Which rifle and handgun "won the west"?

[P5 Guy]

While all that was going on in North America the same was happening in Africa. Europeans colonizing the land, fighting with native tribes, and making a life change for the aborigines.

 

[jmorris]

I saw a period photo of a pile of buffalo bones awaiting shipment back east to be made into fertilizer. The pile looked taller than the depot.

It’s so far in the distance one looses perspective but it’s a big pile none the less. Looks like it’s not a pile of bones but just skulls.

 

[Old Stumpy]

Lever actions and the Colt Peacemaker were invented after the west was won. Shotguns won the west. Along with muzzle loading rifles.

What do you consider the year that the West was won?
In 1866 there were already three lever action rifles in use. The Henry, Spencer, and Winchester, all using large rimfire cartridges. All were practical and two had seen extensive military use from 1860 onward.
All remained in use as saddle guns and hunting rifles even after 1873 when the first center fire Winchester was introduced.
The 1866 rifle was carried by Sioux warriors in significant numbers in the infamous 1876 Custer's Last Stand.
I hardly think that the West was won with the Indian wars in full swing up until at least the1880s.

The Colt Paterson revolver was introduced in cap and ball form in 1836. Texas Rangers used them in the 1840s in their battles with local Indian tribes, replacing them in 1847 with the huge Walker, which was in turn replaced with the Dragoons. During the California Gold Rush 1849 Colt pocket revolvers were extensively carried by civilians. The 1851 Navy belt revolver was used by anyone who could get them including Wild Bill Hickok, who carried two. The Colt 1860, Remington Army, Starr, and many others were in use during and after the civil war. And the 1873 Colt SAA was in use on the frontier long before the "West Was Won".

So, your comment about lever actions and the Colt Peacemaker being invented too late is ridiculous.

 

[huntsman]

A frugal heart and determined sprit are what won the West, tough people in difficult situations used what they had.

Hollywood likes to tie things up with a neat bow but reality of the times means a lot of firearms heading west were cheap European imports not the glam guns brands Colt/Winchester.

 

[FlSwampRat]

Lever actions and the Colt Peacemaker were invented after the west was won. Shotguns won the west. Along with muzzle loading rifles.

It all comes down to when the West was considered "won".
Kansas, Nevada, Oregon, Texas and Iowa all became states before the end of the Civil War.
Civil War ended April 9, 1865
First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869.
Smith & Wesson Russian .44 started production in 1870
Production of the Colt SAA started in 1873
Gunfight at OK Corral October 26, 1881
Nebraska, Colorado, North and South Dakota and Montana became states before 1890.
Sort of hard to pinpoint the date it was considered won. Consider, Oklahoma didn't become a state until 1907 and by then Harley Davidson and Ford Motor Company were in production.

 

[ATLDave]

The “white face” took the West from the Native-Americans with many different kinds of guns; the West was won with bows, arrows, knives and spears.
When the Indians won, it was a massacre - when the white face won, it was a victory - history is written by the victors!

And just before the white settlers and army "won" the west from the Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux, those tribes had just "won" it from the Crow and Pawnee - which is why the Crow and Pawnee were often so willing to sign up as scouts or soldiers for the army.

There was a whole lot of winning and losing and misery going around.

 

[Old Stumpy]

Thinking of picking up some iconic pieces, guns that have a history - but shooters. My research has told me that the "deer rifle" and the rifle "that won the West" is the venerable Winchester lever. As far as hand gun I am thinking it has it might be the Peacemaker; but, I have not researched that yet. Any opinions?

If you are intending to pick up "iconic pieces" for display that "Won the West" then you have to decide whether you want to look at the actual reality or the myth. That line from the movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" comes to mind regarding newspaper journalism, where the editor of the Shinbone Star says that given a choice between truth and legend, print the legend.

