Hiii! I Love All Your Character Analysis Posts And Theories So Much, And Was Wondering If You Have Done

Hiii! I love all your character analysis posts and theories so much, and was wondering if you have done any theories about where the gang was before Blackwater, by chance? I think I saw a post recently mentioning Montana but I can't for the life of me remember if it was you who posted it or not! 😅

But I've wondered about their locations before RDR2 a lot and would love to hear your thoughts about it. I remember reading a very early page in Arthur's journal about how they were in the Northen Grizzlies? But apart from that I can't remember anything else about locations, if there were any mentioned. And I'm sorry if you have done a post like this already, it's just a little piece of the backstory I'd like to hear theories about 😊

I have not talked about it but I definetely can! Also thank you for liking my stuff!!

Well, firstly, some places that exist in real life does not exist in red dead and those are the places on the map. Texas is New Austin, New Orleans is Saint Denis and Luisiana is Lemoyne, meanwhile Californa and New York does exist in game, meaning we can't completely be sure what places exist unless they are directly mentioned.

Firstly, we know they have been in Chicago, that is where Dutch and Hosea met! Then in 1877 the pair went to Kettering, Ohio, where they scammed 300$ out of the residents, later that year we know that they met Arthur in the Northern states somewhere, which could also be Montana! We do not know more than it was someplace in the North.

We also know some time before they met Arthur, they went to Blackwater once but exactly when we do not know.

In 1885 we know they were in Illinois, saving and picking up John Marston and two years later they robbed their first bank Lee and Hoyt, which we do not know where is.

But between then and 1898, they robbed 36 banks across the frontier as stated by Ross in rdr1, which is where we get the famous "We were told there was a price when we reached 50." The wiki page of the VDL gang does say they came to Montana in 1898 but they won't give me source to confirm it, which is a little annoying, but just mentioning it.

We know at some point between 1893 and 1898, after Bill joining the gang, they went to Canada, him, Arthur and Uncle robbing a bank together.

We also know that for a while they would return to the same places for Arthur's romances. Both with Eliza, where he could pop by every few months and for Mary, whom they at least returned to after 1894 when Abigail joined, and before the deaths of Annabelle and Bessie.

Either way, now we come to the fun parts, around winter 1898, the gang was up in what is called the Northern Grizzles, we only have access to the western (Around Mount Hagen) and Eastern (O'Creagh's Run), so I would assume that the Northen are outside the map, probably up above the Wapiti Reservation somewhere.

They traveled down the "Western Foothill of the mountians", not sure what road they took as it could be one off map, which I would honestly guess, probably traveling around the cold of Colter and coming in from left side of the map. Either way, they most likely ended up somewhere down by and Big Valley, which can match up with the fact that Arthur mentions that life was good and food was easy to find. That area does have a lot of easy food access and so forth.

Now I have seen a few people say Dutch met Micah in Strawberry, which is honestly very fair assumption, it matches up with a lot, but a simple fact is forgotten, Strawberry does not have a bar, which is where they met.

I would say that Micah most likely had been in Strawb and done, whatever business he had with Slim and Martha (I believe their names were), and traveled up and out of map where he met Dutch and then decided to join them back down.

Afterwards they traveled down to Blackwater where they "hid in plain sight" right outside town as Arthur says he does not like being so close to the town, and considering how close they were to Valentine, I would guess they camped at the ledges where Charles and Javier hides when going to find Sean, either there or the other side of the town.

Blackwater Camp:

But even though they were camped so close to down, Arthur funnily enough still stayed in town from time to time. It does however not seem that they were settled there or in Big Valley for very long, as Arthur also says that they have been running more than normally those weeks.

Now we get to a bit that confuses me because suddenly the group goes from the southern part of the map down in Blackwater, to suddenly appearing up by Spider Grove by Colter, and Arthur mentions that they headed "east over the Grizzlies" so they went west from Blackwater, out of the map, and then up North only to go east again. Not to mention that it seems they did it in a fairly short time, they haven't had proper time to talk about what happened, they were still shook, Davey was not yet dead from a gut wound and Jenny was burried not far from where we first see the gang?

See that is a little confusing, but I hope that answers your question! I had a lot of fun answering it at least, rereading Arthur's journal and all.