7 ms·

How Texas Made the Old West Even Wilder and Bloodier

37 points by bikenaga 1y ago

kacesensitive 1y ago
This is a good reminder that the mythologized "Code of the West" wasn't some noble cowboy ethic—it was born out of postwar resentment, racial violence, and frontier lawlessness. It's easy to forget that much of what's now framed as rugged individualism was originally just unchecked aggression from people who couldn't handle losing a war. The romanticization of this period by early 20th-century writers smoothed over a lot of ugly history.
- technothrasher 1y ago
  My great grandfather wrote down some stories of his life in Southern Kansas at the time, and I was always struck by how less exciting it was than you’d think. He talks about taking a horse and cart alone into Oklahoma “Indian territory” and how he scrounged up an old pistol because he was afraid of being scalped. He spends two nights camped out and every group of native Americans that pass by him just entirely ignores him. He also talks about going to see the Dalton gang just after their famous shootout, and mentions how it was weird to see the bodies just laid out and people cutting scraps of clothing off them as souvenirs. He said it wasn’t romantic at all, just depressing.
  - vintagedave 1y ago
    That's really interesting in its own way (ie, non-exciting vs stories maybe, but really fascinating.) Have you thought of digitising it and putting it online?
    - technothrasher 1y ago
      I did indeed transcribe them all digitally to preserve them. Most of them probably would only be interesting to the family. The only other one that has general interest was his time as a water fetcher and firewood collector during the gathering before the Oklahoma Land Rush.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    > He talks about taking a horse and cart alone into Oklahoma “Indian territory” and how he scrounged up an old pistol because he was afraid of being scalped. He spends two nights camped out and every group of native Americans that pass by him just entirely ignores him. The modern version is people who are afraid of Chicago.
    - starspangled 1y ago
      > The modern version is people who are afraid of Chicago. I thought America has a serious gun problem. Or is it so exaggerated that it is irrational to be afraid of a city that's in or around the top 10 highest rates of gun homicides in the country?
      - ty6853 1y ago
        No it's not. Last time I had a vehicle failure in a top 10 city the locals noticed, and put a gun to my head. You're a straight up moron if you sleep on the streets of Chicago without a weapon. Here's a hint, get on a rooftop, out of sight.
        bitexploder 1y ago
        Chicago is not a survival video game. If you are stranded call the police.
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        The police are not going to come out - Chicago or otherwise - for "my car broke down". You'll wait hours for a five minute dismissive interaction. You call a tow truck.
        ty6853 1y ago
        Lol maybe in Evanston.
        only-one1701 1y ago
        One time this happened to me. But then when they came I used aikido to disarm them whole flipping the gun out of their hands (all of them at the same time). They were so impressed they made me the leader of their primitive tribe and I started collecting resources and completing mini-missions until I became a high enough level to walk through the sewers until I found the final boss and hit the right combo to kill him.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  When you go see renaissance cultural stuff romanticizing the ancient romans and greeks do you crap all over it on the basis that the societies they're romanticizing had spicy takes on women or that their economies were comparatively primitive? Are you going to complain that they didn't have running water and electricity in the old west while you're at it? The past was generally rife with problems that hadn't yet been solved. Some of those were technical and some of them social. But dismissing it all as racism or whatever is misleading at best. People (generally, I'm sure there's a few exceptions) aren't romanticizing the racism or the violence or the outhouses or the lack of antibiotics or any other negatives that have since been solved or improved upon, when they romanticize these periods of history.
  - analog31 1y ago
    Texas is a little bit closer to home, if you will. There are still people alive today who believe that aspects of it -- mythical or real -- are fundamental to our culture, or a model for contemporary society.
  - cratermoon 1y ago
    I will push back on people who romanticize and emulate those societies, and in the US in the 21st century there are plenty of folks who would like to see the country return to when times were supposedly "great".
    - noworriesnate 1y ago
      I’m glad that the status quo works for you, but it doesn’t work for most people which is why there is so much upheaval right now. It’s screwed up that our society makes raising children so hard. It’s screwed up that our society is so low trust. Those are two things that were much better when we were setting the west and it’s worth exploring how we can return somewhat to those times. By the way, I don’t think anyone wants to return fully to those times. The question is, on what ways can we return and get the maximum benefit for our people? That is a conversation worth having.