Winning the West really begins with the mountain man, the fur trade in the 1820s to 1840s, and with the flintlock rifle, though that isn't what most people would associate with the phrase. Most would associate it with no earlier than 1860, and only with firearms used in the west by lawmen , cowboys, Indians, and outlaws.
This, even though the Winning of the West was more realistically accomplished by settlers and sodbusters and the work horse and the plough.
The most prevalent guns being the Pennsylvania rifle, flintlock fowler, plains rifle, single barrel 12 gauge shotgun, and single shot surplus military breechloaders in .50-70 and the like. And the army, using the Springfield Trap door, Rolling Block, Sharps, and Spencer., along with Colt and Remington cap & ball revolvers, 1873 SAA, and S&W break open revolvers.
The most prevalent handgun in the old west according to historians were pocket guns carried by travellers, miners, cowboys, outlaws, and townsmen. While unromantic, the imported British Bulldog pocket revolvers were widely used, being cheap and popular like a dollar watch and handy to bluff your way out of a brothel if things (or the ladies) turned ugly.

But, most people will want to display the legend, although these guns were very much used as well. The 1860 Henry, 1866 Winchester, Spencer, Sharps Buffalo rifle, 1873 Winchester, Colt cap & ball revolvers, and the Colt SAA. Maybe a double barelled 12 gauge hammer coach gun, Springfield Trapdoor cavalry carbine, and a Sharps buffalo rifle as well.

 

[JONWILL]

A frugal heart and determined sprit are what won the West, tough people in difficult situations used what they had.

Hollywood likes to tie things up with a neat bow but reality of the times means a lot of firearms heading west were cheap European imports not the glam guns brands Colt/Winchester.

I agree with this. I bet a lot were knock offs or converted military guns that were gotten rid of.

From the Sears catalog there were many options cheaper than Colt or Smith and Wesson. The same as today. According to people at the LGS I go to look at price first.

 

[theotherwaldo]

The fulminate of mercury primer in brass cartridges are what really won the west.
This made repeating weapons feasible.
-And very few people carried the heavy, bulky Peacemaker.
Pocket pistols were much more common.

 

[Tommygunn]

Try to do the math and think critically. Try.

A number of dubious sources citing the same implausible tripe does not evidence make. The fact is that hunters were unable to kill more annually than the actual replacement birth level in the herds. The myth of buffalo hunting wiping out the buffalo herds is right up there with the 1873 Winchester being the gun that won the West.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190052818300087

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/16/science/historians-revisit-slaughter-on-the-plains.html

Pursue primary sources, not regurgitated anecdotal blather.

Edit: because you won't do the math yourself.

Estimates of the buffalo herds prior to the railroads allowing large scale hunting range from 50 million to 75 million. Let's start there, at the low end. Keep in mind, they reproduce annually. Even at rapidly declining birth rates, you seem to think dudes with single shot rifles shot, at an absolute minimum 80 MILLION buffalo, in 15 years or so? Really. Where did all the lead come from? Assuming 1 oz for every shot (438 grs per shot, a little high, but indulge me for once) with no misses. That's 80 million ounces of lead, or 5 million pounds of lead, just for buffalo hunting.

Let's assume the low low end. 50 million. Let's assume an efficient guy kills 20 a day. That is higher than the historical record indicates, but let's indulge you. Let's assume he kills 20 every other day. Again, absurdly implausible, but let's. That's 3,550 a year. How many people do you imagine are engaged in buffalo hunting? Let's go high again and assume 1,000 shooters killing 20 every other day. Great, that's an improbable high of 3.5 million a year, more than the dubious sources that you cite claim. If we assume only 20 million reproducing buffalo issuing only one calf a year, and a loss to predation and disease of 50%, your uber efficient workaholic hunters are killing 6 million fewer buffalo per year than are produced.

Inevitably, you will nitpick and seek to inflate the numbers by all forms of absurdity. It doesn't matter. White hunters using single shot rifles did not wipe out the buffalo herds. Because math.

I don't think I've ever read a post, or any other writing, in which the subject of how the Buffalo were nearly exterminated become such a hotly debated topic.
There is no doubt that many hunters, armed with rifles (called "buffalo guns" for some reason .... ) did quite a job lowering the Buffalo population. What seems to be being ignored is the Indians themselves were prolific buffalo slayers; they used the fur, and bones of the animals. Some claim that they were very efficient in this, but it isn't true. In either THE SON OF THE MORNING STAR, or CRAZY HORSE AND CUSTER, THE PARALLEL LIVES OF TWO AMERICAN WARRIORS, (I forget which) the author tells of an army outposts' personnel watching Indians slaughter hundreds of the animals, and only removing the tongues.

Math and numbers aside, thousands of these animals disappeared. Bullets can be melted down, recast and reloaded, and arrows can be reused, so factor that into your Spockian calculations as well.
I'm not meaning to be gruff .... but those herds were terribly decimated. That's history.

 

[ATLDave]

Answering this question in a serious way would require the OP to define two terms:

• Won; and
• West.

Once we know what constitutes "the West," and what it meant to have "won" it, then what role firearms played in that victory can be evaluated... and which firearms specifically were most historically significant.

But I can think of multiple, equally-plausible and historically-valid definitions for each of those terms (and I'm sure there are a bunch of other equally good ones I'm not thinking of), and pretty much every different combination of them will produce different answers to the question about "which guns" were most important.

 

[Old Stumpy]

Another fallacy of history were the fancy gunbelts the TV and movie cowboys all sported. When holsters were seen, they were plain, unassuming affairs, again, based on what survived to be put on display.

Movies and television almost never got the holsters and gunbelts (or anything else) even nearly authentic up until advisors in the 1980s starting setting them straight. The drop loop Buscadero rig was a fast draw Hollywood invention carried forward from the silent movie era of Tom Mix.
As was the universal Mexican loop skirted holster. In the 1850s to 1870s the Slim Jim or California pattern was common, being a closely fitted lower cut scabbard, with a simple belt loop stitched or harness riveted to it. Also popular was a high cut scabbard holster, covering the hammer and cylinder well, somewhat like a saddle scabbard. Mostly all were designed to just carry the revolver, with no consideration for the mythical Hollywood fast draw.
The Mexican loop picked up popularity in the late 1870s, with ornate carving becoming popular on some higher end Cheyenne patterns in the 1880s, with the type becoming universal by the 1890s.
Most holsters and belts of the Old West seem to have been made by local saddlers and vary in details. In common though was that they usually had a simple stamped (or machine rolled) border tooled design and were available in plain russet color or dyed black, and often bore the maker's cartouche stamp. Many appear to have been quickly made and inexpertly stamped using few tools in small shops. The modern "reproductions" in fact are usually superior to the originals and made of heavier leather. Originals were often made of thin leather and didn't hold their shape well after being oiled.
Belts were firstly simple plain waist belts, then cartridge belts with loops, and then even some doubling as money belts later on to hold gold pieces between the two layers of leather. All were straight and cartridge belt holsters had a larger belt loop or Mexican loop design, and looped over the belt and cartridges.

 

[ATLDave]

There is no doubt that many hunters, armed with rifles (called "buffalo guns" for some reason .... ) did quite a job lowering the Buffalo population. What seems to be being ignored is the Indians themselves were prolific buffalo slayers; they used the fur, and bones of the animals. Some claim that they were very efficient in this, but it isn't true. In either THE SON OF THE MORNING STAR, or CRAZY HORSE AND CUSTER, THE PARALLEL LIVES OF TWO AMERICAN WARRIORS, (I forget which) the author tells of an army outposts' personnel watching Indians slaughter hundreds of the animals, and only removing the tongues.

A popular misconception is that the nomadic, horse-riding, buffalo-dependent "plains indians" were an ancient culture. In truth, that culture was a by-product of midwestern tribes displaced by 1700's-era western-civ settlement/expansion re-adjusting to life in a new environment. Recall that horses didn't exist in the new world until they were brought by Europeans.

Native cultures and civilizations were far different, and often far more populous and sedentary*, than what white/western-civ "pioneers" encountered some 200 or 300 years after the first wave of old world diseases had burned through the continent, moving far, far ahead of the europeans themselves. Basically, aside from the very first generation to set foot on the continent, Europeans and their descendants never encountered intact, stable Indian socities... they were wandered through a post-apocalyptic landscape, where prior generations of natives had seen their populations cut in half or worse. A society can't lose 75% of its members and not be fundamentally altered.

