Gunslinger

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Revolverheld (English gunslinger, Spanish pistolero ) is the name of a person in the Wild West who has the reputation of being able to handle the revolver well.

The origin of the English term

The corresponding English term appears according to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang for the first time in 1928 in the novel Whispering Range (Eng. Whispering Prairie ) by Ernest Haycox . It was soon adopted by other western authors and became a common term. In the introduction to his novel The Shootist , Glendon Swarthout writes that the words "gunslinger" or "gunfighter" are modern terms and that the more common names at the time were "gunman", "pistoleer" or "shootist". Swarthout was right about the term gunslinger . However, the term gunfighter was already used by Bat Masterson in the newspaper articles he wrote about his experiences in the Wild West.

Application of the term

The term hero in this case does not have to correspond to the general understanding of a hero. It is primarily about the admiration of a person's skill in handling the weapon, which has often become a myth . The brutality that the gunslingers' acts brought with them mostly fades into the background. This is how stories and anecdotes about these people emerged, which are often controversial and mostly no longer verifiable.

development

In the early 19th century, people moved to the western United States to open up new areas. In order to be able to defend against wild animals and bandits, it soon became common to carry a more compact handgun in addition to a rifle . After the further development of the revolver by Samuel Colt in 1835 and 1836 and its successful mass production in the 1840s to 1860s, many of the western men were soon equipped with a revolver.

After the Civil War there was a fairly high density of revolvers among the American population. During this time, some legends became known: Wyatt Earp , Wild Bill Hickok , John Wesley Hardin or Jesse James .

During the Grazing Wars of the 1870s and 1880s, many men were ranch employees involved in bloody arguments over grazing land. Either it was those who killed on order, or cowboys who developed into criminals in this turmoil. Billy the Kid is a good example : originally involved in the Lincoln County's grazing war, he soon became a cold-blooded cattle thief and murderer . A gunslinger could therefore be an outlaw , a bandit or a murderer who used the largely unpopulated areas of the Wild West to hide and from there to carry out regular attacks on the population.

Opposite these criminals were men of the law like Pat Garrett and Wyatt Earp. Some of them legally represented the law as sheriffs or marshals . Others worked as bounty hunters , whose job it was to catch the outlaws and either kill them or bring them to justice. These men defended the law on their own (or put it himself new off) either out of revenge or because of their own sense of justice, thus vigilantism to practice (see. Vigilantism ).

Gunslingers often appeared in connection with the profession of cowboy, with the vast majority of cattle keepers not carrying handguns, but only a rifle on their saddle. The long and hard working day meant that the cowboys in the cities celebrated exuberantly and quickly got into dangerous situations. When cowboys wielded handguns, shootings could develop too.

Later, the enthusiasm for the myth of the gunslinger developed into sport shooters who demonstrated their skills with the weapon in front of an audience. A false and dramatized picture of the gunslinger is often painted in the Wild West films.

Carrying the gun

Basically, the representation in western films or western novels is wrong that the gunslingers often carry their guns in a holster on a belt low on the hip in order to draw the gun quickly and in one flowing movement.

The holsters were usually kept very simple. Some had slots for additional cartridges . Mostly they were worn at normal belt height. In addition, the so-called cross draw was preferred by many . The revolver is carried with the handle facing forward on the opposite side of the firing hand. A right-handed person pulls the weapon out of the holster from left to right. The advantage of this procedure was a quick and safe drawing of the weapon, even with a longer barrel. James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok carried his guns this way. However, he drew his weapons - two engraved Colt Mod. 1851 Navy with ivory handles - not in a cross draw, but in a twist . In other words, the firing hand is turned with the outer surface inwards, the hand is brought very close to the body to the weapon on the same side of the body - i.e. between the side of the body and the handle of the weapon, with the elbow sticking out very far - and by moving towards front, in which the weapon is turned, brought forward, with the thumb placed on the hammer at the same time and the weapon is cocked at the same time. The advantage of this method was that you had the weapon to aim at eye level. This is also the case with cross draw, but it is very difficult to cross draw two weapons at the same time. However, Wild Bill Hickok has drawn both guns several times. In the western films from the 1950s and 1960s, all actors wear a peacemaker, the Colt Single Action Army . This weapon, produced from 1873 onwards, was very popular but not as widespread as one might assume. Due to the high price for the time, many of the gunslingers used their old percussion revolvers from the civil war. Some had the muzzle-loading revolver converted to breech-loading (drilled through drum, modified hammer, removal of the loading press and attachment of a case ejector). It was a lot cheaper than buying a new weapon. Often the 20 cm long barrel of the old models was shortened. The Peacemaker by Colt, originally only available with a barrel length of 19 cm, was later supplied as standard with barrels of 14 and 12 cm respectively.

