Vikings and tattoos, vanity, table manners and sexual mores

POP1

The word 'heath' is defined as barren land, wasteland, uncultivated land.  It refers to land found in Northern Europe.  'Heathen' is the name for those who lived on the heath - the Heath-men.  These were the Vikings who, unable to survive from cultivating this barren terrain, crossed the sea to pillage the cultivated lands of others.

Today the word 'Heathen' is a derogatory term used by Christians to describe their enemies, opponents etc., and though it's been a thousand years since the Vikings terrorized the Christian nations of Europe, their depradations and the fear they aroused must have been extraordinary to have left such a mark on the psyche of Christianity that the term 'Heathen' exists to this day to denote all that is the antithesis of Christian thought and belief.  Jews for example call their enemies anti-semites, not 'Romans' despite the fact that Rome destroyed Israel, burned the temple, and caused a diaspora of almost 2000 years.

POP2

A book called 'The Vikings' by Robert Ferguson gives some insight into what the Vikings were all about.  Like this example of the inhumanity of the Vikings:

In the year 1014 in a sermon, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, abominated the shameful Viking practice of men banding together to buy a female slave to use for their sexual gratification before returning her to the auction block to sell her on down the line.

Here's his vivid description of captives being herded, probably to ships, to be transported to a life of slavery - "Often two seamen, or maybe three, drive the droves of Christian men from sea to sea, out through this people, huddled together, as a public shame to us all" - a vivid picture of a demoralized English populace.  Two or three Viking guards - all it takes to control a crowd of Anglo-Saxon Christians; like SS guards in Auschwitz.

POP3

Slave trading was by far the greatest source of income for the vikings.  The source of the slaves was the British Isles in the west and the lands of the Slavs in the east.  But such was the volume of human trafficking in captives taken from among the Slavs that the term "Slav" became, via the mediaeval Latin sclavus, our word for all humans held in bondage - "slave".

POP4

Ibn Rustah tells of The Rus as covered even to their fingertips in tattoos depicting trees, figures and various designs.  Alcuin writing around 780 describes the Heathens' fashion for 'blinded eyes', probably black eye shadow - "..once applied it never fades, and the beauty of both men and women is increased".

POP5

Arab travellers have described their impressions of Vikings. Ibn Fadlan describes a band of Rus traders that were travelling down the Volga - I have never seen more perfect specimens, tall as date palms and ruddy complexioned", but he's quite disgusted at their lack of hygiene - a pitcher of water was passed among the menbers of the group in which each washed his hands, face and hair and then cleared his nose and spat. The process was repeated until all had used the same water in the same fashion". Probably a bonding ritual bcause their was plenty of cleaner water in the river Volga. In the movie "The Thirteenth Warrior, Tony Banderas' character is proffered a bowl of water by his new Viking friends in which they have carried out similar ablutions, but he declines to wash in it.

POP6

Ibn Dihya, in a poem/play has a Viking female speak of the liberated sexual mores of her sex - "Our women stay with their men of their own free will; a woman stays with her man as long as it pleases her, and leaves him when she wearies of their life together." The independence of women from the heathen north was a source of great surprise to Arab travellers.  One noted that "among them women have the right to divorce.  A woman can herself initiate divorce whenever she pleases."

POP7

In the Saga of the Jomsvikings: following their defeat, the Jomsvikings are being executed one by one.  Among them is a seventeen year old whose hair is "long and golden yellow like silk". Asked about the prospect of his imminent death, he replies that he has lived the best part of his life and has no desire to survive his companions.  He asks that his hair be held away from his head so that his it will not become bloodstained.  Someone comes forward and twines the long blonde hair around his hands as requested.  As the axe come down the youth jerks his head away and the assistants hands are cut off.  "Whose hands are these in my hair?", the youth coolly asks.  He is reprieved and invited to become  a member of Earl Erik's 'hird'.  He has shown the essential qualities of the heroic Viking: youth, sharp wit, bravery, and vanity.  The family of the Viking who has just bled to death with no hands might not agree.

