The Wild West 1: Legends

When it comes to tales of the Wild West, there’s one tale that surfaces again and again — and for good reason. Join us for the story of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
As the story goes, a young girl lived with her
family deep in the woods of Wisconsin, and those woods
were thick and dark. In fact, the woods were so
dense that the trees existed as far as the eye
could see, and beyond that more woods. A traveler heading
north from the little gray Log cabin wouldn't come upon
another house or road for nearly a month. The young

(00:27):
girl and her family lived alone, with no one but
trees and wild animals to keep them company. It was
just Laura, her parents, sisters Mary and Carrie, and their
devoted dog Jack. Life was an adventure, but hardly easy.
The family had to grow or catch their own food.
The story, which takes place in the late eighteen hundreds,

(00:49):
is mostly true. You see, Laura, the author skillfully blended
fiction with experiences from her childhood. Together with her daughter Rose,
Laura's novel became one of America's mother read and loved
children's books. Rose continued to be her mother's editor, and
soon other books followed. Little House in the Big Woods.

(01:09):
The third and most famous book follows the family as
they moved to Independence, Kansas. In the third book, we
learn of a different life for the family. One of
peril and difficulties. Although the land belonged to the Osage
tribe of Native Americans, the family and a handful of
other settlers still built small farms, much to the disapproval
of those who owned them. Eventually, though the family was

(01:31):
forced to leave. This book and the six others that
followed help establish America's view of life on the frontier.
Decades later, the book would inspire the classic Western TV
drama of the same name, Little House on the Prairie.
The novels focused on the Ingles family and their struggle
during tough economic times after the Civil War. Laura wrote

(01:53):
about the homestead pushes westward, the forced displacement of Native
Americans from their land, railroads, recession, and devastating illnesses. Laura
Ingalls was born in eighteen sixty seven. Her earliest memories
were of life in the woods, a few miles from Pepin, Wisconsin.
At eighteen, Laura followed in her family's path. She married

(02:13):
Almonzo Wilder, ten years her senior, and like her parents, Laura, Almonzo,
and their daughter Rose moved from place to place seeking
financial stability. When her husband suffered partial paralysis from complications
of diphtheria. Laura took in borders and waited on tables
to make ends meet until he recovered. She also wrote

(02:33):
magazine articles for McCalls and Country Gentlemen. Her columns about politics,
women's suffrage, and farm life were popular with readers. When
the stock market crash wiped out her family savings, though
Laura did what she always had. She climbed out of
a tough situation. She began to write books based on
her life experiences and the rest, as they say, is history.

(02:57):
When we imagine the Wild West, we think of cowboys,
Native Americans, and stage coaches filled with settlers heading west.
And of course we picture saloons, shootouts and legendary outlaws.
But how much is fact and how much is fiction?
Like miners panning for gold, it turns out that even
among legendary tales, there's always a little nugget of truth.

(03:21):
So saddle up, partner, You're in for quite a ride,
because this isn't the story of how the American West
was won, but how it was spun. I'm Aaron Mankee,
and welcome to the Wild West. It's rare when historians

(03:42):
can agree that a particular ideology began on a specific date.
Despite the oppressive hot temperatures of July twelfth of eighteen
ninety three, thousands of people flocked to the Chicago World's
Columbian Exhibition. Visitors were treated to the world's largest fair
ever hosted with more shows, games, food, and lectures than

(04:02):
any other before it. One of the most popular attractions
was the ferris Wheel and the Other Buffalo, Bill Cody's
Wild West Show. Cody knew how to draw crowds, and
the grand stands were packed. Advertised as the greatest equestrian
event of the century, over four hundred and fifty horseback
riders participated, from trained military cavalry to cowboys, Native Americans

(04:26):
and writers from other countries. The tricks and show that
they put on were unrivaled. Before the exposition, Cody put
on a parade and hosted a picnic for poor children
who otherwise might not be able to see him. Billboards,
illustrating an overly sensational portrayal of life in the Great Frontier,
captured the attention of children and adults throughout Chicago. Hundreds

