THE AMERICAN FRONTIER
wyatt EARP
he shot to glory as the star of the family saga
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THEY SHOOT COWBOYS, DON’T THEY?
By John Boessenecker These outlaws terrorized Arizona Territory, until the Earp brothers came along
50
62 DEATH
FROM THE GROUND UP
AND THE CORPS OF DISCOVERY
By Aaron Robert Woodard Oscar Micheaux ‘cut the sod’ in South Dakota before turning to filmmaking
56 TWO OTHER
By Jim Winnerman Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and their fellow intrepid explorers rest here—or do they?
MANLY WESTERN PLEASURES By Richard Selcer While the West was wild, its men played two tame games—billiards and bowling
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D E PA R T M E N T S
4 EDITOR’S LETTER 8 LETTERS 10 ROUNDUP 16 INTERVIEW By Johnny D. Boggs Roland De Wolk reveals the scandalous life of Central Pacific ‘railrogue’ Leland Stanford
18 WESTERNERS
Mineralogist Joseph Hiestand loved to hunt but made one fatal error
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20 GUNFIGHTERS AND LAWMEN
By Larry E. Wood Missouri bushwhacker William McWaters remained violent well after the war
22 PIONEERS AND SETTLERS
By Connie Cherba Decades apart, horses and Longhorns stampeded at the same Texas creek
24 WESTERN ENTERPRISE
By David McCormick Audiences packed boomtown theaters to catch the ‘Comedian of the Frontier’
26 ART OF THE WEST
38
CLUSTERS OF EARPS
By Don Chaput Where one Earp family member went, others were likely to follow
By Richard Prosch Kody Bundy had the good horse sense to take up scratchboard art
28 INDIAN LIFE
By John Koster Bone breastplates became an Indian fad, though they didn’t deflect bullets
30 STYLE
Showcasing the great American West in art, film, fashion and more
76 COLLECTIONS
By Linda Wommack Jesse James was shot in this unassuming home in St. Joseph, Missouri
78 GUNS OF THE WEST
By George Layman Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley trusted single-shot Stevens target pistols.
80 GHOST TOWNS
By Jim Pettengill Tombstone miners later tried their luck in Harquahala, Arizona Territory
82 REVIEWS
70 601 REASONS NOT TO SET FIRES By Matthew Bernstein Virginia City vigilantes ‘extinguished’ an arsonist in the Nevada boomtown
Author John Boessenecker picks Tombstone-related books and films. Plus, reviews of books about Leland Stanford, Cherokee Bill, Joe Lynch Davis, Sand Creek and the Northern Cheyenne breakout as well as two recent films
88 GO WEST
Spain, Mexico and the United States in turn contended for this adobe kingdom ON THE COVER Wyatt Earp blazes away as a Kansas lawman in Bob Crofut’s painting Shadow Over Dodge. Wyatt didn’t always act alone, of course. In Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in particular he got much needed help from brothers Virgil and Morgan when confronting the loosely organized gang known as the Cowboys. (Courtesy of Bob Crofut, Ridgefield, Conn.)
OCTOBER 2020
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EDITOR’S LETTER
COWBOY TALK
The word “cowboy” has deep historic roots. In 1725 Dublin-born satirist and author Jonathan Swift first used it in print to describe (what else) a boy tending cows, and the word caught on in Britain in the early 19th century, perhaps replacing the earlier “cowherd” (like “shepherd”). In the latter half of the century the word “grew up” in the American West, referring to the mostly men who tended cattle on horseback, much as the vaqueros (a Spanish word for cowherds) had long been doing across New Spain (Mexico and California). The term remains common in the 21st century West, even if the cow herders of today also use trucks, drones, smartphone aps and GPS to do their jobs. But cowboying has long been about more than just the men doing that particular brand of work. When boys and some girls out West and back East in the 1950s and ’60s played cowboys, they mostly pretended to ride and shoot, not drive or corral bovines. After all, many classic TV cowboys had what we kids considered more interesting occupations—poker playing for the Maverick brothers, bounty hunting for Josh Randall, traveling with gun for Paladin, laying down the law for Marshals Matt Dillon and Dan Troop, wagon train scouting for Flint McCollough or just wandering the West to do heroic things for Cheyenne Bodie. Of course, there were exceptions, such as trail boss Gil Favor and ramrod Rowdy Yates (who kept them dogies rollin’) and the affluent Cartwright and Barkley ranching families (though cattle never seemed their main concern). What these small-screen cowboys had in common was a love of adventure and justice, so it was only natural we wanted to be like them. Yes, they shot people, but almost always the bad guys. Otherwise, they dealt squarely with most everyone—Indians, blacks (when they made rare appearances), Chinese, women, children, horses, dogs and the LGBT community (well, at least Paladin treated playwright Oscar Wilde right in a 1958 episode of Have Gun, Will Travel). I certainly beg to differ with anyone who says that playing cowboys and Indians was “racist playtime.” I, for one, always wanted to be Cochise when a friend and I played our offshoot of the TV show Broken Arrow. Is that “cultural appropriation”? Oh, never mind… There is a point to this nostalgic interlude. I grew up thinking “cowboy” equated to good guy, whether he was serenading cows on the range or confronting bad guys in Dodge City. Thus at some stage in my upbringing I became shocked to learn that the badmen who opposed Wyatt Earp (the ultimate Western good guy in the reel West and on the side of law and order in real Tombstone) were known as the Cowboys. That den of outlaws is the subject of award-winning author John Boessenecker’s cover story. “In the wake of their depredations,” he reminds us, “the formerly innocuous term ‘cowboy’ became a dirty word in Arizona and New Mexico territories.” Of course, I’ve had ample time for the notion of cowboys being bad guys to sink in. Although some people argue the Clanton and McLaury Cowboy brothers were just another faction opposed to the Earp faction in Tombstone, Boessenecker is not one of them. He considers the Cowboys the largest outlaw gang in the American West—a “loosely organized band of some 200 to 300 desperados that raided freely on both sides of the Mexican border.” At first the law (think Sheriff John Behan) mostly let them be, although the Cowboys sometimes fought with each other and also battled Mexican troopers and vaqueros. Then along came Wyatt Earp, brothers Virgil and Morgan and Doc Holliday—and later Wyatt’s vendetta posse—to break up the Cowboy gang. In our modern-day world “cowboy” doesn’t necessarily mean a good guy, either. The term is applicable to a person who heedlessly undertakes a dangerous or sensitive task, a wild young man, a tradesman who produces shoddy work, a reckless driver and an unsophisticated rural person. Drugstore cowboys are pretend cowboys. Until my teen years I definitely was a pretend cowboy growing up in the East, though I never saw that as a bad thing. I later spent considerable time out West, but I never came close to becoming a real cowboy. At least I can write about them.
Playing cowboys was a popular pastime for children in the 1950s, as captured in this photo of a young boy holding a cap gun and dressed to kill Western badmen.
I GREW UP THINKING
THAT ‘COWBOY’ EQUATED TO GOOD GUY
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CLASSIC STOCK/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Wild West editor Gregory Lalire’s next historical novel, Man From Montana, comes out in April 2021. His earlier novels include 2019’s Our Frontier Pastime: 1804–1815 and 2014’s Captured: From the Frontier Diary of Infant Danny Duly. His short story “Halfway to Hell” appears in the 2018 anthology The Trading Post and Other Frontier Stories.
OCTOBER 2020
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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF
Kody Bundy has a love for horses, as is evident in Cowgirl Glitch.
OCTOBER 2020 / VOL. 33, NO. 3
WildWestMag.com Confidentially Told in Brown’s Park
The how and why Colorado cattle barons hired killer Tom Horn near the turn of the 20th century is revealed in Linda’s Wommack’s article, which originally appeared in the June 2019 Wild West and earned the Wild West History Association’s Six-Shooter Award for best general Western history article.
More About Kody Bundy
The scratchboard artist with a connection to horses says her work has evolved beyond copying photographs. “It’s more like how a composer writes music,” she explains. “I patch together a story from the banks of images I keep on file to tell the story I want.”
Extended Interview With Roland De Wolk
“He was certainly guilty of many shabby performances, but given the stage he found himself on, unprepared by upbringing, temperament and history itself, what else can be fairly expected of a man?” posits the biographer of Leland Stanford, one of the transcontinental railroad’s Big Four and the founder of Stanford University.
Love history? Sign up for our free monthly e-newsletter at: historynet.com/newsletters Let’s Connect Like Wild West on Facebook Digital Subscription Wild West is available via Zinio and other digital subscription services
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LETTERS
Milking a legend I’m 73 years old, and I’m watching 60-year-old episodes of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, with Hugh O’Brian, who died at 91 in 2016. The show’s adviser was Stuart Lake, who tended to glorify Earp’s life in his book [Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal]. In the series Earp didn’t touch alcohol but drank nothing but milk while in Dodge City. Is that one of Lake’s falsehoods? Ken Haines Taylor, Mich. Wyatt Earp biographer Casey Tefertiller responds: In those times most men were drinkers, often heavy drinkers. What we know with some certainty is that Earp did not drink hard liquor during his time in Kansas and then Tombstone. Whether he had an occasional beer or glass of wine is not certain, so I have avoided calling him a teetotaler. He actually often visited the ice-cream parlors and was a big ice cream eater. According to one story, at the end of the Vendetta he stopped at Hooker’s Ranch shortly before his posse left Arizona Territory. The men were all having a drink, and Earp joined in with his first drink of hard liquor in many years. It would not be his last. By the time he was in San Francisco in the 1890s, he had become a heavy drinker. After he moved to L.A. in the early 1900s, he drank regularly. I suspect that Prohibition was very good for him, because he seemed to sober up and sharpen up during the last decade of his life. So, if you toast him, feel free to do so with a glass of milk.
BUCK TAYLOR Wild West subscribers may recall when you featured actor/artist Buck Taylor, “Newly O’Brien” on TV’s Gunsmoke, in the February 2012 Art of the West [by Johnny D. Boggs, available online at WildWestMag. com]. Well, a few years ago my wife and I vacationed in Branson, Mo., and visited Silver Dollar City, where one of the attractions was a traditional art show. As we wandered about looking at the exhibits, I spotted Taylor displaying a selection of his spectacular Western art. I immediately strolled over and introduced myself. To my delight Buck and I (see photo) engaged in cordial conversation. I enthused about my love of Gunsmoke, how much I enjoyed his Newly character and his roles in various movies, in particular the megahit Tombstone and my own personal cowboy favorite, Conagher, which 8
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is based on a Louis L’Amour novel and stars Sam Elliot as Conn Conagher. Taylor plays vile outlaw Tile Coker. Buck asked me if I had a favorite scene. I told him it was when Conagher tracks down five of the livestock-stealing band of miscreants, who have holed up in a line shack overnight after driving some stolen Longhorns north. Conagher stuffs some weeds down the chimney and smokes out Coker and the other rustlers. Conagher has to gun down two of them and tells the other three he won’t shoot them or turn them over to the law but orders them to leave the territory and to leave their gear behind. Coker wonders where they are supposed to go. When Buck asked me if I remembered Conagher’s reply, I said, “I think it was ‘East.’” Once he got me into the scene, Buck’s demeanor changed from friendly to belligerent, and he went into his Coker persona from the 1991 film. Growling through his teeth, he looked me in the eye and said: “East! There ain’t a town or place for 50 miles!” That indeed was the original line from the movie, and I was blown away. Buck gave me a taste of how professional actors can effortlessly transform themselves into the characters they play. Taylor became my instant Hollywood hero! Jim Van Eldik Fayetteville, Ga.
MUD SPRINGS MAN I read with great interest John Koster’s article “The Other 7th Cavalry” in your April 2020 issue. He gives a brief description of the attack at Mud Springs Station on April 4 and mentions that the station sheltered nine soldiers and five civilians when the attack began. A telegraph operator sent messages of the attack to Fort Mitchell and Fort Laramie. My great-grandfather Reason McCollister was stationed at Fort Laramie with the 11th Ohio Cavalry and during the attack was at Mud Springs on detached service, as shown in the image at right. Therefore, it appears he was one of the soldiers at Mud Springs. About a year later he is found on detached service as a telegraph operator at Horseshoe Station, northwest of Fort Laramie. He might also have been the telegraph operator at Mud Springs. All this information comes from his records at the National Archives. I wish I could find more information about the soldiers at Mud Springs. Roger Schmitt Alliance, Ohio
ON REVIEW Jon Guttman makes two errors in his review of the book Arizona’s Deadliest Gunfight, by Heidi J. Osselaer, in the August 2019 issue. He states that Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon was never filmed as an American Western. That is not true. In 1964 Martin Ritt directed The Outrage, starring Paul Newman, Claire Bloom, Laurence Harvey, Edward G. Robinson and a young, pre—Star Trek William Shatner. Guttman also states the gunfight took place on the eve of America’s entry into World War I. The gunfight in question took place on Feb. 10, 1918. We had declared war on April 6, 1917, and were deeply involved in combat by the time of the gunfight in Arizona. Phillipp Phelan Muth Dogtown, Pa. Send letters by email to wildwest@historynet.com. Include your name and hometown.
OCTOBER 2020
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ROUNDUP
TOP 10 CRIMINAL COWBOYS Bob Martin is justly considered the founder of the borderlands gang of Cowboys. Hailing from Texas, Robert E. Martin (friends called him “Dutch” or “Dutchy”) was ambushed and killed in 1880 at the hands of fellow Cowboys.
2 Top: In this scene from the classic 1993 Western Tombstone Johnny Ringo (played by Michael Biehn) points his six-shooter while fellow Cowboy Curly Bill Brocius (Powers Booth) shoots off his mouth. Above: The real-life Ike Clanton had the biggest mouth of the outlaw Cowboys.
Curly Bill Brocius was among the most colorful of the Cowboys. He once forced a Charleston preacher to dance at gunpoint and killed Tombstone City Marshal Fred White using a six-shooter move known since as the “border roll” or “Curly Bill spin.” A vengeful Wyatt Earp shot Brocius dead on March 24, 1882.
3
Frank McLaury and younger brother Tom were raised the sons of a prominent Iowa farmer. In southern Arizona Territory they ran two ranches that served as hideouts for Cowboys and their stolen cattle. Their hot tempers and foolish insistence they were not criminals led to a fatal run-in with the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday.
4
Ike Clanton had the biggest mouth of any of the Cowboys. His father, Newman Haynes “Old Man” Clanton, was a cattle-rustling associate of John Kinney. If not for Wyatt Earp’s composure, Ike would have died with younger brother Billy in the gunfight near the O.K. Corral.
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John Ringo, in popular myth, was a Shakespeare-spouting intellectual. In fact, he was a hard-drinking farmhand who left home in San Jose, Calif., and got mixed up in a bloody Texas feud before riding with the Cowboys in Arizona Territory. In 1882, while on a drunken binge, he committed suicide in the Chiricahua Mountains.
6
Sherman McMaster became a Texas Ranger in the wake of the 1877–78 El Paso Salt War. There he met Bob Martin and Curly Bill Brocius, later riding with them as Cowboys in Arizona Territory. McMaster helped Pony Diehl steal Army mules and rob a stage before again switching sides to join Wyatt Earp in his Vengeance Ride against the Cowboys.
7
Pete Spence (born Elliot Larkin Ferguson) robbed a bank in Goliad, Texas, before joining up with the Cowboys. He was a prime suspect in the murder of Morgan Earp. In subsequent years Spence killed at least four more men in violent quarrels in Arizona and New Mexico territories. After serving a term in the Yuma Territorial Prison, he went straight, dying abed in 1914.
TOP: ALBUM/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; LEFT: ARIZONA STATE LIBRARY; OPPOSITE RIGHT: BANCROFT LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
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Florentino Sais, before riding with the Cowboys, took a hand in the 1878 Arizona Territory murders of Deputy U.S. Marshals John Hicks Adams and Cornelius Finley. Believing Sais was among his brother Morgan’s assassins, Wyatt Earp tracked down the Cowboy and killed him on March 22, 1882.
TOP: ALBUM/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; LEFT: ARIZONA STATE LIBRARY; OPPOSITE RIGHT: BANCROFT LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
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Jim “Six-Shooter” Smith was among those who ambushed and killed Cowboy boss Martin in 1880. In March 1882, with notorious Cowboys Billy Grounds and Zwing Hunt, he bungled a mining company holdup near Charleston that left an engineer dead. Smith fled to Texas, where he killed two lawmen and was mortally wounded in a June 22, 1882, gunfight with a posse. He died the next day.
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Frank Stilwell, a younger brother of famed scout “Comanche Jack,” escaped conviction for two Arizona Territory murders. Yet despite Frank’s shady reputation, Sheriff John Behan made him a deputy in 1881. That fall Stilwell and Spence robbed the Bisbee stage. Wyatt Earp believed Frank was one of Morgan’s killers and on March 20, 1882, shot him dead in the Tucson railyards. —John Boessenecker
WINNING WOMMACK
WEST WORDS
The Wild West History Association (WWHA) has awarded Colorado author Linda Wommack (left) its Six-Shooter Award for best general Western history article for “Confidentially Told in Brown’s Park,” published in the June 2019 Wild West. The article makes good use of northwestern Colorado cowhand Frank Willis’ never published manuscript “Confidentially Told.” Fellow cowhand Hi Bernard had confessed to Willis how and why Colorado cattle barons had hired paid killer Tom Horn around the turn of the 20th century, but Bernard made Willis swear not to publish a word about it until after Bernard’s death (which came from a heart attack on Jan. 31, 1924). “It is such an honor to receive this award from Wild West History Association, a prestigious organization of the highest caliber—I am humbled,” says Wommack, a lifelong resident of Littleton, Colo., the author of Ann Bassett: Colorado’s Cattle Queen and other books about her native state, and the writer of the Collections department for Wild West. The WWHA [wildwesthistory.org] awarded its best book Six-Shooter to A Wyatt Earp Anthology: Long May His Story Be Told, edited by Roy B. Young, Gary L. Roberts and Casey Tefertiller. Other Six-Shooter winners include Mark Lee Gardner for best scholarly article (“Jesse James: Rise of an American Outlaw,” in the January/February 2019 National Geographic History), Roger Peterson for best WWHA Journal article (“Wyatt Earp— The Boomtown Sport,” in the March issue) and Jim Dunham of Cartersville, Ga., for lifetime achievement (Dunham is the WWHA president).
FENN’S CACHE FOUND Treasure seekers have been scouring the American backcountry for gold since Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado mounted his 16th-century search for the Seven Cities of Cibola in the Southwest. While Cibola remains elusive, another treasure—this one “missing” for a decade— was reportedly discovered in June somewhere in the Rocky Mountains by an Eastern dude who chooses to remain anonymous. In 2010 Santa Fe art dealer Forest Fenn planted a bronze chest full of gold dust and nuggets, rare coins, rubies and other valuables worth more than $1 million in an undisclosed location. Fenn then posted clues for hopeful hunters in a 24-line poem published in his autobiography, The Thrill of the Chase. “It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago,” he announced. “I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot.” The 89-year-old admitted the end of the chase made him half glad and half sad. “I congratulate the thousands of people who participated in the search and hope they will continue to be drawn by the promise of other discoveries,” he wrote on his website [oldsantafetradingco.com]. While many found the search thrilling, if not rewarding, at least five searchers lost their lives hunting for the cache. The ex-wife of one deemed the hunt for Fenn’s treasure a hoax, claiming there’s no proof of its existence. Tell that to its finder.
‘The greater portion of the laborers employed by us are Chinese, who constitute a large element in the population of California. Without them it would be impossible to complete the western portion of this great national enterprise within the time required by the acts of Congress. As a class they are quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious and economical. Ready and apt to learn all the different kinds of work required in railroad building, they soon become as efficient as white laborers’ —Central Pacific President Leland Stanford wrote this on Oct. 10, 1865, in a report to U.S. President Andrew Johnson and Interior Secretary James Harlan on the progress of the transcontinental railroad.
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DUKE HUNTING ▲
The Democratic Party in California’s Orange County is pushing to revert the name of John Wayne Airport to the Orange County Airport and to remove the statue of the Western film legend at the terminal. The party’s resolution condemned Wayne, who once lived in the county, for offensive comments he made against blacks, American Indians and homosexuals in a 1971 Playboy interview. In July the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts removed an exhibit dedicated to USC alum Wayne after several students called for its removal.
In recent months protesters nationwide have decried and toppled scores of Confederate statues (think Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis). But folks in Monroe, Mich., have been debating the removal of a statue of George Armstrong Custer, who made his reputation fighting on the Union side of the Civil War and then went on to fight Indians on the Western frontier. One group of petitioners argues the statue memorializes a man who committed atrocities against American Indians and remains a symbol of oppression, regardless of his role in defeating the Confederacy and ending slavery. Those seeking to preserve
the statue counter, “General Custer has been a cornerstone of the fabric of Monroe, Mich., for over a hundred years, and although the politics of the time do not match the politics of his time, his role in our nation’s history is still significant and worth honoring.” In July the City Council decided to keep the statue where it is—at the intersection of West Elm Avenue and North Monroe Street along the River Raisin—but agreed to develop a site plan for the monument that presents a more nuanced view of the controversial officer’s military career. Born in New Rumley, Ohio, on Dec. 5, 1839, Custer moved to Monroe at age 14 to attend school and live with his half sister’s family. On Feb. 9, 1864, George
married Monroe native Elizabeth “Libbie” Bacon in the city’s First Presbyterian Church. On June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. Custer was famously killed leading his 7th U.S. Cavalry command into battle against Sioux and Cheyenne warriors at the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory. The statue, depicting a Civil War–era Custer on horseback, was commissioned by the state and dedicated in Monroe on June 4, 1910, in a ceremony attended by Libbie and President William Howard Taft. Though Monroe has long billed itself the “Home of General Custer,” officials removed that wording from city limits signs earlier this year.
REHAB OF THE OPERA ▲
The Tabor Opera House, built in 1879 by mining magnate Horace “H.A.W.” Tabor in the rowdy silver boomtown of Leadville, Colo., is undergoing a muchneeded rehabilitation. Deemed a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the elegant building remains a vital cultural and community center, but long winters in the nation’s highest elevation city have taken their toll since its last full makeover in 1902. Initial repairs will center on the crumbling bricks and leaking windows of the south and west exterior walls. A public-private partnership between
FA M O U S L A S T WO RD S
‘OH, GOD, FORGIVE ME MY SINS....IS MY SOUL PREPARED TO MEET MY DEAR ONES? MY JAWS ARE STIFF. THIS IS A HORRIBLE DEATH TO DIE’ —Jane Lathrop Stanford, the 77-year-old co-founder of Stanford University, said these words on Feb. 28, 1905, as she died of strychnine poisoning in a Hawaii hotel room—an unsolved murder. Preceding her in death were her politician/railroad baron husband, Leland Stanford, who had died in 1893, and their only child, Leland Jr., who had died at age 15 in 1884. 12 WILD WEST
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RIGHT: BERNIE HABICHT; FAR RIGHT: WARNER BROS. PICTURES/SUNSET BOULEVARD/GETTY IMAGES
CANCEL CUSTER? t
ROUNDUP the city and the Tabor Opera House Preservation Foundation raised nearly $1.5 million for the first phase, expected to wrap up in late summer 2021. Fundraising continues for future phases of the ongoing project, projected to cost $10 million. To learn more and contribute visit taboroperahouse.net.
work combines sculptural assemblage, collaged newspaper clippings, historic imagery and other items to convey the artist’s theme of “Native Americans being used as commodities.” A member of Montana’s Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Smith rendered the work as part of a series addressing Christopher Columbus’ 1492 arrival in the Americas.
RIGHT: BERNIE HABICHT; FAR RIGHT: WARNER BROS. PICTURES/SUNSET BOULEVARD/GETTY IMAGES
SANTA FE TRAIL NEARS 200 t
SEEING RED ▲
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has acquired the 11-foot-tall mixedmedia on canvas I See Red: Target, by Salish artist Jaune Quick-toSee Smith, making it the first painting by an American Indian added to the collection. On display in the East Building pop art galleries, the 1992
On June 25, 1821, indebted trader William Becknell published a notice in the Missouri Intelligencer seeking men for an ambitions trip “to the westward for the purpose of trading for Horses & Mules and catching Wild Animals of every description that we may think advantageous.” Setting out that September, Becknell’s party forged a route from Franklin, Mo., to Santa Fe (administered by a newly independent Mexico) on what came to be known as the
Santa Fe Trail, a commercial highway that for six decades served the expansionist interests of the United States. In 2021 the nonprofit Santa Fe Trail Association, whose stated mission is “to protect and preserve the Santa Fe Trail and to promote awareness of the historical legacy associated with it,” will commemorate the bicentennial of the opening of the trail to trade. In 1987 Congress added the 1,203-mile route to the National Trails System as the Santa Fe National Historic Trail and assigned the National Park Service to administer it. Planned activities include a September 1 program at Arrow Rock, Mo., to acknowledge the departure of Becknell and companions, and commemorative events on September 22–26 in La Junta, Colo., and Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site. Visit santafetrail.org for more details. Below is a depiction of the Santa Fe Trail by German-born artist Bernie Habicht.
SEE YOU LATER...
Ennio Morricone Known to film buffs as the composer of the tension-filled scores of such spaghetti Westerns as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Ennio Morricone, 91, died in his native Rome on July 6, 2020. In 2016 he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and won an Academy Award for his score to Quentin Tarantino’s Western The Hateful Eight, having received an honorary Oscar in 2007 for lifetime achievement. In all the composer scored more than 400 film and TV productions.
Wilford Brimley Born in Salt Lake City on Sept. 27, 1934, popular character actor Wilford Brimley, 85, died in his native Utah on Aug. 2, 2020. In the
late 1960s he worked as a riding extra and occasional stuntman in several Westerns, later appearing in such TV Westerns as Billy the Kid (1989), in which he played New Mexico Territory Governor Lew Wallace, and Crossfire Trail (2001), starring Tom Selleck. Brimley’s big-screen credits include The Natural (1984) and Cocoon (1985), though his mustachioed mug became better known through TV commercials for Quaker Oats.
Olivia de Havilland Best remembered for her role as Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind (1939), Olivia de Havilland, 104, died in Paris on July 26, 2020. The actress costarred with Errol Flynn in three Westerns—Dodge City (1939), Santa Fe Trail (1940) and They Died With Their Boots On (1941). In the last Flynn plays George Custer to Olivia’s Elizabeth Bacon Custer (see photo). Born on July 1, 1916, the two-time Oscar-winning BritishAmerican actress was the older sister of actress Joan Fontaine.
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Events of the west Note: Due to the coronavirus shutdown, some events may be canceled or delayed Angeles celebrates the evolution of the cowboy from the open range era with new videos, infographics and hands-on activity stations. That’s an N.C. Wyeth painting below. Call 323-667-2000 or visit theautry.org.
American Cowboy ▲
In “West: The American Cowboy” French photographer Anouk Masson Krantz revisits the ranching and small rodeo communities in the heartland of the American West. The traveling exhibition will be at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City Oct. 17–Dec. 13. (Her book of the same title was released last year.) Call 405-4782250 or visit nationalcowboymuseum.org.
Cowboy Gallery t
The renovated Cowboy Gallery at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los
Dalton Days
Inspired by the way citizens in Longview, Texas, responded to the Dalton Gang’s May 23, 1894, bank robbery attempt, Dalton Days has become a familyfriendly annual celebration of Western heritage. It is scheduled for Oct. 2, 2021. Call 903-753-5840 or visit gregghistorical.org.
Palace View
The long-term exhibit “Palace Seen and Unseen,” which relates the 400-year history of Santa Fe’s Palace of the Governors, opened April 19 at the New Mexico History Museum. The museum’s Santa Fe
campus includes the Palace of the Governors, the Fray Angélico Chávez History Library and the Pete V. Domenici Building. The exhibit examines the adobe building itself (designated a National Landmark in 1960) and showcases related documents, photos, maps and excavated objects. Call 505-476-5200 or visit nmhistorymuseum.org.
