The American Wild West has long been romanticized through film and popular culture. Cowboys,
outlaws, and lawmen pushing through swinging saloon doors, quickdraw duels, vast landscapes,
the promise of a better life – all of this has been framed as the epitome of American
individualism and adventure, as the experiences that made Americans and made America great.
But it really wasn’t so great. A lot of horrible things went on in the Wild West,
things that were far from romantic. Welcome back to Nutty History. Today, we’re exploring why you
wouldn’t survive life in the Wild West. Just getting out west was a dangerous and deadly
journey. The main route out there for families traveling in covered wagons was the Oregon Trail,
the Mormon Pioneer Trail, and the California Trail. This network of trails has been called “the
nation’s longest graveyard”. Between the 1840s and 1860s, some 400,000 people made the trek out west.
About 1 in 10 survived. It’s estimated that along the 2,000 miles of trail,
10-15 people bit the dust every mile. And they succumbed to all kinds of horrible things.
The number one cause of death was disease. There was often very little food and a lack of clean
drinking water. Unsanitary conditions created Petrie dishes for disease.
Cholera was the number one culprit. It tore through the wagons of the Wild West pioneers.
Caused by bacteria in unclean water, some people would contract the disease in the morning and
be dead by noon the same day. Firearm wounds were another major cause of casualties along the trail,
but not in the way you might think. A lot of the pioneers were scared of Native Americans,
so they brought entire arsenals of weapons along with them on their journey.
However, for the most part, the Native Americans were pretty peaceful. Yeah,
there were some hostile tribes like the Apache and Cheyenne who were just trying to defend
their home, but for the most part, the natives actually helped emigrants traveling westward.
They would often give them supplies and help them cross rivers. Firearm wounds were often inflicted
by the pioneers on themselves. Cases of misfiring, accidental pop-offs, and hunting accidents
were by far the most common types of accidental deaths. And if pioneers didn’t immediately succumb
to their wounds, they were very likely to die due to infection shortly afterwards.
One of the most famous Wild West towns during the 1800s was Dodge City, Kansas.
It was so notorious for crime and lawlessness that the name became a common English idiom.
“Getting outta Dodge”, meaning getting away from a bad situation, was inspired by the desire of
many to get outta Dodge City, Kansas because it was too dangerous. The city took on a kind
of mythical air over the years. But how much is actually true and how much is overhyped hearsay?
Dodge City was founded in 1872 after serving as a fort since 1865, playing a role in several battles
between Native Americans and the encroaching colonizers. The town was first established as
a major buffalo trading post. By 1876, over 1.5 million buffalo hides had passed through the city.
However, nearly all the buffalo on the American plains had been wiped out by the end of the 1870s,
and Dodge City transitioned into a cattle town as cowboys would ride through with their hoofed
wares. In the first year after Dodge City was founded, there was no sheriff or law
enforcement of any kind. The town was quickly connected to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe Railroad and development exploded, leading to all kinds of people flocking to the town,
some of them admittedly not so savory in character. As a result, there was a series
of duels and deaths that first year that quickly gave Dodge City a bad reputation. Gunslingers
would often die with their boots on, and the first cemetery in the town was named Boot Hill Cemetery.
The media picked up on the initial lawlessness of Dodge City, and headlines from around the
country began sensationalizing the violence, and Dodge City was soon a mythologized symbol of the
lawless Wild West, justified or not. There was one joke that began circulating went like this: “A
gentleman wishing to go from Wichita to Dodge City applied to a friend for a letter of introduction.
He was handed a double-barreled shotgun and a Colt revolver”. Eventually, the legendary lawman,
Wyatt Earp, was brought in to restore order. Firearms were banned in certain parts of town,
and the newly built jails were soon full. Dodge City became a relatively organized town.
But its reputation had already been cemented by the press…and later Hollywood.
