Contrary to popular perception, the Old West was much more peaceful than American cities are today. The real culture of violence on the frontier during the latter half of the nineteenth century sprang from the U.S. government’s policies toward the Plains Indians.
In the article, “Quantifying the Wild West: The Problematic Statistics of Frontier Violence”, by Robert R. Dykstra explains in great detail the government side of murders that was explored all around the west. In the article Dykstra states from Ann Butler, “One almost cannot speak of western history without taking into account the place and power of violence in the heritage of the west”. Most may think that the American West represents, gunfights, murders, feud’s and lynching makes. Ed Tom Bell, quoted that interpersonal violence must have had reasonable limits, even in late-nineteenth century Texas. With this being said, The author shows how the FBI system failed when American Historians tried to apply the law system to small 19th century western towns. Murder rates seemed to fluctuate within the higher and lower populations.
It was hard to determine the real rate when the system failed and thought it was directed by a mathematical problem. As a result many found that the murders were extremely brutal and almost hard to believe. Once again this proved to show how the west in the 19th century was dangerous and violent. The author tries to influences the audience to think that the west wasn’t as brutal as everyone thought. But by the numerous murders and attacks the author did not make it easy to have any reader believe the west was anything but brutal and violence and especially not peaceful.Statistics showed no different, no matter how much you tried to solve this era as a problem. The west era was shown to be violence, no matter how big or small the town size was. Most innocent people were convicted, as those who knew how to play the FBI system were able to run away and be free. Violence was not different between men and women. Violence is violence, no matter how bad or brutal the crime is.
Quantifying the Wild West: The Problematic Statistics of Frontier Violence
lindzyann 
I liked your blog! I must agree with you, the West was very violent. I like how you mentioned it was not only about “gunslingers” but it involved interpersonal violence as well. It is interesting that the author tried to solve the failings of the system in a mathematical sense. I would think that a failing justice system really just stems back to the West experiencing growths in population and land. I guess from a more social statistics, if that is what he was saying, makes more sense.
It is interesting to know that many different groups were responsible for the high levels of violence in the West. I agree that violence against Native Americans, as well as interpersonal violence, can be seen as contributing factors to the high rate of crime. I think that the lack of a strong legal system and law enforcement contributed to the level of crime in the West. The area simply grew to quickly and to vastly across territory for law enforcement to regulate effectively.
I’m intrigued by your comment about violence toward the plains Indians. Did the author give much more detail about that?
As I was reading other articles online, I found that and thought I would share it in my blog. I should have listed were I found it. Sorry next time I will. Thanks for the comment!
I’m also doing my blog on the west and am finding it very interesting that some articles are depicting it being very violent and other articles are saying that it wasn’t as bad as the movies make it seem. I do think it was pretty violent though because of the government that was trying to be established and the land that was trying to be won, there were many different boundaries that you needed to be wary of. Great post!
I guess you can look at it as word vs word, who’s eyes you can see it from. Some find violence and some don’t. I feel that land and freedom is still something that we are trying to fight over and violence occurs no matter what!