The True History of the American Old West: From Pioneers to Ghost Towns

foreign [Music] foreign

foreign [Music] foreign

Montana just a few miles from where I was born and raised

or it could be royal light Nevada or Bodie California or Terra lingua Texas or Candelaria or Tuscarora or Treasure

City any one of us slew of them well the names don't matter they're they're just

Epitaph for places that died ghost towns and are all part of the old west that's

been dead itself for going on 60 years the real West and that was that was a big piece of

country it stretched some said from Beelzebub to breakfast

but if you if you drop a line down the 100th Meridian like this everything on this side of it

with an annual rainfall of less than 20 inches that was the West

the worst some call it said all it like to be paradise was plenty of water and society which of

course is all they lack in hell the real worst lasted only about 40 years

it took place between between two go and get it and two oops in a holler and what went on in between

was the whole Westward Movement they call it the greatest mass migration since the Crusade

but the real West wasn't where or when it was it was who

it was people real people they were pioneers and Builders and and

destroyers and all of them restless and dissatisfied

the contented ones stayed in the east and those who wasted Bret Hart said were those who who needed a fresh deal all

around they gathered at the river and the river was the Missouri

the gathering places where Saint Joe and Westport Landing Leavenworth and Omaha Fort Smith and Independence

and the river Town's men who would stay behind watch the immigrants as they rendezvoused

and waited for the grass to spring on the Oregon Trail to the Valley of the Willamette

on the Santa Fe and California trails to the golden slopes of the Sierras here was the last outpost of

civilization it'll come hard wrote One Pioneer to have to say goodbye to so much elegance

and refinement foreign cash money would have no value

so it was swapped off for things that would coffee and ships biscuit hog Tallow and dried apples wagon tires and

quinine revolving pistols and gold separating machinery and patented plows

[Music] and maybe a small sack of peppermint striped candy

trains of wagons were formed up and organized into immigrant companies many of them pool their resources and

sold shares of stock had their own bylaws and officers articles were drawn up and signed by

members who had to swear that they were industrious not addicted to cards strong drink or profane language and of sweet

and Peaceable disposition many men signed with their real names it seemed the one Observer that this was

the grandest transmigration of green horns since the children of Israel set out to reach Canaan

Sinners and Saints the wise and the innocent one of them said we are a mixed lot but so we're the

first pilgrims [Music] most of the new pilgrims would take

nothing with them but hope and whatever could be stowed in the wagon and a few took nothing with them but

memories of places they would never see again like three Ohio teenagers running away

from home to find gold and fight Indians New Jersey newlyweds off to build a nest in the new Eden

a Hartford Widow hoping to find a new husband and father for her children [Music]

in Charleston piano Fort maker deserting his wife and his creditors a foreclosed York State farmer looking

for a Greener and unmortgaged pastures the Mississippi Monty dealer seeking fatter fish had less Troubled Waters

a Seminary graduate looking for an uncultivated Vineyard in which to labor and to lead them all Into the Wilderness

they would engage a professional wagon master with the authority of a sea captain and

the honorary title of major these then were the ones who went West they and thousands like and unlike them

they went in wagons and carts and Buggies and some walked all the way more than 2 500 miles

they had three basic motives foregoing to get something to get away from something

and just to get there [Music] and the book said that the Lord said

I will bring you out of Affliction into a land flowing with milk and honey [Music]

the Overland Trail the longest road in history was a river of white top wagons we

haven't seen either end of our train in 18 days wrote One immigrant the teams of those ahead of them had

eaten most of the trail grass so they had to feed their oxen and horses and mules on precious grain they'd saved for

the desert [Music] for A Thousand Miles they followed the

Platte River the Nebraska Seacoast they call it and it took so many bands at one party crossed the river 20 times the

early ones found shallow water the late starters would meet the spring floods they camped In the Heat of the day they

called it nooning it gave them a chance to visit and catch up on their housekeeping

this Gypsy life is anything but agreeable one woman wrote it is impossible to keep anything clean

cookie and wash water were scarce and often harsh with alkali baby towels must be put on while still damper mother

complained [Music] for small infants over Landing could be

one long diaper rash which lowered their resistance to disease [Music]

and no family could travel too fast for cholera [Music]

immigrants guide books were reassuring Prairie navigation is simple merely follow the wheel ruts of the wagons

which have preceded you if you travel at the normal rate for auction of three miles a day there are enough natural

beacons so that you will never need a compass thank you

the atmosphere is so clear that landmarks like Chimney Rock will be observable for weeks before they are

reached it might have added that the immigrants too would be under observation

[Music] foreign [Music]

the first sight of Indians kindled fears of feathered and fiery death for the women the Fate worse than death

