Was the wild west as anarchistic as pop culture leads us to believe?

This is highly dependent on the area of the “Wild West”. Pop culture really portrays a combination of every different part of the West and slaps I️t all together on a desert backdrop and says it’s the story of gunslinging cowboys and outlaws. This is really all just a giant misconception of what was actually happening in the West. I️ can only speak on the southwest in particular as that’s what I️ know but the idea of cowboys vs outlaws/native americas is almost entirely false. However, there was A LOT of prostitution, drinking, and gambling all taking place in this area, but even that is dependent.

The ideas of cowboys vs Indians is really just a repetition of one of the most infamous Texas historians account of the West, Walter Prescott Webb. Webb emphasized a Eurocentric view on the world arguing that the conquest of the West was the simply a sign of progress for man. Because of this, his depiction of the interactions between native Americans and ‘cowboys’ is skewed. The first problem with this is that he based his research on pretty limited sources, really only highlighting what was written in English and largely ignoring Spanish/native language sources. This obviously left out a large part of the actual history on the ground, so his narrative got to tell whatever story he wanted I️t to. He really got this whole story wrong in his book on the Texas rangers (“The Texas Rangers: A century of Frontier Defense”) which was released in 1935. But because this was around the time western movies started to come into light, this was the perception that was used in movies. Since then we’ve seen dozens of recounts of the story of the rangers and other cowboys that tell a more complicated story. Benjamin H. Johnson’s “Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans Into Americans” (2003) discusses how the Texas rangers and those “cowboy” like gunslingers were more often than not cowardly, aggressive, and racist people who saw gun violence as the only way to solve problems, especially with Mexicans. It’s pretty clear how Webb’s version of history was what was picked up in pop culture and the “revisionist” version of the history really just hasn’t made I️t into pop culture yet.

The next big problem with the idea of cowboys vs native Americans and outlaws is that Native Americans in the southwest became some of the most prolific ‘cowboys’ there were. I️ can’t attest to why exactly movies and pop culture portray cowboys as white people but they do, and it’s probably just societal racism. Peter Iverson’s “When Indians Became Cowboys: Native Peoples and Cattle Ranching in the American West” details how Native American Groups became some of the best cowboys there were.

Lastly, the idea that there was always gambling, drinking, and sex taking place has a bit of truth but also a bit of falsehoods. Some towns in the southwest, especially mining/farming towns like Bisbee, AZ or El Paso, TX, were loaded with brothels and bars in their infancy. As time went on that began to change but I’ll get to that in a bit. By the 1920s and American prohibition, towns in Mexico (Tijuana) became havens for Americans to come and enjoy drinking, gambling, and sex. Rachel St. John’s “A Line in the Sand” explains how the demarcation of the US-Mexico Border began to impact life in these towns and how I️t starts to move away from this ‘anarachist’ type towns. So those ideas of anarchy are some what true, but there were other places that were strictly against that kind of behavior because of their roots in religion. Linda Gordon’s “The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction” looks at Nogales, AZ which was a highly catholic town and details how religion affected almost every aspect of life in the town, making I️t less “anarchical”

All together, the ideas of Anarachy in the West, specifically the southwest, seen in pop culture are complicated. It’s not that we can blame pop culture for the mistakes Webb made when telling the story of cowboys and Texas rangers, but that’s just the image that has been made public. The idea of hookers, guns, and booze ruling the southwest is true to an extent, but certainly to less of an extent than perceived in pop culture.

I️ hope this helps and I️ apologize for formatting, I’m on mobile.