The Vikings were very vain about their hair, as evidenced by the fact that when a Viking burial trove is uncovered it invariably includes a comb.

POP8


The vikings had a 'one for all, all for one' attitude.  Ibn Fadlan observes: "If one group of them is challenged to war, they all join forces.  They stand firm as one man against their enemies."
He also writes: "They treat their servants well and dress exquisitely....They are generous to each other, honor their guests and treat well those who seek refuge with them, and all who come to visit them.  They do not allow anyone to annoy or harm these.  And whenever anyone dares to treat them unfairly they help and defend them".


POP9

Trousers discovered in Danish and German bogs suggest that squatting was the position of choice when it came time to rest weary legs.  The trousers have narrow legs widening out across the buttocks, and with no central seam down the rear that would have had a tendency to split from prolonged squatting.  So let's not visualize Vikings lounging around on some chair-equivalent of our lawn chairs.


POP10

Norse warriors are reported in Old Norse literature to have fought in a nearly uncontrollable, trance-like fury.  They would charge their enemies in a mind-numbed rage, feeling no fear and no pain.  Individuals also were capable of going berserk.  Mediaeval scholars no longer regard Berserk madness to be a form of collective insanity; it was deliberately induced, they now believe, by the eating of fly-amanite mushrooms.

This condition is said to have begun with shivering, chattering of teeth, and chill in the body, and then the face swelled and changed its color.  With this was connected a great hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down every thing they net without discriminating between friend or foe.  When this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness followed, which could last for one or several days.

Remember the movie Jacobs Ladder.  In it the US army is testing a new drug to enhance the fighting abilities of its soldiers. The horror is that the soldiers on whom the drug had been tested had attacked, killed and mutilated their fellow soldiers.

POP11

The Norse Berserks were magicians and sages, and seem to have used the scarlet amanita muscaria (fly-amanite) for inducing prophecies. They were called Berserks (Bear-shirts) because they worshipped the Bear goddess, which accounts for our Great Bear constellation, and wore bear skins in her honour. Their cult was suppressed by royal proclamation - in AD 1015 (Norway) and AD 1123 (Iceland).

Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) wrote the following description of berserkers in his Ynglinga saga:
His (Odin's) men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild oxen, and killed people at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon them. This was called Berserkergang.

In 1015 King Erik outlawed berserks, along with 'holmganga' or duels.  It had become a common practice for a berserker to challenge men of property to holmgang, and upon slaying the unfortunate victim, to take possession of his goods, wealth, and women. This was a difficult tactic to counter, since a man so challenged had to appear, have a champion fight for him, or else be named 'ni(dh)ingr' and coward.

Check out the Popthems about the Fly-Amanite mushroom for its association with the Berserkers  and its influence on our civilization.

POP12

Cnut (he of the legend of the tide) was driven out of England by King Ethelred. According to Adam of Bremen, he returned in 1015 with a fleet of over 1000 large ships. Undoubtedly an exaggeration. Wikipedia quotes 200 ships and 10,000 men. The invasion was successful and in 1016 Cnut, at the age of about 20, became the king of England.

POP13

Compare to other invasions:

The Spanish Armada of 1588 consisted of 132 ships, amomg them some of the largest ever built till that time; 3000 cannon and 30,000 men.

Harald Hardrada of Norway in 1066.  300 ships.  Resoundingly defeated at the battle of Stamford Bridge by the new Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson, a mere 25 ships sufficed to take what was left of the Viking army back to Norway.

Two days later William the Conqueror arrived in England.  He had between 600 and 700 transport ships to carry 7000 men (including 3000 cavalry.)

Julius Caesar had 800 ships 5 legions (25,000 men)and 2000 cavalry.  54 BC.

