The Death of Billy the Kid An Enduring Legend Essay Sample free essay sample

Billy the Kid was a complex adult male. He was a slayer. a cattle thief. an flight creative person and. some say. a nice cat. He was an mystery in life. It seems suiting that he would be an mystery in decease. How close are the historical histories of his decease to the truth? No 1 knows. That allows our imaginativenesss to run rampantly. Billy was a maestro of flight. Could he someway have escaped decease at the custodies of Pat Garrett’s posse? The narrative of Billy the Kid is a uniquely American myth. Today. Billy the Kid is one of the most celebrated characters of the post-Civil War American west. In his ain clip. nevertheless. Billy was non peculiarly good known. He was a adult male prone to force. Estimates vary on the figure of people he killed n his feats. but it is likely there were at least nine. We will write a custom essay sample on The Death of Billy the Kid: An Enduring Legend Essay Sample or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page He was an criminal similar to many others at the clip. Ultimately. it was Billy’s decease that would catapult his fable to mythic position. The Making of An Criminal The adult male who became Billy the Kid was born in New York in 1859. His existent name was Henry McCarty. but by the clip he moved west he was utilizing the alias William Bonney. Early on Billy showed elements of the double personality he would go known for. InTriggernometery: a gallery of gunfighters.Eugene Cunningham notes: Ash Upton. open up New Mexico correspondent. a lodger at The Antrims’ . liked Billy. But. he commented. the boy’s ferocious Temper was one of his outstanding features. When Billy In a fury. cipher could command him. ( 1996 ) In newspaper studies at the clip Billy was said to be easy traveling and personable. Billy had a dark side. though. He was no alien to violent gun conflicts and functioning clip in gaol. Billy was non one to softly make his clip. though. He escaped from gaol multiple times. sometimes killing guards in the procedure. Billy had been a ranch manus. security guard and a cattle thief in Arizona when he got involved in the sequence of events that seemingly ended his life. In 1878. a rancher associated with Billy was shot and killed while crowding cowss. Billy joined a group of work forces called â€Å"The Regulators† who sought retaliation for the violent death. What resulted was a series of bloody events now called the â€Å"Lincoln County War† . From this point on. Billy was a pronounced adult male in Arizona. He was jailed a figure of times. but escaped. During this clip. Pat Garrett. a adult male some historiographers say was a friend of Billy. was elected sheriff of Lincoln County. He pledged in a really public manner to stop cowss rustling in the district. Billy became a premier mark of Garrett’s posse. Pat Garrett’s posse would hold better success that old groups at turn uping the criminal. But Billy would still turn out elusive. The Law Closes In Garrett’s posse tracked Billy to an abandoned edifice and captured him. Billy was sentenced to hang. Once once more. he escaped from gaol. Three months subsequently. on July 14. 1881. Garrett tracked Billy to the place of a Fort Sumner occupant. There are several different versions of what happened from at that place. The prevalent position is that Garrett encountered Billy in a darkened room. recognized his voice. and shot him dead. As it turns out. it would be Pat Garrett. the same sheriff who killed Billy that would turn him into a fable. Garrett saw that the narrative could hold mass entreaty. so he wrote the narrative of Billy’s decease himself. The book takes a dramatic tone. From a reissue of Garrett’s history in David Colbert’sEyewitness to the American West: Simultaneously. the Kid†¦raised rapidly a handgun. a self-cocker. within a pes of my chest. Withdrawing quickly across the room he cried ; â€Å"Quien Es? Quien Es?† ( Who’s that? Who’s that? ) . All this occurred in a minute. ( 1998 ) It is from this papers that we get most of what we know about the incident. Some inquiry the sheriff’s history nevertheless. impeaching him of crafting a self-seeking version of the narrative. Robert Utley of The Smithsonian Institution writes inThe Story of The West: In hisAn Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. Garrett embellished the outlaw’s efforts. possibly to add lustre to his ain art as a law officer. ( 2003 ) Other critics have gone further. claiming that the book is straight-out fiction or even portion of a secret plan to guarantee Billy’s flight. Conspiracy theoreticians point to the alleged friendly relationship between Billy and Pat Garrett as grounds to turn out their claims. The nexus between the two has neer been steadfastly established. though. Some claim that the two were merely saloon familiarities