WWA Convention Western Writers of America has moved its 2020 convention to Sept. 4–7 in Rapid City, S.D. Attendees can take advantage of writer/editor panels and likely will have the chance to visit such sights as the Adams House, the Days of ’76 Museum and Mount Moriah Cemetery. Visit westernwriters.org.
WHA Convention The 60th annual Western History Association Conference will convene Oct. 14–17 at the Hyatt Regency and the Albuquerque Convention Center in Albuquerque, N.M. Historians will be speaking on the topic “Migrations, Meeting Grounds and Memory.”
Call 402-554-5999 or visit westernhistoryassociation. wildapricot.org.
Suffrage
This year marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted American women the right to vote. The exhibit “Blazing a Trail,” at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City Nov. 21, 2020–May 16, 2021, explores why women in Western states realized suffrage years before the rest of the nation. Call 405-478-2250 or visit nationalcowboymuseum.org. An exhibit running through January 2021 at the Mormon Church History Museum at Temple Square in Salt Lake City celebrates 150 years since Utah women became the first in the nation to vote under an equal suffrage law. Call
801-240-3310 or visit templesquare.com.
Quest for the West
The Eiteljorg’s annual Quest for the West Art Sale & Show, featuring some of the nation’s most renowned Western artists, runs Sept. 11–Oct. 11 at the Indianapolis museum in White River State Park. The exhibition “Quilts: Uncovering Women’s Stories” will stay uncovered at the museum through Jan. 3, 2021. Call 317-636-9378 or visit eiteljorg.org.
Old West Show
The 31st annual Mesa Old West Show & Auction, presented by Brian Lebel’s Old West Events, comes to Mesa, Ariz., in the new year—the auction Jan. 23 at the Delta Phoenix Marriott Mesa, and the show (with more than 180 vendors of Western art, antiques, collectibles, cowboy gear, antique firearms, books and periodicals) Jan. 23– 24 at the Mesa Convention Center. Also on the horizon is the 31st annual Cody Old West Show & Auction, scheduled for June 25–27, 2021, in Santa Fe. Visit oldwestevents.com.
Send upcoming event notices by email to wildwest@historynet.com. Submit at least four months in advance.
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INTERVIEW
ABOUT AN AMERICAN DISRUPTOR ROLAND DE WOLK TACKLES THE LIFE, TIMES AND SCANDALS OF LELAND STANFORD, ONE OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD’S ‘BIG FOUR’ BY JOHNNY D. BOGGS
What drew you to write about Leland Stanford? Stanford University is the birthplace (some might say “incubus”) of Silicon Valley. It remains its incubator and sustainer. Having covered many different aspects of the valley and Stanford during my years as a reporter with a history background, it has often intrigued me that there seems so little known about Leland Stanford. The university’s well-funded but tightly wound-up publicity department is very defensive about the school’s founder. As a reporter I wanted to know why. What is there to like about Stanford? His true-blue loyalty to his family merits admiration, some respect and a measure of likability. I would have to add that I also, in an odd sort of way, liked his persistence and ability to pivot, even if the ultimate aim for money and power appears shallow. Certainly, being a principal in the construction of the nation-changing transcontinental railroad is worthy of liking the guy on some level. What brought him to California? Failure. He failed in his native upstate New York. He failed in his attempt to reboot in Port Washington, Wis. We Californians are accustomed to seeing people who fail in other places come here and think they can make it. They almost always fail, but Stanford was one of those rare ones who did not. The Gold Rush brought his brothers here, and without the beachhead they secured for him, Leland would have almost certainly screwed up again. What was his role in the transcontinental railroad, and how does he stand in the Big Four? The conventional history of the transcontinental railroad usually diminishes Stanford’s role in the enterprise’s success. And some serious historians have dismissed the railroad’s conventional 16 WILD WEST
standing as a success itself, I should add. I do not. And I would argue that without Stanford bullying state and local governments to extract tax dollars to support his private enterprise, it would not have been built. Insofar as comparing him to the other three of the Big Four, I do believe he carries his own weight. Huntington, not to be slighted because he was a man, as his biographer David Lavender wrote, with a “creative imagination of singular daring.” But it must be said he left a vast amount of self-serving correspondence that has helped him look good. Hopkins was a quiet guy and rarely did anything so odious as either Stanford or Huntington, so he looks fairly benign. Crocker just whipped his railroad crews through his foremen. What were Stanford’s pluses and minuses as governor of California? Pluses…hmmm. I’ll have to get back to you on that. Minuses? He used his Republican Party platform to promise to reduce the state budget deficit. (They were allowed in those days.) He instead forced the state Legislature to borrow even more money by raising taxes—through bond issues, which of course burden taxpayers with still more debt—for his private railroad company. He sanctioned massacres of native peoples, especially in northern California. He screwed up a massive prison escape at San Quentin that ended in a slaughterhouse massacre. Fortunately, he was governor for only two years. Oh, he screwed up his reelection chances as well. Discuss the murder of Stanford’s widow and how you researched that episode. Her murder in a luxurious Honolulu hotel is indeed intriguing. I get asked a great deal about that at almost every event where we talk about the book, especially by women, who all too rarely are respected and written about by historians. For me—and this is the old investigative reporter talking—the cover-up by the president of the university is at least as important. Researching this required reading the police accounts, the voluminous coroner’s investigation, newspaper accounts and The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford, the all-important, if slim, 2003 book by the late Dr. Robert Cutler, a Stanford University professor of medicine, who brought his modern medical scholarship to the case. I even interviewed contemporary homicide detectives to get their insights. I am told a noted professor of history at Stanford is writing a book just about the murder. I am very much looking forward to it.
COURTESY ROLAND DE WOLK, FROM AMERICAN DISRUPTOR: THE SCANDALOUS LIFE OF LELAND STANFORD
Roland De Wolk earned a history degree at the University of California, Berkeley, spent years as a print, online and broadcast journalist, cofounded an online journalism site and is a senior lecturer at San Francisco State University’s journalism department. That background kept him on track as he researched the life of Leland Stanford, one of the Central Pacific Railroad’s “Big Four” (along with Collis Potter Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker). De Wolk recently spoke with Wild West about his resulting 2019 biography, American Disruptor: The Scandalous Life of Leland Stanford.
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WESTERNERS
HUNTING BUDDIES
TONY SAPIENZA COLLECTION
Sharp-dressed mineralogist, entrepreneur and photographer Joseph Gonder Hiestand poses with his bespectacled, hatted hound in this circa 1910 self-portrait in Manitou Springs, Colorado. He has in hand a Mauser C96 carbine with its distinctive broom handle, box magazine and wooden shoulder stock that doubles as a holster. Hiestand loved hunting and taxidermy and is said to have shot and stuffed the last surviving buffalo on Colorado’s Front Range. Born in Strasburg, Pa., on Aug. 15, 1860, he grew up in that state and at age 20 reported his occupation as “mineralogist” on the 1880 Philadelphia census. He married in 1888, raised three daughters and resided in New York City part time while summering in Colorado, where he collected mineral specimens. He exhibited his fine collection several times before selling it in 1898. After divorcing in 1900, Hiestand made his year-round home in Manitou Springs, where he ran a mineral shop on Fairview Avenue and built a hotel and pavilion at Ute Iron Springs, beside the station of the cog railroad that carried tourists up and down Pikes Peak. He became the official photographer for the Manitou & Pikes Peak Railway and also proprietor of the Summit House. The 1910 census listed him as a “retail merchant, minerals and souvenirs.” On New Year’s Day 1916, a half dozen years after taking this photo, he tragically shot himself dead while cleaning his gun. No word as to the fate of his faithful companion.
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GUNFIGHTERS & LAWMEN On Aug. 21, 1863, William Quantrill led a murder raid on Lawrence, Kan., and it was rumored that William B. McWaters was one of his raiders.
THE TERRIBLE McWATERS THE MISSOURI-BORN CIVIL WAR BUSHWHACKER EARNED HIS POSTWAR NICKNAME BY TERRORIZING MIDWESTERNERS FOR A DECADE BY LARRY E. WOOD
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returned to his home territory, resumed bushwhackivil War bushwhacker and postwar outing and struck up a romance with Jennie Mayfield law William B. McWaters apparently of Vernon County, one of the notorious Mayfield came by his mean streak naturally, sisters of “bushwhacker belle” fame. It was ruhis father also having a penchant mored McWaters accompanied guerrilla leader for violence. When the family lived in St. Charles William Quantrill during his horrific Aug. 21, County, Missouri, in the 1840s Hugh McWaters 1863, murder raid on Lawrence, Kan., and later and two accomplices beat up a man and were rode with the equally infamous “Bloody Bill” convicted of riot, though the verdict was overAnderson, but neither can be confirmed through turned on a technicality. contemporaneous records. The second of Hugh and Mary McWaters’ After the war McWaters, like many former Miseight children, William was born on March 7, WILLIAM souri guerrillas, continued his lawless ways. He was 1845, according to family genealogy. After 1850 QUANTRILL implicated in the March 21, 1867, murder of Vernon the McWaters tribe moved to Cedar County in southCounty Sheriff Joseph Bailey, who’d served as a Union west Missouri, where William and brothers took up bushwhacking early in the Civil War. In April 1862 William was general during the Civil War, and that fall he emerged unscathed charged with “jayhawking” and theft in neighboring Vernon from a wild gunfight in Humansville, Mo., with a citizen posse County, arrested and placed in the guardhouse at Butler. One seeking to arrest him for Bailey’s murder. Newspapers reportwitness testified he’d even heard McWaters brag about having ing on the incident described McWaters as “a daring desperado” killed a “damned abolitionist.” But the accused somehow man- who was “an expert with his revolvers.” McWaters absconded to Nebraska, where he met and roaged to get free of the charges against him, as in the fall of 1862 he joined the Confederate army. Later in the war McWaters manced one Susie P. Davis, the young couple marrying in Otoe
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GUNFIGHTERS & LAWMEN could be returned north, howon New Year’s Eve 1868. The ever, Otoe County Sheriff Frank 1870 census places them in Otoe, Farber arrived with extradition McWaters listing his occupation papers and in early November as a day laborer. If he’d turned escorted the fugitive back to Nehonest, it didn’t stick. braska City to stand trial for the In early January 1873 Mckilling of Wirth. Waters and two other men ranConvicted of second-degree sacked the post office in neighmurder in late December, Mcboring Wyoming, Neb., and Waters was sentenced to 21 years assaulted a deputy postmaster in the Nebraska State Penitentiary named Wolf. On January 22 as CHARLES J. NOBE in Lincoln. Asked by a reporter a deputy U.S. marshal moved S about the verdict, the pristo arrest McWaters, gunplay oner said he didn’t care, exerupted between the outlaw, cept for being parted from the marshal and several other men. Susie and their children. In the wild exchange McWaters At the time of his convicwinged the lawman and mortally tion a Nebraska City corwounded Wolf, who was assisting respondent wrote a story the marshal. A report of the incidetailing the many dasdent from Nebraska City, the Otoe tardly exploits of the “terCounty seat, decried McWaters as rible McWaters,” which “the terror of this county ever since subsequently ran in newshe has lived here.” papers nationwide. While McWaters fled the state, but in early much of the report was May authorities in Kansas City arrested ST UR accurate, it also conDH him and promptly extradited him to MARY WOO tained a number of fabNebraska. It was all for naught. At his rications and half-truths September trial the jury found him not guilty, as it came out that during the gun battle that became part of the McWaters legend. Not even that writer could have imagined McWolf had shot and wounded McWaters before the Waters would continue his depredations behind latter returned fire and killed the postmaster. McWaters returned home to wife Susie, but bars. Yet on Jan. 11, 1875, within a few weeks of he was soon in trouble again. On Feb. 13, 1874, his arrival at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, he and acquaintance John Crook stumbled into McWaters started a riot in the prison workshop. a Nebraska City saloon in a drunken state and The inmates overpowered deputy warden Charles started a ruckus. McWaters ultimately pulled his J. Nobes, who was made to strip to his underclothes revolver and opened fire, killing bartender Ru- and tied up. Donning Nobes’ uniform, McWaters dolph Wirth and wounding another man. Mc- impersonated the deputy warden, marched his Waters, described in local papers as “a noted char- cohorts into the main building and nearly engiacter and dangerous man,” fled with Crook, but neered a large-scale prison break before the ruse authorities tracked the pair to Iowa, arrested them was discovered. Prison guards managed to bottle and returned them to Nebraska City. They barely up McWaters and fellow rioters in the building, but not before the inmates had gotten hold of escaped lynching at the hands of a mob. On April 10 the desperate pair, awaiting trial weapons and taken captive the warden’s wife, for first-degree murder, escaped from jail at Ne- Mary Woodhurst, and a couple of guards. During the overnight standoff that followed, braska City and hightailed it south to Kansas, where they split up. A hotelier in Hays City rec- Mrs. Woodhurst stood up to McWaters’ threats ognized McWaters, and the local sheriff held him and ultimately persuaded him and the other riotfor extradition, though he escaped from that lock- ers to surrender. Newspapers nationwide hailed up, too. He then ranged back through southern her for her tenacity and courage. Four and a half months later, on May 26, McNebraska before making his way west. On October 3 McWaters killed a man named Waters was killed by a guard while fomenting George Weed amid a “quarrel in a gambling house” another riot. Thus ended the infamous career in Sparta, Ore. From there he fled to California, of the terrible McWaters, eulogized by a Lincoln where Sacramento authorities arrested him later newspaper only as a “noted murderer, desperado that month for the Oregon murder. Before he and horse thief.”
within a few weeks of his arrival at the nebraska state penitentiary mcwaters started a riot in the prison workshop
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PIONEERS & SETTLERS
In his 1912 oil The Stampede William Leigh captures a scene feared by cowboys driving Longhorns north. One such event befell Stampede Creek a second time on July 4, 1876.
ONE INVOLVED HORSES, THE OTHER LONGHORNS, BUT AS FATE WOULD HAVE IT, THEY HAPPENED AT EXACTLY THE SAME TEXAS LOCALE BY CONNIE CHERBA
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tampedes—whether of cattle, horses or buffalo— weren’t uncommon out West, but most would agree that two stampedes in the very same spot, nearly four decades apart, is certainly unusual. But that’s just what happened at aptly named Stampede Creek in Bell County, Texas. A historical marker on a farm road near Moody commemorates the site of both the first stampede on June 4, 1839, six years before the Republic of Texas was admitted to the Union as the 28th state, and the second stampede on July 4, 1876, the centennial of the United States. The 1839 stampede came in the aftermath of a bitter fight on Bird Creek between Texas Rangers and a band of Caddos, Kickapoos and Comanches. After a series of devastating Indian raids, settlers along the upper Brazos, Trinity and Colorado rivers had petitioned the Third Congress of the Republic of Texas for help. During its first session (1838–39) legislators passed laws calling for mounted volunteer rangers to protect the settlers. Under the provisions of those laws, on May 20, 1839, Captain
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John S. Bird and 50 rangers set out on a scouting expedition from Fort Milam on the Brazos. A dozen troopers soon turned back with deserters in tow. Among those riding on with Bird was Lieutenant Nathan Brookshire, who submitted an afteraction report about the May 26 clash. “Three Indians came within sight of the encampment in pursuit of buffalo,” he wrote. “Dispatched in pursuit of them…spies returned and reported a small body of Indians. At 1 o’clock p.m. Captain Bird marched against them with a command of 35 rank and file. After advancing about 5 miles in the prairie, came in sight of 27 in number.” The Rangers, “arrayed in battle order,” charged after the Indians for several miles before breaking off the pursuit—too late. They’d ridden into a trap, and Indians were soon “hurling their arrows …from every direction.” The Rangers positioned themselves in a ravine that within minutes was surrounded by some 200 Indians led by a chief wearing a conspicuous headdress of buffalo horns. The Indians charged twice but were repulsed. Amid the heat of battle Bird rose to
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STAMPEDES!
PIONEERS & SETTLERS
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shout encouragement to his troops and was shot through the heart by an arrow eyewitnesses said was launched from 200 yards away. Toward the end of the clash Ranger James Robinett shot and killed the “horned” chief as the latter rashly bore down on the entrenched Texas men. Lacking a leader, the Indians retreated as night fell. After secreting the bodies of Captain Bird, Sergeant William Weaver and Privates Jesse Nash, Hiram Metcalf C. Hall and Thomas Gay in the ravine, the Rangers headed for cover in nearby timber, carrying their wounded with them. On reaching Camp Nashville, Brookshire reported five men killed and two wounded against estimated enemy losses of 30 to 40 warriors killed and the same number wounded. Corporal William P. Bird had fought alongside his father that day, and on May 15, 1890, The Belton (Texas) Journal published an article based on a letter he’d written describing the disposition of the bodies: In about a week a burying party went back but found the bodies in such condition they could do nothing with them. One of Gray’s [sic] arms was cut off and hung in a little pin oak opposite the mouth of a little ravine. Bird and Weaver were tied together and laid at the mouth of a little ravine. All were scalped. The party went back after another week and buried the bones on the field. The Indians also buried their dead at the same place. The whites dug “Buffalo Horns” up, stuck the horns on the skull, and stuck his skull on a pole and left it standing.
After burying their dead, the Rangers rode up the east bank of the Leon River in pursuit of the Indians. On the night of June 4, while encamped on the banks of a small creek, their horses stampeded, leaving the troopers afoot. From then on the little cut in the prairie was known as Stampede Creek. Thirty-seven years after the remembered Indian fight, in the wake of a thunderstorm, a herd of 15,000 northbound Longhorns charged wildly across the prairie east of the Leon. Dr. J.B. Cranfill, a Texas cowboy turned schoolteacher, physician, Baptist minister, prohibitionist, newspaper editor and author, chronicled the 1876 stampede in his 1916 autobiography A Story of Life in Texas. According to Dr. Cranfill’s account, that July 4 the Wilson brothers of Kansas City and 25 hired hands were driving the Longhorns north toward the Brazos, with no plans to mark the centennial. Around 4 that afternoon a full rainbow broke out against the black clouds of a threatening thunderstorm. “The entire herd became nervous,” Cranfill wrote, “and showed their fear by those low
bellowings ominous to the experienced cattleman as the muttering thunder.” The cowboys calmed the cattle and kept them moving, and by sundown all seemed well. But around 10 p.m. the herd “appeared to get up all at once, with a single purpose, and the roar that was heard seemed to come from a single throat.” With the panicked Longhorns stampeding toward the Brazos, the Wilsons and their hands quickly mounted their horses, galloped along the flanks of the charging herd and tried to turn the cattle in on themselves in a milling mass. “As the herd rushed on,” Cranfill wrote, “their horns rattled together, and all the horns of 15,000 head of cattle rattling together sounded like an immense concert of castanets.” Just as the crew managed to turn the lead animals, one of the cowboys, a Mexican who was plenty skilled but just then impaired by alcohol, reached the front of the herd and began shooting into the faces of the veering steers. That was enough to straighten the Longhorns out of their turn and send them thundering toward a steepsided creek. By the time the cowboys regained control, 2,700 snorting and bellowing beasts had tumbled to their deaths, nearly filling the gully with their bodies. Sometimes it didn’t take much at all to set off a stampede. In June 1839 the fierce fighting was over, the Rangers resting in camp, when their horses bolted for no apparent reason. Some troopers blamed the stench of dead horses and men killed during the recent fight on Bird Creek, but no one knows for sure. Nearly four decades later on the Fourth of July an afternoon thunderstorm had come and gone, and the Longhorns had remained relatively calm. But then, out of the blue, they bolted. Cowboys later claimed the cattle had dreamt of the passing storm clouds and bright rainbow— dreams that prompted their nightmare charge over the banks of a creek called Stampede.
Cavalry horses panic en masse in this 19thcentury illustration. Texas Rangers’ mounts behaved similarly, for reasons uncertain, on June 4, 1839, at Stampede Creek in Bell County, Texas.
by the time the cowboys regained control, 2,700 snorting and bellowing beasts had tumbled to their deaths
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Jack Langrishe was more than just a comedic actor. He also wrote, produced, directed and managed his own farcical productions.
HE MINED THE GOLD MINERS JACK LANGRISHE BOUNCED BETWEEN FRONTIER BOOMTOWNS TO PRESENT SHAKESPEARE AND HIS OWN PLAYFUL PRODUCTIONS BY DAVID McCORMICK 24 WILD WEST
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ickets to the show were $1 at the door. They might be purchased with gold dust or fresh vegetables. The latter form of currency was hard to come by in early Denver, Colorado Territory. The fare put on by Jack Langrishe at the Apollo Hall, which opened in 1861, provided a bit of levity for hardscrabble miners looking to ease the drudgery of their daily toil. The Apollo offered no coarse entertainment. “Colorado’s favorite comedian,” one contemporary newspaper noted, “gives a chaste and superior class of amusement.” Langrishe went on to earn the moniker “Comedian of the Frontier.” The actor was born in Dublin, Ireland, on Sept. 24, 1825, as John Sewell “Jack” Folds Jr. Folds was certainly not a name for an actor, for shows that flop are said to “fold,” so he fished about for a suitable stage name. Langrishe was a surname of repute known to him in Ireland. Jack Langrishe immigrated to the United States in September 1845, landing in Boston and moving on to New York City, where he made his American stage debut in early December as Pierce O’Hara, title character of the two-act farce The Irish Attorney. For the next several years Langrishe played with various troupes in theaters in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. In 1849 he married fellow thespian Jeanette Allen, a distant relative of Ethan Allen, Patriot hero of the American Revolutionary War. By 1850 Jack had his own troupe, Langrishe’s Vaudeville Company, and through the ’50s Jack and Jeanette played to houses throughout the Midwest. Over that decade the Langrishes migrated ever westward. Jack set himself apart from other entertainers, as he established his own theaters, either leasing, buying or building one wherever miners discovered rich deposits of ore. These were not bawdy houses but places where men could take their families to view wholesome comedies, melodramas and tragedies. And in observance of the Sabbath their doors never opened on Sunday. In the fall of 1860 the Langrishes arrived in a new but already bustling Den-
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ver, where rustic log and canvas configurations housed people of every race, creed, color and background, replete with bandits, scoundrels, gamblers and soiled doves as well as a growing share of law-abiding men and women. Denverites soon went to work erecting several clapboard buildings to house a church, a school, a newspaper, a ladies’ aid society and, of course, a theater— the Apollo Hall. The Apollo occupied the second floor of a two-story building, above Denver’s largest saloon. For two years Jack Langrishe leased the theater, his productions often disrupted by the boozy shenanigans below. Among his offerings were Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Othello and Richard III as well as his own farcical creations. In 1862 he bought the Platte Valley Theater, renaming it the Denver. A new 30-foot-deep stage allowed him to expand on his productions, while the house could pack in 1,500 patrons in the parquet and orchestra, gallery and private boxes—all without the clamor from a saloon. Langrishe would spend nearly a quarter century off and on entertaining audiences in Denver, taking sporadic breaks with his acting troupe to set up theaters wherever miners had struck pay dirt. Langrishe wasn’t only a jack-of-all-trades but also a master of all. A versatile comedic actor, manager, producer and director, he selected all the plays and wrote his own bread-andbutter farces. A tall, dark and lanky man with black eyes, he was blessed with a long nose and flexible mouth that lent themselves to ludicrous expressions and could keep audiences in an uproar without uttering a syllable. While Denver boomed, Langrishe’s top-drawer productions garnered huge receipts. But by the mid-1860s the district’s surface placer deposits were exhausted, and many miners left to seek easier fortune or lick their wounds elsewhere. With the exodus came a predictable drop-off in theater receipts, prompting Langrishe also to seek greener pastures in which to ply his craft—though he would return. In the summer of 1867 Langrishe arrived in Salt Lake City with his full entourage aboard his own painted wagons—an impressive sight to the mostly Mormon residents. After a short, successful stint the company moved on to surrounding mining towns, then ventured north to Virginia City, Montana Territory, for a season. In January 1869 the Langrishes took their act
to Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. Then it was back to Denver for a short stint, where they performed Under the Gaslight, a melodrama with a twist in which the heroine rescues the bound hero from the tracks as a Denver Pacific locomotive bears down on him. In September 1869 Jack opened the Langrishe Opera House in Helena, Montana Territory, the troupe playing there and in surrounding towns, while also making short trips back to Denver. When a fire consumed the opera house in 1874, the Langrishes moved on. In mid-1876 the company arrived in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, where Jack built a ramshackle house of canvas and rough-hewn boards. The seating comprised rough planks nailed down atop driven stakes. His first offering was Banker’s Daughter, during which it rained buckets, soaking the cast and patrons to the skin. In the spirit of the old adage “the show must go on,” Langrishe made arrangements to play the Bella Union until his new theater, alternately known as the Deadwood or the Langrishe, was completed in 1878. But ill fortune struck again on Sept. 26, 1879, when fire swept through town, reducing the theater to ashes. The Langrishes were on the road at the time, having joined the exodus of miners bound for the next important strike— in Leadville, Colo. There, at “Bonanza King” Horace Tabor’s invitation, the troupe cut the ribbon on his newly constructed opera house on November 20, though a hanging party down the block kept opening night attendance down. The company played the Tabor Opera House for 13 weeks. Langrishe then returned to Denver for the last time, leasing a theater on 16th Street. Ironically, he was forced to fold when Tabor built the lavish Grand Opera House directly across the way. For the next several years Langrishe performed at Tabor’s and continued touring. Retiring from the theater circuit in 1885, Jack and Jeanette Langrishe eventually settled in Wardner, Idaho Territory. There Jack edited The Wardner News and, following Idaho’s 1890 admission to the Union, won election as a Republican state senator in its first Legislature. He died on Dec. 12, 1895, and is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Kellogg, Idaho. Jeannette, his co-star onstage and in life, died five years later and rests by his side.
Langrishe wasn’t only a jackof-alltrades but also a master of all
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At right in this 1867 photo of 16th Street in the “Mile High City” is the Denver Theater (the former Platte Valley Theater), which Langrishe bought and refurbished in 1862.
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ART OF THE WEST Scratchboard artist Kody Bundy enjoys capturing horses such as this feral sorrel colt kicking up dust in Focus Before the Storm.
