- There was some ‘yee’ but not all that much ‘haw.’
I do love me a good Western. There’s just something about rootin’ tootin’ six-shootin’ cowboys at the lawless frontier that’s so infinitely entertaining.
Yet, in reality, there was little rootin’ and even less tootin’, while six-shootin’ was almost unheard of.
Yeah, the real Wild West wasn’t actually all that wild. What we now think of as the Wild West is almost entirely the product of novels and, later on, movies.
Here are 7 iconic things about the Wild West that in reality occurred rarely, if ever.
7) Everybody Wore a Stetson
Picture a cowboy. What does he have on his head? A Stetson hat, right?
Congratulations, you’ve been fooled. While John B. Stetson started producing hats in 1865, it was Hollywood that decided to give every cowboy one.
If you look at actual period photos, the most popular hat type was the Bowler. That was for a few reasons — they were relatively affordable, they stayed on your head well while riding, and they looked a bit fancier if you needed to make yourself presentable.
Cowboys — and others in the West — wore all kinds of hats, though. You could find top hats, flat hats, sombreros… Anything to keep the sun off your head.
Even Stetson’s original Boss of the Plains hat doesn’t look like the modern cowboy hat. It’s really more like an Amish hat.
6) Settlers and Native Americans Were at Constant War
Round up the wagons, the Indians are coming! That’s a phrase you would probably never hear in the Wild West.
Yes, there was violence between settlers and Native Americans, that’s a fact. But it was nowhere near as prevalent as Westerns would have you believe.
Let’s look at Oregon Trail, for example. Between 1840-1860, Native Americans killed 362 settlers, while settlers killed about 426 Native Americans.
That’s a lot of lost lives, we’re not saying that. But at the same time, disease (including dysentery) killed up to 30,000 people on the Oregon Trail during the same period.
The conflict didn’t really explode until U.S. control over the frontier solidified. At that point, as we all know, it was less of a war and more of a massacre — but it was the U.S. military conducting most of it, not the settlers.
5) Bandits Robbed Banks All the Time
You might think people were stupid to put their money in a Wild West bank. It’ll just get robbed.
But did it? Let’s look at the numbers.
Between 1859 and 1900, there were eight recorded bank robberies or heists across 15 U.S. states. Meanwhile, in 2011 alone, there were more than 5,000 bank robberies in America.
There are a few reasons why. The banks at the time were often right next to the sheriff’s office, and the only way in was through the front door.
You can see how that might be difficult for the robbers. As a result, wagon and train robberies were much more common — on the open prairie, no one can hear you scream.
Then, why do we think bank robberies happened all the time? It’s because the few that succeeded became REALLY famous cases precisely because trying to rob a Wild West bank was so suicidally difficult.
4) Tumbleweeds Belong in the Wild West
As the two gunmen approach each other at high noon, a lone tumbleweed blows by. Well, that much is true — there were tumbleweeds.
But there shouldn’t have been.
The tumbleweed doesn’t originate in the American West. It’s an invasive species of Russian thistle that didn’t arrive in America until the 1870s.
It did love the West, though. The plant grew so out of control that the Department of Agriculture declared it a problem in 1880.
It’s kind of funny that one of the most iconic features of the Wild West is one that shouldn’t be there in the first place
3) The Cowboys Originated in the Wild West
We often think of the Wild West period as the golden age of the cowboy. Yet, in reality, Wild West killed the cowboy.
The cowboy tradition originates with South American vaqueros. These guys have been at it since 1598 when the first vaqueros were hired. They herded absolutely enormous herds of cows in what is now the U.S. Southwest and West.
Yet, once the U.S. took over, barbed wire fences quickly went up to separate plots of land. Large as they still were, the cows could no longer freely wander around, which fairly quickly killed off both the vaquero and the cowboy — for the most part.
Sure, there are still cowboys today. But it’s ironic that the cowboy is the star of the Wild West when the Wild West is the single reason for their decline.
2) The Wild West Was Wild
Why are we even talking about the Wild West? It really was pretty mild.
Modern U.S. cities have higher murder rates than even the most notorious Frontier hellhole. And while crime happened, it was more of an exception rather than a rule — as we detailed with bank robberies.
That was largely because life in the West was really rough. And when day-to-day life is tough, you don’t need no-good bandits there to make things even harder.
When official law enforcement failed, settlers quickly banded together locally to protect public order. Do something wrong and suddenly all of your neighbors — virtually everyone you know — are pissed at you.
That’s a pretty good reason to stay civil.
1) Six-shooters Everywhere
The one thing that’s more iconic than a cowboy’s hat and horse is his six-shooter. But they rarely had them.
Don’t get us wrong — people had guns. There was a rifle or a shotgun in almost every household, and many also had revolvers (although they were a last-resort kind of gun because the Wild West revolver is stupidly inaccurate).
But they didn’t go traipsing all around the place carrying that six-shooter. Most places had a strict no-guns-in-town policy.
Residents had to keep their guns at home. If a stranger came a-ridin’ to town, they’d have to check their guns in for the duration of their stay.
In fact, the O.K. Corral gunfight — probably the most famous shootout in all of the West — happened because the Clanton gang refused to surrender their weapons to Marshal Virgil Earp.
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