[Music] immigrants were indignant to discover that even the friendliest tribes

considered them not Pioneers but trespassers they parlay only to extort outrageous

tributes for grass and firewood and the loss of some game frightened by our wagons

they are friendly only so long as it serves their purpose and only if you are well armed and look resolute

[Music] how long will government tolerate these Savage impediments to progress in

industry [Music] it is three months since we left

Independence hardship and disease have truly reduced our party the agent and very young die first the women persevere

best and set a brave example but our journey is only half made two of us will complete it

[Music] where the Snake River joined the Humboldt the trail split

here they had to choose between the desert and the mountains the high road was the shortest as the crow flies but

it was mostly eagles which tried it and the clumsy top heavy wagons which struggled to reach the passes before

they were wintered in they had to hurry to beat the first snow and to avoid the fate of the Donner

Party 45 of whom survived only by eating the bodies of the 36 who didn't

over the Wind Rivers the bitterroots the Wasatch the panaments the High Sierras Beyond Every Mountain it seemed there

was another Mountain but if there was danger in the mountains there was no safety at sea level

one traveler Road of the desert trails it was as though the Hand of Death had been laid upon the country

[Music] where it was Apache country this had a few extra hands

[Music] we have just learned that the party ahead of us has nearly perished of

thirst and there is one behind us carrying the smallpox it is more than 100 degrees of heat

truly we are traversing hell with the fires banked it is Milestone with what once were

precious belongings but such sentiments are two burdensome for exhausted horses

[Music] grass and water but it lied the grass was poisonous and

the spring was dry another company had traveled 80 miles without water then almost drowned in the

cloudburst their stock stampeded in their wagons the wood desiccated in the heat fell

apart our cattle sickened on the water and foundered and had to be left behind

but ours was not the only loss dead animals averaged 100 to the mile [Music]

and an immigrant's diary said there are about 80 Graves to the hundred miles that is new ones

each of these marked the high water point of somebody's hopes all of them strung together marked the trail for

others just as hopeful to follow in the great getting there there were no failures

they all put down their roots in the new land even these

[Music] if the way west was a river of wagons then the strongest carrot was the Gold

Rush not just the one in 49 there were actually seven gold rushes

more than that if you count the runs for silver gold and silver copper in fact anything shiny that would assay out to

that dream of getting rich without working it was that dream that sent them out

seeing their susannas that they were off to Sacramento with their washed bowls on their knees

off to see the elephant California or bust wash over bust Pike speaker bust the Black Hills are first

most of them got there and and some of them busted but the real noise was boom wherever

there was a rumor and a hole in the ground they they Jerry Built the camp around it

[Music] and they christened them Brandy Gulch and piety hill Hills delight and gaoji

never sweat and swell it and Petticoat slide Romeo's Berg and julietsville [Music]

claim it was built Spang on top of the mother lode and its Main Street would be cobbled with golden nuggets

but the camps were really founded on the Bedrock beliefs that the West Was as advertised

so rich in Mineral wealth that King Solomon's minds are simply out of the running

discovery of rubies emeralds and fossilized pearls are expected momentarily

[Music] of course the town could always mine the miners

back in the States young men were getting letters saying there are Mighty few ladies here and they don't come

close to handsome but that's not held against them anyway Sabbath breaking is the principal

preoccupation along with wholesale consumption of grain spirits the local Liquors contain a thousand

songs and 100 fights to the barrel sell your mule Bill burn your farm and rent your church pew and come out here

where things are going everyone should be a millionaire [Music]

