America's Manifest Destiny — from "Sea to Shining Sea" — came together in a single generation: the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the Western lands ceded by Mexico in 1848, and the Alaska purchase in 1868. The country gained more than half its land mass in one generation. It began when Columbus reported native tribes wearing gold chest ornaments in 1492, sparking the first Gold Rush as Spanish Conquistadors searched for cities of gold.
Legends sell — so legends get faked
The romance of the West — outlaws, gunfighters, gold — is worth money, and where the records are thin, the fakers go to work. A genuine period object given a famous owner after the fact is the oldest trick in Western Americana.
The object can be entirely real, and the story attached to it entirely invented.
What the chapter covers
- "Outlaw" guns and gunfighter relics
- Manufactured famous-owner provenance
- Gold-rush and frontier material
- Why attribution, not authenticity, is the weak point