♪♪ -♪ There's a traveling wildfire ♪ -The Wild West.

Few eras have burned as brightly or as briefly... ...as America's own mythic age.

But the true history of the West was a lot more diverse, a lot more complex, and a heck of a lot more interesting than we've been led to believe.

The West had boomed as gold inspired a rush of fortune seekers.

Cattle replaced the buffalo and cowboy culture took over.

The railroad united east and west, but the country was a melting pot beginning to boil.

The events to come will earn the Wild West its name.

Outlaws rampaged and robbed while lawmen became legends.

It is a time drenched in booze and gambling and womanizing, until Buffalo Bill starts inventing myths of the West and Hollywood begins turning facts into fiction.

♪♪ -For a long time, people looked at the West as this crucible at the edge of civilization and savagery.

My name is Josh Garrett-Davis.

I'm a gamble curator of Western history, popular culture, and firearms at the Autry Museum of the American West.

The West is the origin point in many ways for the United States as we see them today.

It's a very brief, fleeting moment of history.

-The Wild West was a period of only 60 or so years, yet it looms large in the identity and lore of America.

The tales that emerged here, whether real or imagined, continue to fascinate the nation and the world.

Along with Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and the storied shootouts, one town's legendary name reverberates through the West.

♪♪ Some might say this rough and tumble town hasn't changed much since it was established in 1876.

In Deadwood today, nervous fingers twitch on the triggers of Colt .45s.

These gunslingers are competing at the US national championships of cowboy quick draw.

-Shooters, set.

Shooters on the line.

Hot dog, we got some hits.

-Wild West enthusiasts descend on Deadwood from every corner of the globe to test their mettle in a gunfight.

-267 people here.

We have people from all over the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Netherlands.

-With 1800s replica guns in hand, shooters face off one on one.

The fastest to react and hit the target three times wins the duel and advances to face a new opponent.

-Shooters, set.

We have a .409 on lane one.

-The quick draw competition continues until only one person remains.

-Shooters on the line.

-The defending national champion is Tank, and that kid shoots under .35 of a second consistently.

-Shooters, set.

-The winner is crowned... [ Cheers and applause ] ...the fastest gun of the West.

♪♪ These gun-toting, sharpshooting competitors are following in the long line of Wild West duelers.

Or so we've been led to believe.

Fables of the West in print or in film have told us the shootout story we're now all familiar with.

That the fastest guns in the West were wielded by outlaws or lawmen.

Men of justice facing down cattle rustlers, bank robbers, or murderers.

Rapid reflexes and a stiff resolve were essential during a wild and violent time.

♪♪ ♪♪ It's a classic American story.

But in reality, the duel is one of the great myths of the Wild West.

-We're really more playing Hollywood gunfighters than we are Old West gunfighters.

-Really, there was never really too much quick draw or gunfights.

A lot of them were shot in the in the back.

They were back then.

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ -My name is Stuart Barber, and I am a part-time Old West enthusiast.

All right, we're going hot.

And my Old West alias is Tame Bill.

The only true face-to-face, walk-down gunfight that ever occurred in the West was when Wild Bill Hickok faced down Davis Tutt in Springfield, Missouri, in 1865.

-The two gamblers stand in the town square, 75 feet apart, with hands at the ready.

Tutt fires wide, but Hickok hits the mark.

He kills Tutt with a shot through the chest.

-Why does this one gunfight kind of loom so large?

Partly because of the advent of film and the advent of popular culture and how it got retold.

-Gunfighter legends spread through print in dime novels, story papers, and weeklies.

-Once popular culture gets ahold of the cowboy, the cowboy becomes almost like one of King Arthur's knights, or like a samurai or some sort of mythological warrior, right?

A superhero, basically.

-Born James Butler Hickok in Illinois in 1837, Wild Bill first went west at age 18.

Here he tried his hand as a stagecoach driver, a scout, a Union Army spy, and a professional gambler.

But he finds his fame as a lawman.

-They were writing dime novels about him during his life.

There was an article that was written about him in Harper's Weekly magazine.

It was published in 1867.

It took him from regional fame for a lot of his Civil War exploits into becoming a national figure.

-He becomes the marshal of Abilene, Kansas, a hotbed for cattle rustling at the time.

