Cattle Town Homicide Case Study

Working towns across the Old West had high homicide rates due to all the gambling, drinking, disorderly conduct. In Annual Homicide Rates per 100,000 people produced by David T. Courtwright in Violent Land, 1996, it shows that Leadville, CO had 105 deaths per 100,000 people while Philadelphia, PA 1860-1880 had 3.2 per 100,000 people. Leadville, CO was a mining town where the first promising mining discovery occurred. Most mining camps had no law enforcement since miners were competing against each other for gold. The intense rivalry frequently led to violence. Some miners formed their own vigilante committees to combat theft and violence, but their methods were often excessively violent. Additionally, Samuel Bowles, reporter, Springfield Republican, 1868, stated that, “One or two thousand men and a few women were encamped on the alkali plains...averaging a murder a day, gambling and drinking, hurdy dancing and the vilest of sexual commerce....” Railroad companies were able to lure settlers to the West.

Finally, in Cattle Town Homicides produced by Robert R. Dykstra in The Cattle Towns, 1968, it states that the “...resulting homicide rate was quite high, 45 persons.” A gentleman from Chicago named Joseph McCoy saw branded and unbranded cattle wandering around Texas. In 1867, McCoy bought the entire log hut village of Abilene, Kansas, for $2400 and shipped his first 20 carloads of cattle from Abilene to Chicago. The cattle boom was on. Along with the high death rate in the Old West, confinement and stress emphasize the worst in the Native Americans and