Life in the Old West

1830s brought disease, death to Plains Indians

Old Hoppy — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:49:47 +0000

During the 1830s, diseases brought to the Great Plains region, chiefly smallpox, devastated many Plains Indian groups. This was nothing new in the cultural mingling and cultural conflicts between Native Americans and European traders/settlers. But it was one of the earliest documented pandemics in what we now call the Old West.

According to historian Paul H. Carlson in his excellent book "The Plains Indians," this smallpox outbreak was started when deckhands in an American Fur Company steamboat moving up the Missouri River came in contact with members of several tribal groups living along the Missouri. By 1837, Carlson says, thousands of Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa people had died. He suggests that probably half of the Arikara and Hidatsa population of 4,500 died in this 1837 outbreak. In addition, he estimates this smallpox outbreak killed "virtually all" of the 1,600 Mandans living in the Upper Missouri region.

Diseases that came from Europeans and wiped out villages and large numbers of Native Americans were nothing new even as early as the 1830s. Historians suspect, in fact, that some of the Puritan accounts of mysteriously empty villages with full food stores which they encountered upon first landings in New England were probably empty because the inhabitants had picked up various diseases -- or fled the risk of such diseases -- from Portuguese explorers/fishermen who came to the area. (Some of the Puritan writers, however, credited such "miraculous" provisioning to Divine Providence making the way for their survival in the New England. But that another story for another time.)

Later history of the Old West, during what we call the Indian Wars, reveals some of the more horrible, dark side of European contact with Native Americans -- cases when white people intentionally infected Indian villages with smallpox and other diseases by means of abandoned blankets and clothing. But one of the earliest traceable outbreaks of smallpox among Plains Indians came from the American Fur Company boat venturing up the Missouri River in the 1830s.

Blizzards in Old West days

Old Hoppy — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:20:26 +0000

Blizzards in Old West days were catastrophic throughout most of the West, particularly throughout the Great Plains. For obvious reasons, severe snow, strong winds, and poor visibility combined with near-zero or sub-zero temperatures were dangerous for anyone living in isolated and rural areas. Combine that with the openness of the terrain and dependence upon cattle and stored crops for food, and streams, creeks, or poorly dug wells for water, and blizzards were a far greater disaster then than they are now.

One reference to the "Big Blizzard of 1886" in Foster-Harris' book "The Look of the Old West" indicates that a major Great Plains blizzard that year played a significant role in ending the great cattle drives from Texas northward. Some contemporary accounts of that blizzard point to regions of Kansas where the crops had been particularly poor the preceding two growing seasons, adding further to the impact of the January blizzard.

Having live in Nebraska and South Dakota for a number of winters when I was a child (Nebraska) and young adult (South Dakota) I can attest to the fearful feelings that accompany being on the road during various heavy snow storms and blizzards. Anyone who's lived in the Plains knows, too, the frightening paralysis of trying to drive a car or truck through a "ground blizzard." That's a condition where snow is not falling, or falling very lightly, but some of the region's infamous high winds are kicking up snow from the ground so severely it creates a white-out that eliminates all visibility for long stretches. Driving a car in such conditions often blocks visibility in such a way that you seem to be floating into a solid white wall, or down a narrow tunnel into the snow.

As awful as such situations are in modern vehicles, imagine the effects blizzards in Old West days had on travelers unfortunate enough to be caught outside on horseback or in a wagon.

When winter comes along to the Great Plains and other regions of the West this year, think back on the hard "breed" of folks we call pioneers, and the rugged endurance of the Native Americans, who faced and surmounted many a blizzard to develop the Great Plains we know and live in today.

Prospectors needed grub, they looked for grubstakers

Old Hoppy — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:05:52 +0000

You can't watch too many old Westerns or read a few Western novels without running into these two words somewhere -- "grub" and "grubstake."

The first was used most commonly as sling for food, "grub" -- but it didn't get that meaning from the Old West. According to Winfred Blevins' "Dictionary of the American West" (which I reference a lot around these parts), "grub" started as a cattle term. It was "an earmark that consisted of cutting off the whole ear of the critter." The use of it for food came form slang dating from mid-17th century Britain, according to Blevins.

Of course, once you got to "grub" for food, it was a small step to "grubstake" for the start-up funding and food supplies needed by a prospector, and on to the person who supplied that start-up -- a "grubstaker."