MORE THAN JUST SCRATCHING THE SURFACE he etching is called Focus Before the Storm, and the feral sorrel colt with a white blaze is kicking up the dust. The earth whirls and eddies about her hooves with a sense of kinetic energy unparalleled in scratchboard art. Every vibrant hair is alive with electricity. The shimmering background is a green-and-gold prelude to the explosion of energy to come. Viewers become part of the story, poised on the edge of some grand adventure, connected to the raw energy and drama of the wild. For artist Kody Bundy (pictured deep in her work at right) connection is key. 26 WILD WEST
Growing up on a farm in northern Nebraska, the artist had her first equine encounter with a green-broke filly. The 2-year-old allowed Bundy to slip onto her back and sit quietly with nary a saddle, halter or bridle in sight. When the filly exploded into a gallop, an instant bond was formed. Kody’s father went shopping for a pony soon after. “The only constant I’ve had in my life—except for one miserable year —is I have always had a horse,” says Bundy. “If I didn’t have that connec-
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WESTERN ARTIST KODY BUNDY CONNECTS WITH HORSES AND WILDLIFE IN HER CHOSEN MEDIUM—SCRATCHBOARD BY RICHARD PROSCH
IIMAGES: KODY BUNDY (5)
ART OF THE WEST
tion…I don’t know whether I would have found my way.” And what a way it has been. Since her Cornhusker State upbringing Bundy has had a variety of addresses across the plains and intermountain West. Though she’s always enjoyed drawing, she tucked away her talent for nearly 30 years. “I remember seeing those ads in magazines asking you to draw some illustration to qualify to their art school in Minnesota. I would practice and practice to get it right. But my dad influenced me to look for a different vocation to support myself. So I chose horse training.” Then, while living near Great Falls, Mont., she attended a celebration of renowned hometown artist Charles M. Russell, who also liked horses and became known as the Cowboy Artist. Bundy discovered her media. “Scratchboard is a panel covered with white china clay, then airbrushed with a layer of black India ink,” she explains. “The artist etches an image using razor blades, knives or needles, nibs and steel wool. Just about any tool can be used to remove the black ink and reveal the white clay beneath the surface. Imagine a piece of artwork with each whisker or blade of grass shown in incredible detail. I was hooked.” Working from her northeast Utah studio, Bundy finds inspiration all around, especially in the abundance of mountain wildlife. In Bighorn Ram the awakened subject glances back at the viewer, unconcerned, his stalwart nature reflected in the rugged butte in the background. Bundy’s etchings capture elk, moose, mule deer and, always, horses. At the EQUUS Film and Arts Fest in Lexington, Ky., Bundy recently reconnected with filmmaker
friend Charles Perry. “We had collaborated last year with a small section of his documentary based on the life of ‘Stagecoach Mary’ Fields,” says Bundy. “She was a lady who was born a slave but ended up with her freedom, which took her to a little town south of where I lived in Montana named Cascade. I etched a scratchboard piece of Mary and her white mule, Moses, called The Trail Behind Us, which has been donated to the Montana Historical Society, in Helena.” Mary was the first black woman awarded a contract to deliver mail for the United States, and with Moses’ help she delivered mail from Cascade to St. Peter’s Mission and surrounding mining camps. The artist’s work captures their bond. Bundy is represented by three galleries—Artists on Main, in Ennis, Mont.; Kimball Art Center, in Park City, Utah; and Fine Art Editions, in Georgetown, Ky. To see more of her work, visit her website [KodyBundy.com] or seek her out on Facebook [facebook.com/KodyBundyscratchboardart].
Examples of Bundy’s wildlife-inspired works include (clockwise from top left) Bighorn Ram, Glory and Red Rocker and Medicine Hat.
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INDIAN LIFE
IF THESE BONES COULD TALK BONE BREASTPLATES FLOURISHED AMONG THE PLAINS TRIBES IN THE 1880S, THOUGH NONE IS KNOWN TO HAVE DEFLECTED BULLETS BY JOHN KOSTER
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n the 1941 Western They Died With Their Boots On, set between 1857 and ’76, Anthony Quinn wore a bone breastplate playing Crazy Horse opposite Errol Flynn’s George Armstrong Custer. Lakota extras in the 1955 film Chief Crazy Horse, starring Victor Mature and set in the 1870s, also wore bone breastplates. But the real Crazy Horse never wore a bone breastplate, as he was killed in September 1877, shortly before such breastplates became a decade-long fad among the Lakota and other North Plains tribes. One widely circulated portrait of a pallid 28 WILD WEST
young Indian identified as Crazy Horse has been deemed inauthentic in part because the subject is wearing a bone breastplate, or huhuwanapin in Lakota. Fact is, the New York merchant who mass produced most of the affordable bone hairpipe Indians used to craft breastplates didn’t start churning them out until after the tribes had been confined to reservations in the 1880s. No such breastplate is known to have even briefly deflected a bullet at either the 1866 Fetterman Fight or the Battle of the Little Bighorn a decade later. And by the time of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, which marked the end of the Indian wars, those Lakotas not in show business with Buffalo Bill Cody were often too poor to afford such accoutrements. The bone breastplate was an interim accessory that flourished in the 1880s, faded in the ’90s and only returned as Indian cultural pride saw a renaissance in the late 20th century. The earliest known ancestor of the hairpipe used to adorn ceremonial clothing was the cowrie—a smooth, egg-shaped seashell with a rounded top and flat underside, especially abundant in the Indian Ocean and along the African coast. The cowrie inspired the classical Chinese ideograph for “money.” Its spoken name is Sanskrit, and cowries took on spiritual significance in ancient India. In colonial times merchants trading with American Indians used as currency cowries drilled at one end to accept bark or deer sinew strings. Indian girls with rows of cowries threaded to their dresses were objects of high admiration. In centuries past tribes along the Pacific Coast similarly used the dentalium shell as a trade item, the tubular, ivory-colored shell lending itself to use in bracelets, earrings, necklaces and chokers. Intertribal trade networks spread dentalia and other shells to villages far inland and ultimately to the Atlantic Coast. In 1775, before European traders had made great inroads, James Adair, author of the groundbreaking History of the American Indians, identified members of Southeastern tribes who wore tubular natural beads. “Formerly four deerskins was the price of a large conch shell bead, about the length and thickness of a man’s forefinger,”
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This circa-1890 Sioux breastplate features three rows of tubular bone hairpipe strung between strips of commercial leather, trimmed with glass beads of alternating colors.
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INDIAN LIFE Adair wrote, “which they fixed to the crown of their head as a high ornament—so greatly they valued them.” Dentalium hairpipe, devised by white craftsmen for the Indian trade, became an especially coveted commodity. In the 1830s and ’40s George Catlin painted portraits of Comanche chiefs wearing hairpipe necklaces and chokers. An 1867 portrait of a Yankton Sioux identified as Iron Black Bird is the oldest known photograph of someone wearing a dentalium hairpipe choker. That same year British-born archaeologist and Civil War veteran Dr. Edward Palmer collected a shell hairpipe breastplate from the Comanches. Though demand for hairpipe increased through the 19th century, manufacturers had a hard time keeping traders supplied. Enter the Campbells. Sometime before 1775 John Campbell founded a wampum bead business out of his homestead in Pascack (present-day Park Ridge) in northern New Jersey. Two sons, four grandsons, and two or more great-grandsons followed him into the trade. Campbell initially built the business selling wampum—tubular white and purple beads traditionally crafted from whelk or quahog clam shells—to John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Co. He also sold wampum to the U.S. Office of Indian Trade for its network of frontier agents. Through the mid-19th century the extended family routinely bought up mounds of discarded shells from Manhattan’s Fulton Street fish market, shipping as many as a dozen barrels by boat, wagon and, later, railroad to Pascack. The Campbells sold the shells to a passel of local farmers who would chisel and pick them into “blanks” suitable for craft purposes. The family would then either buy back the blanks from the farmers or from local storekeepers, who often accepted wampum from the farmers in lieu of cash. Everyone prospered. But it was machinist James Campbell who truly revolutionized the trade around the midcentury mark when he invented a drilling machine that increased output at the family mill to 400 hairpipes per day. As a youngster turned a manual crank to power the machinery, the artisan at the controls would drill six hairpipes at a time, reverse them when half drilled, then complete them. While being drilled, the pipes and drills both were immersed in water to keep them cool and wash particles from the boreholes. Finished hairpipes were baked in the family oven to whiten them. James made two copies of the machine—one kept at the factory, the other at home. By 1880 traders started receiving quantities of hairpipe crafted from cattle bone, an adaptation that traces its origins to the bone stems of corncob pipes.
In the mid-1870s Oklahoma Territory trader Joseph H. Sherburne noted the Poncas had begun using pipestem sections to replace broken dentalium shells in their jewelry. Corncob pipes were soon in high demand, though mainly for their stems. Eager to please his Ponca customers, Sherburne contacted New York–based merchant Stephen A. Frost, whose firm supplied the Indian trade with popular glass beads imported from Europe. Frost in turn worked out an arrangement with Armour & Co., the Chicago-based meat packing giant, which supplied the bone for pipestems. It was soon shipping Frost trainloads of raw material— the metacarpal bones of cattle—which the enterprising merchant had mass produced into hairpipe. Sherburne and other licensed traders dispersed the bone hairpipe to Indians, who in the early 1880s still had buffalo robes or beef cattle to swap. Though not as lustrous as shell hairpipe, bone hairpipe was cheaper and stronger. Neither type would stop a soldier’s bullet or a rival warrior’s lance—but the fighting was finished. The bone breastplates merely served as status symbols for social occasions or ceremonial use. Unfortunately, the controversial Dawes Act of 1887 broke up communal Indian lands into individual allotments. In 1889 Congress passed a follow-up allotment act, bitterly resisted by Lakota leader Sitting Bull and other traditionalists, that opened up half of the Great Sioux Reservation (some 9 million acres) to ranchers and homesteaders and split the remaining half into five smaller reservations. The resulting transformation of open grazing land into isolated, water-poor family farms reduced the Lakotas to a subsistence-level existence and made luxuries like bone breastplates unthinkable. In all too many cases despair tragically submerged the warrior spirit in alcohol, as it did in many other warrior cultures. By the turn of the 20th century the Lakotas were immersed in poverty, the extended Campbell family of Park Ridge, N.J., was out of the wampum business and the heyday of bone hairpipe had passed.
In this circa 1890 portrait, Sioux Chief Lone Bear wears an eagle-feather bonnet and a bone hairpipe breastplate. In 1880 traders began selling quantities of bone hairpipe to Indians.
neither type would stop a soldier’s bullet or a rival warrior’s lance— but the fighting was finished
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Wyatt Earp: The Last Summer, 9-by-11 inch limited-edition canvas of 250, original retail price $195 30 WILD WEST
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Courtesy The Greenwich Workshop
STYLE
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STYLE We admire Don Crowley’s powerful paintings, Hopi weavers’ colorful handiwork and Doug Hyde’s beautiful bronzes
ART
The Eyes Have It
Courtesy The Greenwich Workshop
California-born Don Crowley (1926–2019) attended the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles under the G.I. Bill before launching a successful commercial illustration career in New York in 1953. Twenty years later he found a new path in fine arts when he accepted an invitation to exhibit his paintings in Arizona. Taken by the area, he moved his family there in 1974. Perhaps best known for his portraits of American Indian women and children, he also rendered a gunfighter series. In 1995 he was elected to the Cowboy Artists of America and in his first year won the CAA Gold Medal for Drawing. The following year he earned four awards—a Gold Medal for Oil, a Silver Medal for Drawing, the CAA Award and the Kieckhefer Best in Show Award. His limited-edition gunfighter prints are available through the Greenwich Workshop [greenwichworkshop.com]. 31
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STYLE Doc Holliday: ‘Well I’ll Be Damned,’
ARTWORK COURTESY GREENWICH WORKSHOP
9-by-11-inch limited-edition canvas of 250, original retail price $195, by Don Crowley
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STYLE Virgil Earp: Day of Decision,
ARTWORK COURTESY GREENWICH WORKSHOP
9-by-11-inch limited-edition canvas of 250, original retail price $195, by Don Crowley
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STYLE Ram Skull Study,
30-by-40-inch pencil, for Don Crowley originals, Sanders Galleries, Tucson
“1876, Gall, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse,” bronze by John Coleman, 55” H x 96”W x 36”D, edition of 5.
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STYLE White Buffalo,
40-by-70 inch oil, for Don Crowley originals, Sanders Galleries, Tucson
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STYLE CRAFTWORKS
Hopi Handiwork
The Hopi Reservation is in northeastern Arizona, surrounded by the Navajo Nation. A trio of mesas host all the Hopi villages: First Mesa (Walpi, Sichomovi and Hano), Second Mesa (Shongopavi, Sipaulovi and Mishongnovi) and Third Mesa, (Moencopi, Hotevilla, Bacavi, Kykotsmovi and Oraibi). Their renowned basket weavers use plant materials like rabbitbrush, sumac, dune brush and yucca to contrast their vivid designs in traditional red, yellow and black. They use three basic techniques—plating (for cradleboards and Piki trays), wicker (Third Mesa) and coiling (Second Mesa). Hopi baskets are symbolic of life past and present, spirituality, dance, rainmaking, the corn harvest and rites of passage. To see more Hopi products visit Mark Sublette Medicine Man gallery [medicinemangallery.com] at 6872 E. Sunrise Drive, Suite 130, in Tucson.
Hopi polychrome coiled basket with Kachina pictorials (c. 1960s), 8.5-by-11 inch, $1,175
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Hopi polychrome coiled basket (c. 1950s), 8-by-11 inch, $615
Hopi coiled polychrome Kachina plaque, by Lorena Kewewayouu (c. 1970s), 11.75-inch diameter, $555
Hopi polychrome wicker plaque with thunderbird pictorial (c. 1960s), 13-inch diameter, $500
Hopi polychrome coiled plaque with Mudhead Kachina pictorial (c. 1980-90), 13-inch diameter, $390
Hopi coiled turtle plaque, by Dora Poungyouma, (c. 1987), 7.75-inch diameter, $145
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STYLE SCULPTURE
Bronze Beauty
From left to right: Reed Briggs, Roland Briggs, Mike Briggs, Spencer Briggs, at the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch.
American Indian Doug Hyde was born in Hermiston, Ore., in 1946. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., where he was mentored by famed Apache sculptor Allan Houser. In 1967 Hyde attended the San Francisco Art Institute on scholarship before enlisting in the U.S. Army. During a second tour of duty in Vietnam he was seriously wounded by a grenade. A show sponsored by the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning, Mont., changed his life when his work sold out. A stickler for historical accuracy, Hyde works in bronze or stone, often in monumental size. He has lived in Santa Fe since 1972. His works are on display in the collections of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Heard Museum and the Museum of the Southwest, among others. For more information visit Mark Sublette Medicine Man Gallery [medicinemangallery.com] at 6872 E. Sunrise Drive, Suite 130, in Tucson.
From Top to Bottom: Wild Ponies Vessel, 8-by-8-by-8-inch bronze, edition of 15, $2800; Campfire Chat, 13.75-by14.5-by-9-inch bronze, edition of nine, $5,500; Honor Song, 15-by-21by-18-inch bronze, edition of nine, $8,500
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Matriarch and Patriarch
Virginia Ann Cooksey Earp, Nicholas Earp’s second wife , stands by her man in an 1880s portrait. Wyatt was the fourth of their eight children. Newton was Wyatt’s older half brother.
Members of the famed family often migrated to the same spots during their half century of adventures across the Midwest and West By Don Chaput
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KANSAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY; OPPOSITE: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES (5)
CLUSTERS OF EARPS
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ere the Earps an important family? Nah. Are they worthy of our attention? For a variety of reasons the answer is a resounding yes. Through the years the Earps have been featured in countless magazines, novels, histories, films, television shows and documentaries. Thus researchers great, modest and incompetent have investigated every conceivable aspect of their lives, including land the family members owned, their wives and children, court appearances, duels and other confrontations, favorite foods, clothing habits and travels. For information researchers have scoured sources galore, such as mining claims, land contracts, censuses, menus, calling cards, bank statements, hotel vouchers, court files,
KANSAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY; OPPOSITE: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES (5)
WYATT
VIRGIL
By 1869 the Earps had clustered in Lamar, Mo., where for three years the family kept busy, mostly prospering. Nick became a constable, then a justice of the peace. He managed to get young Wyatt appointed in his place to the constable’s post, the latter’s first known stint as a lawman. The census, local newspapers and court documents provide good coverage of the Lamar years. Nick and Virgil were listed as grocers in the census, Wyatt a sometime farmer. Wyatt’s half brother, Newton (Oct. 7, 1837–Dec. 18, 1928), was on hand and even ran against Wyatt for the constable’s position. These were not young boys under Nick’s control; they were men who had chosen to remain among family. Wyatt and Virgil even got married during the Lamar years.
WARREN
tax filings, employment documents and national, state and local newspapers. The geography involved is staggering, stretching from Illinois west to Baja California and north to Alaska. By tracing where these folks traveled and settled, people interested in the trans-Mississippi West in the 19th and early 20th centuries can unearth hundreds of incidents, angles and events big and small. Where one Earp went, another usually followed. This generalization held for a half century, with ample evidence to demonstrate they not only preferred each other’s company, but also would travel half a continent to make that possible. Let’s examine a few such Earp clusters to see how and why this happened. We won’t bother with the Earps farming in Illinois and Iowa or following patriarch Nicholas Porter Earp (Sept. 6, 1813–Feb. 12, 1907) with his 1864 wagon train to California. These were young Earps, with little say in the matter. Yet the mature Earps maintained that same togetherness—a characteristic that suited Nick’s most famous son, Wyatt (March 19, 1848–Jan. 13, 1929), as well as Virgil ( July 18, 1843–Oct. 19, 1905), Morgan (April 24, 1851–March 18, 1882) and most of the others.
MORGAN
JAMES
The Earps next clustered together in Peoria, Ill., then an important Midwestern transportation hub. James ( June 28, 1841–Jan. 25, 1926) enlisted for the Civil War in Peoria and returned there for his discharge. Virgil tended bar there even before the family move to Lamar. From 1871 to ’73 the Earp brothers became “known” to Peoria authorities. Wyatt and Morgan were in the saloon/prostitution business, arrested for pimping, spent time in jail and had their names linked with hookers and madams. Though Virgil was still tending bar there, his name didn’t surface in the prostitution accounts. By then James had struck out for Montana Territory. Warren (March 9, 1855–July 6, 1900) remained a bit too young, otherwise he would have joined his older brothers in Peoria’s demimonde. Roughly from 1874 to ’78 the Earp name was associated with Kansas. Cow town and gunfighter literature abound in family references tied to Wichita and Dodge City. James was in Wichita at least by 1873, running a few girls and sometimes working as a bartender. In the 1875 city census he reported “no occupation,” while wife Bessie was in “sporting.” According to the records he, Bessie and associated working girls were OCTOBER 2020
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TOP: ALASKA STATE LIBRARY; RIGHT: ERIC WEIDER COLLECTION, TOMBSTONE COURTHOUSE STATE PARK; FAR RIGHT: © WYATT EARP IN DODGE CITY, BY ANDY THOMAS
TOP: DAVID D. DE HAAS COLLECTION; LEFT: HAL DUNN COLLECTION
arrested or warned on several occasions. Wyatt The Montana Territory link to the Earps is a arrived in town in 1874 and was soon on the little jerky and complicated. Both James and police force—perhaps a beneficial situation for Morgan spent time there, starting as early his older, errant brother. Morgan and Virgil as 1870 in Deer Lodge. Both later dabbled also made appearances. The Earps may have in booze, cards and jail in and around Butte. grown a bit presumptuous in Wichita, for in James was there a few years and invested in early 1876 Wyatt was removed from the police mining and saloons. Morgan was known to force after having lobbied hard to get brothers be in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, in 1876, James, Morgan and Virgil hired as policemen. then in Miles City, Montana Territory, for a ADELIA The Earps’ Dodge City period, roughly from time. In 1879, shortly before leaving for Tomb1876 to ’78, mostly centered on Wyatt and his role stone, Arizona Territory, he was appointed to the as a lawman. It was there he solidified his connections with Butte police force. Given their Butte connection, it seems Bat Masterson and two of the latter’s brothers and partici- likely the brothers would have sought one another’s compated in events (rowdy cowboy scrapes, doings in the saloons pany frequently. and gambling halls and a few shootings) worthy of newsThe Earps certainly made their mark in Colton and other paper notice. Wyatt left Dodge on a few occasions, once spots in California’s San Bernardino County. By 1880 Nick for a significant sojourn to Texas, where he visited brother and family were well established, and Earps would live there James and met Doc Holliday, a major figure in the family’s into the 1930s. It proved a gathering place for family memdeveloping saga. During another brief and vague sortie bers from such widespread points as Arizona and Idaho he supposedly went to try his luck in Dakota Territory. territories, Alaska, Nevada and Baja California who headed All the male Earps passed through Dodge City. Wyatt, there to visit, live, die or be buried. Adelia and Bill Edwards James and Morgan came to town, and father Nick followed. bounced around the county for decades. As Nick and (surNewton, while farming farther east near Hutchinson, was viving) sons aged, they spent much time visiting and living bested by a grasshopper plague. The Dodge City period also with the Edwards family. spelled the end of the family’s Midwest ties. In early 1877 From 1879 to ’82 Arizona Territory was the family congreNick led his second caravan toward California. The group gation point. While some Earps had earlier visited Virgil included Virgil and wife Allie, Newton and wife Nancy, in Prescott, it was their time in Tombstone that is known as well as Earp sister Adelia ( June 16, 1861–Jan. 16, 1941) the world over. While there Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan wore and her husband, Bill Edwards. Wyatt remained in Dodge federal or local badges and sometimes worked as guards for for a time, as did James and Morgan. Wells, Fargo & Co. The faro tables and mining investments also held their interest. Then the brothers made headlines. For the next half century the Earps were no longer On Oct. 26, 1881, in the best-known gunfight in the history Midwesterners. From 1880 through 1930 events associ- of the American West, Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan walked ated with the family name, from mining to faro games, horse down Fremont Street alongside Doc Holliday for a showracing, prizefights, saloon life and peacekeeping, all trans- down with the Cowboys (see related feature, P. 44) near the pired out West. No Earp better represents this Western tilt O.K. Corral. James, settling down to eat at home, heard the than Nick, who was born in 1813 in North Carolina, a state gunshots, grabbed his revolver and rushed to the scene, a bit bordering the Atlantic Ocean, and died in 1907 near Santa too late to help the wounded Virgil, Morgan and Doc and Monica, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. the notably unscathed Wyatt. In the post-Kansas years the brothers clustered Youngest brother Warren was visiting the senior Earps together sporadically. By 1878 James was in Colton at the time of the October gunfight. But that June, tending bar in Fort Worth for Bob Winders after a major fire struck Tombstone’s business district, town at the Cattle Exchange Saloon. That July marshal Virgil had named Warren a special policeman. brother Wyatt visited, gambled a bit, then Warren returned to Tombstone from Colton after Virgil was had a barroom scuffle with an unruly cow- wounded from ambush on Dec. 28, 1881, and he was there boy. Wyatt was arrested and posted bond, when Morgan was murdered from ambush on March 18, but the charges were ultimately dropped. 1882. Warren also participated in the subsequent “Earp The brothers’ time in Fort Worth blended Vendetta Ride,” in which Wyatt and posse chased down all the typical Earp ingredients—saloons, the Cowboys. Warren also accompanied Wyatt when he gambling, fighting and the law. left Arizona Territory for Colorado. Warren was a true wannabe, admiring his older brothers’ war service, badge wearing, faro expertise, etc. The brothers Family Tokens These Virgil Walter Earp trade were aware of his ambitions, but also knew Warren had tokens were apparently used in a temper and was easily upset. In June 1883 in the Colton the illegal gambling operations he saloon operated by brother James, Warren got in a scrape and James ran in Sawtelle, Calif.
TOP: ALASKA STATE LIBRARY; RIGHT: ERIC WEIDER COLLECTION, TOMBSTONE COURTHOUSE STATE PARK; FAR RIGHT: © WYATT EARP IN DODGE CITY, BY ANDY THOMAS
TOP: DAVID D. DE HAAS COLLECTION; LEFT: HAL DUNN COLLECTION
with a fellow named Belarde. Shots were fired, and a deputy sheriff was dispatched, but Warren had fled. The next day Warren spotted Belarde in town and fired nine shots at the fleeing horseman (missing), but again he escaped the law. Such was Warren, the younger sibling trying to play the tough frontiersman in the presence of his older brothers. The Coeur d’Alene district of Idaho Territory hosted a passel of Earps in 1884. James, Wyatt and wives arrived in January, spending most of their time around Eagle City. There they had mining claims (and legal problems), operated the White Elephant Saloon, and bought and sold land. Wyatt also served as an acting deputy sheriff of Kootenai County. The brothers got in several confrontations, and in one that made headlines James and Wyatt earned praise for their calming presence. The April 16 edition of the Wood River Times stated, “The Earp brothers, James and Wyatt, took a prominent part as peacemakers.” Warren joined them in June, making three Earp brothers scrambling for Idaho Territory gold. An interesting example of Earp connectedness appeared in the June 7 Los Angeles Herald, which printed a letter from James to father Nick in Colton, updating him on Idaho Territory goings-on. “I have seen more gold dust than I can put in my hat,” James wrote. The saloon brought the Earps a steady income, and by August they’d purchased new equipment for work on a promising gold shaft. Wyatt also worked as a guard on at least one gold shipment to Helena, Montana Territory. By September, though, the gold had played out, and James and Wyatt left. Warren remained in town a few more months. For the rest of the 1880s Wyatt was mostly in San Diego, engaged in real estate, horse racing, gambling in Baja California mining camps and a gold mining stint in Harquahala, Arizona Territory (see Ghost Towns, P. 80). Meanwhile, Virgil, despite his crippled arm, served as the town constable of Colton, while father Nick was justice of the peace. Virgil found time to visit with Wyatt twice in San Diego, possibly considering a move there. In 1885 in the new silver camp of Calico, Calif., Virgil and James ran a faro operation, though apparently not one lucrative enough to hold them there. Through the 1890s some Earps remained headquartered in Colton, while Virgil returned to Arizona Territory to mine. Wyatt and James were in San Francisco. Their occupations varied, though Wyatt mostly pursued horse racing and served as a bodyguard, and James took his familiar place behind a bar. The brothers were close, likely seeing each other daily.
Up in that Far Country
Gold drew Wyatt and James to Nome, Alaska, where the former became part owner of the Dexter Saloon.
Despite a weak shoulder stemming from a Civil War wound, James could do a day’s work and was not a wallflower. After the controversial Fitzsimmons-Sharkey heavyweight championship boxing match of 1896, during which spectators condemned Wyatt’s judgment as referee (he awarded the title to Sharkey on a “foul”), Wyatt and James turned to the local horse racing scene. While attending the track one day, James spotted Riley Grannan, a noted national “plunger” who had belittled Wyatt’s refereeing in the local press. James, reportedly a bit tipsy, produced a revolver before Wyatt calmed things down, apologizing for his agitated older brother.
No Dodging the Law
WYATT
Before rising to celebrity status in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Wyatt (in black) made his reputation in Dodge City, Kan.
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Photo caption here
Place photo caption for this photo for this art here, photo caption to be placed here.
Sightings in Sawtelle
Old Soldiers Ride Again
This horse-drawn trolley transported men to and from the Soldiers’ Home in Sawtelle, where Nick and son Newton were enrolled from 1901 to ‘07.
In the summer of 1895 a cluster of Earps descended on the mining camp of Cripple Creek, Colo. Over several weeks Virgil and Wyatt sought their fortune there, but they were a bit late to the boomtown, their Western peers having already secured the lucrative saloon and gambling arrangements. The goldfields of Nome, Alaska, lured Wyatt and James north between 1899 and 1901. The brothers spent much of their time there hanging around the Dexter Saloon, where Wyatt was part owner, James worked the bar and both brothers kept their eyes on the faro table. The Earp contingent included their wives. Also engaged at the Dexter, supposedly as a saloon porter, was Nathan Marcus, the brother of Wyatt’s wife, Josie. Saloons inevitably draw trouble, and in September 1900 Wyatt and Nathan appeared in the U.S. Commissioner’s Court to answer charges of disorderly conduct, having roughed up a soldier outside the Dexter. The next and last major Earp rendezvous came in southern California, stretching from 1901 to ’07, when Nick and son Newton were enrolled at the Soldiers’ Home in Sawtelle, between Los Angeles and Santa Monica. James, with occasional help from Virgil, ran an illegal booze and gambling operation in Sawtelle. Sometimes Wyatt would stop by, and the brothers would strut the streets, encouraging the veterans to spend their pension money wisely. In 1905 Nevada received passing attention from brothers Earp. After toying with farming in Cibola, Arizona Territory (where he’d been
a constable), Wyatt wandered up to Goldfield, Nev., where brother Virgil served as a deputy sheriff of Esmeralda County. The brothers planned a prizefight in town that March beneath a rented tent. Virgil was to manage the affair, while Wyatt would referee. The match never materialized, and that marked the last contact between Wyatt and Virgil, who died in Goldfield that October. By then opportunities for family reunions were fading fast. Brothers Morgan and Virgil were both dead, while Warren, forever overshadowed by his older brothers, had been shot and killed by ranch hand Johnny Boyett in Willcox, Arizona Territory, in July 1900. Patriarch Nick died in the Sawtelle Soldiers’ Home in 1907. A few years later eldest brother Newton left the Soldiers’ Home and spent his last years in northern California. Only Wyatt and James remained of the southern California cluster of Earps.
