When you try to think of a word
synonymous with the Wild West, the first thing that comes
to mind is probably cowboy. But bounty hunter is
at least top five. In Western-themed films,
TV shows, and literature, the bounty hunter was usually
the shadowy anti-hero, a lone wolf with no real
connection to the law who got huge rewards in return
for capturing or eliminating outlaws. While that image made for some
great stories, in reality, life as a bounty hunter
was far different. So today, we're
looking at what it was like to be a bounty
hunter in the Old West. But before we get started, be
sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel and leave a
comment and let us know what other historical professions
you would like to hear about. [MUSIC PLAYING] Ironically, despite
the popularity of Old West stories about
anti-hero bounty hunters chasing down vicious outlaws
in the windswept desert, the term "bounty
hunter" didn't even exist at the time they
were supposed to have been doing all this bounty hunting. The term "bounty" dates
back to the early 1300s. Its original meaning was
"kindness" or "goodness." It wasn't until the
early 1700s that the word took on the meaning
of a "reward," but in the form of a
bonus given to men to entice them to join a
country's army or navy, as in, "Join now and get a
$15 bounty at Red Lobster." By the 1800s, the
term "bounty hunter" was in use for people
who received bonuses for collecting animal
pelts or dead birds, but not for those tracking
and capturing outlaws. American author
Norman A. Fox, who specialized in
Western stories, used "bounty hunter" with its
present day meaning in 1953, followed in 1954 by American
novelist and screenwriter, Elmore Leonard. Incidentally, Leonard
created Raylan Givens, the hard-edged
Western lawman played by Timothy Olyphant in the
television series Justified. [MUSIC PLAYING] As boring as it sounds,
most bounty hunters were actually lawmen
or freelancers contracted from detective
agencies or hired by banks. In an analysis of 255
gunfighters, only three were found to be the type of
steely, cool bounty hunter featured in movies and TV. And even those guys
only did their hunting on an occasional basis. Most rewards were
$100 or lower, which wasn't enough to make
it a full-time gig. If you wanted to be in the
business of tracking down bad guys, you had to
have a day job, sort of like every actor in LA. Wonder how many bounty
hunters worked as servers at Tender Greens. Furthermore, the
bounties being offered weren't necessarily guaranteed. In the case of Pat
Garrett, a sheriff just looking to make
some extra cash, New Mexico's
Governor Lew Wallace placed a newspaper ad
offering a reward for Billy the Kid's capture to the
tune of $500, which was pretty big money for a bounty. When Garrett attempted
to claim the bounty, however, Wallace tried to tell
him he wasn't entitled to it, claiming it was a
personal offer that wasn't binding to
the territory itself. OK, sure, whatever that means. Garrett persisted and
eventually received the reward, but not before local citizens,
disgusted by the governor's refusal to honor the
offer, did the Wild West version of a GoFundMe and raised
$1,150 to send to Garrett. Not to say there wasn't the
occasional Texas tornado-sized payday. Take Jesse James. Everyone else here tried to. Even people who don't know much
about history or the Old West usually recognize
the name Jesse James. He and his older
brother Frank were two of the most infamous
outlaws in American history. In 1882, Thomas T. Crittenden,
the governor of Missouri, offered a reward of $25,000
for the capture of Jesse, dead or alive, and a
$15,000 reward for Frank. Adjusting for
inflation, that $40,000 total would be equal to
$2.4 million in 2020, which is no small potatoes. You can buy a lot of
cowboy hats with that. Crittenden allegedly
had held secret meetings with the coward, Robert Ford,
a new recruit to the James Gang who had been invited to live
with Jesse and his family. On April 3, 1882,
Ford took Jesse out by shooting him in the
back while the outlaw was dusting a picture, which seems
like a pretty low thing to do. And Ford's actions remain
controversial to this day. On the other hand,
did we mention how high that reward was? But if you think
$25,000 is a lot, John Wilkes Booth rang
up even higher numbers, which makes sense. On April 20, 1865,
the US War Department offered a reward for John
Wilkes Booth and accomplices, David Herold and
John Surratt, $50,000 of which was for Booth himself. Adjusting for
inflation, that $100,000 would be equivalent to
approximately $9.8 million in 2020, more than enough
to hang up your gun belt and spurs. Those kind of paydays,
however, were extremely rare. Most of the time, you'd
be risking your life to capture or eliminate
dangerous criminals for minimum wage. Sometimes that risk
was pretty high, like in the case of
John "Jack" Duncan. In 1876, the Texas Ranger
sought out Jack Duncan, a 27-year-old police
officer, and asked him if he'd be down for
a little spy action. They were looking for the
notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin and needed
an undercover agent to get them the information
they needed to find him. The Rangers promised Duncan
a share of the $4,000 reward if he'd agreed to help them
infiltrate Hardin's crew. So, using the
pseudonym of Williams, Duncan moved to
Gonzales County, where Hardin was suspected
of hiding, and worked as a laborer and handyman. What followed was a
Donnie Brasco-esque scheme of dual identities