Are you in the market for a grubstake or grubstaker? Perhaps those terms should have been kept alive for investors and venture capitalists in today's world. Yet in a way, those terms are still useful, as there are many people who still do gold prospecting throughout the modern West -- though most as a hobby rather than for living income. Still, when life's pressures get hard and heavy, have you ever thought of putting together a grubstake and heading for the gold in those Western hills and rivers?

How did settlers identify distinct Indian tribal groups?

Old Hoppy — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:02:29 +0000

I have been a big fan of "Westerns" and legitimate Western history since my 1950s childhood back in southeastern Nebraska, and I've never gotten a good answer to this question: How did settlers and soldiers who moved across the Plains and into the West learn to identify the various Indian tribal groups they encountered?

Think about it. We've all seen the movies where the wagon train circles up and prepares to defend against the hostile Indians. Invariably someone shouts something like, "Them's Apaches. Watch 'em. And here come some o' them Comanches!"

Or whatever.

But the point is this: None of the tribal groups or individual Indians wore name tags. I assume many times various Indians were identified by particular areas where they lived, by some unique styles of clothing and/or bodily markings, etc. But until the settlers or soldiers or whoever learned the languages involved, I would assume many times various Indian groups were mistaken for others.

What I'm getting at is this. Do any of you reading this have a good online source and/or book/magazine that you know of which discusses these issues? I would really like to read more about distinctive markings, clothing, or any other means any of the Indian tribes had of identifying each other, other than distinctive language or physical characteristics. Anybody offer a good source?

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Books you need: Buy ‘Cowboy Culture’

Old Hoppy — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:45:17 +0000

Ever wonder when, where, and why "cowboys" came from? (And why are they called "cowboys" and not "horse boys"?) I would highly recommend a very readable, classic Western history book that contains the answers for just about any questions you've got about cowboys and the West where they lived and thrived. The book is "Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries" by David Dary. (If you follow the link I've created to the book title, you'll find copies available on eBay.)

Dary's book is not new, and I'm sure there are newer, similar book available about cowboys and all things related. But Dary's may still be the best. It's remained in print in one form or another for more than 20 years, because it simply is both thorough and thoroughly entertaining. He rightly begins with the Spanish roots of horses, cattle, and men who handled them in the Western Hemisphere, tracing the development of cowboys and cowboy culture from Mexico up through Texas, California, and those regions we now call the American Southwest.

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Take a good look around used bookstores in your area, search eBay and other online sites, and find yourself a copy of "Cowboy Culture." If you're a lover of all things Western, you won't regret owning this wonderful little book.

Love Western fiction? Here’s a site that reviews Westerns

Old Hoppy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:05:50 +0000

Ran onto a nice resource blog for all of us who love Western novels. Don't know why I hadn't found this before. It's a blog called "Western Fiction Review," and it pretty much does exactly that: The author of the blog has some really nicely written reviews of Western novels, current and past, and some fascinating interviews with some Western writers -- also current and recent past.

I haven't looked all around the site yet, but I already would recommend it. I found this blog by Googling the name of an old friend of mine who's been a very prolific Western novelist for more years than he or I would be willing to own up to -- Frank Roderus (whom I believe I've referred to here before). Be sure to look around the "Western Fiction Review" site and read that interview, as well as several other very interesting interviews.

Wish I could locate more "About" information concerning the blogger running that site. If you should happen to read this post and recognize your blog, leave me a "Contact" message, and identify yourself, so's I can give you the credit due!

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Indian Pidgin English shaped the Old West

Old Hoppy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:41:27 +0000

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."

Some of the terms that are classified as Indian Pidgin English are "fire water," the use of "winter" to mean "year," the use of "moon" to mean "month," and even "buffalo soldier" to mean "black soldier." Blevins points out that some Indian tribal groups used this pidgin language to communicate with other tribal groups whose language they never learned. And, quite interesting, is his notion that the word "squaw," which actually started as an Algonquin word, was identified by most Plains Indians as a "white man" word which they considered offensive. He concludes his discussion of Indian Pidgin English with this remark:

Americans were once criticized enthusiastically by the British for corrupting English with "wigwam words." So let us now proclaim them thoroughly ours and celebrate them.

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What do you call the guys with the pistols?

Old Hoppy — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:27:51 +0000

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.

(Interestingly, the term "shooting iron" in reference to handguns is found as far back as 1787.)

