Did Cowboys Carry Pistols?

When I was about nine, my Uncle lived Mississippi, having moved there in the early 1930s to take advantage of a government offer to let people use land along the Mississippi levee in return for keeping the grass maintained.

He didn't ride a horse and he didn't wear a gun, so I did not think of him as a cowboy.

One evening they were going through some pictures of his cowboy days in New Mexico.

"Those aren't cowboys".

"Yes they are."

"No, they are not wearing guns."

"Why do you think they would wear guns?"

"Cowboys wear guns."

Ans: anyone who works from dawn to dusk herding, taking salt to, notching, and branding cattle, rounding up stray calfs, mending barbed wire and fence posts and watering troughs, and keeping pumps primed leaves his large-frame revolver somewhere where he doesn't have to carry it.

I got the chance to go into town with my uncle to see the sheriff.

Oh boy!

The sheriff wore a gun. A Smith $ Wesson Terrier.

Diving back in the Studebaker, we drove out and looked over the cattle.

The radio was on. William Conrad in Gunsmoke.

Now that was more like it!
 
briandg said:
I have always sort of assumed that there weren't as many high noon shoot outs as believed. Even the ones that did happen are exaggerated.
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This is absolutely true. See my earlier post.

Some serious historians have tried to suss out the truth in various well-known Old West shootouts, but they're often drowned out by less serious storytellers who repeat the highly embellished or outright fictional Eastern newspaper versions. (In many of these versions, the only thing that's factually correct is the number of bodies and the town where it took place, and sometimes not even that. :rolleyes:)
 
http://thechive.com/2015/08/20/15-of...ory-15-photos/
Supposedly this is a picture of Wyatt Earp with guns and horse. Not sure what year.

Thanks DJ - pic removed.

What are your thoughts on the Wyatt Earp photo - real of actor?
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Here are a few well documented photos of Wyatt Earp.

Wyatt Earp seated, Bat Masterson standing 1876

Wyatt_Earp_und_Bat_Masterson_1876_zps0ivdusbo.jpg


Wyatt_Earp_portrait_zps2kcxakjq.jpg




Wyatt Earp, seated, second from left. Bat Masterson, standing, second from right.

wyatt%20earp%20bat%20masterson_zpsv2wsosmz.jpg




Wyatt Earp as an old man.

wyatt%201_zpsho89zs9x.jpg




I gotta tell you, to my eye, this does not look like Wyatt Earp.

28626085941_2d67208377_zpsse9xmywh.jpg
 
I have always sort of assumed that there weren't as many high noon shoot outs as believed. Even the ones that did happen are exaggerated. I read an article about the bill hickock "duel" in Missouri. He supposedly drew and fired, nailed the bad guy in the heart at an extreme distance. What's more amazing is that he corrected for wind and elevation to make that three inch hit with one hand. Would the writer embellish facts?
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The Hickock - Tutt shooting on July 21, 1865 in Springfield Missouri has been well documented.

Both men stood about 75 yards apart. Tutt drew his weapon first, then Hickock his, a 36 caliber Colt Navy Cap & Ball revolver and steadied it on his left arm. Both hesitated for a moment, and then both fired at the same moment. Tutt missed, Hickock hit Tutt between the 5th and 7th ribs. Tutt cried out 'Boys, I am killed'. He ran to the porch of the local court house, then back into the street and he died.

No, it was not your typical Hollywood quick draw shoot out a few paces apart. The two men were 75 yards apart and Hickok took the time to aim.

It is also well known that unlike many Westerners, Wild Bill was an expert shot. He practiced daily with his Colt Navy revolvers. Whether or not it was a lucky shot that he killed Davis Tutt with one shot at that distance will never be known, but he did make the shot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Bill_Hickok_%E2%80%93_Davis_Tutt_shootout
 
At '$30 or $40 and found' a cowboy couldn't afford a firearm. Absolutely not a Colt. Even owning a horse was a huge outlay of money that cowboys just didn't have. A horse, not a trained cow horse, cost about $200 in the 19th Century. Cowboys got a horse(maybe a saddle too) issued to 'em when they got hired and firearms were not allowed in the 'bunk house' on most ranches. If the boss thought a guy needed a firearm, he was issued one. Not likely a Colt though. Too expensive.
"...He didn't ride a horse and he didn't wear a gun..." Neither did most other people. The idea of the U.S. being a nation of riflemen is a myth. Most people neither owned nor ever saw a real firearm outside the movies them either.
"...in the early 1930s..." Most people then couldn't afford a firearm either. Laws aside. There was a major depression on in the early 1930s.
"...low slung buscadero..." Strictly Hollywood.
"Hickok, Earp, Doc Holiday and the like..." Were also paid a great deal more than '$30 or $40 and found' too. None of 'em actually ever worked. Gamblers mostly.
 
