Hi, everyone and welcome back to America under the Microscope. Hi, James.

Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone.

So for today's topic, can I ask you a question first?

Of course.

When you guys are talking about movies, different types of movies, there is a specific type called Western which initially always confused me.

No. What we mean by a Western is a movie that is set in the American Wild West.

That seems to be a recurring theme in American pop culture, TV, films, what people talk about.

Honestly, it's probably a really big part of American history and that's still reflected upon now, it's fairly unique.

Yeah, it is, because when you hear west, western, you think of America. First of all, let's have a definition. What is the Wild West? What is the definition?

OK. What we mean by Wild West? So the west refers to the west of the Mississippi River, which is the longest river in the United States. It's the area west of that river, so this would be states like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, these western states. It's during the period after the American Civil War, so this would be after 1865 till around 1924. So not a very long period, but a good amount of time.

So it is not just a place, it is actually a specific place or a region and a specific time period.

Yeah, it's time and place. Because before… like the civil war, we wouldn't call it the Wild West, we would just call it the frontier.

I see. Now, here is the question: why is it called Wild West? When people hear Wild West in America, what is the general impression they have?

General impression of it, to start off with the very basic is kind of lawlessness.

Lawless. So lots of criminals?

Kind of. It's more like thing of bandits and people out there they are stealing cattle, stealing horses, robbing deliveries and things like this.

Yeah, because enforcement of laws at that time was very difficult due to these sides of the west and the geography, just made it really hard.

Honestly, if I think of the Wild West, for some reason, I keep thinking cowboys.

That is a big part of it. So we've talked about cowboys before in our broadcast and yeah, that's one of the big aspects of the Wild West is the cattle Baron. So there are people who have these big cattle ranches. The cowboys who were there to take care of the cows. The other big parts of it would be outside of ranching would be mining. In the west they found silver mines, gold mines, copper mines, where there's mines that draws workers.

I see. So mines and ranches.

And lastly the railroad.

The railroad from where to where?

We are working on the transcontinental railroad. So California to the east.

I see, by the way, California that's not west, is it?

No, we don't really include California in the Wild West because California was settled before this time of period. Then it has the benefit of being a coastal state.

So it's more like developed.

Yeah, and they had a gold rush there in 1849. People were moving over there much sooner.

I see, so what we would probably imagine this as almost like a蛮荒之地那种感觉. You said lawlessness, there's a lot of crime going on, the bandits, and there's also a lot of money to be made.

Yeah, some people make quite a lot of money in the west, who has dug to get rich, mining, be the first to set up businesses in the town. So there are lots of opportunities for people, but also being at the edge of American life and civilization. There were a lot of heartache and heartbreak at the same time.

You talk about cowboys, this is when you watch those westerns, the movie type, you see lots of cowboys.

You see a lot of cowboys, there's a lot of shooting. Right. So shooting is what we think of it as, gunslingers and shootouts.

What does gunslingers mean?

Gunslinger is a person that would like he carry his gun on his hip. And take it out, shoot people. So it's just someone who just shoots really quick.

I see, almost like a duel.

It is a duel.

It is a duel. It's like 10, 9, 8…

Sadly, those weren't as common as people would imagine. Yeah. Because a lot of towns actually had gun rules in place where they didn't want people carrying their guns out in public for that very reason.

Because if everyone can just carry guns and shoot other people on the street, not just lawless that would be a pretty horrible situation, pretty chaotic.

Yeah, it could be at times, because there were shootouts they are pretty famous ones, like one of the most famous ones is called The Shootout at the O.K. Corral. This was a famous shootout between lawmen and bandits in Arizona. And people involved with this are in the places American Legend, it's called Tombstone and the lawman Wyatt Earp, they are all household names in America because of this shootout that happened over 100 years ago.

I'm assuming he is a household name because he wanted a shootout.

Wyatt Earp and his brother did window shootout.

It's like both sides shooting at each other.

Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

But there are also some notorious outlaws, notorious criminals.

Oh, there are so many that are well known in America. We can't go through all of them, but probably the most famous one would be Jesse James.

I've heard of that name.

Yeah, he was probably one of the most notorious bandits and outlaws at the time for stealing, murder, all kinds of unsavory actions.

Yeah, it's perhaps one of the more notorious criminals back in the Wild West days.

Yes.

However, it is because sometimes this is what happens to bad men in history, they are just so notorious. They became somewhat of a legend.

Yeah, this happened to a lot of American outlaws overtime. They were truly not good people.

They are ruthless.

But over time they've been turned into like an urban legend.

Yeah. They have been referenced so many times. Jesse James has been referenced so many times.

Billy the Kid is another one that's really famous.

But here is a question, we talked about cowboys, outlaws, bandits, lawmen. What happened to people who were already there like we talked about Native Americans before what happened to them?

It probably comes in as no surprise. There was a lot of clashing between the settlers at the time the natives. There were wars fought between them, there were natives that attack the settlers, there were settlers that attacked the natives.

Were they chased out afterwards or were they?

Overtime they we forced into resettlement.

I see.

They were put on what we call it reservations, but that came after lots of fighting, lots of blood. It's not a very proud moment in American history.

It's not a glorious moment. It just sounds like a lot of chaos, a lot of bloodshed.

Greed is another word I would’ve read.

Yeah, because you have the mind, you have all these fortunes to be made. Now dialing back to a less heavy topic, one thing I do want to mention because this show is called Happy Hour as you know. Back then there was a specific type of drinking place called saloons.

Yes. So a saloon was simply it's a bar. But it's not exactly what we think of a bar nowadays. The closest thing to a saloon would probably be like an English pub.

I would agree with that actually, I definitely would. They also have rooms upstairs, right？

Right.

For people to lodge, to stay there, like a hotel.

So many saloons were community meeting places, so there were the places you see, they had rooms for people to stay. They would do elections in them. They would…

Play cards?

Play cards, they would do church service in some of them.

Wow.

Because usually the saloon was built before a church was built.

That would be the center of a town.

Yeah, the saloon would definitely be the center of the town. If a saloon goes out of business, the town has a problem.

And just right outside of saloons usually where the shootouts take place.

At least in films and TV show that's a lot of where they happen.

But do they still have saloons nowadays in these places?

Really all in name only.

It's like a stylized.

Yeah, but nowadays if you go to a saloon in America it's just a bar. Just more of a western theme.

Western themed bars.

So don't expect to go to a saloon and drink fancy cocktails. It's going to be a lot bill or basic of just beer…

Very down to earth.

Whiskey, simple mixed things, nothing highbrow.

Nothing fancy.

I think we're going to wrap up here. We got to know the basics about the Wild West in the advanced episode, we're going into the role of Wild West on the American psyche and this whole effect on America. Thank you, James.

Thank you, bye.

Bye.

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