FOR LOVE OF MONEY The Earps did not migrate West to engage in shootouts. They wandered in search of opportunity and a corresponding boost in cash flow. To them the money came quickest via mining, gaming, saloon operations and/or pimping. —D.C.
Moneymakers
Left: Wyatt made this deposit. Above: California businessman Lucky Baldwin was his wealthiest friend.
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OPPOSITE TOP AND RIGHT: DON CHAPUT COLLECTION (3); OPPOSITE LEFT: BEN TRAYWICK COLLECTION; TOP LEFT: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT AND BOTTOM: NEWSPAPERS.COM (2)
This early 20th-century photo captures Fourth Street in a town where James and Virgil profited from booze and gambling and Wyatt sometimes stopped by.
Last Stop for Virgil
OPPOSITE TOP AND RIGHT: DON CHAPUT COLLECTION (3); OPPOSITE LEFT: BEN TRAYWICK COLLECTION; TOP LEFT: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT AND BOTTOM: NEWSPAPERS.COM (2)
He was serving as an Esmeralda County deputy sheriff in Goldfield, Nev., in 1905 when Wyatt visited, but Virgil died in Goldfield that October.
Though the brothers saw each other on occasion, Wyatt spent much of his time from 1905 until his 1929 death working modest copper and gold claims in San Bernardino County’s Whipple Mountains during the winter and summering in Los Angeles. After the death of his father in 1907, James moved to San Bernardino to be near sister Adelia Edwards and family. He spent his waning years in Los Angeles under the care of Hildreth Halliwell, a relative of Virgil’s wife Allie. Even near the end the Earps remained connected. Ironically, despite their togetherness in life, no Earp male rests beside another. The decision had rested with widows and other survivors. Father Nicholas lies in the Los Angeles National Cemetery near the former Sawtelle Soldiers’ Home. Newton’s grave is in a family plot in Sacramento’s East Lawn Memorial Park. James’ grave is in Mountain View Cemetery in San Bernardino; nearby, in the Pioneer Memorial Cemetery, rest wife Bessie, sister Adelia, mother Virginia and sister-in-law Allie, Virgil’s widow. Virgil’s grave is in River View Cemetery in Portland, Ore., his daughter’s onetime hometown. Wyatt is buried beside wife Josephine in Hills of Eternity Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery in Colma, Calif. Initially buried in the old city cemetery in Colton, Morgan’s remains and those of other residents were later reinterred in that town’s Hermosa Gardens Cemetery. A grave marker inscribed with Warren’s name stands in Arizona’s Willcox Cemetery, though it is unlikely his body lies beneath the stone. It is noteworthy that not a single Earp male rests in Tombstone, which not only has an appropriate name, but also is the location
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most closely associated with the family name. On its face theirs is the story of an unPistol-Packing Peacemakers The Woods River Times cited important family wandering the AmeriJames and Wyatt as a calming can West. Yet to follow the Earps from force during a shooting fray in Illinois to Kansas, Texas, Arizona, IdaIdaho Territory in April 1884. ho, Alaska, Nevada and California is to brush up against some of the most exciting times of a half century. The booming mining camps; the bustling saloons, gambling halls and racetracks; the tense courtrooms and teeming jails; the anything but peaceful peacekeeping; the headline controversies—you get these and more when you enter the Earp world. It is not only a world of twists and turns, but also the saga of a family deeply involved in one another’s affairs until their time ran out. California author and frequent Wild West contributor Don Chaput is the author of Virgil Earp: Western Peace Officer and The Earp Papers: In a Brother’s Image and co-author of The Earps Invade Southern California: Bootlegging Los Angeles, Santa Monica and the Old Soldiers’ Home (with David de Haas) and the two-volume Cochise County Stalwarts (with Lynn R. Bailey). Those books are recommended for further reading, along with Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend, by Casey Tefertiller, and Wyatt Earp: A Biography of the Legend, Vol. 1: The Cowtown Years, by Lee A. Silva.
CHECKING IN A common practice for 19th-century newspapers was to print the names and other check-in details of new arrivals at local hotels. Such information is a useful aid to researchers and family historians. This Lick House list ran in San Francisco’s Daily Examiner on Sept. 17, 1884.
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Gunfight Near the O.K. Corral
THEY SHOOT COWBOYS, DON’T THEY?
The outlaw band known as the Cowboys operated freely in Arizona Territory —until the Earp brothers and a friend named ‘Doc’ called their bluff By John Boessenecker
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© TOMBSTONE PHOTO CREDIT TURMOIL, ANDY THOMAS; RIGHT: THE GRANGER COLLECTION/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
In his painting Tombstone Turmoil Andy Thomas depicts four Cowboys: Ike Clanton running away, Frank McLaury staggering into the street, Billy Clanton with yellow bandanna and Tom McLaury behind the sorrel horse. Opposing them are (from left) Doc Holliday with shotgun, Morgan Earp on ground, Wyatt Earp and Virgil Earp.
T
© TOMBSTONE PHOTO CREDIT TURMOIL, ANDY THOMAS; RIGHT: THE GRANGER COLLECTION/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
he story of Wyatt Earp, his brothers, friend Doc Holliday and events surrounding the inaptly named Gunfight at the O.K. Corral remains one of the most infamous episodes in the history of the American West. For nearly 140 years the tale has been told and retold in countless newspapers, magazines, books and WYATT EARP films. Most accounts scrutinize the goingson in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, in a vacuum, detailing the relationship and antagonism between the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday on one side and the Clanton and McLaury brothers on the other in the weeks and months leading up to the October 26, 1881, shootout in a vacant lot near the O.K. Corral. More recent revisionist narratives even claim the troubles in Tombstone were essentially a vendetta between two rival factions, the Cowboys and the Earps. Those accounts are wrong. Truth is, Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp, while clearly flawed—each had seen the inside of a jail cell—took on and defeated the biggest outlaw gang in Arizona Territory. It is impossible to understand the brothers and their actions in Tombstone unless one understands who the Cowboys were, where they came from and what they did. The Cowboys were a loosely organized band of some 200 to 300 desperadoes that raided freely on both sides of the Mexican border. To Mexicans they were broadly Tejanos, or Texans, while Americans dubbed them the Cowboys. In the wake of their depredations the formerly innocuous term “cowboy” became a dirty word in Arizona and New Mexico territories. “The cowboy is a cross between a vaquero and a highwayman,” one contemporary Southwestern newspaperman declared. The Cowboys committed stage robberies, attacked Mexican packtrains, rustled thousands of cattle along the border and murdered at least 35 men between 1879 and ’82. The gang colluded with dishonest ranchers, cattle dealers and butchers to smuggle and sell stolen livestock. They operated virtually unopposed until running headlong into the Earp brothers and Holliday. The man responsible for starting up the Cowboys was New Mexico Territory transplant John Kinney, aka the “King of the Rustlers.” In the mid1870s Kinney established a huge stock-stealing operation, and he and his gang played leading roles in the bloody El Paso Salt War and the even bloodier Lincoln County War back in his adoptive territory. Billy the Kid rode with Kinney’s band and later turned against him. Among Kinney’s stalwarts were Bob Martin and “Curly Bill” Brocius, a pair of accused murderers who escaped custody near El Paso in November 1878 and fled to Arizona Territory. Martin and Brocius soon fell in with a small army of outlaws, including Charles “Pony Diehl” Ray (see sidebar, P. 48), John Ringo, Frank Stilwell, Pete Spence, Duke Raymond, Ponciano Domingues, Jim “Six-Shooter” Smith, Martin “Bud” Stiles, Jim Crane, “Harry the Kid” Head, Luther King and Billy Leonard. Bob Martin headed up the Cowboys in Arizona Territory, organizing them along the lines of Kinney’s loose-knit group of horse and cattle thieves. They were the frontier equivalent of a modern street gang. Mexican diplomats filed repeated protests with the U.S. State Department about Martin’s raids, OCTOBER 2020
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TOP IMAGES: JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION (3); MAP BY JOAN PENNINGTON
deeming him “a noted robber on the Texas and New Mexico frontier.” Martin and the Cowboys also took a hand in politics. For example, they opposed the election of Bob Paul—a longtime lawman, Wells Fargo detective and close friend of the Earp brothers—as sheriff of Pima County. In 1880 Martin and cohorts stuffed ballot boxes in the San Simon Valley to ensure the reelection of Sheriff Charlie Shibell, who like his deputy, John Behan, made little effort to oppose the Cowboys. Paul sued, proved election fraud and ultimately replaced Shibell as sheriff. As if to prove the old adage “There is no honor among thieves,” the Cowboys were JOHN KINNEY (STANDING) AND GANG soon at one another’s throats. Shortly after the election a quarrel broke out over a band of stolen horses. Claiming the animals on the were ready for them. Smith, Stiles, King and Leonone hand were Martin and George Turner; ard set up an ambush in Granite Gap, 10 miles disputing their claim were Smith, Stiles, King north of the ranch and just east of the Arizona Terand Leonard. On the night of Nov. 22, 1880, ritory line. They knew Martin and Turner would the latter four slipped onto Turner’s ranch have to pass through the gap on the return trail. in the San Simon Valley, rounded up seven Just before dusk the unsuspecting Martin and BOB PAUL horses and mules and fled south. Turner rode into Granite Gap. From concealment Discovering the theft the next morning, behind rocks along the road the four ambushing Martin and Turner gathered three of their men—Raymond, Cowboys suddenly opened up a terrific barrage. Bullets tore Domingues and a Cowboy known only as Colt—grabbed their into the riders’ horses, killing both mounts. Martin and Turner guns, saddled up and galloped off in pursuit. The possemen jumped free, but before they could get their guns into action, tracked their quarry 60 miles southeast into New Mexico’s a bullet struck Martin in the head, killing him instantly. Turner Animas Mountains. They caught up with the rival Cowboys scampered for cover. He spotted the attackers’ horses picketed near the Downing ranch, where a blistering gun battle erupted. up the trail. Hoping to gain his escape by shooting their mounts, Outnumbered and outgunned, Smith, Stiles, King and Leonard he opened fire but only managed to kill one animal. The four bolted, leaving behind Turner’s animals and eight other horses assassins kept up a hot fire, forcing Turner to hunker down in the they had stolen from the mining town of Shakespeare, New rocks. As darkness fell, he slipped away and walked the 10 miles Mexico Territory. The posse then rode back to Turner’s ranch back to his ranch. “It was a close call,” a reporter noted days later, with the recovered stock. “as there were several bullet holes through his clothes.” Vowing revenge, Leonard and his fellow Cowboys circled back At daybreak Turner, accompanied by a band of loyal Cowand shadowed their pursuers to Turner’s ranch, watching them boys, returned to Granite Gap with a wagon. Loading Martin’s from a distance through a field glass. Finally, they saw Martin and body aboard, they brought it back to Turner’s ranch and buried Turner start from the ranch with a remuda of horses. Following, the Cowboy leader. But their rivals weren’t finished. The murLeonard and the others bided their time. Meanwhile, Martin derous foursome soon arrived at the ranch, seeking to make off and Turner, in an uncharacteristic display of honesty, rode the with more stock. Turner and his men drove them away with rifle 35 miles northeast to Shakespeare and returned the eight stolen fire and went in pursuit, but Smith, Stiles, King and Leonard horses to their rightful owner. On November 27 they mounted up vanished. Turner’s men found nothing but their abandoned and rode back toward Turner’s ranch. By then the duo had been camp in the hills. On November 29 Turner telegraphed Sheriff almost continuously in the saddle for four days. Their enemies Harvey Whitehill in Silver City. “Myself and Bob Martin were
LEFT: JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION (2); FAR LEFT: PAUL L. JOHNSON COLLECTION (2)
FRANK McLAURY
TOM McLAURY
CHARLIE SHIBELL
r ande
Rio G
Ch ir Mticahua n s.
on im ley l
TOP IMAGES: JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION (3); MAP BY JOAN PENNINGTON
A Quiet Day in Tombstone
This photo was taken in 1879, two years before the the Cowboys and the Earps met head to head in deadly fashion.
boyish mustache, otherwise almost beardless… small, sharp and very effeminate features…chews tobacco incessantly; speaks good Spanish; good shot with rifle and pistol.” One Tombstone pioneer recalled Leonard as “the toughest nut that ever carried a gun. He wasn’t originally a cowboy; had very little experience at it. He was Their ambush killing of Cowboy leader Martin greatly a jeweler from New York City, a highemboldened Leonard and King. The former had perhaps the class workman. He had consumption, most unusual background of all the Cowboys. Billy Leonard knew he had to die and really would hailed from New York and was trained as a watchmaker, gunhave preferred being killed.” smith and jeweler, a trade that came in handy whenever On the night of March 15, 1881, the Cowboys had to melt down stolen gold and silver. A Leonard, King and fellow Cowmorphine addict whose left arm was heavily scarred from boys Harry Head and Jim Crane needle marks, he’d made Doc Holliday’s acquaintance in set up an ambush at a dry wash near Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory. Charged with shooting a Drew’s Station, on the stage road man and carrying deadly weapons, Leonard fled Las Vegas 16 miles northwest of Tombstone. and drifted south to the New Mexico bootheel, where he filed PETE SPENCE They planned on holding up a stagea claim on government grazing land. There he met Martin and coach transporting a half-dozen passenother prominent Cowboys. According to lawman Paul, Leonard was gers and $26,000 in gold bullion. Unknown to about 30 years old, 5-foot-8 and weighed just 120 pounds, with “long, dark, curly hair, when cared for hanging in ringlets down to shoulders; small, dark, them, the shipment was guarded by Paul, who was working for Wells Fargo while awaiting a decision in his election lawsuit against Sheriff Shibell. As the Cowboy Country coach entered the wash, Paul spotted the four rifleNEW MEXICO bearing outlaws paired up atop 10-foot-high emARIZONA TERRITORY bankments on either side of the road. A full moon TERRITORY Lincoln lit the scene, and Paul recognized Leonard. JumpGlobe ing into the road from Paul’s right, another of the Dripping Springs Florence Cowboys shouted, “Hold!” San Silver City Va S “I don’t hold for anybody!” thundered the Wells Las Cruces Fargo man. Shakespeare Tucson Whe Granite Gap Cowboys on either side simultaneously opened Mttston Galeyville Cottonwood Spring ns. El Paso fire with their Winchesters, while Paul jerked his Tombstone Animas Mtns. U ME .S. shotgun to his shoulder and triggered both barrels. TEXAS Camp Rucker Charleston XIC O Bisbee Buckshot ripped into Leonard’s belly, staggering 0 50 100 200 miles him in pain. His fellow Cowboys continued to rain gunfire into the stage. One bullet plowed through e
LEFT: JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION (2); FAR LEFT: PAUL L. JOHNSON COLLECTION (2)
waylaid on Friday by four horse thieves, and Martin killed,” he wrote. “If possible, send out four men to protect life and property. I will give $1,000 for the apprehension of these murderers.” The irony of a Cowboy seeking aid from the law was lost on Sheriff Whitehill, who had previously befriended both Kinney and Brocius and allowed Martin to go about unmolested in Silver City. He sent his fast-shooting deputy, Dan Tucker, to investigate. “Tucker is now at the San Simon looking after these pets,” a Silver City newspaperman reported tongue in cheek. But the deputy couldn’t find Leonard, King, Stiles and Smith.
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Paul’s seat cushion, and two more tore his clothing. Another rifle slug slammed into driver Bud Philpott’s left arm above the elbow. Splintering the bone, it passed through Philpott’s arm, entered his left side through the ribs, cut the aorta and severed his spinal column. Paul grabbed for the slumping reinsman with one hand, but Philpott tumbled over the footboard, dropped between the wheelhorses and landed heavily on the road. He was dead. Crazed by gunfire, the team broke into a run. The spiteful Cowboys, seeing their loot rolling away, riddled the departing stage with 20 rifle bullets, mortally wounding passenger Peter Roerig, who sat exposed in the rear dickey seat atop the coach. Meanwhile, the reins had slipped down out of Paul’s reach, and the out-of-control stage thundered past Drew’s Station. Thinking quick, he yanked on the brake, finally bringing the runaway team to a halt a mile farther down the road. This deadly attempted holdup proved the turning point that brought the Earp brothers into direct conflict with both the Cowboys and Cochise Arrest the Murderers!
In March 1881 Wells Fargo Special Officer Bob Paul posted this wanted notice for the arrest of the men who ambused his stagecoach and killed Bud Philpott and Peter Roerig.
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Cowboys in Arizona Territory. On the night of July 21 he, Sherman McMaster (a former Texas Ranger) and a third desperado stole six U.S. Army mules from Camp Rucker, a cavalry post in the southwest foothills of the Chiricahua Mountains. Deputy U.S. Marshal Virgil Earp investigated the theft and concluded the rustlers had taken the mules to the McLaury ranch near Charleston. Though unable to recover the animals, Marshal Earp was certain Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton had participated in the rustling operation. That accusation sparked the initial conflict between the Earps and the Cowboys. On the night of Feb. 16, 1881, Diehl and McMaster stationed themselves on the stage road near Dripping Springs, between Globe and Florence, an isolated spot some 80 miles north of Tucson. At 11 p.m. the masked pair stopped the stage from Globe and demanded the mail pouches and Wells Fargo strongbox. But that didn’t satisfy them. According to a newspaper account, the robbers accosted one of the passengers, an ailing Illinois man who wore a “liver pad,” a medicated plaster,
strapped to his torso. “[They] hurled him to the ground,” the paper reported, “and regardless of his agonizing cries, tore off his liver pad and left him to perish.” Authorities later captured Diehl and jailed him in Tucson. But the case against him didn’t stick, and he was freed. On Jan. 6, 1882, Diehl and two other Cowboys stopped the stage from Tombstone to Bisbee, opening fire on Wells Fargo shotgun messenger Charles Bartholomew and wounding one of the horses. As Bartholomew and his passengers scurried for cover, the outlaws broke open the strongbox and fled with $6,500 in gold coin. Weeks later, on March 24, Wyatt Earp had a deadly encounter with Curly Bill Brocius and fellow Cowboys at Cottonwood Spring, at the southern base of Arizona’s Whetstone Mountains. In a pitched gun battle Earp shot and killed Brocius. Earp and friend Doc Holliday later insisted Diehl had been one of the Cowboys involved in the shootout. Following the killing of Brocius, Diehl had enough sense to flee back to New Mexico Territory, where he rejoined his rustling comrade Kinney. The Kinney
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TOP: ARIZONA STATE LIBRARY; RIGHT: ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Pony Diehl achieved infamy as one of the more notorious Cowboys in Arizona Territory. Born circa 1848, he claimed his true name was Charles T. Ray and that he hailed from Rock Island, Ill. Diehl became a prominent member of John Kinney’s New Mexico Territory rustling outfit. Pony first came into prominence in the wee hours of New Year’s Day 1876, when he, Kinney, Jesse Evans and Jim McDaniels were celebrating in a dancehall in Las Cruces. Also present were 8th Cavalry troopers from nearby Fort Selden. A drunken brawl broke out in which Kinney was battered and one trooper beaten so badly that he died a few days later. After tossing Kinney and cohorts from the cantina, the troopers went back inside to celebrate. The humiliated outlaws then resorted to gunplay. Leveling their six-shooters through the cantina doors and windows, Diehl, Kinney, Evans and McDaniels opened fire, killing one soldier and a Mexican civilian and badly wounding three other troopers. An inquest was held, but Diehl and the others weren’t charged. By 1880 Diehl, like many members of Kinney’s gang, was riding with the
JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION
NOT SUCH A GOOD DIEHL
TOP: ARIZONA STATE LIBRARY; RIGHT: ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION
County Sheriff Behan. In its aftermath Wyatt sought to strike a secret bargain with Ike Clanton, in which Clanton would lure the wanted men out of hiding so Earp could capture or kill them. Though eager to claim the reward, Ike knew the Cowboys wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if word of the plan leaked out. That episode spawned a series of events leading to the gunfight in the vacant lot behind the O.K. Corral. From November 1878 to that fateful day in October 1881 the Cowboys—from Martin to Brocius to Ike and Billy ClanIkeCLANTON Clanton IKE ton and Tom and Frank McLaury—had run rampant along the border, bullying, raiding, smuggling and robbing. They killed anyone who dared oppose them. The only time they had faced deadly force was when they fought fellow Cowboys or battled Mexican troopers and vaqueros. They showered Tombstone and its fellow mining towns of Charleston and Galeyville with
gang subsequently shipped hundreds of head of stolen cattle to Diehl in El Paso, Texas. Diehl (known in the border town as Charley Ray) then sold the cattle to local butchers and livestock brokers, with no questions asked. Having had enough, in January 1883 New Mexico Governor Lionel Allen Sheldon ordered the territorial militia into the field to crush Kinney’s operation. They soon captured the “King of the Rustlers,” who was convicted of cattle theft and sentenced to five years in prison. During the trial the freight agent for the Santa Fe Railroad produced a bill of lading which showed that on January 22 Charles Ray of El Paso had received a carload of cattle shipped from New Mexico Territory by Kinney. Authorities promptly issued an arrest warrant for Ray/Diehl, who fled across the border into Mexico. New Mexico Territory cattlemen pooled their money to fund a manhunt, and in June Mexican officials captured the notorious Cowboy and jailed him in Chihuahua. Extradited to the United States, Diehl soon found himself behind bars in Las Cruces. “The importance of this arrest can hardly be overestimated in view of the man’s thorough bad character, his
stolen loot and cattle. They befriended many merchants and even lawmen like Behan. But all that changed in Tombstone on Oct. 26, 1881, when a band of Cowboys faced four hard-nosed opponents who had “smelt powder” and weren’t afraid of a fight. California author John Boessenecker is the awardwinning author of 10 history books and a frequent contributor to Wild West. His 2020 book Ride the Devil’s Herd: Wyatt Earp’s Epic Battle Against the West’s Biggest Outlaw Gang is recommended for further reading, along with A Wyatt Earp Anthology: Long May His Story Be Told and related books Boessenecker lists in Reviews (P. 82).
long career of crime and his association with the leading criminals of southern New Mexico,” one local paper noted. The case came to trial 10 months later, in April 1884. Diehl testified in his own defense. Insisting his name was Charles Ray, he declined to share any further personal details and refused to say just how he’d acquired the stolen cattle. Convicted of rustling, he was sentenced to five years in the territorial prison at Santa Fe. He had no intention of serving out his term. On Feb. 20, 1885, while at work in the rock quarry, Diehl and three fellow prisoners overpowered a pair of guards, took away their guns and fled into the mountains. Their freedom was shortlived, for within two weeks officers had recaptured all four men and returned them to prison. Two years later Diehl informed the warden someone had tried to saw off a bar to a window in the prison kitchen. Learning of the incident, Territorial Governor Edmund G. Ross found that Diehl had rendered “a service in behalf of the safety and good government of a
Pony Diehl
PONY DIEHL
penal institution that is invariably rewarded by executive recognition in commutation or pardon.” On March 14, 1887, the pardoned Cowboy strolled out of prison. A Las Cruces newspaper editor decried the release of “this notorious horse and cattle thief, stage robber and murderer and one of the Kinney gang” and called for him to be returned to Arizona Territory to stand trial for his various crimes there. But authorities in Arizona were never notified of Dieh’s release. Meanwhile, Pony Diehl disappeared. His fate remains unknown. —J.B. OCTOBER 2020
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A Real/Reel Pioneer
Oscar Micheaux broke ground in rural South Dakota, which he wrote about in his first book (opposite) and put on film as a Hollywood director.
FROM THE GROUND UP
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux parlayed his experiences as a pioneering South Dakota homesteader to become the father of black American cinema By Aaron Robert Woodard 50 WILD WEST
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he greatest period of immigration in the nation’s history was arguably in the latter half of the 19th century. While many of the Europeans who flooded to the United States during those decades settled on the Eastern seaboard, others ventured farther west, consumed with the idea of owning land—something that had been almost impossible in their native countries. Not every westbound emigrant was a recent immigrant, of course. Black Americans, whose ancestors had been forced to North America during the colonial era, were also seeking new opportunities. After the Civil War some freed slaves stayed in the South through Reconstruction, and some went north to find work in such expanding industrial centers as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and New York. Still others believed their best chance at “liberty and the pursuit of happiness” lay west of the Mississippi River. They could not or would not remain in the regions where their ancestors had experienced such horrendous treatment. Though freed slaves began migrating west in the decade following the war, the exodus didn’t really pick up until informal passage of the Compromise of 1877, which marked the end of Reconstruction and removed federal protection for blacks in the South. That year a group of former slaves migrated to Kansas and settled Nicodemus, the first all-black community west of the Mississippi. Two years later racial oppression and injustices by such white supremacist organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, as well as Democratic state and local governments across the South, triggered the Exodus of 1879. In that first westward mass migration of “Exodusters” (a reference to the biblical Exodus of the ancient Israelites) blacks migrated
to not only Kansas but also Colorado and Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Kansas tallied some 17,000 black residents in 1870, a population that rose to more than 43,000 within a decade. While it may have fallen short of the Promised Land, Kansas beat anything they’d left behind. Fewer blacks migrated to the northern Great Plains states and territories. In the late 1860s some 20 former slaves settled near the town of Moorhead, Iowa, in Monona County (near the shared border with Nebraska and South Dakota). Initially they worked as hired hands for white landowner Adam Miers and his black wife, Mariah. The 1880 federal census recorded 88 black residents in Monona County, though by 1900 there were still only 325 black farm families in all of Iowa. In 1882 brothers Benjamin and Patrick Blair traveled from Illinois to Sully County in what by decade’s end would become the state of South Dakota. There they established a ranch that became the nucleus of what was known as the Sully County Colored Colony or Blair Colony. It boasted as many as 200 members, though many families left during the hard times of the 1930s. Another black homesteader who emigrated from Illinois to South Dakota went on to do far more in his life than simply “cut the sod.” Oscar Devereaux Micheaux moved to Gregory County in the early 20th century, and he later published The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer, the first of seven novels he would pen. But he truly shined in the new medium of film, between 1919 and ’48 directing and producing at least 45 silent and sound pictures (fewer than 15 survive). As the most successful black filmmaker of the early 20th century, Micheaux earned his mantle as the father of black American cinema. OCTOBER 2020
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Originally published anonymously in 1913, The Conquest captures the hopes and struggles of a black homesteader named Oscar Devereaux.
The fifth of Calvin and Belle Michaux’s 13 children, Oscar was born on a farm near Metropolis, Ill., on Jan. 2, 1884. (Young Michaux later added an “e” to his surname to make it appear more French in origin.) While Oscar was born a freeman, father Calvin had been a slave in Kentucky, possibly owned by one of the French settlers who moved to the region after the Revolutionary War in search of land and opportunity beyond the Alleghenies. Most of what is known about Micheaux’s childhood comes from his autobiographical works and was somewhat fictionalized. He received some schooling in Metropolis, read avidly and was intrigued by the self-help teachings of the esteemed black educator Booker T. Washington. The large family had its share of financial problems, and Oscar exhibited a rebellious streak. Calvin eventually secured some sort of marketing position for his discontented son in Metropolis. Enjoying that kind of work far better than farm labor, Oscar developed social skills and made personal contacts that would serve him well later in life. 52 WILD WEST
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OPPOSITE PAGE: MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK; TOP LEFT: EVERETT COLLECTION INC./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; TOP RIGHT: NORMAN STUDIOS
Hail, the Conquering Homesteader!
