Life in the Old West

If you heard an “old-timer” back in the days of the Old West speak about “storming the puncheons,” would you guess it sounded like a battle — or perhaps some Saturday night fun in town? (Of course, old-time cowboys might have thought “battle” and “Saturday night fun in town” synonymous.)

In fact, what sounds like it should have been an attack on a fortress was actually old-time cowboy lingo for dancing, according to Winfred Blevins’ wonderful “Dictionary of the American West.” (My edition of Blevins’ comprehensive resource is copyright 1993, published by Facts On File, Inc., publishers, New York.) Blevins explains that floors in pioneer days were often made of puncheons — rough timbers split from logs and smoothed or leveled on one side. They were generally just one step up the scale of civilization from dirt floors. The “storming” came from the vigorous way many pioneers and cowboys approached the whole idea of dancing, with great enthusiasm set to some form of music.

Read more on One of the fun ‘Westernisms’: Let’s storm the puncheons…

You may have to look around to find it, but I urge you to get Henry M. Stanley’s account of his 1867 trip across the Plains.

I absolutely love reading the diaries, journals, and other firsthand accounts of people who traveled to and through the Old West. My copy of Stanley’s fascinating account of his travels with U.S. Army troops and the early Indian Wars is an old paperback edition published in 1982 by the University of Nebraska Press as part of their Bison Books history series. The title of the book is “My Early Travels and Adventures in America.”

Read more on Get Henry M. Stanley’s account of his 1867 trip across the Plains…

I was reading about the early wagons and wagon trains which shaped America’s Western expansion and ran onto an interesting tidbit: Habits of early freighters and their freight wagons, such as the huge Conestoga wagons, are responsible for American traffic traveling along the right side of the road.

According to Foster-Harris’ wonderful book I’ve cited frequently, early pioneers and freighters did not ride in or on their wagons most of the time to drive their horses. The early pioneers at least loaded the wagons and walked alongside them. They used the wagon space and the horses’ strength to carry stuff, not people.

Read more on Wonder why American traffic passes on the right? Blame it on Conestoga…

When it comes to the single biggest influence in shaping life in the Old West, it would be hard to get past that four-legged critter made famous in books and movies — the horse.

Certainly, the railroad radically influenced settlement of the West when it came along, completion of coast-to-coast rail service, and completion of a coast-to-coast telegraph system both mightily influenced everything about westward expansion and settlement. But from beginning to end, the West relied in one way or another on horses. Early trappers and pioneers who expanded “Anglo” influence into every area we call the Old West, came on foot, came dragging and pushing various forms of sleds and sheds and wagons — but they all came at one time or another riding and/or leading horses and horse drawn vehicles.

Read more on Horses built and shaped life in the Old West…

I would bet there’s never been a television or radio Western LESS like life in the real Old West than “The Lone Ranger,” but that was perfectly okay to a generation of us growing up back in the 1940s and ’50s and carefully, breathlessly following actor Clayton Moore’s every masked move.

Clayton Moore became the Lone Ranger, just as Native American actor Jay Silverheels (who actually was a Canadian by birth) became his faithful sidekick, Tonto. Moore and Silverheels, who were paired in more than 200 episodes of “The Lone Ranger” on television from 1949-57, both had many other roles in television and movies. But unless you’re a real Moore or Silverheels fan, I’ll bet you can’t name one for either man.

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When I was a small boy, we made a few trips to visit my paternal grandparents in southeastern Colorado and went out of town about 20-25 miles to the original family homestead and were shown the remains of the house my father grew up in — a genuine sod house. The house (completely gone except for parts of one wall by 1970) was built sometime just after 1900 and my grandparents continued to live in it until sometime around 1940-45.

Read more on Not so long ago, people on the more remote Plains still lived in sod houses…

Longhorn cattle, identified early in the history of the Old West with Texas, New Mexico, and the region of the American Southwest, were earlier “settlers” in this land than the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower — and had a reputation for being dangerous critters.

The Longhorns’ ancestors came from the Andalusian region of Spain, and first landed in Mexico in 1521. Since most of what is now the American Southwest WAS Mexico, they merely spread northward and were there waiting when the earliest “Anglo” settlers and pioneers entered the region. The earliest ancestors of the modern-day Longhorn were called “cimarrones” — Spanish for “wild ones.” And they really were. One source I have suggested they were as feared as the Comanches by early Anglo settlers. Indeed, a battalion of U.S. soldiers during the Mexican War in the 1840s actually fought a battle with a herd of these cimarrones in Arizona, with the bulls charging out of the brush right into the face of heavy musket fire!

Read more on Longhorn cattle added danger, source of meat to life in the Old West…