Life in the Old West

The westward rush of the railroads across the Plains and westward led to an onward march of an interesting social characteristic that gained a special name: “hell on wheels.” More than just a curse or profane expression, “hell on wheels” was a Westernism for a very specific advancement of a very unusual type of a sort of “portable town.”

The expression “hell on wheels” referred to the motley collection of tents, board shacks, furniture, furnishings, and people who were moved along by the railroad itself ahead of the advancing rail-head and set up near the tracks for the benefit of the railroad workers. This ragged collection of shanties and shady people usually centered around a large tent and included a group of smaller tents and shacks that housed all the gamblers, prostitutes, and fast-money merchants who met the needs of the rail workers and others involved in moving the tracks westward.

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The cowboy’s bedroll, unlike bedrolls or sleeping bags used by modern-day campers, was much, much more than a sleeping bag. The bedroll served as his “mini-home” on the range.

In its most elaborate form, a bedroll contained a whole host of personal possessions wrapped in canvas (when canvas could be found) or sometimes just in make-shift heavy grain sack cloth. Tied up or strapped within such a bedroll might be a “sugan” (also spelled “sougan” or “suggan” and several other very creative ways) or two and the cowboy’s “war bag” or “possibles sack.” In fact, a well-planned and well-stocked bedroll carefully wrapped and tied might be slung across a horse’s back behind the saddle, or if it was too large and burdensome and the cowboy was a working cowboy, his bedroll might be slung off the side of a chuck wagon or tucked down in the bed of the chuck wagon along with all the crew’s cooking utensils.

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As a writer, I enjoy words, their meanings and their origin. As someone who enjoys reading and writing about life in the Old West, I really enjoy the various Westernisms or “cowboy talk” that enriched the language of the Old West.

Take the word “paint,” for example. I ran onto several colorful (pardon the pun) uses of the word. (My source for most things regarding Western lingo is the wonderful book I’ve mentioned in several articles at this site: “Dictionary of the American West” by Winfred Blevins.)

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In his excellent reference work, “Dictionary of the American West,” writer Winfred Blevins has an interesting section in the introduction on Indian Pidgin English, a language of convenience which he says bridged a communications gap and traveled via explorers, traders, and mountain men across the entire continent.

Blevins makes an interesting point that this mishmash of terms came about mostly from efforts by the many Indian language groups “to learn or develop words that would work, starting a pidgin language, with expressions like big medicine, big water, big talk. … In time, with lots of Indians using it, whites learning it and translators adopting it, Indian Pidgin English became a kind of language.”

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Most sources I’ve read suggest that “gunfighter,” and “gunman” were terms used in the later days of the Old West (probably after the 1870s or ’80s) for someone who was also known as a “shootist,” or in our post-Western movie times, the guy who had the pistol and wasn’t afraid or hesitant to use it.

According to Winfred Blevins’ highly useful “Dictionary of the American West” (to which I’ve referred here before), “gunfighter” and “gunmen” as well as “gunfight” and “gunfighting” all came along in the late 1800s — and there was never any distinction made between “gunfighter” as the sort of good guy or “gunman” as the bad guy. Blevins suggests that such terms almost always referred to pistols rather than long guns, i.e., rifles.

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A recent visitor to our site was asking an interesting question about the Old West — “How much is a bit in money?” I did some digging around to try to find an answer related to the Old West. Here’s what I came up with:

According to Winfred Blevins’ valuable little reference book, “Dictionary of the American West,” a “bit” in relation to money was originally one-eighth of a Spanish or Spanish-Colonial dollar. That was probably the origin of the “two-bits, four-bits, six-bits” method of referring to money since the days of long ago.

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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.

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