Living in the Wild West

I bet everyone out there has at least once wanted to be a cowboy.  The most badass man in the west that didn’t take no lip from anyone.  You most likely imagined yourself going to a bar and dueling the first person who looked at you funny.  You might have even imagined being an outlaw who robbed many banks.  I’m sorry but today I am going to ruin this dream for you. The Wild West is nothing like what people believe it is like.
First of all being a cowboy was not an American invention.  We may associate Americans as being the first cowboys but we weren’t.  The idea actually came to us from the Mexican cattlemen.  These cattlemen,  called vaqueros, came up with all the cowboy lingo we know and love today.  They even taught the cowboys how to be cowboys.  Next point is that most cowboys during the time didn’t wear the iconic hats we believed they did.  Most cowboys did wear hats they got that part right.  They just weren’t the hats that we think they would wear today.  The most common hat during that period is actually bowler hats.  Yea that’s right bowler hats people.  Your favorite cowboy, sheriff, or outlaw most likely wore a bowler hat.  Either that or some other ragged hat to keep the sun off of them. 
Now we're past all the physical differences between real life and Hollywood cowboys.   Let's talk about how the badass things you think they did are untrue.  You most likely think that cowboys would fight with Native Americans all the time.  This isn’t true at all.  I mean yes we did kill quite a few of them but that was the military.  Everyday settlers didn’t get into skirmishes with Native Americans much.  Only about four percent of deaths in the west were because of Native Americans.  If you ever dreamed of being a sheriff stopping bank robbers you would be pretty bored.  In the Wild West, bank robberies rarely happened because the vicinity of the sheriff’s.  It was right next to the bank in a lot of towns. Many towns’ buildings like banks, sheriff’s offices, and general stores were side by side.  Not only were they close together but they also were hard to get out of with only a front entrance.  Another thing about the real Wild West was that their gun laws were stricter than they were today.  At first, there was a lot of gun violence but soon after the government started to act.  Towns put up signs prohibiting guns.  Also the six shooter of the time was terrible.  It was only effective at a range of about fifty feet and would burn your hand with every shot.
The Wild West is just not the glamorous place you think it is.  Not only is a lot of it myth you would also have had to deal with terrible doctors and unsanitary conditions.  Oh, and you would also be trying not to die from diseases or other means.  So it was not fun in the Wild West being a death trap if you ever made it there.  So now you can sleep easy knowing the Wild West was terrible.