      - 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  The Confederate diaspora was relatively small compared to immigrants and Northern-born settlers.
NorthOf33rd 1y ago
Texas is good at mythologizing its patently terrible origin stories. See the Alamo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forget_the_Alamo:_The_Rise_and_Fall_of_an_American_Myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forget_the_Alamo:_The_Rise_and...
- theultdev 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - tomhow 1y ago
    Please don't do this here.
- jobs_throwaway 1y ago
  At least in my Texas history class, we weren't taught that the Alamo was a battle of strategic importance. And obviously, the Texans lost, so it didn't help us in that way. It was though an important cultural moment that became a rallying cry and unifying force (ie 'those evil Mexican bastards massacred us at the Alamo, we need revenge!'). And its hard to argue with the result the Texans got.
- diogenes_atx 1y ago
  The writer of this article in Texas Monthly, Bryan Burrough, co-authored a recent book about the Alamo: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth (2021) As the title indicates, the book demolishes one of the biggest myths in American history: the legend of the Alamo. The author follows the trail of hagiographic heroism from 1836, the year of the iconic battle led by William Barret Travis, a man whose own memoirs show that he was a syphilitic womanizer. Like many of the slave traders and land speculators who illegally crossed into the Mexican province of Tejas, Travis was a failed businessman, crushed by debt, who abandoned his wife and children in Alabama to play soldier of fortune on the frontier. Worse, this incompetent officer disobeyed direct orders from Sam Houston to evacuate the old Spanish mission at the Alamo, which was understood by virtually everyone to be impossible to defend against the Mexican army. The predictable result was total defeat and slaughter. After that, myth-makers began re-writing the history to turn the Alamo into a heroic tale of military glory. The mission itself was mismanaged for more than a century, large sections of the original structure were allowed to fall into disrepair, and the iconic shape of the Alamo building - the bell-shaped facade on the front wall of the chapel - was added many years after the battle of 1836. Today the battle over the Alamo continues in the form of struggles by the community to recover the authentic history of the place, while hard-line conservatives insist on maintaining the fiction of the fake past. https://www.amazon.com/Forget-Alamo-Rise-Fall-American/dp/198488011X?crid=77SF65JUQ8KI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.V5luEthyZ7A6thGukCIHeg.XElE9H5C5axQMPOwvUItG1MRbrSKZHHb-_SKoJNsrDY&dib_tag=se&keywords=forget+the+alamo+the+rise+and+fall+of+an+american+myth&qid=1746545357&sprefix=forget+the+alamo%2Caps%2C244&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Forget-Alamo-Rise-Fall-American/dp/19...*
chiffre01 1y ago
When you go to any Western state, you see this romanticization of cowboy mythology everywhere. People genuinely believe it, and it’s been several generations since the actual cowboy era, so facts about the period are scarce. The part that ends up being truly harmful is state legislatures passing laws based on perceived views of 'The Old West' Looking at you Wyoming.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
  > People genuinely believe it [....] passing laws based on perceived views The factual accuracy doesn't actually matter though. The laws are being passed based on the current generation's values. And that seems fine with regard to values. "Genuine belief" is kinda what makes a thought a value.
dueltmp_yufsy 1y ago
Well they made the their state brand slogan "don't mess with Texas", so makes sense.
- alabastervlog 1y ago
  Originally an anti-littering ad campaign. (seriously!)
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    Reminds me of this a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Noem#%22Meth._We're_on_It%22_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Noem#%22Meth._We're_on_... > On November 18, 2019, Noem released a meth awareness campaign named "Meth. We're on It". The campaign was widely mocked and Noem was criticized for spending $449,000 of public funds while hiring an out-of-state advertising agency from Minnesota to lead the project. She defended the campaign as successful in raising awareness.
giardini 1y ago
Texas didn't do it - Hollywood did! And for a good reason - to make money! And so what? We got, and get, a lot of entertainment out of this mythologizing. As a child I knew that much in the movies about the Alamo was BS. No damage was done. We still played cowboys, indians, Mexicans and Texians. The good guys (usually) win! Its the same for war movies (in fact, for all movies) with over-the-top, word-of-mouth stories depicted as reality. Its a story for God's sake! Might as well be complaining about Aesop's Fables.