they say if you wash your face in the Yellowstone River you can pan four ounces of dust out of your whiskers

if you stump your toe on a rock in Montana don't cuss it cash it have you heard there's a solid silver

mountain in the panamints and in Dakota window curtains assay out a dollar to the ton after a dust storm

rumors and everyone sent thousands of would-be millionaires up nameless Creeks to wash away nameless mountains a pound

at a time and to slush them over the riffles of a sluicebox but Placer mining picking it up off the

ground began to play out glory holes had to be deepened lengthened into tunnels and galleries

they never worked so hard in their lives to get rich without working some did strike it rich enough to keep

the others grubbing away at what an Eastern Paper called the world's deepest underground lunatic asylum

for every lucky cuss mine every Comstock miles of tunnels were veined with nothing but disappointment

I couldn't make money on my claim if I fell down the shaft of seven dollars a foot

far from home and Marianne the miners generally were unmarried unchurched and unwashed they had to send their clothes

all the way to China to be laundered and spent their spare time frustrating the efforts of Eastern missionary

societies law they said is five cartridges in the cylinder Justice is the one in the

chamber anyone found guilty of high grading claim jumping or general nuisance

quickly got a suspended sentence [Music]

or became harder to extract with just a tin pan and a sharp stick it began to cost money to make money

mining companies capitalized in the East moved into the diggings they imported complicated Machinery

stamped Mills and refining equipment and a new breed of hard rock Miner he was usually a cousin Jack an

immigrant cornishman a professional he dug for wages and he worked in shifts for the first time men were being paid

to come West mining with the fire hose hydraulicing out the low grade R and sending the pile

back East to be spent by stockholders it was time for the jackass Miner to move out

besides the true Bonanza was really over the next Mountain where the grass was a little bit greener

the mule's tale was the prospector's compass and all they had to do was follow and it would lead them to the

golden Boulders of the Madre de Oro then there was always the solid Silver Mountain slide down in on the sharp

Runner sled and gather up the shavings and the ghost mines the lost Dutchman the mislaid peg leg the Phantom Peralta

somebody had to search for them foreign beyond the next rise into the next

Valley was always El Dorado the mule would find it the man would know it and through it

would be flowing a river of pure gold [Music] chair was always looking for greener

grass then so was the Cattle Man he grazed his herds wherever the grass

grew and the water was good and the range was open he could over graze and Overstock and

generally go broke about any time he wanted to so so he got the reputation of being absolutely independent and it was

sometimes true the Stockman was pretty hard to Cork it wasn't healthy to call him a cattle

farmer which he was for his paid help Hired Hands on

horseback which they were they consider themselves

individualist and if you threw one of them in the river he just naturally float Upstream

well they didn't have much use either for big business or big government these were these were Eastern things

and they regarded the East with the same scorn that the easterner regarded Europe you put a man like that on horseback

and he's in a position to look down on everyone else a man of what they said is no man at all

and they had downright contempt for any labor which couldn't be performed from the hurricane deck of a cow pony

[Music] you could tell where in the west they came from by the shape of their hats and

the flare of their shafts only the Eastern Tenderfoot call them Cowboys they call themselves Vaquero

Wadi Wrangler Calhan they said all you needed to become one was guts and a horse and with enough

guts you could steal the horse all right the cattle farm it could be so big you

had to grease the wagon twice to get from the front door to the front gate or just a captain ball outfit held together

with Wang string and a mortgage either way it was a magnet for the kind of kid who used to run away to Sea

Texas newspaper complained there is hardly a boy learning a trade or reading for a profession west of the Colorado

as soon as they can climb on a pony they're off to the Prairie to drive stock

[Music] up the Chisholm Trail the Sedalia Trail the good night loving the Western and

the journey this was the long drive from Texas to the Railhead towns of Kansas and

Missouri to the market to deliver a herd of domesticated beef

were as treacherous as the backlash of a bull whip later the breed was white-faced and

nipple need but spookier than a wing-busted bird in a Cat Country the swing Riders rode double The

