The Wild West as it really was

The newspaper, The Daily Mail this week ran several pictures from the US Library of Congress which gave a great look into the way the Old West really was.

In grainy black and white photographs, it's the way the Wild West really was.
From hunting, mining and wagon trains to white settlers mixing with native American Indians, life on the frontier is captured movingly by cameraman John C.H. Grabill.
Between 1887 and 1892 he sent 188 photographs to the Library of Congress for copyright protection. Most of his work centred on the then rowdy town of  Deadwood in South Dakota.

The famous and the infamous passed through in search of adventure including the legendary Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp,  George Armstrong Custer,   and Calamity Jane.

But long before the arrival of the white man, the land was home to the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Pawnee, Crow and Sioux (or Lakota) Indians. Grabill was best known for his compelling pictures in the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre by the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1890.