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- [00:01]
Sally Helm
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through Instacart? Because maybe you only bought two wreaths, but you have 12 windows. Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the Advent calendar. Or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm. Or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason, this season Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul. Get decorations from the Home Depot, CVS and more through Instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service Fees in terms of why the DSW Black Friday sale is on, take 30% off almost everything in stores and online right now. Yep, you heard that right. 30% off. Stock up on new shoes, bags and extras for you and yours from all the gift worthy brands you love. But hurry. Black Friday can't last forever. Get to your DSW store or dsw.com asap to save big exclusions. Apply details@dsw.com.
- [01:00]
Tori Olsen
The History Channel Original Podcast.
- [01:05]
Sally Helm
History this Week October 5, 1871 I'm Sally Helm. It's raining in Abilene, Kansas, a town people call one of the wildest in the Wild West. Every year, thousands of cowboys pass through Abilene, drinking, fighting, generally causing trouble. And today the cowboys are in an especially hot headed mood. For one thing, there was supposed to be a county fair today, which would have been a fun way to blow off steam, but it's canceled because of the rain. There's also been tension in town centered on a saloon, the Bull's Head Tavern. It's run by a man named Phil Coe. Coe had what he thought was a great idea for promoting the business, a massive painting on the side of the building of a sexually aroused bull. People in Abilene were outraged. They complained the sheriff, Wild Bill Hickok, tried to get Coe to cover the painting. He wouldn't, so Wild Bill just painted over it himself. And Phil Coe has been angry. Not explosively. Things have been sort of simmering. But on the evening of October 5th, the tension boils over. By nightfall, more than 50 cowboys are out in the street, causing a general ruckus. So loon owner Phil Coe is with them, the sheriff, while Bill Hickok is on hand to keep the peace. And then suddenly, a shot rings out. Hickok steps in, tries to find out who shot the gun. Phil Coe steps forward, waving his pistol in the air. It was me, he says. But I was just shooting at a stray dog. And then, almost immediately, he pulls out a second pistol and fires twice. The first bullet hits the ground between the sheriff's legs. The second goes through his coat. Hickok, quick as thought, one newspaper writes, fires three shots back. Two of them hit Coe in the stomach. He dies three days later. This feels like a very familiar Old west story. Sheriff, cowboys, a shootout, a saloon. But there is more going on here, just under the surface.
- [03:53]
Tori Olsen
Wild Bill Hickok. As with many gunslingers of his day, they are political creatures. They had very partisan affiliations and most of the time they shot people who were not of their partisan identity. Right? The Democrats tended to shoot Republicans and Republicans tended to shoot Democrats.
- [04:11]
Sally Helm
Democrats Professor Tory Olsen has made it his job to take a classic gunslinging western and uncover the complicated political story beneath. He's recently been focused on a kind of story that a lot of people overlook. A video game, Red Dead Redemption. One of the most popular gaming franchises of all time. This game is full of shootouts and outlaws, hard drinking cowboys and gunslingers inspired by people like Wild Bill Hickok. And Red Dead is so popular that it has impacted the way a whole generation of people understands the west today. A conversation with Tori Olsen about what we can all learn from the real history in Red Dead Redemption. Who were the inspirations behind its characters? And how can understanding this modern take on a classic Western help us all see the American west more clearly?
- [05:20]
Tori Olsen
This episode is brought to you by US Cellular. You shouldn't have to sacrifice a great experience to get a great deal. And U.S. cellular Prepaid agrees. Which is why right now you'll get a new Samsung Galaxy A15.5G for free without any hidden fees, like the device activation fees you get with those other prepaid providers. So you can use your free phone with US Cellular's nationwide 5G coverage to stay connected to the ones you love without having to make sacrifices. Terms apply. Visit uscellular.com for details.
- [05:50]
Sally Helm
Hello everyone, My name is Wesley Levisay. From the History of the Second World War podcast, Join me on a journey through the most destructive conflict in human history. A journey that will take us not just through the famous campaigns and cataclysmic battles, but also to the lesser well known corners of the war that touched millions all over the world as we try and answer not just the questions of what and where, but how and why. You can find history of the Second World War on all major podcast platforms or at historyofthesecondworld war.com want to shop.
- [06:22]
Tori Olsen
Walmart Black Friday deals first Walmart plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one year annual membership shop, Black Friday deals first with Walmart plus see terms@walmartplus.com.