Of course, carrying the revolver should be noticed at times. For example, Curly Bill Brocius , who made life difficult for Wyatt Earp, was a cowboy who knew how to dress up. It is said of him that he carried his revolvers in a holster with silver decorations. Equally noteworthy was Jesse James , who carried up to six revolvers at a time.

In addition to one or more revolvers, knives and sometimes pocket pistols ( Deringer ) as well as rifles for shooting at long distances were part of the equipment.

The appearance

Wild Bill Hickok cross draw with his two Navy Colts

What basically differentiated a gunslinger from other people at that time was the willingness to fight a conflict with the weapon, the unscrupulousness to kill someone, the skillful use of the weapon (quick draw and also accuracy) and a certain myth that built around the person.

In Hollywood , the gunslinger is often depicted very exaggerated, often in a black leather outfit, which does not correspond to reality at all. Surely there were some people who wanted to stand out by certain characteristics, e.g. B. richly decorated holsters or elegantly crafted weapons (nickel-plated with mother-of-pearl handles ), but mostly it was the fashion of the time that determined the appearance. Wild Bill and Wyatt Earp were (in their later years) two well-dressed men, mostly dressed in dark frock coats, and wore expensive hats. Others again such as B. Billy the Kid could be seen as cowboy origins. They mostly wore functional clothing that looked rather dingy. Basically, however, it can be said that a gunslinger could come from any class of society, so there is no guide or “uniform scheme” into which one could classify this breed of people. There was also no special behavior pattern, as is often shown: taciturn, smoking, loner.

The shootings

In reality, the shootings were very different from what we know from movies. It is important to differentiate between spontaneous shootings carried out out of a sudden rage and real duels .

In the spontaneous shootings z. B. in a saloon both opponents jumped up, drew their weapons and fired at each other. In contrast to the film world, where whole drums were often emptied before one or even both opponents were hit, the hit rate was very high here, as these so-called shootouts were fought at a distance of less than two meters.

There were classic duels like in the film, but under completely different conditions. Here the opponents were not 50 or 100 meters apart, as is often shown, the distance was often only a few tens of paces (almost five meters). Often more than one shot was fired before an opponent was hit. This was mainly due to the low accuracy of the revolvers at that time. Sometimes nobody was hit and the dispute was still considered to be settled.

It has been proven that there were some very good shooters. Among them were u. a. Jesse James , Cole Younger , Wild Bill Hickok and John Wesley Hardin. Apart from Hardin, however, these “heroes” had far fewer deaths on their conscience than they were supposed to be. Wild Bill has been shown to have killed seven people in his "career". However, the stories and legends attribute to him well over 20 killed opponents. Wyatt Earp, in his role as Marshal, preferred to use his revolver k. o. to hit than to start a shootout.

Well-known historical gunslingers

literature

  • Bill O'Neal: Gunfighter. An encyclopedia of all the gunslingers of the Wild West . Augsburg 1997. ISBN 3-8289-0415-7
  • Paul Trachtman: The Great Gunslingers . Marshals, sheriffs, outlaws. Men who became legends. Naumann & Göbel 2002. ISBN 3-625-10761-9

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Gunslinger  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations