This week, I looked at Billy the Kid: Las Vegas Newspaper Accounts of His Career, 1880-1881. The accounts begin with the circumstances leading to his capture, and then they report on his escape and death. The content of the pieces is much like the other descriptions I have read, but I was really looking to see how they portrayed the bandit. The coverage is surprisingly straightforward, with the expected villification of Billy the Kid, but they still seem to relish his deeds.
The newspapers seem to love everything about the saga. They talk up Pat Garrett, the sheriff, using language such as “this modest man, who has little to say, but is always ready for action” and “the terror of all evil-doers in this loser country” (5, 23), but they also bill the Kid as “THE DARE DEVIL DESPERADO” and continually refer to his shrewdness and daring (19, 20). They do not portray him as popular, however. In describing the Kid’s escape from the jail, the editors explain that he was not stopped due to a mixture of fear and sympathy, and they lambast those who preferred to see him go free. In one article from May 9, 1881, one paper got the erroneous report that Billy the Kid had been killed. They describe it as not likely, but go on in detail about what would happen if he were to die. The piece says that the kid burned whatever sympathy the public had for him by his continued killing of innocent men, and that should he die, “no tears, will be shed, no requiem chanted in token of his earthly departure, but. . .silhouettes of an evil life will arise to accuse and condemn him” (20). Another article by a different paper published on the following day says essentially the same thing, saying that death is the only justice for a man such as Billy the Kid. When the Kid actually is killed, the newspapers stick to their word for the most part, praising Garrett and writing off the Kid as a bad man who got what as coming. The writers sometimes slip adjectives like “promising” and “remarkable” into their descriptions, however, creating some confusion as to their true feelings (27). If everything is taken at face value, the newspapers do not seem to be responsible for the Kid’s ascent into myth.
The prevailing attitudes of the papers of the day seem to be that the Kid is just another outlaw, memorable only for being a little brasher and younger than the rest of desperadoes of the west. The editors elevated him a little, but nothing compared to the job Siringo does, describing him as the friendliest, bravest fellow there ever was. So somehow, the public took these straightforward accounts and found a darling criminal to love within them. Part of it may have to do with how vehemently the writers decried some of the Kid’s actions. People, having no exposure to the reality of the killings, took these descriptions and romanticized them into the version of the Billy the Kid that appears in the 1920s. It may also have to do with the outlaw culture of the West at the time. From the lack of surprise in the language of the articles, one can assume that murders and thefts were fairly common. Perhaps the story of Billy the Kid appealed to the outlaw, renegade spirit that was inside of many settlers, and so they took it in turn and imagined it into something greater.
Billy the Kid: Las Vegas Newspaper Accounts of His Career, 1880-1881. Waco: W. M. Morrison, 1958. Print.
Reading Charli’s post and noticing the date of your book for this week makes me wonder if its publication was inspired by the movie of the same year. Was there a sort of “Billy the Kid” craze around this time?