Comparisons

I noticed a couple of things were similar between Bent's Fort and Deadwood when thinking about the social situations. One was that acts of violence/murder were almost too common and no one made a huge deal out of it. The Indians were known for chopping their enemies up and gun fights were a daily occurrance. In Bent's Fort, townships weren't really set up, so there wasn't a strong law. The "law-like" sense came from respect, except when it came to the Indians. In Deadwood, everyone's illegal anyway. It wouldn't make sense to have laws, so no one paid much attention when someone died. I noticed the most attention anyone ever paid was when Wild Bill died. He had quite a turn-out for his funeral, sounded like! It surprised me when no one really went after Jack McCall. The most they did was hold a court hearing for it. It didn't have much of an impact, though, because no one could possibly hold any real evidence against him. It was just another gun fight between two men, basically. Another comparison was in the amount of alcohol consumed. Alcohol never fails to make an appearance in any story/movie about the West. It's used a little differently in the two books, however. In Deadwood, it's consumed by everyone and there's many different saloons to choose from. It's just what everyone did, every night. In Bent's Fort, it was used to "pursuade" the Indians into trading away everything they had. It was thought of as a tool for business many times. Alcohol was consumed in the same amount by the "white men" just as much as in Deadwood, I'm sure, but the way it was talked about in Bent's Fort puts a different story behind it.