37 points by bikenaga 1y ago

This is a good reminder that the mythologized "Code of the West" wasn't some noble cowboy ethic—it was born out of postwar resentment, racial violence, and frontier lawlessness. It's easy to forget that much of what's now framed as rugged individualism was originally just unchecked aggression from people who couldn't handle losing a war. The romanticization of this period by early 20th-century writers smoothed over a lot of ugly history.

technothrasher 1y ago
My great grandfather wrote down some stories of his life in Southern Kansas at the time, and I was always struck by how less exciting it was than you’d think. He talks about taking a horse and cart alone into Oklahoma “Indian territory” and how he scrounged up an old pistol because he was afraid of being scalped. He spends two nights camped out and every group of native Americans that pass by him just entirely ignores him. He also talks about going to see the Dalton gang just after their famous shootout, and mentions how it was weird to see the bodies just laid out and people cutting scraps of clothing off them as souvenirs. He said it wasn’t romantic at all, just depressing.
- vintagedave 1y ago
  That's really interesting in its own way (ie, non-exciting vs stories maybe, but really fascinating.) Have you thought of digitising it and putting it online?
  - technothrasher 1y ago
    I did indeed transcribe them all digitally to preserve them. Most of them probably would only be interesting to the family. The only other one that has general interest was his time as a water fetcher and firewood collector during the gathering before the Oklahoma Land Rush.
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  > He talks about taking a horse and cart alone into Oklahoma “Indian territory” and how he scrounged up an old pistol because he was afraid of being scalped. He spends two nights camped out and every group of native Americans that pass by him just entirely ignores him. The modern version is people who are afraid of Chicago.
  - starspangled 1y ago
    > The modern version is people who are afraid of Chicago. I thought America has a serious gun problem. Or is it so exaggerated that it is irrational to be afraid of a city that's in or around the top 10 highest rates of gun homicides in the country?
    - ty6853 1y ago
      No it's not. Last time I had a vehicle failure in a top 10 city the locals noticed, and put a gun to my head. You're a straight up moron if you sleep on the streets of Chicago without a weapon. Here's a hint, get on a rooftop, out of sight.
      - bitexploder 1y ago
        Chicago is not a survival video game. If you are stranded call the police.
        ceejayoz 1y ago
        The police are not going to come out - Chicago or otherwise - for "my car broke down". You'll wait hours for a five minute dismissive interaction. You call a tow truck.
        ty6853 1y ago
        Lol maybe in Evanston.
      - only-one1701 1y ago
        One time this happened to me. But then when they came I used aikido to disarm them whole flipping the gun out of their hands (all of them at the same time). They were so impressed they made me the leader of their primitive tribe and I started collecting resources and completing mini-missions until I became a high enough level to walk through the sewers until I found the final boss and hit the right combo to kill him.
potato3732842 1y ago
When you go see renaissance cultural stuff romanticizing the ancient romans and greeks do you crap all over it on the basis that the societies they're romanticizing had spicy takes on women or that their economies were comparatively primitive? Are you going to complain that they didn't have running water and electricity in the old west while you're at it? The past was generally rife with problems that hadn't yet been solved. Some of those were technical and some of them social. But dismissing it all as racism or whatever is misleading at best. People (generally, I'm sure there's a few exceptions) aren't romanticizing the racism or the violence or the outhouses or the lack of antibiotics or any other negatives that have since been solved or improved upon, when they romanticize these periods of history.
- analog31 1y ago
  Texas is a little bit closer to home, if you will. There are still people alive today who believe that aspects of it -- mythical or real -- are fundamental to our culture, or a model for contemporary society.
- cratermoon 1y ago
  I will push back on people who romanticize and emulate those societies, and in the US in the 21st century there are plenty of folks who would like to see the country return to when times were supposedly "great".
  - noworriesnate 1y ago
    I’m glad that the status quo works for you, but it doesn’t work for most people which is why there is so much upheaval right now. It’s screwed up that our society makes raising children so hard. It’s screwed up that our society is so low trust. Those are two things that were much better when we were setting the west and it’s worth exploring how we can return somewhat to those times. By the way, I don’t think anyone wants to return fully to those times. The question is, on what ways can we return and get the maximum benefit for our people? That is a conversation worth having.
    - 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
The Confederate diaspora was relatively small compared to immigrants and Northern-born settlers.