and double-crosses. Duncan made sure
to pledge loyalty to the people in
Hardin's circle, even befriending Neal Bowen,
the outlaw's father-in-law. Bowen eventually
took in Duncan-- I mean, Williams-- as a boarder. Duncan went deep undercover. He even had the Texas
Rangers arrest him at one point to make his
cover story more believable. Duncan eventually tricked
Bowen into giving him Hardin's location
and gave the info to the Rangers, who
finally nabbed Hardin on a train headed to Florida. Duncan got his money, but
quit the Texas Rangers after just four months to
work as a private detective and bounty hunter in Dallas. [MUSIC PLAYING] Despite the generally
appealing depiction of bounty hunters in
popular entertainment as grim but
honorable anti-heroes with an unflinching
sense of justice, in reality, the work they did
was frequently unglamorous, if not downright villainous. The first Fugitive
Slave Act was passed in 1793, which gave local
governments the right to seize and return
escaped enslaved people to their owners. As a result, bounty
hunters were regularly hired to track down
these fugitives. You probably won't
see Steve McQueen take too many of those bounties
on Wanted: Dead or Alive. The law also stated that
slave owners and their agents had the right to search for
escapees in free states. If a suspected
escapee was captured, the bounty hunter would
then go before a judge and provide evidence that
the person was enslaved. If the court was
satisfied with the proof, the owner could then
take the escapee back to his or her own
state, whether or not they had actually been a slave. Northern states tried to prevent
this miscarriage of justice. For example, they passed
personal liberty laws that gave accused runaways
the right to a jury trial. These laws also protected free
Black people, many of whom had been abducted by bounty
hunters and sold into slavery. This law did end up being
challenged in the 1842 Supreme Court case Prigg
v. Pennsylvania, which revolved around
a bounty hunter named Edward Prigg, a
Maryland resident convicted of
kidnapping someone he thought was an escaped
enslaved person. The Supreme Court ruled
in favor of Prigg, setting the precedent that
federal law superseded any state measures
that attempted to interfere with the
Fugitive Slave Act, although Northern states
still refused to abide by it. So if you were trying to earn
a living as a bounty hunter, you could regularly
find yourself tasked with bringing in people
whose only crime was wanting to live free. [MUSIC PLAYING] If you think some of
these outlaws were scary, there were some equally
dangerous bounty hunters out there in the Wild
West, if not more so. Take Henry Newton Brown. In 1882, he became the assistant
marshal of Caldwell, Kansas, and was later
promoted to marshal. But what nobody knew was that
Brown was a former outlaw who had been part of Billy the
Kid's gang, and in 1878, had ambushed and slain a sheriff
during the Lincoln County War. He also joined forces
with Billy the Kid instead of capturing him
and attempted a robbery of the Medicine Lodge Bank,
fatally shooting the bank's manager in the process. The bandits were
captured and taken to the Medicine Lodge Jail. Brown wasn't so lucky. He was gunned down as
he attempted to escape. Should have stuck
with the script, man. Those marshal paychecks
couldn't have been that bad. But the most infamous bounty
hunter was probably Tom Horn. In the late 1880s, the Pinkerton
National Detective Agency hired Horn as a bounty
hunter and tracker. But he didn't stay
with them for long. He became a gun for
hire and was thought to be responsible for the murder
of more than a dozen people. In other words, he was too
wild and unpredictable, even for the Pinkertons. And that's saying something. It's like getting kicked out
of Motley Crüe for partying too hard. Ironically, Horn
was hanged in 1903, after being convicted of a
crime many historians believe he did not commit-- the shooting of
14-year-old Willie Nickell, who was shot in the
back on July 18, 1901. Even bad guys did a little
bounty hunting on the side, though the reasons might
not have been as altruistic. The Dunn brothers-- Bee,
Calvin, Dal, George, and Bill-- ran a boarding ranch
near Ingalls, Oklahoma, where they allowed
outlaws to hide out. As a neat little side
gig, the brothers also occasionally
robbed or killed the travelers who stayed there. In addition, they
ran a meat market in Pawnee, a
convenient way for them to get rid of the cattle
they occasionally rustled. According to one
account, the Dunns made a deal with
lawmen in which they agreed to help capture members
of the outlaw Doolin-Dalton Gang in exchange for
getting the cattle rustling charges against them dropped. Their younger sister Rose had
been romantically involved with George "Bitter
Creek" Newcomb. And on May 2, 1895, he and
fellow Doolin-Dalton member Charlie Pierce arrived
at the ranch to see her. Conflicting reports exist
about what happened next. Depending on the
source, the brothers either tipped off the law, who
then ambushed and eliminated the outlaws. Or the Dunn brothers terminated
Newcomb and Pierce themselves. Either way, Pierce and Newcomb
ended up in the ground. And the Dunns
collected the bounty, which reportedly was
$5,000 for each man, enough to finally retire from this life
of crime, or on second thought, maybe not. So what do you think? Could you have made
it as a bounty hunter? Tell us why or why not
in the comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos from our Weird History.
