“Cowboys driving cattle over open range. Outlaws and lawmen facing one another on a dusty main street. Indian hunters racing through buffalo herds on horseback. These images, so familiar from books and movies, are what come to mind when many people think of the American West.” Although these images are not entirely fictionalized, the real American West was home to European settlers and pioneers. The show helped develop dramatic images of the "wild west" and the west was a place open for imagination and new starts.
Some lucky settlers or people flocking to the west found this promise of a better life fulfilled. These are the people who made the myth of the west true. However, for many others the promise did not come through. For them life was rough and the truth of the west was rougher. Still, a promise for the struggling people of eastern cities, suburban, and rural areas was a nice idea. It gave them hope and a bit of assurance that their hardships were not forever or in vain. The development of Wild West shows were a way to preserve this open promise- without the failure that it often presented in reality. For Native Americans, of course, the back side of the medal was a constantly lived reality, where the Wild West's 'frontier' was a battle front taking over traditional lands.
Wild West shows were shows that took the reality of the West and glamorized it for the eastern audiences to give it an exciting appeal. The showmen who ran the shows adapted western life to fit an exaggerated yet captivating image which the eastern audiences both expected and were intrigued by. The shows were a marriage of reality and theater and were designed by the showmen to be both “authentic” and entertaining, a balance which sought to not flat out fabricate, but only enhance truth. Some shows even claimed educational benefits. The shows were “Romance and reality, adventure and ‘the story of our country’”.