Wild West June 2022

THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

Aboard a horse called Vic, originally named Victory, Lt. Col. George A. Custer rode into the 1876 battle.

a nd

CUSTER VIC

they rode to disaster at the little bighorn

JUNE 2022 HISTORYNET.COM

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H FEARLESS MAN HUNTER tom tobin H WHY THE 7TH U.S. CAVALRY GOT WHIPPED H kEEPER OF THE KIOWA FLAME

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40 THE INDIANS WON AT THE LITTLE BIGHORN

By Gregory Michno Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer underestimated his foe on June 25, 1876

48

62 FROM EMIGRANT

THE MAN IN BLACK

By Daniel Sanchez-Leonetti Tom Tobin ended a killing spree by the ‘Bloody Espinosas’ in Colorado Territory

TO EX-CON

By John Boessenecker Paxton Jacoby skirted the Mountain Meadows Massacre to become a California lawman and gunfighter

56 KIT CARSON III

RECALLS TOM TOBIN

By Robert Leonetti and Daniel Sanchez-Leonetti In 1868 a grad student interviewed the grandson of Tom Tobin and Kit Carson

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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 Award-winning author John Boessenecker tells the truth about bandit Pearl Hart

18 WESTERNERS

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Mexican revolutionary general Pancho Villa still rides in Western history and lore

20 GUNFIGHTERS & LAWMEN

By David G. Thomas A murder on this spot triggered New Mexico Territory’s Lincoln County War

22 PIONEERS & SETTLERS

By Chuck Lyons Brave wife of a bold filibuster, Jane Long has been called the ‘Mother of Texas’

24 WESTERN ENTERPRISE

By Aaron Robert Woodard The steamboat Bertrand carried treasures when it sank on the Missouri in 1865

26 ART OF THE WEST

32 VIC AT THE

LITTLE BIGHORN

By Sharon B. Smith Custer rode this Thoroughbred sorrel into battle, but Vic did not bring victory

By Gregory Lalire The Booth Museum in Cartersville, Ga., draws Western art lovers to the South

30 INDIAN LIFE

By Lance Nixon An accident ended Thomas Sarpy’s good relations with the Sioux—and his life

76 COLLECTIONS

By Linda Wommack The DuPont Historical Museum, in Washington’s Puget Sound, is a real blast

78 GUNS OF THE WEST

By George Layman Texas Rangers and others swept up crime with the ‘Broomhandle’ Mauser C96

80 GHOST TOWNS

By Jim Winnerman Ushered in by the railroad, Cuervo, N.M., remains on the beaten track off I-40

82 REVIEWS

Your editor picks his all-time favorite Western history books and films. Plus reviews of recent books about Confederates, Comancheros and George Armstrong Custer

88 GO WEST

70 KIOWA KEEPER OF THE FLAME

By Ron J. Jackson Jr. Linguist Parker McKenzie spent his life preserving tribal history and culture

Artists and tribal gatherings have kept Kiowa culture alive in Anadarko, Okla.

ON THE COVER Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, posing here in field dress during the Civil War, rode to the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, aboard the Thoroughbred sorrel Vic. Custer and his entire command died in the battle, but Vic (depicted standing behind the colonel in the background painting, John Mulvany’s 1881 work Custer’s Last Rally) may have survived and gone north to Canada with a new Lakota master. (Atlaspix/Alamy Stock Photo, photo colorization by Brian Walker; background painting: Incamerastock/Alamy Stock Photo)

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EDITOR’S LETTER

MAN HUNTER TOBIN Kit Carson (1809–68)—fur trapper and trader, guide, scout, Indian agent, Army officer—achieved fame in his lifetime and was arguably the West’s best-known frontiersman until self-promoting Buffalo Bill Cody came along. Yes, Carson killed Indians, which has made him persona non grata among those presuming to make politically correct pronouncements about historical figures. Still, most Americans realize he lived in a violent frontier era when Indians were also trying to kill him. Kit Carson remains a household name, though perhaps not in as many households as it once did. Not so Carson’s younger colleague and relation by marriage Thomas Tate Tobin (1823–1904), who achieved many of the same benchmarks that made Kit a heroic American. Writes Daniel Sanchez-Leonetti in “The Man in Black” (P. 48), “Some contemporaries considered him the only man who could surpass the legendary Kit Carson in shooting, scouting and tracking.” The unsung Tobin also turned a stint as something Carson never was—a bounty hunter.

In 1863 Tobin achieved renown by tracking down and killing the murderous Felipe Nerio Espinosa in what today is central Colorado. Felipe and brother Vivián Espinosa are considered by some students of murder and mayhem the first serial killers in the American West.

The so-called “Bloody Espinosas” (Felipe recruited young nephew José Espinosa after a posse killed Vivián) committed their depredations a decade before the “Bloody Benders,” a homicidal family that disposed of unwary travelers at their roadside inn in southeastern Kansas. Exactly how many people John, Elvira and children John Jr. and Kate Bender killed between 1871 and ’73 is uncertain, but it ranged upward of a dozen. The Bloody Espinosas killed perhaps as many as 32. Anyway, that was Felipe’s claim. In personal papers recovered after his death he also described a dream in which the Virgin Mary ordered him to kill 600 gringos—a hundred for each of his relatives killed in the Mexican War. Tobin, whose father was an Irish immigrant and mother was of mixed white and Indian blood, had survived many ordeals (including the 1847 Taos Revolt) before he got the call from Fort Garland commander Lt. Col. Samuel Tappan in October 1863 to track down the Espinosas. Sanchez-Leonetti relates Tobin’s successful mission, the evidence of which—presented to Tappan in a gunnysack—caused the colonel to turn green and take a seat.

In a related feature (P. 56) Sanchez-Leonetti presents the transcription of an interview brother Robert Leonetti conducted with Kit Carson III (1883–1974) regarding Tobin’s pursuit of the Espinosas. Tobin was 77 in 1900 when he first described the adventure to then 16-year-old Kit, the grandson of both Tobin and Kit Carson. In 1878 Tobin’s daughter María Pascualita had married William “Billy” Carson (1852–89), and young Kit was one of their six children. Leonetti interviewed the latter on Dec. 30, 1968, six years before Carson died at age 91.

“My brother was a graduate student at Adams State College [in Alamosa, Colo.] when he taped the interview with Kit Carson III,” says Sanchez-Leonetti. “The original transcript was not done well and was never published. The tape has reposed for 52 years in my brother’s shed. I looked for it for a long time, praying my brother hadn’t tossed it out. I transcribed it pretty much word for word. In parentheses I corrected some of Kit Carson III’s wrong facts. He was very old at the time of the interview, and Tobin was notorious for getting dates wrong. But Kit Carson III did clear up one date. In a deposition nine years before his death Tobin said he went after the Espinosas in September 1863, but in the 1968 interview Kit Carson III remembers it was in October 1863, the same month that his mother was born.”

In the interview Carson said Grandfather Tobin claimed to have been ignorant of any bounty when he rode in pursuit of the Espinosas—in which case the tracker wasn’t technically a bounty hunter.

“And the reason he went was like all these old-timers done,” Carson explained. “He done it for humanity sake and to protect mankind that these fellas were killing all over the valley, all over the place.”

Kit Carson III could look up to both of his grandfathers—and so can we.

Tom Tobin tracked down and killed the murderous Felipe Espinosa and his nephew José in 1863.

THE BLOODY ESPINOSAS

KILLED PERHAPS

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Wild West editor Gregory Lalire’s historical novel The Call of McCall comes out in July 2022. His earlier novels include 2021’s Man From Montana, 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.

TOP: HISTORY COLORADO

AS MANY AS 32 PEOPLE

JUNE 2022

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Follow the storylines of history to North Dakota — to the homelands of Sitting Bull and the reconstructed home of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer. See where Sakakawea joined the Corps of Discovery and where Theodore Roosevelt became a Rough Rider.

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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER

Jim Dunham knows his way around Western guns and art, and loves his work at Georgia’s Booth Museum.

Visit our WEBSITE FOR ONLINE EXTRAS

JUNE 2022 / VOL. 35, NO. 1

WildWestMag.com

GREGORY J. LALIRE EDITOR DAVID LAUTERBORN MANAGING EDITOR GREGORY F. MICHNO SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR JOHNNY D. BOGGS SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR JOHN KOSTER SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR JOHN BOESSENECKER SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR

“Such a tale of blood and sorrow had little to recommend it to those who created the legend of the West,” wrote Will Bagley, the award-winning expert on Mormon history, who died in 2021. “It involved white people killing white people in an act of treachery that does nothing to support our pride in what makes us Westerners. Since the story involved a persecuted religion, historians liked to navigate around it.”

Extended Interview With John Boessenecker

The award-winning California author keeps busy. His many Western history books include Wildcat: The Untold Story of Pearl Hart: The Wild West’s Most Notorious Woman Bandit; Ride the Devil’s Herd: Wyatt Earp’s Epic Battle Against the West’s Biggest Outlaw Gang; and Texas Ranger: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, the Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde.

More on the Booth Museum

“What makes the museum unique is the vast amount of art by living, working artists,” says Jim Dunham, the director of special projects at this outstanding Western art museum in Cartersville, Ga. “This opens the door for artists to visit and do programs at the museum, including lectures, workshops, demonstrations and book signings. A wonderful part of my job is doing special programs. The museum does an ‘Art for Lunch’ lecture every first Wednesday of the month and one Thursday evening lecture each month. I get to do several of them a year.”

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LETTERS

THE vINATIERIS As a longtime fan of the New England Patriots and a student of the Little Bighorn, I was delighted to read the piece “Custer Connection” on Adam and Felix Vinatieri in Roundup of your October 2021 issue. Although Felix (as chief musician) and all but three of the 16 enlisted men of the 7th U.S. Cavalry’s band marched FELIX VINATIERI with the regiment from Fort Abraham Lincoln on May 17, 1876, they did not ”follow upriver on the steamboat Far West.” They (and several other troopers) were assigned to the Powder River supply depot, which the regiment reached by land. The band’s horses were not “confiscated.” Apparently, they were reassigned to other dismounted enlisted men. Trumpeter John Martin (dispatched with the last message of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer) was not a member of the band. He was assigned to Company H of the regiment.

Felix Vinatieri’s tenure with the 7th Cavalry was not always pleasant. In August 1875, for example, he requested a discharge from the Army due to an apparent personality clash with Fort Lincoln’s adjutant and band commander, Lieutenant James Calhoun, who approved the request, which Custer endorsed. Calhoun (who died with Custer) noted that “the chief musician is not a competent person.” However, no discharge was initiated at that time. For circumstances that are unclear Felix did not return to civilian life until December 1876, months after the Little Bighorn. A well-researched, detailed profile of “Custer’s bandmaster” appeared in the June 1988 edition of the Little Big Horn Associates’ Research Review.

C. Lee Noyes Morrisonville, N.Y. GEORGE HEARST Matthew Bernstein’s list of “George Hearst’s Top 10 Mines” in the February 2022 issue has a couple of misstatements about Black Hills mines. His No. 3 listing mentions a “Custer Mine” and connects it to the town of Custer, S.D. Hearst never owned a Custer Mine in the Black Hills. He and his partners did own a Custer Mine, but it was in Idaho. (As a sidenote, the town of Custer was founded around placer claims and never relied on hard rock gold mines for its existence.) In his No. 10 listing, about the Deadwood Mine, Bernstein says Hearst “quickly lost faith in it.” In fact, the Deadwood Mine sat along the Homestake Gold Belt and was absorbed into the Homestake Mining Co.’s holdings. Hearst had an interest in that mine until his death.

David Wolff Spearfish, S.D. 8

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Matthew Bernstein responds: Good eye! There are actually three Custer mines: one in Idaho, one in North Dakota and one in South Dakota. In “George Hearst’s Top 10 Mines” I was referring to the one in Idaho, but in a game of editorial three-card monte the Idaho Custer Mine was substituted for the South Dakota Custer Mine. In my biography George Hearst: Silver King of the Gilded Age I correctly note it was the Custer Mine in Idaho Territory that Hearst owned. Wolff is ADAM VINATIERI also correct about the Deadwood Mine being incorporated into the Homestake, although what I wrote about Hearst quickly losing faith in it was also true. On May 4, 1878, Hearst wrote from Deadwood to business partner J. B. Haggin: “The Deadwood Mine I found on my arrival here…very unfavorable if not disastrous. We are still continuing the tests, but my faith is gone and has been for some days, but Mr. M still thinks it will come out all right.” Mr. M was Samuel McMaster, a respected Irish mining engineer whose experience ranged from Australia to South America, Nevada and the Black Hills. Fortunately for Hearst, his faith in McMaster paid off.

In Matt Bernstein’s Top 10 list No. 1 mentions an assayer who deemed the silver from the Ophir Mine valuable. The story around Nevada City, Calif., is that the assayer was James Ott, of Ott’s Assay Office here. Hearst and partners sent down a sample of the claylike gray mud to see if it was worth anything, and it came back almost pure silver.

Until that time they had been dumping it, because they were looking for gold (hence Gold Hill/Virginia City). When the news got out around town here, many miners left for Nevada, because the mines in California’s Nevada County were all established, and no new claims were being discovered.

Jim Luckinbill Nevada City, Calif.

Matt Bernstein responds: Luckinbill’s information on James J. Ott (cousin to John Sutter of Sutter’s Mill fame) is good. Ott was among the first assayers to determine the ore being mined from the Comstock Lode was silver, which inspired Hearst (living in Nevada City at the time) to head east to Virginia City. Six months later Hearst was a millionaire.

DREISER & JAMES Toward the end of Chapter 19 of Theodore Dreiser’s book A Book About Myself (1922) appears the following paragraph: “Although [Edward] Butler was an earnest Catholic, he was supposed to control and tax the vice of the city, which charge may or may not have been true. One of his sons owned and managed the leading vaudeville house in the city, a vulgar burlesque theater, at which the ticket taker was Frank James, brother of the amazing Jesse who terrorized Missouri and the Southwest as an outlaw at one time and enriched endless dime novel publishers afterward. As dramatic critic of the Globe-Democrat later I often saw him. Butler’s son, a more or less stodgy type of Tammany politician, popular with a certain element in St. Louis, was later elected to Congress.” I don’t know if this information about Frank James is well known to James’ historians, but I am passing it on in case it isn’t. Finding it in one of Dreiser’s less-read books struck me as a bit of serendipity.

Dennis Bertram Buffalo, N.Y. Editor responds: Frank James, twice acquitted of crimes after Jesse’s death in 1882, lived in St. Louis from the end of the 19th century into early 20th century. He worked for several years (as usher, doorman and possibly guard) at the Standard Theater, at 7th and Walnut. Colonel Edward “Boss” Butler, who ran the St. Louis Democratic Party from about 1876 until convicted of bribery charges in 1904, owned the theater. It was operated by his son James J. Butler.

Send letters by email to wildwest@historynet.com. Include your name and hometown.

JUNE 2022

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ROUNDUP A bird’s-eye view takes in part of the state-maintained ghost town of Bannack, Mont., the site of a major gold discovery and the first capital of Montana Territory.

10 INTERESTING HISTORICAL PLACES IN WESTERN MONTANA

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Blackfoot River: The Nez Perce and other tribes west of the Continental Divide called it the Cokahlarishkit (River of the Road to the Buffalo), as they would follow it east to the Plains on annual hunts.

Corps of Discovery Captain Meriwether Lewis skirted the river in July 1806 during his return trip from the Pacific Ocean. The primary travel route today is Highway 200.

The river features in Norman Maclean’s 1976 novella A River Runs Through It, which inspired the namesake 1992 film directed

by Robert Redford.

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Bison Range: The federal government established this 18,800-acre national wildlife refuge on the Flathead Indian Reservation in 1908, when buffalo were near

10 WILD WEST

extinction. Today the size of the herd fluctuates between 300 and 500 buffalo. In 2021 management of the reserve, formerly called the National Bison Range, transferred from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

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Travelers’ Rest State Park: Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark camped here with the Corps of Discovery on Sept. 9–11, 1805, en route to the Pacific Ocean, and again on June 30–July 3, 1806, on the return trip. Lolo Creek runs through this idyllic spot, where for centuries the Salish, Pend d’Oreille, Nez Perce and other tribes had also camped. Twelve miles south of downtown Missoula off U.S. 93, this is the only historic campsite along the Lewis and Clark Trail bearing physical evidence of the expedition: In 2002 archaeologist found a trench latrine tainted with mercury, fire hearths and lead used in making bullets.

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Fort Owen State Park: Fort Owen, in present-day Stevensville, preserves the site of Montana’s first permanent white settlement. There in 1841 Jesuit Father Pierre-Jean De Smet built St. Mary’s Mission, the first Catholic church in what would become Montana, for his missionary work among the Salish in the Bitterroot Valley.

Civilian sutler John Owen bought the site in 1850 and built an adobe trading post

he named for himself. The restored rooms of the east barracks showcase period artifacts and furnishings.

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Going-to-the-Sun Road: This spectacular 50-mile paved road—dedicated on July 15, 1933, after more than a decade of planning and construction— traverses Glacier National Park, which President William Howard Taft signed into existence on May 11, 1910. Architects and engineers worked to blend the road, initially called the Transmountain Highway, into the surrounding environment. Glacier is home to thousands of bears, including some 1,000 grizzlies, but there are no designated bear crossings.

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Butte: Vast deposits of copper gave rise to one of the largest cities out West by the early 1900s, earning Butte the nickname the “Richest Hill on Earth.”

Visitors will find the World Museum of Mining atop the retired Orphan Girl mine, but all of the town and the neighboring communities of Anaconda and Walkerville constitute a national historic district.

Among other worthwhile sights are the Copper King Mansion (elegant 1884 home of “Copper King” William Andrews Clark), the Dumas Brothel Museum (a two-story former bordello) and the 1924 Hotel Finlen (retaining Butte’s boomtown ambience).

JUNE 2022

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FROM TOP: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; NETFLIX

Bannack: A major gold discovery on July 28, 1862, led to the birth of this settlement, today a well-preserved ghost town, state park and national historic landmark. On Jan. 10, 1864, vigilantes hanged Sheriff Henry Plummer and two deputies here due to their alleged ties to a gang of road agents. When President Abraham Lincoln signed Montana Territory into existence that May 26, Bannack was named its capital, though in 1865 that honor passed to Virginia City, a lively gold boomtown then and another ghost town worth seeing today.

KIM PHILLIPS PHOTO

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Old Montana Prison: The gray sandstone walls of the onetime territorial and state prison, built in Deer Lodge by convict labor in 1870–71, today encompass five museums. The prison operated through Montana’s 1889 admission to the Union until 1979, when officials transferred inmates to a new state prison just west of town. Frank Conley, who served as warden from 1890 to 1921, encouraged prisoners to do such “outside work” as erecting buildings, paving roads, logging and farming statewide. The “inside” featured austere cells, though even those were vastly superior to the “black box” of the maximum-security cellblock.

9

Grant-Kohrs Ranch: Designated a national historic site in 1972, the ranch dates to 1862, when former Canadian fur trader Johnny Grant built a home in the Deer Lodge Valley, where he’d been wintering cattle. In 1866 he sold the ranch to cattle baron Conrad Kohrs, who expanded it and was able to withstand the severe winter of 1886– 87 that bankrupted many other ranchers and put an end to the open range era.

The National Park Service runs the site as a living history ranch, adhering as closely as possible to the way things were done in the 19th century.

