Wild West gangs: structure, hierarchy, roles
Many people associate the criminal world of the Wild West with legendary gangs and lone bandits who have earned themselves “nationwide” fame, largely thanks to Hollywood scriptwriters. The image that they or them created varies from romantic georevs, popular avengers, to utter villains who have nothing sacred and do not value anyone around, even their own accomplices.
The most widespread type of criminal communities of those times were gangs — rather poorly organized groupings, in which mostly people and narrow-minded and, in principle, ignorant, hungry for easy money, gathered for a short time or on a permanent basis.
Each of the gang members occupied a niche and began to fulfill a certain role. Roles shifted more often than one might think, as the skilled people typical of romanticized crime fiction in the real world hardly met, especially in those days.
Many gangs were the product of the Civil War, based on blood relations, and there were many hangers-on among the members.
Although the composition of the gangs varied from two to several dozen members, there was a certain set of roles that are present in every organized criminal group:
“Local” — a person who knows roads, trails, some river fords, crossing routes, places to hide, for example, remote ranches, he also knew or was associated with local people who could help the gang.
They might be the most important members of the gang for success and escape, but often they were not very smart, unreliable, and not so powerful enough to get their relatives to hide criminals, feed them, change horses, heal gunshot wounds, provide alcohol , etc.
Successful gangs were usually those that could rely on large networks of relatives, friends, old military friends, or on existing ranch networks where the owners themselves were not very friendly with the law.
The Blaster is usually an old miner or railway tunnel blaster with some knowledge of nitroglycerin, gunpowder, dynamite, ignition and timers, but this is mostly in the movies. Successful explosions of bank vault doors were very, very rare.
“Observer” — stood on the street and watched everyone who could interfere with the robbery.
Usually they did not notice the reaction of citizens (in films, the observer often shoots to death at citizens, in reality, often everything happened exactly the opposite: citizens more often grabbed rifles, shotguns and revolvers and immediately shot some or all of the robbers (see “Difficult Cities”) Robert Barr Smith for many real-life examples).
A “scout” is either a local resident or mostly unknown gang members who may have visited the vicinity of the robbery site to determine escape routes, where to break the door if it is a robbery, where to keep the horses, where and who is from law enforcement … often such work took a long time and was carried out by gangs that have existed for a long time.
In fact, many robbers figured out how the operation would proceed 2–3 minutes before the start and very often, before and during the case, many of them were drunk. Those. in fact, most of the robberies were badly planned, impulsive and hackneyed.
“Smart” (relatively; among real criminals, “smart” usually has only a very average intelligence and only occasionally a lot of experience or skills adopted from a criminal mentor (for example, Butch Cassidy and Pancho Villa took their pseudonyms from their “mentors targets, assesses risks, plans escape, monitors logistics (horses, food, sabotage, masks, hostages, etc.) and leads the gang.
“Stableman” — a person who knows how to keep horses, has the skills to work with horses, knows how to collect / steal / borrow / buy / ride horses, check harness, accumulate food (which is often forgotten) and water, provide veterinary and blacksmith care as far as possible, and can best assess horse fatigue (in the Old West, people on the run or chase often used their horses so illiterately that the horses fell dead, received constant injury, injury or temporary disability, or could not maintain the pace).
And finally, a separate category and role:
The shooter is usually a loner, in contrast to the gangs, which were more or less grouped intruders who supported each other in criminal adventures.
Historically, the term “gunfighter” or “gunman” has been used to refer to those who have acquired a reputation as a dangerous shooter and have previously participated in gunfights or fights with pistols.
Hundreds of Western films have captured the image of two shooters colliding on a dusty main street. They take out revolvers, shoot, and only one leaves.
In fact, in reality, more shots went off target, and hits caused injuries, and not death on the spot; but many of the participants in such fights subsequently died of their wounds due to the lack of adequate medical care.
Most often, skirmishes arose spontaneously to resolve a dispute, to avenge some imaginary insult, or for no good reason at all. The list of shooters — romantic heroes is not that great: John Wesley Hardin, Billy Kid, Bill Hickok, James Miller, Dan Bogan, Wild Bill Longley, Harvey Kid Curry Logan, Black Jack Ketchum, Luke Short, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, Dallas Stoudenmire, Curly Bill Brosius, Jonathan R. Davis and Alphego Buck. The rest are not well known.