(04:49):
of historians attended the exposition, eager to record and participate
in the historic event. With so much to see and
do few took note of a thirty one year old
historian named Frederick Jackson Turner when he stepped up to
the podium. The Midwest and West had been the driving
force that brought the American people together as one. He
told his peers, immigrants were freed from the stigma that

(05:11):
they and their ancestors had brought across the Atlantic. When
immigrants and descendants of earlier settlers made their way west,
people across America had been determined to conquer and tame
the West, regardless of the cost. He claimed that the
white Americans duty was to bring customs, culture, and religion
to the savage indigenous people. And I hope you can

(05:33):
hear the massive air quotes I used there around the
word savage. Over time, Turner's thesis on the frontier would
be retold in political speech and taught in American academia.
His speech helped define our beliefs on early settlement in
the wild West. Soon tales of railroad expansion and bold
train robberies were handed down. Stories of saloons and the

(05:54):
gold Rush delighted listeners from cowtowns to ghost towns. Stories
of the Wild West became popular fights with Native Americans,
shootouts on dusty streets at high noon, and legends of
the most notorious outlaws to ever live found their way
to our history books. Ranchers to farm hands shared their
experiences and perils, and like most tales, many were embellished.

(06:18):
Even so, those living on the East Coast eagerly read
magazine articles, memoirs, and newspaper stories all about the frontier.
As with many a great story, they often have a
way of twisting and turning. With each retelling of the facts,
myth and legend become so entwined that it's nearly impossible
to separate them. The Wild West Era, otherwise known as

(06:40):
the Old West Era, began just at the end of
the Civil War in eighteen sixty five and continued through
the eighteen nineties. In those short twenty five years, we've
romanticized a good portion of it. So before we dig in,
there are a few creative, but slightly misguided beliefs about
the area that we need to discuss. Today, we picture

(07:00):
cowboys wearing large stetson hats. It's a great look, but
mostly inaccurate. Stetson's weren't in style at the time. Instead,
most men wore bowler hats, and those odd saloon doors
that hung from chest height to knee length also not accurate.
I'm sorry to say the doors were actually floor to
ceiling length to keep out the dust. Hei noun. Shootouts

(07:21):
weren't common either, and those bank robberies, well, historians speculate
that you'd be more likely to witness a bank robbery
today than back then. So what about all the stories
of Butch Cassidy and Jesse James, Well, it comes down
to fame, you see, bank robberies were challenging to pull off,
so a successful heist made outlaws instantly famous. And speaking

(07:44):
of these famous outlaws, there's probably no greater tale of
the American West than the life and times of Robert
Leroy Parker, although, as you might have already guessed, that's
not the name most people remember him by. Robert Leroy
Parker entered the world on Friday the thirteenth in April

(08:07):
of eighteen sixty six in Beaver, Utah. His parents and grandparents,
along with their founder, Joseph Smith, were devout Mormons who
finally settled in Utah when Parker turned thirteen. The family
eventually moved to a small, unassuming one room farmhouse near Circleville.
For those who love odd facts, thirteen came up a
lot in Parker's history because he was also one of

(08:29):
thirteen children. For entertainment, the family sang and played music together.
Parker and his siblings enjoyed each other's company, often creating
new games to play. They were also mischievous. One day,
Missus Parker noticed the chickens acting strangely. It turned out
that the chickens were drunk. Her children had stolen some
of the neighbor's wine and added it to the chickens

(08:51):
water pans. Otherwise, life was typical for the family. They
raised cattle, and while his siblings helped on his parents' ranch,
Parker worked at other ranches to help support the family,
and that work took Parker further and further away from
his family and the church. It was at one of
the many ranches in western Utah that Parker met Mike Cassidy.