-Wild Bill was the real deal.

His first two weeks in office, he killed Bill Mulvey.

Bill Mulvey was a bushwhacker from during the Border Wars.

Wild Bill was kind of a bad man to mess with.

-His career as an elected official ends in 1876, when he moves on to prospecting gold and gambling in the infamous boomtown of Deadwood.

-He wasn't very happy with being a miner, but he had been successful in gambling and mining gold that way from the miners.

-But just a few months later, Wild Bill's Wild West story comes to an end.

He is shot in the back and killed by the coward Jack McCall while gambling in Deadwood Saloon Number 10.

While Wild Bill's story lives on in the popular imagination, perhaps the greatest lawman of the age is one few remember today.

A man by the name of Bass Reeves.

-♪ Now he's a US Marshal and a lone ranger ♪ ♪ He's a US Marshal and a lone ranger ♪ ♪ He's a lone ranger ♪ ♪ Bass Reeves is his name ♪ -Well, I'm Dom Flemons, the American songster.

"He's a Lone Ranger" is about Bass Reeves, the very first deputy US Marshal of the United States who was African-American west of the Mississippi.

♪ He was the baddest man that ever was alive ♪ ♪ He's a US Marshal ♪ ♪ Bass Reeves is his name ♪ Once I began to study some of Bass Reeves' history, I found he was such an interesting, larger than life character of the West.

♪ Born a slave down in Arkansas ♪ ♪ Lived with his master and his dear ol' ma ♪ -His path to becoming an officer of the peace was less than straightforward.

Bass Reeves was born into slavery in 1838, but an altercation with his master led him to flee west.

-♪ He's a lone ranger ♪ ♪ Bass Reeves is his name ♪ ♪ Master called Bass Reeves to a gambling game ♪ ♪ Bass's freedom was the stake that he made ♪ ♪ Master cheated, you oughta heard the sound ♪ ♪ Of Bass's hoof beats as master hit the ground ♪ -Out on the plains, he becomes acquainted with the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole tribes.

-Bass Reeves is an important symbol of Indian Territory and the West more broadly, because he represents how, one, a person, Black or white, can reinvent themselves in this space.

Bass Reeves is able to create his own niche by learning the geography of the West, learning Native American languages.

And it is because of these skills that he is then called upon by the US Marshals to become part of them, their body that helps really police the West.

-He becomes a deputy marshal and soon turns into a living legend in his corner of the West.

-Bass Reeves has this colorful kind of character history where he's known for disguises, his exploits, his many arrests, his kind of skill in gun-fighting, and also not getting shot.

Bass Reeves was known as one of the few honest lawmen.

He would sometimes actually tell criminals like, "Hey, I'm going to gonna arrest you tomorrow, so, you know, you can turn yourself in or you can wait for me to get you."

He wasn't known for murdering or hurting people purposely.

So he really has this sort of respect amongst people in the criminal world.

So I think that legacy lives on because he is remembered as someone who was able to successfully navigate this complicated world.

-An honorable man who prizes the law above everything else, he's thought to have made over 3,000 arrests in his career.

He even brings in his own son.

-♪ You'll hear Bass Reeves break into song ♪ ♪ He get down to business, and it won't be long ♪ There's a family story that when he was getting ready to get into a gunfight, he'd start singing a little spiritual song to himself.

And so if he starts singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," everybody knows they have to stand back because Bass Reeves is about to get down to business.

-Because of his sterling reputation and unique tactics, it's widely believed that Bass Reeves inspired one of the great icons of Western pop culture.

-I was drawn to his story first because you find out that he is the historical precedent to the fictional character The Lone Ranger.

Everything from using disguises like the Lone Ranger to riding a big white horse.

So anybody who's a fan of Westerns has heard of The Lone Ranger.

And to know that there's a Black man that's behind that story in some capacity I found very interesting.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Bass Reeves is a deputy marshal for almost 30 years until months of ill health forced him to retire.

His fame may have faded through the ages, but Bass Reeves was the living embodiment of the legendary lawman.

-My name is J.D.

Huitt, and right now we are standing in northwest Missouri.

And whenever you're in Missouri, you're literally standing in the gateway to the West.

-The Wild West of legend emerged during the desperate times that followed the Civil War.

