PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE WILD WEST

The 500 carefully selected illustrations,- photographs, documents, handbills, paintings, contemporary records -- justify this being called a ""pictorial history"". But there is also a substantial amount of text- close to four hundred pages. Here the major factors behind the lurid history of American outlawry (for it is that rather than a history of the Wild West) are analyzed. There were three:- the tradition of outlawry, which dated back to Colonial days and the cattle rustlers and horse thieves, the outlaw bands of the American Revolution, the ruffans of the Neutral Grounds, and so on to the violence of the Nattchez Trace, the Gold Rush days, etc. etc.; the impact of the Civil War with men accustomed to shooting turned loose and homeless; the drought that brought disaster to the cattle industry. Here are the stories of gangsters, bank robbers, train robbers, hustlers, out-laws, gunmen. Here are the famous figures of the so-called comics,- Vasquez, Black Bart, the Daltons, the James, the Rufus Buck gang, Apache Kid, Black Jack, the Wild Bunch and others. Here are the women who played their parts,- Calamity Jane, Belle Starr, China Polly. Here are the men on the side of the law,- Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, the Pinkertons. A source book for the addicts who have run out of figures of America's days of violence.