A Star Is Born At age 17 Micheaux moved to Chicago to live baritone singer with a brother who worked as a waiter. Oscar andBass actor Paul Robeson soon found his own apartment and held down made his screen debut in Oscar Micheaux’s a variety of jobs, including unpleasant, back(ironically) silent 1925 breaking ones in Chicago’s stockyards and steel race film Body and Soul. mills. Such dead-end work apparently convinced him to try his hand at being a modest entrepreneur. Opening a shoeshine stand in a well-to-do area of black Chicago, he began to polish not only shoe leather but also his business acumen. He then worked for three years as a Pullman porter, a prestige position for blacks by the turn of the 20th century. In his travels he further expanded his horizons and encountered many types of people, including plenty of wealthy whites. He wisely set aside enough of his own tip money for future ventures. Micheaux never explained what motivated him to abandon the urban life and try his hand at homesteading. Perhaps his experiences in roughand-tumble 1890s Chicago had turned him against cities, or maybe he had been intrigued by the countryside he’d watched from train windows while working for Pullman. In any case, around 1904 he moved to south-central South Dakota, settling near the newly platted town of Gregory in the namesake county. That May, with the Sioux relegated to reservations, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the opening of western Gregory County for settlement. On July 28 the government began registering homesteaders for 2,400 quarter sections of 160 acres each. Whether Micheaux obtained his land then is uncertain, but at some point he registered as a homesteader and began working to improve his claim. Accounts differ regarding his success as a farmer. In his autobiographical novel The Conquest, which portrays the hopes and struggles of black homesteader Oscar Devereaux, Micheaux writes that by the time he turned 24 he was worth $20,000, and that by 1910 he’d expanded his holdings to more than 500 acres. Contemporary sources tell a different tale. They cite a different year for his arrival, 1905 (by that June the town of Gregory had 500 residents), and they reveal a financial struggle, including successive bank foreclosures between 1912 and ’14. His marriage also suffered. In 1910 Micheaux married Orlean McCracken, the Chicago-born daughter of a black preacher who apparently
First Feature-length Talkie
disapproved of her chosen husband. Orlean herself grew unhappy with her lonely life on a South Dakota homestead. Making matters worse, while Oscar was away on business, she delivered a stillborn son. Orlean returned to Chicago soon after that. Some sources claim she emptied Micheaux’s bank account before her departure, which might explain his subsequent financial difficulties. Almost all of Micheaux’s Gregory County neighbors were white immigrants of the lower and middle classes. He apparently kept his distance from them (before and after his short-lived marriage), instead focusing on his farm work and a new passion—writing. He began submitting articles and was soon getting published in The Chicago Defender, a newspaper founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott primarily for black American readers. In his articles Micheaux urged urban blacks to follow his example, move away from the crowded cityscapes and reinvent themselves out West as pioneers and landowners. In 1913 Micheaux published The Conquest. Why he did so anonymously is uncertain. Perhaps he feared if his race was known, sales would suffer. The pioneer life of Oscar Devereaux was clearly based on his own experiences as a South Dakota homesteader. The Conquest outlines the author’s views on black upward mobility, its title alone underscoring Micheaux’s self-confidence. Arguing that urban blacks were mired in a culture of self-victimization, he gave little credence to the concept of institutional racism impeding blacks from success. The novel emphasizes his belief that blacks who came west could establish themselves and succeed economically, while those who remained frozen in place were, in effect, simply lazy. Micheaux’ reasoning and theory mirrored that of famed Western historian Frederick Jackson Turner, who in his essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” argued The Jump Into Film that American men and women in general In 1917 he self-published could successfully reinvent themselves on The Homesteader, and the the Western frontier, where established social movie version premiered in Chicago two years later. conventions and classes did not exist. Turner
OPPOSITE PAGE: MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK; TOP LEFT: EVERETT COLLECTION INC./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; TOP RIGHT: NORMAN STUDIOS
Micheaux’s 1931 film The Exile, was adapted from his first novel, The Conquest. Throughout his film career the self-taught director gave black perspectives and racial slants to familiar Hollywood scripts.
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Stamp of Approval
Micheaux followed for the next 30 years,” critic Richard Gehr wrote in American Film magazine. “He’d shoot a film in the spring and summer, edit it in the fall, then travel with a driver throughout the Northeast, South and East, where he would show stills of his stars to ghetto theater owners.” Micheaux targeted black audiences with his “race films,” which dealt with such touchy subjects as interracial love, racial prejudice, church corruption and lying. Early playwrights and filmmakers often ascribed the worst racial stereotypes to black Americans. Notably, in his 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation acclaimed director D.W. Griffith portrayed blacks (played by white actors) as ignorant, sexually aggressive dependents. Contrast that with Micheaux’s 1920 film Within Our Gates, his “corrective challenge” to Griffith’s film, in which the director deemed such racial stereotypes hateful and suggested blacks had more to fear from the dominant white society in an era when lynching remained a real threat. The main character in Within Our Gates is a mixed-race schoolteacher who was raised by sharecroppers. The film shows the lynching of the woman’s parents by angry whites who believed her black father had shot his white landlord. By challenging racial stereotypes, Micheaux introduced a black perspective to the powerful new motion picture medium. But the director made movies in all genres, from musicals and romances to Westerns and gangster pictures. “In these films,” movie historian Donald Bogle noted, “black Americans saw themselves incorporated into the national pop mythology, and a new set of archetypes emerged: heroic black men of action. Whether cowboys, detectives or weary Army vets, many of the early characters were walking embodiments of black assertion and aggression, and of course they gave the lie to America’s notions of a Negro’s place.…To appreciate Micheaux’s films one must understand that he was moving as far as possible from Hollywood’s jesters and servants. He wanted to give his audience something to further the race, not hinder it.” Micheaux did draw his share of critics. Some blacks felt he didn’t treat their churches right in
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TOP: AMAZON; RIGHT: NORMAN STUDIOS
On June 22, 2010, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in Oscar Micheaux’s honor as part of its Black Heritage series.
NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
further argued the frontier had largely shaped the national character and was what differentiated Americans from Europeans. Though likely unfamiliar with Turner’s academic work, Micheaux certainly would have agreed with the historian’s thesis. In practice, however, his efforts to encourage fellow blacks to emulate his example and seek independence and self-reliance on the frontier did not bear fruit, though he did persuade his older brother to come west. In 1915 Micheaux published a second novel, The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races, about a racially motivated lynching in Atlanta. But a drought that year made farming difficult, and book sales weren’t enough to save his Gregory County homestead. He moved to Sioux City, Iowa, and started the Western Book Supply Co. to sell his own titles. Micheaux hawked them door to door to white neighbors and businessmen and later traveled the South to pitch his books to black readers, many of whom had likely never met a black author. In 1917 he self-published The Homesteader, whose plotline Micheaux reportedly based on his real-life romance with a white female settler in Gregory County. In this third book, which the author dedicated to his beloved mother, black homesteader Jean Baptiste falls in love with Agnes, the motherless daughter of recent Scot immigrant Jack Stewart. (Unknown to Agnes, she is of mixed-race ancestry.) As their forbidden romance (interracial marriage was almost unheard of at the time and remained illegal in many states) appears doomed, Jean leaves and later marries another woman. When that marriage ultimately unravels, Baptiste returns to his Dakota homestead to find Agnes still waiting for him. She has since learned the truth of her heritage, and they are free to marry. Though Micheaux reportedly abandoned his real-life forbidden love, he touched on the theme in several of his books and films. Brothers George and Noble Johnson, cofounders of the black-owned Lincoln Motion Picture Co. in Los Angeles, read The Homesteader and approached Micheaux about making a movie based on it. When the Johnsons refused to allow Micheaux to direct the film, the author decided to produce it himself. He reorganized his Western Book Supply Co. as the Micheaux Film & Book Co. (later Micheaux Pictures Corp.) in Chicago. To finance the film project, he sold company stock at up to $100 a share to those who bought his novels as well as white farmers and businessman back in Sioux City, where he maintained an office. In 1918 the pioneering black filmmaker began shooting The Homesteader in Chicago. Traveling to theaters in black neighborhoods across the Midwest, he then persuaded owners to show the eight-reeler, the first featurelength motion picture made by a black American and among the first “indie” films. A half-page ad in The Chicago Defender hailed The Homesteader as the “greatest of all race productions” and grandiosely implored theatergoers to go see it “as an appreciation of those finer arts which no race can ignore and hope to obtain a higher plain of thought and action.” On Feb. 20, 1919, the movie premiered in Chicago. Micheaux cobbled together enough capital to support the ongoing production of his independent pictures. To maximize his scarce dollars he used unpaid black actors, rarely shot more than one take per scene and reused generic footage in subsequent films. “Thus began a pattern
My results might have been narrow at times, due perhaps to certain limited situations which I endeavored to portray, but in those limited situations the truth was the predominate characteristic. It is only by presenting those portions of the race portrayed in my pictures, in the light and background of their true state, that we can raise our people to greater heights. I am too imbued with the spirit of Booker T. Washington to engraft false virtues upon ourselves, to make ourselves that which we are not.
In 1926 Micheaux remarried, wedding actress Alice Burton Russell (1889–1985), who had roles in almost all her husband’s films. Despite a bankruptcy filing in the lead-up to the Great Depression, the filmmaker continued to make movies right up until his March 25, 1951, death of heart failure. Micheaux was buried alongside his parents and siblings at Kansas’ Great Bend Cemetery. The epitaph on his headstone aptly memorializes him as “a man ahead of his time.” A 2014 documentary, The Czar of Black Hollywood, chronicles Micheaux’s early life and career, his roots as a writer and filmmaker firmly anchored in his homesteading experiences on the South Dakota prairie. Having chronicled his personal challenges as a black man in a frontier community, Micheaux adapted that material in a new medium to appeal to a far broader audience in the more settled Midwest and East.
Countering D.W. Griffith
TOP: AMAZON; RIGHT: NORMAN STUDIOS
NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
Micheaux’s 1920 film about a mixed-race schoolteacher was his answer to the ugly portrayals of blacks in The Birth of a Nation.
The Homesteader. Others objected to Micheaux’s staunch personal philosophical theme, favoring blacks who migrated westward to achieve success over those who remained in poor rural or urban settings. A general criticism of his pictures was that he cast light-skinned black Americans as the leads and darker actors as the bad guys. “The themes of interracial love, wrongful accusation and racial prejudice—both white vs. black and light-skinned vs. dark-skinned blacks —repeat themselves with an obsessiveness verging on compulsion,” critic Gehr noted. “[He] was profoundly ambivalent about his race… and this love-hate relationship expressed itself in all his work.” Ironically, Micheaux managed to turn controversy about his films into box office revenues by advertising critiques that a film was “scandalous” or “forbidden” as an incentive for filmgoers to see his production. His work appealed to wide swaths of middle- and lower-class moviegoers, those who frequented the theaters even when money was tight for an “escapist” experience. Michaux assessed his own work this way:
Aaron Robert Woodard, an instructor at the University of South Dakota in Sioux Falls, wrote the 2018 book The Revenger: The Life and Times of Wild Bill Hickok and the feature “The Coward Who Shot Wild Bill” in the August 2019 Wild West. For further reading he suggests The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer, The Homesteader and the other five novels written by Oscar Micheaux; Oscar Micheaux: Dakota Homesteader, Author, Pioneer Film Maker, by Betti Carol VanEpps-Taylor; and The Life and Work of Oscar Micheaux, by Earl James Young Jr.
Walk of Fame
In 1987 Micheaux became the first black director to be honored with a star on the famed Hollywood Boulevard landmark.
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Last Shot in Tombstone
One of Wyatt Earp’s brothers was gunned down while playing pool, as depicted in Kim Frank Fujiwara’s oil painting Morgan’s Last Game. It happened in the Campbell & Hatch saloon and billiard parlor (see inset) on March 18, 1882. 56 WILD WEST
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TWO OTHER MANLY WESTERN PLEASURES Alongside the more notorious Old West amusements, billiards and bowling captured men’s attention and money By Richard Selcer
W
hen we think of manly Western pleasures, we tend to think of dance halls, barrooms and gambling joints. Oftentimes these all resided under the same roof. Then, of course, there were the “ladies of the line,” good-time girls providing another type of pleasure—for a price. There were also church socials, though few trail hands headed for the nearest chapel when they hit town. For sporting types the most familiar games of chance were faro, keno and poker, played atop beer-stained tables in smoky saloons. All involved a modicum of skill, from high (poker) to practically nil (keno). Virtually absent from mention in the history books are two other popular pastimes indulged in by Western gents—billiards and bowling. Billiards has somewhat more historical resonance out West, mainly due to its tragic connection to the Earp brothers (see related story, P. 38). On March 18, 1882, Morgan Earp was shot and killed from ambush while “addressing the ball” at the Campbell & Hatch saloon and billiard parlor on Allen Street in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Brother Wyatt narrowly missed being hit by the same fusillade. The assassination came in the aftermath of the infamous Oct. 26, 1881, shootout near the O.K. Corral, and it prompted Wyatt’s legendary “Vendetta Ride” targeting the killers and their pals. LEFT: MORGAN’S LAST GAME, BY KIM FUJIWARA; ABOVE: ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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In his 1850 book New York by Gas-Light author George Foster noted that the city abounded with tenpin alleys and billiard rooms 58 WILD WEST
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TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RIGHT: ANAHEIM PUBLIC LIBRARY
one’s fellows. Two-bit saloons in countless frontier towns had at least one pool table, definitely not of tournament quality. In the roughest locales “shooting pool” could take on a literal meaning, as after a few drinks boisterous cowboys were wont to shoot balls from the table with their six-guns. It proved such a popular pastime that it even had a name: “pistol pool.” Naturally, management frowned on this kind of abuse of their tables. Bowling, or tenpin—first brought to New York by the Dutch in the 17th century—came West about the same time as billiards. Though it was originally a lawn game, by the mid– 19th century bowling had moved indoors and acquired a coarse, working-class reputation. Some states even sought to ban the game as immoral due to its close association with drinking and disreputable establishments, which only made it more popular. Like other games in their formative years, bowling took on countless variations. From town to town and saloon to saloon the house rules applied. The first set of standardized rules appeared after the Civil War in New York City. In 1895 clubs there established the American Bowling Congress to bring order and (hopefully) respectability to the game. Long before then the wealthy were installing private bowling alleys in their mansions, much as they put in tennis courts and swimming pools. On the Fourth of July 1870 President Ulysses S. Grant tried his hand at bowling during a visit to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry C. Bowen of Woodstock, Conn. He reportedly bowled a strike, though that could just be a story spread by the president’s friends. The fancier saloons out West installed bowling alleys to cash in on the game’s appeal as a gamblers’ sport. While billiards and bowling each had a males-only public image, of the two billiards had the far more unsavory reputation. In most towns billiard halls had to be licensed, and temperance societies required pledging members to “stay out of barrooms, gambling salons, billiard halls and houses of ill fame.” Bowling alleys apparently escaped such scrutiny.
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Billiards was a British import dating from the colonial era. The American version used four balls, including the cue ball, on a large four-pocket table. Players scored points by pocketing balls or caroming the cue ball off two or more balls. The first known significant stake match was held in Detroit’s Fireman’s Hall in 1859—hardly a front-page event. Equipment evolved over the years. The balls were made of rare ivory through 1869, the year nitrocellulose (aka guncotton) balls were introduced. Until JIM COURTRIGHT properly coated, such balls had a tendency to explode when struck. One Colorado bartender complained to the manufacturer that whenever a billiard ball burst, “every man in the room pulled his gun.” Two-piece maple cue sticks appeared in the 1830s, and by the 1870s modern 15-ball pool had developed into a game for traveling professionals who took on all challengers using their own custom-made cues. The game became known as pool when billiards became a high-stakes betting game. “Pool” referred to the ante, and the poolroom was originally a betting parlor for horse racing. Proprietors installed billiard tables in such rooms so patrons could pass the time while awaiting race results, and eventually the term “poolroom” became exclusively associated with the game, an unsavory connection to be sure. The rapid spread of pool led to the first U.S. championship in 1878. The rules and nomenclature of the new game also evolved over time, some players using the term “billiards” to refer only to carom games and “pool” strictly for pocket games. Eight-ball arrived around the turn of the 20th century, followed by straight pool and nine-ball. Pistol Pool, Anyone? Pool’s popularity lay in its appeal as In the Wild West more boisterous a game of chance that could be played saloongoers sometimes shot balls with six-guns instead of cue sticks. while doing some serious drinking with
TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RIGHT: ANAHEIM PUBLIC LIBRARY
FROM TOP: RICHARD SELCER COLLECTION; EBAY; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
under the guise of saloons and lunchrooms. The games went on 24 hours a day, with “sharps” regularly cleaning out the “pigeons.” Foster touted billiards as an “elegant and fascinating” amusement requiring “some quietness and refinement of taste for its enjoyment,” while he regarded bowling as “much more generally popular…as everybody can appreciate it.” That was 1850. It didn’t take long for both games to travel West. By the onset of the Civil War frontier Army posts had both billiard rooms and bowling salons for the benefit of officers. In prewar Houston Irish-born entrepreneur Dick Dowling, the legendary Confederate hero of Sabine Pass in 1863, ran a billiard saloon, The Weekly Telegraph deeming it “the best in the state.” Several notable Westerners were aficionados of billiards, bowling or both. When Judge Roy Bean, aka “The Law West of the Pecos,” served as justice of the peace in Langtry, Texas, beginning in the 1880s, he ran his courtroom out of a saloon with an attached billiard hall. Wild Bill Hickock was reputedly as formidable shooting billiards as he was shooting his twin Colt Navy six-shooters. Likewise, Jim Courtright and the Earp brothers enjoyed a game or three of billiards on occasion. Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan of Wild Bunch fame was an avid pool shooter who liked to imbibe apricot brandy while he played. As improbable as it may seem, John Wesley Hardin, perhaps the deadliest gunfighter in Texas history, was something of a bowler. By the 1870s Fort Worth, Texas, a typical Western town of roughly 5,000 residents, offered a variety of amusements for its cowboys and other manly types. It welcomed its first bowling alley in 1875, a year before the railroad arrived and at a time when neighboring rival Dallas was sneering that Fort Worth was so dead, someone saw a panther sleeping in the street. By 1878 Fort Worth, by then a terminus on the Texas & Pacific Railway, boasted 32 saloons, three billiard parlors, two bowling alleys and a theater comique. The Pacific and Trinity saloons each offered billiards, as did the El Paso, Fort Worth’s only first-class hotel at that time. The Trinity took out newspaper ads claiming it had the “finest tables”
Respectable Pastime?
Westerners debated whether bowling was “wholesome” for men, let alone women.
in town (not really much of a boast, given it only had two competitors). The Bismarck saloon likewise bragged about its first-class bowling alley, extolling the benefits of “wholesome exercise,” as opposed to sitting at a card table for hours or standing at the bar with lager in hand. In September 1877 proprietor J. Bohart had the lanes “dressed down and waxed,” leading him to brag they were “the best alleys in Western Texas.” Billiards, unlike bowling, was a moneymaker for the town, as by state law a city could tax the tables much as they taxed taverns and tippling houses; the more tables, the higher the tax. Bowling alleys were not in the same taxable category for reasons clear only to the legislative solons in the state capital. The saloon business was highly competitive, thus establishments promoted any amenity to the heavens. The Pacific and the Trinity were especially proud of their pool tables. The Trinity was fancy by Fort Worth saloon standards, calling itself “a quiet, orderly retreat where gentlemen may indulge in the diversion of billiards or moisten their lips with fluids of the highest purity and finest flavor.” The El Paso Hotel, the terminal for a twice-weekly stagecoach run between Fort Worth and Yuma, Arizona Territory, bragged that its billiard hall was “a favorite resort for all who enjoy the game,” who while playing could imbibe “the best and purest imported and domestic liquors, wines and summer drinks.” One December 1881 news item described a typical evening in the hotel’s billiard room as a “scene of hilarity and jollity.” When the celebrated White Elephant opened in 1884, it billed itself as a saloon and billiard parlor with “some 10 or a dozen [tables]…of the latest improved and also beautiful design.” The growing popularity of billiards led inevitably to contests of skill with purses and side bets. In October 1876 promoters staged a match in Dallas between Galveston champion George Stone and Denison cham-
Tables All Set
Chilie’s Place in Anaheim, Calif., was a popular spot to shoot pool in the early 20th century.
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In the wake of the Stone-Liverman match, whose generous purse and lively side bets stirred a growing interest in billiards among professional gamblers, the state clamped down on the game. The following year the Texas Legislature made playing pool “a violation of the gaming laws.” Fort Worth Marshal Jim Courtright was among the first arrested under the new statute. The chief black mark against billiards was that, like cards, it provoked violence among inebriated, testosterone-charged, habitually armed men. The more the game spread, the more inci60 WILD WEST
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TOP: JOANNA KALAFATIS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; RIGHT: CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY
pion Harry Liverman for the “championship of the State of Texas.” Billed as “the finest match game ever played west of the Mississippi Valley” and offering a purse of $500, it had all the attendant hoopla usually reserved for a big prizefight or horse race. Advertised statewide, it attracted scores of onlookers, each of whom paid 50 cents for admission to Lively Hall. (Ladies accompanied by a gentleman were admitted free.) The play commenced at 8 p.m. and ended at 11:15 when the winning player reached 500 points. Liverman “played a fine table game,” reported the morning papers, but Stone was unbeatable. Never before in the Lone Star State had the game of billiards been so newsworthy. Fort Worth’s Pacific saloon was soon holding nightly pool and billiard matches with $10 purses. It did wonders for business.
RICHARD SELCER COLLECTION (2)
JEFFERSON McLEAN
dents of violences were reported. In Decem- Drink, Smoke and Shoot ber 1877 the Fort Worth papers reported on This Fort Worth saloon also boasted a tobacco stand a murder in a billiard hall in nearby Ar- and pool tables out back. lington. It seemed one John Tomlin and a man by the name of Weaver had a difference of opinion over a game. Bad language led to fisticuffs, whereupon a friend of Weaver’s joined in and cut Tomlin’s neck from ear to ear. Everyone said what a nice fellow Tomlin had been and what a tragedy his death was, but the killer was never brought to justice. In September 1878 in Omaha, Neb., a dispute between gambler James Burke and Texas cattleman Morris Weil over a pool game debt ended with Burke shooting Weil dead. That acquaintances described the cattleman as “overbearing and disagreeable” did not change the fact he’d been shot over a mere game. Legendary Texas Ranger Jeff Milton resigned in 1883 to open a saloon and poolroom in Murphyville, Texas. An accomplished player himself, Milton was known on occasion to use the business end of his cue stick to lay out self-proclaimed badmen. Bowling also had a mixed reputation. Debate centered over whether it was “wholesome exercise” or just another form of the gambling evil like keno or three-card monte. The state lunatic asylum in Austin, with the blessings of its superintendent, had both billiard tables and a 10-pin lane for the benefit of patients. But the game was also associated with ne’er-do-wells like Billy Sims, a notorious gambler and admitted opium user. Sims was in Fort Worth on Feb. 10, 1877, when he made the acquaintance of Jeff George, a local sport. The two rolled tenpins for $5 a ball before calling it a night. The next day George broke through the door to Sims’ room and attacked him with a knife. The latter managed to grab his pistol and kill his erstwhile friend. Questioned by authorities, Sims couldn’t explain why George had attacked him. Speculation centered on a difference of opinion regarding the results of their bowling. Arguments over the moral standing of billiards even crossed traditional gender lines. Fort Worth’s Daily Democrat of Dec. 26, 1877, speculating on “what makes a woman masculine” as opposed to ladylike, observed that “many very fine ladies play cards and billiards, both being favorite games in many wealthy and refined homes.” By that logic it was one’s surroundings, not the game itself, that determined respectability. Wholesome or not, billiards and pool were frowned upon by Fort Worth’s churchgoing community when played on the Lord’s Day in violation of the city’s Sunday closing law. The ordinance prohibited all commercial activity, excepting the sales of such essentials as food and medicine, on the Sabbath. That said, most Sunday transactions went ignored, but liquor sales and gambling activities were absolutely damnable. The July 28, 1878, edition of The Daily Standard sniffed that “on certain
Ghosts of Games Past
TOP: JOANNA KALAFATIS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; RIGHT: CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY
RICHARD SELCER COLLECTION (2)
The ghost town of Bodie, Calif., holds reminders of its pastimes, including this attractive table.
corners of certain streets” it was considered “genteel to play billiards, poker or faro and to drink freely of wine and lager beer.” The association of billiards with cards and strong drink was alone enough to condemn it every day of the week. In 1893 the Dallas County attorney convinced county commissioners to ban dice games, dominoes and pool tables in any establishment that served liquor, and Sheriff Ben Cabell enforced the ban with a passion. By the turn of the century public sentiment against billiard halls had overwhelmed any wholesome sporting connotation the game once enjoyed. In 1903 the Texas Legislature took up a potential ban of poolrooms that had broad support in both houses. Critics said the bill was about politics, not morality, and if passed would cost the state millions in lost revenue. They further argued pool was a game “where knowledge and study count; it is not a game of chance.” Such opponents managed to sidetrack the bill in 1903, but four years later supporters pushed a similar bill through the 33rd Legislature, and Governor Samuel Lanham signed it into law. Poolrooms were lumped together with other gambling establishments amid public outrage over the shocking murder of Fort Worth County Attorney Jefferson McLean, gunned down on Main Street in front of his wife on March 22, 1907, by the irate proprietor of a gambling hall police had just raided. The state’s new anti-gambling statute was closely associated with the existing “local option” that allowed each town to permit liquor sales or not. Fort Worth and other towns conflated pool playing with liquor sales, leading newspapers to report “knights of the green cloth” were leaving the state in droves for more hospitable locales. Apparently, not all players fled Texas. At least one remained to file a court case testing the constitutionality of the law with regard to poolrooms. The case worked its way to the state Court of Criminal Appeals, with the defendant, a poolroom owner, claiming the statute was “repugnant to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States,” as it denied him “equal protection” and deprived him of his property “without due process of law.” Though the Court of Appeals sided with him and struck down the law, Fort Worth’s fathers doubled down, passing an ordinance that closed pool halls nightly at 9:30 and kept them closed all day Sunday. The coming of Prohibition in 1920 reinvigorated the opposition to pool playing in Texas, emboldening the 36th Legislature to pass a bill shutting them down. Tarrant County Rep. Marvin H. Brown was among those supporting the legislation. He cited the opinion of Fort Worth Police Chief Rufus Porter, who claimed, “Since Prohibition has been
in effect at Fort Worth, open pool halls have become a greater menace than the open saloon.” Such an across-the-board attack of moral conscience is hard to fathom today. Meanwhile, bowling escaped the crackdown. While critics continued to question its wholesomeness, alleys did not have to be licensed unless integral to a saloon or gambling joint. The only restriction on their operation were the Sunday closing laws, which prohibited most forms of public entertainment, even baseball, on the Sabbath. Eventually, as the Bible Belt loosened a few notches and law enforcement turned its attention to illegal drugs and gang violence, both billiards and bowling emerged from their unsavory past. As the 20th century progressed,
A Parlor Fit for Ladies
The Hotel del Coronado in San Diego County offered women a billiards room in the 1890s.
the old Sunday closing laws lapsed, saloons became nightclubs and even churches like First Methodist of Fort Worth installed their own bowling alleys. Texas, it seemed, had become either more tolerant or less moral. Only time would tell. Fort Worth author Richard Selcer is a frequent contributor to Wild West. Much of his information for this article came from contemporary Fort Worth newspapers. To learn more about billiards and bowling, see The Complete Book of Billiards, by Mike Shamos; History of Bowling and Billiards, by Leila C. Dorion; and The History of Bowling, by Mort Luby. OCTOBER 2020
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Whither the Missouri?