And the famous names of that time were as likely to be outlaws as lawmen.

-Coming out of the Civil War, it's difficult for us to really comprehend just what this country looked like.

The South was completely devastated.

Its economy was in shambles.

The social structure had been completely upended and people were tired and they were angry.

For a certain group of these ex-Confederates, they cannot accept this new society.

-Some bands of former soldiers and militia refused to accept the new normal and turned to a life of crime.

-Whenever you're looking at the history of the Old West and Old West outlaws, I think that the original is Jesse James.

The mythology of Jesse James is larger than life, and the James-Younger gang stands in the history of the Old West as one of the most violent and notorious gangs of outlaws that ever existed.

-A staple of pop culture to this day, the core of the James-Younger Gang is Jesse James and his older brother Frank.

They are joined by their friends the Younger brothers, Cole, John, and Jim.

-The history of the James-Younger Gang really has its genesis in the Civil War.

Now, the Civil War in Missouri is completely different than the Civil War in the East.

Out here, it's guerrilla warfare.

You have Frank James and Cole Younger early on in a group called Quantrill's Raiders.

And then as the Civil War wears on, a young Jesse James at the age of 16 is going to join in.

So these men had a long history together.

The James boys and the Youngers were primed for a life of violence.

This February afternoon in 1866, a group of men wearing Union Blue overcoats ride up to the bank.

They go inside.

They pull out their revolvers.

They aim it at the cashier, and they demand that he empty the safe.

So in the town of Liberty, Missouri, we have the very first daylight bank robbery in US history.

And this was going to be the first in a long series of robberies for the James Gang.

-The James Gang goes on to raid and rob across Kansas and Missouri.

But despite his acts of violence, Jesse James becomes as revered as he is reviled.

-When asking the question about how Jesse James became the celebrity outlaw that he did in the 1860s and 1870s, you really have to look at his relationship with a news reporter by the name of John Newman Edwards.

John Newman Edwards was an ex-Confederate who worked for the Kansas City Times.

Jesse James is this outlaw who is, you know, robbing trains and he's robbing banks.

Okay.

So he's kind of fighting against the established structure of the federal government.

And John Newman Edwards plays right into that and really turns Jesse James into this folk hero that people kind of identify with, even though a lot of the stories that are told don't quite match up with reality.

Jesse James is really mythologized in his own time as somebody who is robbing from the rich and he's giving to the poor.

The reality is a little bit different.

-After 10 years as outlaws, the heat is on for the James-Younger Gang.

The law is hot on their heels.

Desperate, they head north to Minnesota, looking for an easy score.

-September 7, 1876.

You have eight men from the James Gang who ride into Northfield, and what they didn't realize is that this was going to be the Waterloo for the James Gang.

Three members of the James Gang go into the bank, while the others are stationed at different places in Northfield to stand watch.

Frank James pulls out his revolver and starts holding up this bank.

Everybody outside can hear the yelling, and you have to keep in mind a bank in the 1880s, this is not insured.

So if this gang leaves with this money, you're just out of luck.

Cashier refuses to open the vault.

He is going to end up being shot and killed.

And outside, the citizens start yelling "Bank robbery!

Get your guns!"

And all of a sudden, chaos just breaks out in the town of Northfield.

And the three robbers who went into the bank are coming back out into a war zone.

So of the eight members of the James-Younger Gang who came into Northfield, only six are leaving.

This robbery that was supposed to be an easy score for a very experienced outlaw gang... ...ends up being a complete bust.

The gang ended up leaving town with just over $27.

Over the next few weeks, it is hard times for the James and Younger brothers.

They end up splitting up.

Frank and James go one way.

The Younger boys go another.

After the debacle, Frank James was out.

He was done with his career as an outlaw.

And this is going to essentially be the end of the James-Younger Gang of the 1870s.

Jesse James, so he forms up another gang.

It's nothing like what it was.

And in this new gang are a couple of guys by the name of Charlie and Bob Ford.

And the story is quite well known about how Jesse James meets his end at the end of the revolver of Bob Ford.

-Like many legends of the time, a violent life ended in a violent death.

-Whenever you're looking at the history of the Old West and of the archetypical Western outlaw, I think that Jesse James is an interesting study, because a lot of people have fallen in love with the myth of Jesse James.

