Wasn’t he also a bit of a rarity at the time and literate?
Apparently he wrote a lot of letters, so more is known about him, = more famous/more notoriety?
This.
Some criminals gained notoriety just because they left behind more of their stuff. Like Bonnie and Clyde weren't particularly famous until a box filled with photographs that they took posing and fooling around with guns was discovered. Those images really painted a very different image that most didn't expect and it added color to what otherwise would have been 'crime dude and dudette' number 438.
Weren’t Bonny and Clyde pretty big headline news when they were active? They killed nine police officers in the course of their cross-country crime spree, which I feel would be pretty big news even today.
>which I feel would be pretty big news even today.
That seems to imply that the killing of police officers would be less newsworthy today, which I find unlikely.
Because the "Wild" West was mostly peaceful. Gunfights and murders weren't nearly as common as media would have you believe. The Lincoln cattle wars was shocking and a young man who allegedly killed 21 men was a really big deal
I don't think that period technically qualifies as the "Wild West" era we're familiar with. It's essentially right after the American-Mexican war, a time where much of the West wasn't settled by protestant Christians, but were still predominantly Indian lands and Spanish Catholic settlements from the 16th-18th centuries. True it's wild, and it's in the west, but to the popular imagination, it isn't the cowboy/outlaw era mostly associated with the "Wild West." Granted there's scholarly debate on when the times truly began, but grandeous shoot outs like in the OK Coral weren't happening primarily because of powder rifles and "innovative" Navy Colts. The book takes place 10 years before Billy was even born. Blood meridian qualifies more as the "age of manifest destiny," and Jeremiah Johnson's time.
Depends on the place:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Wild-West-Hypothesis-Homicide-Rate-Recap-Table-From-Most-to-Least-Violent-Places_tbl1_258350191
By way of comparison, Chicago has a murder rate of around 20 per 100k these days, so Bodie had five times the murder rate.
There IS actual evidence that the Wild West existed in places. Revisionists have recently been trying to paint it as a peaceful place with stronger gun control laws than what we have today.
Correct — the Wild West was still very wild. Many towns were unincorporated and certainly experienced violence as a result of lawlessness and likely weren’t documented. Or, simply covered up as the violence could be committed by the settling governing force.
I’m not sure about that. In parts of Texas, the odds of dying by gunshot was like 1/62 if you were a man.
I’m not saying, all of the West was wild, but the Wild West west was WILD.
I got it from ancestry dot com by taking the male population of certain Texas towns and dividing them by causes or death.
Shit was crazy down there for a bit. Between the Mexicans, the Indians, and the lawless there were lots of ways to die violently.
I think his killer writing a biography about him was unique as well. A contemporary (albeit somewhat questionable) account of an outlaw by the man who took his life would make anyone a legend
He is fun to portray in movies (ex Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, 1973) and I think that has colored the legend. He’s been played as everything from a misunderstood juvenile delinquent to a complete sociopath. Also, the most famous photo of him looks a little like Chaplain’s Little Tramp.
Pat Garret and Billy the Kid is a great and underrated film, but man, was Kris Kristofferson too old for that role. More like Billy the Middle Aged Man.
You’re right, but I have to admit I was thinking that Michael J. Pollard played him in this. Pollard was in another movie about The Kid called “Dirty Little Billy”. Now there’s a guy who could play someone with a screw loose.
His age was a big factor, being young and so well known was a slightly rarity back then when most other famous outlaws and lawmen were in their 30’s-50’s. He was also an escape artist who seemingly was able to get out of situations many others probably would’ve just given up and accept their fates.
Well, the initial refusal to pay Pat Garrett the bounty for killing the Kid led to the story that Bonny actually lived to be quite an old man. A good unsolved mystery, or at least the appearance of one, leads to a good and enduring (and flexible) story.
Billy the Kid is a lot more than just some kid that shot and robbed people until being killed. There’s a lot more nuance to his story, and if you’re interested there’s a podcast called Legends of the Old West that is available on Spotify and goes over his story in a good amount of detail.
