There’s something deeply American about rooting for the guy on the run. We celebrate the underdog who stands up to authority, the rebel who refuses to play by the rules—even when those rules exist for good reason. That’s partly why historical outlaws have never left our cultural imagination. They’re not just criminals; they’re symbols of a kind of rugged independence that resonates with how many of us want to see ourselves.
The truth is, though, the mythology often outpaces the facts. Take Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—there’s no definitive historical consensus on where those boys actually died. Billy the Kid’s story is even murkier. Newspaper editors, hungry for sensational copy, would declare these guys dead in print while they were very much alive. Imagine being Butch Cassidy, reading your own obituary in the papers while you’re still drawing breath. It’s the kind of surreal irony that Woody Guthrie captured in“Poor Lazarus”with the line“How do I look, boys, dead or alive?”
That tension between myth and reality gets at something deeper. Robert Redford, reflecting on the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, invoked Bob Dylan’s famous line:“To live outside the law, you gotta be honest.”There’s an odd code of honor embedded in that idea—the notion that an outlaw operating by their own rules might actually be more trustworthy, more principled, than the politicians and power brokers running things. Redford even suggested that a Butch Cassidy type might do a better job running government than the politicians he had in mind back in the early Seventies. Dark humor, maybe, but there’s a grain of truth in it.
Then there’s Davy Crockett, who complicates the whole outlaw narrative in interesting ways. He started as an Indian scout, but later found himself at odds with American power structures when he sided with Native American interests on the frontier. He became infamous for opposing the Indian Removal Act—a stance that put him against his own government. Yet he’s remembered today for his defiance, for standing on the Tennessee parlor floor and declaring“You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.”That’s America’s first celebrity, and he built his legend on principle, not just rebellion.
What draws us to these figures isn’t really lawlessness—it’s the idea that one person, driven by conviction, can challenge the machinery of the establishment and live by their own code. In a country built on the mythology of the self-reliant individual, the outlaw remains the ultimate expression of that dream. Whether the history matches the legend hardly matters anymore. We believe in them because we want to believe in the possibility they represent.
About the Author
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
