The "west" did not come pre-colonized, the term "wild west" refers to the time period when a lot of it was still wilderness, and unclaimed. People could head out in that direction to claim homesteads and stake out land for personal ownership. It's often used as a dual meaning to imply "wild" behavior which was ALSO true to a great extent, though you are correct that reality does not reflect the movies. Most of the great outlaws and gangs and such are ones that you've already heard of, and honestly they were more than enough given the population of the time. People also don't die in the numbers implied by Hollywood of course, most real killers have killed far fewer people that you see in a typical movie.Icedshot said:
Typically Hollywood tends to present things as telling an unknown story or whatever, rather than implying that things were that exciting everywhere. The existance of guys like "Judge Roy Bean" opens the possibility of criminals who were impressive, but did their stuff locally, and were disposed of quietly.... and yes Roy Bean existed, and is an example used in Criminal Justice classes to explain the nessecity of due process.
Most Western battles involved groups like Wildcatters and the like, things like claim jumping when someone actually discovered wealth, or people who simply wanted someone else's homestead and killed them for it before they could file the paperwork. In most cases however these crimes were unrecorded and the bad guys won, rather than any kind of epic battle.
Political Correctness has greatly altered the history/role of Native Americans in the time period. Basically after "The French and Indian War" colonists viewed Indians as a threat and began to push them out of the area, or exterminate them. This caused conflict as the natives fled west, ran into other tribes, and got into fights over land, hunting rights, and everything else. There was a lot of native vs. native fighting that is rarely explored, one group of indians committing genocide against another doesn't exactly raise the moral dander of the populance. One important thing to consider is that east coast indians (I worked for 2 diferant tribes) were not nomadic as per the stereotype, they lived in "Longhouses" and were very much unlike the stereotype. They DID understand concepts of land ownership and such, and this was part of what sparked some of the conflicts with other tribes.
This of course lead to a backlash against whites, where many saw what was going on, and felt that attacking us was the best way of dealing with the problem. Some indian leaders also managed to put together large tribal alliances towards that purpose.
The result being that oddly Hollywood had things more accurate than many historians (given reinventionisn), from their PERSPECTIVE settlers were being attacked out of hand during most of the western expansion. Most of the major acts to get rid of the native population having occured earlier down the pipeline, and mostly resumed (when they were actually resumned) in more of an unofficial war type climate.
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While unrelated (if you, or anyone also read this far) Hollywood also greatly exagerrates with Gangsters, and Bikers. Though it's very true that both did rampage through the country at various times. Capone really did take over a city, and Biker gangs really did take over entire towns. It's just that your dealing with a handfull of incidents which were more than enough, rather than a situation where you had armies of bikers on every highway, or dudes with tommy guns in violin cases running around everywhere in their respective periods. This was due to weak law enforcement coordination, leading to the empowerment of things like the FBI (which were fairly toothless beforehand). People today criticize guys like J. Edgar Hoover for his techniques and some of the policies that are still used today, referring to him as a totalitarian psychopath and everything else. However if you look at the enviroment at the time, you understand why the things that happened did happen, and why various laws and such exist, along with why he was once thought of as a national hero even if he was criticized as being an administrator leading some to believe he tried to personally apprehend "Creepy" in an irresponsible manner.
The legends about that era of outlaws come from real incidents like when Clyde Barrow was found in a motel and surrounded by the authorities. A no win scenario for pretty much any criminal even today, but he's one of the few dudes who actually won a fight and escaped. He did this by having a BAR (Browing Assault Rifle) at a time when military grade weaponry being in the hands of criminals was virtually unheard of. This gave him a truely unexpected amount of firepower, and he was able to fight off the police so "Bonnie and Clyde" could get to a car and escape while the police were going "WTF was that". Heavier rounds, longer range, much greater rate of fire.... compared to what the police had he was like a one man army.
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Don't let historical reinventionism fool you, while Hollywood exagerrates for entertainment, they have been more or less right about a lot of things.
When it comes to things like "The Wild West" there are other concerns involved, like the politics involving Native Americans, that figure in to how political historians want to see it portrayed.
It's sort of like how a lot of people even claim Hollywood faked the moon landing, consider though that there are typically political motivations behind such claims as well.