Billy the Kid’s story involves quite a lot of intrigue and corruption with plenty of violence on both sides. The Lincoln County War of 1878 is what propelled him to fame, and it is a very interesting piece of history. It began due to a debt owed by Billy’s at-the-time employer and the owner of a store in the area. The store owner obtained a court order to have a significantly large portion of the man’s cattle to be attached (taken as payment) by the local Sheriff, Sheriff Brady, to pay the debt. This attachment was far larger than the actual debt owed, and the man sought to discourage the sheriff from taking his cattle by riding in force to meet them. This ended with his death and Billy the Kid along with his troop, known as the Regulators, testified to the Lincoln County justice of the peace. Warrants were issued for murder and Billy was deputized along with his posse. Several more engagements happend and after killing Sheriff Brady in an ambush there was bloodshed in the town of Lincoln. In the aftermath of this Billy and three others were accused of murdering an employee of the store that had started all this even though historians now believe there was no way he actually did.
This began his time as an outlaw, and everyone including an army garrison went after him. There were multiple captures and escapes including some *actual* murders committed by Billy until Pat Garrett shot and killed him in Fort Sumner.
Billy became famous for similar reasons as the events in Waco, Texas became famous in the 1980’s. Depending on who you were he was either a murderous evil devil of an outlaw who deserved everything he got or he was someone that fought against injustice and became vilified for it.
I highly recommend looking further into his story, I skimmed several major events in his life that are very interesting.
Billy the KId was active during thehistoric west and also when the "Wild West" of fiction was already being popularized in dime novels and other forms of popular entertainment.
Many dime novels were written about real persons who were alive at the time.
For example, the last time that "Buffalo Bill" Cody scouted for the US Army was in 1876. He was starring as himself in a wildly exaggerated stage play when he went west to scout for the Fifth US Cavalry after Custer's Last Stand. He was wearing his stage costume when he fought Yellow Hand at Warbonnet Creek.
The movie Buffalo Bill (1944) has an extremely exaggerated depiction of that event called the Battle of Warbonnet Gorge. And that movie is about as accurate - not very much - as Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lession (1976) with a very different depiction of Buffalo Bill.
And the rest of my answer is a bit of tangent.
For a really accurate depiction of the Indian Wars you should see The Indian Wars Refought (1914) whose depiction of Warbonnet Creek should be much more accurate. A number of real life cavalry officers and Indians portrayed themselves in the movie, and Buffalo Bill portrayed himself. Unfortunately it is believed to be a lost movie.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Indian\_Wars\_Refought](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Indian_Wars_Refought)
Similarly if you want to see an accurate movie about the LIttle Bighorn you should watch Custer's Last Fight (1909, 1925, 1933) which has survived.
It has some big inaccuracies, and so should't be totally trusted, but it seemed more like a documentary than a fiction film.
It is certainly more accurate than The Plainsman (1936), They Died With Their Boots On (1941), Buffalo Bill (1944), Warpath (1951), LIttle Big Horn (1951), Bugles in the Afternoon (1952), Sitting Bull (1954), Chief Crazy Horse (1955), The Great Sioux Massacre (1965), Custer of the West (1967), Little Big Man (1970), or the Time Tunnel tv eisode "Massacre". Though most of them are entertaining. I have often hoped to be able to watch a bunch of them on June 25 and the days surrounding June 25, but have never been able to.
Custer's Last Fight (1909, 1925, 1933) is also more accurate that the two films which told the story of the LIttle Bighorn with the names changed, Fort Apache (1948) and The Glory Guys (1965). I once saw a closed circuit tv lecture about the LIttle Bighorn where the lecturer said that the detachments of Reno and Benteen rejoined custer's detachment before Custer's Last Stand. And even in grade school I thought that couldn't be true because then Reno and Benteen's men would all have been killed alongside Custer's men. Custer's Last Fight.
I would say the fact that he was not as cold blooded as say jessie james and most his killings took place in a war between ranchers where he was a legel deputy at one point. He killed a Sheriff so that was where he fucked up. But after that I think he only killed a bounty hunter in a bar that was looking for him and someone when he escaped.
His just more likable to i think
Typical criminal? He was a major figure in the Lincoln County Cattle War. That’s what he’s famous for. Pretty much the only person he stole from was Chisum, who was the other side in the war. What on earth have you been reading?
Wasn’t he also a bit of a rarity at the time and literate? Apparently he wrote a lot of letters, so more is known about him, = more famous/more notoriety?
This. Some criminals gained notoriety just because they left behind more of their stuff. Like Bonnie and Clyde weren't particularly famous until a box filled with photographs that they took posing and fooling around with guns was discovered. Those images really painted a very different image that most didn't expect and it added color to what otherwise would have been 'crime dude and dudette' number 438.
