American Frontier / Wild West

Bumping this thread because it's a worthy topic.

Fun fact: Apache guerrillas were a problem up until the 1930s.

It's weird that people think of the "Wild West" as a distinct historical period when Americans were continuously settling and moving westward from the Jamestown colony until 1890.

Oh yes I'd like to join in as well.
What's the most common form of punishment for horse theft?

>>1857912
A hanging, or they would wrap you in cow hide. The hide would dry, and slowly choke you to death.

>>1857645
Another fun fact: the Wild West is the period with the strictest gun laws in American history.

>>1857718
It's really not though. Read "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" which argued that as people moved further west, they began to embody what we think of as being central to the country: a distrust of authority and hierarchy, rugged individualism, etc. In other words, the move west, especially to the land farther and farther west of the Mississippi, forged the people who would become true Americans as they shed more and more vestiges of the old European, forged into a new people by new lands requiring new approaches.

The Frontier Thesis gained widespread popularity which filtered down to entertainment leading to a romanticization of the specific period post-Mexican-American War/post-Civil War which even further amplified the "Americanness" of the period and helped separate it (rightly or not) as something distinct from earlier pioneer periods. The West is our own national myth, no different than how certain other periods such as the Three Kingdoms or Sengoku Jidai play into romantic national mythmaking of China and Japan despite other periods of war.

>>1858114
Where'd they get their CCW permits?

>>1858117
Samefag but really, read it. It's a pretty good read and Turner is quite possibly the most important/influential American historian of all time ignoring all the faggy "b-b-but we must destroy his work because WOMEN AND MINORITIES WERE MORE IMPORTANT" shit..

Wasn't the whole cowboy thing a really shitty job in general, but a job a black man could get and do.

>>1857718
>"Wild West" as a distinct historical period
I always thought of the Louisana purchase as the beginning of the "wild west" and ending around the year 1912.

>>1858397
Yeah. The pay was shit as we're the conditions. The occupation has been romanticized,John Wayne being the epitome of that.

>>1858505
so it didn't involve stopping baddies on trains and fucking hot mexican sluts

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>>1858509
Wyatt Earp, a lawman, fits the bill to an extent. The man if I recall, was rather hedonistic. My favorite old west Lawmen are Bass Reeves, and Thomas J. Smith. Smith preferred to use his fists against outlaws, and survived an ambush in a bar using his knuckles.

>>1858159
There were no permits. A lot of the towns had laws that banned all guns entirely. The famous Dodge City was one of them.

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>>1858581
You been talking about the queen again Bob?

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>>1858549
>Smith preferred to use his fists against outlaws
based. any other interesting lawmen?

>>1858505
Wasn't something like 50% of cowboys black?

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I'm currently reading the autobiography of Tom Horn. He write his story while awaiting his death sentence for the murder of a young boy.

>>1858699
I'm really skeptical of any of the articles about black _____ because of all the wewuzism maymays, but I heard that quite a significant portions of cowboys were black years and years ago. I can't find a good source at the moment on what the percentage is, but I doubt its 50%, probably more like 10% if even that much.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768669

[spoiler]Red Dead Redemption 2 featuring a black cowboy makes 1000% more sense than a fucking World War 1 game featuring a black soldier.[/spoiler]

>>1858699
A lot of ex-slaves went West and did indeed become cowboys, but I can't give an estimate. Cowboys were a very diverse group of people; Mexicans, Scots,Irishmen,Blacks.

>>1858721
Any Japanese cowboys?

>>1858729
Not that I know of. The only Asian people who feature prominently in the old west, are Chinese immigrants. I know for certain that the Chinese primarily focused on mining.

>>1858729
Rawhide Kobayashi

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>>1858694
Jim Miller, the man was an absolute scumbag. I don't really know how to give the breakdown on him, he was a lawman, an assassin, and a cowboy.

>>1858505
people confuse cowboys with outlaws. cowboys were just farm hands.

>>1858699
not 50%, but many were. it was a shitty job done by poor people generally.