The American West Q1

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The American West In the west there were two, newly set up towns. These consist of cow towns, such as Abilene and mining towns, such as Helena. These towns suffered many problems, some of which were. In mining towns there was claim jumping and in both towns there were robberies, violence, gangs, racism and lack of facilities. In cow towns, the worst problems came when the cowboys came back from the cattle drives as they had been away from civilization for a long periods of time and as a result of this, when they returned, they went to the saloons, with money earned from numerous jobs they had accomplished and it would often lead to a lot of trouble. This happened as so little women were available and men would often fight with other men, as there was a gender imbalance. The Women hadn’t yet come to the newly set up towns and the few who had usually travelled with the saloons. A wagon driver and a gambler shot each other when arguing over a woman in 1879, is an example of this. Violence was often happening in cow towns, this is because when cow boys came back from the cattle drives, they would go to the saloons and have lots of alcohol. This caused many fights and nobody around would be there to prevent and stop them. During this time law and order was either not used in newly set up towns or it was used extremely poorly. As a result of this, people could fight, punish and even kill their enemies with no punishment what so ever. Another consequence of lack of law was that people could do anything to both protect themselves, their families and their land. They were known as vigilantes and the idea spread across the cow towns. Eventually they set up courts where the vigilantes gave them a trial. Racism was another huge problem, as most of the cowboys were black and when the cowboys came back if they might have had ethnic problems and race issues. The

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