FROM TOP: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; NETFLIX

KIM PHILLIPS PHOTO

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Missoula: Eight miles northwest of town is the 187-acre Council Grove State Park, where on July 16, 1855, U.S. government representatives and members of the Bitterroot Salish, Pend d’Oreille and Kootenai tribes signed the Hellgate Treaty, creating the Flathead Indian Reservation.

In 1877 Fort Missoula (on the site of the present-day town) was established as a permanent military post, and in 1888 it became the headquarters of the 25th U.S. Infantry, a regiment of black soldiers commanded by white officers.

In 1896 buffalo soldiers under Lieutenant James A. Moss formed the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps, which a year later rode from Missoula to St. Louis. While in town visit the Oxford Saloon & Café, aka “the Ox,” which opened its doors in 1883 and a century later was frequented by a future editor of Wild West.

— Gregory Lalire

YELLOWSTONE AT 150 On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill that established Yellowstone, the first national park in the United States and perhaps the world’s first. Congress had only just withdrawn the region from public auction, having reviewed a report compiled by Ferdinand V. Hayden’s 1871 geological survey that included spectacular large-format paintings by Thomas Moran and photos by William Henry Jackson. Encompassing more than 2.2 million acres in northwestern Wyoming, southern Montana and eastern Idaho, the park forms the core of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which boasts some 25 sites, landmarks and districts on the National Register of Historic Places. Highlighting this year’s sesquicentennial celebration, a May 6 event hosted by the Old Faithful Inn will include remarks from National Park Service and partner representatives, free historic Yellow Bus tours of the Old Faithful Historic District and an American Indian art exhibit and marketplace. The NPS and gateway communities have scheduled myriad other activities, both virtual and in-person. For more information visit nps.gov/yell.

DOG DAYS AT OSCARS The 2021 Netflix film The Power of the Dog, a Western set in 1925 Montana and described as “a slow-burning interior character piece” (see review online at Historynet.com) received a leading dozen nominations in advance of the 94th Academy Awards, held in Hollywood on March 27. Most groups of film critics hailed The Power of the Dog as best picture and Campion (a native of New Zealand, where filming took place) as best director, but its lone Oscar went to Campion for her direction. Nominees that didn’t win were Best Picture (CODA was the winner), Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Best Supporting Actor ( Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee), Best Supporting Actress (Kirsten Dunst), Best Adapted Screenplay (Campion, based on the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage), Best Cinematography (Ari Wegner), Best Film Editing (Peter Sciberras), Best Original Score ( Jonny Greenwood), Best Production Design (Grant Major and Amber Richards) and Best Sound (Richard Flynn, Robert Mackenzie and Tara Webb). The Western psychological drama doesn’t appeal to everyone.

Actor Sam Elliott, for one, compared Campion’s cowboys (who run around shirtless in chaps) to Chippendale dancers and objected to the “allusions of homosexuality throughout the movie.” Another 2021 Netflix Western, The Harder They Fall (see review in the February 2022 Wild West and at Historynet.com) failed to garner a single nomination.

WEST WORDS

‘Of course, everyone has heard of wicked Dodge; but a great deal has been said and written about it that is not true.

Its good side has never been told, and I cannot give it space here.

Many reckless, bad men came to Dodge, and many brave men.

These had to be met by officers equally brave and reckless. As the old saying goes, “You must fight the devil with fire.”’

—Dodge City pioneer Robert Marr Wright wrote this in his 1913 book Dodge City, the Cowboy Capital and the Great Southwest.

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ROUNDUP

WWA AWARDS ▲

Since 1953 Western Writers of America has honored those who write about the American West with its prestigious Spur Awards. This year top honors go to Irene Bennett Brown (see above), a Kansasbased author of historical and juvenile novels, who will receive WWA’s Owen Wister Award for lifetime contributions to Western literature.

The 90-year-old novelist will also be inducted into the Western Writers Hall of Fame, housed outside the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo. Brown has written more than 20 books, including the young adult novel Before the Lark (which won the 1982 Spur for best Western juvenile book) and its adult sequels Miss Royal’s Mules (2018) and Tangled Times

(2020). WWA will honor her and the 2022 Spur Award winners and finalists during its annual convention, June 22–25 in Great Falls, Mont.

Spur winners include Terry Mort for his historical nonfiction book Cheyenne Summer: The Battle of Beecher Island: A History (see review on Historynet.com); Shane Dunning for his short nonfiction article “The Right Man to Do a Wrong Thing: Charlie Thex, the Bear Creek Sheep Raid and the Primacy of Fear” (Montana: The Magazine of Western History); Wynne Brown for his biography The Forgotten Botanist: Sara Plummer Lemmon’s Life of Science and Art; Michael Punke for his historical novel Ridgeline; Chase Pletts for his traditional novel/ first novel The Loving Wrath of Eldon Quint; and David Heska Wanbli Weiden for his short fiction “Skin” (published in Midnight Hour: A Chilling Anthology of Crime Fiction From 20 Authors of Color). For the complete list of winners and finalists visit westernwriters. org/spur-awards.

WILD FRONTIER

The Old West lives again on the INSP cable network—with not only reruns of smallscreen Western classics like Gunsmoke and Wagon Train but also Into the Wild Frontier, an original, action-packed historical docudrama series, which premiered in February. Most of the well-known frontiersmen of the real West show up, starting with Daniel Boone, who spent most of his life exploring the wild country east of the Mississippi before moving to what became Missouri. Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark feature in the series, as does John Colter, a member of the expedition who stayed in the wilds for more adventure. The list of mountain men show cased include Jedediah Smith, Tom Fitzpatrick, Jim Bridger, Jim Beckwourth and Kit Carson. Among the experts offering on-screen commentary is Paul Andrew Hutton —history professor, award-winning author, television personality, documentary writer and Wild West contributor.

Into the Wild Frontier is presented by Warm Spring Productions, based in Montana.

SEE YOU LATER...

MARGOT LIBERTY

CHIP CARLSON

WILL BAGLEY

DWAYNE HICKMAN

Margot Helena Liberty, 89, an anthropologist by training who authored four books about Cheyenne culture and heritage, died on Feb. 9, 2022, in Sheridan, Wyo. Her classic 1967 work Cheyenne Memories was a collaborative effort with tribal historian John Stands in Timber.

Will Bagley, 71, who wrote Blood of Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (2002) died on Sept. 28, 2021, in Salt Lake City. Bagley authored and edited 20 books and wrote for Wild West. He received Western Writers of America’s 2019 Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in Western literature.

Wyoming historian Chip Carlson, 84, died in Cheyenne on Jan. 4, 2022. Carlson wrote the books Tom Horn: Killing Men Is My Specialty, Joe Lefors: I Slickered Tom Horn and Tom Horn: Blood on the Moon, as well as “Gunfighter Most Understood” (April 1993) and “Tom Horn on Trial” (October 2001) for Wild West.

Actor Dwayne Hickman, 87, died on Jan. 9, 2022, in Los Angeles. Best known for his starring role in the 1959–63 TV series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Hickman also made a strong impression among film buffs as “Jed” in the 1965 Western comedy Cat Ballou, starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin.

FA M O U S L A S T WO RD S

‘BRUTOS’ —On Oct. 15, 1863, in what would become south-central Colorado Territory, mortally wounded serial killer Felipe Espinosa said this (which translate as “Brutes”) to the man who’d just shot him, tracker Tom Tobin, and a posse of approaching soldiers. Felipe might have wanted to say more, but moments later Tobin used a hunting knife to sever the murderer’s head for purposes of identification. See related feature (P. 48).

12 WILD WEST

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THE REAL DEAL SINCE 1876

Once lawless, Deadwood’s fabled past runs deeper than veins of Black Hills gold. Like Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, it’s rooted in the myths and lore of a place larger than life. History lives here.

You’ll hear it in the tall tales of the short-statured Potato Creek Johnny. You can feel it etched on Boot Hill’s headstones. There is always more to discover. And you’ve only scratched the surface.

This is no spaghetti western; this is Deadwood. The rest is history.

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ROUNDUP

WIYOT AWAKENING ▲

At dawn on Sunday Feb. 26, 1860, a halfdozen local white men attacked the Wiyot village on Tuluwat Island (aka Indian Island), in Arcata Bay a mile northeast of Eureka, Calif. The mob had waited until most of

the Wiyot men had paddled away from the island to get supplies for the tribe’s World Renewal Ceremony. Then, armed with hatchets, knives and clubs, they descended on the sleeping village and slaughtered some four dozen Wiyots, mostly women, children and old men. That same night and over the next five days bloodthirsty vigilantes, numbering some 75 men in all,

hit nearly a dozen other villages, killing as many as 250 Wiyots.

Writer Bret Harte, then a young journalist, was outraged and couldn’t imagine why the extermination campaign had targeted the most assimilated Indians in the region (see “Bret Harte’s Voice for the Wiyots,” by Robert Aquinas McNally, at Historynet.com).

Closing a painful chapter in Wiyot history, the remains of at least 20 of those slain

on Tuluwat in 1860 were recently repatriated. Amid a jetty construction project in Eureka some 70 years ago work crews unearthed the bones of several victims and artifacts buried with them. A team from the University of California, Berkeley, collected the remains and put them in storage at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

Although long reluctant to surrender the historic remains,

UC Berkeley recently did an about-face and agreed to return the Wiyot items. In 2019 the Eureka City Council had returned all of Tuluwat Island to the tribe, which has yet to decide where to inter the remains.

“They’re going to be at peace and at rest with our other ancestors,” assured Ted Hernandez, the Wiyot’s historic preservation officer. “They’ll be able to reunite with their families.”

Events of the west

“Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art From Spiro” runs through Aug. 7 in the Hoffman Galleries of the Dallas Museum of Art. The exhibition presents nearly 200 ancient and contemporary works exploring Mississippian ceremonial centers, the discovery of the Spiro site in Oklahoma and the power of Mississippian art. Call 214-9221200 or visit dma.org.

Little Bighorn

The 30th annual Battle of the Little Bighorn Reenactment, hosted by

break, the Wild West History Association will hold its annual Roundup July 20–23 in South Dakota, with events in both Rapid City and Deadwood. Visit wildwesthistory.org.

WWHA Meets After a two-year pandemic-related

Jan. 29, 2023. Visit centerofthewest.org.

Frontier Days

Wyoming’s 126th annual Cheyenne Frontier Days kicks up the dust July 22–31.

Visit cheyenne.org/ events/cheyennefrontier-days.

Jubilee Days

WWA Meets

Western Writers of America heads to Montana for its next convention, June 22–25 in Great Falls.

Visit westernwriters.org.

For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People” through

Yellowstone 150 ▲

In recognition of the sesquicentennial of Yellowstone National Park the Buffalo Bill Center of the West presents “Yellowstone:

The weeklong Laramie Jubilee Days celebrates the Western lifestyle in that Wyoming city July 2–10. Visit laramiejubileedays.org.

Prix de West

More than 300 Western paintings and sculptures are on display during the 50th annual Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition & Sale at the

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. The works will be on exhibit June 2– Aug. 7, and they’ll go on sale June 17 and 18. The museum commemorates the sesquicentennial of Yellowstone National Park with the exhibition “Colter’s Hell: Yellowstone National Park at 150,” June 25–Oct. 23.

Call 405-478-2250 or visit nationalcowboymuseum.org.

Eiteljorg Festival

The Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis hosts its annual Indian Market & Festival, celebrating American Indian culture through art, music, dance and demonstrations, June 25 and 26. Call 317-636-9378 or visit eiteljorg.org.

Send upcoming event notices by email to wildwest@historynet.com. Submit at least four months in advance.

14 WILD WEST

TOP: ELLIN BELTZ

Spiro Art ▲

the Real Bird family, rides into action June 24–26 just south of Crow Agency, Mont., at Medicine Tail Coulee and Minneconjou Ford. Visit littlebighornreenactment.com.

Concurrently, for the 14th straight year, the U.S. Cavalry School presents “Custer’s Last Ride” Adventure at the Little Bighorn Reenactment, June 18–26.

Visit uscalvaryschool. com/programs/ custers_last_ride.html.

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3/29/22 11:43 AM

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Shi Se

INTERVIEW

A PEARL OF A BIOGRAPHY AWARD-WINNING HISTORIAN JOHN BOESSENECKER UNCOVERS THE TRUTH ABOUT OUTLAW PEARL HEART

BY JOHNNY D. BOGGS

What intrigued you about Lillie Naomi Davy (alias “Pearl Hart”)?

I have always been fascinated by her, ever since I read the book Tombstone’s Yesterday, by Lorenzo D. Walters, when I was a teenager. As I became older and more sophisticated as a researcher, I realized much of what had been written about her was hogwash.

How did she acquire her alias?

Lillie Davy served a term in the Ontario Reformatory. On her release in 1890 she joined her 17-year-old sister, Katy, who was running a bordello in Buffalo, N.Y. At that time one of the bestknown madams in Buffalo was a woman named Pearl Hart, from whom Lillie adopted her alias.

What else did you learn about her sister Katy?

Katy Davy was gorgeous, glamorous and as independent as Pearl. She also started out as a prostitute, then became a pioneer parachutist in Texas, then a writer and actress. She even had roles in silent films before 1920 and wrote a science-fiction novel in 1940. She had countless lovers and broke her husband out of jail twice, in Oklahoma and in Texas.

How has the digitizing of newspapers helped you and other historians?

I spent months poring over digital newspaper archives looking for tidbits of information. Pearl and siblings tried hard to conceal their real names. Without being able to do word searches in digital newspapers, I would never have figured out the truth. The hardest part was learning her real name. That opened the floodgates.

How did you weed out fact from fiction?

Old West newspapers are often the only source one has. I always try to use firsthand accounts from the newspapers, or an account written by a local reporter. I try to confirm those with court records, memoirs, local histories and other records. The good thing is the papers often gave detailed coverage of crime news and included accounts by witnesses and law officers.

16 WILD WEST

Was Pearl herself a reliable source?

No, but most of the falsehoods she told were about her background, as she was trying to protect her mother from the shame and notoriety she had achieved. While her accounts of her misadventures were generally true, her accounts of her childhood, family and marriages were false.

Did drugs take a toll on Pearl?

Pearl always said her husband Dan Bandman got her addicted to injecting morphine and smoking opium. Obviously she did it to offset the pain and humiliation of her life as a prostitute in Phoenix and Tucson in the 1890s. While serving her term in Yuma Territorial Prison for stage robbery, she kicked the habit and never used drugs again. But they clearly took a heavy toll on her health, for her sisters all lived into their 80s, while Pearl died in 1935 at age 64.

And prostitution?

Prostitution was her principal livelihood from her early teenage years in the 1880s until she landed in Yuma in 1899. After her release there is no evidence she ever returned to it.

And perhaps poor choices in men?

Her choices in men were beyond bad. Her first husband, Bandman, was a drug-addicted piano player who regularly beat her.

Her second husband, Earl Lighthawk, was a mentally unstable actor and con man. However, they had a daughter, Millie, born in 1906, and she grew up to be a respectable woman in Los Angeles, married to a former U.S. Navy submariner.

Why do we remember Pearl Hart?

In an era when women were subservient to men, when they lived at home, performed all domestic work and raised children, Pearl refused to be constrained. She broke free from those constraints and lived life on her own terms. She made a lot of bad choices, but her life story almost defies belief.

What’s better, writing about lawmen or outlaws?

Both are equally fascinating and equally hard to research. Few lawmen kept diaries, so you have to track down the details of their exploits in newspapers and court records. The same is true of outlaws. Most, like Pearl Hart, used aliases and tried to cover their tracks, which makes researching them more than difficult.

What’s next for you?

I’m finishing up a full-length biography of Charles E. Boles, better known as “Black Bart,” the Old West’s most notorious stage robber.

JOHN BOESSENECKER

John Boessenecker, a San Francisco trial lawyer and former police officer, has also become one of the leading historians on crime, outlaws and lawmen of the Old West. A recipient of both a Spur Award from Western Writers of America and a best book award from Westerners International, Boessenecker recently spoke with Wild West about his latest book, Wildcat: The Untold Story of Pearl Hart, the Wild West’s Most Notorious Woman Bandit (see review in the April 2022 issue and online at Historynet.com).

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WESTERNERS

ON A PALE HORSE

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

His birth name, José Doroteo Arango Arámbula, might be forgotten today, but as Francisco “Pancho” Villa—a name he adopted in the early 20th century—he lives on in everlasting controversy on either side of the U.S.-Mexican border. Born in Durango, Mexico, on June 5, 1878, Villa made headlines in adulthood as a Mexican revolutionary, bandit and guerrilla. It is uncertain why he changed his name, though he claimed to have done so while on the run from authorities after shooting a hacienda owner who had raped a sister. He might have adopted the name as a nod to his paternal grandfather, Jesús Villa, or perhaps in homage to a late bandit who went by Francisco Villa. Period accounts depict him as both a ruthless bandit and a benevolent champion of the poor, or the “Robin Hood of Mexico.” In 1914 Villa bought ammunition legally from the United States and secured the support of President Woodrow Wilson in the ongoing Mexican Revolution.

Wilson even offered him political asylum in 1915. But on March 9, 1916, the revolutionary—perhaps believing the U.S. president had betrayed him in his power struggle with Mexican President Venustiano Carranza—directed his Villistas to raid the border town of Columbus, N.M. Wilson sent Brig. Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing south of the border in pursuit, but that mission proved unsuccessful. The uncertainties and mysteries surrounding Villa persisted, though in later life he is known to have turned to ranching. On July 10, 1923, seven riflemen ambushed him as he returned to his hacienda from a trip to Parral, Chihuahua, dropping him with nine bullet wounds.

While the question of who killed Villa has never been satisfactorily answered, one thing is certain—he was shot riding in an automobile, not atop a horse.

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History. Heritage. Craft CULTURE. The Great Outdoors.

The Nature of the West.

1.1

million acres of pristine wildland in the Bighorn National Forest, encompassing 1,200 miles of trails, 30 campgrounds, 10 picnic areas, 6 mountain lodges, legendary dude ranches, and hundreds of miles of waterways. The Bighorns offer limitless outdoor recreation opportunities.

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restaurants, bars, food trucks, lounges, breweries, distilleries, tap rooms, saloons, and holes in the wall are spread across Sheridan County. That’s 101 different ways to apres adventure in the craft capital of Wyoming. We are also home to more than 40 hotels, motels, RV parks, and B&Bs.

4

seasons in which to get WYO’d. If you’re a skijoring savant, you’ll want to check out the Winter Rodeo in February 2022. July features the 92nd edition of the beloved WYO Rodeo. Spring and fall are the perfect time to chase cool mountain streams or epic backcountry lines.

∞

Sheridan features a thriving, historic downtown district, with western allure, hospitality and good graces to spare; a vibrant arts scene; bombastic craft culture; a robust festival and events calendar; and living history from one corner of the county to the next.

3/25/22 7:10 PM

GUNFIGHTERS & LAWMEN

FOR LONG YEARS NO MONUMENT MARKED THE SPOT WHERE LINCOLN COUNTY, NEW MEXICO TERRITORY, RANCHER JOHN TUNSTALL WAS AMBUSHED IN 1878

BY DAVID G. THOMAS

I

n 1926 author Walter Noble Burns published The Saga of Billy the Kid, the first book-length biography of the Kid since Charlie Siringo’s History of Billy the Kid, published in 1920. As Burns explained to readers, the unprovoked, sadistic murder of Englishman John Henry Tunstall on Feb. 18, 1878, was the event that kicked off the bloody Lincoln County War. Tunstall was killed while attempting to flee from a “posse” of at least two dozen men led by just deputized Jacob Mathews. The posse, little more than a lynch mob backed by Tunstall’s bitter business rivals Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan, included at 20 WILD WEST

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LEFT: DAVID G. THOMAS; RIGHT: FULTON PAPERS, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

THE MURDER THAT TRIGGERED A WAR

least four notorious outlaw gunmen. Fleeing with Tunstall were Billy the Kid, Robert Widenmann, Richard Brewer and John Middleton. The men were driving a string of horses from Tunstall’s ranch on the Rio Feliz to Lincoln, as Tunstall wanted to save the animals from confiscation by the posse.