The Corps of Discovery puzzles over which fork to take, in David H. Wright‘s oil on panel painting Lewis & Clark—Decision at Marias River, June 1805. The explorers chose the left fork, which was in fact the true Missouri River. The right, or northern, fork was the Marias.
The members of Lewis and Clark’s expedition led varied, interesting lives, but details of their respective deaths and burial sites are mixed By Jim Winnerman 62 WILD WEST
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A
fter spending 862 days (May 14, 1804–September 23, 1806) traveling by boat, foot and horseback more than 8,000 miles to and from the Pacific Ocean under the leadership of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark (who was posthumously promoted to captain in 2001) almost all of the intrepid explorers who composed the Corps of Discovery returned to St. Louis alive and well. Their arrival back in civilization marked the last time those men and one notable woman gathered as a group. As they separated, none could have predicted the diverse paths they would take on their post-expedition journeys through life or where they would eventually rest in death. Sometime between 1825 and ’28 a curious Clark penned a casual accounting of what had happened to his fellow explorers, listing on the front of a ledger the fate of those for whom he had knowledge. Exhaustive research by historians over the intervening years has accounted for the post-expedition lives of most of the corps. Yet today we know where only 14 of the explorers are buried, and in several of those cases we know only the cemetery, not the location of the gravesite. Surprisingly few of the known markers bear inscriptions noting the participation of the decedent in the groundbreaking journey to the Pacific. Following is an accounting of the 14 known burial sites and markers. OCTOBER 2020
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Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809)
In 1807 President Thomas Jefferson, who had commissioned the expedition, appointed Lewis governor of Louisiana Territory, and Congress rewarded both Lewis and Clark with 1,600 acres of land west of the Mississippi River. Lewis, who settled in St. Louis, never married and left no offspring. En route to Washington, D.C., on Oct. 10, 1809, he stopped at an inn named Grinder’s Stand, on the Natchez Trace some 70 miles southwest of Nashville. He died there early the next morning at age 35 from gunshot wounds to his head and abdomen. Many people, including Jefferson, believed he’d killed himself due to depression over his career and personal life, while others, notably his mother, contended he was murdered by either political enemies or robbers. The debate continues over whether it was suicide or murder. Lewis was buried on the property where he died, near Hohenwald, Tenn., and in 1848 state officials erected a monument atop the grave (see photo above). Jefferson is credited with the Latin inscription on Lewis’ tombstone, which translates as, I died young: But thou, O Good Republic, live out my years for me with better fortune. The burial site lies within present-day Meriwether Lewis National Monument, at milepost 385.9 on the Natchez Trace Parkway. Between 1993 and 2010 Lewis family members sought to exhume the body for forensic analysis in hopes of definitively determining the cause of death, but the Department of the Interior ultimately refused their request. 64 WILD WEST
In 1807 President Jefferson appointed Clark brigadier general of the Louisiana Territory militia and U.S. agent for Indian Affairs, and from 1813 to ’20 he served as the fourth governor of the territory (renamed Missouri Territory in 1812). Also settling in St. Louis, Clark married 16-year-old Julia Hancock in 1808, and they had five children. After Julia’s 1820 death Clark married her first cousin, Harriet Kennerly Radford, with whom he had three more children. In 1822 President James Monroe appointed Clark superintendent of Indian Affairs west of the Mississippi, a position he held until his death in St. Louis, at age 68, on Sept. 1, 1838. Clark was buried with Masonic and military honors on the farm of his nephew, Colonel John O’Fallon, just outside St. Louis. The funeral procession was reportedly over a mile long. In October 1860 his remains and those of six family members were moved to a hilltop overlooking the Mississippi in St. Louis’ Bellefontaine Cemetery. In 1904, the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase, Clark’s family had a 35-foot granite obelisk erected atop his grave. At its base is a bust of the explorer (see above), beneath which is inscribed the following epitaph: William Clark—Born in Virginia, August 1, 1770—Entered into life eternal September 1, 1838—Soldier, explorer, statesman and patriot— His life is written in the history of his country.
GRAVE MATTERS Dozens of direct relatives lie at rest around the grave of William Clark in St. Louis’ Bellefontaine Cemetery. Though Bellefontaine is the final resting place of many prominent Americans, cemetery spokesman Daniel Fuller says the explorer’s grave is by far the most visited. “Whenever someone enters and requests the location of a specific person, it is almost always General Clark,” he says. “Usually there is a smattering of coins at the foot of Clark’s statue or tucked into the niches of the sculptures at the site.” Not long ago at the foot of the obelisk Fuller discovered a small handmade white-and-turquoise American Indian bowl filled with ceremonial plant material and four images of Clark. Across the narrow road leading to the gravesite the cemetery has planted a garden of native plant species Clark is known to have collected, dried and preserved in a book he took on the journey. Clarkia onagraceae, related to the evening primrose, is named after him. —J.W.
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OPPOSITE LEFT: SKYE MARTHALER (CC BY-SA 3.0); OPPOSITE RIGHT: JIM WINNERMAN (2); TOP LEFT: CHRIS LIGHT (CC BY-SA); TOP RIGHT: AGEFOTOSTOCK/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; RIGHT: JIM WINNERMAN
William Clark (1770–1838)
OPPOSITE LEFT: SKYE MARTHALER (CC BY-SA 3.0); OPPOSITE RIGHT: JIM WINNERMAN (2); TOP LEFT: CHRIS LIGHT (CC BY-SA); TOP RIGHT: AGEFOTOSTOCK/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; RIGHT: JIM WINNERMAN
William E. Bratton (1778–1841)
Born in Virginia’s Augusta County, Bratton moved to Kentucky with his family around 1790. He apprenticed as a blacksmith as a young man and became a skilled gunsmith and hunter— qualities that made him very useful to the corps. After the expedition he returned to Kentucky for a spell before becoming a keelboat freighter on the Mississippi. In December 1811 he was in New Madrid, Mo., when a series of severe earthquakes struck the region, causing the Missouri to flow upstream for several hours. Three of his keelboats were destroyed, but Bratton survived. He went on to enlist as a private in the Kentucky militia during the War of 1812. He married in 1819, at age 41, and fathered eight sons and two daughters. The family made its home in Waynetown, Ind., which is where he died on Nov. 11, 1841, at age 63. He is buried in Waynetown’s Old Pioneer Cemetery (see above). The humble epitaph on his marker reads, With Lewis and Clark to the Rocky Mountains.
Jean Baptiste “Pomp” Charbonneau (1805–66)
Born to French-Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau and his Shoshone wife Sacagawea in 1805, prior to the corps’ departure from the Mandan villages, Jean Baptiste was toted to the Pacific and back by his intrepid mother. After the frontier journey William Clark assumed guardianship of Jean Baptiste, who in adulthood became a hunter, fur trader, scout and prospector. At age 61 he was headed for the goldfields of Montana Territory when he fell ill (possibly with pneumonia) and died on May 16, 1866, at Inkskip Station (present-day Danner, Ore.). His gravesite there is on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1973 the Oregon Historical Society placed a marker (see above) inscribed in part, This site marks the final resting place of the youngest member of the L ewis and Clark Expedition. Toussaint Charbonneau (c. 1758–1843)
Lewis and Clark employed Sacagawea’s husband as a translator, and after the expedition he did the same for various fur companies. Over the course of his life he had at least five Indian wives. Charbonneau is thought to have died in 1843 and been buried at Fort Mandan (in present-day North Dakota), but details are wanting. Others claim he lies in St. Stephen Cemetery in Richwoods, Mo., 45 miles southwest of St. Louis. A marker there (see at left) reads Toussaint Charbonneau—Born Mar. 1, 1781—Died Feb. 19, 1866. But those dates conflict with ones recorded when his son probated his will in 1843. Most scholars concur this headstone more likely marks the grave of a son, nephew or other relation. OCTOBER 2020
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Charles Floyd (c. 1782–1804)
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Robert Frazer (c. 1775–1837)
Just when and where Virginia-born Frazer joined the Corps of Discovery is unknown. On Oct. 8, 1804, he transferred to the “permanent party” after Moses Reed was drummed out for attempted desertion. Following the expedition Frazer secured the permission of Lewis and Clark to print his own journal, but it was never published and is presumed lost. He settled in St. Louis, where he soon got into trouble. He was charged in 1808 with beating a local sheriff and the following year with assaulting an Indian. In 1812 he faced murder charges in St. Charles County, but the disposition of that case remains unknown. Frazer died in 1837 in Franklin County, Mo., and is buried in an unmarked grave in his family plot. A marker (see below) was dedicated to him in 2004.
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FROM TOP: WAYMARKING.COM; JIM WINNERMAN; LUC NOVOVITCH/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Colter was one of the best hunters and explorers with the Corps of Discovery. In August 1806, during the return from the Pacific, he was granted permission to leave the expedition at the Mandan villages. His wild adventures continued. The mountain man became famous for visiting the fumaroles and bubbling hot springs of Colter’s Hell (in present-day Yellowstone National Park). He is also remembered for a narrow escape from hostile Indians referred to as Colter’s Run. In that 1809 incident Colter and former fellow expedition member John Potts were fur trapping on the Jefferson River in what would become Montana when Blackfeet killed Potts and subjected Colter, stripped naked, to a cross-country race for his life. He managed his escape by killing one of his pursuers and outrunning the others for five days before hiding in a beaver lodge. Six days later he stumbled into a trader’s fort on the Little Bighorn, exhausted but alive. By year’s end 1810 Colter had put the great and dangerous frontier behind him and returned to St. Louis for the first time in six years. He soon married and had a son, later enlisting to fight the British in the War of 1812. He probably died of jaundice on May 7, 1812, though conflicting sources claim he lived until Nov. 22, 1813. Colter was initially thought to have been buried near Dundee, Mo., but in the 1980s a descendant researched and found what is believed to be his actual gravesite on private land in New Haven, Mo. In 1988 history buffs there marked Colter’s grave with a stone that mentions only his War of 1812 service with Nathan Boone’s Rangers.
TOP LEFT: COSMOS MARINER, HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE; TOP RIGHT: JIM WINNERMAN; LEFT: WILLIAM FISCHER JR., HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE
John Colter (c. 1774–1812)
The Corps of Discovery had traveled some 700 miles up the Missouri when 21-year-old Sergeant Charles Floyd fell ill with what is thought to have been appendicitis. The Kentucky native died on Aug. 20, 1804, near what became known as “Floyd’s Bluff,” within the limits of present-day Sioux City, Iowa. The sergeant was the first American soldier to die west of the Mississippi and the only member of the corps to die during the expedition. The original cedar post marker erected by his fellow corps members eventually slid into the river. In 1901 Sioux City officials marked the spot with a 100-foot white sandstone obelisk, which in 1960 was designated a National Historic Landmark. The focal point of a 23-acre park, it remains the largest monument to any member of the expedition.
Patrick Gass (1771–1870)
Nathaniel Hale Pryor (c. 1772–1831)
Pryor was a cousin of fellow expedition member Charles Floyd and a first cousin to John Floyd, 25th governor of Virginia. In 1807 he was put in charge of an expedition to return Mandan Chief Sheheke home from St. Louis, but the party was forced to turn back when attacked by Arikaras. During the War of 1812 Pryor was commissioned a captain and fought in the Battle of New Orleans. In 1820 he established a trading post on the present-day Grand River in Arkansas Territory (near Pryor Creek, Okla., which is named for him). Around the same time he married an Osage woman, his third wife. Pryor died on June 9, 1831 (based on a death notice in the July 21 St. Louis Beacon), and is buried at Graham Memorial Cemetery, near Pryor, Okla. His present-day marker lists his date of death as June 1, 1831.
Sacagawea (c. 1788–1812)
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TOP LEFT: COSMOS MARINER, HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE; TOP RIGHT: JIM WINNERMAN; LEFT: WILLIAM FISCHER JR., HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE
Pennsylvania-born Gass, who by age 21 in 1792 had seen service fighting Indians, was one of the oldest members of the Corps of Discovery. He joined the expedition as a private on Jan. 1, 1804, other members voting him to the rank of sergeant after the untimely death of Charles Floyd. His experience as a trained carpenter was invaluable to the corps, as he built winter shelters and wagons for the portage of canoes. In 1807 his journal of the expedition was the first to be published. Gass remained in the Army and lost an eye during the War of 1812. In 1831 the 60-year-old veteran married 20-year old Maria Hamilton, and they had seven children over the next 15 years. On April 2, 1870, 98-yearold Gass, the last surviving member of the expedition, passed away. He is buried beside his wife in Brooke Cemetery, in Wellsburg, W.Va., beneath a granite marker with the notation, Sgt.—Lewis & Clark Exp.
Among the most celebrated members of the expedition—and the only woman—Sacagawea has been honored in sculpture, with a U.S. stamp and with a collectible dollar coin. Most scholars agree she died at Fort Manuel on the Missouri (in present-day Corson County, South Dakota) in 1812. A Dec. 20, 1812, journal entry by John C. Luttig, a clerk for fur trader Manuel Lisa, reads: “This evening the wife of, Charbonneau, a Snake squaw, died of putrid fever. She was a good and the best woman in the fort, aged about 25 years.” Others doubt she died then, as Luttig didn’t mention her by name, and Shoshone oral tradition suggests she died in her 90s in 1884 on Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation. Clark’s circa 1825 list of expedition members reads, “Se car ja we au— dead,” a notation based either on firsthand knowledge or more likely on Luttig’s journal. In 1978 Fort Manuel was added to the National Register of Historic Places as Sacagawea’s final resting place, but a marker on the Wind River Reservation (see at right) also bears her name. OCTOBER 2020
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The youngest adult member of the expedition, Pennsylvania-born Shannon twice became lost and separated from the party after having been dispatched on special assignment. Regardless, he survived the journey. His next big adventure came in 1807 when wounded in the leg (later amputated) by Arikaras during Pryor’s expedition to return Chief Sheheke to his Mandan village. Shannon went on to practice law in Lexington, Ky., and St. Charles, Mo. He died on Aug. 30, 1836, at age 51, in Palmyra, Mo., where he’d traveled to defend a murder suspect. His grave in that city’s Massey Mill Cemetery is unidentified, but a marker was put up on the courthouse lawn in 2004. 68 WILD WEST
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George Shannon (1785–1836)
Born in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, Shields reportedly trapped with Daniel Boone, who some historians suggest was a kinsman. Despite their insistence on hiring only unmarried men, Lewis and Clark recruited Shields, who had wed in 1790. He was the second oldest member of the Corps of Discovery. He proved valuable, especially as a gunsmith. “Nothing was more peculiarly useful to us in various situations than the skill and ingenuity of this man as an artist, in repairing our guns, accoutrements, etc.,” wrote Captain Lewis in 1807. Following the expedition John and wife Nancy followed Boone’s brother Squire to Harrison County, Indiana Territory, and settled there in 1807, where Shields may have worked as a gunsmith and blacksmith, just as he had with the Corps of Discovery. He died of unknown causes at age 40 in December 1809. The inscription on his headstone in Little Flock Baptist Cemetery, near Corydon, Ind., notes that he was a U.S. Army private and a member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery, one of the most amazing and challenging journeys in American history.
LEFT: JOHN DESAULNIERS, JR., HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE; RIGHT: GENI
John Shields (1769–1809)
Alexander Hamilton Willard (1778–1865)
Born in Charlestown, N.H., Willard assisted Shields as a blacksmith on the journey. He may have kept a journal, but if so it was accidentally destroyed or lost. Following the expedition Lewis appointed Willard government blacksmith for the Saux and Fox Indians. Willard married in 1807 and later moved to Platteville, Wis. His family grew to include seven sons and five daughters. In 1832, at age 54, he fought alongside four of his sons in the Black Hawk War. In 1852, at age 74, Willard and his extended family joined a westbound wagon train and resettled in Franklin, Calif., near Sacramento, where he reportedly continued to work as a blacksmith. He died there on March 6, 1865. Beside his gravestone in Franklin Cemetery is a historical marker indicating he was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, for which he kept a journal and gave valuable service as a gunsmith. St. Louis–based freelance writer Jim Winnerman is a frequent contributor to Wild West. For further reading he recommends The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition, by Larry E. Morris, and Bob Moore’s May 2000 article “Corps of Discovery Gravesites,” in We Proceeded On, the quarterly journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation [lewisandclark.org].
TOP: JEN (CC BY-SA 2.0); RIGHT: DON SNIEGOWSKI (CC BY-SA)
LEFT: JOHN DESAULNIERS, JR., HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE; RIGHT: GENI
OTHER CORPS DEATHS
Here is what is known about other Corps of Discovery members: • John Collins (died 1823): Believed killed by Arikaras along the Missouri River (in present-day South Dakota). • Pierre Cruzatte (dates unknown): Thought to have been killed along the Missouri sometime after 1823, though details are lacking. • George Drouillard (1773–1810): Killed by Blackfeet along the Three Forks of the Missouri (in present-day Gallatin County, Mont.). • Joseph Field (c. 1780–1807): Joined expedition with younger brother Reubin. Died in his home state of Kentucky, though the circumstances are unknown. • Reubin Field (c. 1781–1822): Will probated in Kentucky in 1823, but the circumstances of his death are unknown. • George Gibson (died 1809): The dates of his probated will imply he died in early 1809. No other details are known. • Silas Goodrich (dates unknown): Died sometime before 1828, but no details are known. • Hugh Hall (born c. 1772): Died between 1820 and ’31, but no details are known. • Thomas Howard (1779–1814): Died in St. Louis, and his will was probated in late 1816, but the circumstances of his death are unknown. • François Labiche (dates unknown): Said to have died by the late 1830s, but no details are known. • Jean-Baptiste Lepage (1761–1809): The location and cause of his death are unknown. • Hugh McNeal (born c. 1776): Died sometime before 1828, but location and cause are unknown. • John Ordway (c. 1775–1817): Ordway’s 100,000-word journal remained in a private collection until published in 1916. He became a prosperous Missouri farmer, but his date of death and gravesite location are unknown. • John Potts (c. 1776–1808): Killed at age 32 by Blackfeet along the Jefferson River (in present-day Montana). • John B. Thompson (died 1815): Killed by July 1815, but the cause and location remain unknown. • Peter M. Weiser (born 1781): Killed sometime before 1828, but the cause and location are unknown. • William Werner (died c. 1839): Died in Virginia, though location and circumstances are unknown. • Joseph Whitehouse (c. 1775–1860): Death date is by word of mouth, and details are lacking. • Richard Windsor (dates unknown): After the expedition he settled in Missouri but soon rejoined the Army and served until 1819. Details of his death are unknown. • York (born c. 1772): Clark’s slave, the only black member of the expedition, died in Tennessee, reportedly of cholera, sometime between 1816 and ’32. Clark said in 1832 he had freed York but didn’t specify when it happened. A statue of York (above) now stands at Riverfront Plaza/Belevedere in Louisville, Ken. —J.W. OCTOBER 2020
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601 REASONS NOT TO SET FIRES When arsonists targeted Virginia City, Nevada, in early 1871, the 601 Vigilance Committee took decisive action By Matthew Bernstein
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F
or the masked vigilantes of Virginia City, Nevada, the wheels of justice moved too slowly. Shortly after midnight on March 14, 1871, Hugh Kelly and Charley Fletcher were strolling down B Street when they spied something ominous—reflected orange light flickering off the houses opposite Piper’s Opera House. Springing into action, the pair filled buckets with water from a nearby trough, forced their way into the opera house and doused the fire before it could spread. Police Chief George Downey moved just as swiftly. Within a half hour, on the corner of C and Union streets, Downey arrested William Willis for arson. His grounds for suspicion were strong. Hours earlier Willis—ironically, a volunteer firefighter of Washoe Engine Co. No. 4—had bulled his way into the opera house to watch that evening’s play. After proprietor John Piper ordered him out, Willis had sworn he’d “get even.” Later that night Officers George Potter and William Stout spotted GEORGE DOWNEY Willis lurking about the opera house and went to investigate but soon lost sight of him. On hearing about the fire, the officers reported to Downey, who soon located Willis. Coal oil on the latter’s hands and coat sleeves was evidence enough to warrant his arrest. Willis was in bigger trouble than that, for the opera house fire was only the latest of several blazes that had ravaged the Nevada boomtown that year. The other fires had killed four people and reduced dozens of homes and businesses to ashes, damages running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Arson” was on everyone’s lips, and on February 18 the Nevada State Journal had fanned the flames. “It seems to be well established that there is an organized gang of incendiaries in Virginia City,” the paper surmised, “and that the numerous fires in that city were kindled by the Have Hose—Will Travel
An engine company poses in Virginia City five years before arsonists struck the Nevada town (whose main street is depicted at left).
LEFT: UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT: UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO; BOTTOM: WESTERN NEVADA HISTORIC PHOTO COLLECTION
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gang. What object these miscreants expect to accomplish by A year after this photo was taken, one of the town’s 1871 firebugs, destroying the city is not clear; William Willis, received a pardon and was released from state prison. but there is a determination on the part of the respectable citizens to wreak summary vengeance upon anyone caught at the nefarious work.” With Willis in custody, townsfolk wondered what other fires he might have set and whether he’d acted alone. If he were tried and convicted, they reasoned, he could potentially be induced to name his fellow arsonists on a promise of reduced jail time. But for the 601—Virginia City’s vigilance committee—that wasn’t good enough by half. Willis had been behind bars for less than 24 hours when a knock came at the jailhouse door. From inside Jailer Benjamin L. Higbee called out, “Who is it?” “A friend,” came the reply. Pushing back the bolt, Higbee cautiously opened the door. All at once a masked man burst through the gap, seized the jailer by the throat and pushed him inside. On the intruder’s heels followed a dozen others armed with shotguns and pistols, their faces disguised by masks fashioned from red or white cloth cut with crude eyeholes. Retrieving the jailer’s keys, they opened the cell holding Willis and spirited him out of jail. The vigilantes marched Willis to the scene of the crime—the basement of Piper’s Opera House. Tossing one end of their rope over a charred beam, they fixed the noose around their quarry’s neck and gave it a tug. With his life on the line, Willis confessed to having set the fire. He also implicated three fellow incendiaries. Helping him set the opera house fire was Charley McWilliams, whom Willis claimed had also burned down a cabin near the old provost station in the lower part of town. Tom Laswell, Willis said, had set ablaze a boardwalk outside the Collins House hotel. The lead firebug, however, was 24-year-old hothead Arthur Perkins. According to Willis, Perkins had helped Laswell commit arson, incinerated Athletic Hall, set the fire next to the confectionary store on C Street and destroyed the Invincible Hose Co. engine house. Plunder, Willis claimed, had been the object of Perkins’ devilish design. Having forfeited any bargaining power, Willis was perhaps surprised when the vigilantes removed the noose and returned him to jail. On the strength of his confession authorities soon arrested McWilliams and Laswell. Perkins, however, was already in jail on a charge of murder. 72 WILD WEST
Not So Helpful Volunteer
Ironically, Willis was a member of the city’s Washoe Engine Co. No. 4.
Murder was one thing. Arson and murder was quite another. The 601 decided on a more permanent solution for Perkins. Born in the fall of 1846 aboard Thomas H. Perkins , a U.S. Army transport en route from New York City to Rio de Janeiro, the newborn boy was christened Arthur Perkins Heffernan—his first name after the ship’s captain and his middle name after the ship. From Rio Perkins continued around Cape Horn to San Francisco. Soon after arrival the boy’s father, Corporal Charles Heffernan, was mustered out, moved the family to Tuolumne County and opened a store in Jamestown. After amassing a small fortune, Charles pivoted to politics as an essayist and Democratic Party delegate. When of age, rebellious young Arthur moved 100 miles northeast to Virginia City, where he dropped his surname and took to calling himself Arthur Perkins. Like Willis, McWilliams and other venturesome young men, Perkins joined Washoe Engine Co. No. 4. He also became embroiled in a local war over water rights at Seven-Mile Canyon. “He was a fine-looking man,” prospector Dwight Bartlett wrote of Perkins in a letter to his mother, “but he had fight on the brain.” On March 5, 1871, for seemingly no reason, he shot and killed young English prospector Bill Smith
LEFT: WESTERNMININGHISTORY.COM; RIGHT: DENISE BOOSE, HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE; OPPOSITE TOP: MICHAEL DEFREITAS NORTH AMERICA/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; OPPOSITE BOTTOM: HIPPOSTCARD
Virginia City in 1878
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LEFT: WESTERNMININGHISTORY.COM; RIGHT: DENISE BOOSE, HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE; OPPOSITE TOP: MICHAEL DEFREITAS NORTH AMERICA/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; OPPOSITE BOTTOM: HIPPOSTCARD
in the International Saloon. Perkins was soon arrested, and by the time of Willis’ confession at the end of a rope the murder suspect was securely locked up in the Storey County Jail. Sharing a cell with him was Moses Remington, who days earlier had shot his wife in the face in a fit of jealous rage. The two cellmates were about to receive uninvited guests. The night of March 24 was a bitter one. Freezing winds punctuated by swirling eddies of hail swept down from Mount Davidson. It wasn’t the sort of night one would expect men to be afoot, but out of that frigid darkness—just around midnight—emerged a mob of men, their faces obscured by signature red and white masks. Surging down B Street, the 601 Vigilance Committee assembled inside Armory Hall to retrieve pistols, shotguns and rifles. Stationed outside was a sentinel, and only men who gave the correct password were granted entry. Anyone happening to stroll by in the early morning chill was confronted by the vigilantes, told to go home and ordered to speak to no one about what they had seen. Secrecy was paramount. Any alarm might thwart their plans. One shotgun-wielding vigilante snuck into the engine house of Young America Engine Co. No. 2, on South C Street, and roused the slumbering Sam Wyckenham. In a subsequent interview with the local Territorial Enterprise Wyckenham claimed the vigilante asked whether he was the steward. When Wyckenham replied that he was, the masked man told him, “Well, if you are the steward, take this pistol and go up into the belfry, and if anybody comes to ring the bell on any pretense whatever, you shoot him. Get up there, quick!” Under the gaze of the shotgun-wielding vigilante, Wyckenham took the proffered pistol, donned his coat and climbed to the belfry. “He kept poor Sam there in the
Firebugs of the Opera cold and storm for about an hour and a half,” Willis claimed he and the Enterprise wrote, “when he was permitted Charley McWilliams fired to come down, and the masked man, taking the opera house, a blaze doused by alert passersby. the pistol from him, left.” Meanwhile, around 1 a.m. the main body of vigilantes, some 80 strong, reached the sheriff’s office, several dozen of them cordoning off the surrounding streets. Men on their way home who came upon the sentinels were flatly told, “Go back!” A group of printers coming off the night shift at the newspaper ran into the cordon. The foreman, plainly terrified, thought the masked men were robbers and cried out he didn’t have a cent. Recognizing the printers and recalling they lived just within the line, a handful of the vigilantes escorted them home. “Will I be quite safe here?” the foreman asked from his open doorway. “You are safe enough inside,” one of the masked men replied, “but if you step a foot out of the house, we will blow the top of your head off.” The foreman shut the door.
Inside the county jail Sheriff Thomas A. Atkinson and Undersheriff Phil Stoner woke to knocking. As Sheriff Atkinson slid back the bolt, a dozen masked men forced the door and rushed inside. All carried guns, which they leveled at the officers. One held up a feeble candle. After dragging Undersheriff Stoner from bed, they demanded the keys to Perkins’ cell. The officers stoutly refused, even after suffering abuse at the vigilantes’ hands, Atkinson receiving a black eye for his troubles. Over the next few minutes the mob thoroughly ransacked the room, one of the men finally turning up the keys, pigeonholed in a corner desk. Hearing the commotion from his cell, Perkins realized he was the target. “They have come for me,” he told Remington. “I may as well say goodbye. Ophir Mine
Vigilantes of the 601 marched lead arsonist Arthur Perkins from jail and hanged him here.
