American West: 1861-76

Lesson 8: A Home in the West

Lawmen, Outlaws, and Other Wild Types

Towns in the west drew all types of folks. Right along side preachers, teachers, doctors, and lawyers were the bad guys—and gals. These rambling kind of citizens came in the form of gamblers, gunfighters, bank robbers and other outlaws, as well as madams and her girls who were often referred to as ‘Soiled Doves.’ To keep these folks in line you hired a sheriff.

All of these questionable folks, sometimes including the sheriff, seemed to gather in the saloons, for there you could wet your thirst and, as in Omaha, Nebraska, you might find a game of draw poker to sit in on. That’s where a one-eyed gambler met his match.

It seems a man named Mr. Jones caught Old One-eye palming a card and called for a fresh deal. Before they started this new deal Mr. Jones announced, while fingering his revolver, that they were going to have nothing but square deals, and that he wasn’t accusing anyone but if he caught anyone cheating, he’d shoot his other eye out.

Of the women who came to the Plains, like the men not all settled on homestead. As well, not all of the women became schoolteachers or wives of men of the town. But they served a necessary function — for the time. One such young lady was Josephine “Chicago Joe” Hensley who set up her business in a log cabin in Helena, Montana.

Hensley’s kind of establishment was referred to as a Hurdy-Gurdy House, a term left over from California’s gold rush days. Josephine once avoided a jail sentence when the Montana legislature outlawed “Hurdy-gurdy Houses.” It seems Hensley’s business, in place of a hurdy-gurdy, had a three-piece band. So by the legislature's own wording, Chicago Joe wasn’t breaking the law — such as they were in the west.

Good laws or bad, someone had to enforce them. In Abilene, Kansas, in 1871, Marshal Wild Bill Hickok was doing the enforcing.

Wild Bill Hickok

Often there was a unique understanding between the lawman and the lawbreaker. It seemed to be so when Jesse and Frank James slipped into Hickok’s town and passed the word to Wild Bill that they wouldn’t cause any trouble while there. However, the James boys added a slight bit of advice to their message: in case Bill tired to capture them, they had already made arrangements for Hickok’s funeral. The marshal didn’t pay them a visit.

Jesse James

A sheriff’s pay, for the dangerous job he had, must not have been too considerable, especially in Colorado since some of them seemed to need to take second jobs. One such instance occurred in 1861 when a U.S. marshal was arrested for embezzling federal funds and another one faced charges of larceny and of passing counterfeit money.

Good or bad, this was your place in the west where cowboys herded, miners panned, homesteaders plowed where buffalo had roamed, and Indians went on the warpath.

Wild Bill did come to the end of his days. Here's a link to "Read All About It."

Good-Bye Bill By Mary Trotter Kion http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/grea... Yesterday, August 2, 1876, James Butler Hickok, also known to friend and foe as Wild Bill, was brutally assaulted and murdered in the Black Hills mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota.

Here's a link to: Madam, Is This the End of the Line?: The Josephine Hensley Story By Mary Trotter Kion http://www.mkionwritenow.com/page4.html

Sources for this section are:

Hicks, Jim, Editor. The Gamblers: The Old West. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1978.

Kion, Mary Trotter. Madam, Is This the End of the Line? The Josephine Hensley Story: Women of the West, web site.

Trachtman, Paul. The Gunfighters: The Old West. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1974.

Wheeler, Keith. The Townsmen: The Old West. Time-Life Books, New York, 1975.

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