The Last Gunfight: The Real Story
of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral and How it Changed the American
West (2011) by Jeff Guinn
Thanks to tv, radio, and film, many
Americans born after 1950 have a specific image of the "Wild
West" as a lawless, violent place, where "good cowboys"
and "bad cowboys" had shoot-outs on Main Street every other
day. Even opera has perpetuated this myth- see Puccini's The Girl
of the Golden West.
Because
of Jeff Guinn and other historians of frontier America, though, we
can learn what the West was actually
like: filled with optimists who poured out of the overcrowded East
and were interested in building up towns around gold and silver
strikes. Contrary to the myths, violence (especially gun violence)
was relatively rare and actively dissuaded. In places like Tombstone
(Arizona Territory), for instance, men weren't allowed to carry
concealed weapons, and even had to check their guns in saloons and
other establishments like we check our coats today. After all, bloody
shoot-outs and violence scared would-be investors away from
burgeoning frontier towns, and when the gold and silver discoveries
ended, the towns needed some kind of economic stability.
What
makes this book so fascinating, then, is Guinn's exploration of the
famous shoot-out near
the O. K. Corral on October 26, 1881 between (on one side) lawmen
Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp, Morgan Earp, and the dentist Doc Holliday,
(and on the other side) cowboys Billy Claiborne, Ike and Billy
Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury. Far from being an ordinary
occurrence, shoot-outs like this were discussed throughout the
territory, and even picked up by newspapers around the nation.
Guinn
takes us through all the events that led up to the showdown,
including the efforts of the Earp brothers to secure prestigious and
remunerative positions in each town they moved to, and the vexed
relationship between cowboys (synonymous back then with "outlaws")
and lawmen. The argument that
led to the showdown between the cowboys and the Earps built up over
several months, emerging out of political ambitions, secret
agreements, betrayals, and pride. Guinn provides a thorough overview
of social and economic conditions in this southwestern territory near
the end of the 19th century, but also describes the shoot-out in such
detail that you can picture each man's movements.
And
like all feuds, the confrontation between the Earps and the cowboys
went beyond that day in 1881, snowballing into multiple attempts at
retribution on both sides for the deaths of Billy Clanton, the
McLaury brothers, and later, Morgan Earp.
Concluding
with a discussion of Wyatt's later (failed) attempts to publish his
life story and the growing entertainment industry's shaping of the
Wild West narrative, Guinn encourages us to rethink our assumptions
about this particular time and place in American history and how the
myths of Wyatt Earp, cowboys, and Tombstone have shaped how we think
of our nation today.
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