I'm sure the cowboys around Tombstone at the time of the Earps did carry guns now and again. I believe some were deputized by Sheriff Behan, a Democrat as were the Texas cowboys.

Now the Earps, they were Republicans.

And the prize, of course, was the sheriff's job because he was also the tax collector and kept part of the collection in Arizona Territory.

As to the OK Corral shootout, one of the few real confrontations in the classic movie sense, the cowboys were woefully undergunned and actually outnumbered by the Earps and Doc Holliday.

One of my favorite films was "Jack Slade" starring Mark Stevens. In one scene, he faces a foe but they start with their guns drawn and moving from pillar to post along the sidewalk, using all the cover they can. When the foe, Barton MacLane, decides he doesn't want to face Slade, Slade turns to walk away. And that's when Slade's shot in the back. :eek::D
 
Whether a Cowboy was armed depended on a number of factors. The time period would be very important. I don't know exactly when the Indians were subdued, but, there was a time when opportunistic Indians would raid homesteads, steal live stock, or if they were in a particular bad mood, kill everyone. I think this period ended around 1890's. If there were live, angry, dangerous Indians around, everyone who could carried a firearm of some sort or another.

As stated before, handguns were expensive. Rifles were expensive. People today don't know just how poor working people were back then. I have read a number of Cowboy autobiographies and people were working full time and still were not able to feed the household.

I have viewed lots of pictures of Cowboys. Montana Memory Project has a lot of Cowboy pictures. These are probably after 1900 and firearms are not common. I see them occasionally, but most of the time, I don't.

http://mtmemory.org/cdm/search/collection/p267301coll3/

http://mtmemory.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p267301coll3/id/3279/rec/98

http://mtmemory.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p267301coll3/id/4210/rec/44

http://mtmemory.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p267301coll3/id/4174/rec/101

http://mtmemory.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p267301coll3/id/4577/rec/102

http://mtmemory.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p267301coll3/id/4597/rec/123


It was likely that those who ran the Ranch, they would probably only allow the Supervisor 24/7 firearm carry. In the bunk house would be a bunch of young men, crowded together, getting on each others nerves, with pranksters in the mix. If there was no external Indian threat, no need for anyone but the line Supervisor to be carrying firearms. You want to work, fine. You want to shoot someone, find another Ranch to work at. Handguns would be stored at the big house and any Ranch hand would need a good reason to gain possession during work hours.
 
I find it odd that somehow the Indians were able to obtain significant numbers of repeating firearms when, as some would have us believe, hardly anyone could afford them. Consider that an unmarried young man, responsible for no one but himself, signs on for a cattle drive. All along the way, there is no place to spend money. After the herd gets sold, it's payday and our cowboy can spend his money as he likes. While some, no doubt, drank, gambled, and otherwise misspent their pay, with nothing left to show for it but a bad hangover; I think others may have upgraded their outfit wisely.
 
Pathfinder,

Trade in guns was common going back to the 17th, 18th centuries.

By the time of some of the Great Plains battles, i.e. Little Big Horn, the Sioux
easily got firearms by paying for them in gold, gold which the prospectors of the Black Hills no longer had any use for. Also, Captain Fetterman no longer had any use for the Army's single shot rifles nor Fetterman's scouts their Henrys.

And so on.....
 
QUOTE: "...If anyone in the know could direct me to some solid historical evidence I would be curious to see it..."

Glad to oblige! I've seen John Wayne carry a six-shooter many, many times. Just go to your local library and check out True Grit. It's all the evidence you'll ever need. :D
 
A few posters have mentioned Indian attacks as being one of the motivations for being armed. Be that as it may, I understand that there were a number of Range Wars fought as well. Were these fought primarily with pistols or long guns?
 
Old Bill,

I suspect both long gun and pistols.

If you're interested in the range wars which were fairly well documented
look up The Lincoln County War, the Hoodoo (Mason County) War, the Pleasant Valley War and the Johnson County War.

Reportedly Johnny Ringo of Tombstone fame was part of the Hoodoo fracas and of course Billy the Kid was in the Lincoln County affair. And I believe Tom Horn took part in the Pleasant Valley murders.
 
We tend to ignore that right now America is full to the top with crazy, sociopathic lunatics who toss their babies into microwave ovens. The wild west, imo, by comparison, may have been a pretty decent place. It's not entirely unfair to compare it with any big city in America with one exception. We have a far better standard of living, and take better care of ourselves and our people, have far better peace officers, yet even without an active and involve public and LE/justice system, the society back then didn't involve the violence and hatred known here. Records seem to bear that out. Even the vigilante committee of Montana was better.

