Conclusion

Egged on by the popular press of the day, the entire nation appeared to single out “the Mormons and the Indians” as especial perpetrators of unrestrained ferocity in the nineteenth-century West. However, this national scapegoating was in fact confession and projection, for brutality was a part of everyday life throughout the West, regardless of any underlying demographics. In 1987, for example, Plains historian Robert M. Utley wrote about brute force in Lincoln County, New Mexico. Here in the 1870s, argued Utley, the populace—in all of its permutations—adopted a “casual attitude” toward the “chronic violence and lawlessness” affecting the county. Whether it was “murder, assault, larceny,” arson, or lesser criminal acts, the sparsely settled county gazed upon their endemic local violence with a collective shrug. Certainly one of the foundational myths of the American West was its tolerance of excessive levels of murder and mayhem. While some historians dispute this view as mythic, a distortion, or an exaggeration, others have found substantial evidence to support the characterization of the West as a site of chronic and casual bloodthirstiness.