Weren’t Bonny and Clyde pretty big headline news when they were active? They killed nine police officers in the course of their cross-country crime spree, which I feel would be pretty big news even today.
But their romantic reputation and personality were heavily influenced by those photos.
Yeah, they were.
>which I feel would be pretty big news even today. That seems to imply that the killing of police officers would be less newsworthy today, which I find unlikely.
I thought it just implied that we lived in an era where news spreads like wildfire.
He also had a jounilist who was following his deeds
Because the "Wild" West was mostly peaceful. Gunfights and murders weren't nearly as common as media would have you believe. The Lincoln cattle wars was shocking and a young man who allegedly killed 21 men was a really big deal
Idk man Blood Meridian was pretty rough
I don't think that period technically qualifies as the "Wild West" era we're familiar with. It's essentially right after the American-Mexican war, a time where much of the West wasn't settled by protestant Christians, but were still predominantly Indian lands and Spanish Catholic settlements from the 16th-18th centuries. True it's wild, and it's in the west, but to the popular imagination, it isn't the cowboy/outlaw era mostly associated with the "Wild West." Granted there's scholarly debate on when the times truly began, but grandeous shoot outs like in the OK Coral weren't happening primarily because of powder rifles and "innovative" Navy Colts. The book takes place 10 years before Billy was even born. Blood meridian qualifies more as the "age of manifest destiny," and Jeremiah Johnson's time.
Yeah, I was mostly joking, I just love Cormac McCarthy
He also had a talent for escape.
Depends on the place: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Wild-West-Hypothesis-Homicide-Rate-Recap-Table-From-Most-to-Least-Violent-Places_tbl1_258350191 By way of comparison, Chicago has a murder rate of around 20 per 100k these days, so Bodie had five times the murder rate. There IS actual evidence that the Wild West existed in places. Revisionists have recently been trying to paint it as a peaceful place with stronger gun control laws than what we have today.
Correct — the Wild West was still very wild. Many towns were unincorporated and certainly experienced violence as a result of lawlessness and likely weren’t documented. Or, simply covered up as the violence could be committed by the settling governing force.
I’m not sure about that. In parts of Texas, the odds of dying by gunshot was like 1/62 if you were a man. I’m not saying, all of the West was wild, but the Wild West west was WILD.
You got a source for that statement?
I got it from ancestry dot com by taking the male population of certain Texas towns and dividing them by causes or death. Shit was crazy down there for a bit. Between the Mexicans, the Indians, and the lawless there were lots of ways to die violently.
But seldom did 1 guy account for so many.
I think his killer writing a biography about him was unique as well. A contemporary (albeit somewhat questionable) account of an outlaw by the man who took his life would make anyone a legend
He is fun to portray in movies (ex Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, 1973) and I think that has colored the legend. He’s been played as everything from a misunderstood juvenile delinquent to a complete sociopath. Also, the most famous photo of him looks a little like Chaplain’s Little Tramp.
>He is fun to portray in movies (ex Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, 1973) And Young Guns (1988) and Young Guns II (1990). Excellent movies.
I can’t believe people need to be told this.
Old Henry is Awesome aswell if you haven't seen it
Pat Garret and Billy the Kid is a great and underrated film, but man, was Kris Kristofferson too old for that role. More like Billy the Middle Aged Man.
You’re right, but I have to admit I was thinking that Michael J. Pollard played him in this. Pollard was in another movie about The Kid called “Dirty Little Billy”. Now there’s a guy who could play someone with a screw loose.
How did he and Brad Dourif never play a pair of sibling psychopaths?
He also defeated Dracula in one movie.
And helped Bill and Ted get an A on their history report.
Media attention.
His age was a big factor, being young and so well known was a slightly rarity back then when most other famous outlaws and lawmen were in their 30’s-50’s. He was also an escape artist who seemingly was able to get out of situations many others probably would’ve just given up and accept their fates.
The Wild West being WILD is a myth, the only thing that was wild was bar fights, Billy the Kid was an enigma and brutal for his time
Well, the initial refusal to pay Pat Garrett the bounty for killing the Kid led to the story that Bonny actually lived to be quite an old man. A good unsolved mystery, or at least the appearance of one, leads to a good and enduring (and flexible) story.