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This is my last night on earth.” Moments later vigilantes appeared at the cell door. “Come out,” one said as the key turned in the lock. “We want you.” Hurriedly dressing, Perkins protested his innocence. Although he did not deny shooting Smith, he claimed “it was an accident.” He categorically denied any role in arson, particularly the torching of the Invincible Hose Co. engine house. Perkins swore he’d been playing billiards in the Washoe Exchange at the time. His protestations meant nothing to the vigilantes. They had already judged Perkins guilty; their role was to execute the sentence. When Perkins, in his excitement, fumbled with his boots, he was told to forget them. “Where you are going,” one vigilante sneered, “you will not need boots.” By then a crowd of curious spectators had gathered out front on B Street between Union and Taylor, hoping to catch sight of Perkins as the mob emerged from the jail. The vigilantes instead hustled him out the back. Following A Street to Sutton Avenue, they marched Perkins 74 WILD WEST
Virginia [City] is overrun with bad characters of every description.…Do you wonder that the people took the law into their own hands? Four lives have been lost in these fires within a few months. Since Virginia was settled, 168 men have been killed, and only one man has been hung by law, and only five or six punished at all. It is impossible to get a jury to convict a man for killing another unless he does it in cold blood.
Whatever the case, the Enterprise reported that hundreds of people attended Perkins’ fu-
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Although the name “601” was shrouded in secrecy, Territorial Enterprise reporter Alfred Doten thought he had the answer. “It is known that the [vigilance committee] members were all successively numbered on joining the organization,” he noted in his published journals, “therefore, presumably 601 was the number of the secretary.” According to Doten, the 601 had modeled itself after San Francisco’s notorious vigilance committee, whose warnings were signed, “No. 33, Secretary.” After lynching Perkins, the 601 strongly advised other roughs to vacate Virginia City. Among those warned was ex-convict and murderer George B. Kirk. Kirk initially took the hint, bouncing to Eureka and Carson. Foolishly returning to Virginia City in early July, Kirk boasted that he’d like to come across some of the 601. On July 13, 1871, he got his wish. At 11 p.m. vigilantes forced Kirk into a carriage outside Dutch Mary’s brothel, opposite City Hall on North C Street. Undersheriff Stoner had led the posse that discovered Perkins’ dangling corpse at the Ophir Mine, but it was Sheriff Atkinson who found Kirk’s corpse around 1 a.m., hanging from the old ore car track at the Sierra Nevada Mine. Pinned to the dead man’s shirtfront was another calling card: George B. Kirk—Committee 601. The 601 soon spread west. A decade after the Perkins and Kirk lynchings, the 601 hanged Joseph Daroche in the California gold mining town of Bodie for having murdered Thomas H. Treloar. In Truckee, Calif., the 601 used the mere threat of death to run badmen out of town, though the vigilantes did tar and feather hard case Terrence Fagan. Ironically, Fagan fled to San Francisco, whose vigilance committee had likely inspired the 601. Newspaper clippings suggest he continued his depredations, though his ultimate fate is unknown. —M.B.
up to the Ophir Mine, whose treasures had started the 1859 rush to the Comstock Lode. A small outbuilding sat atop one of the Ophir shafts. From the front of the building, 12 feet off the ground, jutted a beam. Around it the vigilantes looped their rope. The doomed man was then made to stand on a plank spanning an ore car path some 6 feet deep. One man adjusted the noose around Perkins’ neck while others bound his hands and feet and blindfolded him with a towel. Citing anonymous sources, the Enterprise reported Perkins seemed collected at the end, mentioning his relatives. As his executioners yanked away the plank, Perkins jumped. The jump may have altered his fall, for his neck did not snap. Instead, he strangled to death, legs thrashing and arms straining against his bonds. After making certain he was dead, the vigilantes pinned a calling card to the left lapel of his coat: Arthur Perkins—Committee No. 601. Authorities made little effort to identify the vigilantes. Rumors quietly swirled that opera house owner Piper, the former mayor of Virginia City, might have had good reason to string up Willis. Others might have questioned firehouse steward Wyckenham’s story—that an armed vigilante gave him a pistol and “forced” him to guard the alarm bell, seemingly unconcerned Wyckenham might turn the gun on him. Some also likely wondered how hard jailer Higbee had resisted the vigilantes who’d assaulted him, or why he thought opening the front door to a stranger in the dead of night was a smart play. Mostly, however, people were glad Perkins was no longer a threat, dismissing his assertion he’d killed Smith by accident. “He killed a man in cold blood,” Bartlett wrote to his mother. Further down in the letter Barrett captured the spirit of what the average citizen was feeling:
COURTESY CAITLIN BATES
BEHIND THE 601
The 601 in Bodie
The committee hanged a murderer in this California gold mining town .
neral. Perhaps members of the 601 wanted one last look at the arsonist whose life they had extinguished. Willis, who had fingered the dead man for his role in the Virginia City fires, was soon brought to trial, convicted and sentenced that April to 21 years in the Nevada State Prison at Carson City. On September 17 he and 28 others escaped. Willis didn’t get far. Ten days later a posse led by Sheriff Atkinson and Chief Downey captured him and fellow escapee John Squires in Seven-Mile Canyon, returning them to prison. Despite the time added to his sentence, Willis received a pardon and was released in 1879.
Matthew Bernstein teaches literature at Matrix for Success Academy and Los Angeles City College. For further reading he recommends Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and the Dwight Bartlett Letters at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif.
TOP: CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; INSET: NEVADA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
COURTESY CAITLIN BATES
PRISON BREAK At 6 p.m. on Sept. 17, 1871, Lt. Gov. Frank Denver— whose appointment as warden of the Nevada State Prison at Carson City had been political and whose discipline was frightfully lax—was enjoying Sunday dinner in the warden’s dining room with his wife, daughter, mother-in-law and several guests from San Francisco and Nevada. Waiting on them was Bob Dedman, a model inmate serving a life sentence for murder. Denver had allowed most of his guards to retire for the evening. Only F.M. Isaacs, Johnny Newhouse and captain of the guard led the general charge downstairs. Stepping Volney Rollins remained on the prison grounds, out to the top of the stairs, Denver watched in while an unarmed Slovak guard named Perahorror as prisoners ran pell-mell through the sich stood watch outside the main gate. halls, some toward him, some for the wideEarlier that evening the guards had herded open entrance gate. Still others headed for the arsonist William Willis and 71 other inmates prison armory, where they grabbed up two Henry into the prison dining hall for a meal. Taking repeating rifles, four double-barreled shotguns, FRANK DENVER advantage of Denver’s laissez-faire attitude, most five six-shooters and enough ammunition to start of the inmates had secretly armed themselves with a war. As the pandemonium spread, guards Isaacs and bottles and crudely fashioned scrap iron knives and Newhouse appeared, pouring lead into the mob, while Peraslungshots. They’d also cut a man-sized hole through the sich ran to the neighboring Warm Springs Hotel for a weapon. wooden roof. As the warden entertained his guests, the When a bullet shattered Isaacs’ right knee, the guard shifted prisoners milled about in nervous anticipation. his weight to his left leg and continued to fire until felled by a Rollins’ final duty that night was to usher the inmates slug to the hip. (He died of his wounds weeks later.) Moments back to their cells. As the guard unlocked the iron gates after winging train robber E.B. Parsons, Newhouse took a to the dining hall, robber Pat Hurley dropped the iron ball disabling slungshot strike to the back of his head. attached to his leg chains. That was the signal. John Squires, Meanwhile, firing from atop the stairs, Denver was shot serving time for train robbery, struck Rollins over the head in the thigh, enabling inmates to rush up and bludgeon the with a bottle, knocking him to the floor, whereupon burglar warden over the head. Dedman managed to stave off several William Russell, by all accounts a ruthless character, then fellow inmates, checking them with the chair and sending one savagely gashed the captain of the guard over the left eye with tumbling over the staircase balustrade. Entering late in the fray, a makeshift slungshot. Grabbing Rollins’ keys, Hurley opened Perasich fired gamely and wounded several inmates before the door to a nearby cell and locked the guard inside. The taking a bullet to the hip. As hotel proprietor Matt Pixley rushed convicts then began slithering through the hole in the roof. to the guards’ aid with a brace of pistols, inmate Charley Jones To Denver’s ears the furiously clanking leg chains on the thumbed the hammer of a Henry rifle and put a slug through roof sounded like an earthquake. Realizing it was a prison Pixley’s eye. The hotelier dropped dead on the prison porch. break, the warden drew his revolver just as a pair of prisoners That terrible evening 29 prisoners escaped, the others burst through the door. Denver fired offhand at horse thief electing to remain inside. Among the escapees was Willis, Frank Clifford, grazing him. Wanting no part of the break, who apparently wanted to see “old Virginia” again. He was Dedman, swinging a heavy chair, drove the other prisoner among the 18 inmates recaptured and returned to prison. from the room. The wounded Clifford made it to his feet and Eleven vanished. —M.B. OCTOBER 2020
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COLLECTIONS
Ca
JESSE JAMES DIED HERE
U
ndoubtedly the best known home in all of St. Joseph, Missouri, is the one that belonged to Show Me State native and notorious outlaw Jesse James. On April 3, 1882, 34-year-old James had just stepped up on a chair to straighten a picture on the wall, his back turned to the Ford brothers, when Bob opened fire while Charles looked on. The pistol round struck Jesse just behind the right ear, killing him instantly. After a 16-year criminal career James had been using the alias Thomas Howard and settling into home life with wife Zerelda and their children, Jesse Edward and Mary Susan. Lured by Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden’s $10,000 reward and promise of amnesty for past crimes, James Gang members Bob and Charles turned on their onetime boss. When the brothers brought in Jesse’s body to collect the reward, authorities arrested, charged, 76 WILD WEST
convicted and condemned them for murder. But it was all for show, as Crittenden immediately pardoned them, and they eventually collected their pieces of silver. After the Civil War Jesse and brother Frank cobbled together their gang and pulled off stagecoach and train robberies in Missouri and elsewhere across the Midwest, as far north as Northfield, Minn. For obvious reasons Jesse, who’d been born in Clay County near present-day Kearney, moved often over the years. St. Joe had a population of about 32,500 when he moved there with his family in 1881. By then Frank had gone off to live in Virginia, and most of the gang had been wiped out. The town had sprung up along the Missouri River in the early 1840s as a jumping-off point for westbound travelers. At the time Jesse was assassinated, the one-story wood-frame James Home sat astride a hill at 1318 Lafayette St. The night of
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PATEE HOUSE MUSEUM AND JESSE JAMES HOME (5)
VISITORS TO THIS ST. JOSEPH, MISSOURI, HOME CAN STAND WHERE THAT COWARD BOB FORD GUNNED DOWN THE INFAMOUS OUTLAW BY LINDA WOMMACK
PATEE HOUSE MUSEUM AND JESSE JAMES HOME (5)
COLLECTIONS
her husband’s murder Zerelda took her children and Jesse’s mother, Zerelda Samuel, to the nearby World’s Hotel (the present-day Patee House), where they spent two nights. Meanwhile, the morbidly curious descended on the murder scene for souvenirs. In 1939 the house became an even greater tourist attraction when moved to the more accessible Belt Highway. In 1977 Mr. and Mrs. Robert Keatley bought the home and donated it to the Pony Express Historical Association, which returned the house to its original neighborhood, at 12th and Mitchell, on the grounds of the presentday Patee House Museum and Jesse James Home [ponyexpressjessejames.com]. The association’s stated mission is to interpret the history and development of St. Joe, especially during the heyday of the Pony Express and the James Gang. From 1860 to ’61 the Patee House served as the headquarters and eastern terminus of the horseback express service. When visitors enter the parlor of the adjacent James Home, they’ll soon spot the conspicuous hole in the wall made by Bob Ford’s bullet as it exited Jesse’s head above his left eye. The hole grew in caliber over the decades as early visitors touched, poked and prodded it. The home contains several personal items that belonged to the Jameses, including one of the outlaw’s guns. Photographs of the family, including brother Frank, are on display, as is an accurate description of what daily life must have been like for the outlaw turned family man. A side exhibit profiles Bob Ford, the “dirty little coward that shot Mr. Howard.” In the aftermath of the killing the Ford brothers traveled the country to reenact onstage the assassination of the most wanted outlaw. Charles, addicted to morphine and suffering from depression and illness, shot
and killed himself on May 6, 1884. Bob drifted around the West another eight years until Edward O’Kelley shotgunned him to death on June 8, 1892, in Creede, Colo. In 1995 forensic scientist James Starrs led a team that exhumed Jesse’s remains from Kearney’s Mount Olivet Cemetery to conduct DNA tests, which proved, with 99.7 percent certainty, the corpse was indeed that of the outlaw slain in St. Joe. Artifacts from the grave on display at the James Home include the coffin handles, a tiepin Jesse was wearing the day he was killed, a slug removed from his right chest cavity (from a wound suffered years before his death) and a casting of his skull, showing the bullet hole behind his right ear. Anyone interested in the life and death of one of history’s most infamous outlaws will enjoy a visit to this modest but significant museum.
Opposite: This drawing of a clean-cut Jesse is on display at the Jesse James Home. Above (clockwise from top left): On the wall of the parlor where James was killed hangs a painting of Bob Ford shooting Jesse from behind; a wood stove once heated the cozy home; in the yard are preserved headstones from early St. Joseph settlers’ graves (no remains lie beneath).
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GUNS OF THE WEST
1891 Frank Butler gave his wife, celebrated sharpshooter Annie Oakley, this engraved, gold-plated Stevens-Gould .22-caliber presentation pistol with mother-of-pearl grips. Annie shot rifles, too, of course. Opposite: There she is posing with a Stevens tip-up target rifle.
WHEN EACH SHOT COUNTED
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tarting in the late 19th century, J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co., of Chicopee Falls, Mass., produced among the best-known lines of both high- and lowcost rifles and pistols. The man behind the company, Joshua Stevens, was born in Chester, little more than 20 miles west, on Sept. 10, 1814. A skilled machinist, he entered the world of firearms manufacturing in his mid-20s under the tutelage of Springfield gunsmith Cyrus B. Allen, who was manufacturing the imposing .54-caliber 1837 Elgin cutlass pistol for the U.S. Navy. By 1847 Stevens had hired on with Connecticut gunmaker Eli Whitney (son of the famed cotton gin inventor), then producing the famed Whitneyville-Walker revolver under subcontract to Sam Colt. Believing they could design a better handgun, Stevens and fellow Colt employee William Henry Miller partnered with Hartford gunsmith Edwin Wesson (a brother of the co-founder of Smith & Wesson) in the production of percussion revolvers. After Wesson died unexpectedly at age 37 in 1849, Stevens helped found Massachusetts Arms Co., of Chicopee Falls. In 1851 Sam Colt successfully sued Massachusetts Arms for patent infringement, limiting 78 WILD WEST
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Stevens’ revolver designs until Colt’s patent expired in 1857. Stevens was reportedly friends with John Brown and supplied pistols the abolitionist and his followers used during their 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, in present-day West Virginia. On Sept. 6, 1864, Stevens secured a patent for a breechloading, tip-up action single-shot pistol that became the basis for a dozen such single-shot pistols he designed through the years. That same year 50-year-old Stevens left Massachusetts Arms and, with financial backing from James E. Taylor and William B. Fay, started his own company out of a converted grist mill. J. Stevens & Co. manufactured shotguns and tip-up pistols and rifles, as well as machine tools and dies. In 1886 Stevens and partners reorganized the company, incorporating it as J. Stevens Arms & Tool Co. Fay died in 1893. Three years later company bookkeeper Irving H. Page bought out all shares owned by the retiring Stevens and Taylor, and he and several partners assumed control. By 1902 the company had 900 employees and was among the world’s largest producers of sporting firearms. On Jan. 21, 1907, Stevens died at age 92.
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TOP: AUTRY MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN WEST; MIDDLE: HERITAGE AUCTIONS; BOTTOM: GEORGE LAYMAN COLLECTION
ANNIE OAKLEY AND OTHER NOTABLE SHARPSHOOTERS TRUSTED STEVENS SINGLE-SHOT TARGET PISTOLS BY GEORGE LAYMAN
TOP: AUTRY MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN WEST; MIDDLE: HERITAGE AUCTIONS; BOTTOM: GEORGE LAYMAN COLLECTION
GUNS OF THE WEST
By then Stevens guns were household names, from such low-cost models as the “Old Model” pocket pistol, boys’ rifles and popular “Ideals” and “Favorites” to such expensive target rifles as the Stevens Ideal No. 54 “Schuetzen Special.” They were well received by shooting clubs back East and out West. Among the company’s most popular single-shot tip-up target pistols were the Stevens-Lord No. 36, the Stevens-Gould No. 37 and the Stevens-Conlin No. 38. From 1880 to 1911 the company produced some 3,500 of the Stevens-Lord No. 36, named for famed target shooter Frank Lord. It was available in many calibers—.22 Winchester rimfire, .25 Stevens rimfire, .32 Short Colt, .32 Long Colt and .44 S&W Russian centerfire—with a 10- or 12inch part-round/part-octagonal barrel, nickel-plated frames, checkered walnut grips and a wide and weighted flared butt cap. From 1884 to 1903 the company produced nearly 6,000 of the Stevens-Conlin Model No. 38, named for James S. Conlin, another celebrated marksman and owner of a popular shooting gallery on Broadway in New York City. The No. 38 came in .22, .25 and .32 calibers and was fitted with an adjustable tip-up tang-style rear sight. Like the StevensLord model, it too had nickel-plated frames, checkered walnut grips and a flared butt cap. From 1889 to 1903, somewhat out of numerical sequence, the company made around 1,000 of the Stevens-Gould No. 37, named for 19th-century firearms expert and magazine editor A.C. Gould. It was available in .22- and .25-caliber rimfire and like the Conlin featured an adjustable tip-up tangstyle rear sight. Several celebrated Western performers and competition shooters bought Stevens pistols, often with fancy extras. Showman extraordinaire William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody ordered a pair of
Stevens-Lord pistols—Serial No. 29 for himself and No. 32 as a gift to famed gambler/ gunfighter Ben Thompson. Both were deluxe grade, with 10-inch barrels chambered in .32 Short Colt, motherof-pearl grips and Louis Daniel Nimschke scrollwork with gold inlay. An engraving on the backstrap of the gift pistol reads, From Buffalo Bill to B e n T hom p son . In 1891 sharpshooter Frank Butler gave Annie Oakley, his celebrated sure shot of a wife, a set of three cased, gold-plated presentation pistols, one a Stevens-Gould engraved with dog- and horse-head motifs. It resides in the collection of L.A.’s Autry Museum of the American West. Stevens firearms were not your typical gunfighter guns, but they certainly made a name for themselves among target shooters who required a precise, reliable pistol to win acclaim and prize money or to simply knock coins from the air for a share of the house receipts. In 1915 New England Westinghouse bought Stevens Arms in order to produce rifles for the war effort, five years later selling it to Savage Arms. The Stevens division of Savage kept producing firearms in Chicopee Falls until 1960. Savage continues to turn out affordable shotguns under the Stevens brand.
Buffalo Bill Cody ordered a pair of StevensLord pistols— Serial no. 29 for himself and no. 32 as a gift to famed gambler and gunfighter ben thompson
This Stevens-Lord No. 36 tip-up target pistol was one of 3,500 produced in Chicopee Falls, Mass., between 1884 and 1903.
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GHOST TOWNS The boomtown once boasted 150 buildings, including houses, stores, saloons and a newspaper office. Only adobe walls remain in places.
Place caption for art on this page, photo caption to be placed here or art on this page, photo caption to be placed
HARQUAHALA, ARIZONA
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recious metal mining in southern Arizona had fallen on hard times by 1888. The sporadically productive Vulture Mine near Wickenburg had again shut down, while a catastrophic 1886 fire in Tombstone had severely damaged the water pumps necessary to operations in its rich silver mines. Flooding had left only two mines in limited production. Things changed in late 1888 when rumors surfaced of a rich strike 90 miles west of Phoenix in the remote Little Harquahala Mountains (originally spelled Harqua Hala, which translates to “running water” in Yavapai). Spanish explorers had discovered gold in the area as early as the 1760s, but Pimas had driven them off. In 1814 the Indians turned away another Spanish party. Then, in 1863, with the Pimas safely relegated to reservations, Herman Ehrenberg told fellow Prussian-born prospector Henry Wickenburg about a deposit he’d found in the Little Harquahalas. Wickenburg visited the site and agreed it looked promising, but he soon discovered the rich deposit that became the Vulture and thus never pursued the Harquahala prospect. Meanwhile, prospecting in the area continued with limited success. In 1886 Captain Charles Harris filed claims in Centennial Wash, soon establishing a settlement he modestly named 80 WILD WEST
Harrisburg. He also built a small mill to process ore from his and other area claims. Two years later Harry Walton, Robert Stein and Mike Sullivan struck pay dirt while prospecting in the Little Harquahalas and started working separate claims. Legend has it one day Sullivan sat down to rest and, finding the ground littered with nuggets, filled his pockets and hat before realizing he was on his partners’ claims. So, caching his treasure, he returned to camp and convinced the others to consolidate their claims. Only then did he “find” the nuggets, which were worth a few thousand dollars. The partners filed their first claims that November, followed soon after by several promising strikes. Of the developed mines the best were the Golden Eagle and the Bonanza. Early discoveries comprised placer deposits and handsized plates of gold within fissures. Development later shifted belowground to hard rock mining. Word of the goldfields spread rapidly, and within weeks miners streamed into the area, many from Tombstone. The Tombstone Prospector quoted a late December letter written from the new strike by O.B. Bloomer: “There is the finest prospect here I ever saw. Nuggets as large as small eggs.…There are only 50 or 60 men here now, but many are coming in.” While most
THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE: JIM PETTENGILL (3)
AMONG THOSE WHO FLOCKED HERE IN SEARCH OF GOLD WERE MANY FORMER TOMBSTONE RESIDENTS, INCLUDING WYATT EARP BY JIM PETTENGILL
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GHOST TOWNS
a 6-mile-long pipeline from Harrisburg to bring more water to the mines. To deter outlaws from robbing their bullion shipments, they had the gold cast into 400-pound bars—each worth more than $11 million at present-day gold prices. On one occasion the heavy bar broke through a wagon bed and tumbled into a steep ravine, the drivers mounting a heroic effort to retrieve the bar and complete their delivery. In 1893 Bowers and Hubbard sold their holdings to British investors for $1.25 million. After a few more years of production the mines ran thin on ore and operated only sporadically under a variety of owners. The post office finally shuttered in 1932. Total production through 1950 amounted to some $2.5 million. Harquahala has one other claim to Arizona fame, a most unusual one for a gold mining ghost town in the middle of the desert. It was the birthplace of pitcher Lee William “Flame” Delhi, Major League baseball’s first Arizona native player, who in 1912 appeared in exactly one game with the Chicago White Sox. All that remains of Harquahala are the wellpreserved cemetery and a few heavily weathered buildings and foundations at the townsite and mine. Access is via the unpaved Harquahala Road, between Salome and Exit 53 off I-10. The townsite lies east of the road some 4.5 miles north of the interstate, the cemetery west of the road another half-mile north.
Above: This corrugated tin building is air-cooled. Below: While this stone structure was reduced to cornerstones, the post office managed to keep its doors open till 1932.
On One occasion the heavy gold bar broke through a wagon bed and tumbled into a steep ravine
THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE: JIM PETTENGILL (3)
early arrivals lived in tents, the town eventually comprised some 150 structures, including houses, stores, saloons, the Harqua Hala Miner newspaper office and other businesses. The first saloon operated out of a simple tent with a plank bar and a 5-gallon jug of whiskey. Wells Fargo opened an office in February 1889, and a stage line soon served the community. A post office opened in 1891, the population peaking at several hundred. Among the early arrivals were several prominent Tombstonians. “Nellie Cashman returned from the new mines yesterday,” the Tombstone Prospector reported in early January 1889, “and is enthusiastic about the place and declares that the district is one of the richest in the west. Nellie has had considerable experience in mining camps and is competent to speak. Nellie will return to the mines and erect a boardinghouse.” Others included former Cochise County Sheriff Charles Shibell, former jurist “Justice Jim” Burnett and Wyatt Earp of O.K. Corral fame. Earp arrived in Harquahala in early January 1889 with San Diego acquaintance William Bryson. Impressed with its potential, Wyatt returned within weeks with wife Josie and a load of lumber and bar supplies, intending to build a large saloon and gambling house. He also filed several claims, some in conjunction with Bryson and a dynamic mining investor from Harrisburg named Carmelita Campbell. By midsummer, however, the Earps had returned to San Diego (see related feature, P. 38). It proved an insightful move. The Harquahala mines were initially rich, and high-grading (the practice of making off with ore on the sly) became common. One tale claims miners’ children would sing loudly while their fathers scraped the arrastra beds for gold. Others reportedly toted away nuggets in lunch buckets or in their mouths. Walton, Stein and Sullivan ultimately sold out to partners George Bowers and A.G. Hubbard, who built a 20-stamp amalgamation mill and
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REVIEWS
MUST SEE, MUST READ JOHN BOESSENECKER PICKS TOMBSTONE-RELATED BOOKS AND FILMS Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend (2006, by Gary L. Roberts): This excellent biography is virtually a companion volume to Tefertiller’s Wyatt Earp bio. Voluminous and highly reliable, it is a textbook on how to research, write, document and analyze history. The volumes by Roberts and Tefertiller are required reading for anyone who is a fan of the Old West. A Wyatt Earp Anthology: Long May His Story Be Told (2019, edited by Roy B. Young, Gary Roberts and Casey Tefertiller): A massive undertaking— 936 pages thick—it contains scores of papers and magazine articles that explore every aspect of the Earp saga, many of them previously published in Wild West and other journals and periodicals. This is required reading for casual fans and hardcore buffs alike.
Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend (1997, by Casey Tefertiller): Written nearly a quartercentury ago, this remains the authoritative biography of the famed lawman. The result of years of exhaustive research, it is a sober and accurate retelling of Earp’s exciting life.
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The McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona: An O.K. Corral Obituary (2012, by Paul Lee Johnson): This is the first and only biography of Tom and Frank McLaury, who died in the so-called Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. It presents a wealth of new information. Prior to its publication the McLaury brothers were mainly known for their bloody deaths. Here they appear as flesh-and-blood men with a long history before they ever came to Arizona Territory. Curly Bill: Tombstone’s Most Famous Outlaw (2003, by Steve Gatto): The one and only factual biography ever written about Curly Bill Brocius, it uncovers much new information about
his violent career. Curly Bill’s real name, though, remains uncertain; he used the surnames Brocius and Bresnaham, which may have been aliases. Without understanding Cowboys like Curly Bill and the McLaury brothers, one cannot hope to understand the events that took place in Tombstone.
MOVIES My Darling Clementine (1946, on DVD and Blu-ray, 20th Century Fox): Henry Fonda stars as Wyatt Earp in this huge commercial success directed by John Ford. Many film critics have lauded it as one of the best Westerns ever made. Unfortunately, critics tend to know very little about the real West. About the only factual connection this film has to the Tombstone saga is that it features characters called Earp and Doc Holliday. Consider it a cautionary tale of Hollywood’s ability to butcher reality. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957, on DVD and Blu-ray, Paramount Pictures): The talented cast features Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp and Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday. But like My Darling Clementine this John Sturges film contains barely an authentic moment. The personalities, the costumes, the dialogue, the sets and the scenes are wrong in every detail. Again, watch it as an example of what the Wild West was not.