- [06:38]
Sally Helm
Red Dead Redemption 2 was released in 2018 and it's what you would call an open world game. You're free to roam around as an outlaw, interacting with various characters and joining up on missions as you make your way through America in 1899. And Red Dead 2 is an enormous hit. It made $725 million its opening weekend and since then gamers have purchased 64 million copies. One of those gamers is Tori Olsen. He's a professor of history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and he teaches a whole class about the true history behind this game. And he just published a book based on that class. So you are a history professor, but I actually want to start by asking you not about your life as a scholar, but about your life as a gamer. So tell me about that. What drew you to video games originally and especially to this game?
- [07:33]
Tori Olsen
So I really did the bulk of my gaming in the late 1990s when I was in high school, which was not a good thing for me as a student. And I will confess that I sneaked out of high school with a 2.7 GPA. Not my proudest moment. Most people would probably not have expected me to be professorial material at that point. So in 2000, when I went to college, and I'm still fortunate enough that a respectable university admitted me in the first place, I decided to quit gaming cold turkey for like literally 20 years until the Pandemic. And you know, I'm confined in my home. And by that point I had achieved a good deal of stability in my career. I'd earned tenure, I'd published my first book, and I felt like this could be a decent time to dip my toes back in the water. And so I bought a new gaming PC and I began to experiment with this old medium that I had given up so long ago.
- [08:30]
Sally Helm
You know, it's so funny, I was home at my parents house during part of the pandemic and I started playing the Sims again, which I had also last played in high school. So I understand the draw during COVID too, right.
- [08:43]
Tori Olsen
It was just a particular moment, you know, a particular emotional stew that made this seem like a good idea. Now I had some misgivings to be sure, right? Like, is this going to impact my professional career?
- [08:56]
Sally Helm
Well, and it did. I never have imagined that it would.
- [08:59]
Tori Olsen
Impact it in any positive way. Right. That was like unthinkable when I began.
- [09:04]
Sally Helm
Is that when you found red Dead Redemption 2. Is that when you first started playing it?
- [09:08]
Tori Olsen
It was. It was that summer of 2020. And really, you know, I came to this game, Red Dead 2, really not expecting much, you know, because as a professional historian, you just see so often how pop culture tends to recycle the sorts of cliches instead of telling, you know, thoughtful, nuanced stories. But I was surprisingly impressed. I was really stunned by how frequently the game would GE to ward some of the very biggest dilemmas that historians have been debating for generations. You know, it pays lip service to these big questions like women's suffrage, questions of black rights in the south after the civil War and the army's war against native people, which is a topic that many classic westerns have spoken to as well. But those classic westerns were unequivocally on the side of the army and the white settlers, you know, painting native peoples as, you know, savage or backward or anything like that. The game does not do that. The sympathies of the game, you know, lay pretty close to how many western historians today study the period and not as this sort of triumphal tale of white men winning the West. And again, I was not expecting that when I came into the video game, but was really quite impressed at how they told that story.
- [10:25]
Sally Helm
Yeah, you also write in the book that you were really impressed with the visual world of the game and how accurate that was. Tell me a little bit more about that.
- [10:33]
Tori Olsen
You know, a lot of the online conversations about Red Dead talk about its accuracy. You know, how. How incredibly gritty the level of detail that they. That they provide is. Maybe the most famous example that made a lot of waves on the Internet was that as the weather changes, the size of your horse's testicles literally change.
- [10:56]
Sally Helm
It's so ridiculous.
- [10:59]
Tori Olsen
It's not at all historical. But, you know, the game has this reputation as, wow, they really thought about every single detail.
- [11:06]
Sally Helm
Let's drill down on the premise of the game. Who are the two main characters, and what kind of, like, quest or journey are they on?
- [11:14]
Tori Olsen
So the game centers around this outlaw gang led by Dutch van der Linde, who's this idealistic dreamer who sees the west as this sort of reserve of unbounded possibility, which he believes is coming to an end, that as sort of corporate order and hierarchy and rigidly enforced laws are settling in, that he's looking for an escape, which is a very old story, I should note, and the story of the west closing. It's not actually a story, I think, that's very historically realistic or accurate. But that's something we can get into later on.
- [11:51]
Sally Helm
Yeah. Tell me a little bit about that, actually. What's the sort of origin story of the idea that the west is ending, that it's closing?