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The period of fifty years from Cnut to William The Conqueror is perhaps the pivotal period of English history, not just because of the Norman conquest of 1066, but because of what might have been but was not.  Consider the possibilities:

Cnut died in 1035.  His two sons ruled for a brief period dying respectively in 1040 and 1042.  Had either of them lived longer, William the Conqueror would probably not have invaded in 1066, and England would have been a Scandinavian nation; the English language would have been a mix of Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon.

The battle of Hastings was a very closely fought battle that could have gone either way, even despite the weariness of King Harold's army which had just defeated Hardrada's Vikings and endured a forced march from the north of England.  If Harold had been victorious, England would have remained Anglo-Saxon and the English language would not be this glorious amalgam of Anglo-Saxon and French.

POP15

The Normans (Norse-men) were the descendants of Vikings who settled in what became Normandy.  Their leader was Rollo who, in about 911, became baptized and married the daughter of King Charles the Simple.

POP16

In the Heathen calender, the midwinter feast was called Jol. In the three scandinavian languages of today Jul is the term for Christmas, and in the English language we have Yuletide.

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According to the Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), Odin promised his followers that each man who came to him in Valhalla would have the use of "what he himself had buried in the earth". This would go a long way toward explaining the treasure troves that farmers sometimes dig up, such as the Silverdale hoard, or the Spillings hoard discovered in 1999.

POP18

From about 800 to about 1200 there occured the Mediaeval Warm Period (also known as the Little Optimum) which producd some of the warmest centuries of the past 8000 years. Previously inhospitable regions now became destinations for Viking settlers, who now had the incentive to make the long journey westward toward a desirable end, and were thus induced to travel ever further, to Iceland, on to Greenland and finally to America. Iceland for example was covered with woods from the mountains to the seashore, and whereas now only 20% of the land is suitable for pasture, then the figure was between 45 and 70%.

In 1495 Pope Alexander VI (that would be Alexander Borgia) found time amidst his intrigues to express concern in a papal letter about the spiritual life of Greenlanders noting that "no vessel has touched there during the past eighty years".

POP19

Charlemagne's forced Christianization of the Saxons in the 780's included sanctions that were far divorced from any intimation of brotherly love - death for eating meat during lent, death for cremating the dead in accordance with Heaten rites, death for any who hid themselves unbaptised. But for a Christian to kill a Heathen earned no penance because the Heathen were considered less than human.

POP20

The Vikings were not always victorious.  In 844 a fleet of 80 Viking ships appeared off Lisbon, "covering the sea like dark birds". The city was captured and the fleet continued down the Spanish coast to Seville, at this time part of the Muslim empire.  The city was also taken and occupied.  A Muslim army with the use of siege catapults drove the Vikings out.  A few months later the Vikings suffered another defeat with the loss of thirty ships.  The corpses of Viking captives hung from the palm trees of Seville and Talyata - an incongruous picture of Norsemen amid the palm trees.

Deadliest Gunfight in American History. One Man Against Fourteen.

POP1

Jonathan R. Davis was a gold rush prospector. On 19 December 1854, he single-handedly killed eleven armed outlaws at Rocky Canyon near Sacramento, California using two Colt revolvers and a Bowie knife. This episode is possibly the single deadliest small arms engagement in American history where one man went up against multiple foes

POP2

Jonathan Davis was born on August 5, 1816, to a prosperous family in Monticello, South Carolina.  He was an educated man, having studied at the University of South Carolina. In December 1846, he enlisted in the Palmetto Regiment of Volunteers for service in the Mexican War. He was soon promoted to second lieutenant.  He served with great distinction and fought in many battles; he was wounded in action at Churubusco.  He was known as an expert pistol shot, and according to a friend he was "second to none in the state as a fencer." He was an honorary captain, but was called Captain Davis.

POP3

On December 19, 1854, Captain Davis and two fellow prospectors were walking down a miner's trail in Rocky Canyon in El Dorado County, on the North Fork of the American River.  His two companions were armed with pistols; Captain Davis carried two Colt revolvers and a large Bowie knife.