In terms of the Indian wars - these were really "won" about 200-300 years earlier, when smallpox and other european germs killed the vast majority of the indians and totally destabilized their societies. Everything done by settlers or the US army was just "mopping up" the remnants.

*In the anthropological sense. Farming is "sedentary," as opposed to nomadic. Even before Columbus, I don't think many north american indians were getting obese from too much recliner time.

 

[Tommygunn]

Well, yes .... I wasn't intending such an expansive historical sweep; I was simply trying to put a few things in perspective relative to that period of time euphemistically refered to as "the wild west." (minor apologies to Robert Conrad) .

Every time truly disparate cultures come together, it seems massive disruptions or exterminations, either deliberate through war, or accidental through diseases, seem to result.
North America being no exception.

 

[ClickClickD'oh]

Try to do the math and think critically. Try.

At the risk of further derailing the thread... we don't need to think critically and do the math, we have history to go by. We don't need to assume there were 1,000 shooters. We know for a fact there were thousands of Buffalo Runners. We don't need to assume an efficient Buffalo Runner could kill 20 animals a day when we know that 50 was the rate they were expected to perform to. And, as I have had to point out repeatedly in threads where someone inevitably claims the .45-70 never killed a buffalo, the US Army provided ammunition for the Buffalo Runners (guess which caliber the US Army was using at the time)

Why? Because the US Army had put Sheridan in charge of the Indian problem. Sheridan of course was a great proponent of denying your enemy their comforts and supplies. He was scorching earth before Sherman. Killing Buffalo was a natural tactic for Sheridan.

Also, you might want to look into Bison reproduction habits. Assuming that you get a 50% return on population through calfs every year is hilarious. A population of 20 million Bison won't produce 10 million calfs in a year.

 

[CraigC]

I've always thought the idea of an inanimate object "winning" the west was odd. Because it wasn't a singular event. Because the western frontier was constantly moving from the time that Europeans first settled here and because it's disrespectful to the hardy men & women who did the actual work of settling the United States by giving the credit to one of the tools they may have used. It also wasn't a game to be "won". People died all along the way and entire civilizations were wiped out in the process.

 

[ATLDave]

Why? Because the US Army had put Sheridan in charge of the Indian problem. Sheridan of course was a great proponent of denying your enemy their comforts and supplies. He was scorching earth before Sherman.

And Sheridan's boss during the Indian Wars was Sherman himself. Both proponents of total war.

Say what you want about their morality/ethics, those guys knew how to win wars such that those wars stayed won.

 

[ATLDave]

. It also wasn't a game to be "won". People died all along the way and entire civilizations were wiped out in the process.

Yes, but people have been using that phrase for a long time. At least since Theodore Roosevelt (yes, that Teddy Roosevelt) wrote his multi-volume history "The Winning of the West." Suffice it to say that Roosevelt's sensibilities about inter-cultural relations are a bit different than the prevalent views today!

 

[CraigC]

And Sheridan's boss during the Indian Wars was Sherman himself. Both proponents of total war.

Say what you want about their morality/ethics, those guys knew how to win wars such that those wars stayed won.

They did win but the way in which they won, along with the "reconstruction", sewed the seeds of discontent that still exists today.

 

[ATLDave]

They did win but the way in which they won, along with the "reconstruction", sewed the seeds of discontent that still exists today.

Yeah, but compare that to the level of "discontent" that exists in, say, Afghanistan or Iraq!

We have lower levels of discontent that the Quebecois have about being part of Canada.

 

[alfsauve]

All very interesting. And I don't know to which firearm belongs the honor, but being a revolver fan, my first thought is always, "The West wasn't won with a bottom feeder."

 

[Robert]

Hey look, another interesting thread killed because we can't seem to stay on topic. Snark and attitude have no place on THR so, please try and act like mature, polite adults...