The Wild West

The "Wild West" is a famous time in American history. It happened in the big, open lands in the west of the United States, between about 1865 and 1895 — only about thirty years.

At that time, the government said: "Come west! You can have free land if you live on it and farm it." So lots of people set off for the west. Farmers, miners, ex-soldiers and families from many countries all moved there to find land, gold, or a new life. In 1869, a long new railroad joined the east of the country to the west, so the journey became much easier.

It was a land of grass and cattle. Cowboys rode their horses for weeks and brought huge groups of cattle north to the new towns by the railroad. There, the cattle went onto the trains and travelled east to be sold. Life on the frontier was hard, exciting and often dangerous — and this is where the legend of the Wild West began.

On the frontier, there were often no police and no judges. So some men became outlaws — criminals who lived outside the law. The most famous was Jesse James. With his gang, he would hold up banks and trains and run off with the money. Some people were afraid of him. Other people liked him, because he stole from rich banks and railroads. In 1882, a young man in his own gang shot him dead, to get the bounty on his head.

Another famous outlaw was a young man called Billy the Kid. He broke out of jail more than once, and people say he killed several men before he was twenty-one. A sheriff called Pat Garrett set off to find him, and in 1881 he caught up with him and shot him.

The most famous lawman was Wyatt Earp. In 1881, in a town called Tombstone, Wyatt, his brothers and their friend Doc Holliday had a fight with a group of outlaws near a place called the O.K. Corral. The fight lasted only about thirty seconds, but three men died — and people still talk about it today.

The Wild West became a story very fast. Cheap books made the outlaws and sheriffs sound like giant heroes. From 1883, a man called Buffalo Bill travelled around America and Europe with a big "Wild West" show, with real cowboys and pretend battles. Later, Hollywood made hundreds of cowboy films. The cowboy became one of the biggest symbols of America.

But this exciting story hides a sad truth. The land was not empty. It was the home of the Native American peoples — the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Apache and many others. When the settlers and the railroad came west, they took the land. They hunted the buffalo, the animal that many of these peoples needed to live, almost to zero. After many wars and broken promises, the Native Americans lost their land and were moved to small, poor areas. In 1890, soldiers killed about 300 Lakota people — men, women and children — at a place called Wounded Knee.

That same year, the government said the frontier was finished: the west was now full of towns. The Wild West had lasted only about thirty years. But the legend has never died. More than a hundred years later, its cowboys and outlaws still ride through our films — a story of adventure, but also of a great cost to the people who were already there.