Distance by rounding up strays and the point Rider never knew when it had to blow off and Stampede the whole

herd up his shirt tail before he could spitting on her howdy if your road drag you ate dust all the

way for these labors they were paid one recalled Damn Few money and a hill of a lot of beans

our chief Recreation was cussing the man whose Boots the cook brewed the coffee in

on the trail the Chuck Wagon was parlor bedroom bath and gents ordinary for the Cowhand

and finally on the day before they reached Town it was the barbershop too in the morning they would get their

lower neck clothes out of the wagon cut out their sugar eating Sunday horse and hightail it for the nearest hitching

rack for months they had slept on Prairie feathers with only a backbone for a

mattress for the next week they figured I'm not getting to bed at all

foreign [Music] patiently the cow Towns at the end of

the drive waited for the trail hands to get paid off a newspaper described one as the Rendezvous of all the unemployed

scalawagism in seven states her code of morals is the honor of Thieves her principal business is polygamy and

decency she knows not her only visible means of support is rowdyism and 17 saloons furnish the

inspiration for it the Texans call the townsman paper collar Comanches who waited in Ambush to

buy their beef and see that the weight of the money didn't burden their journey home

[Music] hurraying a town was a semi-competitive Indoor Sport

It generally meant a visit to the ladies of the line and the wholehearted dedication to Downing popsico whiskey

quicker than it could etch the glass a lot of cow hands carried pistols usually Rusty but a few of them could

grab fast enough to hit anything but their own toes trouble usually came when unreconstructed Texas Rebels played

cards with Yankees who thought the North had won the Civil War a re-examination of First Manassas

through Appomattox plus the slimmest suspicion of a bottom deal or a cold deck

was quite apt to bring down the hammer on 40 grains of black powder [Music]

it was said that pulling up a town to look at its roots didn't help its growth not

besides it rattled a dealer and was bad for business which wasn't appreciated if the principal dealers were also the

police force Dodge City's Peace Commission boasted three notorious professional gamblers

except with cars none of them was a quick draw artist take your time and don't miss that's what Matt Masterson

said [Music] The Undertaker's friend is what they

called Luke short because he always shot his victims where it didn't show a colleague over here is

named Wyatt Earp never Rose higher than assistant Marshall partly because of his friendship with Doc Holliday a

psychopathic dentist and Ducks Lady Love big nose Kate while Bill Hickok the long-haired

Marshal of Abilene and Hayes made his headquarters in back of a bordello who gloried in his Legend which he

invented himself he didn't survive to enjoy it but the myth of the two gun Galahad did

the dime novel invented a whole Cavalry of glorified Ambush artists and the dime novel was invented by Ned

puntland a hack writer who got rich by putting the Yahoo on Horseback and making him seem larger than life

but Sam Colt had made all men the same size the real West knew what it really thought of its own outcast

one of our banking institutions was visited Yesterday by The Firm of Dalton Brothers with the purpose of closing out

several large accounts when the transaction was completed they had been paid in full with interest

compounded [Music] the price on the head of Jesse James did

not indicate His True Value to society there was a considerable discount on that it took some doing to fit the James

boys into the Robin Hood Legend if they robbed only the rich it was because there was no profit in robbing the poor

and Jesse killed Lofton out of sheer meanness it was allowed that Jesse and Frank honored their father and mother so

did their cousins the youngest an otherwise self-righteously obeyed certain other carefully selected

Commandments but reading further into the book out of 28 members of the James younger gang who

lived by the sword 19 died the same way [Music]

there was another over publicized pack of pariahs and their ending made a liar out of Ned Buntline too

they followed an older text with what measure ye meet it shall be measured to you again

William Bonnie Jr was a homicidal [ __ ] from the slums of New York before he was killed he had murdered a man for each of

his 21 years and left nothing behind but a myth they called it Billy the Kid the mythmakers didn't forget the ladies

the fairest flowers of the Prairie they call them what tickled the westerners was that they were usually referring to

such Charming specimens of Eve's flesh as big many [Music]

blonde Marie foreign [Music] mustache

and there was there was Martha Jane Canary an excessively soiled Dove known at a

safe downwind distance from history as Calamity Jane [Music]

the dime novelists who called her virtuous also called Bell star beautiful law was late reaching the west but order

and sometimes even Justice was enforced by vigilante officers of the midnight Court

judge Lynch presiding the man trackers of a posse didn't read dime novels a whole lot so they didn't know how tough

the law Dodgers were puffed up to be they were a pretty hard case lot themselves

the kind of reading they favored most were the coroner's verdicts they helped to write

