From the moment that settlers began moving across the Appalachians and into the Ohio Valley, the gun was an essential tool. The settler's rifle was a guarantee that he would never go hungry—and a means of fending off the Native Americans.
Yet the real Wild West experience is defined not by battles with Indians or claiming land, but by the competition among settlers for access to and control of the riches of the western landscape. Beginning with the California gold rush of 1849 and 1850 and continuing through the cattle booms of the 1860s and 1870s, a number of booms drew people westward in search of easy money and excitement. Many of the people who participated in these booms were law-abiding citizens and hard workers who valued integrity and honesty. But among them were also cheaters and outlaws, degenerates who escaped old problems in the East and created new ones in the West. Horse thieves, claim jumpers, cattle rustlers, and cold-blooded killers, these western outlaws were despised by upright citizens of the West, and they contributed to the most colorful conflicts in the long history of western expansion. These conflicts occurred in mining camps and cattle towns, on wagon trains and in saloons, and among outlaws and lawmen.
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