What a Wild West Duel Really Looked Like

it's july 1865 in springfield missouri the gunfighter wild bill hickok loses his favorite gold watch in a poker game to dave tut a gambler who's also been flirting with an old flame of his while bill hears that the next day tut plans to further humiliate him by showing off his watch in the middle of town that day while bill walks into the town square revolver in hand and spots tut with his watch the town's people disperse in the two men's stand alone 75 yards apart [Music] from here it's a classic quick draw duel the men stand sideways with their guns cocked hands hovering over their holsters they reach for their guns in fire at the same time tut misses badly but while bill doesn't he shoots tut between his ribs killing him that's one of the only quick draw duels we can historically verify since the 1860s wild west fiction has convinced many people that cowboys spent a good chunk of their time dueling cheap fictional books called dime novels newspapers and later comics and films took real-life gun fighters like while bill hickok and wyatt earp and exaggerated their stories cowboys became folk heroes noble gunslinger shooting down bad guys on the lawless frontier [Music] but there's actually a lot of debate among historians about how violent the wild west really was the numbers say american frontier towns were extraordinarily homicidal but as robert dykstra points out the stats can be misleading since we calculate homicide rate by homicides per 100 000 people meaning that one free homicide in a 500 person frontier town could give you an absurdly high crime rate depending on when and where you restrict your sample you could wind up with homicide rates from zero to over a thousand however even conservative estimates say that the old west was about as murderous as today's most violent u.s cities and this makes sense gangs of bandits roamed the frontier and law enforcement was often weak or corrupt cowboys had a role in this violence as well skilled gunfighters found work as protection men for cattle companies before the days of vast fenced-in ranches these cowboys rode along the distant edges of ranches and shot cattle thieves on site but most importantly the wild west combined a culture of gambling and drinking with a bunch of gun-wielding men the occasional drunken shootout was inevitable that's how a lot of violence in the old west happened gunfights were almost never honorable planned out duels they were spontaneous and sloppy even while bill hickok's story doesn't end in a quick draw duel he beats jack mccall in poker and the next day mccall gets drunk pushes through the saloon doors pulls out a revolver and shoots him while his back is turned robert de armand writes that wild west's gunfights were generally sudden impromptu affairs and gunfighters took every advantage available when langford farmer peel got into a gunfight over a gambling match he and his opponent shot each other until they ran out of bullets then peel with three bullets in him crawled to his opponent and won the duel by stabbing him in the chest with a bowie knife peel recovered but he lived and died by this kind of no rules gun fighting one night at a saloon he got into an argument with outlaw john bull peel challenged bull to a duel but bull said he needed to go up to his room to get his gun eventually peele assumed bull was too afraid to fight and left to see his mistress across the street she held peel's right arm while they walked suddenly bull emerged from the saloon with his gun in hand peel tried to grab his own gun but the woman was still clutching his shooting arm bull fired three bullets past the mistress and killed peel fiction gets the wild west duel wrong duels weren't formal clean or honorable the people of the frontier were human they drank booze broke the law and lost their temper the gunfights that actually happened often involved alcohol gambling and cheap shots which is more appropriate for a place called the wild west [Music] so thanks for tuning in to another history dose episode if you like what you saw make sure to subscribe like the video maybe even share it with some friends and consider donating to the patreon account thanks again [Music] you may think he's asleep

Channel: History Dose

Views: 3,074,680

Keywords: wild west, gun duel, cowboy, wild bill hickok, revolver, standoff, old western movies, gun fight scene, what was the wild west really like?, how violent was the old west?, was the wild west really that wild, wild west history, how the wild west became myth, why did the wild west end, the wild west movie, django unchained, shootout, old west, spaghetti western, shooting, crash course, dueling, red dead redemption, gun violence, hollywood, dave tutt, frontier, truth about

Id: I18K4Fm62zI

Length: 5min 3sec (303 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 29 2018