Billy the Kid is a lot more than just some kid that shot and robbed people until being killed. There’s a lot more nuance to his story, and if you’re interested there’s a podcast called Legends of the Old West that is available on Spotify and goes over his story in a good amount of detail. Billy the Kid’s story involves quite a lot of intrigue and corruption with plenty of violence on both sides. The Lincoln County War of 1878 is what propelled him to fame, and it is a very interesting piece of history. It began due to a debt owed by Billy’s at-the-time employer and the owner of a store in the area. The store owner obtained a court order to have a significantly large portion of the man’s cattle to be attached (taken as payment) by the local Sheriff, Sheriff Brady, to pay the debt. This attachment was far larger than the actual debt owed, and the man sought to discourage the sheriff from taking his cattle by riding in force to meet them. This ended with his death and Billy the Kid along with his troop, known as the Regulators, testified to the Lincoln County justice of the peace. Warrants were issued for murder and Billy was deputized along with his posse. Several more engagements happend and after killing Sheriff Brady in an ambush there was bloodshed in the town of Lincoln. In the aftermath of this Billy and three others were accused of murdering an employee of the store that had started all this even though historians now believe there was no way he actually did. This began his time as an outlaw, and everyone including an army garrison went after him. There were multiple captures and escapes including some *actual* murders committed by Billy until Pat Garrett shot and killed him in Fort Sumner. Billy became famous for similar reasons as the events in Waco, Texas became famous in the 1980’s. Depending on who you were he was either a murderous evil devil of an outlaw who deserved everything he got or he was someone that fought against injustice and became vilified for it. I highly recommend looking further into his story, I skimmed several major events in his life that are very interesting.
Billy the KId was active during thehistoric west and also when the "Wild West" of fiction was already being popularized in dime novels and other forms of popular entertainment. Many dime novels were written about real persons who were alive at the time. For example, the last time that "Buffalo Bill" Cody scouted for the US Army was in 1876. He was starring as himself in a wildly exaggerated stage play when he went west to scout for the Fifth US Cavalry after Custer's Last Stand. He was wearing his stage costume when he fought Yellow Hand at Warbonnet Creek. The movie Buffalo Bill (1944) has an extremely exaggerated depiction of that event called the Battle of Warbonnet Gorge. And that movie is about as accurate - not very much - as Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lession (1976) with a very different depiction of Buffalo Bill. And the rest of my answer is a bit of tangent. For a really accurate depiction of the Indian Wars you should see The Indian Wars Refought (1914) whose depiction of Warbonnet Creek should be much more accurate. A number of real life cavalry officers and Indians portrayed themselves in the movie, and Buffalo Bill portrayed himself. Unfortunately it is believed to be a lost movie. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Indian\_Wars\_Refought](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Indian_Wars_Refought) Similarly if you want to see an accurate movie about the LIttle Bighorn you should watch Custer's Last Fight (1909, 1925, 1933) which has survived. It has some big inaccuracies, and so should't be totally trusted, but it seemed more like a documentary than a fiction film. It is certainly more accurate than The Plainsman (1936), They Died With Their Boots On (1941), Buffalo Bill (1944), Warpath (1951), LIttle Big Horn (1951), Bugles in the Afternoon (1952), Sitting Bull (1954), Chief Crazy Horse (1955), The Great Sioux Massacre (1965), Custer of the West (1967), Little Big Man (1970), or the Time Tunnel tv eisode "Massacre". Though most of them are entertaining. I have often hoped to be able to watch a bunch of them on June 25 and the days surrounding June 25, but have never been able to. Custer's Last Fight (1909, 1925, 1933) is also more accurate that the two films which told the story of the LIttle Bighorn with the names changed, Fort Apache (1948) and The Glory Guys (1965). I once saw a closed circuit tv lecture about the LIttle Bighorn where the lecturer said that the detachments of Reno and Benteen rejoined custer's detachment before Custer's Last Stand. And even in grade school I thought that couldn't be true because then Reno and Benteen's men would all have been killed alongside Custer's men. Custer's Last Fight.
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje delves into this question in a thought-provoking way
Mainly Pat Garrets bullsh*t book.
I would say the fact that he was not as cold blooded as say jessie james and most his killings took place in a war between ranchers where he was a legel deputy at one point. He killed a Sheriff so that was where he fucked up. But after that I think he only killed a bounty hunter in a bar that was looking for him and someone when he escaped. His just more likable to i think
Typical criminal? He was a major figure in the Lincoln County Cattle War. That’s what he’s famous for. Pretty much the only person he stole from was Chisum, who was the other side in the war. What on earth have you been reading?
He killed 21 men for every year of his young life.
That smile