By 1848 the United States claimed virtually all of the West. Ken Burns, The West III
Suddenly, gold seekers rushed in from every corner of the globe. ibid.
The Chinese miners kept to themselves. ibid.
It was the worst slaughter of Indian peoples in United States’ history. ibid.
The Californian gold rush and the war with Mexico changed everything. Ken Burns, The West IV
What would come to be known as Bleeding Kansas. ibid.
Mountain Meadows: The Mormons opened fire ... In less than half an hour one hundred and twenty people had been butchered. ibid.
The Civil War that had already begun in the West now exploded in the East. ibid.
They would build a railroad: it’s completion would be one of the greatest technological achievements of the age. Ken Burns: The West V, The Grandest Enterprise Under God
Buffalo: perhaps as much as thirty million of them. ibid.
‘Son, when I am gone, you are the chief of this people.’ Ken Burns: The West VI, Fight No More Forever, pow-wow
By 1874 railroads had brought millions of settlers to the West opening up new lands for homesteads. ibid.
Most soldiers never met an Indian in battle. Some never saw an Indian at all. ibid.
By 1877 the American conquest of the West was nearly complete. For every Indian in the West there were now nearly 40 whites. Ken Burns: The West VII: The Geography of Hope
Between 1877 and 1887 four a half million more people came West. ibid.
There was less and less room for those who didn’t conform. ibid.
‘The white people are wicked. I want you to teach my people to read and write. But they must not become white people in their ways. It is too bad a life.’ ibid. Sitting Bull
Anti-Chinese violence broke out all across the West. ibid.
The same year that the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed, Congress also took action against the Mormons in Utah … the Mormon practice of plural marriage. ibid.
In 1893, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the new world, celebrated in Chicago: it was called the World’s Columbian Exhibition. Ken Burns, The West VIII: One Sky Above Us I 1887-1914
There were 63 million Americans in 1893; 17 million of them now live west of the Mississippi. ibid.
By the end of the day all 1,920,000 acres in the Oklahoma district had been claimed. ibid.
The Dawes Act, meant to help Indians, devastated them instead. ibid.
Finally, after a heavy snowfall, a burial party arrived at Wounded Knee, dug a pit and dumped in the frozen bodies. ibid.
Miss Waxham: P.S. I like you very much. ibid. Ethel Waxham, correspondence with John Love
Between 1890 and 1904 the population of Los Angeles quadrupled to nearly 200,000. Ken Burns, The West IX
The United States is pushing west into unchartered territory and danger. As they tame the wilderness the pioneers face incredible hardship. But their battles will build the new American nation. America: The Story of the US: Westward, History 2010
Germans, Belgiums, French, Catholics, Presbyterians, Mormons: one of the world’s great mass migrations begins. ibid.
Gold fever is about to change the west and the people heading there. ibid.
At the Alamo the pioneers make their stand for independence. ibid.
After just six years the gold rush is over. Of the three hundred thousand who rush to find gold less than one out of a hundred strike it rich. The fortunes are made by the merchants and land owners who supply the miners. From dirt and dreams come the great cities of California, but the new nation’s hunger for goods triggers another kind of revolution. ibid.
1830: President Andrew Jackson declares a new policy: a policy that America will maintain for more than a hundred years: the forced relocation of American tribal people on to reservations. The Bill passes Congress by a single vote. ibid.
Buffalo Bill: In 1883 Bill hits the big-time all around the world with his all-star wild-west show. James Burke, Connections s3e4 An Invisible Object, BBC 1997
Those stories are inseparable from the landscapes in which they took place – the mountains, the deserts and the great plains. How the Wild West was Won with Ray Mears, BBC 2014
Very soon the emerging nation demanded the rich resources of these mountains. ibid.
In the boom years, in the late 1870s, up to 10,000 people lived here in Bodie. There were 30 mines here. ibid.
To describe this as an ocean of grass is pretty accurate ... half a million square miles. How the Wild West Was Won with Ray Mears II
It’s staggering to think how many perished on the way. ibid.
In 1861 the US government passed the Homestead Act – offering 160 acres of free land to pretty much anyone willing to farm it. ibid.
Without the buffalo the plains Indians simply could not survive. ibid.
8% of the United States is arid land. How the Wild West was Won with Ray Mears III
More soldiers die of illness than engagement of the enemy. ibid.
Are the facts of the shoot-out at the OK Corral as clear-cut as they appear to be? ... Could this myth be wrong, and the shoot-out a cold-blooded murder? Unsolved History: Shoot Out at the OK Corral, History 2002
It’s the late 1870s. One of the most infamous outlaws of the American Wild West is Billy the Kid, a teenage killer who terrorises New Mexico. His life of crime comes to an end when gunned down by his one-time friend lawman, Pat Garrett. This is the legend of the Kid. But closer analysis and new forensic evidence reveals his story is very different. Mystery Files: Billy the Kid, 2010
The gang becomes the Regulators: their purpose to regulate justice on their boss’s killers. And so the Lincoln Country War kicks off. It runs from February to July 1878. And is the setting for the Kid’s rise to fame and his downfall. Modern investigation shows his actions are very different in reality to his legend. The Kid does not lead the Regulators. ibid.
The pardon never appears. The Kid is tried and convicted for the murder of Sheriff Brady. And sentenced to death by hanging. No criminal charge ever sticks against anyone else in the gang conflict ... The Kid is faced with hanging. The Kid’s escape in April 1881 around two years after his initial deal with [Lew] Wallace marks his first great step into celebrity. ibid.
In Fort Sumner, around two hundred kilometres north-east of Lincoln, Pat Garrett hunts the Kid down, exactly eleven weeks after his escape from jail. The Kid’s death does not stop his legend from growing. ibid.
93,175. Billy the Kid: Easily the most notorious desperado of the Wild West. He killed 21 men. One for every year of his young life ... According to most sources Lincoln Country sheriff Pat Garrett was eager to collect the $500 bounty on Billie the Kid. In July of 1881 he tracked Billy down in Fort Sumner New Mexico and killed him. History also tells us that Billy was buried the following day in a simple grave. But now some people say that history is wrong. That Billy wasn’t the man in the grave. Unsolved Mysteries s1e20: Billy the Kid, NBC 1987
There is no doubt whatever in my mind about Brushy Bill and Billy the Kid was one and the same person ... There were seventeen points of identification of similarity between the two. Dr William A Tunstill, historian
cf.
There is absolutely no comparison whatsoever between Brushy Bill Roberts, known as Ole Partridge Roberts, and William Bonney alias Billy the Kid. Dr Donald Lavash, historian
Billy the Kid only killed four people we know of for sure. There seems to be two divergent myths. Elise Gomber, Ruidoso River Museum
We don’t know where he was born. We don’t know who his father was. We don’t know where he spent the first twelve years of his life. Frederick Nolan, author The West of Billy the Kid