[Music] when The Fugitive was found he was so full of holes that the coarsest food was

of no use foreign cause of death stoppage of the breath

occurring while guests of honor at a meeting of the uplift Society died of a fall when the platform on

which he was standing suddenly gave way it was finally becoming unfashionable to die with your boots on

[Music] what the easterners were already calling the wild west

had hardly had hardly really got woolly before it began to feel the curry comb of

civilization for one thing too many men had burned too many beans the winters seemed longer and and The

Lonesome seemed thicker so they so they wrote home for Mary Ann and when she arrived by the thousands

respectable and strong-willed she said we've got to make this a fit country to raise kids in

and then the West knew it was going to have to start shaving on Sunday and stop wearing its galluses looped across its

butt gold dusted gotten gritty to The Taste and was was Mighty thin nourishment

and a can of peaches looked real good to a man who had been on a steady diet of his own or his neighbor's Beast

trade was it was a real civilizer so in the east they put wheels on cash and credit

and rolled them across the white Missouri it was the greatest race in history the

Civil War was on the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific were track laying from both ends

to the middle to bold America together East and West before it blew apart North and South

the West was in a hurry for its Railroad troops had to be sent to fight the Indians rifles shipped to the Indians to

fight the troops and the settlers sent to be protected by the troops against the Indians and carloads of Celluloid

collars for the settlers cable Twist tobacco non-typical spittoons all that is needful as one Pioneer said to

transform the Wilderness into Arcadia foreign [Music]

plenty wagon no horse he watched it cutting his land in two and only hoped it would hurry with those

rifles [Music] as a bonus there was a federal land

grant for each mile of track laid after five years they met a Promontory Point Utah for the driving of a final golden

spike it was engraved may God continue the unity of our country as this railroad unites the two great oceans of

the world the Central Pacific president missed the spike and hit the rail

the Union Pacific president hit his own shin somebody in a sweaty undershirt got the

two oceans properly joined said one celebrant all I remember is that there was a great abundance of

champagne now the West was really open for business

to populate its right-of-way with customers land which the railroads had gotten for nothing was so cheap some of

the best farmers in the world fugitives from Russian and Prussian tyranny an Irish famine flocked over to take

through trains without a change of cars to that land of milk and honey there was free land too

the Homestead Act opened millions of Acres of Prairie to anyone who could prove up on it Uncle Sam bet them 160

acres of land that they couldn't live on it for eight months but most of them stayed

they built their homes of sod Nebraska marble they called it and they fueled their fires with Buffalo chips

life wasn't easy for these sought Busters for a Pioneer Woman it could be a long day Rose about five got my

housework done make six more loaves of bread made a kettle of mush

put my clothes away and set my house in order nine o'clock P.M

was delivered of another son [Music] they were called Saudis and nesters and

Cloud jockeys they raise hearty crops and sturdy children they put the roots down deep because

they were the ones who came not to rape the land nor rob it but to make it rich and harvest the fruit of it and to make

it rich again [Music] they had unraveled the devil's hat band

to make barbed wire and they fenced off the West with it finally there was no more free land left

except for a corner of Oklahoma territory it had been given to the Indians for their proposed state of

Sequoia but that didn't matter much it was opened up for settlement by anyone who could get there except Indians the

last unassigned lands in the west were thrown up for grabs foreign

land Seekers showed up the legal ones were Boomers Sooners were the ones who sneaked in the night before

many were speculators who staked out claims not to settle on but to sell claims are protected here in two ways

they set by lever action and by legal action but Winchester litigation was nearly out

of style law was the thing in Oklahoma and if possession was nine points of it that

other one point kept plenty of lawyers doing a land Office business [Music]

