Wild West Photo Friday: The Chuck Wagon

Home on the range? When you're on a cattle drive and your bed is a blanket and your pillow is your saddle, then the closest thing to home is the chuck wagon. Even working on the rangeland of one of the big ranches you might be miles from home come lunchtime. This photo was taken by Erwin Smith on the J.A. Ranch, Texas, around 1907. It's titled "A J.A. cook inspecting his stew."

Below is a closeup of the wagon itself. Looks like they got themselves some tasty vittles!

Photo Courtesy Library of Congress.

How Wild West fistfights really went down

Movies and comics have taught us that fistfights in the Wild West were simple punch-ups where the good guy almost always won (unless vastly outnumbered) and that the loser got away with little more than a black eye and some lost status in the local saloon. In the old Western movies, the guys somehow always managed to keep their hats on too.

The reality was a bit nastier. It was considered manly to "mark" your opponent by giving him some sort of permanent scar or injury. Wild Bill Hickok used the popular tactic of stomping on people's faces with his bootheel. The spurs came in handy to add a little extra flair to the "mark."

Another popular tactic was eye gouging. Regular fighters would often grow a thumbnail specially for gouging people's eyes out and would "brine" (sharpen) it to make it more effective. This was especially common among the early riverboat and mountain men and got less common as laws began to take hold in the West.

Of course nobody really wants to see that in a movie!

My book on Tombstone is out now!

I've just received the author's copies for my latest book, Tombstone - Wyatt Earp, the O.K. Corral, and the Vendetta Ride 1881-82. This is published by Osprey Publishing and as usual they did a bang up job on the layout and artwork.

This book looks at the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as well as the lead up to the confrontation between the Earp brothers and the Cowboys and the vendetta that lasted for some months afterwards.

As the back cover blurb states:

The Gunfight at the OK Corral on 26 October 1881 is one of the most enduring stories of the Old West. It led to a series of violent incidents that culminated in the Vendetta Ride, in which Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and several other gunslingers went after their rivals the Cowboys.
Like most tales of the Wild West, the facts are buried under layers of myth, and the line between good guys and bad guys is blurry. Wyatt Earp, leader of the so-called “good guys”, was charged with stealing horses in the Indian Territory in 1870 and jumped bail. Becoming a buffalo hunter and gambler, he got into several scrapes and earned a reputation as a gunfighter.
Several times he helped lawmen arrest outlaws, but usually his assistance came more because of a personal grudge against the criminal than any real respect for law and order. He even got fired from a police job in Wichita for beating up a political rival.

This is my sixth book for Osprey and my fourteenth overall. I'm currently talking with the editors about more projects. Stay tuned!

Wild West Photo Friday: A Mexican Caballero in San Antonio

Now that the A to Z Challenge is over, I can get back to my regular Photo Friday series, whether it's Civil War, Wild West, or Military History. This week it's the Wild West, with this fine Mexican horseman photographed in San Antonio, Texas, in the 1870s.

Before there were cowboys, there were vaqueros. The Spanish made it to the Southwest first and set up extensive ranches. The process continued after Mexican independence from Spain. When white settlers started streaming in, they learned the trade from the Mexicans. Sadly, most Western films and books forget the vaqueros, just like they forget the black cowboys.

Photo courtesy New York Public Library.

Tom Mix: An Early Western Superstar

Last week I blogged about William S. Hart, the first Western movie star. Hart got the ball rolling and soon Westerns were a favorite genre among moviegoers in the days of silent film.

The next actor to make it big in the Cinematic Wild West was Tom Mix. Unlike Hart, he wasn't a professional actor drawn to a new medium. Instead, he was a real-life cowboy. He worked various jobs in Oklahoma including a stint in 1904 as a bartender and sheriff/marshal in Dewey, Oklahoma. He later worked at Miller's 101 Ranch and earned a reputation as a crack shot and fine rider, winning prizes at rodeos all around the West.

He later got a gig at Will A. Dickey's Circle D Ranch, a Wild West show that provided cowboys and horses to the early motion picture studios. In the first decade of the Twentieth century, small ranchers were being bought out and centralization was the name of the game. Many cowboys found themselves out of work and ended up living in Hollywood. There they lived like they always had, in bunkhouses and taking care of steers and horses, but this time their employers were the studios.

