The image of the Western “bad man” is one that enters time and time again into the popular consciousness with such bravado and boldness as to illicit near veneration. However, this all too familiar fantasy of the Robin Hood-esque “lone gunman,” while seductive, is not enough to cover the harsh realities of frontier lawlessness and the shedding of innocent blood from which this picture has been drawn.


Towards the turn of the Twentieth century, the Wild West outlaw had already become a well-grounded archetype in literature. Dime Novels, weekly stories that provided much of the popular entertainment of the day, enticed readers with illustrated, color covers embellishing the desperado as a well-meaning but misunderstood hero rather than an outright villain. From such publications, a legendary figure came to be spawned from a reality that never truly existed except in the imagination of commercial writers. A well written retort against the glorified image of the desperado appeared in The Boston Herald in September of 1883. It is evidently clear that the correspondent leaves on no uncertain terms about his feelings on the topic.

CHARACTER OF THE
FRONTIER DESPERADO

Let me assure you my younger readers that there is nothing heroic in the “Billy the Kid” type of the frontier. The desperado is too lazy to work for a living. He is a theif and a cut-throat whenever he can cut a throat without fear. There are some brave men among them, to be sure, but their bravery arises from a consciousness of their matchless command of their weapons. They know perfectly well that they can shoot an ordinary man dead before his hand reaches his pistol. Often they have the triggers of their Colts 45 filed off, and fire by snapping the hammer with the thumb, whirling the pistols in their hands and shooting as the weapon comes to a level. And they are dead shots, as they need to be. Yet the ‘bad men’ who haunt the groggeries [barrooms] with their weapons ostentatiously displayed, who are given to shooting right and left when drunk, and, indeed, to discharging their ‘guns’ at all times—these fellows will rarely take the chances in a fair, stand-up fight. They wait until they can ‘get the drop’ on a man, or shoot him from behind on a dark night. Don’t look for any signs of chivalry among them. They are the meanest of all mean brutes. It is well that the changes wrought in the West by the completion of the various railroads announce that their race is nearly run. But this is an unpleasant subject. I have known so much of this sort of thing, however, that I could not forbear a word to offset the curious belief among some young people in the East that the Western “bad men” is a more noble figure than the Boston burglar or wife beater. He isn’t.—Cor. Boston Herald.

— Wessington Springs Herald, vol. I, no. 27, p.4, September 29 , 1883 (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.])

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