:18We've got mountains, plains.
27:20There's an unexplored country.
27:21Is there a way to get across it?
27:23They're introducing
27:24some of these indigenous populations,
27:26these Indian nations,
27:27to the United States.
27:28Lewis and Clark brought with them peace medals.
27:31The Indians were used to getting peace medals
27:33because of the Great Britain, France, and Spain.
27:36And so the United States,
27:37well, we had to have our peace medals
27:38to impress these leaders
27:39of these Indian nations as well.
27:41Another is the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.
27:45And that is how the United States
27:47acquired from Mexico
27:48what we now call the American Southwest.
27:51This is the whole chunk of land
27:53that's acquired through that treaty.
27:56So that's another option,
27:57is the beginning of the West,
27:59or at least according to the poll.
28:00We also have the end of the Civil War.
28:03You have a lot of Civil War veterans
28:04that go west.
28:06But we also have here
28:07the Transcontinental Railroad.
28:09The Transcontinental Railroad
28:10stretches all across the plains
28:12and across the Rocky Mountains,
28:14and it allows a migration of people,
28:16passengers, to take the trains
28:17all the way across the country.
28:19In a way, this term you hear,
28:21manifest destiny,
28:22that the United States was destined
28:24to expand from ocean to ocean.
28:26The railroad completes that idea, that theory.
28:29So those are all really good suggestions.
28:31I kind of like the end of the Civil War
28:33for that classic period of the Old West.
28:36Well, that's all the questions for today.
28:38They were good questions.
28:39Enjoyed answering them.
28:40Thank you for watching Wild West Support.
28:42Turkey in the straw!
28:44Turkey in the hay!