(09:12):
Part time cow hand and full time wrestler, Mike Cassidy
frequently found himself at odds with the law. Parker shared
his new mentor's distrust of the law. After a brief
run in when he was young, he had run an
errand to the general store, only to find it closed,
and not wanting to make the journey back empty handed,
he took a pair of pants and left a note
to the shopkeeper promising to return with the money. He

(09:34):
was arrested, but the ShopKeep eventually dropped the charges. Some
say it was this experience and Cassidy's influence that soured
Parker on law enforcement. Mike Cassidy took Parker under his
wing and taught him how to shoot a gun and
train horses. Not long after, though, he left the ranch,
leaving Parker behind. So when Parker turned eighteen, he also left,

(09:56):
hoping to find more in life than farming and cattle.
He moved around for while before settling until You Ride Colorado.
In eighteen twenty one, Parker met Matt Warner, who owned
a race horse. With Parker's knowledge of training horses, the
two paired up and split the horse's winnings. It wasn't enough, though,
and Warner suggested a side job a bank robbery, and

(10:17):
Parker agreed. Now it's unclear why Parker changed his name
to Cassidy around this time. It could have been to
honor his mentor to protect his family, or even to
create a different persona regardless, Cassidy, Warner and two other
men robbed the San Miguel Bank of twenty one thousand
dollars worth approximately half a million dollars today. Unfortunately, the

(10:40):
men spent a large portion of the money at saloons
and brothels. Cassidy left till You Ride with what little
money he hadn't squandered, and found work as a butcher
in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Before long, the people of a
small town began calling him Butcher Cassidy, and then just
Butch Cassidy, as you might have guessed. Though, he grew
tired of working at as a butcher and purchased a

(11:01):
ranch in Du Bois. Though the ranch was more of
a front for a Cassidy's rustling business than a place
to actually raise cattle, the venture proved successful until eighteen
ninety four, when the local sheriff arrested Cassidy for stealing horses.
The eighteen month long sentence did little to deter him
from returning to a life of crime, though. After that

(11:22):
he banded together with best friend William elz Ellsworth, Lay
Harvey kid Curry Logan, and Ben Tall Texan Kilpatrick among
many others. Together, they called themselves the Wild Bunch, and
in August of eighteen ninety six, they robbed a bank
of seven thousand dollars, a fortune by today's standards. A
whole string of other robberies followed in South Dakota, New Mexico, Wyoming, Utah,

(11:47):
and Montana. The gang used a place called the Hole
in the Wall Pass as their hideout, a popular stretch
of land among outlaws in Wyoming. Their success also meant
that they were wanted men, and many a town sheriff
were eager to hunt them down. In eighteen ninety nine,
local law enforcement arrested a few of the Wild Bunch,
including Cassidy's best friend Elsie Lay. To fill the void

(12:09):
in their lineup, Kid Curry brought in a newcomer, Harry Longabau.
Don't recognize the name, Well, that's because his nickname is
infinitely more famous. Harry Longabow, you see, was the Sun
Dance Kid. Harry Alonzo Longabau was just a year younger

(12:33):
than Butch Cassidy. Back when he was fifteen, he was
sent to help his cousin George suttle out west in Cortes, Colorado,
while helping his cousin settle in, Harry worked at a
neighboring ranch, learning to buy and sell horses. That trade
offered other opportunities for work, and he soon left Cortes
in eighteen eighty six, taking on a job at a
ranch in Montana. Now Montana winters are hard, and that

(12:56):
year was worse than most. The ranch let go of
many of its ranch hands, so Harry drifted for a while,
but finding work seemed harder than the winter itself. Now,
his travels took him to a ranch near Sundance, Wyoming,
where he stole a horse, a saddle, and a gun.
The theft landed him an eighteen month prison sentence. Then
the story of it all gave him his nickname, the