Blevins says the first use of "gunman" was in a 1903 New York newspaper. The Old West lawman-turned-newspaper-sports-writer, Bat Masterson, used the term "gunfighter" when he wrote of his Western adventures and people he encountered. The related term "gunslinger" has been traced back to early Western movies, but isn't authentic to the Old West. It was picked up quickly by Western writers and popularized in novels and movies.

One of the interesting, archaic terms which Blevins says goes back to the days of the American Revolutionary period is "gunsman" -- which he says probably wasn't limited to those who used pistols.

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The whole culture surrounding guns was crucial in the days of the Old West, and much that we have romanticized about guns and those who used them came about from actual usage being distorted by the early, flamboyant Western writers (i.e., the dime novelists) then carried into present-day cultural fiction.

Native American cultures, alliances were always diverse

Old Hoppy — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:28:55 +0000

To speak of some pre-European "Native American lifestyle" is more myth than reality, when it comes to the cultures and allegiances of the many ethnic groups which inhabited North America before the Spanish, British, French, and other European colonizers came here.

In reality, Indian (the preferred terminology within most Native American ethnic groups even today) bands and tribal groups were as diverse and fragmented in their culture and their alliances with each other as were any of the nations of Europe. The Iroquois Confederacy of the Northeast was a major exception to this. The five original "nations" or tribal groups which made up that alliance (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk) -- joined by a sixth (Tuscarora) in 1720 -- were a major exception. In those regions we generally refer to as the Old West (the Plains and the Southwest), there were some 30 distinct cultural/linguistic Indian groups at the time of earliest contact by Europeans. In Mexico, Central America, and South America there were many, many more.

Population and tribal group estimates for the entire pre-Colombian Western Hemisphere are guesses at best and range from 10 million to more than 110 million. Recent scholarship tends toward the 10-20 million range. It has also been estimated that there were as many as 300 distinct American Indian language and cultural groups in North America in the year 1500, the designated starting point in many history books for European contact.

Among the many distinct tribal groups there were indeed alliances, mostly those of convenience for food gathering and hunting purposes. There were also constant and bitter wars, rivalries that extend back for centuries. In some cases among the Plains Indians in particular, there were tribes with common ancestry which became historic rivals after they were split apart by invading groups from outside the Plains. (One excellent book, though somewhat dated now, for learning more about American Indian history and culture is "The American Indian: Prehistory to the Present" by Arrell Morgan Gibson.)

So there was little cultural or linguistic unity among the 300+ American Indian tribal groups here when Europeans came to the Americas. And those alliances which did exist were often easily broken if that meant beneficial trade and treatment with the invading Europeans. We cannot possibly understand the history of the Old West without understanding more of the cultural diversity and dynamics of the American Indian groups who were here when Europeans first encountered them.

Many Southwest tribal groups descended from Anasazi ‘cliff dwellers’

Old Hoppy — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:29:21 +0000

An ancient group of Indians (Native Americans) who had a great impact on the history of the Old West, specifically in the Southwestern region of the U.S., was the Anasazi. They were ancestors of more well-known, modern tribal groups as the Zuni and Hopi. The Anasazi created the captivating Pueblo dwellings such as Mesa Verde and Kayenta.

The word "Anasazi" itself is a Navajo term that means "the ancient ones," and researches say these people lived in what is now known as the Four Corners Region (where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah boundaries come together) until about seven or eight centuries ago. Archaeology is sketch, and written records are non-existent, about where these cliff dwellers may have originated. And all that's known about their departure from that region into the Rio Grande Valley near the end of the 1200s -- where they became the ancestors of the Zuni and Hopi tribes -- is that it may have come about because of extended drought or pressure from their enemies. (One source tells us that contemporary Pueblo groups object to the name "Anasazi" because it is a word from their longtime "enemies," the Navajos.)

Anasazi life was based on agriculture, included the development of wonderful Anasazi pottery, and showed a highly developed ceremonial religion.

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It is always important to remember that few cultures or groups of people lived in isolation, with many ancestral and tribal groups have an impact on each other. The Anasazi at their height traded and spread people and traditions throughout the Southwest and into the Plains regions. An excellent source of information about the spread of tribal cultures and the ancestral origins of Native Americans throughout the West, especially the Plains, is a very readable yet scholarly work titled "The Plains Indians" by Paul Carlson.