Scandal of the West: Domestic Violence on the Frontier, by R.E. Mather, History West Publishing Co., Oklahoma City, Okla., 1998, $15.95 paper.
Tales of the Old West frequently involve men gunning down other men, male outlaws robbing stages and banks, mere boys getting reputations by firing six-shooters at human targets, and frontiersmen using firearms to protect their families from hostile Indians. They are a part of real history and an even bigger part of the mythical frontier. Tales about domestic violence, wife abuse and child abuse are another matter. They rarely work their way into Western history, and even less often into Western legends. R.E. Mather is to be commended for venturing into places where few Western historians have gone before. In the chapter on child abuse, Mather points out that famous stock detective Tom Horn received “regular thumpings” from his parents, and that while John Wesley Hardin was not beaten by his mother or his Methodist preacher father, they did instill a strong regional hatred (for “Yankees”) in him, “fostering an attitude that prompted violence.” We also find out that the Montana Vigilantes’ Captain James Williams, who directed more than 21 lynchings, is on “a list of frontiersmen who left their childhood homes at an early age because of repeated harsh punishments by birth parents.” Elsewhere in the book, Mather considers the California case of Lucinda Vedder, whose abusive husband was killed in self-defense by law officer Henry Plummer. Later, Plummer became sheriff in Bannack (in present-day Montana), where the Vigilantes hanged him for allegedly leading a gang of supposedly murderous, gold-stealing road agents. In previous works (including an article in the August 1993 Wild West), Mather has defended the controversial Plummer, who–unlike some of those vigilante types–was apparently not abused as a child and was not a wife-beater. In any case, Mather’s latest book sheds light on some truths of frontier life that are often overlooked or ignored.