Maybe it's because we have had hundred of years to create this mess and the west was new.

Sure, no iris need apply and chinks weren't allowed in town, but I don't believe that we can find the level of viciousness back then. Billy the kid was just, nuts, simple as that, but he certainly seems like an anomaly.

If I was living back then I would want a lever carbine and a simple cartridge handgun in small bore. Maybe a shotgun instead. Just a hunting gun and a pocket pistol.
 
I'm kind of tired of the cliche that we live in the wild west. Not even close, really. Maybe once in a while a guy was beaten up for his boots, but I can't imagine that people were shot for pretty sneakers.
 
T O'Heir said:
Most people neither owned nor ever saw a real firearm outside the movies them either.
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What is your evidence for that statement? I know in my own family, you can go back seven or eight generations and they are all armed. Poor sure; but they had firearms. Ammo for the firearms was expensive; but they all owned firearms.

Firearms are durable goods after all. They can be passed down to younger generations.
 
$30 or $40? Where? Anyone paying that kind of wages would be swamped with drifters and cowpokes. $15 a month ($.50 a day) was about average for most of the period. Don't forget, a cowboy was about on the same skill level as a burger flipper today; it was a low level, low paying job that involved a lot of hard, dirty work, with no union benefits, no minimum wage. Romance of the Old West? Hell, they were lucky not to freeze to death in a drafty bunkhouse with more holes in the walls than walls, and one old potbelly stove and ratty blankets, lice included no extra cost.

"I find it odd that somehow the Indians were able to obtain significant numbers of repeating firearms..." More myth. While in every encounter, a few Indians did have late model guns, usually taken from whites who didn't need them any more, most Indians who had guns had either older models, muzzle loaders or non-working junk. And only a minority had guns at all - most had bows or spears.

Jim
 
I thought it was commonly believed that Hickok used one of his .36 Navy revolvers of which he was so fond.
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I personally believe he did use the .36. I'm just saying it's not really documented by actual witnesses and there are different sources that say he used a Dragoon and in at least on case a .32 S&W.

History of Greene County, Missouri
1883
R. I. Holcombe, Editing Historian https://thelibrary.org/lochist/history/holcombe/grch30pt1.html

The little group about Bill scattered, and he took a few steps forward and drew his revolver, a Colt's dragoon, with cap and ball.
 
Only a fraction of the people living west of the Mississippi during the 1860's-1890's were "cowboys". A lot of the references to guys carrying guns were not cowboys.

The time of the fur traders and early settlers was well before the cowboy era which was post Civil War. During that time most settlers, trappers, explorers certainly carried both long guns and handguns. It was muzzle loading shotguns, rifles and pistols that fought off most of the indians, animal attacks, and provided food.

The very, very early cowboys involved in the long cattle drives may well have been armed. But the reality is that this was a very brief part of history. The railroad made this obsolete almost as soon as it started. Virtually all of real cowboy work was much more civilized with very little need for a gun.

Even when we mean well it is hard to separate fact from Hollywood which has so strongly influenced us. All of us know that modern Hollywood movies have had a huge impact on certain guns sales. But even our grandfathers and great grandfathers were influenced as well. Winchester lever actions and Colt revolvers were present in the 19th century west. But were quite rare. But the Western movies were all the rage even in the 1920's and all the cowboys had them. Had it not been for the influence of the movies I'd bet the popularity of those guns today wouldn't be nearly as great as it is.
 
Re holsters; a lot of the period photos show revolvers carried crossdraw. Daily wear or just to show off better in a picture?

I have a reprint 1901 Sears catalog. Of course you could order a Colt or S&W of various models and calibers for $12-$15 and a Winchester or Marlin for about the same. The amazing Savage was a full $21.50.

If you were a cowboy or farmer, or landowner equipping the hands, you could get a surplus .50-70 Trapdoor for $2.50 or a handier Spencer Carbine for $3.65. Revolvers aplenty for less than $2 up to $4; enough to repel boarders.
Not to mention the ubiquitous shotgun, $3.98 to an astounding $94.50 for an Ithaca Pigeon Gun.

Sears also carried a wide range of saddles. Prices about the same as the guns, $4 to $25.


I have been reading about Frank Hamer, who was in the Texas Rangers and other L.E. in the first decade of the century. Lots of folks, honest and not, had guns, types seldom mentioned.

One thing that caught my interest was how fast the telephone got important. Many reports of going to the nearest telephone to call the law or the doctor... who would arrive by horse or hack; automobiles much slower to become common.
 
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