Butch Cassidy: Infamous Leader of the Wild Bunch Gang | Wild West Documentary

The iconography of the old west wouldn’t be what it is today without the fearsome figures and various folk heroes both celebrated and reviled over the course of the last 150 years of American history. These iconic and infamous men and women range from belligerent bandits and the courageous lawmen that chased them down, to the cowboys and Indigenous Americans that took their turns firing warning shots at the other until the entire territory was rife with violence and sabotage. Of course with a few peacekeepers and honourable heroes sprinkled in.One such figure was none other than the notorious outlaw and former-butcher-turned-bandit Butch Cassidy himself. Once the son of an English immigrant and maestro of an infamous outlaw gang, Butch Cassidy transformed into one of the most discussed, complex, and undeniably popular figures of wild west lore, despite his violent tactics and unlawful tendencies. Regardless of his countless crimes and affinity for trouble, Butch Cassidy lived a life emblematic of so many ideas and themes saturating the way we talk about outlaws of the old west into the modern age. In order to gain a better understanding of how the leader of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang gang became synonymous with the term “wild west,” and influenced the way we talk about the era, we present to you a closer inspection into the tales and times of one of the most infamous outcasts in all of American history. This is Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, and his criminal misadventures alongside the Wild Bunch. Copyright © 2022 Footprints on The Frontier. All rights reserved.