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Family Life and the Wild West
The "Wild West" is a term used to describe frontier society in the United States in the second half of the 19th century. To a large degree, our understanding of what the Wild West is has been shaped by popular Western novels, which began to appear as early as 1860, and which romanticize the exploits of people such as Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Buffalo Bill, and Calamity Jane.
Our conception has also been heavily influenced by the cowboys and Indians, outlaws, and cattle rustlers that play a crucial role in 20th-century Western film. At the heart of this mythic West is the rugged individualist. Families and family life are almost never the focus of traditional Western novels or films. The heroes and villains of the mythic West are almost always "lone wolves."
So to what extent is the myth of the American West an accurate reflection of reality? What role did families play in the Wild West? Explore these and other questions about family life on the frontier in this new learning activity from History Study Center.
William Cody
© Getty Images
Learning Activity
1. Assign students to browse through some of the resources in the History Study Center Study Unit The "Wild West": Life on the American Frontier.
Have them pay close attention to sources that describe either the presence or absence of family life. They should look, for example, at sources that portray the lives of cowboys and cowgirls, the cattle industry, Native American life and culture, settlement, outlaws, immigrant life, etc. As they browse, the students should look for answers to the following questions:
a. In what ways does the popular myth of the rugged individualist on the American frontier give us a distorted picture of what life was really like in the American West of the 19th century? What role did families play in the history of the American frontier? Why are depictions of family life often absent from popular literary and cinematic treatments of the Wild West?
b. What elements of frontier life either worked in favor of or against cultivating a stable family life on the frontier?
c. What was life like for Native American families on the frontier? In what ways did American expansionism become a destructive force for these families?
2. Lead students in a discussion of the role of families in the Wild West in which you explore the questions above as an entire group.
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