Motivated by the account of the murder in Burns’ book, two of Tunstall’s nephews traveled in April 1927 from England to Lincoln, N.M., to seek their uncle’s grave. They met with rancher George Coe and others still living in the Lincoln area who had known the late merchant and rancher. Coe took the pair to the spot where the Englishman had been murdered, and they marked it with a stack of rocks. Those interested in the history of the Lincoln County War owe a bouquet of thanks to Coe and the unnamed Tunstall nephews for their efforts.

That October rancher and New Mexico Representative James V. Tully, of Glencoe, wrote Paul A.F. Walter of the New Mexico Historical Society with a suggestion: “There should be a marker for the spot back of my ranch on the so-called Tunstall Trail, nailed on a juniper tree, to show where [Tunstall] was slain. This is now nearly forgotten.”

In the fall of 1929 Dr. William Alexander Osborne, dean of the medical school at the University of Melbourne, Australia, traveled to Lincoln to research the Lincoln County War. His interest, as he told an Associated Press reporter, “was aroused because Tunstall, the first victim of the range war, was an Englishman.” Stimulated by the publicity generated by Dr. Osborne’s visit, the U.S. Forest Service erected an official monument at the murder site that December. The site is thickly forested today, and it is challenging to mentally picture what it looked like on that fateful Monday when Tunstall was murdered.

The canyon where Tunstall was killed descends from a relatively flat plateau in the hills above and to the south of Glencoe, within the Smokey Bear Ranger District of the Lincoln National Forest. Calling it a valley is perhaps a better description. According to the Kid, in a sworn deposition provided to U.S. Department of Justice Special Investigator Frank Warner Angel, Tunstall’s party had just reached the mouth of the canyon, or the

CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO

John H. Tunstall (1853–78) had this portrait taken in 1875, three years before his murder.

Tunstall was killed while he and four others, including Billy the Kid, were driving a string of horses to Lincoln, New Mexico Territory.

LEFT: DAVID G. THOMAS; RIGHT: FULTON PAPERS, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

CENTER FOR SOUTHWEST RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO

GUNFIGHTERS & LAWMEN “brow of the hill” as Billy described it, when they sighted the posse riding “at full speed” behind them. Billy and Middleton were trailing some distance behind the other three, who were not riding together. Brewer and Widenmann were 200 to 300 yards to Tunstall’s left, off the trail. Tunstall was riding about 100 yards to the right of the trail, out in front of his horses, who were following the trail.

Billy and Middleton raced forward to warn those riding ahead. The two had just reached Brewer and Widenmann when the posse commenced firing. The lead men in the posse, Tom Hill and William S. “Buck” Morton, were some distance in front of the main body. Billy said he, Widenmann and Brewer turned their horses left and rode “over a hill towards another, which was covered with large rocks and trees, in order to defend [ourselves] and make a stand.”

Middleton galloped toward Tunstall, yelled a warning, and then veered left and joined Billy, Widenmann and Brewer.

According to the sworn testimony of posse member Albert Howe, Hill and Morton, having spotted Tunstall off on his own, galloped toward the Englishman, who stopped, turned and faced them. Hill called out for Tunstall to approach, assuring he would not be hurt. At the same time the pair stealthily drew their weapons. Tunstall rode closer, expecting to talk.

Without warning, Howe said, “Morton fired and shot Tunstall through the breast, and then Hill fired and shot Tunstall through the head.” Howe’s testimony is thirdhand, however. The only witnesses were the killers themselves. But the evidence suggests certain conclusions.

Hill and Morton may have thought that with Tunstall positioned directly in front of them, it would be harder for any potential witnesses riding up from behind to know whether the Englishman had drawn on them. That was their alibi: He had shot first, and they had returned fire in self-defense. Someone also shot and killed Tunstall’s horse. Morton and Hill then dismounted and just had time to remove two cartridges from the Englishman’s pistol and drop it beside his body before the other posse members arrived on the scene. In a despicable act of mockery someone placed Tunstall’s hat beneath his dead horse’s head and beat the Englishman about the head with the butt of a gun.

That evening John Newcomb, Patricio Trujillo, Florencio Gonzales, Lázaro Gallegos and Ramón Baragón went after Tunstall’s body. “We could not get up the canyon in a wagon, so we packed it on a horse,” Gonzales recounted. “The body was lying by his dead horse’s head, with his and his horse’s head right together.” Newcomb added telling details. “The corpse had evidently been carried by some persons and laid in the position in which we found it,” he noted. “A blanket was found under the corpse and one over it. Tunstall’s overcoat was placed under his head, and his hat placed under the head of his dead horse. By the apparent naturalness of the scene we were forced to conclude that the murderers of Mr. Tunstall placed his

Above: In 1927 two of Tunstall’s nephews, guided by rancher George Coe, marked the murder site with a stack of stones. Left: On Feb. 18, 1978, the centennial of Tunstall’s murder, the Lincoln County Historical Society placed a second marker at the site, which lies within the Lincoln National Forest.

dead horse in the position indicated, considering the whole affair a burlesque.…We found his revolver quite close to the scabbard on the corpse. It must have been placed there by someone after Tunstall’s death. We found two chambers empty, but there were no hulls, or cartridge shells, in the empty chambers; the other four chambers had cartridges in them.”

Billy the Kid and other self-appointed “Regulators” sought vengeance. On March 9 they killed Morton and another of the posse members along Blackwater Creek. On March 14 Hill took a fatal bullet while trying to rob a sheepherder’s camp.

Then, on April 1, six Regulators, including the Kid, ambushed Lincoln County Sheriff William J. Brady and four of his deputies, killing the sheriff and Deputy George Hindman. There was no turning back. The Lincoln County War was in full swing.

A number of writers have wondered why Tunstall’s horse was shot and posed as it was. The answer is that the murderers knew about Tunstall’s deep love of horses, particularly a bay Thoroughbred named Colonel, who was in the string the Englishman been driving that day. Colonel was incurably blind. Tunstall had rescued the horse from the Fort Stanton butcher pen and tended him since. The gruesome death-scene posing of Tunstall and his horse was a final, depraved act of contempt.

On Feb. 18, 1978, the 100th anniversary of Tunstall’s murder, the Lincoln County Historical Society placed a second commemorative marker at the site, which is difficult to find. One can park within a half mile of it, but there are no markers to show where to begin hiking. Perhaps that too will be remedied someday.

For directions to the commemorative marker visit HMDB.org and enter the search term “Tunstall murder site.”

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PIONEERS & SETTLERS

Jane Long prepares to fire the cannon at the fort at Point Bolivar, Texas, to keep Karankawa Indians at bay while the slave girl Kian, holding Jane’s baby, Mary James, looks on. Below: Around 1820 Jane designed a flag with a red field and white star that may have been Texas’ first “lone star” flag.

AN EARLY MOTHER OF TEXAS

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sister Barbara and husband Alexander “Sandy” Calvit, a captain with the territorial militia, at Propinquity Plantation near Natchez. It was there in 1815 she met and married Dr. James Long, who had served as a U.S. Army surgeon under Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson at the January 8 Battle of New Orleans, the climactic clash of the War of 1812. The couple settled at Long’s nearby plantation, Walnut Hills, where their first child, daughter Ann, was born a year later.

But trouble was soon again brewing. In 1819 the United States and Spain signed the Adams-Onís Treaty, which ceded Florida to the former and defined the border between the States and the shrinking viceroyalty of New Spain. Opposed to the pact were many American and French settlers in the South. Among them was James Long, who promptly gathered some 300 men— including Jim Bowie and Ben Milam—for an invasion of Spanish

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TOP: ANNE DONNARUMMA/DREAMSTIME; RIGHT: GALVESTON & TEXAS HISTORY CENTER

J

ane Long had been left alone at coastal Point Bolivar, Texas, with a 5-yearold daughter and a newborn to tend. A 12-year-old slave girl named Kian was there to help, but she too had to be fed and sheltered. Long grew increasingly nervous as hostile Karankawa Indians gathered across the channel on Galveston Island to eye the all-but-abandoned Point Bolivar outpost. On top of everything else winter had come.

Born Jane Herbert Wilkinson in Charles County, Md., on July 23, 1798, she was the last of 10 children and experienced trials early in life. A year after Jane was born, her father died.

In 1811 the Widow Wilkinson moved her children to the Mississippi River town of Washington, the capital of Mississippi Territory (present-day Mississippi and Alabama). But a year later she died, orphaning the children. Jane moved in with older

TOP: HENDRICK-LONG PUBLISHING COMPANY/UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO; LEFT: GLASSHOUSE, CC BY-SA 3.0

JANE LONG, WHO WENT TO TEXAS IN 1820 WITH HUSBAND JAMES LONG, DESIGNED WHAT WAS PROBABLY THE FIRST ‘LONE STAR’ FLAG

BY CHUCK LYONS

TOP: ANNE DONNARUMMA/DREAMSTIME; RIGHT: GALVESTON & TEXAS HISTORY CENTER

TOP: HENDRICK-LONG PUBLISHING COMPANY/UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO; LEFT: GLASSHOUSE, CC BY-SA 3.0

PIONEERS & SETTLERS

Texas. (He also sought in vain to recruit French pirate Jean Lafitte. who had participated in the fighting at New Orleans). On arrival in Texas in June 1819 the expedition captured Nacogdoches, and Long’s followers presumptively proclaimed him president of the first Republic of Texas. Later that month, days after having delivered her second child, a girl named Rebecca, Jane left their daughters in the care of sister Barbara and joined her husband. But his term in office and the republic itself were shortlived. In October a Spanish army drove out the would-be filibusters. Sadly, during her parents’ absence from the States, infant Rebecca had died.

Escaping to Natchitoches, La., Long immediately began recruiting men for a second expedition into Texas. Finally, in April 1820 he headed to the Gulf Coast with Jane, daughter Ann and the slave girl Kian to his new headquarters at Point Bolivar, opposite Galveston Island at the mouth of the namesake bay. There his men erected a crude mud fort defended by a single cannon. Around this time Jane is said to have designed a flag for the expedition, featuring a red field with a single white fivepointed star (she later added 13 alternating red-andwhite horizontal stripes and moved the red field and its white star to the canton, echoing the American flag). Jane dubbed it the “lone star,” intending it to represent her husband. The flag may have been the first “lone star” flag in Texas.

After more than a year at the remote outpost, perhaps seeing the handwriting on the wall, men started to desert. Regardless, on Sept. 19, 1821, an undeterred Long kissed his wife goodbye and boldly sailed off with most of his remaining 56 filibusters to fight the Spanish. Unknown to anyone at Point Bolivar, he was captured at La Bahía within days of having landed in Texas. Meanwhile, in the company of three other civilians and just four soldiers, Jane, daughter Ann and Kian were about to face one of the worst winters on record.

Pregnant with her third child, Jane resolved to wait at Point Bolivar for her husband’s return. But in the coming weeks and months, as supplies dwindled and no word came of the expedition’s fate, the other settlers began leaving, and the soldiers deserted.

Eventually, only Jane and the two girls remained.

When the provisions gave out, the trio survived on fish and oysters scavenged from the bay. All the while the Karankawas on Galveston Island watched and waited. Jane kept them at bay by periodically firing the cannon, making them believe the outpost remained occupied and as formidable as ever.

Some accounts claim she flew a red petticoat from a pole in imitation of a battle flag and donned a

uniform left by the deserting soldiers to further carry on the deception.

On December 21 the dauntless 23year-old, with the preteen Kian’s help, delivered daughter Mary James in the cold comfort of an ice-covered tent.

Finally, with the spring thaw in 1822, a party of Texas-bound American settlers landed at the outpost, bringing the sad news that on April 8 James Long had been shot dead by one of his guards in Mexico City. With no more reason to hold the fort, Jane finally left Point Bolivar with her daughters and Kian.

After visiting Mexico City to inquire about her husband’s death, Jane spent the next decade dividing her time between Texas and Mississippi. In 1832 she bought William Tennant Austin’s Brazoria, Texas, boardinghouse and ran it for five years. Three years later it hosted a dinner party to welcome back Stephen Austin (no relation to William Austin) from his own imprisonment in Mexico City. In 1837 Jane moved to land granted her by that “Father of Texas” in newly incorporated Richmond, where she opened another boardinghouse and started a plantation south of town. By the 1861 outset of the Civil War she’d acquired 19 slaves and more than 2,000 acres of land. After the war she continued working the land with the help of tenant farmers. Daughter Ann, who lived nearby, died at age 53 in 1870.

According to family lore, over the years Widow Long was courted by—and refused marriage offers from—Stephen Austin, Ben Milam, William Travis and Sam Houston. Jane died a widow at age 82 on Dec. 30, 1880.

Since her death various authors and boosters have erroneously credited her with having given birth to the first child born in Texas to Englishspeaking parents, which was not true. Several had been born before Mary entered the world in an ice-covered tent. Nonetheless, the monument atop Jane Long’s grave at Richmond’s Morton Cemetery bears the inscription The Mother of Texas.

Top: This 1872 lighthouse overlooks the spot at Point Bolivar once occupied by filibuster James Long’s long gone mud fort. Above: According to family lore, several famous Texans courted the “Mother of Texas,” but Jane Long died a widow on Dec. 30, 1880.

Pregnant with her third child, Jane resolved to wait at Point Bolivar for her husband’s return

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WESTERN ENTERPRISE

On April Fools’ Day 1865 the 161-foot paddle wheeler Bertrand was steaming up the Missouri River some 25 miles above Omaha, Neb., when it hit a snag. The boat took 10 minutes to sink in mild weather, and no one died.

THE WRECK OF BERTRAND THE SALVAGED CARGO OF THIS STEAMBOAT, WHICH SANK ON THE MISSOURI RIVER IN 1865, PROVIDES VALUABLE INSIGHTS INTO FRONTIER COMMERCE

BY AARON ROBERT WOODARD

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In July 1831, on its maiden voyage out of St. Louis, American Fur’s side-wheel steamboat Yellowstone completed the first successful commercial run of the upper Missouri, navigating past its many hazards as far as the Dakotas and back. The following year it steamed some 2,000 miles upstream to the mouth of its namesake river. Three decades later myriad steamboat companies and business concerns were utilizing the river as a superhighway west for the transport of goods, livestock and passengers. Major gold strikes in what would become Montana necessitated the import of mining equipment, sturdy clothing and vast stores of dry goods. The quickest and most cost-efficient shipping method was by steamboat. The 161-foot paddle wheeler Bertrand was typical of those in operation on the Missouri in 1865, as touted in an ad from the February 9 edition of Daily Missouri Republican:

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NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Since the loss of our keelboat [Beaver] and the arrival of Mr. [Kenneth] MacKenzie [American Fur’s principal trader], we have been contemplating the project of building a small steamboat for the trade

of the upper Missouri. We believe that the navigation will be much safer in going up, and possibly also in coming down, than if it is by keelboat.…I imagine that there will always be a little risk to run, but I also believe that if we succeed, it will be a great advantage to our business.

COURTESY OF JIM TROTT FAMILY

I

n the frontier West of the mid- to late 1800s the cutting-edge method of travel, both commercially and privately, was the steamboat. The continental United States is blessed with excellent waterways, none grander than its two mightiest rivers, the Missouri and the Mississippi. While the Mississippi wends a relatively languid and gentle course, the Missouri has earned its reputation as an unpredictable and sometimes hazardous body of water.

American Indians were undoubtedly first to ply the Missouri by boat, but it was the big 19th century fur companies, principally John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Co., that initiated the first large-scale attempts to conduct commercial and passenger transportation along the Missouri. The benefits of a steamboat for transporting trade goods to the forts on the upper Missouri were manifold. Fur trader Pierre “Cadet” Chouteau Jr. spelled out some of those in advantages in an Aug. 30, 1830, letter to American Fur headquarters in New York:

WESTERN ENTERPRISE

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

DESOTO BEND NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE (U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE)

The new fast and light draught steamer Bertrand…will leave St. Louis for Fort Benton on the opening of navigation to Omaha.

Shippers and passengers seeking transportation to Fort Benton, Virginia City, Deer Lodge and the Bitterroot Valley cannot improve this opportunity.

Though such ads promised passengers safety, travel on the Missouri was fraught with danger. The main channel was also known to shift widely, and shoals and sandbars could pop up in unexpected spots between voyages. Submerged fallen trees, known snags or sawyers, were particularly hazardous, as they were essentially undetectable until a vessel hit one, often resulting in costly repairs or even the loss of the vessel. The boilers on these steam-powered vessels could, and sometimes did, explode, resulting in the destruction of the vessel and/or deaths of passengers and crew. In an 1897 study noted engineer and historian Hiram M. Chittenden recorded the loss of 295 steamboats on the Missouri from the 1831 outset of commercial river traffic. The majority of losses were due to snags (193), while other boats succumbed to river ice (26), fire (25), submerged rocks (11), collisions with bridges (10) and the dreaded boiler explosions (six), among other causes.

Thus, trusting passengers and shippers placed their fates in the hands of chance when Bertrand departed St. Louis at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 18, 1865, bound for the upper Missouri. Launched a year prior, the steamboat was owned by the St. Louis–based Montana & Idaho Transportation Line, founded by experienced steamboatman John J. Roe, sonin-law John G. Copelin and partners. The partners already owned a wagon freighting line and hoped to increase their share of the upriver trade with a large shipment of dry goods and supplies for the mining camps in Montana Territory.

Stowed aboard with their shipment was a cargo of various consigned goods also intended for the goldfields. Among the consignees was “Mr. Montana” himself, the pioneering Granville Stuart, who operated a mercantile store in Deer Lodge that supplied miners. Stuart and the owners of Bertrand, as well as the passengers, were all in for a shock. The ship never reached its destination.

On April Fools’ Day Bertrand was proceeding up the Missouri past De Soto, Neb., some 25 miles upstream of Omaha, when it hit a snag. Fortunately for the passengers and crew, the wreck occurred in daylight, the weather was mild, the boat took 10 minutes to sink, and no one died. The next afternoon Bertrand’s master, Captain James A. Yore, and several passengers checked in at Omaha’s prestigious Herndon House hotel.

Among the items initially salvaged from Bertrand were goods labeled for Stuart and other consignees. Later reports and rumors also claimed the doomed steamship had been carrying a fortune in mercury (aka quicksilver, used to refine gold), as well as 5,000 gallons of whiskey in oaken casks. A report in The Omaha Daily Bee dated July 19, 1896, more than 30 years after the wreck, related the efforts of four would-be salvors and a hired civil engineer to locate Bertrand and salvage the rumored 35,000 pounds of mercury aboard. They appear to have failed, as the salvage operation vanished from the public record.

The next serious attempt came 72 This photograph was taken years later when Omaha-based trea- during the 1968 excavation of Bertrand, which turned sure hunters Jesse Pursell and Sam up beneath a field, the river Corbino went in search of Bertrand. having shifted course over On scouring period newspaper ac- the intervening decades.