(13:18):
Sun Dance Kid. It was in eighteen ninety seven that
he met the Wild Bunch member Kid Curry, and they
robbed bank together in South Dakota. Authorities did capture them,
but the outlaws escaped a few months later. After that,
the pair made their way to the Wild Bunch's hideout.
While Cassidy and Sundance weren't the best friends that the
legends would have us believe, they did work well together

(13:40):
and they began making a name for themselves, although not
just as outlaws. You see, Cassidy never resorted to violence,
at least he claimed that he never shot anyone. And
another thing that made the pair stand out was that
they occasionally gave some of their stolen money to those
in need, like a Wild West version of Robin Hood.
Cassidy's read mutation for helping those in need made the

(14:02):
Outlaws popular among the common folk across several states. Soft
hearted and shrewd marketing plan, this alliance between townsfolk and
outlaws made capturing them a lot more difficult, and the
Wild Bunch had another ally at a place Sundance met
Ella sometime in the eighteen nineties, and the bond that
they formed helped to romanticize the legend. But heroes are outlaws,

(14:25):
the gang presented a growing problem to the authorities. The
Wild Bunch robbed a Union Pacific Railroad train on June
second of eighteen ninety nine of around fifty thousand dollars,
which would be worth over one point eight million today.
The gang had successfully pulled off the most incredible train
robbery in history. A month later, Cassidy stayed behind while

(14:47):
the rest of the Wild Bunch robbed the Colorado and
Southern Railroad for a similar amount. This time, though authorities
caught up with the gang. The ensuing gun battle killed
men on both sides. Els A Lay was arrested and
sentenced to life in print in for killing a sheriff.
As for the rest of the Wild Bunch, Federal authorities
called in the Pinkerton Agency for assistance, offering a thirty

(15:07):
thousand dollars reward. In nineteen hundred, Cassidy wrote a letter
to Utah's governor asking for amnesty. The governor suggested that
Cassidy ask the Union Pacific Railroad to drop the charges instead,
butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid robbed another one of
their trains on August twenty ninth of nineteen hundred, noting
them fifty five thousand dollars, hardly the letter the railroad

(15:29):
was expecting. I'm sure Cassidy and Sundance fled to New
York after that. In nineteen oh one, the men, along
with at a Place, headed to Buenos Aires to settle
into a new life there. The trio even purchased a
fifteen thousand acre ranch on Rio Blanco's East bank and
Here's where Cassidy and Sundance made a fatal mistake. They

(15:49):
went back to a life of crime. The men you see,
sold everything and went on the run once again. By
nineteen oh four, word of English speaking outlaws had reached
the United Slime States. They were wanted by the South
American government, and now the Pinkerton Agency had sent their
best to track them down.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
There.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
A courier for a silver mine claimed that two American
bandits had robbed them, and witnesses told authorities that they
spotted the men at a boarding house. Three days later.
Bolivian soldiers and the local police surrounded the house on
the evening of November sixth of nineteen oh eight. Bolivia's
mayor also showed up, intent on personally handcuffing the outlaws himself.

(16:28):
I'm sure it was a great plan, but it didn't
work out that way. Shots rang out, killing one of
the soldiers. The other soldiers and the police returned fire,
not stopping until they had riddled the walls with bullet holes.
After a brief moment of quiet, screaming erupted from within
the house. The crack of two gunshots followed, and then silence.

(16:49):
Soldiers burst into the house and found two men dead
on the floor. After a legendary career, Butch Cassidy and
the sun Dance Kid had reached the end of the line.
Both bodies had several gunshot wounds. The man believed to

(17:12):
be Sundance had been shot between the eye's execution style.
The other body had a fatal bullet wound in the head.
It appeared that Cassidy had shot Sundance to put him
out of his pain from the other wounds, and then
turned the gun on himself rather than be captured. Bolivian
officials buried the bodies in the San Vicente Cemetery in
unmarked graves. With that, both countries moved on. But there

(17:36):
was a problem. The men who robbed the courier might
not have been Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Eventually,
whispers of their escape began to spread. Rumors soon became legend,
arguably one of the most famous stories of the Wild West.
So what happened to the outlaws? Did they die in
a blaze of glory as depicted in the nineteen sixty

(17:57):
nine films starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, or did
they escape in the nineteen nineties, researchers set out to
find their graves and put the long standing rumors to rest.
They tested the remains of the men buried in several graves,
but none of them was a genetic match. Another researcher
in twenty seventeen tried it again with the same results.