Saloons are a well-known staple of the Wild West. Cowboys, outlaws, prospectors – you name
it. Anyone trying to make it out west would come through those swinging doors to throw
back some drinks, gamble, and maybe get into a drunken bar fight or two. Western saloons were
inspired by Mexican cantinas south of the border. One of the first popped up in Wyoming in 1822, and
they quickly spread to frontier towns throughout the Wild West. Saloons became the most popular
attractions in town…and they were really popular. Some towns had one saloon for every couple
hundred people. In 1883, Livingston, Montana had a population of just 3,000…but they had 33 saloons.
Leavenworth, Kansas had a population of 16,500 and had 150 saloons. Due to a lack of resources
and erratic supply chains, saloon owners often had to get creative and stretch out their alcohol
supplies. Many did this by “watering” down their bottles of booze with such unsavory and deadly
ingredients like turpentine, formaldehyde, ammonia, gunpowder, and tobacco juice. Gross.
The gold rush began in California in 1849. Soon, everyone and their uncle was looking
to hit it big. People flooded into the West hoping to make their fortunes in gold or silver
or copper or zinc. The non-native population of California exploded from around 800 to 300,000
in less than 10 years. Mines began popping up all over the place. And they were far from safe.
The negative health effects of inhaling stone dust all day have been well-documented.
Tracheal cancer, lung cancer, tuberculosis, and other respiratory problems took out thousands
of miners. More immediate threats included mine fires, collapses, dynamite accidents,
and just about any other safety hazard you could think of in mining shafts that would certainly
not have passed any of the most lenient health and safety inspections. To make matters worse,
once again the Native population was destroyed by the Gold Rush. California’s indigenous
population numbered some 300,000 before the rush of 1848. Twenty years later, one third
of them had perished, either because of mining and disease, or else attacked by angry bigoted miners.
The world’s oldest profession was certainly widely practiced in the Wild West. Ladies of
the night worked at the many brothels attached to the many saloons in the many frontier towns that
were popping up during the 1800s. Life for these ladies was harsh, as you could imagine. Many were
very young and very poor. Lots were immigrants trying to eke out a living in any way they could.
To make matters worse, 50 to 90 percent of these women in the Wild West had some sort of venereal
disease. Workers did take precautions against unwanted diseases and pregnancies, but those
precautions were often toxic. It was common to use solutions with chemical ingredients like mercury,
carbolic acid, and cyanide to prevent disease and pregnancy, but the dangers of using these
toxic chemicals would often be more dangerous than the diseases they were thought to prevent.
We can’t talk about the horrors of the Wild West without mentioning the annihilation of the Native
Americans. The numbers are unclear, but estimates of the indigenous population throughout North
America before the Europeans came range from 5 to 15 milllion, to even as high as 60 million.
By 1900, less than 300,000 remained. And the Native Americans were not simply small tribes
wandering around the countryside like many of us were taught in history class. Advanced
civilizations like the Mississippians built large, complex cities, complete with large, pyramid-like
mounds, many of which were astronomically aligned. But by the 1800s, these civilizations were gone.
One of the main culprits was disease. European diseases like smallpox wreaked havoc on indigenous
populations. Some say the problem started when Spanish explorers pushed towards the
Mississippi and then left, leaving behind exotic diseases that the Natives had no immunity to.
Those who survived were met with fighting brought by the pioneers.
The Seminole Wars and the war of 1812 led to yet more deaths. Starting in the mid 17th century,
boarding schools were set up across the country, with the motto “end the Indian, save the man”.
The goal was to “civilize the savages”. In one of the darkest examples of colonial American history,
hundreds of thousands of native americans were taken from their homes between the 17th
and early 20th centuries and reeducated in the white, European model. The Wild West was, well,
wild. It was dangerous. Life there was uncertain and perilous. It was far from the romantic,
cowboy, Hollywood image that was cultivated in the 1900s. Rugged, American individualism,
manifest destiny, adventure…these ideas were manufactured. What the Wild West really was was
a chaotic colonial expansion at the expense of an already dying indigenous population.
As always thanks for watching. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more Nutty History.