A band of robbers was lying in wait in the canyon brush near the trail.  Among the bandits were two Americans, one Frenchman, two Britons, five Australians and four Mexicans. Fourteen in all.  The band had robbed and murdered six Chinese two days before, and had robbed and killed four Americans the previous day.  Two of the gang had been wounded in these encounters.

As Captain Davis and his companions walked past the place of ambush, the bandit gang charged out of the brush, shooting their pistols.  James McDonald, one of Captain Davis' two companions died instantly, without time to draw his revolver or react in any way.  The other, Dr. Sparks, managed to get his six-shooter out and fire twice at the highwaymen before he dropped, badly wounded.

POP4

Captain Davis later described himself as being "in a fever of excitement at the time." He stood his ground and, like Wyatt Earp, kept his nerve.  His aim was deadly accurate. One after another he shot down his assailants. The outlaw bullets tore at Davis's clothing but caused only two slight flesh wounds. Within moments seven of the bandits were dead or dying on the ground, and Davis's pistols were empty.  At the very least seven of his twelve bullets found their target (or seven of ten if he kept one chamber empty).

Four of the remaining robbers, three armed with Bowie knives and one with a short sword, now closed in on the Captain to finish him off.  With his Bowie knife Captain Davis warded off the thrusts from the two most aggressive bandits.  He stabbed one of them to death; the other he disarmed by knocking the knife from his grasp and slicing off his nose and a finger of his right hand.

The two last attackers were the men who had been wounded in the previous raids. Despite their weakened condition, they foolishly approached Davis with drawn knives. As the captain explained later, he did not know that they were wounded: "Two of the four that made the charge upon me were unable to fight on account of their old wounds. They came up with the rest, making warlike demonstrations by raising their knives in a striking posture, and I acted accordingly. I noticed that they handled them with very bad grace, but attributed it altogether to fright or natural awkwardness."  He killed them both.

Seven of the robbers were dead, three desperately wounded, and the eleventh, the now noseless bandit, did not appear to be fatally injured. The final three remaining outlaws fled.

POP5

Captain Davis removed his shirt, tore it to strips, and began bandaging Dr. Sparks and the wounded brigands.  Suddenly Davis spotted three well-armed strangers coming up the trail. They turned out to be a John Webster and two members of a mining party camped a mile distant on a creek running into the North Fork of the American River.  They had been out hunting game and had seen the entire fight from a nearby hilltop.

POP6

Someone examined Captain Davis's hat and found that at least six bullets had passed through it.  Participants in a gunfight may have tendency to shoot high, given that Davis had only two flesh wounds, but all of six holes in his hat.

POP7

By nightfall the three badly wounded bandits had died.  In the morning McDonald and the ten dead robbers were buried.  The surviving bandit's wounds proved to be more serious than had been thought, and he died that day and was buried with the rest.

POP8

John Webster and other miners formed a coroner's jury and prepared a long statement setting forth the facts of the affair.  They concluded, "From all the evidence before us, Captain Davis and his party acted solely in self-defence, and were perfectly justifiable in killing these robbers.  Too much praise cannot be bestowed upon them for having so gallantly stopped the wild career of these lawless ruffians."

Seventeen miners signed the report, which was then delivered to Placerville.  At the same time, John Webster wrote a long letter to a friend in Placerville offering his firsthand account ot the desperate battle in Rocky Canyon. The wounded Dr. Sparks was carried down the mountains to his home near Coloma by Captain Davis.  The doctor died on December 26.

POP9

Sceptics.

The coroner's report and the letter from John Webster created a sensation in Placerville. The Placerville Mountain Democrat ran an extra edition on December 23, publishing both accounts in full.  The issue was reprinted by the San Francisco and Sacramento newspapers, and eventually by major newspapers in other parts of the country.  The story was considered so incredible that many doubted it. The San Francisco California Chronicle responded that "The story, though it might be considered certainly fabulous in any other country, is quite in character with things that often take place in California."

