St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-04-29
STUDY OF WESTERN BAD Men,
An Old Character Dressed I'D
With a New Name.
He USUALLY Halls FROM THE SOUTH,
Some Noted Fad Men Who ave Died
With Their Boots en-The Careers of
Wild Bill and Zen. Thompson
Bat Masterson and rs Long
u List of Victims.

There is a general impression particularly
in the east, that the lawless frontiersman is
comparatively recent addition to our GRIM
inal classes. This is a mistake Ever since
we have had frontier, ever since there has
been any part of our country so sparsely
settled as to be practically out of the reach
or control of officers of the law, we have had
this element with US, but its types have va
ried with the Improvement in firearms and
the nations general advance.
1t is a mistake to suppose that the lawless
desperate is a peculiar product the far
west. He is found in greater numbers in
the settled parts of the south and west than
in the mining camps and pasture lands of the
west. AS matter of fact we have no from
pstier at this time, and have had none since
the transcontfnental railroads brought the
near east and the far west within six days of
each other. The people of the southern
mountains and of western Texas are not
naturally more vicious than those of other
parts OF our country; but living in sparsely
settled communities, where school-houses
are impossible, where reads are ruts, where
agriculture is practced in in its most primi-
tive forms, and where the word claw is an
kept up the barbarous custom of CARRYING
firearms. There are parts of the south and
southwest to-day where men regard the knife
and revolver as much articles of dress as
their hats and boots-more So indeed, for
there are seasons when man might travel
with safety without boots, but he would
hardly think it healthy to do so without his
customary pistol.
Since the revolutionary days the people
who settled along the Appalachian range, par
ticularly in the Southern slave states, have
been distinguished for their lawlessness. 1t
is only the other day that the country was
Mortified by the recital of the Hatfield Mccoy
feud, when scarcely month went by without
the recital of a murder. 1t was so with the
Hatfeld-Turner feud in Kentucky, where
judges were murdered on the bench, and
sheriffs were made targets by the men they
tried to arrest. These mountain desperadoes
were so strong as to set the authority of
governors at defiance, and the story of their
barbarities presents record as cruel and
brutal as anything recited in the most lurid
history of Indian massacres. As the country
becomes more settled, schools will be estab-
ished and law and order will take the place
- OF that violence which has SO long distin-
guished the sparsely settled portions of the
south and west.
The western bad man is therefore not
new character, but an old character, under a
new name, who finds the methods of MUIR
der modified by his environment. quarter
of a century ago, or Immediately after the
war, the western desperado, who was in
variably a D.. er, and at times a fighter,
was, physicazs it least, most picturesque
character. VIZ am Haycock, or ''Wild Bill'
as he delighted 70 be called, was fine type
of this class. While connected with the gov
eminent survey in 1857 7 met this man at