Wyatt Earp: Most Interested Lawman In The Old West

On the one hand, Wyatt Earp is often considered to be one of the biggest he-roes in the history of the American frontier, the “most admired lawman in the Old West” . Because of that view, he was portrayed in numerous movies and books as the personification of “good”, winning over his “evil” enemies. But behind that facade, there is obviously more.

You can generally say that the main focus of Wyatt’s eighty-year-long life is laid on the years 1881 and 1882, especially on the infamous “30 seconds” on Oc-tober 26, 1881. That said, most moviemakers and authors are only interested in depicting this particular timeframe, his early and later life seems to be not as interesting and remains untouched by them. Surely, Wyatt surely spent most of his

It is unclear if Wyatt really got his revenge through the killing of the four Cowboys, but it definitely forced him to leave Arizona and Tombstone for good. It was no success that Ike Clanton, one of the main initiators of the Gunfight and the two assassinations, survived unscathed while minor persons like Florentino Cruz were killed. Sean McLachlan describes it fittingly:

“The Earps were reacting to events rather than following a coherent strategy. The Earp faction did not plan and fight a war of annihilation. Instead they hit targets of opportunity and then fled the Arizona Territory when the legal situation became too hot for them.”

A topic that is also never discussed in movies is that Wyatt deserted his second wife, Celia Ann “Mattie” Blaylock. During the Vendetta Ride, Mattie went to California together with Virgil and his wife in order to wait for Wyatt there. He never returned and married another woman instead: Josephine Marcus, the love interest of Johnny Behan. The desperate Mattie never managed to forget Wyatt which even led to her suicide from an overdose in the summer of 1888.

All in all, it can be said that Wyatt was not the saint like he is depicted in mov-ies and perceived by the audience,he was also not that much of a bad guy. Historian John Bossenecker describes him as an: “enigmatic figure” , calling his “entire life [...] a gamble, for the long