Recovered cargo included counts, the pair had discovered the everything from candy and name of someone who had owned peaches to shoes and tools. land along the Missouri near the wreck site. They correctly reasoned that over the decades the river had shifted its course, leaving Bertrand buried beneath a certain field. In 1968, having narrowed their search and obtained the permission of the current landowner, the salvors used fluxgate magnetometers to scan for buried ferrous metals, such as those contained in the cargo of a ship holding hardware. That February they homed in on a likely target and, with the help of heavy equipment operators and some 60 other kindred spirits, began excavating the site. Proof positive of their prize came when they pulled up wooden crates stenciled Bertrand Stores.

The salvors brought up nine wrought-iron vessels filled with mercury, each holding 76 pounds of the liquid metal. If the cargo had included 35,000 pounds of quicksilver, it would appear that salvage divers hired by the original insurers back in 1865 had removed most of it. Regardless, the true treasure of Bertrand turned out to be the trove of ordinary stores, clothing, foodstuffs and hardware that had lain encased in thick river mud for more than a century and emerged in a state of near pristine preservation. The salvors recovered such hard goods as knives, firearms and mining and agricultural tools, as well as fragile textiles and clothing, including shoes, coats, shirts and pants. Foodstuffs such as candy, ketchup, canned cherries, tomatoes, meat, peaches, pepper and spirits also survived the ravages of time. On display at the visitor center of the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, near Missouri Valley, Iowa, the items recovered from Bertrand provide invaluable insight into everyday life in the late 1860s, while the story of the wreck itself is illustrative of the incredibly risky steamboat business in the emerging Western United States.

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ART OF THE WEST

Diamond A Cowboy, a 1984 oil on masonite by James Reynolds (1926– 2010), is one of three paintings Jim Dunham, the Booth’s director of special projects, counts among his favorites.

A WESTERN GEM DOWN SOUTH

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The Booth’s American West Gallery, divided into interpretive themes, covers everything from the classic works of George Catlin, Charles M. Russell, Frederic Remington and Charles Schreyvogel to notable creations by such recent masters as Howard Terpning, Frank McCarthy, G. Harvey and Andy Warhol. The Frank Harding Cowboy Gallery features 30-plus paintings

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TOP RIGHT: © FRITZ SCHOLDER, INDIAN WITH AURA, 1977, PRIVATE COLLECTION; MIDDLE: ERIN GRAY; BOTTOM: BOOTH MUSEUM

F

or anyone interested in Western art, it pays to go South. For those already living in the Southeast, the motto of the Booth Museum applies: “Explore the West without leaving the South.” Since 2003 the Booth, in quaint Cartersville, Ga., has showcased Western-themed paintings, sculpture, photography and artifacts in what is now (after a 2009 expansion) a 120,000-squarefoot limestone building designed to resemble a modern pueblo. Some 40 miles northwest of Atlanta, the museum is a proud affiliate to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Location notwithstanding, it is the world’s largest permanent exhibition space for Western art.

© JAMES REYNOLDS, DIAMOND A COWBOY, 1984, BOOTH WESTERN ART MUSEUM PERMANENT COLLECTION

THE BOOTH MUSEUM IN CARTERSVILLE, GA., SHOWCASES WORKS DEPICTING COWBOYS, INDIANS AND THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

BY GREGORY LALIRE

TOP RIGHT: © FRITZ SCHOLDER, INDIAN WITH AURA, 1977, PRIVATE COLLECTION; MIDDLE: ERIN GRAY; BOTTOM: BOOTH MUSEUM

© JAMES REYNOLDS, DIAMOND A COWBOY, 1984, BOOTH WESTERN ART MUSEUM PERMANENT COLLECTION

ART OF THE WEST

Above: Fritz Scholder (1937–2005) painted his oil on canvas Indian With Aura in 1977. Left: Dunham offers a friendly tip of the cowboy hat to museumgoers. Bottom left: Western sculptures grace the grounds of the 1,200square-foot museum in northeast Georgia.

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ART OF THE WEST

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© THOM ROSS, WYATT EARP AT MIDNIGHT, 2000, BOOTH WESTERN ART MUSEUM PERMANENT COLLECTION

and sculptures of cowboys and cowgirls at work and play. More than 150 American Indian artifacts from tribes spanning the nation draw visitors to the Native Hands Gallery. An original 1865 stagecoach graces the Neva & Don Rountree Heading West Gallery, alongside depictions of fur trappers and mountain men. Other galleries showcasing the permanent collection include the Modern West Gallery (a sampling of artwork from the past half century), the Lucinda & James Eaton Sculpture Atrium (traditional and contemporary figures) and, on the lower level, the Sagebrush Ranch (an interactive gallery organized like a working ranch and designed for children, who can saddle up and play Western dress-up). Amid the Western-themed galleries are a War Is Hell gallery, featuring Civil War art, and the Carolyn and James Millar Presidential Gallery, with a portrait and original signed letter from every U.S. president from George Washington to Donald Trump.

TOP: FIRST NATIONAL PICTURES, 1928, BOOTH WESTERN ART MUSEUM PERMANENT COLLECTION; LEFT: © WALT GONSKE, VILLAGE OF PILAR, NEW MEXICO, N.D., TIA COLLECTION

Left: Another of Dunham’s favorite paintings at the Booth is the oil on canvas Village of Pilar, New Mexico, by New Jersey native Walt Gonske, who in 1972 at age 29 moved to Taos, N.M. Above: In addition to fine art the Booth holds a collection of posters depicting such iconic big-screen cowboys as Ken Maynard, who in 1928 starred in the silent Western film The Glorious Trail.

© THOM ROSS, WYATT EARP AT MIDNIGHT, 2000, BOOTH WESTERN ART MUSEUM PERMANENT COLLECTION

TOP: FIRST NATIONAL PICTURES, 1928, BOOTH WESTERN ART MUSEUM PERMANENT COLLECTION; LEFT: © WALT GONSKE, VILLAGE OF PILAR, NEW MEXICO, N.D., TIA COLLECTION

ART OF THE WEST

The museum’s namesake is Atlanta businessman Sam Booth, who was a friend and mentor to the family of Western art collectors who founded the Booth and have chosen to remain anonymous.

The Booth’s director of special projects, Jim Dunham, doubles as president of the Wild West History Association and once upon a time in the West taught gun tricks and fast draw techniques to Hollywood actors. A long-ago art major at the University of Colorado (1961–66), Dunham counts three paintings among his favorites at the Booth—Diamond A Cowboy, by James Reynolds, Village of Pilar, N.M., by Walt Gonske and Indian With Aura, by Fritz Scholder.

“The Western art here is all about the narrative and is also highly diverse, with many female artists, black artists, American Indian artists and Asian artists,” says Durham. “What makes the museum unique is the vast amount of art by living, working artists. The collection includes styles from photo realism to abstract. The collectors—like myself—were influenced by Western movies and television, especially the so-called adult TV ‘oaters’ of the 1950s and ’60s.”

Any visitor who grew up on Hollywood Westerns will delight in the collection of movie posters,

dime novels and action-packed magazine covers that recall such legendary screen figures as Tom Mix, Ken Maynard, Gene Autry and John Wayne.

The mythical frontier presented at the Booth also appeals to boys and girls who didn’t grow up playing cowboys and Indians by day and watching prime-time Westerns by night.

Dunham enjoys giving lectures at the Booth.

“I started a series titled ‘They Were From Georgia.’

These are based on historical people born in Georgia who became famous out West. The talks include Doc Holliday, Heck Thomas, Pink Higgins, John Bozeman, John Charles Frémont and, of course, Soapy Smith.”

So it happens the South’s connection with the West is historic as well as artistic—and the Booth is the place those connections come to life.

Wyatt Earp at Midnight is an acrylic on canvas

by Thom Ross, among the contemporary Western artists whose works are on view at the Booth. Most artists base depictions of historic figures on period photos, but Ross explores the abstract to find a new way of portraying the likes of the larger-than-life Earp.

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INDIAN LIFE Sioux race their horses near Fort Pierre, in a Karl Bodmer illustration from Travels in the Interior of North America (1843). In that era fur company traders enjoyed good relations with the Oglala Lakotas.

THE DAY THE CANDLE BLEW OUT IN 1832 THOMAS SARPY, A FUR TRADER MARRIED TO AN OGLALA LAKOTA, MET AN UNFORTUNATE, UNTIMELY AND VIOLENT END IN THE DAKOTAS

BY LANCE NIXON

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NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

TOP: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY; LEFT: MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY

T

he days were short at the American had banished the young man north because he Fur Co.’s Oglala Post that January— had been living a wayward existence in St. Louis. the Moon of Frost in the Tepee by In quick succession the young exile married two the Lakota way of marking time. Trader Thomas Lakota wives. “His first wife when he got up there L’Estang Sarpy had perched a candle atop the was a daughter [Woman Ahead of the Clouds] of counter for light as he and two assistants put Chief One Ghost [other sources say White Swan] the storeroom in order. One of three brothers in of the Minneconjou band of the Sioux,” Sarpy’s a prominent St. Louis fur-trading family, Sarpy great-great-grandson Clarence Mortenson said in had married into the tribe and was wintering in the a 2016 interview. “She died in childbirth, leaving PIERRE “CADET” CHOUTEAU JR. post at the confluence of the Cheyenne River and a little girl. So he then married the one who was Rapid Creek (near the Black Hills in present-day my great-great-grandmother—Her Good Ground, South Dakota) to barter trade goods for buffalo robes and furs. the daughter of [Rotten Body or Stinking Ribs] of the Sans Arc Then it happened—perhaps a robe or an elbow bumped the band of the Sioux—and she was the one that raised those two girls candle, which toppled from the counter into the trade goods [one from each marriage],” Mortenson said. Her Good Ground’s stacked below. For Sarpy the world ended with a roar that day, daughter, known to the Lakotas as Wasicu Win (White Woman), Jan. 19, 1832. In a blinding flash the log building erupted around went by the Christian name Mary Sarpy. him as he hurtled through the air to land on the winter earth By marrying the daughter of a chief, a trader could secure horribly bruised, burnt and barely alive. He died a short while good relations with his wife’s band. But Sarpy’s time with Her later, groaning bewildered comments in his native French. His Good Ground and the Lakotas was cut short by that toppled more fortunate assistants survived the explosion. Days would candlestick on January 19. Eight days later at Fort Tecumseh, pass before the outside world learned what had happened.

American Fur’s post little more than 100 miles east on the Sarpy had spent scarcely two years in Sioux country before Missouri River, clerk Jacob Halsey received word of the accihis fatal accident. Family lore has it his father, Grégoire Sarpy, dent. The clerk kept a journal of his life on the Plains, and in it

INDIAN LIFE that day he wrote that messengers “arrived from the Ogallallahs’ [sic] post with the melancholy news of the death of Mr. Thomas L. Sarpy, the cos. trader at that station.”

Halsey held a comparable position within the company and had known Sarpy well. In his journal he waxed spiritual about the late trader:

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

TOP: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY; LEFT: MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Cut off in the prime of life, he has arrived at his eternal home and is fixed in an unchangeable state. Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he, what has become of him who but a short time ago we saw and conversed with? He has gone to the bar of God, to give an account of the time, the means and advantages he has enjoyed and to receive his doom. Mr. S. was one of the cos. most useful clerks. His loss will be felt and much regretted by his employers.

More than a useful clerk, Sarpy was family to principals in the intricate web of owners that comprised the Western fur trade.

Within days the traders at Fort Tecumseh had shared the sad news in letters—at least seven borne by couriers between January 31 and February 22. The first was Halsey’s summary of the tragic events for Pierre “Cadet” Chouteau Jr., the St. Louis businessman who controlled the Western Department of American Fur. Chouteau’s prominence can’t be overstated. A year later, when the company replaced Fort Tecumseh with a new trading post, the principals named it Fort Pierre Chouteau in his honor.

It is a testament to the power and influence of American Fur itself that Fort Pierre grew into what today is South Dakota’s oldest continuously occupied white community. The city celebrated its bicentennial in 2017, tracing its origins to fur trader Joseph La Framboise Jr., who in 1817 had established an earlier post at the confluence of the Bad River and the Missouri.

In his January 31 letter Halsey told Chouteau that William Laidlaw, the Scottish bourgeois (chief trader) at Fort Tecumseh, had just left for the Oglala Post to put things in order after the accident. “Mr. Sarpy was found lying on his back some distance from where the building stood,” Halsey added. “He lived about an hour after the explosion took place and his spirit fled into eternity. The other two were much injured, but they are now considered out of danger.”

More details emerged later, including the comforting fact Sarpy may have lived only minutes, not a full hour. Trader Honoré Picotte, also writing from Fort Tecumseh on January 31, told Jean Pierre Cabanné, a trader at a post serving the Otoes in eastern Nebraska, that Sarpy was found a considerable distance from where the building stood. The mortally wounded man spoke three times before he died, marveling about the tragedy, asking responders to pour water on his body, then asking them for water to drink.

On February 15, having returned from his visit to the Oglala Post, bourgeois Laidlaw wrote to Kenneth MacKenzie, the company’s principal trader at Fort Union (on the present-day border of North Dakota and Montana). Laidlaw told MacKenzie the toppled candle had landed in a 50-pound keg of powder that had been opened that morning. “It blew three houses all in a line to shivers,” he added. “It is singular that the men who were alongside of him should have escaped without injury,

save one that got one side of [him] In 1833, a year after trader Sarpy’s death, American Fur a little scorched.” built Fort Pierre Chouteau A week later Laidlaw replied to a as its principal trading post. request from trader Pierre D. Papin Present-day Fort Pierre, S.D., remains a testament to the for a lock of Sarpy’s hair by which to company’s lasting influence. remember him. “Your letter arrived too late,” Laidlaw wrote, “and even had it been in time before he was interred, it would have been impossible to have got it, as the hair was completely burnt off his head, and [he was] so shockingly disfigured as scarcely to bear any resemblance to a human being.”

One thing that stood out in the aftermath of Sarpy’s death was the superb efficiency of the Oglala warrior society. As Laidlaw related in a February 15 letter to trader David D. Mitchell, there had been no looting of the storehouse ruins, thanks to the warriors. “The conduct of the Indians upon the occasion cannot be too much applauded,” he wrote. “The soldiers [Oglala camp police] mounted guard and collected the goods in every direction and would not allow man, woman or child to approach the fatal spot. Not even a dog was allowed to approach with impunity.”

Laidlaw, in a follow-up letter to MacKenzie, noted the Oglalas delivered the collected goods to a company trader doing business with the Cheyennes (close allies of the Lakotas) some 15 miles away, but not before securing assurances the Cheyennes would not get the trade items they had salvaged. “The former are very tenacious of their rights…[and] insisted upon having the goods that were intended for them,” Laidlaw wrote.

“Their conduct has been so meritorious that I could not help humoring them.”

It wouldn’t be the last time whites would have cause to marvel at the Oglalas. Though little known at the time, even to the fur company employees with whom they traded, they would gain the rapt attention of the U.S. Army in coming decades. After all, they were the band of Chief Red Cloud, who would win his 1868–68 war against the United States. They were also the band of Crazy Horse, who in 1876 would lead the combined force that destroyed Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th U.S. Cavalry command at the Little Bighorn.

But all of that remained decades in the future. In 1832 the Oglalas were only an obscure band of Sioux, illuminated for just a moment by candlelight and a flash of powder that destroyed Thomas Sarpy of the American Fur Co. JUNE 2022

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George Armstrong Custer brought two horses on his 1876 Indian campaign and chose to ride into battle the Thoroughbred originally named Victory

By Sharon B. Smith

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LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

VIC AT THE LITTLE BIGHORN

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Holding Custer’s Horses

LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Private John Burkman, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s orderly, holds Dandy, at left, and Vic. This is the only known photo of Vic, the mount Custer rode into battle at the Little Bighorn.

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hortly before noon on Sunday, June 25, 1876, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer changed horses.

Custer, commanding 12 companies of the 7th U.S. Cavalry, had assumed the privilege of rank and brought two horses on the 40-day march from Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory, to this spot in southeastern Montana Territory some 15 miles from a sprawling village of mostly Sioux and Cheyenne lodges. While officers were generally allowed two horses each, the 600-plus troopers and attached civilians of Custer’s column were limited to one. A few spare horses

made the march, though nowhere near enough for most troopers to switch mounts.

It’s uncertain why Custer made the change from his favorite warhorse, a mixed-breed remount named Dandy, to a Kentucky Thoroughbred with the birth name Victory. (The colonel had shortened the sorrel’s name to Vic on acquiring him three years earlier.) Custer’s orderly, Private John Burkman, later recalled he and the colonel had discussed retiring Dandy from active service after the campaign. “Dandy’s age is beginning to tell on him a little,” Custer told Burkman as JUNE 2022

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Photo caption for this art to be placed here, place photo caption here, the caption to accompany this art is to be placed here.

they left Fort Lincoln. “I’ll baby him some on this expedition.”

In truth Dandy was no older than Vic and perhaps a year or so younger. Custer had estimated Dandy’s age as 3 when he acquired the horse from an Army consignment in 1868. If the estimate was right—and Custer was an experienced horseman—Dandy was around 11 and Vic 12 in 1876. Though far from young, neither was too old for battle.

More likely Colonel Custer switched to Vic simply because he wanted a fresh mount. He’d ridden Dandy during a nighttime march and then back and forth from a vantage point known today as the Crow’s Nest, from which the colonel and his Crow scouts had spotted the Indian village on the Little Bighorn River. Dandy, he may have thought, was spent. Back with the packtrain by the time Custer rode into battle, Dandy survived the Little Bighorn and was returned to the Custer family (see sidebar, P. 39).

It’s also possible Custer made his choice because of Vic’s main claim to fame—as the fastest horse in the regiment. Vic’s speed had saved Custer before. He came by it naturally. The horse was about as well-bred as any in the country. Vic’s racing record, while not as brilliant as his pedigree, Above: Custer inaccurately wields a saber and rides a dark bay or brown horse in Custer’s Last Charge, a circa 1876 work by lithographer Feodor Fuchs. Left: In Custer’s Last Ride, by Mark Churms, the colonel narrowly evades arrows before his demise.

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TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; LEFT: CUSTER’S LAST RIDE, © MARKCHURMS.COM 2000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Amid the Affray

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FROM TOP: LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, VICTORIA STAUFFENBERG (NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, 2); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Photo caption to go here

Plenty of Bones About It

Above: For years after the battle the bones of cavalry horses remained on and around Last Stand Hill. Was Vic’s among them? Left: This monument at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument marks the spot where the horses’ remains were finally buried. Below: Custer is probably riding a Morgan in this Civil War scene.

By 1872 Civil War hero and former Maj. Gen. Custer had met success in the Battle of the Washita (Nov. 27, 1868) and thought of himself as both an Indian fighter and a man of the Plains. He rarely mentioned his exploits in the late war, either in his widely read magazine articles or in conversation. He still wanted to be called “General,” although he’d lost his brevet rank after Appomattox, as had most other Regular Army officers. He, like others who remained on active duty, had had to

FROM TOP: LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, VICTORIA STAUFFENBERG (NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, 2); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; LEFT: CUSTER’S LAST RIDE, © MARKCHURMS.COM 2000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

had been good enough to earn him a mention in The New York Times obituary of his breeder.

Ironically, his exceptional speed and quality may have assured Vic an early death on the hot afternoon of June 25.

But one of the enduring mysteries of the Battle of the Little Bighorn is the question of what ultimately happened to Custer’s mount. Had Vic died alongside his master in a fusillade of bullets and arrows? Or had he ridden off into history beneath a new master?

The annihilation of the five companies of Custer’s immediate command meant no non-Indian eyewitnesses survived. There were survivors of the 7th to be sure, but none was with Custer in the final minutes of the brash colonel’s life. His troopers later wrote about what they saw before and after the battle, but none had witnessed the Last Stand.

Hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne survivors had witnessed what happened, several of whom later gave interviews and dictated narratives of what they’d seen and heard. But the accounts from Indians and whites proved contradictory, incomplete and often self-serving, and on perhaps no other detail do they vary more widely than regarding Vic’s fate. Some versions are more plausible than others. First comes the story of how an almost famous racehorse found himself in the most famous battle of the Western Indian wars.

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accept a lower permanent rank—in his case, lieutenant colonel.

One thing Custer did retain was his deep, long-standing love and admiration for good horses, especially Thoroughbreds. As soon as he had the money and access, he acquired them with great enthusiasm. Though the 7th’s assignment to Reconstruction duty in Elizabethtown, Ky., in April 1871 was disappointing to Custer the Indian fighter, it proved a blessing to Custer the lover of racehorses.

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The regiment was tasked with cracking down on the Ku Klux Klan and breaking up illegal distilleries. But Klansmen were few and far between in Kentucky, and private stills didn’t require a regiment to break them up, so Custer spent much of his 23 months in Elizabethtown buying horses for the regiment. He acquired hundreds of them, largely the sturdy mixedbreed mounts the cavalry favored. Some were Thoroughbreds, but most of those were unraced or unsuccessful runners. That task readily accomplished, the colonel turned his attention to more personal pursuits.

Custer began to fashion himself an owner and breeder of racehorses, having had a taste of the lifestyle at the close of the Civil War. In 1865 he’d purchased a confiscated horse named Don Juan, a 12-year-old bay stallion with an impressive racing record who’d bowed a tendon and been retired to stud duties in Virginia. Custer had paid $125 for Don Juan, who was essentially unrideable. Indeed, when the colonel rode the stallion that May in the Grand Review of the Armies in Washington, D.C., Don Juan bolted past President Andrew Johnson, General Ulysses S. Grant and other dignitaries in the White House reviewing stand. Custer lost his hat and saber and made headlines, though not particularly favorable ones. Don Juan’s chagrined owner shipped the horse to Michigan for a stud career that ended a year later with the stallion’s untimely death from a burst blood vessel.

But Custer wasn’t dissuaded in his efforts to establish himself as an owner and breeder of fine horses. In 1872 he set out to prove what he’d long believed—that a man of ordinary means could own a Thoroughbred by making an offer just after the peak of a horse’s career. That fall Custer bought a share of Frogtown, a successful Kentucky Thoroughbred. How much he paid and what percentage he owned isn’t known, but for the next few years the colonel enjoyed hearing of Frogtown’s accomplishments on the racetrack. Custer probably didn’t own much of a share, as he remained short of money the rest of his short life.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Above: Kentucky, Vic’s three-quarters brother, was successful enough on the racetrack and at stud to merit painting in 1866 by celebrated American equine artist Edward Troye (1808–74). Below: Custer is thought to have owned this sleek racing saddle in the early 1870s.

TOP: COURTESY SHARON B. SMITH; LEFT: RR AUCTION, BOSTON

A Horse of the Same Color

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

TOP: COURTESY SHARON B. SMITH; LEFT: RR AUCTION, BOSTON

Meanwhile, Custer hoped and anticipated the 7th Cavalry would be recalled to the West. Redirecting his attentions, he sought horses to carry him to war against the Indians he expected to meet.

First, he acquired the 5-year-old bay gelding King Bernadotte, named for the reigning royal house of Sweden and Norway. While King Bernadotte wasn’t especially successful on the track, he’d shown some recent ability in hurdle races. That intrigued Custer, who thought the horse’s ability to jump might prove useful during a cavalry campaign. King Bernadotte had been offered for sale earlier that year for $400, so Custer presumably paid that or less. Then the colonel learned of the Thoroughbred he’d come to call Vic. Victory, a foal of 1864, came from the bluest of blue Kentucky blood.

He was born bluegrass royalty on property formerly owned by Henry Clay—congressman, senator, secretary of state and three-time presidential candidate.

In early 1845 an admirer from New Orleans had sent Clay a valuable gift—a 3-year-old daughter of Glencoe, one of the most successful British Thoroughbreds of the mid–19th century. The stallion had recorded an even more impressive career as a stud. Clay’s gift horse, a filly he named Magnolia, became perhaps the best broodmare Clay ever owned, producing 13 foals, including the champions Kentucky and Daniel Boone.

For foaling these and other good horses, Magnolia became known as the “Empress of the Stud Book.” Mentioned by name in Clay’s 1851 will, she was bequeathed to his son, John. In 1864, at age 23, Magnolia produced her final foal, a chestnut colt who looked very much like the great Glencoe. Soon after giving birth, Magnolia died.

The colt’s sire was Uncle Vic, a son of the great American stallion Lexington. Uncle Vic never started a race, probably because the Civil War intervened. But his pedigree was enough to earn him a chance at stud, and Clay was willing to give him an additional chance with one of the great broodmares of the century. Magnolia’s two best foals, Kentucky and Daniel Boone, were sons of Lexington, and that made the chestnut colt a three-quarters brother to them.

Given the auspicious name Victory, the colt began his career as a worthy little brother. In 1867 he finished a close second in the Phoenix Hotel Stakes, Kentucky’s most important race for 3-year-olds, held during the spring meet at the Kentucky Association track in Lexington. (Eight years later the Kentucky Derby assumed the mantle as the state’s most significant race for 3-year-olds.)

Victory followed his promising debut with five up-and-down years of racing. He’d disappear from the racing record for months at a time, then pop up in results from tracks across the nation. Though he was a good horse, he was never a great one, finishing second and third nearly as often as he won. When his racing career ended, his pedigree should have assured him a life of leisure on a stud farm. So, what happened to turn Victory into Vic, the warhorse who vanished into the maelstrom of the Little Bighorn?

In spring 1872 Victory began his stud career in Virginia. A few months later, however, his owner offered him for sale for $500 (just shy of $12,000 in today’s dollars). It’s unknown why Victory was rejected from stud service so quickly, before even a single foal was born to him. Perhaps he proved infertile, or maybe he just didn’t attract owners of mares in sufficient numbers to justify his maintenance. His cele-

Magnolia’s Owner

Henry Clay (1777–1852), a three-time presidential candidate who represented Kentucky in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, owned Vic’s dam, Magnolia, known as the “Empress of the Stud Book.”

Clay had died by the time Vic was foaled, but Vic grew up on Ashland, the family estate depicted in this portrait.

brated brothers Kentucky and Daniel Boone were still living in 1872, and mare owners may have preferred more successful stallions of the same bloodline.

At any rate, Victory was available, and Custer heard about him from newfound friend Daniel Swigert of Lexington. By the time he met the famed colonel, Swigert had built a reputation as a skilled breeder of Kentucky Thoroughbreds.

An ambitious, acquisitive man, he was also in the initial stages of parlaying tracts of land and carefully selected horses into what would become a bluegrass empire. Choosing to pass on Victory, he told Custer, who somehow scraped together the $500—or whatever price he managed to negotiate.

The colonel finally owned a horse about whom he could brag. Perhaps because of his experience with the stallion Don Juan’s runaway performance in the Washington Grand Review, he immediately had his new horse gelded and, adding insult to injury, shortened his name from Victory to Vic. As a Thoroughbred he’d been identified as chestnut, but from then on he was referred to as a sorrel. Genetically identical, chestnuts and sorrels are reddish brown with manes and tails of the same color. In some breeds the word “sorrel” is modified by variations of JUNE 2022

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TOP: LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; RIGHT: AMON CARTER MUSEUM, FORT WORTH, TEXAS LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RIGHT: LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

column. Custer penned an article describing their mad dash to safety, casting it as a race with far higher odds than Vic had ever faced during his five years on the racetrack.

The escape, Custer recalled, was high stakes racing without money on the line. “Everything, however, but the money was up,” the colonel wrote. “I was up, the Indians were up, and for a little while I thought it was ‘all up’ with me.” Though the colonel made jest of the situation, Vic’s race to safety was deadly serious.

But money was on the line at races CusWINFIELD SCOTT EDGERLY EDWARD SETTLE GODFREY ter organized and participated in at Fort Lincoln. Vic invariably came through for color depth and shading. Vic was a medium his owner on the post’s primitive racetracks. According to Burkman, on May 16, 1876, even as the regiment made final preparations for its sorrel like his grandsire Glencoe.

His personal stable in order, Custer eagerly expedition to force the free-roaming Sioux and Cheyennes into the Indian awaited orders for the 7th Cavalry to return to agencies, Custer arranged for a match race with Vic, open to all comers, active service in the West. Word came in Feb- for a stake of $500. The colonel needed the money. “Mrs. Custer and I ruary 1873, and the regiment left Kentucky the spent all our money on our trip East,” he told Burkman, “and we’re broke.”

The race, of course, never happened. Forty days later Custer climbed first week of March. Poor King Bernadotte was apparently an afterthought from the start. In aboard his fleet Thoroughbred for the final ride of his life. their respective accounts of the weekslong journey to Dakota Territory both Elizabeth Custer, The sequence of events on the morning of June 25 is well known. the colonel’s wife, and Private Burkman, his After spotting the Indian village, Custer chose not to wait for a support orderly, repeatedly mentioned Dandy and Vic. column en route from central Montana Territory. Mounted on Vic, the colonel split his nearly 700-man regiment of soldiers, scouts and attached Neither said a word about King Bernadotte.

The unfortunate horse never had much of a civilians into four battalions. He assigned one company to watch over chance to make himself a favorite. A few months the supplies and most of the civilians. A three-company battalion under after arriving at Fort Lincoln, Custer marched the Major Marcus Reno was to attack the south end of the village while a regiment west into Montana Territory to protect three-company battalion under Captain Frederick Benteen made a sweep Northern Pacific Railroad surveyors along the farther south to secure any possible escape route. Custer himself retained Yellowstone River. On August 11 a group of Sioux five companies of some 225 officers and troopers. His immediate command warriors charged across the river to attack eight was wholly destroyed, though specifics are lacking.

Not all of Custer’s men died. A handful of couriers, stragglers and companies of the 7th. In the subsequent battle King Bernadotte was shot and killed. Custer, Indian scouts weren’t present on the battlefield, though their accounts thrilled at his regiment’s successful defense of provide clues as to the course of the fight. Also helpful are accounts their position, wrote a jubilant letter to his wife. dating from June 27 when survivors of Reno and Benteen’s combined Though the colonel noted the loss of his horse, battalions and officers from the arriving Montana Column discovered the disaster. Dozens wrote descriptions of what they’d seen while walking he didn’t refer to King Bernadotte by name.

In retrospect, the oversight was understand- the field. Several mentioned Custer’s horse.

Lieutenant Winfield Scott Edgerly, of Benteen’s battalion, referred to able. Since the start of the Civil War in 1861 Custer had had 11 horses shot out from under the sorrel by name. “Vic was killed,” Edgerly told Little Bighorn chronihim. That figure doesn’t include the time in cler Walter Mason Camp. “Dandy was with the packtrain.” Lieutenant 1867 he accidentally shot and killed his own Edward McClernand, of the Montana Column, concurred. “A dead horse horse while hunting buffalo on the southern about 100 or 150 feet, more or less, from Custer’s knoll,” he recalled, “was pointed out to me as the animal ridden by Custer.” That said, Plains. The colonel was very hard on horses.

Vic rated higher than King Bernadotte in McClernand had never laid eyes on Vic, and he didn’t reveal who’d his owner’s esteem. Custer credited the sorrel identified the horse for him.

Benteen, who did know Vic, didn’t mention the sorrel by name in a with having saved his life during that very same Yellowstone expedition when Vic thundered report on his survey of the battlefield. He counted 42 men, including the away from a Sioux war party that had decoyed colonel, and 39 horses on or around Custer Hill, suggesting three horses the colonel into straying too far ahead of his survived, at least for a while.

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TOP: LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; RIGHT: AMON CARTER MUSEUM, FORT WORTH, TEXAS LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RIGHT: LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Another man who knew Vic, Lieutenant Edward ada from a vengeful U.S. Cavalry.

Settle Godfrey, of Benteen’s battalion, also viewed Sitting Bull himself heard and apthe aftermath and was convinced Custer’s horse parently believed one outstandhad survived. “Vic was a sorrel with four white feet ing sorrel was Custer’s horse. and legs and a blaze in the face,” Godfrey noted Tribal historian Samuel Charger of his distinctive appearance. “He was not found claimed the horse in question on the field.” was ultimately sold to a Canadian Accounts from Indian survivors offer more intriguofficer and lived out his life north ing clues. Perhaps the most credible story regarding of the border.

SITTING BULL Vic’s fate came from Minneconjou Lakota warrior If true—and the balance of eviIron Hail, later known as Dewey Beard. In the 1930s dence suggests it may be—then Beard told his white adoptive son, David Humphreys Miller, that he Vic’s story had a more or less happy ending. had witnessed both Custer’s death and the capture of his horse. “It was We’ll never know the name under which he a fine animal, a blaze-faced sorrel with four white stockings,” he recalled. lived out his life, though Victory would cer“A Santee named Walks-Under-the-Ground took that horse.” Beard tainly be apropos for a horse once owned by claimed a Minneconjou named Charging Hawk had killed Custer. an Indian survivor of the Little Bighorn. We Skeptics who believe Beard was mistaken in his identification of the also don’t know whether the Canadian officer horse insist Vic had three white socks instead of four. Yet Godfrey echoed knew the origin of his new mount—or would Beard’s description of a sorrel with four white socks. In the only known have admitted it if he did. verified photo of Vic only three legs show, so we can’t look to that.

Custer’s orderly, Burkman, said the horse had three white socks. But Sharon B. Smith was a broadcast journalist, Burkman also claimed Vic was a mare—which he certainly wasn’t—and writing, anchoring and commentating on horseother aspects of his narrative are suspect. related broadcasts for ESPN and NBC Sports.

Among the Sioux there remains a deep and abiding belief that Walks- She is the author of nine books, including The Under-the-Ground (aka Noisy Walking or Sounds-the-Ground-As- Best There Ever Was: Dan Patch and the He-Walks) came away from the Little Bighorn with Custer’s horse. Walks- Dawn of the American Century (2012) Under-the-Ground was a son of the notorious Wahpekute Santee chief and Stonewall Jackson’s Little Sorrel (2016).

Inkpaduta, instigator of the March 1857 Spirit Lake Massacre in Iowa. For further reading Smith recommends General His name and that of his family carried weight.

Custer’s Thoroughbreds, by Lawrence A. Frost; Compelling accounts from the Sioux mention sightings of Vic among the The Custer Myth, by William A. Graham; and pony herds they brought with them on their November 1876 flight to Can- Lakota Noon, by Gregory F. Michno.

DANDY ENDING Dandy, the other horse taken on campaign in 1876 by Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, spent the two days of battle on the Little Bighorn besieged with the troopers atop Reno Hill, some 4 miles southeast of Custer Hill. Dandy suffered a neck wound, and Private John Burkman, the orderly who cared for both Dandy and Vic, fretted over how to tell Custer the horse had been injured on his watch. That, of course, didn’t prove necessary.

The wound turned out to be minor, and Dandy recovered quickly. Shipped east to widow Libbie Custer in Monroe, Mich., he became a saddle horse and the pampered pet of Emanuel Henry Custer, George’s elderly father. Dandy

Daddy Custer Rides a Dandy

Little Bighorn survivor Dandy became the pampered pet of Emanuel Henry Custer, who poses aboard son George’s battle horse in Monroe, Mich., circa 1878.

was also a favorite of local children, who often followed him as he trotted down the street and cheered his starring appearances in town parades.

Dandy achieved a measure of fame as a living shrine of sorts for visitors who had known or just admired Custer.

When Buffalo Bill’s Wild West toured

anywhere nearby, Cody himself was known to duck over to Monroe to pay respects to Custer’s buffalo horse. At least once he brought sharpshooter Annie Oakley with him.

In August 1889 Dandy died, probably of colic, at age 24. He was buried in the orchard of a farm owned by George Custer’s only surviving brother, Nevin. Dandy remains a celebrity in Monroe, meriting mention on a historical marker in front of the old Custer home and farm. —S.B.S. JUNE 2022

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Celebrating Custer’s Defeat

COURTESY Z.S. LIANG

Plains Indian warriors rejoice after having crushed Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s immediate command, in artist Z.S. Liang’s Victory Dance, Little Big Horn, 1876.

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COURTESY Z.S. LIANG

THE INDIANS WON AT THE LITTLE BIGHORN Students of the battle have long sought reasons and scapegoats to explain Lt. Col. George Custer’s 1876 defeat, but the Army lost because it underestimated the Lakotas and Cheyennes

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By Gregory Michno

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Custer Lost in the Fog of Battle

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social and cultural differences. The Indian functioned in tune with ecological, environmental and geographical sequences, affected more by the vagaries of nature. Being continually squeezed into a smaller space by American settlers only exacerbated the problem. As author John Stephens Gray observed a century later in Centennial Campaign, “One cannot live by the chase in another’s fenced corn patch.”

In contrast, the dominant Anglo-American society operated in an aggressive cycle of expansion, as exploitation of resources fed population growth and material power, fueling demands for more territory and more efficient exploitation.

For the most part the U.S. government and many of its most influential citizens were expansionist and bellicose. As economist Henry George (1839–97) famously wrote, “Material progress does not merely fail to relieve poverty—it actually produces it.” George envisioned the poor living in urban

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LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

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he Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of Lt. Col. George A. Custer have been amply, perhaps excessively, examined. Most of the analysis centers on speculation as to what happened, with copious minutiae regarding individual and unit actions, movements, motivations, wheres, hows and whys. How could a U.S. Cavalry regiment have been so badly beaten? Instead of focusing on the graveyards, however, we might be better served by an abstract approach.

The battle came during the Reconstruction era, as the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant struggled to incorporate the former Confederate States back into the United States, and the processes that were at work in the South— racism, bigotry and capital’s exploitation of labor and natural resources—were also operating out West. American Indians were perhaps more susceptible due to the great underlying

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Mounted warriors race in the foreground while 7th U.S. Cavalry troopers are little more than specks in the dusty background, in The Custer Fight, a 1903 painting by Montana artist Charles Marion Russell (1864–1926).

LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

1874 expedition confirmed the presence of gold in the hills, and an inexorable tide of trespassing prospectors flooded in, the government tried to buy the land. The Sioux would not sell. The government ultimately reneged on the treaty, demanding all Indians be back on their respective reservations by the last day of January 1876. The Sioux did not comply, so the Army compelled them to move. The stage was set for another war.

ghettos, but his observation was just as apt for Indians in rural ghettos or blacks in a sharecroppers’ ghettos.

GEORGE CUSTER IN MARCH 1876 Progress had an ugly tendency to destroy as much as create.

In a nutshell, that explains why the United States coveted Indian lands, particularly the Black Hills. The nation was suffering from the Panic of 1873, an economic depression created by its own insatiable quest for money and power. The largely itinerant, impoverished masses in the East looked to the mythical “safety valve” of Western land—even more so wherever that land contained timber or gold. Hence, the largely itinerant, impoverished Indians out West would have to get out of the way.

The Black Hills had been sacred to the Sioux and other tribes for millennia, and in the Sioux Treaty of 1868 the U.S. government promised them the Black Hills in perpetuity. But when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s

In the Great Sioux War of 1876 Brigadier Generals Alfred Terry and George Crook and Colonel John Gibbon initially tried to round up the free-roaming Indians, but things did not go well. The showpiece battle that captured the nation’s attention started on the Little Bighorn River on June 25, 1876. Early that morning part of Terry’s command—the 7th U.S. Cavalry under Colonel Custer, with some 31 officers, 585 soldiers, 33 scouts and 20 civilians—reached a divide overlooking the Little Bighorn Valley and spotted a massive Indian village on the river below.

