For several hundred years, the West had been the land of dreams, an extraordinary region of hope, expansion and opportunity where European countries—and then the young USA itself—sent their finest explorers to plant seeds in a seemingly untapped, open landscape. This spirit captured the popular imagination in the Wild West, those raucous 30 years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of a new century. Within these pages, readers will explore true tales of rebels and heroes such as General George Custer, Buffalo Bill, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Annie Oakley, and Sitting Bull, among others. The Wild West was the American Dream on steroids. It was an age of gunfights and gold rushes, cowboys and Comanches, with the likes of Buffalo Bill, Jesse James and Billy the Kid making their names. It forged extraordinary legends and even bigger lies, with everything fueled by dime novels written back East that encouraged folks to grab their share of a promise that was difficult for this hard land to keep. This book looks at all these mythical characters, the start of the railroad across the nation, the cost it all dealt to the Native Americans whose land was lost, and the way Hollywood still keeps the dream alive. As historian Richard White says, “People could go west and no matter their failures elsewhere, they had an opportunity to remake themselves. It’s a symbol for a kind of individualism that actually doesn’t exist in the West, but mythically it does.”
American Legends of the Wild West
Legends of the Wild West Set, 6-Volumes
Further resources such as a chronology and timeline, a bibliography, a glossary, and an index will assist student researchers using these books for class projects.
A panoramic celebration of the colorful characters that made up the Wild West shows, with color and black and white photos throughout.
The settling of the West in the 19th century is the essential American story, rich in symbolism and full of inspiration.
Legends of the Wild West (Ssc T/Notes U
Legends of the Wild West
This series is a great supplement for social studies curricula, and will appeal to the adventurous side of young readers everywhere!
William "Buffalo Bill" Cody was a "boy extra," a bullwhacker, cattle driver, hunter, and an American Indian fighter on the Great Plains of the 1850s, all before becoming a teenager.
143. 20. William Frederick Cody, An Autobiography of Bu alo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Company, 1920), p. 233. 21. Yost, p. 55. 22. Cody, Autobiography, p. 304. 23. Russell, e Lives, p. 190.