Analysis: Shootout at the O.K. Corral

Date: November 16, 1881

Author: Wyatt S. Earp

Genre: testimony

Summary Overview

At 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in the sleepy frontier town of Tombstone in Arizona Territory, a gunfight broke out between the Earp brothers and a group of ranchers tied to an outlaw gang called the Cowboys. The entire event lasted only about thirty seconds, but almost immediately after, it became the stuff of legend and grew to define the lives of the participants, especially that of Wyatt Earp, for the remainder of their days. For Americans more generally, the shootout eventually came to define law and justice on the frontier, with the deputy marshal at the center of events playing both hero and villain. In popular imagination, Wyatt Earp became somewhat of an avenging angel, the lone gunslinger, taking the law into his own hands, having gone up against an armed band of desperados. This archetype would come to define heroism in not just the American West, but throughout the world.

Defining Moment

Tombstone, in southeastern Arizona Territory was not that different from the hundreds of frontier boomtowns that began to appear in the region in the late 1800s. Initially established thanks to the railroads and expanding in response to the prospect of mining riches, such dusty backwaters were known to appear suddenly and vanish just as quickly once all available resources were picked clean. If someone were smart enough and quick enough, they could make a small fortune in the interim. It was for this reason that Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Virgil and Morgan, arrived in Tombstone in the winter of 1879, just a few months after the town's founding.

The Earps, long-time ramblers seeking their fortune, hoping to join western high society, quickly, albeit reluctantly, took on jobs in law enforcement. Having worked as lawmen in frontier towns before, including the raucous Dodge City, the Earps understood that they were expected to walk a fine line. They were charged with keeping the peace, but also, more importantly, in protecting the interests of the wealthy ranchers and miners who were the real power in the region. As long as business wasn't disrupted, trivial things like the law did not really matter. It was in this environment that the Earps came into direct conflict with “the Cowboys”—a loose confederacy of outlaws and cattle smugglers, who made their living by robbing the territory's ranchers and miners.

In the Spring of 1881, after a band of Cowboys attacked a stage coach, murdering the driver, Wyatt Earp, hoping to use the publicity of a successful capture to boost his chances of getting elected sheriff, made a secret deal with Ike Clanton, a corrupt local rancher with ties to the Cowboys, in which Clanton would turn over the fugitives in exchange for cash. The deal came to nothing, but Clanton began to grow increasingly nervous that Earp would reveal their secret deal to the Cowboys.

On the night of October 25, 1881, a drunk, nerved-up Ike Clanton started publically threatening the lives of the Earp brothers, telling anyone who would listen that he planned to gun all three down the next morning. Acting on rumors of an imminent ambush, and bowing to pressure from wealthy interests eager to see the Cowboys disbanded, Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and Wyatt's good friend, Doc Holiday, a mysterious, hot-tempered gunslinger from the deep South, went to confront Ike Clanton and his brother Billy, who had gathered along with fellow ranchers, Tom and Frank McLaury, at a small enclosure known as the O.K. Corral. Immediately upon approaching the ranchers, after Wyatt told Ike Clanton he was under arrest, gunfire erupted from both sides. The shootout lasted thirty seconds. Virgil, Morgan, and Doc had all been wounded, Frank and Tom McLaury, along with Billy Clanton were killed, Ike Clanton ran, only to be arrested later. Wyatt Earp came through unscathed.

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral became an immediate sensation, and the Earps were largely celebrated for their actions. However, the event soon set off a long chain of violence and reprisals, from both Ike Clanton and his Cowboy allies, and, after the murder of Morgan and the attempted assassination of Virgil, from Wyatt Earp as well. In the end, Wyatt, backed and encouraged by the territorial business interests, would track down and kill many of the men whom he thought responsible for the attack on his family. Only Ike Clanton escaped Wyatt's retribution, only to be killed in an unrelated incident six years later.

Author Biography

Wyatt Earp was born in 1848, the third of five boys, sons to a father who moved the family farther and farther west, partly in search of opportunity, and partly to escape paying off the family's extensive debts. Growing up on the frontier, never staying in one place long enough to plant any roots, the Earp brothers learned to rely on each other, with Wyatt standing in as their silent, steady center. Wyatt set out to make his own destiny at the age of seventeen. He worked as a laborer on the railroads and briefly as a brothel operator, but eventually found his way into law work. In 1879, Wyatt and his brothers moved to Tombstone, with dreams of easy riches, but his famous clashes with the Cowboys soon derailed those plans. Somewhat of a pariah after his well-publicized vendetta and hounded by both the public and media over his infamous gun battle, Wyatt eventually settled in San Francisco. There, with his partner Josephine, he attempted various business ventures, including mining, real estate speculation, fight promotion, and prospecting. Wyatt eventually died in 1929 at the ripe old age of eighty, never quite having found his fortune and haunted always by the shootout at the O.K. Corral.

Document Analysis

The document represents the firsthand testimony of Wyatt Earp about the events leading up to, and including the shootout at the O.K. Corral. Earp goes into great detail, trying to explain the complicated web of tensions that connected the Earps to the Clantons, McLaurys, and the Cowboys. Establishing the corrupt, illegal practices of Ike Clanton and Frank McLaury long before the shootout, then addressing the deal brokered for the capture of the fugitive Cowboys, Wyatt Earp carefully lays out every piece of the sordid drama. By the time he finally comes to the events of October 26, 1881, the entire affair appears to be spiraling toward an unavoidable confrontation. Despite this buildup, even at the last moment, Wyatt Earp appeared to hope for a resolution. His intention, he says, was to arrest the men, not shoot them.

It is important to remember that this is Wyatt Earp's court testimony. We have only his version of events. As a lawman, Earp understood that, in order to avoid legal troubles of his own, he had to lay a foundation of criminality at the feet of Ike Clanton and establish that he had no other option but the use of force. At the same time, there's little reason to doubt Earp's testimony. Ike Clanton and the Cowboys were not innocent bystanders. The threats against the Earp brothers, Ike Clanton's erratic, aggressive behavior was not in question, and tensions, in fact, had been boiling for months. The tone of Wyatt Earp's testimony is steady, there's little in way of exaggeration or sensationalism. His version of events, though clearly one-sided, has the air of authenticity. The fact that he could have shot Ike Clanton but spared him, speaks volumes to his credibility.

After the events in Tombstone, Wyatt Earp was never the same again. Not for the loss of his brother Morgan, although that too had a profound effect, but more so for the shootout at the Corral. Up until the end of his life, he never made peace with that had happened. He carried that burden always. In reading his testimony, it is difficult not to get a sense of the weight on Wyatt Earp's shoulders. He did what he had to; there was no other choice.

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Barra, Allen. Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends. New York: Carol & Graf, 1998. Print.

Guin, Jeff. The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral and How It Changed the American West. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.

Marks, Paula Mitchell. And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight. Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 1989. Print.

Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1998. Print.

Tefertiller, Casey. Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. Print.