Western outlaw and subject of legends. Cassidy (an alias) was born to Mormon pioneer stock in southern Utah and became the leader of the Wild Bunch, a group of rustlers who graduated to robbery of banks, mines, and trains in the 1890s, frequently hiding out in remote parts of Wyoming and Utah. Their migratory ways, the obsessive pursuit of them by the Pinkertons, and their specialization in attacking the most feared and hated institutions in the West led to a wide range of Robin Hood-like legends. After fleeing in 1902 with Harry Longabaugh (“The Sundance Kid”) and Etta Place to South America, where they began a series of bank and gold-shipment robberies, Cassidy and Longabaugh were reported killed in a battle with Bolivian troops about 1908, but persistent stories of sightings—one dated 1958, when Cassidy would have been ninety-two—suggest that they somehow escaped to the United States. In keeping with the Robin Hood motifs, most legends turn on Cassidy’s defiance of the power of government and industry, on his trickster-like wit and intelligence, on his ability to escape death and frequently reappear, and on his compassion for the weak, the poor, and the downtrodden. Supposedly, Cassidy never killed anyone, spared the lives of bank and railroad-express clerks, rode through a snowstorm with medicine for a sick child, and gave away large sums of plunder. In one frequently repeated tale, Cassidy heard that a poor widow was about to lose her ranch to foreclosure. The Wild Bunch rode into town, held up the bank, delivered the full amount of the mortgage to the widow, waited until the banker had collected from her, then held him up again. Similar tales have been told of Robin Hood, Jesse James, and Sam Bass. Other legends concern buried treasure throughout his range, secretive visits to his aged mother, and sightings of him with Pancho Villa, Wyatt Earp, and scores of old friends. Many of these recent legends have gained material from a dozen books published since 1938 and from popular television shows and films beginning with George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). The entire corpus suggests the increasing influence of modern media on oral narrative and their growing interdependence. David H.Stanley References
Betenson, Lula Parker, and Dora Flack. 1975. Butch Cassidy, My Brother. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press. Pointer, Larry. 1977. In Search of Butch Cassidy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Steckmesser, Kent L. 1966. Robin Hood and the American Oudaw: A Note on History and Folklore. Journal of American Folklore 79:348–355.
——. 1982. The Three Butch Cassidys: History, Hollywood, Folklore. In American Renaissance and American West, ed. Christopher S.Durer et al. Proceedings of the Second University of Wyoming American Studies Conference. Laramie: University of Wyoming Press, pp. 149–155.