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REVIEWS Hour of the Gun (1967, on DVD and Blu-ray, United Artists): Ten years after directing Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Sturges returned to the Earp story, with James Garner as Wyatt and Jason Robards as Doc. This go-around was billed as a more accurate portrayal of the events in Tombstone, its opening title reading: “This picture is based on fact. This is the way it happened.” While that’s hardly true, the filmmakers at least manage a basic chronology, providing a heavily fictionalized account of the street fight near the O.K. Corral, the ambush shootings of Virgil and Morgan Earp, and Wyatt’s subsequent Vendetta Ride. Tombstone (1993, on DVD and Blu-ray, Hollywood Pictures): Kurt Russell stars as Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in what is by far the best film about the Earp saga. The first five minutes and last 15 minutes contain fabricated, overwrought bloodbaths with no relation to reality. But in between those opening and closing scenes a viewer will see what is perhaps the finest Western ever filmed. The costuming, language and attention to historical detail are extraordinary, a credit in particular to the superb screenplay by
Kevin Jarre and the expertise of technical consultant Jeff Morey, a leading authority on Wyatt Earp. Wyatt Earp (1994, on DVD and Blu-ray, Warner Brothers): Kevin Costner has the title role in a film that had the misfortune of being released on the heels of Tombstone. It tells a broader story, dealing with Earp’s pre-Tombstone years as well as his exploits in Arizona Territory. But the first signs of trouble are when Earp appears on-screen wearing a 1990s style cowboy hat and the male actors all sport modern buscaderostyle holsters. When taken as a whole, the film was a nice try, but Tombstone made it look below average.
BOOK REVIEWS American Disruptor: The Scandalous Life of Leland Stanford, by Roland De Wolk, University of California Press, Oakland, 2019, $34.95 Leland Stanford was the best known of the “Big Four” Central Pacific Railroad tycoons (the others being Collis Potter Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crooker), in part because Stanford was a prominent politician (including a onetime governor of California and a U.S. senator from that state), but
mostly because he and wife Jane (“Jennie”) founded Stanford University as an extravagant memorial to their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who died of typhoid as a teen. The Big Four were the movers behind the biggest enterprise in 19th-century North America, namely construction of the first transcontinental railroad, and more railroads and other business ventures followed. As the shrewd quartet largely used public money to back their private ventures, they received plenty of flak in their lifetimes, notably from crusading journalist Ambrose Bierce, who dubbed them the “railrogues.” Stanford rose from humble beginnings (born in 1824 in a backwoods tavern in upstate New York) and suffered many failures and disappointments (in New York and Wisconsin) before going to California, where he became a late-blooming success. His life was one of great risk and great reward (Leland and Jennie’s ostentatious
displays and lavish personal spending even came to alarm his railroad baron partners). “In extraordinary but largely overlooked actions,” writes investigative journalist Roland De Wolk, “[Stanford] fully exploited the positions of governor and, to a lesser extent, U.S. senator to get what today would be billions of taxpayer dollars to make fortunes for himself and his notorious small band of business partners.” The author considers Stanford “a largely misunderstood and forgotten man,” which is arguable. For one he remains a household name, and most people correctly perceive him as an ambitious and fiercely persistent individual willing to do anything it took (from corrupt and shady dealings to reassessing the value of the Chinese immigrants he needed to build the Central Pacific) for his own benefit. Stanford’s warts have long been on display, and De Wolk (see Interview, P. 16) doesn’t avoid them, but the details the author has unearthed reveal a far more complex figure, one who clearly loved his wife and son. The author sums him up as an ordinary man who found himself in extraordinary circumstances and contends that history “shows
that the business Stanford pioneered was the foundation not only for Silicon Valley but also for the modern corporation itself.” While the latter point is also arguable, Stanford almost certainly was the key player in developing the rail network that made possible widespread industrialization. De Wolk also reveals much about Jennie Stanford, who was left in financial straits after her 1893 husband’s death but managed to save their namesake university—and make her own share of enemies—before her unsolved murder by poisoning in 1905. —Editor
Cherokee Bill: Black Cowboy —Indian Outlaw, by Art T. Burton, Eakin Press, Fort Worth, Texas, 2020, $17.95 Since his first book on the subject in 1999 Art T. Burton has been revealing overlooked black Americans who made their mark on the American West. In 2006 he wrote Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshall Bass Reeves, the first
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REVIEWS scholarly biography of the highly regarded lawman. Burton’s biography of Cherokee Bill reminds us (as if we need it) that fame and notoriety counted on both sides of the law. Born Crawford Goldsby, Cherokee Bill was raised in Indian Territory in the latter half of the 19th century, just before its transformation into the state of Oklahoma. Originally allotted to the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole), the territory developed into a multiethnic haven for black freedmen and slaves, as well as the progeny of mixed marriages. The varying ethnic groups coexisted uneasily—one of dual ancestry might be called “half-breed” if he looked predominantly black or “mixed-blood” if predominantly Indian. Whether or not such labels were bandied about with respect often depended on one’s reputation with a gun. Authorities strived to impose order over this unruly melting pot, often at the end of a rope, courtesy of Judge Isaac C. Parker and such lawmen as Heck Thomas and Heck Bruner. Complicating that effort somewhat was the fact that white men’s laws and Indian laws were not exactly in harmony. By 1894 Goldsby had established himself 84 WILD WEST
as one of the deadliest badmen “on the scout,” robbing and occasionally killing under the name of Cherokee Bill with such confederates as Bill and Jim Cook and Sam “Verdigris Kid” McWilliams. In late January 1895 authorities caught up to Cherokee Bill, largely due to the betrayal of friend Ike Rogers. Soon after being convicted and sentenced to death, he attempted escape, in the process adding guard Lawrence Keating to the seven previous victims he admitted to having killed. But he wouldn’t escape justice. On March 17, 1896, the 20-year-old dropped through the gallows trap at Fort Smith. As is often the case with Western biographies these days, author Burton devotes considerable scholarship toward distinguishing fact from legend—and finding plenty of truth behind the notoriety in multiple newspaper accounts of the time. This includes a series of contemporary stories in The New York Times that prove Bill’s fame reached well beyond Indian Territory. Although the narrative derails in places that could have used closer editing, Cherokee Bill should revive a short but eventful career to compare with those of Jesse James and Billy the Kid. —Jon Guttman
Wrecked Lives and Lost Souls: Joe Lynch Davis and the Last of the Oklahoma Outlaws, by Jerry Thompson, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2019, $24.95 Jerry Thompson, regents professor of history at Texas A&M University and the author of many books on the history of the West, wrote a stirring story about the bloody if often overlooked Porum Range War in the October 2019 issue of Wild West. The war was triggered in east central Oklahoma by pervasive rustling and efforts by the local Anti-Horse Thief Association (AHTA) to stop the principal perpetrators—the Davis Gang. The Davis brothers —Cicero, Sam, Jack and Bob—were mixedblood Cherokees who came to what was then Indian Territory in the 1880s and became among the biggest ranchers. Their way of life included gathering cattle from what they perceived as the open range, which angered the farmers and smaller ranchers who owned some of
those cattle. Things heated up in May 1911 after Bob Davis killed Muskogee County Deputy Sheriff Jim Work, the AHTA putting a price on Bob’s head. Three weeks later 19-yearold Joe Lynch Davis ( Jack’s son) and friend Samuel “Pony” Starr battled a posse in a ferocious 10-minute gunfight in which 14 men were shot, eight mortally wounded or killed outright. Joe Davis survived the range war, which Thompson says left more than 30 men dead and many farms and ranches in ruin. Joe would jump bail and flee to Arizona, take an alias and rob trains and banks before authorities finally nabbed him in 1916 and sent him to the penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., for 14 years. As the center of so much lawlessness, Davis was worth profiling in a book. Thompson had one other big reason for tackling the project— the mixed-blood outlaw was the grandfather he never knew. The author only learned about Davis’ criminal activities and other shocking family history after his mother died in 1982, and he discovered a shoebox full of letters and cards in an old dresser. Busy teaching and writing other things, Thompson finally set out on the trail of grandfather Davis in 2000. The
result of the historian’s painstaking detective work is this fascinating book about a man who truly was one of the last of the old Oklahoma outlaws, and who to the end—Joe Lynch Davis died at age 86 on July 15, 1979—refused to talk about his outlaw past or time spent at Leavenworth. As dramatic as Joe’s involvement in the Porum Range War was, the drama that followed in his life at least matched that. “Davis [at age 24] had established a record unsurpassed perhaps in the criminal annals of Oklahoma or any other state,” writes Thompson. “Within three months he had been arrested four times on four different felony charges, on warrants out of four different jurisdictions, and each time he was released.” The author contends Davis was no typical hard case living on the edge of society. His uncles were wealthy ranchers and, according to the author, “In the socioeconomic and political order of eastern Oklahoma during the Progressive Era, his banditry was not so much an example of lower-class social resistance but more about protecting wealth and power.” The bottom line was that Joe Davis robbed railroads and banks “as much for the thrill as for the money.” —Editor
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Sand Creek and the Tragic On September 11, 1857, a wagon End of a Lifeway, by Louis Kraft, train of 120 men, women, and children from Arkansas were University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, massacred under a white flag 2020, $34.95 by Utah Mormons in one of the Louis Kraft has written many articles most horrifying crimes in American history. Through the for Wild West and other publications, actual testimony of a young girl as well as seven books, including the who survived, interviews with 2011 biography Ned Wynkoop and the descendants and forensic investigations, this compelling Lonely Road From Sand Creek. One of his film breaks through decades of favorite figures on the Western frontier cover-up to expose a story kept remains Wynkoop, the Army officer out of the history books. who among other things tried to bring about peace before the Nov. 29, 1864, tragedy in Colorado Territory known as the Sand Creek massacre. Wynkoop receives plenty more attention in 6/15/15 Kraft’s most ambitious work to date,whg-wiw-100007740patrickfilms-display-marketplace-6757.indd 1 but the focus of this well-researched book is on the destruction of the way of life of the Cheyennes (Tsitsistas) and Arapahos (Hinono’eino), who took a major hit when Colonel John Chivington attacked and destroyed the village of Southern Cheyenne Chief - 1945 Black Kettle at Sand Creek. Though - 1947 Chivington called the engagement - 1950 a battle, he resigned from the Army - 1974 three months later and was condemned For more, visit For more, search DAILY QUIZ for what one Army judge called “a WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ at HistoryNet.com. cowardly and cold-blooded slaughter.” MAGAZINES/QUIZ Black Kettle, a chief who wanted peace, survived Sand Creek but was HistoryNet.com killed when Lt. Col. George Custer ANSWER: 1974. PRIVATE TERUO NAKAMURA, A TAIWANESE WW-201000-009 Burying the Past 1/6th.indd 1 NATIONAL, ENLISTED IN THE JAPANESE ARMY IN 1943. HE attacked his village on the Washita ANSWER: 27. ON THE CURRENT DESIGN HAS BEEN HELD OUT MORTAI IN INDONESIA UNTIL HE WAS CAPTURED IN DECEMBER THAT YEAR, HIRO ONODA, WHO IN PLACE SINCE 1974. 1960EARLIER WHEN THE FLAG WAS in Indian Territory (present-day OkHELD OUT THE PHILLIPINES, FINALLY MODIFIED TOIN INCLUDE HAWAII, THE 50thSURRENDERED. STATE. lahoma) on Nov. 27, 1868. In the aftermath Custer managed to avoid further bloodshed when he held back his soldiers and convinced Cheyenne Chief Stone Forehead to surrender after a dramatic standoff (detailed in Kraft’s October 1998 Wild West article “Confrontation on the Sweetwater”). “More likely his decision not to attack —his shining moment on the plains— mimicked Chivington’s,” Kraft notes, Sign up for our free monthly E-NEWSLETTER at “in that he held the power to release historynet.com/newsletters two armies on a people, two armies that craved blood, but chose not to
HOW MANY TIMES THE LAST JAPANESE SOLDIER HAS THEFROM DESIGN WORLD OF THE WAR U.S. IIFLAG SURRENDERED CHANGED? IN THIS YEAR
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27, 31, 36 or 40?
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REVIEWS butcher children, women and men.” There was more fighting up north, but Chief Tall Bull was killed at Summit Springs in July 1869, and the next month the Southern Cheyennes and Southern Arapahos were settled on the reservation at El Reno in Indian Territory. “Only a few Southern Tsitsista and Hinono’eino leaders survived the deliberate destruction of their people’s freedom and were herded onto their reservation in Indian Territory that none of them wanted,” the author writes. “In a little more than two decades these onceproud people—the rulers of the central plains—had lost everything and had been reduced to paupers and prisoners in a foreign land.” Among the characters in Kraft’s wellcrafted history are the prominent Indian leaders Black Kettle, Stone Forehead, Tall Bull, Bull Bear, Little Raven and Little Robe, as well as such mixedbloods as the sons of William Bent and Edmund Guerrier. The author does not neglect the whites involved in this oftensad story. Colorado Territory Governor John Evans, who took a harsh stance against the Indians he thought were threatening Denver, comes across as misguided but not as 86 WILD WEST
bad as sometimes portrayed. Rocky Mountain News editor William Byers, a staunch defender of the anti-Indian vision of Chivington and Evans, might be considered a “villain” in Kraft’s narrative, which is far more than simply another retelling of the horrific tragedy at Sand Creek. —Editor
January Moon: The Northern Cheyenne Breakout From Fort Robinson, 1878– 1879, by Jerome A. Greene, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2020, $29.95 Jerome A. Greene, retired research historian for the National Park Service and author of numerous books involving American Indians and the U.S. military, reexamines the desperate, ultimately tragic attempt by Chief Dull Knife’s Northern Cheyenne to escape their imprisonment at Fort Robinson, Neb. By the end of the 1876–77 Great Sioux War the Army had driven the Northern
Cheyennes south to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). In that hostile environment they began to sicken and die from such epidemic diseases as malaria or from starvation. In 1878 Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf resolved to lead 300 of their tribe out of their governmentdesignated reservation and return to their northern homelands. Greene describes in detail that valiant effort and the battles they fought with the soldiers that tried to force them back, notably a string of successes that highlighted Little Wolf’s natural ability as a commander. As they neared their goal, the chiefs split forces. Dull Knife’s band soon surrendered to the Army and followed the road to Fort Robinson to await the government’s judgment. Its decision, rendered in early days of 1879, was an order to trek back to their reservation in Indian Territory. Lacking proper winter clothing, Dull Knife and his people saw no option other than to attempt a breakout. On the night of January 9, after a desperate struggle against the garrison, the Indians managed to get as far as Antelope Creek, where the bluecoats annihilated anywhere from 32 to 64 of them. Eleven escaped to join Little Wolf’s band; 78
others were recaptured. Eleven Army troopers and one Indian scout were also killed. Four years after the uneven battle Assistant Surgeon Carlos Cavallo sold Cheyenne skulls and other remains he’d found at Antelope Creek to the Smithsonian Institution. The events leading up to the bloodbath at Fort Robinson inspired legendary director John Ford’s Western Cheyenne Autumn. Involving as it did 150 Cheyenne men, women and children armed with 12 rifles, three revolvers and miscellaneous knives, one cannot help but question the magnitude of the threat they posed to the fully equipped U.S. cavalry and infantry who mowed them down. One might also ask about the hatred underlying that sense of menace. The author, however, suggests it was not the behavior of lower-ranking Army officers that brought on disaster but the strict orders they received from their superiors in Washington, D.C. What those authorities wanted above of all else was permanent confinement of the independent bands of hunters and warriors on American soil. January Moon makes an excellent addition to military history, albeit one tainted with deep sorrow. —Thomas Zacharis
ON-SCREEN REVIEWS
First Cow, 121 minutes, A24, PG-13, 2020 Writer-director Kelly Reichardt has earned a level of acclaim in independent film circles for relating minimalist stories about people on the periphery of society (usually set in the rural Pacific Northwest) with films like Wendy and Lucy (2008), Meek’s Cutoff (2010) and Certain Women (2016). With her latest, First Cow, set in 1820 Oregon Country, she adds another smallscale masterpiece to her oeuvre. First Cow tells the tale of two gentle souls, Otis “Cookie” Figowitz ( John Magaro) and Chinese immigrant King-Lu (Orion Lee), who find themselves in an otherwise rugged world populated by men who’ve come from far and wide (including the Eastern United States, Great Britain and Russia) to strike it big in the lucrative fur trade. Though this is no doubt a violent world, the camera
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often “averts its eyes” to instead capture scenes of sweetness and serenity. When a fight breaks out in a saloon, for example, and the combatants all tumble out into the street, the camera remains behind with Cookie and KingLu, the only men left inside. They soon become close friends, their bond forming the heart of the picture. The men move in together, and it is here, as platonic cohabitants of a tiny shack at the edge of civilization, they briefly find domestic bliss. Then comes an entrepreneurial breakthrough: After King-Lu, the
more ambitious of the two, tastes one of Cookie’s delicious homemade biscuits, they go into business together and start selling baked goods at a nearby fort to men happy to line up and pay astronomical amounts for such treats. The duo’s scheme, however, involves pilfering milk (a scarce resource) from the territory’s first and only cow, which is owned by a wealthy Englishman named Chief Factor (Toby Jones). Even when things get tense, though, the film is able to gear back into a state of tranquility—much like that experienced as a
warm, buttery pastry settles in one’s stomach. —Louis Lalire Tombstone Rashomon, 81 minutes, TriCoast Entertainment, not rated, 2017 (released online and on DVD in 2020) Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece Rashomon is known for its storytelling from multiple perspectives. Writerdirector Alex Cox follows Kurosawa’s structure to examine the Oct. 26, 1881, gunfight near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Time travelers are in town the day after the Wild West’s most famous
Caldwell Idaho The Fishes of Idaho
gunfight to interview surviving participants Wyatt Earp (Adam Newberry), Doc Holliday (Eric Schumacher), Ike Clanton (Benny Lee Kennedy) and eyewitnesses to the fight. Unsurprisingly, their stories conflict, as was the case in real life at Judge Wells Spicer’s hearing in the aftermath of the street fight. Cochise County
Sheriff Johnny Behan ( Jesse Lee Pacheco) proves the most entertaining interviewee. If you’re unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the historic feud and fight, you might have trouble figuring out what’s going on. Another caveat: This is a low-budget effort, thus it’s best not to compare it to either Kurosawa’s Rashomon or the 1993 classic Western Tombstone. But for those who appreciate offbeat Western entertainment and can’t get enough of Wyatt Earp and friends (and enemies), Tombstone Rashomon is worth a look. —Editor
Publishing Fine Books in the West since 1925
years between 1815 and 1845 were marked by a comparative dearth of Indian “Wars.” It
Fishes of Idahowas is the most recentwhen and most comprehensive guide to theprofessional, multitude of fish and when it learned that the frontiersmen, not a time the Army became species that inhabit Idaho’s waters. were thestatus greater enemy. wasto aoccur time when the Government expanded its role as This 815 page the book Indians, updates the conservation of the 100+ fish taxaIt known in Idaho. The sophisticated key andprovider; illustrations promotes of regulatordichotomous and welfare whenidentification some frontier people became terrorists; when our gun culture these fishes and provides the reader with prime fishing locations and indispensable blossomed; when our racism, bigotry,and xenophobia exploded; when our anti-intellectualism information about Idaho’s fish species that is of great value to biologists and sportsmen alike. Fishes of Idaho was named as the Honorable Mention recipient of the 2018 Idaho soared; when the populist “common man” seized the political scene; and when our conception of Book of the Year Award. American exceptionalism ISBN# took978-087004-6117 root, based $85.00 on the creation of the heroic frontiersman icon. 815 pages – Hardbound - Full Color
The Idaho Traveler - by Alan Minskoff
The IDAHO TRAVELER
The Frontiersmen Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight By Gregory Michno Isbn# 978-087004-6315- $18.95- Softcover The IDAHO
TRAVELER In The Idaho Traveler author Alan Minskoff explores the oft-ignored treasures of smalltown Idaho. From historic buildings and sites to the mom-and-pop restaurants that Indian Raids and Massacres covers incidents in Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska from 1864-1870. offer the best pie and breakfast in the Gem State. Interviews with long-time residents and newcomers alike illustrate to Idaho and captures the essence what the focus is on the Euro- American There are two sides this to paean these violent events, and, ofwhile defines Idaho’s unique character. Alan Minskoff
Minskoff
WORKING THE
JOHN McCARTHY John McCarthy moved to Idaho in 1977, to work trail crew in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness for the U.S. Forest Service. He later ran a range crew and worked on ranches in Hells Canyon and the Salmon River country. He started writing about wilderness as a reporter for the Lewiston Morning Tribune, where he also covered cops, courts, arts and agriculture for 10 years. He switched to environmental organizing and advocacy for two decades, as the conservation director for Idaho Conservation League and Idaho forest campaign director for the Wilderness Society. He is now a jazz disc jockey at Radio Boise doing his Jazz Beyond the Sky show.
John McCarthy
EARLY LEADERS FOR WILD LANDS tells true stories about four men and one woman who established how to work in and be in the wilderness. They were guides for protection of wilderness and for the protectors who followed them. Their lives were immersed in service — to wild land and the American people. They worked for the U.S. Forest Service, centered in the vast Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana. Three were active before and after the Wilderness Act of 1964. The younger two came in at the beginning of the modern wilderness era. They all adapted skills of the pioneers to the new land designation. Their stories celebrate heroes for the enduring resource of wilderness and point to the future to keep their legacies thriving.
WILDERNESS
WORKING THE WILDERNESS
ORKING
THE
Caxton Press
perspective, the contrary perspective of the Native American is also presented. Broome relies on ignored by other authors. Untapped Indian depredation claims housed in Washington, DC give the reader a deeper understanding of the terrors of Indian raids, Working the Wilderness: Early Leaders Wild Landsby John especially when experienced by new settlers to theforregion. What emerges represents a bold and new W W McCarthy history not found in other published accounts. Working the Wilderness: Early Leaders for Wild Lands tells true stories about four men and one womanthan who established howof to work and be in the wilderness. and They were These chapters reflect more 20 years Broome’s research writing on the Central Plains guides for protection of wilderness and for the protectors who followed them. Their Indian War. lives were immersed in service – to wild land and the American people. They worked for
Isbn# 978-087004-627-8 $18.50 primary-source documents Softbound – Color photography – 318 pagesusually
ILDERNESS
early leaders for wild lands
the U.S. Forest Service, centered in the vast Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and
Montana. Three were active before and Wilderness Act of 1964. The younger War By Jeff Broome Indian Raids and Massacres: Essays onafter thetheCentral Plains Indian two came in at the beginning of the modern wilderness era. They all adapted skills of the Isbn# 978-087004-6353 $24.95 – Softcover pioneers to the new land designation. Their stories celebrate heroes for the enduring resource of wilderness and point to the future to keep their legacies thriving. Isbn# 978-087004-6391 - $34.95 - Hardcover JOHN McCARTHY
Babette Munting
ISBN# 978-087004-625-4 $17.50
278 pages – Softcover Order now at www.caxtonpress.com Available at local bookstores or at
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GO WEST
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
S
BRUCE YUANYUE BI/GETTY IMAGES; INSET: NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
anta Fe was founded in 1610 as the capital of the Spanish province of Nuevo México. For centuries Pueblo Indians had lived here along the banks of the Santa Fe River just east of the Rio Grande. They resented the intruders and in 1680 drove them out. A dozen years later the Spanish were back, followed by a Mexican administration in 1824. By the mid-19th century the city was the coveted hub of a Southwest trading network, end point of the namesake trail. On Aug. 15, 1846, at the outset of the Mexican War, Brig. Gen. Stephen Kearny entered Santa Fe with his Army of the West and claimed New Mexico as a U.S. territory (inset). Railroads arrived in the 1880s, and the town has since grown by bounds. Yet it has retained its signature Pueblo Revival architecture, as evinced below in the glowing exterior of the Inn and Spa at Loretto, which is a mere 45 years old.
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TODAY IN HISTORY JULY 17, 1918 TSAR NICHOLAS II OF RUSSIA AND HIS FAMILY WERE EXECUTED. YEARS LATER, CONSPIRACY THEORIES EMERGED, AND IMPOSTORS BEGAN TO SURFACE. AN EASTERN EUROPEAN WOMAN NAMED ANNA ANDERSON CLAIMED TO BE GRAND DUCHESS ANASTASIA ROMANOV, SPARED DEATH IN 1918 BY A SYMPATHETIC GUARD. TEN YEARS AFTER HER DEATH IN 1994, DNA TESTING CONCLUDED SHE WAS NOT ANASTASIA BUT A MISSING POLISH FACTORY WORKER. For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY
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Un o 13 pen 8 Y ed ea fo rs! r
Discovered! Unopened Bag of 138-Year-Old Morgan Silver Dollars Coin experts amazed by “Incredible Opportunity”
Historic Morgan Silver Dollars Minted in New Orleans Struck and bagged in 1882 Unopened for 138 years 26.73 grams of 90% fine silver Hefty 38.1 mm diameter Certified Brilliant Uncirculated
The Morgan Silver Dollar is the most popular and iconic vintage U.S. coin. They were the Silver Dollars of the Wild West, going on countless untold adventures in dusty saddlebags across the nation. Finding a secret hoard of Morgans doesn’t happen often—and when it does, it’s a big deal.
by NGC
Certified “Great Southern
Treasury Hoard” pedigree
How big? Here’s numismatist, author and consultant to the Smithsonian® Jeff Garrett: “It’s very rare to find large quantities of Morgan Silver Dollars, especially in bags that have been sealed... to find several thousand Morgan Silver Dollars that are from the U.S. Treasury Hoards, still unopened, is really an incredible opportunity.” -Jeff Garrett But where did this unique hoard come from? Read on...
Morgans from the New Orleans Mint
In 1859, Nevada’s Comstock Lode was discovered, and soon its rich silver ore made its way across the nation, including to the fabled New Orleans Mint, the only U.S. Mint branch to have served under the U.S. government, the State of Louisiana and the Confederacy. In 1882, some of that silver was struck into Morgan Silver Dollars, each featuring the iconic “O” mint mark of the New Orleans Mint. Employees then placed the freshly struck coins into canvas bags...
The U.S. Treasury Hoard
Fast-forward nearly 80 years. In the 1960s, the U.S. government opened its vaults and revealed a massive store of Morgan Silver Dollars—including full, unopened bags of “fresh” 1882-O Morgan Silver Dollars. A number of bags were secured by a child of the Great Depression—a southern gentleman whose upbringing showed him the value of hard assets like silver. He stashed the unopened bags of “fresh” Morgans away, and there they stayed...
Limit five coins per household Actual size is 38.1 mm
third-party grading service Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC), and they agreed to honor the southern gentleman by giving the coins the pedigree of the “Great Southern Treasury Hoard.” These gorgeous 1882-O Morgans are as bright and new as the day they were struck and bagged 138 years ago. Coins are graded on a 70-point scale, with those graded at least Mint State-60 (MS60) often referred to as “Brilliant Uncirculated” or BU. Of all 1882-O Morgans struck, LESS THAN 1% have earned a Mint State grade. This makes these unopened bags of 1882-O Morgans extremely rare, certified as being in BU condition—nearly unheard of for coins 138 years old.
Don’t Miss This Rare Opportunity—Order Now! Regular 1882-O Morgans sell elsewhere for as much as $133, and that’s without the original brilliant shine these “fresh” 138-yearold coins have, without their special NGC hoard designation, and without their ability to tell their full, complete story from the Comstock Lode all the way to your collection.
Given the limited quantity of coins available from this historic hoard, we must set a strict limit of five coins per household. Call quickly to secure yours today as supplies are sure to sell out quickly! 1882-O Morgan Silver Dollar NGC Certified BU from the Great Southern Treasury Hoard — $99 ea.
The Great Southern Treasury Hoard That is, until another 50 years later, when the man’s family finally decided to sell the coins— still in their unopened bags—which we secured, bag and all! We submitted the coins to respected
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