while others claim that they were fast friends. There are rumours. but small grounds. that a local rummy was used as a substitute for Billy. while Garrett and Billy himself shot him dead. The Making of a Legend Even today. the Billy the Kid enigma is alive and good. The fable that was begun by Pat Garrett’s book has proved resistless for the American populace and for those who would claim a personal interest in Billy’s bequest. A figure of people have come frontward over the old ages to claim that Billy was non changeable dead that twenty-four hours by Pat Garrett. Some have even claimed to be Billy themselves. and achieved a significant sum of celebrity themselves. In 1933. a adult male named John Poe claimed his portion of the Billy the Kid bequest. Poe had a peripheral function in the hunt for Billy. Upon reexamining Poe’s history of the gaining control. theSouthwest Historical Quarterlyreported that: By his cool and ciphering work Poe was mostly responsible for William Bonney’s ( Billy the Kid ) decease. though Pat Garrett had the award of hiting him. ( 2004 ) In the 1950’s a adult male traveling by the name of Brushy Bill claimed to be the existent Billy the Kid. There were a figure of contradictions in his narrative. Billy the Kid was a literate adult male who spoke fluid Spanish. while Brushy Bill was neither. Still. the fable of Brushy Bill is about every bit digesting as that of Billy. Deoxyribonucleic acid trials are now underway in an effort to somehow connect Brushy Bill to the household of Billy the Kid. Based upon a statement by Homer Overton. a adult male who claims that Pat Garrett’s widow one time told him that Billy’s decease was faked. governments continue to look into. In 2004. theAssociated Pressreported that: Overton’s sworn statement was offered as grounds for disintering the organic structure of the Kid’s mother†¦to comparison her Deoxyribonucleic acid with that of a Texas adult male ( Brushy Bill ) . ( 2004 ) This shows the power of the Kid enigma. The fact that governments could be prompted to take such an action in the 100 twelvemonth old instance of a slain criminal is singular. To day of the month. nevertheless. no conclusive lucifer has been made. Brushy Bill was non the lone one claiming to be Billy. A adult male named John Miller besides claimed the rubric. Miller himself did non travel public. but his household did after his decease. Miller was exhumed in 2005 for DNA proving. Those consequences have non been made public. Finding Deoxyribonucleic acid that is faithfully from Billy or his household to do a lucifer is turn outing to be hard. As with most historical events. the whole truth of the decease of Billy the Kid will likely neer be known. How true is the image pained of Billy himself? Billy lived in an age when authors felt free to embroider their topics greatly. Unless farther grounds somehow arises. it appears that the history of Pat Garrett is still our best usher to what happened to Billy the Kid. This lone insures that his fable will populate on. The narrative of Billy the Kid’s life. and his decease. are a colourful portion of American history and traditional knowledge. His narrative is symbolic of a alone epoch in American history. It was a clip when America was still happening and specifying itself. The hereafter was every bit ill-defined as the narrative of Billy and the other western characters that stimulate our imaginativeness. There is something deep in the American mind that admires a individual who fights against the system like Billy. That is portion of what causes us to romanticise the characters of the Old West. They are symbolic of a certain rough and tumble freedom that is long gone. It is that nostalgia that makes us desire to believe that Billy got off. Bibliography Colbert. David. 1998.Eyewitness to the American West.New York: Penguin Books. Cunningham. Eugene. 1996.Triggernometry: a Gallery of Gunfighters.Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Fackler. Elizabeth. 1995.Billy the Kid: the fable of El Chivato.New York: Forge Jameson. W. C. 2005.Billy the Kid: beyond the grave.Lanham. Mendelevium: Taylor Trade Pub. Lewis. Preston. 1994.The Demise of Billy the Kid.New York: Bantam Books. McMurtry. Larry. 1988.Anything for Billy.New York: Simon and Schuster. Texas State Historical Assoc. 2004.Death of Billy the Kid.Southwest Historical Quarterly On-line. Available from cyberspace. hypertext transfer protocol: //www. tsha. utexas. edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v037/n3/review_DIVL2960. hypertext markup language. Accessed 5 Dec. 2006. The Associated Press. 2004.Statement adds turn to Billy the Kid saga.MSNBC On-line. Available from cyberspace. hypertext transfer protocol: //www. msnbc. msn. com/id/3947244/print/1/displaymode/1098/ . Accessed 5 Dec. 2006. Utley. Robert. 2003.The Story of The West.New York: DK Publishing.