Custer had to make a decision. Thousands of writers have since speculated about that decision. It’s worth noting the U.S. military hadn’t formulated a systematic strategic or tactical policy for fighting Indians, leaving its field commanders to reinvent the wheel on every campaign. Even so, Custer’s tactics may have been largely predetermined, given a widely held belief Indians seldom stood and fought, and the fact the campaign centered on how to corral the free-roaming Indians.

On the divide above the Little Bighorn that early morning Custer made his decision. First, he split his forces.

One tried-and-true military maxim holds that an army should march divided and fight concentrated. Custer did the opposite. But a fluid situation calls for flexible tactics. Given an expectation the Indians would run, it was theoretically not unsound to divide a strike force.

Some critics point to Custer’s failure to scout for enemy trails on his approach or to listen to his Indian scouts, who warned of “too many” enemy warriors (some estimates claimed the village comprised as many as 2,000 tepees accommodating 10,000 people, up to 3,000 of whom were warriors). Though he attacked at midday, Custer did surprise the village, a fact acknowledged by at least a dozen Indian participants.

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The Best-Laid Plans of Officers

In the subsequent clash, known to the Indians as the Battle of Greasy Grass, the Sioux and Cheyennes annihilated Custer’s immediate command and killed 268 soldiers, scouts and civilians. Students of the battle have since sought reasons and scapegoats for his defeat.

One overview concluded the village was not too large, there were not too many Indians, Custer did not violate any principles of war, there was no ambush, the Indians did not have appreciably better weapons, the Army’s guns were not defective, the regiment did not have too many raw recruits, and the soldiers were not too exhausted to fight. On the downside were a lack of intelligence, failure to reconnoiter, disobedience of orders, glory-seeking, discord within the ranks and Custer’s personal psychological demons.

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As historian Robert M. Utley contends, the simplest explanation of the battle’s outcome is “that the Army lost largely because the Indians won.” Representing the result only in terms of military failure devalues the Indians’ strengths.

All things considered, a combination of Indian fortitude, poor Army tactics and a snowballing series of seemingly uncontrollable events generated both a great victory and a crushing defeat. The 19th-century Army had no remedies for any of these factors—it didn’t even recognize its own philosophy as the leading culprit.

But it was not only the Army that appeared oblivious— the government seemed not to comprehend that its own prejudice shaped policies. The sovereignty of Indian nations had long been systematically undermined.

Racial arrogance was always part of the equation, and it was in abundance in June 1876.

Such arrogance was endemic on three levels. The first, and perhaps most insidious, was conceptual—the pervasive assumption of entitlement that arrived with the earliest Anglo colonists, who for the most part believed they had a right to the land because the resident Indians were non-Christian savages. It was God’s design white men would rule. Second, and also pervasive, was arrogance on a strategic level. Indians did not know how to best utilize the land they occupied, and Anglos did; the latter were therefore justified to steal the lands they coveted by making or breaking treaties whenever it suited them. Colonists had flirted with the possibility Indians could be assimilated, but by the nascent years of the republic segregation, removal and even extermination became the most viable, expedient options. Indians were an obstacle to Western expansion and must be eliminated by means fair or foul. Third, such arrogance was ubiquitous on a tactical level. Many held that Indians were generally cowards who practiced a “skulking” way of warfare and were only brave enough to fight from ambush or when their foes were overwhelmingly outnumbered. Riding into battle on the Little Bighorn, Custer followed

MAPS: SOPHIE KITTREDGE (2); OPPOSITE TOP: HISTORY COLORADO/DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY; OPPOSITE RIGHT: BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST

Left: The Army sent three columns, led by Brigadier Generals Alfred Terry and George Crook and Colonel John Gibbon, to round up the free-roaming Indians. Above: Custer, part of Terry’s command, split his forces on June 25, 1876, expecting the Indians to flee.

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this long-established American tradition of underestimating Indian warriors. It was long past the point of no return when he and his ill-fated men realized they were no longer the hunters but the prey, the tables having been turned due to their own arrogance.

SITTING BULL

Where’s Custer?

Though Edgar Samuel Paxton (1852–1919) managed to cram nearly every prominent combatant into his well-researched 1899 painting Custer’s Last Stand, the buckskin-clad, golden-haired “Boy General” still stands out as he fights on despite a wound to his side.

MAPS: SOPHIE KITTREDGE (2); OPPOSITE TOP: HISTORY COLORADO/DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY; OPPOSITE RIGHT: BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST

Some readers may harbor a reluctance to accept this unsavory view of American methods of warfare. Consider it from a different angle.

What if the 7th Cavalry were attacking a regiment of British, French or German soldiers? Would Custer have attacked at midday without having reconnoitered his foe? Would he have split his companies into four detachments, sending them beyond mutual supporting distance? Would he have assumed the enemy soldiers were cowards who would flee and not fight? Of course not. Custer lost that day not because of his failure to scout one creek, his failure to bring Gatling guns, a handful of defective armaments or even too many Indians. He lost in large part due to his own racially motivated arrogance.

Even in the wake of a war fought to end slavery, the Army was susceptible to such arrogance. The 7th Cavalry rode out handicapped by stereotypes—that unlike Confederate soldiers in the late war, Indians would not stand and fight; that Indians were cowards and would flee on approach; that repeating rifles were useless on such a campaign because one could rarely catch an Indian close enough to employ shortrange weapons. The same held for howitzers or Gatling guns: While useful against Rebels who stood their ground, they would prove worthless against Indians who ran away. A unified force and reconnaissance were likewise unnecessary when facing an enemy prone to flight. Rumors even held that Sioux leader Sitting Bull had to have attended West Point, or that ex-Confederates had led the Plains tribes into battle. After all, Indians alone could not have achieved such a victory.

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Where They Fell

These white marble slabs at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument mark the spots where Custer and those killed alongside him were found after the battle.

Others suggested more conspiratorial causes to explain Custer’s shocking defeat. On any level playing field, their thinking went, the best, brightest and whitest were unbeatable, so somewhere along the line someone or something must have failed, derailing a plan that would otherwise have succeeded. Why had the soldiers used copper cartridges, which proved difficult to ex-

tract from their breechloading carbines? Why had the regiment fielded so many raw recruits? Why had they ridden into battle with exhausted mounts? Why had Custer disobeyed orders in his zeal to obtain glory? Why had certain officers who loathed him plotted to cause his ruin?

Such conjecture falls under the heading of black swan events—improbable occurrences that come as a surprise, have a large impact and are only perceived through hindsight.

We are blind to random events, which only appear plausibly inevitable through the efforts of those writing in hindsight who “find” anecdotes to fit the narrative and thus manufacture credibility. Anecdotes, however, are the building blocks of erroneous narratives, not historical evidence. The tendency of such writers is to overinterpret our nationbuilding story line. They cannot look at facts without trying to weave an explanation built on wholly identical Lego blocks. Do that repeat-

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He was “proud to have been a member” of a caucus Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens called the “traitors’ convention,” filled with northern Copperheads and disloyal Rebels.

Johnson then embarked on his “Swing Around the Circle,” a crosscountry speaking tour in advance of the 1866 midterm elections. In a show of solidarity General of the Army Ulysses S. Grant joined him on tour, as did Custer. Hecklers mocked Johnson’s insistence the South was loyal, riots broke out, and several people were killed and injured. Johnson, said to have been drunk much of the time, even hinted God had removed Lincoln so he might take his place. An embarrassed Grant (no stranger to drink himself) refused to take the lectern, but Custer spoke at several stops. In Ohio hecklers were so vociferous Custer said he was “ashamed” of them. At a more peaceful reception Custer expressed his relief at being away from the worst people he had seen since the beginning of the war. “Not worse than the Rebels!” someone yelled. “Oh, worse by far,” Custer countered, “for the Rebels have repented.”

Johnson took a hard line against blacks, once saying there were too many “colored men” who “incline to become loafers and depend upon the government to take care of them.” With regard to voting rights, he declared, “It will not do to let the negroes have universal suffrage now. It would breed a war of races.” Likewise, Custer noted Southern planters were losing money “because negroes refuse to work. To deprive one of wage has no effect, so long as he gets enough to eat and drink.” Custer was “in favor of elevating the negro to the extent of his capacity and intelligence,” but “opposed to making this advance by correspondingly debasing any portion of the white race. As for trusting the negro of the Southern states with the most sacred and responsible privilege—the right of suffrage—I should as soon think of elevating an Indian chief to the popedom of Rome.”

In other contemporary quotes Custer appears in sympathy with blacks and Indians, but a rare talk will not change a contrary lifetime of walk.

The president and the general were on the same page.

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TOP: WINKELVI, CC BY-SA 4.0; FAR RIGHT: PICTORIAL PRESS LTD./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

On June 25, 1876, Custer finally played out what fate had seemingly had in store for him from the day he was born.

As a child George echoed his family’s Jacksonian Democratic politics and once boasted he and his father could whip all the Whigs in Michigan. As an Army officer he remained a Democrat, as were many others. Custer was also a friend of George B. McClellan, the former commanding general of the U.S. Army who ran against Abraham Lincoln in 1864. By 1866 Custer had a newfound friend in President Andrew Johnson, another fellow Democrat who was lenient toward former Rebels, cooperated with Southern planters to control black labor and made no bones about his racist views. Johnson helped organize the National Union Convention in 1866, in hopes of hatching a new party of Southern Democrats and disaffected Northern Republicans who’d opposed the war. A delegate to the convention, Custer believed it impolitic and unchristian to be harsh to the Rebels. Freedmen, however, did not factor into Custer’s equation, for he insisted the North hadn’t fought to end slavery but only to preserve the Union.

GEORGE H.H. HUEY, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

CUSTER, POLITICS & PREJUDICE

TOP: WINKELVI, CC BY-SA 4.0; FAR RIGHT: PICTORIAL PRESS LTD./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

GEORGE H.H. HUEY, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

edly over time, and legend obscures facts. Black swan events happen simply because—to paraphrase a popular if crude idiom—“swans happen.” The Custer fiasco may be regarded as a black swan event.

Another question students of the battle still raise is why weren’t more soldiers sent West to places they were needed? That, too, proved irrelevant.

In 1876 the military Division of the Missouri, where the Sioux were concentrated, fielded 16,295 soldiers out of 22,778 available (or roughly 72 percent manpower). That year, aside from the Custer disaster, only 20 soldiers died in battle, another 196 of disease, which had long been the biggest killer. Thus, Custer’s Last Stand was an exception, or black swan event. It’s worth mentioning that soldier deaths in 1876 paled in comparison with the number of blacks murdered in the South, which may have approached 600. Westerners’ prevailing image of the Indian as a murderous

After his brush with Johnsonian politics, Custer went on to become lieutenant colonel of the 7th Cavalry.

In 1867, having had trouble catching Cheyennes, he said, “They are influenced by fear alone.” Frustrated by the failed expedition, he abandoned his command to visit his wife, Elizabeth. Grant ordered his court-martial for having been absent without leave and conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline—the result being a year’s suspension from rank and pay. By November 1868, however, Custer was back, leading the regiment against the Cheyennes on the Washita, a fight depicted as both a great victory and a massacre.

From 1871 to ’73 he and the regiment served in the South on Reconstruction duty, but Custer did not enjoy it.

Assigned to Elizabethtown, Ky., he evinced more sympathies with Southern Democrats than with Republicans and was particularly hostile toward one of his officers, Major Lewis Merrill, who took troopers to South Carolina and did proud service fighting the Ku Klux Klan—perhaps the most praiseworthy duty the 19th-century 7th Cavalry ever performed. Custer often went on leave to New York City, where he rubbed

7th U.S. Cavalry Monument

In 1881 the War Department erected this granite memorial on Last Stand Hill to honor the soldiers and attached personal who paid the ultimate price for what some historians call the “Custer fiasco.”

yet lazy, ignorant, insolent pauper who needed to “feel the whip” was the same attitude many Southerners of the era had toward blacks. At the Little Bighorn, however, the tables were turned, and the U.S. Army got whipped.

Wild West special contributor Gregory Michno has authored many books about the Indian wars.

For further reading see his Lakota Noon, as well as Centennial Campaign: The Sioux War of 1876, by John Gray; The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer, by Jeffrey D. Wert; and My Life on the Plains or, Personal Experiences with Indians, by George Armstrong Custer.

During Reconstruction

Right: President Andrew Johnson trades barbs with hecklers during his 1866 “Swing Around the Circle” tour: Below: Major Lewis Merrill of the 7th U.S. Cavalry battled the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina.

elbows with such wealthy Democrats as the Belmonts, Bennetts and Astors and delved into schemes to make a small fortune through horses, stocks, mines and railroads.

Few of them panned out. By 1873 he was back in the West, protecting Northern Pacific Railroad crews as they crossed Dakota Territory. The following year Custer led troopers of the 7th on an exploration of the Black Hills. Their discovery of gold ultimately led to a contrived war with the Sioux, setting the stage for the 1876 campaign.

Custer rode away to his death. His sympathies had always lain with the Democrats, but his prejudices were not out of line with those of many fellow officers—nor with those of many fellow Americans. Custer would not live to see Democrats back in charge

of the country, but it did come to pass. After the disputed 1876 election, the Republicans made a deal that installed Rutherford B. Hayes as president but returned regional political control to the Democrats and removed the Army from the South, ending Reconstruction. As a result of that Faustian bargain big business got a welcome boost, but Southern freedmen fell into a pit often described as worse than slavery. Custer had abetted the relapse. He found not glory but conspired with the Fates in the creation of a tragedy as both a perpetrator and casualty of our national shame. —G.M. JUNE 2022

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OPPOSITE: HISTORY COLORADO/DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY; RIGHT: GENEALOGY IMAGES OF HISTORY

I The Perfect Hunter

Frontiersman Tom Tobin was tasked with tracking down the Espinosa family of serial killers, depicted in action in the illustration on the opposite page. Tobin often dressed in all black, though for portraits he wasn’t averse to a splash of color, as evinced this oil painting by Juan Menchaca (1910–99).

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THE MAN IN BLACK

OPPOSITE: HISTORY COLORADO/DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY; RIGHT: GENEALOGY IMAGES OF HISTORY

I

Colorado Territory tracker Tom Tobin may not have worn a white hat, but he answered the call to duty in 1863 and hunted down the ‘Bloody Espinosas’

By Daniel Sanchez-Leonetti

n March 1863 the “Bloody Espinosas,” as brothers Felipe and Vivián would become known, began a reign of terror in central Colorado Territory, randomly murdering and mutilating residents and travelers alike.

Over a two-month period they killed as many as 32 people, giving them the dubious distinction of being perhaps the first serial killers in the Western United States.

Seeking to justify the killings, Felipe journaled about how he and his family had been victimized and left destitute by white Americans, and he recounted a dream in which the Virgin Mary had ordered him to kill 600 gringos.

In late April 1863 a citizens’ posse managed to corner the brothers and kill Vivián, temporarily halting the murder spree. But that fall Felipe recruited young nephew José Espinosa and resumed his depredations, recording at least one more killing. Then, in early October the pair ambushed a wagon west of Sangre de Cristo Pass. Unfortunately for them, the driver and passenger escaped and reported the crime to Lt. Col. Samuel F. Tappan, the commander at Fort Garland, in the nearby San Luis Valley. Tappan immediately sprang into action, or rather he called back into action former

Army scout and esteemed tracker Tom Tobin—the perfect man to send after the notorious Espinosas.

Thomas Tate Tobin was born in St. Louis on May 1, 1823, to Irish immigrant father Bartholomew Tobin and wife Sarah (née Tate) Autobees, a widow of mixed white and Indian blood who’d brought into the marriage a son named Charles (who later styled his surname Autobee, without the “s”). In 1828, five years after his half-brother Tom’s birth, 16-year-old Charles left home to trap beaver. He returned to St. Louis in 1837 but soon turned back west, this time with 14-year-old Tom, whom he taught wilderness survival skills.

Autobee and young Tobin headed to Taos in New Mexico, then a territory of Mexico. The half-brothers worked at Simeon Turley’s mill and distillery, the latter famed for its 188-proof Taos Lightning, flavored with chili powder, gunpowder and tobacco. They made pack trips to deliver Turley’s whiskey and flour to places like Bent’s Fort and El Pueblo, in what would become Colorado, and also traded with Indians for beaver pelts and buffalo robes they then sold in St. Louis. In 1846 Tobin married 17-year-old María Pascuala JUNE 2022

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LEFT:, RIGHT, AND BELOW: DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY (3); CENTER: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The Man Hunter

Bernal, and the couple made their home near the mill at Arroyo Hondo. (Pascuala, as she was known, was actually a distant cousin of Felipe Espinosa. Regardless, she and Tom would have a passel of children and remain together until her death at age 57 on Jan. 1, 1887.)

That year marked the start of the Mexican War, followed by the unopposed U.S. occupation of New Mexico and establishment of a provisional government. Life went on much as usual for the newlywed Tobins and neighbors. That is, until the outbreak of the Taos Revolt on Jan. 19, 1847. Mexican rebel Pablo Montoya, the self-proclaimed “Santa Ana of the North,” and Pueblo Indian cohort Tomás Romero led the bloody uprising against American rule. That day the insurrectionists murdered several government officials, including civilian Governor Charles Bent. The next day some 500 Mexicans attacked and laid siege to Turley’s mill, where Tobin and Autobee were working. Autobee rode off to seek help at Santa Fe while Tobin and a handful of others tried to defend the mill against impossi50 WILD WEST

ble odds. The fighting continued into the night before rebels set fire to the mill. Only Tobin and one other defender managed to escape. In the aftermath Tobin and Autobee served as scouts in a company of volunteers led by fur trader Ceran St. Vrain that ultimately helped hunt down the insurrectionists and quash the revolt.

In 1848 Lt. Col. William Gilpin of the 1st Missouri Volunteers, encamped near Bent’s Fort,

LEFT: HISTORY COLORADO; RIGHT: ART INSTITUTE CHICAGO (2)

Tobin (above) tracked down Felipe and nephew José Espinosa. By then a posse had killed Felipe’s brother Vivián. There are no known photos of the trio, but they likely dressed like the vaqueros depicted by Frederic Remington at right.

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LEFT:, RIGHT, AND BELOW: DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY (3); CENTER: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

CHARLES AUTOBEE

hired Tobin as a scout and courier. By all accounts he served well. Tobin lived for a time among the Indians and became a gifted tracker who could reportedly “track a grasshopper through sagebrush.” Some contemporaries considered him the only man who could surpass the legendary Kit Carson in shooting, scouting and tracking. Tobin rode with Carson and worked with such other Western notables as Uncle Dick Wootton, Buffalo Bill Cody, John C. Frémont and Benjamin Lloyd Beall. In 1858 Autobee was hired to supervise the adobe construction of Fort Garland. After he was wounded in a stabbing, Tobin stepped in to complete the fort.

Five years later, in October 1863, Tobin was raising horses and cattle on his ranch near Fort Garland, anticipating the birth of a child by wife Pascuala, when a soldier rode out to summon him to the fort. Colonel Tappan had urgently

SAMUEL F. TAPPAN

WILLIAM GILPIN

requested Tobin’s presence. Although he was 40 years old, Tobin’s hair remained jet black. His preference was to dress in all black, from his hat to his boots, and to sit a black saddle on a black horse. At 5-foot-7 and weighing at the most 140 pounds, the bowlegged former scout wasn’t exactly imposing. Still, Tappan found him an impressive figure, with his big-bladed hunting knife, an 1851 Navy Colt holstered in buffalo hide, with rump hair and tail intact, and a 15-pound .53-caliber Hawken rifle (shoulder height on Tobin) with which he claimed to have already killed 10 men (“red, white and Hispano”). What’s more, Tobin had proved himself on the Western frontier, displaying all the skills necessary to track down one of the most vicious killers ever to come down the pike— Felipe Nerio Espinosa.

