Posts Tagged ‘American west’
From the History in the Margins Archives: The Sand Creek Massacre
As we drove across Wyoming, heading toward the western-most point of our trip, I noticed signs stating that we were on the Sand Creek Massacre Trail, which confused me slightly since I knew that the massacre occurred in Colorado. A quick internet search informed me that the trail was a 600-mile stretch of road…
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How the Wickedest City in the American West Created Frontier Justice In Spite of Itself
Tom Clavin opens Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and the Wickedest Town in the American West with Masterston stepping off the train in Dodge City, expecting trouble. The scene is tense; Clavin deliberately evokes the images of lawlessness, and violence associated with the city’s name. (Not to mention similar images attached to Masterston himself.)…
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Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles
Historian John Mack Faragher has spent his career writing about frontiers in general and the American West specifically. In Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles, he considers the structure and culture of violence in a frontier society, how violence reproduces and polices itself in a so-called “honor culture,”* and the slow development…
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