Whenever you square it up with the reality of who he really is, this is a violent man who is living in violent times, and he kind of lets this darkness overtake him.

These were men who were ex-Confederates, who were completely unreconstructed after the Civil War and took up a career robbing banks, robbing stagecoaches, robbing trains, and just in general creating mayhem all throughout the Midwest.

And whenever we study Jesse James, it's really a good exercise in looking at the history and being able to separate the myth from reality.

-In the Wild West, the line between the law and lawless was thin, and some of the most mythologized names of the day were controversial figures in their time.

♪♪ -My name is Chris James Rivera.

I'm an Old West reenactor.

We're out here at Mescal Movie Set.

This is a place with a lot of history.

A lot of movies were made, particularly about the events that happened here in southeast Arizona.

When you hear the name Earp, typically what you're what you're going to think of is Virgil Earp, Morgan Earp, and probably the most notable, Wyatt Earp.

The legend of Wyatt Earp, it could be portrayed as a hero, depending on who you ask, could be portrayed as an outlaw.

And like many lawmen at the time in the era, he teetered on lawman and outlaw.

-The legend and the stories about Wyatt Earp and his brothers and Doc Holliday don't really come close to the facts.

The more you learn about the Earps, in many cases, the less you like them.

Most cases, they were known as pimps.

In Wichita, Wyatt Earp's oldest brother, James, was married to a madam, and they ran what was known as a sampling room today.

So it was a saloon and it was also a brothel.

-1878 or so, when he began his stint as a lawman for the first time in the rough cow towns of Kansas, first in Wichita and then more notably in Dodge City.

So he would find himself hunting down what he deemed a criminal element and dispatching them in the way that he deemed fit.

That's where he began to build a reputation as a lawman.

-After Dodge City, Wyatt and his brothers drift west in search of new business opportunities.

-He was well known in Tombstone by the time he arrived, but really, his real notoriety began in Tombstone, Arizona, because of this very long feud with the Cochise County Cowboys.

-That feud would eventually boil over into the most famous gunfight of the Wild West, the shootout at the O.K.

Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.

-What actually happens at the O.K.

Corral has been told so many times in history through movies, music, TV.

The facts get skewed, but there's there are things we definitely know for sure.

-The fight in Tombstone at the O.K.

Corral was more akin to a gang fight than it really was the white hats versus the black hats.

-The morning of October 26, 1881, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, along with Doc Holliday, they would meet the Cochise County Cowboys outside of the O.K.

Corral in a vacant lot near Fremont Street.

And they have this hellacious gun battle.

This was essentially a battle in the street.

The gunfight only lasts 30 seconds.

30 shots are fired.

Three Cowboys died during the confrontation.

Wyatt Earp is the only man not shot during the gunfight.

The aftermath of the gunfight is a mess in Tombstone.

This leads to assassination of Wyatt Earp's younger brother, an attempted assassination on Virgil Earp, which then leads to the famous Wyatt Earp Vendetta Ride, where he seeks revenge for his brothers, and he gets it.

-Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp and his posse slaughter two people in revenge before he leaves the law behind.

-He essentially gives up and leaves Tombstone and then to California, to Alaska.

Wyatt Earp had many adventures after that, but the rough and tumble lawman that was Wyatt Earp ended in Tombstone, Arizona.

-But the legend of Wyatt Earp and the O.K.

Corral lives on in infamy.

While the stories of lawmen and outlaws are a mix of reality and fiction... ...there is no doubt the West earned its wild reputation.

And some thanks to a popular drink of the time, high-proof whiskey, wets the whistles of cowpokes and townsfolk alike.

-These boomtowns, whether based on gold or cattle or some other resource, a lot of young, unattached men -- you're going to have a lot of substance abuse.

-In Missouri, there is a relic of the country's booze-soaked past.

♪♪ -Holladay Distillery is actually the oldest distillery west of the Mississippi, so it's been here over 166 years.

-Before the Revolutionary War, American drinkers were partial to rum, but as cane sugar became more expensive, and with the settling of the rich, corn-growing Midwest, whiskey was suddenly cheaper than beer, wine, coffee, tea, or even milk.