NorthOf33rd 1y ago

Texas is good at mythologizing its patently terrible origin stories. See the Alamo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forget_the_Alamo:_The_Rise_and_Fall_of_an_American_Myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forget_the_Alamo:_The_Rise_and...

theultdev 1y ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 1y ago
  Please don't do this here.
jobs_throwaway 1y ago
At least in my Texas history class, we weren't taught that the Alamo was a battle of strategic importance. And obviously, the Texans lost, so it didn't help us in that way. It was though an important cultural moment that became a rallying cry and unifying force (ie 'those evil Mexican bastards massacred us at the Alamo, we need revenge!'). And its hard to argue with the result the Texans got.
diogenes_atx 1y ago
The writer of this article in Texas Monthly, Bryan Burrough, co-authored a recent book about the Alamo: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth (2021) As the title indicates, the book demolishes one of the biggest myths in American history: the legend of the Alamo. The author follows the trail of hagiographic heroism from 1836, the year of the iconic battle led by William Barret Travis, a man whose own memoirs show that he was a syphilitic womanizer. Like many of the slave traders and land speculators who illegally crossed into the Mexican province of Tejas, Travis was a failed businessman, crushed by debt, who abandoned his wife and children in Alabama to play soldier of fortune on the frontier. Worse, this incompetent officer disobeyed direct orders from Sam Houston to evacuate the old Spanish mission at the Alamo, which was understood by virtually everyone to be impossible to defend against the Mexican army. The predictable result was total defeat and slaughter. After that, myth-makers began re-writing the history to turn the Alamo into a heroic tale of military glory. The mission itself was mismanaged for more than a century, large sections of the original structure were allowed to fall into disrepair, and the iconic shape of the Alamo building - the bell-shaped facade on the front wall of the chapel - was added many years after the battle of 1836. Today the battle over the Alamo continues in the form of struggles by the community to recover the authentic history of the place, while hard-line conservatives insist on maintaining the fiction of the fake past. https://www.amazon.com/Forget-Alamo-Rise-Fall-American/dp/198488011X?crid=77SF65JUQ8KI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.V5luEthyZ7A6thGukCIHeg.XElE9H5C5axQMPOwvUItG1MRbrSKZHHb-_SKoJNsrDY&dib_tag=se&keywords=forget+the+alamo+the+rise+and+fall+of+an+american+myth&qid=1746545357&sprefix=forget+the+alamo%2Caps%2C244&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Forget-Alamo-Rise-Fall-American/dp/19...*

chiffre01 1y ago

When you go to any Western state, you see this romanticization of cowboy mythology everywhere. People genuinely believe it, and it’s been several generations since the actual cowboy era, so facts about the period are scarce. The part that ends up being truly harmful is state legislatures passing laws based on perceived views of 'The Old West' Looking at you Wyoming.

ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
> People genuinely believe it [....] passing laws based on perceived views The factual accuracy doesn't actually matter though. The laws are being passed based on the current generation's values. And that seems fine with regard to values. "Genuine belief" is kinda what makes a thought a value.

dueltmp_yufsy 1y ago

Well they made the their state brand slogan "don't mess with Texas", so makes sense.

alabastervlog 1y ago
Originally an anti-littering ad campaign. (seriously!)
- ceejayoz 1y ago
  Reminds me of this a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Noem#%22Meth._We're_on_It%22_campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Noem#%22Meth._We're_on_... > On November 18, 2019, Noem released a meth awareness campaign named "Meth. We're on It". The campaign was widely mocked and Noem was criticized for spending $449,000 of public funds while hiring an out-of-state advertising agency from Minnesota to lead the project. She defended the campaign as successful in raising awareness.

giardini 1y ago

Texas didn't do it - Hollywood did! And for a good reason - to make money! And so what? We got, and get, a lot of entertainment out of this mythologizing. As a child I knew that much in the movies about the Alamo was BS. No damage was done. We still played cowboys, indians, Mexicans and Texians. The good guys (usually) win! Its the same for war movies (in fact, for all movies) with over-the-top, word-of-mouth stories depicted as reality. Its a story for God's sake! Might as well be complaining about Aesop's Fables.