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For almost the full ten years of Texas Standard, commentator WF Strong has been bringing us stories about Texas. One of his first was a list of his favorite nonfiction books about the state.
On it was “The Big Rich” by Bryan Burrough. Now, WF Strong tells us that the author has a new book he’d recommend for those who might need an antidote for Hallmark holiday movies.
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The full transcript of this episode of Stories from Texas is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
About 10 years ago, I put out a list of my favorite nonfiction books about Texas. One of those was The Big Rich by Brian Burrow. I stand by that choice still as one of my all time favorites. Burrow has a new book out I’d like to recommend for those who might need an antidote for Hallmark Holiday movies.
His new book is called The Gunfighters. Interesting enough title, but it is the subtitle that seized my attention how Texas Made the West Wild. There is a thesis contained in those few words that makes a Texas sized claim about Texas having primary responsibility for making the Old West a lawless and violent place, not just in Texas.
Mind you. But all across the West. Fascinating. I pulled the trigger on that book and loaded it into my Barnes and Noble card immediately. I couldn’t wait to see how Burrow made his case. It doesn’t take him long to lay out his claim more fully. In chapter one called The Thing About Texas, he writes, the Old West was a kaleidoscope of personal violence.
Here’s the thing. If you study these Marques Gunfights at any length, something jumps out at you about the participants in Kansas and Wyoming, in New Mexico, in Arizona, all across the frontier. A startling number of these deadly encounters involved a single kind of person, a Texan. I know maybe it shouldn’t affect me this way, but as a Texan, I was a little bit proud to read that still, I wasn’t going to let a wellspring of Pride Cloud my judgment.
I needed much more proof than could be contained in a few complimentary paragraphs. Burrow says it’s true. Texas cowboys, cattlemen and outlaws took part in and often initiated the notable gunfights of herbs, tombstone and Dodge City, the manic shootouts of Billy the Kids New Mexico, the showdowns of Hick’s, Abilene, and the cattle wars of Wyoming.
Take away Texans, Texas Cowboys, Texas Outlaws, and Texas lawmen, and the American Gunfighter shrinks to insignificance Burrow has a good point, but one has to wonder why. What was it about Texas that created a fertile cultural soil that nurtured that kind of man? Or was he already that kind of man before he arrived in Texas?
Burrow says that Texas was indeed different. It was the only one of 50 states to defeat a massive army to win its independence. Texas settlers continued to fight on two frontiers thereafter. With Mexico on the southern border and Native Americans on the Western frontier, what resulted he said was a highly Marshall culture.
Its people deeply attuned to violence and expert at it. Larry McMurtry famously said that you couldn’t expect families that had experienced such lethality to have it sift out of them within a generation or two. Burrow concludes that it’s no surprise it was Texans who first popularized the new revolvers that ushered in the Gunfighter era.
There is also the southern connection. Texas was populated largely by immigrants from southern states and they brought with them the dueling culture. The tradition of stepping off 20 paces was eventually replaced by the quick draw Burrow points out that we still have vestiges of the Gunfighter era in Texas today.
Texas Tech still has its guns up symbol of school spirit. It’s also not uncommon for Texans to say. You wanna take this outside when things get heated? Mostly it’s just in jest, but not always. Buroughs book is a wonderful read. If like me, you’re lover of the western canon of literature and history, you’ll certainly enjoy it.
All the usual suspects are here. Wyatt, Irv, Billy the Kid, John Wesley Harden. Butch Cassidy and Bat Masterson while others are watching sweet movies with hot chocolate this holiday season, you can be off in a quiet room reading, enjoying shots of whiskey and dodging bullets. I’m W Strong. These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
