The Myth of the Hunting Frontiersman Debunked Again

Posted on August 12, 2007 in Folly Watch History

Late response to a comment by Dreaming Mage who has been identified as a spammer by Akismet (not my fault):

Though the argument probably has a great deal of accuracy to frontiersmen as well, as regards hunting. The early frontiersman that first expanded west of the original colonies mostly DID own weapons, and were so often attacked by Indians that they often lived in what were basically fortified communes. (see as an example the biography of Daniel Boone.)

But once they expanded beyond the Mississipi, frontiersman were mostly farmers and ranchers once again.

The myth of the early “territory” people being gun-toters is definitely false. Very few of them owned handguns, except (and this may be where that myth came from) for the lowly cowboy. Most of them OWNED handguns, and nearly none of them knew how to use them, because they hadn’t the money or time for practice. The handguns were just attractive trinkets. They mostly stayed in the saddle-bags or in their locker at the ranch because wearing a handgun at best was inconvenient, mostly you would have to check it in at the Sheriff’s office when you went to town; in the towns where that wasn’t so, wearing it could get you killed.

Oh, another place that myth may have grown from is that the 19th century ranchers HATED eating their own beef, it was for money, not food. Most ranchers employed a hunter (a specialist) to bring in game for the crew.

Mage

Daniel Boone was an exception, a professional hunter, one who got attacked by Indians a great deal probably because he provoked them. If you read carefully, he used his gun rarely, preferring to use his knife to finish the kill as did most “frontiersmen”. These were a decided minority — probably not even 1%.

American guns of the time were terrible. They could not shoot more than 20 or 30 yards because of their length and their heaviness. They weren’t true rifles in that the barrels weren’t bored, but made of two halves soldered together. The Kentucky frontiersmen who turned out for the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 were not the men of legend: the battle was in fact won by the cannon the Americans were able to bring to bear on the British columns, both from land and from sea. (Andrew Jackson so much as said so in his report to Washington.) When they entered a shooting competition with a group of gentlemen shooters from New Orleans, they were trounced.

You employ a liberal definition of what constitutes the “frontier” that allows you to pull examples mostly from the period after the Civil War as if they were contemporary to the period I describe. After the Civil War, the ownership of guns did increase. The reasons for this are complex and include the availability of surplus weapons plus the impact of the industrial revolution plus the popularity of the legend of the hunting frontiersman. This is the era of bad men and outlaws. But were they the norm even then? Hardly. Gun enthusiasts like to focus on the criminals and lawmen of the age, but again, they are a decided minority. The overwhelming number of people who settled the West (and you can’t really draw a neat line in the period after the Civil War as to when the frontier ended and the period of settlement begins) were peaceful farmers and ranchers. They didn’t ride down into town looking for a fight. Outlaws were always fringe people (why do you think they called them “outlaws”?), yet you fall into the trap of treating them as “the way the West was” when they were actually the way most of the people in the West weren’t. It’s the old Twentieth Century romance of the horse opera playing out in the guise of real history.

If Daniel Boone and Natty Bumpo enthralled their contemporaries, it was because they were unusual for their times. They were the Jason Bournes, engaged in a rare calling. I imagine that someday there will be romanticists of our own age, who see secret agents on every porch as you see shootouts happening all the time. I highly recommend Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture as a work by a professional historian who actually did the research rather than rely on a oaters and legends passed on without proof.