The Selig Polyscope Company put Mix was in his first film in 1909 and he went on to make a hundred shorts for them before signing with the Fox Film Corporation. His films always highlighted his skill with the rope and as a rider. Mix did some amazing stunts such as leaping off cliffs and riding on top of trains. These were the days before trick photography and when you see Mix doing something crazy on film, he really was doing it.

Unlike many silent stars, Mix managed to make the switch over to sound films and continued working until 1935, thrilling a whole new generation of fans.

Photo courtesy the Beinecke Library.

Django Unchained: How Historically Accurate is Tarantino's Latest Historical Action Flick?

The A to Z blogfest continues, and today is the letter J, so I'll be talking about the movie everyone's been talking about--Django Unchanged! Hey, the D is silent.

Many people have asked me how historically accurate this film is. Then short answer is not at all. The long answer follows.

Django's opening title states that the year is "1858, two years before the Civil War." The war, of course, started in 1861, which was 3 years later. From then on there's a host of factual errors. The characters use repeating rifles that didn't exist at the time, they use metal cartridges that didn't exist at the time, they even visit cities that didn't exist at the time, etc., etc. The Internet Movie Database has a long list of historical errors in Django Unchained so I won't go into them all here.

I live in Spain, and many Spaniards I know were shocked with how slaves were treated in the film. The common reaction was, "I knew slavery was bad, but I didn't know it was that bad!" Here Tarantino is on firmer ground. Slaves really were beaten and mutilated for trying to escape. Sometimes they really were torn apart by dogs. Slave women really were used as sexual playthings. Tarantino, being Tarantino, amps this up a bit but all of it is true.

The only place where he really exaggerated is with the "Mandingo fighting". He portrays a group of wealthy slave owners training slaves to fight to the death. According to slavery historians interviewed by Slate, this never happened. Slaves were trained to fight as bare knuckle boxers, but they were too valuable as property to be used in death matches.

Hopefully the fans of this film will be inspired to read about the era and learn the reality behind the fiction. One can only hope. I did enjoy the film as a kickass action Western with some fine acting. I just didn't see much history.

William S. Hart: the first Western film star

I've always been a fan of silent films. Like most people, I loved the old Chaplin and Keaton slapstick shorts as a kid. Unlike most people, I soon became entranced with the silent dramas and adventures. Back in the 80s when I was growing up, you could still see these pictures on late night TV and in New York City revival houses. Now I watch them on the Internet or at rare showings at arthouse cinemas.

I've recently been getting into silent Westerns. The first silent Western star was William S. Hart. He starred in more than 70 Westerns from 1914 to 1925 and helped establish many of the tropes still used in Westerns to this day.

Hart had a stony face and dominating manner that was perfect to play heavies. In fact, he often portrayed villains. Sometimes he'd be saved by a good woman, sometimes not. Every Hart film contained a gunfight, sometimes several, and they were always quick, brutal affairs that looked very realistic.

In The Return of Draw Egan (1916) Hart favors a slight grimace and a cigarillo that looks like it inspired Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name. I wouldn't be surprised. Hart inspired many Western actors and helped establish the genre. He was hugely successful in his day but sadly all but forgotten now. His films are full of Victorian moralizing that come off as dated. For me at least, they retain a primal power that makes them worth watching.

In preparation for this post, last night I watched what's considered one of Hart's best films: Hell's Hinges (1916). That link will take you to Youtube where you can watch this public domain film. The rest of this post contains spoilers.

Wild West Photo Friday: Four Forgotten Cowboys

Many of the historic photos that have come down to us lack information. Looking at these two images, I have to wonder--who were they? Where were they? And are they really cowboys?

The reason for this last question is that by the turn of the century, the West was already becoming a tourist attaction. People went to see the sights and as a memento would have their picture taken in Western gear. In some posed images they didn't even leave the big city, they just went to a photographic studio and picked out a costume!

The top photo looks real to me, but the bottom image rings a bit false. Maybe it's the contrast between the ties and the heavy weaponry. Maybe they don't look as hard-bitten as the guy in the top photo. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. What do you think?