Whether shot or sipped, it was drunk at an incredible rate.

-So whiskey became more prevalent.

And in the 1850s, you could get a really good whiskey.

The problem was, once it left the distillery, you weren't really sure what would happen to it between when it left to when it made it to the saloon.

Those transporters, the people that were then selling it, might want to stretch that supply.

They would flavor it.

They would add neutral grain spirits, like a moonshine, to try to stretch it as far as they could to make money.

You might have found that it had prune juice in it, burnt sugar, sulfuric acid, old chewing tobacco even.

It's rather disgusting.

-Whiskey is shipped in oak barrels across the country, and the storage method brings unexpected benefits.

-When distillate was put into a barrel, they started to realize you could get good flavors from that oak.

You didn't have to add all of those flavorings.

-Perhaps no man is more responsible for whiskey culture in the West than Ben Holladay.

-So Benjamin Holladay is arguably one of the greatest figures of American history that nobody really knows about, but he really was the transportation tycoon of the West.

He had silver mines, gold mines, steamships, railroads.

-He also produces whiskey at his own distillery.

-Ben's originally from Kentucky, so he knew that was a good source for making good whiskey.

So he and his brother David set out to distill their first batch of bourbon in 1856, and they put those barrels in the ancient cave to age just for about a short year.

And then in 1857, they sold their first gallon for just $0.35.

-Alcohol consumption peaks in 1830.

American adults were drinking an average of 90 bottles of liquor per person per year.

So it's no wonder the West was pretty wild.

Saloons are at the heart of frontier towns.

And they're central to the social life of miners, mountaineers, and homesteaders.

And in most places where you could grab a drink, there was bound to be another great Western pastime -- gambling.

Out West, people love a game of chance.

A bit of luck can make or break those willing to try their hand at poker, monte, Faro, roulette, chuck-a-luck, or blackjack.

The first American gambling establishment opens in New Orleans, drawing crowds for 24 hours of boozing, dancing, and gambling.

As Americans continue west, gambling dens pop up on riverboats, port towns, and all over the frontier.

Famous folks like Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane are drawn to boomtowns like Tombstone and Deadwood, where money is as likely to be made betting as prospecting.

For many, going west is the ultimate gamble.

The chance to change one's fortunes and live a life of autonomy inspires millions... ...including many women who dream of independence and decide to try their luck.

-Another archetype of mythical West is the saloon girl or prostitute of a frontier town.

Often it will be men who would go to live in this lonely place, far from their families.

With a lot of young, unattached men, you're going to have trafficking and prostitution.

-But prostitutes of the American West are far from fallen women.

Many are savvy entrepreneurs who saw a land of opportunity.

In Colorado, one house offers a rare glimpse into the lives of red-light ladies of the West.

♪♪ -My name is Charlotte Bumgarner, and we are currently in Cripple Creek.

But more importantly, we're in the Homestead House Museum that was a brothel during the 1890s to 1912.

The most elite and most expensive on our five city blocks of red-light district here.

-Colorado's last great gold rush turns Cripple Creek into a thriving boomtown.

-During the heyday of Cripple Creek, when we were gold mining, there was so much money taken out of here, we had a stock exchange here that was just as big as New York.

-Women come to the West with big dreams but face harsh realities.

-Women in the West in this time period was tough.

In those days, there wasn't so many jobs for women.

They weren't even allowed to teach, you know, and we only needed so many hat makers and there was only so many laundry women needed.

But I think they heard about the gold rush.

"Let's go where the money is."

-Many paths are closed, but brothel doors are wide open.

-We grew up to 50,000 people.

But that was 10 men for every woman.

So there was a lot of men here without their wives, without women.

-In Cripple Creek and boomtowns throughout the West, prostitution is an integral part of society.

-This house, this profession, is part of our history.

And a dang important part, if you ask me.

The town wouldn't have survived without it.

Because the men, yeah, what would they have done?

I know it's kind of hard to say, but maybe these girls were a necessity.

It gave miners some place to take care of their natural needs.

It's their bodies.

If they can make a profit off of it, why not?

-And in the Homestead House, there's plenty of profit to be made.

-This house was a parlor house.

In the hierarchy of prostitution, a parlor house is the highest and the most elite.