The three miners who had witnessed the fight, John Webster, Isaac Hart, and P.S. Robertson, had moved to new diggings twenty miles farther up the mountains.  They had had no contact with outsiders until they were visited by a Mr. Williams, a brother-in-law of Dr. Sparks, who had searched for them for several weeks before finding their camp. Williams wanted to confirm the details of Dr. Sparks' death, and he informed the three for the first time that their account had been discredited.

On March 20, 1855, three months after the battle, Captain Davis, Williams, and the three eyewitnesses appeared in the office of the Mountain Democrat.  Before Judge R.M. Anderson and a delegation of prominent citizens they recounted the battle in detail.  After careful questioning of Webster, Hart, and Robertson by Judge Anderson, those present were soon convinced that the fight had taken place exactly as described.  The three young miners presented letters of introduction and also gave a written statement about the battle.  Their testimony in this almost formal  setting settled all doubts in the public mind.

Concealed Firearms. Renaissance style.

POP1

In 1522, the city of Ferrara in Italy forbad the carrying of crossbows or firearms into the city, day or night.  (The city ordinance specifically mentioned wheel locks which were mechanical and did not need a lighted fuse).

In 1523, the ordinances became more draconian:

..."and since an especially dangerous kind of firearms have come to be used, which are called vulgarly 'stone guns', (wheel locks) with which a homicide can easily be committed; in knowledge of this, His Excellency, knowing that these are devilish arms, prohibits their being carried without express authorization, under penalty of having a hand publicly cut off..."  ..."because these arms are being used more and more for murders and assassinations"...

Often however the ban came to be applied primarily to wheel locks that were short enough to be concealed in clothing.  Even these short firearms could usually be kept within the confines of the house; and longer firearms could be carried (as long as they were unloaded) from one's home to the city gates, at which point they were beyond the confines of the city and could be loaded.

This is 350 years before dodge City.

In Florence in 1547, the Duke of Florence forbad the carrying of firearms that were short enough to conceal.

Timeline - Leonardo Da Vinci died in 1519.

POP2

In London the practice of taking potshots at birds was probably becoming dangerous to humans because of poor marksmanship of the shooter - or so it would seem from a Parliamentary ordinance of 1549:

...noe person under the degree of Lord in Parliament shall henceforth shote in any handgunne within any citie or towne at any fowle or other mark, upon anie church, house or dovecote, neither shal any person shote...any hayl-shot (bird shot) or any more pellets than one at a tyme, upon payne of tenne pounds...

The Year 1515. "I didn't know the gun was loaded".

POP1

In the year of Our Lord 1515, on the day of the Three Holy Kings (January 6), there was a certain young citizen of Augsburg in Constance who invited a handsome whore, and when she was with him in a little room, he took up a loaded gun in his hand, the lock of which functioned in such a way that when the trigger was pressed, it ignited itself and so discharged the piece (a wheel lock).   Accordingly he played around with the gun and pressed the trigger and shot the whore through the chin, so that the bullet passed out through the back of her neck.  So he had to compensate her and give her 40 florins and another 20 florins per annum for life.  He also paid her doctor 37 florins, and the other costs amounted to some 30 or 40 florins.

From 'Chronica Newer Geschichten' by Wilhelm Ren, Under the title, 'How Laus Pfister Shot a Whore in Constance'

Bodie and Aurora, Mining Camps and Violence

Bodie is in California, and Aurora in Nevada.  A study of crime in these two mining towns offers a glimpse of life in the Old West.  The period for Aurora is the 1860's, after which Aurora became a ghost town and Bodie which boomed in the mid-1870's into the early 1880's.  The towns are ten miles apart.

POP1

Nearly every man went about armed.

Sam Clemens, (the future Mark Twain) visited Bodie and spent some time in Aurora working as a miner and writing for the Esmeralda Star.  He said that he had never had occasion to kill anybody with the Colt Navy revolver he carried, but he had "worn the thing in deference to popular sentiment, and in order that I might not, by its absence, be offensively conspicuous, and a subject of remark."

