Streets of Deadwood: A City Not Yet Civilized

Control and Violence

“Streets of Deadwood: A Means of Social Control” is the fourth in a series of posts about the streets of the TV series, “Deadwood.”

The introduction to this series is free content:

David Milch uses Deadwood to convey the idea of a city that was not yet civilized. So it follows that The Throughfare of Deadwood was not yet civilized. The characters of Deadwood are trying to civilize themselves and not making much progress.

Image 1. John C. H. Grabill, “Engleside and Cleveland [Deadwood?] from east of city,” 1888. Source: Library of Congress.

Means of Social Control

When Juvenal wanted to see social performance, he stood at the street corner. Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) and Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe) prefer a bird’s eye view of the street from their verandas. George Hearst (Gerald McRaney), after buying the Grand Central Hotel, desires a similar vantage point and improvises a portal to the roof decking with a sledgehammer. Like Juvenal, these power brokers of Deadwood take the pulse of the street through careful observation.¹

Juvenal only uses his street corner perspective to make satirical observations. Swearengen, Tolliver, and Hearst, on the other hand, use their superior elevations as a means of social control. Perhaps elevation is a metaphor as all three men who control the use of the verandas were Deadwood’s three business powerbrokers. Yet the second floor serves practical functions for the triumvirate. First, this vantage point allows a sight line for the length of the main thoroughfare. Second, the characters understand that these men run the town, so they can use their visibility to intimidate or menace others.

When people use the main thoroughfare, do they feel exposed, as if they were in a fish bowl, or could they lose themselves in the crowd? Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) uses the cover of an alley to hide her dram of whiskey. Bullock avoids the main street on one occasion, according to this dialogue (Season Three, Episode Six):

Swearengen: I was awaitin’ you comin’ out of Udder’s office, thinking you might make a call on me, tell me what the f___ was goin’ forward, but you did not appear. I finally asked myself, ‘Could our sheriff have took another route home, maybe through Chinaman’s alley?  And what would that speak of his frame of mind?

Bullock: It bespoke of me that I didn’t feel like f___in’ talking to you.

Arrivals of stage coaches are important public events within the show. In the opening scene of the season two premiere, a stage coach can be seen in the distance.  In season three, Swearengen and (Paula Malcomson) note the return of Mister Wu (Keone Young ). Trixie notices that Wu traded his Chinese clothing for a suit of the western world. The stage coach arrival is also the scene of reunions. Hearst greets his personal chef (Cleo King) with an embrace in the street (Season 3, Episode 3).

The Thoroughfare as a Place of Violence

The street is also a violent place. Some of these events are opportunistic, some accidental, and others are staged not only to cause physical harm to a foe, but also to subject them to public humiliation.  Tolliver is stabbed in the gut in the middle of the day in a crime of opportunity. (Season 2 Which episode?)  Bullock challenges Swearengen to a fight in the Gem’s office, but they wrestle each onto the veranda and crash through the balustrade, falling to the street, where they continue to brawl. (Which episode?) In many cases, street violence fulfills the desire for public performance, calculated to shame or humiliate an enemy.  In the second episode of the series, Bullock steps into the thoroughfare and accuses a man of conspiring with a gang of road agent in the slaughter of a family. Wild Bill joins Bullock in the confrontation, and they both fire at the road agent as he reached for his pistol. Another fight takes place by mutual agreement. Dority steps onto the sidewalk in front of the Gem and waits as Captain Turner walks on the opposing sidewalk. With ceremony, Dority removes his gunbelt and folds it in half. He extends his right arm away from his body displaying the gunbelt. Similarly with his left arm, he displays his knife sheath. Turner faces him and discards his gun belt. Dority places his weapons on a barrel. After a wagon passes, the two men charge each other, meeting in the middle of the thoroughfare, where they fight with no-holds barred (Season 3, Episode 5). Dority kills Turner. Hearst later claims that he gave specific orders to Turner that he was not to kill Dority, but to “make it last,” confirming the idea that their goals were to maximize pain and public humiliation.

Acts of street violence are sometimes acts of terrorism. A Cornish miner is murdered in the thoroughfare in broad daylight. No witnesses come forward. Many characters agree that this was a machination of a Hearst, as he had already hinted at his responsibility for the murder of another Cornish miner at the Gem Saloon. Hearst, the owner of a local gold mine, wields violence against miners to chill efforts to unionize labor. As the most powerful person in the camp, he could leave enough clues to suggest his involvement in the crimes without placing himself in legal jeopardy. As part of an ongoing terrorism campaign in season three, Hearst hired a platoon of Pinkertons to instigate random acts of violence against persons in Deadwood.

Deadwood’s streets are violent, but Deadwood is violent indoors, too. There was at least one murder at the Bella Union, three murders at Chez Amie, and too many murders at the Gem Saloon to count.

1. Timothy M. O’Sullivan, Walking in Roman Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 54–5.