Life in the Old West

Preachers and philosophers may debate the wages of sin, but sin paid well for early-1880s Seattle.

According to a paragraph in a fascinating article I was reading recently about Seattle’s famous “Underground,” gambling and prostitution was prevalent in the fledgling Queen City of the Northwest and prompted a sort of “sin tax.” The article mentioned in passing that this tax on the fleshly vices furnished 87 percent of the municipal Seattle budget in 1881-82.

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Looking back into the past, we can see how a steam-powered, iron-wheeled freight wagon to haul goods across several hundred miles of the Great Plains in the 1860s appears to be a real folly. But in 1862, Major Joseph R. Brown, an agent to the Sioux Indians in New Ulm, Minnesota not only thought it was a good idea, he shelled out $9,000 to have the behemoth built. Adding a great deal of other expense, time, and effort, he accompanied his “prairie motor” wagon to the Nebraska City, Nebraska, starting point of what he thought was a prosperous future!

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For all you Old West “history buffs,” students, and Western writers out there who have been at this longer than I, can anyone answer the question I’ve posed in the title of this article? Did Buffalo Bill Cody and Wyatt Earp ever meet? If so, can you point me toward information about any meeting(s) or relationship between the two? If not, how or why do you think such a meeting would NOT take place?

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I urge you, if you have any interest in the history and leadership of Plains Indians — especially the Cheyennes — to get a copy of this excellent book by historian Stan Hoig, “The Peace Chiefs of the Cheyennes.” It was published by University of Oklahoma Press in 1980, and, yes, it IS (or at least at the time I’m writing this article) available to order online directly from University of Oklahoma Press — and, no, I don’t make a plug nickle from the purchase if you go to that link and buy yourself a copy.

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It occurred to me awhile back that many people interested in life in the Old West these days might appreciate some simple, easy ways to find good books and other resources to learn more about the American West. Having grown up in a time when movies, television, and just about every entertainment media had ample references (though often mythical) to the West, this is a subject it never occurred to me might be helpful.

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Order rodeo gear, from saddles and ropes to rodeo wear of all sorts, then thank Buffalo Bill Cody for his role in “inventing” or at least popularizing modern rodeos.

Throughout America rodeo fans and participants from kids to old timers enjoy annual “Frontier Days” and high school or college rodeo contests. (I’m not a rodeo fan myself, although I’ve been to a few and had a cousin who was a bona fide professional rodeo clown.) I know there’s a professional rodeo circuit that’s been around for a long time, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (P.R.C.A.), and that cowboys and ranch hands from everywhere enjoy showing off their skills and rising to the challenge of serious rodeo competition all over America.

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Our adventures on the Pony Express trail, done a number of years ago for our 25th wedding anniversary, were great fun and very enlightening.

What else would you do to celebrate 25 years of marriage but try to trace some of the history and historic sites of the Old West? In our case, the year was 1992, we had just bought a new-to-us station wagon, and we had some vacation time to combine with a long weekend. At the time, I had been reading about Buffalo Bill Cody (William F. Cody, that is) and happened to read about his early years as one of the original Pony Express riders. Mrs. Hoppy and I immediately knew we had a fun trip to organize for our anniversary celebration.

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Widespread use of horses by Native American tribal groups and the rampant rush of people hungry for gold in the Rockies ultimately altered the nature of the Great Plains region as much as railroads and farmers may have during America’s westward expansion.

That’s the premise of historian Elliott West’s fascinating look at Old West history titled “The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado.” Originally published by the University Press of Kansas in 1998, this fascinating look at life in the Plains, Colorado Territory, and the Rockies during the 1850s and 1860s is well worth getting, if you’re at all interested in the economic and cultural forces that shaped the American West.

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The first wagon trains headed westward along the overland trails — the most famous was the Oregon Trail — from Missouri in 1841, and a major motivation for those making the long, often tortuous journey was economic: Following the Panic of 1837 (a fearsome Depression by even today’s standards), wages throughout America had fallen by 30-50 percent. There were no unemployment figures kept at the time, of course, but had there been, they would have been horrific. Major public demonstrations by out of work residents of Philadelphia and New York City brought out hundreds of thousands of people in 1839 and 1840.

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I ran onto a wonderful little book in my library which I had forgotten, and wonderful it truly is: It looks at America’s Westward settlement through women’s eyes, by giving excerpts from their diaries of their westward emigration.

The book is “Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey,” by Lillian Schlissel. Historian Schlissel is professor emerita of Brooklyn College-CUNY, where she was director of American studies. Her book was published in 1982 and reissued in, I believe, 2004. The copy I have is a tattered paperback of the 1982 original. You can still find the book from time to time on eBay and Amazon, and I urge you to get a copy. (If you click on the title of the book above it will take you to any copies currently for sale on Amazon.) It is a real eye-opener that abolishes many of the stereotypes of the rugged, “manly” settlers who tamed the West.

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