![]() ![]() ![]() The natural result of which is that farmers are now grumbling because as the festive hawk disappears under the bounty hunters the field mice increase. Ohio has a law which allows a bounty on all hawks killed. The Winona Daily Republican (Winona, MN), 19 Dec. Our own opinion is that there is either an extensive wolf preserve somewhere in the region of Stearns and Douglas counties, where the animals are bred for the bounty, or else the whole Northwest, as far north as Hudson’s Bay, has been harried and scoured by the bounty hunters. The evidence we have shows that the rewards offered during this period were not for criminals on the run but for the pelts of predatory animals or dead birds: So bounty hunter was used to mean “bonus hunter.” Did it also mean “reward hunter”? Well, sort of. Ottawa Weekly Republic (Ottawa, KS), 9 Feb. The man who should refuse to volunteer as a soldier because he was too good to associate with the rank and file of the army, or because he did not like the colonel or the captain, would at once be recognized and branded as a wanton coward or a mercenary bounty hunter. Jackson Citizen Patriot (Jackson, MI), 17 Jan. The letter which he wrote to the Massachusetts bounty hunters, who were scouring his lines to obtain negro recruits and hard money, was an excellent production of his pen, abounding in patriotism and good sense, and creditable to the writer, both as a man and a soldier. Union County Star and Lewisburg Chronicle (Lewisburg, PA), 11 Mar. Alarney, from Potter county, was passing down with a hundred volunteers, among whom were a few suspicious-looking “ bounty-hunters,” whom he charged his “veteran” guard to take special charge of. This sense was still very current during the mid-to-late-19th century in America, the period depicted in westerns: Initially, this “reward” sense was used to refer to a sum of money given to recruits upon joining the British army or navy-a meaning closer to what we would today call a bonus, showing that these etymological twins overlapped in meaning and in usage. Bounty then came to mean “generosity” and “yield of a crop” before it began to be used to mean “reward” around 1700. They can be viewed as paid vigilantes who have the authority of the law on their side, but the 1872 legal decision often cited as the ruling that permits this kind of private law enforcement never uses the term bounty hunter or even the term bounty at all-it uses the term bail instead.īounty originally meant “kindness” or “goodness” in English dating back to the 1300s, just as it did in its original language, French, where bonté derives from bon, meaning “good,” itself from the Latin word bonus. The character of Rooster Cogburn in True Grit is also a bounty hunter. Clint Eastwood played several in his career, from For a Few Dollars More to Unforgiven. Have carbonite refrigeration unit, will travel.Īnother common element in westerns is the character of the menacing bounty hunter. The holster strapped to his thigh and the shoot-‘em-up escape sequences lend an air of satisfying familiarity to the narrative, which purportedly takes place on planets in an unknown galaxy but where things like oxygen, gravity, and the use of standard English nevertheless seem to be surprisingly universal. Tropes from westerns especially abound in Star Wars, like the cynical loner figure of Han Solo, introduced as a “have gun, will travel” mercenary but who becomes a hero in the third act. He also tapped into the deeper patterns of myths seen across cultures and throughout time-the young searcher, the old master, the shadow self-as explained by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. In the masterpiece of mythmaking that is Star Wars, George Lucas deliberately summoned up the memory in American culture of pulpy Saturday matinee movies and serials of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, especially westerns and the early sci-fi hero Flash Gordon. The sense relating to "one who tracks down and captures outlaws" arose around the 1950s in pulp fiction and Hollywood westerns.Īmerica loves its myths and America loves its movies, and sometimes it’s difficult to tell which came first. Though it conjures images of vigilantes in the Old West, the term bounty hunter was not in use in this context in the 1800s. ![]()
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