And we were -- The Homestead House was the most elite and most expensive.

-And the best brothels are run by madams.

-Pearl DeVere built this house.

Pearl was an amazing businesswoman.

I respect her for that.

I think she wanted the girls pretty, but she also wanted them educated so they could visit with the men.

And it's not all about the act of sex.

They danced down here.

They played cards down here.

Big business deals happened in this house.

We've even found records where the Denver Businessmen Club chartered a train car to come to Cripple Creek to have business meetings in the Homestead House.

You know, that's what they told their wives, I'm sure.

It was business.

-Pearl DeVere is a businesswoman first.

-She did know she was providing a service, and she charged for that service.

It was $50 for a trick.

$250 if the gentleman wanted to stay all night.

And that equals almost $9,000 in today's equivalency.

And the madam kept 60%.

The girls kept 40%.

-In many ways, the oldest profession is safer and more regulated than mining at the time.

-Everybody on the street had to go report to a doctor once a month, get a health check, then take that health check to the city and buy their license.

"License."

-But not every woman would find the job so empowering.

-We had girls down the street that were a quarter.

And I felt sorry for them.

Some of the girls that were down the street in what we call cribs, which are one-room shacks, they basically was one room with a bed and a stove.

They had one window, and it was a hard life for them.

-Careers are often short lived.

-Our average girl was only here a year and a half because they either married and married well, or they had enough money to go home respectably.

You know, they came and made their fortune.

-Their stories are essential to the history of the West.

-We need to recognize that those women were important in how the West was formed.

Many of those women probably ended up being successful mothers, successful housewives, maybe successful teachers, but they did what they needed to to grow.

-The West wouldn't be the same without the women who lived and loved in places like this.

♪♪ Tales of outlaws and lawmen, cowboys and Indians, virtue and vice... ...created the legend of the Wild West.

And it continues to fascinate the country and the world.

But one man more than any other is responsible for the myth-making of the American West -- William Frederick Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill.

Buffalo Bill led an extraordinary life.

Legend has it that at 14, he served as a rider for the famed Pony Express.

He joined the Union Army at 17 and fought in the Civil War alongside Wild Bill Hickok.

At 24, he served as a scout in the US Army's campaign against the people of the Plains.

There he earned his name as a Buffalo killer.

In 1883 at the age of 37, Bill finds fame when he stages the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

With this blurring of fact and fable, the myth of the Wild West will be forever changed.

-And this was this major entertainment extravaganza that was kind of part circus, part outdoor play, drama, part rodeo, part sports contest with shootings.

-He recruits famous names like Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, Sitting Bull, and even Wild Bill Hickok.

They all make appearances playing themselves in Bill's show.

-This was something that thousands and thousands of people would come see, and they would travel by train and bring huge casts, huge sets, and set up in a city for a few weeks and perform and everybody would have to go.

-The show goes mainstream and in 1885, it attracts over 1 million fans.

By 1887, Buffalo Bill is introducing Europeans to the Wild West, drawing crowds of 20,000 to 40,000 people a day.

-And they went to the UK.

They performed for the Queen.

They performed all over the world and in some ways started to promote the idea of what is the American West around the world.

You had people in Germany become really obsessed with the West.

-But there is a dark side to Buffalo Bill.

While many of his exploits were exaggerated, others are based in shocking truth.

-He was first getting his start performing, he would just perform on stage in the winter on the East Coast, and he played these kind of heroic characters in the Wild West.

But then in the summer, he would go back out and work in the West and scout for the US military.

And in 1876, he murdered a Cheyenne man in his show clothes, sort of in order to perform that, that next year.

So it's like creating violence to perform violence.

He knew he was going to reenact that.

♪♪ -In his day, Buffalo Bill is one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

The stories told at his Wild West shows have impacted perceptions of the West ever since.

-Buffalo Bill Cody, while giving us our image and beliefs of what the Wild West was, really painted a very false narrative.

And I think the very bad thing about that was while he glorified the cowboy, I mean, let's get right down to it, he also gave us a false narrative, I think, too, about the American Indian.

-These narratives take root in an emerging art form that would go on to have a major impact on the West of the imagination.

♪♪ -Buffalo Bill's Wild West Shows as live performance and then later on camera and film have a huge impact in the creation of the West.