[Applause] [Music] The Great Outdoors was gridironed into

town Lots the people of the Wide Open Spaces had used up the land and started to huddle together

City life would make it easier to acquire material wealth communicable diseases and culture

[Music] [Applause] education had never been unvalued west

of the Missouri but now it is no longer rude and occasional and communities boasted of

their schools with all the brag they used to reserve for their saloons and they were in God's country that they

knew and most of them admitted it and were grateful so they built him a house the best in town

[Music] they did what they set out to do they made it a fit country to raise kids in

and when they did that The Westward Movement was over at one time one out of every hundred

Americans was involved in the opening of the West there was glory in what they did just in

getting there was Glory but there was tragedy too

because someone was there first [Music]

he and the people of the Prairie and the plains the Sioux decree Arapaho a Kiowa Crow Cheyenne Shoshone Pawnee

and the people of the mountains and the foothills of the mountains the Blackfoot NE Perce is

and the people of the desert and the dry places the Ute the Navajo the hikariya Apache Mescalero shirikawa

[Music] thank you and they looked across the land and they

saw that it grew sweet grass and it wore the Buffalo for a robe then the Destroyers came and turned it

into a slaughterhouse skinners took the hides by the Thousand ton and left the meat to rot the meat

hunters came took only the tongue and the hump and left the rest to rot then the sportsmen they killed and left it

all to run and when there was nothing left the Indian wondered whose bones next

would be gathered by the scavengers and the soldiers came and wondered the same thing

they drew down 13 a month and sang We're marching off for Sitting Bull and this is the way we go 40 miles a day on beans

and hay in the regular army-o the Indians called him dogface wagon gun Soldier and Heap walk man

and he wondered what was he doing so far from home and like soldiers everywhere he passed the time Drilling and

housekeeping [Music] over something to happen

and the officers one of them said because she married a pair of pumpkin Ryan shoulder straps with no influence

in the war department my wife must share my Exile in the middle of a Sahara at the bottom of the promotion list

the officers and Men of the frontier departments heroically enforced the treaties of a civilian Indian Bureau

they despised for its stupidity and Corruption [Applause]

of One Piece commission sitting Bulls said I would have more faith in the grandfather in Washington if he did not

have so many bald-headed thieves working for him but the Indians crime was greater he was

in the way I was born on the Prairie where the winds blew free and there was nothing to

break the light of the Sun although you say go to another country I am here and here is where I'm going to

be shut us up on a reservation we want peace but let us go wherever we please

as the Americans do the white man has the country which we love and we only wish to wander on the

Prairie until we die I want no blood upon my land to stain the grass

we ask [Music] as young men we shall have peace what

treaty have the whites ever made with us that they have ever kept not one tell the grandfather at Washington not

to let the white man come into our country that is what they promised in their treaty

[Music] and then the white man spoke the more I see of these Indians the more

convinced I am that they all have to be killed or maintained as a species of pulpers

the only good Indian is a dead Indian kill all scalpel little and big nits make lice

when the Indians spoke again he said the whites want war and we will give it to them

thank you [Music] thank you

[Music] thank you [Music]

the longest war was over the 28-year war it was a civil war

fought between two American armies on their own American soil where they had fought

the grass grew richer new home Sand Creek

the Washita the rosebud Salt River Canyon

the Little Bighorn slim Buttes big hole Wounded Knee but the war was over long before the

last battle when a gallant Indian warrior said I am tired of fighting our Chiefs are

all killed the old men are all dead the little children are freezing to

death my people have run away to the hills and have no food

no one knows where they are I want to have time to look for my children

maybe I shall find them among the Dead hear me my Chiefs I am tired

my heart is sad and sick from where the sun now stands I will fight no more

forever [Music] the real West

it lasted only 40 years and then it was finished if it's a good land and it grows good

people it's because it's been irrigated by a lot of sweat and spit and blood

tears have fallen on it too and a little Snakehead whiskey an old-timer said at best

it's big and pretty now all right and I helped build it but by damn

wouldn't it be fun to tear it down and start all over again [Music]

[Music] foreign [Music]