- [11:59]
Tori Olsen
Right. I mean, as long as Americans have. Have been obsessing about the west, they've been worried that the sun was setting on the West. This era of wildness, of untamedness, was coming to an end. And I think this all comes down to one crucial moment, to one address by this extremely influential historian by the name of Frederick Jackson Turner. And he delivers it at this major milestone in American culture, which is the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, this huge World's Fair. So Turner gives this address, and it's called the Significance of the Frontier in American History. And it really might be like the single most influential history lecture of all time. It really is up there. And in this fairly brief address, Turner makes this twofold argument. A. He argues that the American character is fundamentally defined by this taming the wildness of the frontier, that this is what made Americans independent, kind of what made Americans great. So that's the first part of his argument. But then he also argues that, well, all of that is coming to an end, that the frontier has closed. And he pinpoints the year 1890 as the turning point. And Turner's really anxious about this, right, because he thinks that frontiering made America great. Well, what happens to America when frontiering ends? And this argument, it's not really noticed. At the time, during the fair, I think people were more excited about the debut of the Ferris wheel and Cracker Jack popcorn.
- [13:31]
Sally Helm
A lot of big things at the World's Fair.
- [13:33]
Tori Olsen
My favorite is that the Pabst Brewery wins a blue ribbon, which they still haven't stopped boasting about.100.
- [13:40]
Sally Helm
That's the blue ribbon.
- [13:42]
Tori Olsen
That's the blue ribbon. It's the 1893 Chicago World's Exposition. And that's a big moment. But Turner's address is bigger. Right? Turner's sort of concept of Western history would make a tremendous dentist in American thinking. But the problem is that Turner's wrong. That's not true. There's all sorts of chaos and unsettled violence and wildness in the west long after 1890. So many historians have argued that, no, there's actually an uninterrupted story of Western history, which is that of conquest, which is that of sort of Eastern powers, particularly the federal government and Wall street conquering the west, which is a very violent and controversial process. But, yeah, so Turner. You know, Turner's name doesn't appear in the credits of red Dead Redemption 2, but maybe it should, because the game very much leans on this. West is closing by the 1890s argument, right? I mean, Dutch Van Der Linde, perhaps he read Frederick Jackson Turner sounds like he might have. Yeah. So the game really revolves around his vision, Dutch Van Der Linde, and that of his top lieutenant, whose name is Arthur Morgan.
- [14:54]
Sally Helm
Yeah. And tell me about Arthur Morgan.
- [14:55]
Tori Olsen
Yeah. So players spend a great deal of time getting to know Arthur Morgan because he is the single controllable figure in the game. And Morgan is more jaded. He does not have his head in the clouds to the same extent that his boss Dutch does. And I think, you know, a lot of the narrative has to do with the sort of redemption, which is why it's in the title of Arthur Morgan as someone who's a bad man, who's done cruel, heartless things. He's killed people, people in cold blood, who's trying to come to terms with that. But basically, the game follows this outlaw gang as they're being pursued by the Pinkertons, by the police, by various authorities, as they're trying to, you know, salvage some shard of Western independence or, you know, free spirit of some sort.
- [15:44]
Sally Helm
You mentioned the people who are kind of the antagonists of the game, the Pinkertons. And I know that they are just, like, literally lifted from the pages of history. The name Pinkerton is a real name. It wasn't even changed in the game. So tell me who they are in the game and who they were really.
- [16:02]
Tori Olsen
So the names of people and places are overwhelmingly made up. Right. There was no Dutch Van Der Linde. Gamers know this. But there's one institution, of course, whose name is not changed at all, and it's the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. And in the 1870s, the Pinkertons become famous and really widely beloved in the US for their pursuit of outlaws, but were a hired army of big business who operates at the behest of massive new corporate interests. However, by 1899, the particular moment when the game catches the Pinkertons, the vast majority of that agency's operations were, yes, operating on the behalf of big business, but not really chasing Western outlaws. They are primarily involved in crushing the labor movement, breaking strikes, infiltrating labor unions, trying to sabotage the growing effort of American workers to get a fair shake. And the Pinkertons earn a lot of bad press as a result. They really come to be a rather toxic household name. By the 1890s, so, you know, if this game had been realistic or more realistic, you would have. Arthur Morgan, like, in a striking crowd, like, you would have seen picket signs. It was just the social question of the day.