(18:19):
Whoever the men buried in the unmarked graves were, they
were not related to the infamous outlaws. Today, some historians
think that it's possible that the men inside the boarding
house weren't Cassidy or sun Dance. They theorized that the
Bolivian authorities killed two run of the mill robbers instead.
But it gets even more intriguing. Residents of Bags, Wyoming

(18:40):
say Cassidy visited there in nineteen twenty four, driving a
Ford Model tee around town. Cassidy's surviving family said that
they had seen him several times, and those in Cassidy's
hometown of Circleville claimed that they saw him and his
brother Mark driving around in the same Ford. Cassidy's sister
Lula told reporters that she remembered his return clearly. It

(19:01):
was nineteen twenty four and he had driven up in
a Ford Model tea. Later that day, she and her
brother sat together eating blueberry pie. Lula said that her
brother regretted the mess that he had made of his
life and for disappointing their mother. And when he died
on an autumn day in nineteen thirty seven from pneumonia,
the family made a pact tell no one where they

(19:22):
had buried him. He'd been chased all his life, and
they thought that he deserved to rest in peace. Now
there's no word on whatever happened to Sundance Kid or
his girlfriend at a place. In her book, Butch Cassidy
my brother, Lula claims that the pair went straight after
that night in Bolivia. The truth remains a mystery to
this day. Tales of Butch Cassidy living out the rest

(19:43):
of his days under a fake name still circulate like
dust in a sandstorm, passed along from family to family
and generation to generation. Wherever Butch Cassidy is buried, we
may never know. Lula was his last surviving sibling. She
passed away at the the ripe old age of ninety
six back in nineteen eighty, taking the answers to the

(20:05):
mystery to the grave. There are few legendary characters that
embody the Wild West. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sun
Dance Kid. Between their robin hood esque reputation, massive success,
and mysterious ending, their story has all the ingredients necessary

(20:27):
to make a legend. But they aren't the only ones.
And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break,
my teammates Ali Stead will tell you all about one
more Wild West legend.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Prospector Ed Schefflin had been warned. Soldiers at an Arizona
Army outpost told him he'd find nothing except his own
tombstone near the Dragoon Mountains in eighteen seventy seven. They
called the area goose Flats, and Ed ignored their warning.
As it turned out, he didn't find his tombstone out there,
he did find something else, something better. He found silver

(21:09):
and soon founded a mine, ironically naming a Tombstone. By
eighteen eighty, settlers named a nearby town Tombstone after Ed's mine.
Home to over one hundred saloons, fourteen gambling houses, a
dance hall, and a popular red light district, the town
became one of the West's wealthiest and most populated. Tombstone

(21:30):
was very new, and like many Western mining towns, the
influx of outlaws and wrestlers made it difficult for lawmen
to keep the peace. Everyone carried a gun and the
townsfolk were no strangers to violence. To make Tombstone a
safer place to live, the town decided to name a
new marshal in eighteen eighty one, and they chose Virgil Irp.

(21:51):
Virgil and his brothers Wyatt, Morgan and James, had moved
to Tombstone in December eighteen seventy nine. Wyatt loved boomtowns
and gambling, so it was little surprised that the brothers
opened a few saloons and brothels, though Virgil also found
work as a bank guard. Wyatt brought his friend and
fellow gambler, Doc Holiday, into the fold, and the group
quickly gained a reputation for their ruthlessness and determination to

(22:14):
keep the peace by any means necessary. But not everyone
liked the IRPs or the way they ran the town.
On the outskirts of Tombstone were ranches belonging to the
Clantons and the mclory's. The two groups loosely formed a
band of outlaws known as the Cowboys. Being thieves and rustlers,
the cowboys constantly challenged the Rps for control over the town.

