Firearms of the American West 1866-1894

Between 1865 and 1900 the American frontier changed radically. Prior to the building of the transcontinental railroad, the area between the Missouri River and the West coast was largely uninhabited by settlers, but as this vast area became accessible to them, and as they pushed westward, the problems of violence on the frontier increased. Bears, wolves, and Indians no longer posed the greatest threat to pioneers; white clashed with white, the lawful with the lawless. And, of course, firearms played a major role in this drama. This is the second volume of a two-part study of firearms in the nineteenth-century American West. It traces the development of the firearm from the close of the Civil War to the beginning of its modern era, marked in 1894 by the initial army issues of a new high-velocity bolt-action rifle designed for smokeless-powder cartridges. The Winchester Model 1894, a civilian arm adapted for smokeless-powder ammunition, also appeared at that time. Within this period, the authors have discussed all the important military and civilian firearms used in the settling of the West, as well as the guns favored by Indians. As in the first volume, this study is encyclopedic in its detail on rifles, shotguns, and handguns and again draws on advertisements from newspapers, catalogs, and other primary sources as well. Over five hundred photographs illustrate the weapons and the famous and now-forgotten men and women who used them. This lively and thoroughly researched book examines guns as a integral part of the frontier experience in a society where peace officers and judges were few. As one Texas ranch foreman observed, "The fear of the law is not half so great as the fear of a bullet..."