- [17:22]
Sally Helm
And worker power was the social question, like, how much power are workers going to have in this world of the new big corporations, the railroads.
- [17:30]
Tori Olsen
Exactly.
- [17:31]
Sally Helm
Robber barons, people rising up and becoming extremely rich. How are workers going to fare? That was a big question.
- [17:36]
Tori Olsen
Right. You know, you and I, Sally, like, we've grown up in the shadow of mega corporations. That's just something we take for granted. But in the 1870s and 1880s, those things are new. Those things have never been seen on that scale in American history. Really. The modern business corporation doesn't take root until the railroads pop up in the 1870s. So Americans are seeing this for the first time and they are not at all sure that they like it.
- [18:04]
Sally Helm
So the Pinkertons are basically hired to protect big business, to protect corporate interests, and to fight outlaws. But an interesting thing in the west in this period is that some of the people that we maybe think of as outlaws really weren't like someone like Wild Bill Hickok, who we heard about at the beginning of the episode. He actually was like, not particularly an outlaw. So tell me a little bit. Who was he and what kinds of work did he do in the West?
- [18:37]
Tori Olsen
So all of these gunslingers, they stood somewhere on the towering question of the day, which was what kinds of power would corporate capitalists, mainly headquartered on the eastern seaboard, what kinds of power would they wield over regular people's lives? And Wild Bill Hickok had a very simple answer. He was in favor of these big corporations. He would be kind of a sympathetic ally of the Pinkertons. A part of this stemmed from his political identity. Wild Bill Hickok was an anti slavery Republican who had, of course, fought. Fought for the U.S. army during the Civil War on the side of the Union, of course. And afterward, he really pledges himself as a hired gun on the side of big business.
- [19:19]
Sally Helm
Interesting. So it sounds like the political organization of the time was kind of like Republicans. There were two big things. They were anti slavery and they were pro business. They wanted these big corporate interests to succeed. And then the Democrats, they had been pro slavery in the South.
- [19:36]
Tori Olsen
I mean, there's. In the south, it's a complicated stew. But yes, white Southerners were overwhelmingly Democrats during and after the Civil War. And there was a great deal of anti corporate mentality within the Democrats. And they, I think, see it as the, you know, the working Man's party at that period.
- [19:55]
Sally Helm
I mean, yeah. So we've been talking about how much violence there was in the west and the ways that that was actually in real life about people's political position, what they were fighting for, who they were fighting against. And obviously, violence is something that think of when they think of video games and Indeed Red Dead 2. Like, even if you play the most honorable way, you. You write that you still kill 900 people. So that's a lot of people.
- [20:23]
Tori Olsen
It's astounding. It's way too violent. Right. There's only a handful of outlaws that even kill 10 people.
- [20:30]
Sally Helm
So the west, it wasn't that violent. It wasn't as violent as the game is. And it's not random gunslinging. It's not just like all shootouts at the saloon. When people have had a little bit too much to drink, a lot of it is more targeted and more tied to these big political issues of the day. Tell me a little bit more about that.
- [20:49]
Tori Olsen
So this is something the Red Dead redemption games in the second one as well, doesn't really acknowledge because a lot of the gunfighting in the game takes place when there's too much whiskey, when there's personal rivalries, where there's, you know, drunken poker matches, or if there's just, you know, bullets often fly in a game linked to the personal pursuit of gain. Right. Like a robbery, you know, robbing a bank, robbing a wagon or a train. And yeah, it's true that that happened once in a while, but many western outlaws can be pegged on this sort of spectrum of political identity. You know, where they stood on the question of corporate capitalism. Whether they were pro northern or pro Southern, you know, good or bad is not quite enough to get at the intricacies of this. But. But Red Dead Redemption 2 has a single linear scale to measure an outlaw's identity. They have this thing at the bottom of the screen that they call the honor gauge. That's a really simplistic way to understand some of the real life individuals of this period. You're either a good outlaw or you're a bad outlaw.
- [21:55]
Sally Helm
When we come back, whether you think they're good or bad, who are the real life outlaws behind this game?
- [22:09]
Tori Olsen
I'm James McComb reporting live from home in my bathrobe in slippers. Tonight we're talking Dunkin Poehler, peppermint coffee. Gene's here with the latest.
- [22:19]
Sally Helm
Uh, Gene, do you copy? The home with Dunkin is where you want to be.