POP2

Thirty-one Bodieites and at least 17 Aurorans were victims of homicide during the towns' boom years.

Women residents of the towns were far safer than their counterparts are today in any American city. Men fought men with fists, knives, and guns, and they often fought to the death.  They occasionally fought over women or mining property, or even politics.  But mostly they  fought over who was the better man, real or imagined insults, and challenges to pecking order in the saloon.  The men involved in the fights were willing—often very willing—participants. Some of them were professionals, hired as gunmen for mining companies.  Others were simply miners, teamsters, bartenders, carpenters, woodchoppers, and the like.  The men were mostly young and single, and adventurous and brave.  The combination, sometimes laced with alcohol, led often to displays of reckless bravado and not infrequently to death.

In a study of violence in nineteenth-century Michigan lumber towns, Jeremy W. Kilar has found that there were some 112 homicides in the lumber counties of Bay, Saginaw, and Muskegon during the years 1868-1888.  More than half of the lumber town homicides occurred from 1881 through 1886.  In 1881, East Saginaw, with a population of some 20,000, had 15 homicides. 

The men of Aurora and Bodie were miners and ready to fight if the need arose.  Their consumption of alcohol meant that they would fight often. And their carrying of guns meant that fighting could easily prove fatal.

Although the armed state of the citizenry reduced the incidence of robbery, burglary, and theft, it also increased the number of homicides.

Residents of Aurora and Bodie accepted the killings because those killed, with only a few exceptions, had been willing combatants. They had chosen to fight.

Commenting on killings in Bodie, the Daily Free Press said on January 7, 1880: 'There has never yet been an instance of the intentional killing of a man whose taking off was not a verification of the proverb that "He that liveth by the sword shall perish by the sword.' "  The old and the weak, women and those unwilling to fight were almost never the object of an attack.

POP3

Robbery.

Robbery occurred only infrequently.  There were eleven robberies and three attempted robberies of stages during Bodie's boom years and a nearly equal number during Aurora's heyday.

When highwaymen stopped a stagecoach, they normally took only the express box and left the passengers with their possessions intact.  Passengers frequently remarked that they had been treated courteously by the highwaymen.

Only twice were passengers robbed.  In the first instance the highwaymen later apologized for their conduct, and in the second the road agents were drunk.  Highwaymen seemed to understand that they could take the express box without arousing the general populace, but if they began robbing passengers they would possibly precipitate a vigilante reaction.

Bullion shipments carried occasionly by stagecoaches were often of great value: some of them would be worth $5 or $10 million in today's dollars.  Yet, not one of the bullion stages was ever attacked by highwaymen.

The reason is obvious.  The bullion stages, unlike the regular stages, were always guarded by two or three or more rifle and shotgun toting guards.  Highwaymen preferred to prey on unguarded coaches, take whatever was in the express box, and escape unharmed.

Only once did highwaymen and guards exchange gunfire - a highwayman was killed and a guard wounded - and in that case the highwaymen had not expected to encounter any guards.

Fear of arrest could not have served as much of a deterrent to stage robbery since only three road agents were ever apprehended, and only two of the three were convicted of robbery.

POP4

Bank holdups, after stagecoach holdups, are the form of robbery most popularly associated with the frontier West; yet none of the several banks that operated in Aurora and Bodie were robbed.  Bankers went about armed, as did their employees, and robbers, like the highwaymen who avoided the guarded bullion stages, evidently were not willing to tangle with armed men.

POP5

During this same periods there were ten robberies and three attempted robberies of individual citizens in Bodie and a somewhat smaller number in Aurora.

In nearly every one of these robberies the circumstances were almost identical: the robbery victim had spent the evening in a gambling den, saloon, or brothel; he had revealed in some way that he had on his person a tidy sum of money; and he was drunk, staggering toward home late at night when the attack occurred.

More robberies might have occurred if Aurorans and Bodieites had not gone about armed and ready to fight.  They were, unless staggering drunk, simply too dangerous to rob.

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Theft.