On March 16, 1863, Franklin Bruce kissed his bride goodbye at home in Cañon City, Colorado Territory, and headed up Hardscrabble Creek for his sawmill. He never made it. Neighbors found his body. Shot through the heart, he’d been stripped naked and mutilated, a large cross carved into his chest with a knife. Two days later sawmill owner Henry Harkens was found dead at his cabin near present-day Colorado Springs. He’d Not Exactly Fair Play

LEFT: HISTORY COLORADO; RIGHT: ART INSTITUTE CHICAGO (2)

The Espinosas shot lumberman Edward Metcalf on April 25, 1863, near Fairplay, Colorado Territory, but he survived and described his assailants to authorities, sparking the manhunt.

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The long gun above is one of two known rifles Tobin once owned. There are notches on the barrels of both—seven on this one, a dozen on the other. It is uncertain which he used to kill the Espinosas. This one, whose barrel is stamped J. Biringer, Leavenworth, K ansas, is owned by Carol Mondragon, whose grandfather obtained it from Tobin at some point.

been shot in the forehead, his head split open with an ax. The terror continued for weeks as the killers left a string of bodies as far north as Ute Pass. Some corpses were found with crude stick crucifixes protruding from bullet holes in their foreheads. Territorial officials mustered the 1st Colorado Cavalry into the field to track down the murderers, but troopers failed to catch even a glimpse of them. Governor John Evans posted a bounty for the elusive killers. “The people are scared nearly to death here,” one soldier journaled. “None but the bravest dare go out at all.”

A break finally came, though, after lumberman Edward Metcalf survived an April 25 attack to relate a harrowing story. He’d been driving his wagon on the road east to Fairplay when a rifle ball smacked into his chest, tumbling him into the wagon box. The shot might have proved fatal were it not for a copy of President Abraham Lincoln’s recent Emancipation Proclamation folded up in Metcalf’s breast pocket. Miraculously,

TOP: DONNA J. LEONETTI; BOTTOM: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Tobin’s Hawken

it stopped the bullet. As his frightened oxen bolted, bearing the wagon down the road and out of reach, Metcalf saw two Mexicans emerge from the timber. It was later discovered the Espinosas had been in the act of mutilating their latest victim, lumberman Bill Carter. Metcalf and another man alerted by the shots described the assailants to authorities.

Volunteers in the California Gulch mining district quickly formed a posse of 17 men led

by John McCannon. They crossed Weston Pass into South Park, where more men joined the hunt.

Setting out on a cold morning in early May, the posse spent several tension-filled days following a trail of hoofprints in the soft, wet ground, several times finding campsites in which ash still smoldered in the fire rings. At dawn on May 8 they spotted two hobbled horses below them in a gulch, though there was no sign of their riders.

McCannon split his force, and the groups closed in from opposite directions. Vivián Espinosa was the first to appear, and as he moved to release the horses, posseman Joe Lamb fired a shot, knocking him to the ground. Vivián tried to rise while reaching for his revolver, but posseman

Fort Garland, Colorado Territory

HISTORY COLORADO

Post commander Tappan sent Tobin on his unsavory hunting trip in 1863.

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TOP: DONNA J. LEONETTI; BOTTOM: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Fred Carter fired a second shot that struck the killer between the eyes.

The shots brought Felipe crashing from the thicket. On finding his brother dead on the ground, he ran off into the brush. The possemen, uncertain whether the fleeing figure was friend or foe, held their fire. Realizing their mistake, they pursued Felipe, but the surviving brother slipped away over the canyon rim.

While they had let the most dangerous of the Espinosas escape, the posse had at least managed to stop one cold. More important, in a buckskin pouch on Vivián’s body they found personal papers. Authorities finally had names to go with the faces, and in coming weeks newspapers dubbed the fugitive killers the “Bloody Espinosas.” After severing and bagging Vivián’s head as proof of their accomplishment, the posse buried the outlaw’s body.

In the wake of Vivián’s death the killings ceased, and some expressed optimism Felipe must be dead or dying somewhere, perhaps down in Old Mexico. Rumors were rife. One had him returning to the site of his brother’s death and carrying off his severed feet as a keepsake. Another claimed he’d composed a schizophrenic ode to himself that went, “Felipe le dice a Nerio / Vamos matando este gringo” (“Felipe tells Nerio / Let’s kill this gringo”). It soon became apparent Felipe had neither died nor given up his crusade against Americans. By October he was back on the outlaw trail, riding with nephew José Vincente Espinosa, the latter all of 14 years old.

HISTORY COLORADO

Heading off His Quarry

On October 10 storekeeper Leander Philbrook was descending west from Sangre de Cristo Pass in a buggy with passenger Dolores (“Lola”) Sánchez—en route from Trinidad, Colorado Territory, to Costilla, New Mexico Territory—when the Espinosas opened fire, missing their mark.

Philbrook fled afoot up a steep mountainside, hotly pursued by Felipe and José, while Sánchez hid behind a boulder. Soon down the road trundled two other Mexican men in a wagon. Emerging from hiding, a frantic Sánchez explained what had happened. Driver Pedro Garcia told her to get into the wagon box and hide. She did so just as the Espinosas, having lost Philbrook, re-emerged on the road.

According to one account, Felipe screamed, “Put that prostitute of the American out of the wagon, or we will fire on you!” Garcia refused, but Sánchez intervened. “Don Pedro, don’t perish for me,” she said, climbing down from the wagon. “They are Christians and won’t hurt me.” Garcia and his passenger pleaded with the Espinosas not to shoot the woman.

“Go ahead,” Felipe ordered them, “and if this woman is found dead, you can tell the people that the Espinosas of the Conejos killed her!”

The Espinosas did not kill Sánchez, but neither were they Christians.

After raping her, they bound her securely, hand and foot, swearing to return after taking care of her gringo companion. But Philbrook, a veteran of the 1st Colorado Volunteers, continued to elude them and reached Fort Garland by evening. Meanwhile, Sánchez managed to free herself and hide from the Espinosas. The next morning she flagged down patrolling troopers, who brought her to the fort. It was at that point Colonel Tappan summoned Tobin.

“He told me to go see the woman,” the tracker recalled. In conversation with Tobin at Fort Garland an exhausted Sánchez told him of the Espinosas’

After discovering the fugitives’ camp on Oct. 15, 1863, Tobin shot Felipe and then José Espinosa before beheading both to provide grisly proof.

disgraceful abuse and described them in detail.

Tobin wanted to pursue the fugitives alone, but Tappan insisted he take a detachment of troopers. “Be careful not to make a mistake,” the colonel further advised, “and bring other parties,” a likely reference to hot-blooded citizens’ posses then sweeping the region.

The next morning, October 12, Tobin left Fort Garland with Lieutenant Horace W. Baldwin and 15 troopers—including scout Timothy G. Graham—a civilian scout named Loren Jenks and young teen Juan Montoya, whom the tracker had brought along to lead his horse whenever he dismounted. Starting from the site where the Espinosas had stopped Philbrook’s buggy, Tobin made ever-widening circles—sometimes on all fours, face planted to the earth—until he “cut sign,” identifying the tracks of two ponies. It was young Montoya, not Tobin, who caught the first glimpse of the Espinosas. As the tracker had ridden ahead, the boy told Lieutenant Baldwin, “Ahí van dos hombres a caballo!” (“There go two men on horseback!”). But Baldwin didn’t speak Spanish. By the time he clued in and rode after the Espinosas, he JUNE 2022

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could only watch in frustration as they spurred out of sight over a ridge.

The next day the group scattered in the mountains to follow several intersecting tracks, most left by local Utes’ ponies. Jenks and most of the troopers became separated from the detachment for the duration of the hunt. Baldwin, Montoya, Graham and the four remaining troopers followed Tobin as he traversed the rough terrain, often crawling on his knees through thick underbrush.

The party camped for the night on La Veta Mountain and spent the next day searching in vain.

On the morning of the fourth day, October 15, Tobin came down La Veta Creek (present-day 54 WILD WEST

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DONNA J. LEONETTI (2)

Tobin was entitled to a bounty for having killed the Espinosas, but Colorado Territory Governor John Evans never paid up. In consolation Evans’ successor, Alexander Cummings, gave the tracker this elaborately decorated buckskin coat in 1866. A grateful military expressed its thanks with a limited-edition Henry rifle.

SAN LUIS VALLEY MUSEUM, ALAMOSA, COLO.

A Reward From the Governor

South Abeyta Creek, near the town of La Veta) and discovered the tracks of two oxen. On finding one of the oxen roaming free, he deduced the Espinosas were driving the other as a source of food. Even so, the terrain made tracking difficult. “It was only by the broken twigs that I could follow them,” Tobin recalled. “Many places I would crawl under the fallen timber to keep the direction they were driving the ox.”

Stepping out into a clearing, Tobin saw birds circling in the sky just ahead and suggested to the others that meant the Espinosas had killed one of the oxen. The fallen timber was too heavy to traverse on horseback, so Tobin told the others to wait in a clump of trees while he crawled ahead with Montoya. He relented when three troopers volunteered to join him.

After crawling about 100 yards, Tobin recognized the birds as squawking magpies—feathered “camp robbers” that undoubtedly signaled their proximity to the Espinosas’ camp. After warning the soldiers not to speak or fire their guns until otherwise directed, the tracker inched forward alone.

Positioning himself behind a fallen log, Tobin was able to get a good look at the campsite. Felipe, with a bushy beard and a distinctive deep scar running the length of his left cheek, was hunched over the campfire.

The carcass of the ox hung from a nearby willow. As Tobin watched, Felipe rose to carve steaks from its rear shank for roasting, then returned to the fire. The tracker didn’t see José, who was down in a ravine tending to the outlaws’ horses.

“At this time I stepped on a stick and broke it,” Tobin recalled in an 1895 deposition taken at Fort Garland. “[Felipe] heard it crack…and saw me. He jumped and grabbed his gun. Before he turned around fairly, I fired [with his Hawken rifle] and hit him in the side. He bellowed like a bull and cried out, ‘Jesus, favor me!’ and cried to his companion, ‘Escape, I am killed!’”

Felipe slumped facedown into the fire, singeing his whiskers before he could roll out, while José bolted from the ravine toward a distant aspen grove. “I tipped my powder horn in my rifle [and] dropped a bullet from my mouth into the muzzle of my gun while I was capping it,” Tobin said. He shouted in Spanish for José to stop, but young Espinosa instead turned and fired at the tracker, missing wide. The teen had again broken into a run when Tobin fired, striking him in the small of his back. José dropped dead with a shattered spine.

Felipe had crawled away from the fire and was still clinging to life, waving his revolver over his face, when Tobin reached him. The outlaw cursed the tracker. “I had run down to where he was,” Tobin recalled.

“I spoke to him and asked him if he knew me. I told him who I was.”

As the troopers moved up, Felipe hissed, “Brutos” (“Brutes”). Suddenly, Tobin yelled, “Look out, he will shoot you!” Felipe did in fact fire wildly.

After disarming his quarry, Tobin dragged the elder Espinosa by his scorched hair, drew his neck over a log, unsheathed his knife and neatly severed Felipe’s head from his body. He then had the boy, Montoya, behead José, also for purposes of identification. They left the corpses where they had fallen.

Among the items Tobin and party found in the outlaw camp were Sánchez’s personal effects, as well as Felipe’s diary and several letters.

The latter contained descriptions of several brutal murders alongside Felipe’s self-justifying rantings for having killed Americans—32 by his count. Denver’s Weekly Commonwealth later published translated excerpts from the documents, including the following bizarre, quasi-religious passage in a letter addressed to Felipe’s wife:

I am blessed with the milk from the breast of the Holy Mother Mary! I am covered with the cloak of the Holy San Salvador!

I am defended by the sword of the Holy St. Paul!

I am looking after animals and my enemies.

They have hands and cannot touch me; They have feet and cannot catch me; They have eyes and cannot see me; They have ears and cannot hear me.

Without further ceremony, Tobin dropped the killers’ heads into a discarded gunnysack, lashed it to his saddle and mounted up. Bound southwest for Fort Garland, the group made camp that night on the slopes of the Sangre de Cristo. Spirits were high, and all slept well.

The next morning, October 16, the weary procession arrived at the fort.

As luck would have it, Colonel Tappan, his officers and their wives were out riding. Tobin sent the colonel’s orderly to fetch him while he waited in the commandant’s office.

When Tappan returned to the post with his riding party, he asked, “Tom, did you have any luck?” Rolling the heads from the gunnysack, the tracker nonchalantly replied, “So-so.” Several of the officers’ wives screamed, and a couple fainted. The colonel himself turned green and sat down quickly. Tappan then told his orderly, “Take those nasty things and bury them.”

Such was the ignominious fate of the Bloody Espinosas.

Tobin’s Home on the Range...Maybe

This Colorado cabin some 5 miles from present-day Fort Garland reportedly once housed the tracker.

Author Daniel Joseph Sanchez-Leonetti is a Colorado-based novelist and screenwriter who has worked for various newspapers and magazines in the Southwest. For further reading he suggests Season of Terror: The Espinosas in Central Colorado, March–October 1863,

by Charles F. Price; Tom Tobin: Frontiersman, by James E. Perkins; and Tom Tobin and the Bloody Espinosas, by Bob Scott.

DONNA J. LEONETTI (2)

SAN LUIS VALLEY MUSEUM, ALAMOSA, COLO.

THE AFTERMATH The baby Tom Tobin had been anticipating—a daughter he and wife María Pascuala named María Pascualita—arrived on Oct. 23, 1863, a week after his return to Fort Garland. In 1878 Pascualita Tobin married Kit Carson’s son Billy. A decade later, on learning a drunken Billy had mistreated her, Tobin went after his son-in-law with a knife. Young Carson fended off Tobin with a sledgehammer and then shot Tom in the groin. The in-laws ultimately reconciled, but Tobin suffered from the wound to the end of his days.

For having killed the two Espinosas in October 1863, Tobin was entitled to the bounty (reportedly as much as $2,500) posted by Colorado Territory Governor John Evans, though the tracker later claimed ignorance of any bounty. Regardless, Evans never paid a penny to Tobin. In 1866 Alexander Cummings, Evans’ successor as governor, gave Tobin an elaborately decorated buckskin coat. Tom later wore the coat in several portraits, while the military presented the tracker with a limited-edition Henry rifle. Only later did Tobin receive any money. Several years after the bloody incident Territorial Governor Edward M. McCook gave Tobin $500, and in 1893—three decades after the deaths of Felipe and José Espinosa—Governor Davis Hanson Waite gave him $1,000.

Despite the fact Tobin could only write his name, he served two years (1893–95) on the Costilla County School Board.

One year on the opening day of class he visited the school-

Grave Mistake

Thomas Tate Tobin and wife Pascuala are buried on a private ranch near Fort Garland. Toben reads his misspelled tombstone.

house and delivered a memorable address to teacher Nettie Calkins and her young students.

“If any of these brats disobey or are mean, just let me know,” the grizzled tracker quipped, “and I will cut out their hearts.”

That time he presumably kept his knife sheathed.

Tobin was notorious for scrambling the dates of relevant events in his life, which has led to some confusion for historians. It is certain, however, he died virtually penniless on his ranch on May 15, 1904. He and wife Pascuala (who preceded him in death in 1887) are interred in the private Mac Mullan Cemetery in Blanca, near Fort Garland. Not only is he little remembered today—at least in comparison to colleague and in-law Kit Carson—but his tombstone bears a birth date different from that found in historical literature, and his inscribed name is misspelled Toben. —D.S.L. JUNE 2022

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Memories on Horseback

OPPOSITE: DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY; THIS PAGE: HERITAGE AUCTIONS

In 1900, as he searched for stray horses with grandson Kit Carson III, scout and tracker Tom Tobin (at right) recounted his 1863 pursuit of the “Bloody Espinosas.”

In 1968 Carson shared those memories in a recorded interview with graduate student Robert Leonetti. Kit Carson III’s other grandfather was his namesake, frontiersman Kit Carson (see opposite).

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KIT CARSON III RECALLS TOM TOBIN OPPOSITE: DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY; THIS PAGE: HERITAGE AUCTIONS

In 1968 the grandson of famed frontiersmen Kit Carson and Tom Tobin shared what he’d been told about the latter’s tense 1863 hunt for the murderous Espinosas

W

By Robert Leonetti and Daniel Sanchez-Leonetti

hat follows is an account of frontier scout Tom Tobin (1823–1904) and his pursuit of the Espinosa family of killers, as told to and related by Christopher Kit Carson III, a grandson of both Tobin and legendary frontiersman Kit Carson (1809–68). The younger Carson (who was born on June 30, 1883, and died at age 91 on Nov. 28, 1974) shared this account in a Dec. 30, 1968, taped interview with Robert Leonetti, then a graduate student at Adams State College in Alamosa, Colo. The original transcript was never published. Daniel Sanchez-Leonetti, Robert’s brother, recently listened

to the interview and cleaned up the manuscript for publication in Wild West. The editors have made only minor corrections to syntax and punctuation. To listen to the original recorded interview, visit Historynet.com/tobin.

On May 1, 1900, Tobin’s 77th birthday, he shared his exploits with then 16-year-old grandson Kit while the two were out looking for lost horses, and the latter never forgot his grandfather’s narrative.

Tobin was justly heralded as the man who finally tracked down and killed Felipe Espinosa and nephew José in Colorado Territory in October 1863 (see related feature by Sanchez-Leonetti, P. 48).

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In the Image of His Grandfather

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Robert Leonetti: What time of year was this when you were up at the creek with him?

Carson: That was sometime in May or June. But we stopped, and he showed me about where. He said: “Now Indian Creek goes up here.

Up here a little ways there is another creek come into Indian Creek from the north.…[It] was about probably 2 miles north of the junction of this little creek and Indian Creek.”

Now, this is the way it had happened. These two outlaws of the Espinosa brothers [Felipe and Vivián] had come up from New Mexico [Territory], and they [had] been terrorizing this part of the country from New

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Kit Carson III: There have been a lot of stories written about Grandfather Tobin, and especially about him having killed them two desperadoes, the Espinosa brothers. There have been so many stories now that several times fellows came there to the ranch, located about 3 miles southwest of Fort Garland [Colo.]. Grandfather Tobin was a buddy of my other grandfather, Kit Carson, who was commander of Fort Garland at one time.…There used to be fellows that would come to interview him about the Espinosa deal, and when they would publish it, they published a whole lot of stuff that wasn’t true, things that he hadn’t told them at all. And he got so [angry], that was the last [they] came to interview him.

He wouldn’t give them an interview, because they wouldn’t put down what he told them. They

sent him a copy of their story, and [there] was lots of stuff in there that he hadn’t told them at all, so he quit interviews.

But what I got from him was right from him.

It happened this way: My grandfather used to raise horses and some cattle, but his hobby was racehorses. He used to sell lots of these horses to buyers from New York and Eastern towns…and train them for polo ponies.…When we rounded them up in the fall, most of them would come in by themselves, but this time a bunch of mares and one stallion didn’t come in. So, the next spring [1900] my brother and I made two or three trips into the mountains looking for these horses…but we couldn’t find them, so grandfather and I went out to see if we could find them. And we were up Indian Creek, that little creek that comes up into the Sangre de Cristos just a few miles above Garland, but the head of it is between La Veta and Fort Garland.

