Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • FA L L 2 0 1 7 46 W I L D W E S T W OR DS W I L D W E S T W OR DS with CHRYSTI THE WORDSMITH D E PA R T M E N T H E R I TA G E BOOT HILL/GRAVEYARD/ CEMETERY e remains of assorted forgotten frontier characters repose in Boot Hills scattered throughout the American West. In Montana, Boot Hill graveyards lie a-moldering in Virginia City, Billings, and Powderville, a stop on the stagecoach line from Deadwood to Miles City in the southeast corner of the state. In each frontier graveyard (styled after the original Boot Hill Cemetery in Dodge City, Kan- sas) scofflaws there buried were said to have died "with their boots on" in violent confrontations. Elsewhere in North America and other English speaking regions, the deceased have for centuries been laid to rest in graveyards and cemeteries attached to churches. e Oxford English Dictionary traces the unpretentious, utilitarian graveyard to an English document dated 1767. e term successfully survived the jump across the Atlantic and is commonly used by American English speakers as another moniker for a burial ground. e etymology of the word cemetery suggests it was adopted by both Latin and English speakers as a euphemism to blunt the sting of death. Its origin is a Greek word meaning "dormitory" or "sleep- ing place," which aligns with the Christian belief that the deceased merely slumber while awaiting resurrection. It was applied by early Latin-speaking Roman Christians to the catacombs and other burial places where the martyrs "slept." e term made it to the English language as long ago as 1387 and has been in circulation since, even throughout the American West, where those not interred in Boot Hills rest in cemeteries, their temporary "sleeping places." WILDERNESS e New World was a continent of mysteries when European settlers landed on its wooded shores in the early 1600s. e first English-speaking colonists applied the word wilderness to the dark, ancient forests that stretched seemingly forever in all directions. It was a polite title by 17th century European standards. Wilder- ness was, for four centuries prior to North American colonization, the term reserved for uninhabited, uncultivated land. In an English memoir called e Travels of Sir John Mandeville published circa 1400, the author describes a certain European landscape as "waste and wilderness and not inhabited." e New World certainly was inhabited, but not by people whose agriculture, settlements, and cultural practices resembled those of the newcomers. For them, the presence of indigenous people likely made the "wilderness" seem "wilder." At the heart of wilderness is the Old English term wilddeoren, "of wild beasts." Etymologically, wilderness is a place where untamed beasts outnumber domestic ones. A newer sense of the word was developed for America's Wilder- ness Act, signed into law by Congress in 1964, which recognized wilderness as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Chrysti on "Bunk" and "Debunk" www.distinctlymontana.com/wordsmith174 DISTINCTLY MONTANA | DIGITAL ELLEN BAUMLER William and Clara Dalton's grave in Virginia City's Boothill cemetery

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