Theft was more common than robbery or burglary in Aurora and Bodie but still infrequent.  Bodie recorded some 45 instances of theft, and Aurora somewhat fewer.  Since both towns were high up in mountain valleys at elevations of 8,400 and 7,500 respectively, firewood and blankets were the items most commonly stolen.

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Horse thieves.

Of Bodie's 45 instances of theft only six involved horses.  Just two horse thieves were caught, and they were punished far less severely than has been traditionally supposed: one was sentenced to serve six months in the county jail, and the other a year in the state penitentiary.

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Rustling.

Although thousands of head of cattle grazed to the west of Bodie and Aurora in the Bridgeport Valley and to the south in the Owens Valley, cattle rustling, except for Indian thefts during the Owens Valley warfare of the 1860s, seems not to have occurred.

From 'Violence in America' edited by Ted Gurr.

Dodge City Homicide Statistics

Contrary to the impression left by Western movies, homicides were rare in the Wild West


POP1

In 1880, wide-open towns like Virginia City, Leadville or Dallas had no homicides.  Compare this to Cincinnati, in the 'civilized' state of Ohio, which had 17 homicides in that same year.

Virginia city had 8 homicides during the year-and-half following its founding in 1859.  In 1876, the year of its birth, Deadwood had 4 homicides.  Ellsworth, one of the Kansas cattle towns, had 8 homicides during the twelve months following its establishment in 1867, and Dodge city, the queen of the cattle towns, had 9 in its first year, 1872-1873.  (Note: this number of nine homicdes from Frontier Violence: Another Look, author W. Eugene Hollon does not agree with the number given below.)

POP2

From 1870 to 1885, the fabled cattle towns of Abilene, Caldwell, Dodge City, Ellsworth and Wichita had a total of 45 homicides between them - an average of three per year spread over five towns, or roughly one killing every one-and-half years per town.  Sixteen of these 45 homicides were committed by duly authorized peace officers.  Some of these were domestic quarrels.

The population of Dodge City was never much more than 3,000.  In its worst year (1876), Dodge City had 5 killings.  This translates to approximately 1 murder per 600 residents per year.  Remember, this is 'the worst year'.  To keep everything in perspective, consider that in Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, not a single person was killed in 1869 or 1870.

One homicide per 600 residents would translate to 5000 homicides in a city the size of Chicago, with a population of approx. 3 million.


POP3

Sounds awfully high, but it all depends on your perspective.

Most city suburbs have a population greater than 3000, and to have 5 killings in a small suburb of a size comparable to taht of Dodge city would be considered horrendous.

On the other hand, six or seven weekends in Chicago in 2012 can leave 45 homicides - it took 15 years and 5 cattle towns to reach that figure in the Wild West.  Then consider Cincinnati again which in one year (1880) had 18 homicides.

In conclusion it looks as if the Wild West was a relatively safe place to be.

Dunces and Supreme Court Justices

Given the intellectual and scholastic abilities of the justices of the United States Supreme Court, the term 'dunces' hardly seems applicable.  But what about by association:

POP1

The 'Supreme Court Of The United States' is being referred to more and more by the media using the acronym "SCOTUS".


Lets look at John Duns Scotus (1265-1308).   He was one of the most important and influential philosopher-theologians of the High Middle Ages.  'Scotus’ was a nickname, identifying him as a Scot.  His family name was Duns, which was the name of the village where he was born.  His brilliantly complex and nuanced thought earned him the nickname 'Doctor Subtilis'.

Later philosophers in the sixteenth century were not as complimentary about his work, and accused him of sophistry.

In the 16th century, the followers of Scotus (Scotists or Dunses)) obstinately opposed the new learning (i.e., the King James Bible).  The term duns or dunce became in the mouths of the Protestants a term of abuse - someone who is incapable of scholarship.

So that's where the word "dunce' comes from.

POP2

It just goes to show that when you're dead, your enemies make the rules and get to do the name calling. Consider Nero, Alexander, and even Judas Iscariot.