(22:35):
The townsfolk knew this and watched a storm brewing between
the lawmen and the outlaws. One night in late October
of eighteen eighty one, Doc Holliday and one of the
cowboys got into a heated argument. Outnumbered and underprepared, Ike
Clanton stormed off, telling Wyater that he and the others
would be ready for him, his brothers, and Holiday in

(22:58):
the morning. It was a threat that Clantons made good on.
They arrived the next morning with the full intent of
causing trouble, and fully armed. Gunfights broke out across the town.
Virgil and Morgan caught and disarmed Ike and dragged him
before a judge, but he was only fined and then released.
Ike's younger brother and the Mcloryes arrived later that day.

(23:20):
Intent on retaliation. The group headed to the Ok Corral,
where witnesses heard them talking about killing the IRPs and Holiday.
The IRPs decided they'd had enough of the gangs and
made their way to confront them. The weather was cold
that afternoon as the IRPs and Holidays strode down the street,
their long black coats rustling in the wind. Residents stood
quietly as the lawmen passed. Others peeked out from cracks

(23:43):
and doorways and behind curtains at the windows. Under a
clear sky, a storm was brewing. As the two groups
faced each other, witnesses held their breaths. No one was
expecting the confrontation to end well, as the IRPs and
Holiday were easily outnumbered. Completely undeterred, Virgil demanded the cowboys
drop their weapons. The cowboys scoffed and refused, not so politely.

(24:07):
Clinton drew his gun. The IRPs and Holiday quickly drew Theirs,
and the shootout began. No one knows who fired first,
but that didn't matter. Bullets whizzed through the air and
bystanders ran for cover. When the dust settled, Billy Clanton,
Frank McLaury, and Tom McLaury lay dead. Ike Clanton and
two other cowboys escaped unharmed, though Doc Holliday and the

(24:29):
Earps survived. Only Wyatt remained uninjured. The shootout lasted less
than thirty seconds, but its impact was only just beginning.
Ike Clanton claimed the IRPs had shot down his family
and the two mclory boys in cold blood, but by
Tombstone law, the ERPs were within their rights to shoot
anyone who was armed and threatening violence, and after a hearing,

(24:51):
a judge acquitted the ERPs and Holiday. But the feud
didn't end there. Outlaws ambushed Vigil on December twenty eighth
of eighteen Needy one. They shot him in the back,
and he survived, but he was left maimed. The following March,
Morgan was shot and killed while playing pool. Not long afterwards,
Whyat became a US Deputy Marshal. Seeking justice, or some argue, vengeance,

(25:16):
he deputized Doc Holliday, and the pair set out to
find Morgan's killers. For those who love a more pendantic
and picky approach to their folklore, it must be said
that the actual shootout occurred on Fremont Street, about six
doors down from the Ok Corral. Even still, this was
a moment that had become a symbol of the Wild West,

(25:36):
one that has been told and retold throughout the years.
Accurate or not, this piece of American folklore will most
likely live on for decades to come.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Grimm and Mount Presents The Wild West was executive produced
by me Aaron Manky and hosted by Aaron Mankey and
Alexandra Steed. Writing for this season was provided by Michelle Mudo,
with research by Alexandra Steed, Sam Elberti, Cassandra de Alba,
and Harry Marx. Fact Checking was performed by Jamie Vargas,
with sensitivity reading by Stacy Parshall Jensen. Production assistance was

(26:09):
provided by Josh Stain, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
To learn more about this and other shows from Grim
and Mild and iHeartRadio, visit Grimandmild dot com