-The Wild West Show is the precursor to the great staple of American entertainment and culture, the movie Western.

♪♪ -"The Lone Ranger."

-The Western has been there from the very start.

-Hi-yo, Silver!

-Film became the medium through which to reenact history, and more precisely, in creation of ideas about the West, of these ideologies, of the conquering of the so-called West.

In the Numu Tekwapu, in the Comanche language, I say... Dual citizen of the Comanche Nation and of the US.

I am a playwright of Comanche-centric theater, and I'm a professor of indigenous media and sound, film, television, music at the University of Oklahoma.

-Some of the earliest film ever shot in the United States is of native people when the medium of film is in its infancy... ♪♪ ...and the West is still being fought for.

-In the mid-1890s, as the so-called Indian Wars have just concluded, Thomas Edison is filming natives and other subjects on camera.

♪♪ This so-called Ghost Dance that real-life Lakotas are performing in Edison Studio, that is literally less than four years after the December 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre.

♪♪ And this was Edison and Buffalo Bill Cody working together to ask Lakotas to reenact this.

And I could only imagine what that may have felt like.

-To a country obsessed with stories from the West, early films inspired by real events blur the lines between reality and fiction.

♪♪ -When it came to these early films, it was such a mix of professionals and amateurs with cast and crew.

You had a lot of filmmakers who essentially were, in some cases, former outlaws and former sheriffs turned filmmakers.

Here you have the 1908 film "The Bank robbery," and you have Al Jennings playing the bad guy, and he was a former outlaw turned actor.

And then you have my great-great-great-grandfather, Quanah Parker, last recognized chief of our Comanche people, Quanah Parker, essentially playing a version of Quanah Parker.

That's the beauty of these silent films.

-Early filmmakers are creating a new method of storytelling on the fly.

But many tropes of the genre would be evident from the very beginning.

-Some of the earliest Westerns in the late 1890s and through the first 10, 15 years of the 20th century, included native representation, included native peoples playing versions of themselves.

But it's not too long until -- once we get to about 1914, 1915, and we're seeing more of this development of the narratives of the making of the West.

-As the real West begins to be tamed, the West of the imagination is being established.

-The genealogy of Western film is fascinating and curious.

You have this collision of narratives of the Wild West supposedly wrapping up, and the reinvention of the Wild West on camera, coming into focus.

It's all this building up with early 1920s silent Westerns.

Then we see the talkies and cowboys singing and Gene Autry doing his thing, and Roy Rogers and all these singing cowboys.

And you hear this sensationalistic, hyper violent, hyper masculine rhetoric epitomized by John Wayne.

♪♪ -Indians on the warpath.

Red man versus white.

Burnings, scalpings, atrocities, massacres.

-So the lack of nuance in some of these Western films, even in a lot of films today, is blurring any notions of authenticity and reality.

It was never just good guy, bad guy, or just white guy and Indian.

That real-life West is a borderlands of cultures, a multiplicity of peoples coming together.

And the archives of these films give us glimpses, even if just moments at times of peoples representing themselves within the larger canon of Western films.

Those moments matter, and it's really, I believe, an extension of the storytelling that had been happening for millennia around the campfires and telling these old stories.

It's about being more humanly respectful, being respectfully human.

and going forth and telling the stories that come out of real-life history that we're just beginning to tell.

♪♪ ♪♪ -By 1900, the brief period known as the Wild West has changed the United States forever.

-Without the West, the United States would just be this small string of colonies on the eastern seaboard.

The American West is what makes the US part of the Americas more generally, and part of this sort of broader global society.

-As the country takes shape and settles down, the events of a wild and volatile time create a new national identity.

But as the legends of the Old West become part of pop culture, the true stories of the West were almost lost.

-For a long time, that was what the mythology of the West did for American identity is it left out a lot of the people who were actually living in the American West.

-I think in some ways, when you begin to recognize the mythology of the West, then you can start seeing the real people who were standing out there on the range and out in the fields, you find a very multifaceted story.

And I think that once you can do that, then you can look at the West in a whole -- in a whole other light, through the true story.

♪ Oh, my love, oh, my love ♪ -The real Wild West was undoubtedly one of the most influential and fascinating periods in American history.

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