Uncivilized Civilization in the West
Towns sprung up, then the railroad came through. What became known as cattle towns, such as Dodge City, Kansas, were born. Now the west was filled with hard-working cowboys, gamblers, outlaws and lawmen, and those ever necessary at the time Soiled Doves.
Earp, Custer, and Crazy Horse
As the west moved toward a new century Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were shooting it out at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Billy the Kid took a deadly slug from Pat Garrett, and George Armstrong Custer fought his last fight at the Little Bighorn. Sitting Bull returned from Canada and traveled for a while with Cody's Wild West Show. Crazy Horse turned himself in and was murdered by one of his own kind but Red Cloud lived to be an old man.
Black Hills, Hickok, and Deadwood
Sometime after the Black Hills were taken away from the Sioux so the whites could get to the gold there, the town of Deadwood sprung up and, there, Wild Bill Hickok died with a bullet in his brain. Perhaps that was when the Wild West really began to die. Perhaps all of these events, and more, were just minute breaths extinguished as the Wild West died, only to live forever in the hearts of all of us that still dream about when the west was young.
Previous: The Cow or the Buffalo: The West Not Big Enough For Both.
Recommended Reading:
Maude Adams: The Girl Who Grew up to Become Peter Pan.
Slave Revolt: Bloody Mayhem Planned.
Sources:
Brady, Cyrus Townshend. The Sioux Indian Wars, From the Powder River to the Little Big Horn. Indian Head Books, New York, 1992.
Brown, Dee, forward by. The Wild West. Warner Books, A Time Warner Company, 1993.
Capps, Benjamin. The Great Chiefs: The Old West. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1975.
Fifer, Barbara. Vicky Soderberg. Along the Trail with Lewis and Clark. Montana Magazine, 1998.
Horn, Huston. The Pioneers: The Old West. Time-Life Books, New York, 1974.
Utley, Robert M. The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1984.
Willison, George F. The Gold Rush: The Search for Treasure in the American West. Indian Head Books, New York, a division of Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1992, previously entitled Here They Dug the Gold.