- [22:25]
Tori Olsen
You could get the most important meal of the day. Any time of day. I'm talking about the five dollar Big Deal Breakfast Meal from Jack in the Box, available all day and all night. A breakfast Jack with a freshly cracked egg, a hash brown and French toast sticks for five bucks. Sounds good for breakfast, lunch and dinner at Jack. Every bite's a big deal. Order Jack's $5 big deal breakfast Meal now.
- [22:51]
Sally Helm
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- [23:47]
Tori Olsen
I think this is the single most powerful inspiration behind the gang in the game. And I think that any diehard fan of red dead Redemption 2, if they haven't already, they need to sit down and watch the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, because if they do, they're going to have a lot of deja vu. And not only does that capture, you know, a mirror onto the game, but the actual career of Butch Cassidy, of Harry Longabaugh, who is known as the Sundance Kid, that has to be the closest inspiration in the sense that in 1899, the Wild Bunch, this gang robs a train in the small town of Medicine Bow, Wyoming. So first the Wild Bunch stops the train and then they dynamite the express car where the valuables are held just the same way that the gang does in red Dead Redemption 2 in order to get the banknotes and gold that were within it. And you know, this is a major score. And they, I think, largely come to regret that decision because crossing EH Harriman, this big railroad tycoon, was a difficult thing to do.
- [24:57]
Sally Helm
So they're being chased and people are trying to track them down. Who's trying to track them down?
- [25:02]
Tori Olsen
So this big railroad tycoon, EH Harriman is so insulted by the robbery that he hires the Pinkertons.
- [25:09]
Sally Helm
The Pinkertons.
- [25:10]
Tori Olsen
Pinkertons are very much part of this story. Right. I mean, I think that once the Pinkertons are on their case, they have much more difficulty evading the law.
- [25:18]
Sally Helm
There's sort of like almost a meme online now about how in Red Dead Dutch Van Der Linde keeps being like, I'm going to Tahiti. I'm going to go to Tahiti. Maybe I have to go to Tahiti. And that's. That's actually not that far off from how Cassidy and his crew were thinking at this time. Right, right.
- [25:33]
Tori Olsen
The Wild Bunch, they go to Argentina first. They buy a ranch in southern Argentina, near Patagonia. And this was gonna be their sort of land at the end of the rainbow. But they get too cocky. They write letters back home and the Pinkertons get back on the trail.
- [25:49]
Sally Helm
I mean, and their plan was, I think, to go straight in Argentina to stop robbing banks, but they just like, can't seem to do it. Tell me how they end up getting caught.
- [25:57]
Tori Olsen
So they end up fleeing into the mountains, and that's a moment when they fall back into their old habits of robbery. They do rob multiple banks in several of these Andean countries and then end up getting cornered by the constabulary and then end up dying in Bolivia.
- [26:14]
Sally Helm
Is that kind of like the end of an era?
- [26:17]
Tori Olsen
I'm hesitant to, you know, to place a moment and say, oh, that's the end of this era, because a lot of the dynamics that we see in the so called Wild West, I mean, a lot of them you can find for much of the 20th century, if not today. Right. I mean, very well. Armed population, well, that sounds a lot like 20, 24. People today are fighting about capitalism and race, the sorts of big issues that fueled violence back then. Maybe 100 years from now, people will come to understand that, but it's, you know, it's hard for us always to have perspective on the time that we live in today.
- [26:55]
Sally Helm
Tori Olsen's book is Red Dead's History, A Video Game, An Obsession, and America's Violent Past. It's available now. And the audiobook version, by the way, is read by Roger Clark, the actor who plays Arthur Morgan, and he reads in character. Thanks for listening to History this week, a Back Pocket Studios production in partnership with the History Channel. To stay updated on all things history this week, sign up@historythisweekpodcast.com and if you have any thoughts or questions, send us an email@historythisweekistory.com this episode was produced and sound designed by Ben Dickstein and produced and story edited by me, Sally Helm for Back Pocket Studios. Our executive producers are Ben Dickstein and David Weisbord from the History Channel. Our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler. Don't forget to follow, rate and review History this Week wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next week. Hey listeners, we just wanted to let you know that as we head into the holidays, History this Week is not going anywhere. You will have plenty of new stories to share with family and friends, so when you're showing off everything you learned, make sure to tell them you got it from History this Week.