Well, we didn’t find them, and he was 83 years old [77] at the time. It was getting late in the evening, and he was getting pretty tired. We started back, and I happened to think when we were up on Indian Creek, and I says, “Grandpa, wasn’t it up in here that you killed the Espinosas?”

And he said, “Yes.” And I said: “Where about? Do you remember?”

He said: “That’s been a long time ago, and I don’t know as I could go to the exact spot anymore. Maybe I could.”

But his eyesight was failing him, and he was getting old, and it was getting late in the day.

TOP LEFT: AULTMAN (TRINIDAD) STUDIO COLLECTION AT HISTORY COLORADO; TOP RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; MIDDLE: SAN LUIS VALLEY MUSEUM, ALAMOSA, COLO.

In 1863 Tobin (at left) was living near Fort Garland, Colorado Territory (above), when the commander sent him after the Espinosa family of serial killers.

He later recounted those exploits to his grandson Kit Carson III, posing at far left in some of Tobin’s garb.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

TOP LEFT: AULTMAN (TRINIDAD) STUDIO COLLECTION AT HISTORY COLORADO; TOP RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; MIDDLE: SAN LUIS VALLEY MUSEUM, ALAMOSA, COLO.

Mexico clear into the South Park here in Colorado. It was said that they had killed about 23 [Felipe claimed 32] men on the rampage and had a grudge against the Americans. There had [been] so many different stories about it that nobody seemed to know just what it was, but it seems like it stemmed from the Mexican War. [They] traveled through the country here, and any white man that they [saw], they’d kill. Posses had been after them for eight years [actually two].…[Scouts] and old soldiers from Fort Garland been after them, but couldn’t get them. They never come out into the open. They just traveled in the mountains from north to south of the Sangre de Cristo Range. The state had ordered a reward of some say $1,500 and some say $2,500 for the capture of the Espinosas.

So, it happened that at this time these Espinosa brothers had killed a man [Leander Philbrook actually escaped their ambush unharmed and fled to Fort Garland] between La Veta and Fort Garland.…He was coming over into the valley. He was married to a Spanish woman [Philbrook’s passenger, Dolores “Lola” Sánchez of Trinidad, was not his wife]. He was driving a buckboard [buggy] with two mules, and just as he came over the top of Indian Creek pass [Sangre de Cristo Pass] into the valley, one of the mules was shot from ambush. Of course, the fella couldn’t get any further. He had to stop.…They kept the woman captive for three or four days [actually a matter of hours]. During the day they would go away while she was held captive, but they [would] tie her to a tree until they got back. One day she got loose, and she started down the road toward Fort Garland.…She met a bunch of soldiers on patrol, and they brought her down to Fort Garland. She told the commander at the fort [Lt. Col. Samuel F. Tappan] her story and gave the location…as well as she could.

Well, this commander, he didn’t know what to do, because he’d been trying to get at these fellas a long time, so he thought of Tom Tobin.

He sent after him at the ranch and [said], “Tom, I wish you’d go and see if you can get these fellas. We know they’re in this part of the country, and I think that you’re the man that can track ’em down.”…Tobin had a reputation among the old fellas that he…could track a grasshopper through the sagebrush.

He didn’t want to go at that time. He said he couldn’t leave, because they were expecting a baby at the house…and he thought he better not go. But the commander insisted…so he decided to go. He went back to the ranch to change horses, and the commander at the fort had said that he would give him all the men and equipment that he wanted.…

But grandfather said: “What would I do with a bunch of soldiers? I couldn’t handle them. Besides, they’ve been after these fellows for a long time and haven’t caught them, and they couldn’t get ’em this time either.” So, he went to the ranch…and a Spanish family working for them at the ranch had a boy [ Juan Montoya] about 15 years old, and he took this boy with him.

The next morning they started out early, and they came to the place where the buckboard [buggy] was. They took the mule that they didn’t kill with them, these Espinosas. So, Grandfather started to track ’em, and their tracks were headed south. Well, he followed the tracks south for a little ways [and] figured that they had backtracked and went north instead.

So, he went back to where he had started.…Well, they only went about a mile, maybe 2 miles, north, and being he was a tracker, he figured that he wasn’t very far behind. [When] the tracks got pretty hot, he left the boy with the two horses. He told the boy: “Now, you see the shadow of this tree across the gulch, there across the creek? When that shadow points

KIT CARSON

to that point of rocks on the other side…and I’m not back, you take the horses and go back to the fort, because I won’t be back.”

So, he went, and the further he went, the hotter it got. So, pretty soon he located ’em. They had a little fire going, a small fire.…It was only one brother that was left then. Before that time [the] Espinosa brothers had held up a stagecoach up in South Park, and some fella had killed one of the Espinosa brothers [Vivián was killed in a shootout with a citizens’ posse]. He killed him, so the other one that was left [Felipe] went down to New Mexico and got his nephew [José], a boy about 19 or 20 years old [actually 14], and he got to be worse than his uncle.

So, Grandfather had a muzzleloading rifle— you know, a Hawken rifle…that you used to have to pour the powder in and then ram the bullet in and put a cap on the tube before you could shoot. So, he put two bullets in his mouth, and he snuck up behind a fallen tree. He had to get close because them rifles didn’t carry as far as our modern rifles do. And one shot, and if you missed, you was a goner. So, he snuck behind this log, and the uncle, the old man [Felipe], was cooking some meat on this campfire. [They] killed some animal [a stolen ox], and they had some of the meat hung up on the willows to dry.

The young fellow [ José] was off a little ways, taking care of the horses, something. And Grandfather got within range, and he said this old fella was like an animal. He could sense danger. He hadn’t seen grandfather or heard him, but Grandfather said he’d stoop over to stir his meat. But JUNE 2022

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he’d straighten up right quick and always reach for his revolver, but he didn’t take it out of his scabbard at all. Then he’d go ahead with his meal. Grandfather didn’t want to shoot him until he got the two of them together.

Pretty soon the young fella came, and he started to unpack some sacks that they had, and they were talking, but Grandfather was too far to hear just what they were saying. But he could have understood ’em, because he [could] talk Spanish.…So he got ready, and the old man stooped over again to take care of his meat, and the young fella dumped something out of his sack. And Grandfather took a crack, and the 60 WILD WEST

Leonetti: And it was supposed to be a reward of $1,500 to $2,500?

Carson: Fifteen hundred or $2,500. Some said $1,500, others said $2,500.…Some say that he got $1,500 dollars, but, you know, Grandfather couldn’t read or write. He could write his name, but that was all.

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DONNA J. LEONETTI

Tobin poses with one of his rifles shortly before his death in 1904. Grandson Kit told interviewer Robert Leonetti his grandfather had a reputation for being able to “track a grasshopper through the sagebrush.”

HISTORY COLORADO

A Tracker Near the End of His Own Trail

old man pitched over into the fire, but he wasn’t dead. He rolled out of the fire. It only singed his whiskers.…Grandfather said he had never seen a more horrible looking thing than that old man. Probably hadn’t had a bath in years or shaved or anything. He was dirty, and his fingernails were so long that they curled over his fingers. But anyhow, he cracked down on the old man.…The young fella started to run, and Grandfather called to him in Spanish and told him to stop, and he stopped long enough to fire his revolver at Grandfather, but he missed, and he started to run again. Just as he got to the edge of the timber, Grandfather cracked down on him, and he went down.

So, Grandfather walked over to the fire. The old man was laying on his back. He wasn’t dead, but he had his revolver in his hand, and he waved [it] over his face once or twice and said, “Damn the Americans.” He didn’t know who shot him. He hadn’t seen anybody. And then Grandfather went over to the young one, the nephew, and he was dead. He broke his back.…

Grandfather came back to the camp and wondered what he should do. He couldn’t take the bodies to Fort Garland. He had to take some evidence, and he only had the two horses, and it was a long ways [to the fort]. So, he took his hunting knife and cut off the old man’s head and then went and cut [off] the young one’s head…and put them in a sack that the young one had emptied [and] walked over to where the horses were. And when he got there, the horses were there, but the boy…had taken off afoot and had hidden in some rocks. But he finally found him and tied the heads on behind the saddle.

[Grandfather] came to the fort…and there was an orderly in the commandant’s office, but all the officers [and their wives] had gone down the road toward San Luis for a [ride].…So he sent the orderly after them. And they all came in, and the commander says, “Tom did you have any luck?” and Grandfather went behind the door and picked up a sack and dumped the heads out. He said some of the women fainted…[and] men turned green.…The commander says to the orderly, “You take these things out of here and bury ’em someplace.”

So Grandfather went home. And see, when he went after these fellas, he didn’t know that there’d been a reward offered by the state [territory].

And the reason he went was like all these old-timers done. He done it for humanity sake and to protect mankind that these fellas were killing all over the valley, all over the place.…When [he] got to the home, the baby he was expecting was already there.…

After he learned there was a reward out for ’em, he didn’t claim it until a few years later. He put in a claim to the state, and the Legislature hopped back and forth, and they didn’t have no funds for [those] things. …Eventually they paid him [$500 from Territorial Governor Edward Moody McCook, followed 30 years later by $1,000 from Governor Davis Hanson Waite].

Now, if they ever paid $1,500 or $2,500 dollars, whoever does his correspondence for the state probably got the balance of it.…

One time I was in Colorado Springs, and I met with the historical society of the Pikes Peak region, and they were talking about Kit Carson—my other grandfather. And eventually someone brought up this Espinosa deal, and they started to ask me about names and dates. I said, “My gosh, I have such a poor memory that I don’t remember dates or names either.”

Well one of them said, “Do you remember what time of year it was when your grandfather got these Espinosas?”

And I said, “Yeah, in October.”

And he says: “What year? Do you remember that?”

“Yeah, 1863.”

He says, “Well, I thought you didn’t remember dates?”

“Well, I have reason for remembering that date.”

And he says, “Why?” “Well, when he got home, that baby born that day…later became my mother [María Pascualita Tobin]. And so I remember that date of her birth and the year. So, it was October 1863.”

Leonetti: I wanted to ask you about the old man [Felipe] Espinosa.

You said he [your grandfather] shot him first, and he rolled over the fire. …Did he just die there?

Carson: No, Grandfather seen him wave the revolver past his face, and then [he] passed away. Grandfather didn’t have to shoot him again, because he seen he was too far gone to do any damage.…He went to see about the boy. [When] he got back…the old man was dead.

Leonetti: And you said they had great big, long fingernails. I could just imagine those dirty long fingernails and big beards.

Carson: Long fingernails, long black beard, and fire had singed part of his [Felipe’s] beard away, so he was an awful looking sight.

DONNA J. LEONETTI

HISTORY COLORADO

Leonetti: Were they in buckskins?

The Interviewer and the Tape

Robert Leonetti displays the audiotape on which he recorded the 1968 interview.

It went missing for 52 years before brother Daniel Sanchez-Leonetti happened across it.

[Felipe, Vivián and José] couldn’t think that they had any money with them. Besides, what good would money do the Espinosas? They didn’t go to town.…They would swoop down on some village…change horses, take what horses these fellas had and provisions. And of course the Spanish people—most of them, not all—they were in sympathy with the Espinosa brothers, naturally. Lot[s] of them around [Fort] Garland [in] later years, they had a dislike for my grandfather…on account of [going after the Espinosas.]

Leonetti: Do you remember who the commander was at the time at the fort?

Carson: No, I don’t remember.…I was born in the same house where Grandfather [Carson] had his headquarters as commandant of Fort Garland. I was born in that same house.

Leonetti: During the time he was commandant?

Carson: No, Grandfather Carson was commander at Fort Garland in 1852 [actually 1866– 67], and I wasn’t born until 1883. But I was born in the same house [in which] he had his headquarters, which is still there.

Leonetti: How was your father related to the original Kit Carson?

Carson: I suppose they were in buckskins. Now, lots of people say in stories that [have] been written that…some museums has souvenirs. …Some say they kept a diary and the names of the fellas that they killed.

Now, tell me, how would these guys keep a diary when they were illiterate? [The brothers were actually found with letters and a diary written in fluent Spanish]. They couldn’t write, they couldn’t read, and they didn’t know who they [had] killed. Now, they weren’t going to ask a man what his name was and then kill him. They killed all these fellas from ambush.

Carson: My father was the original Kit Carson’s eldest son. His name was William.…

William married Tom Tobin’s youngest daughter…the one that was born when Grandfather killed the Espinosas.

Leonetti: Do you think they, according to your grandpa, killed people here because they had such a dislike for Americans?

Author Daniel Sanchez-Leonetti, whose hometown is Trinidad, Colo., found the 5-inch reel audiotape of the interview brother Robert recorded in 1968 with Kit Carson III in Robert’s shed, where it had lain undisturbed for 52 years.

Carson: That’s right. Because it wasn’t for robbery.…[The] men killed, most of them…were timbermen, prospectors or things like that. They

Leonetti: And that was your mother?

Carson: My mother.

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With and Without a Badge

Paxton King Jacoby, who became a San Francisco police officer in 1874, posed for two portraits five years later. In this one he wears his uniform and badge; in the one opposite he is in civilian clothes.

JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION (2)

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FROM EMIGRANT TO EX-CON After barely avoiding the notorious Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah Territory, Paxton Jacoby became a California lawman and gunfighter with an itchy trigger finger

JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION (2)

T

By John Boessenecker

he annals of the Wild West are filled with characters who led lives of great drama on the frontier but are long forgotten. Among them is Paxton Jacoby, an emigrant wagon train driver, prospector, gambler and lawman from the 1850s through the ’90s. He was also a gunfighter who left a bloody trail in California and Nevada. His story has never been told.

Paxton King Jacoby was born in Pennsylvania on May 15, 1836. In the 1840s his father moved his wife and their four children to Stark County, Ohio. There, on Feb. 28, 1857, Paxton’s younger sister, Rebecca, 18, married William B. Duck, a 23-year-old riverboatman. Duck had a hankering to move West, and Rebecca and Paxton were all for it, so they organized a small party of emigrants with several wagons and a hundred head of cattle. Within weeks of William and

Rebecca’s wedding the party started for California, likely setting out by boat down the Ohio River. After crossing the Mississippi, they drove their wagons west through Arkansas.

In April 1857 in the Ozark Mountains they fell in with a westbound wagon train led by John Twitty “Jack” Baker. Baker’s train then joined another led by Alexander Fancher, and other families soon joined what became known as the BakerFancher party. As Jacoby later recounted for a reporter, “It was the richest and bestequipped train that ever set off across the continent, numbering about 140 souls— men, women and children—with 900 head of cattle in a herd and 100 working oxen drawing the 16 wagons.” Some of the settlers were drawn by the promise of gold, while others planned to establish cattle ranches in California.

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A Narrow Escape

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an village in a remote valley. Jacoby and the rest then charged in, chased off the warriors and recovered most of the herd.

By the time the wagon train reached Fort Bridger, the arguments over slavery had become so contentious that Jacoby, Duck and the rest of the Northerners decided to separate from the Arkansans. Jacoby’s group headed west toward Bear River on the Oregon Trail, while the BakerFancher train drove southwest toward Salt Lake City. Jacoby and companions had made an extraordinarily fortuitous choice. As the reporter who interviewed Jacoby wrote, “About nine days after their departure from Bridger they received intelligence from a party that overtook them that the Arkansas train which they had abandoned had all been massacred, the bloody deed being attributed to the Indians.”

TOP: DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY; ABOVE: COOPER COLLECTIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY

They continued west across the Plains, following the Arkansas River to Pikes Peak in what would become Colorado. Jacoby, Duck and a handful of other party members were Northerners who opposed slavery, while most of the emigrants were from Arkansas and supported it.

During the long and arduous trip the factions argued bitterly over slavery, particularly about the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required escaped slaves be returned to their owners, even if captured in a free state. Jacoby also cited another kind of trouble. “During the journey,” he recalled, “the emigrants were frequently molested by the Indians, who were then the lords of the Plains.”

The wagon train swung north toward Fort Bridger (in what would become southwest Wyoming), then the first outpost in the region, as Denver did not yet exist. Before the train reached the safety of the fort, Indians made a nighttime raid on their camp and drove off the entire herd of cattle. Jacoby and many of the men mounted up and started in pursuit. A few days later they captured one of the straggling raiders and forced him to guide the pursuers to the responsible Indi-

JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION (2)

Arguments over slavery prompted Jacoby and other Northerners to separate from Arkansan emigrants at Fort Bridger (right). Thus the former averted the 1857 slaughter of some 120 men, women and children known to history as the Mountain Meadows Massacre (above).

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Jacoby’s ‘Belly Gun’

As a San Francisco policeman he carried this Model 1849 Colt pocket pistol, converted to fire metallic cartridges. Its backstrap is inscribed P.K. Jacoby, Officer 141.

JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION (2)

The Baker-Fancher train had arrived in Utah Territory at the height of a conflict between Mormons and the federal government. A U.S. Army expedition had been sent to the territory to keep the peace, but the Mormons believed a bloody war was coming. By the time the Baker-Fancher train reached the southwestern corner of the territory, Mormon militiamen had convinced themselves the emigrants were enemies. In early September 1857 the Mormons and Paiute allies repeatedly attacked the wagon train at Mountain Meadows, slaughtering upward of 120 men, women and children. They spared only the 17 children too young to tell anyone what had happened. Jacoby and companions had narrowly missed death in what became known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, among the most infamous crimes of the Old West.

The wagon train with Jacoby and his companions continued west to California, arriving without further incident. His sister and brother-in-law settled in Marysville, a prosperous gold town in northern California, while he drifted to the mining camp of North San Juan, some 40 hard road miles northeast in the Sierra Nevada. Jacoby spent several years digging for gold before becoming a bartender at the camp’s Union Saloon. Among his patrons on the evening of Sept. 4, 1861, were a pair of rowdy miners—Henry Van Ness and Jack Pollard, a 27-year-old English-

man. Pollard was known as both a hard drinker and a bully who abused women.

Miners crammed into the saloon, which featured a bordello stocked with “hurdy-gurdy” girls.

The women sang, played music, danced with the men and sold them more than just beer and hard liquor. According to a contemporary news account, that evening the miners were “enjoying a free dance with four of the hurdy-gurdy girls” when Van Ness interrupted the frolic with “certain antics, much to the annoyance of those engaged in the dance.” Jacoby, from behind the bar, told the interloper to stop, but Van Ness ignored him. A witness said Van Ness “took a chassez or flourish down the room and through the quadrille, breaking in upon the pleasure of those who formed it.”

At that Jacoby stepped forward and shoved Van Ness from the dance floor. Pollard then intervened, telling the barman not to interfere with his friend and encouraging Van Ness in his disorderly conduct. Pollard then took a swing at Jacoby. That was a mistake, for the barman yanked out a “five-shooting Colt’s revolver” (probably a Model 1849 pocket pistol) and struck Pollard a heavy blow on the side of the head.

Though stunned, Pollard sprang forward and began choking Jacoby. After a desperate struggle Jacoby managed to break free, cock his pistol and fire. The bullet ripped through Pollard’s collarbone into his neck and nicked his jugular vein, dropping the miner in a bloody heap.

Picking up Pollard, bystanders carried him to a nearby house. Though he initially showed signs of recovery, he died three weeks later.

Meanwhile, authorities arrested Jacoby. Follow-

TOP: DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY; ABOVE: COOPER COLLECTIONS OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Sand Springs Station

In June 1864 Jacoby joined an impromptu posse that killed two suspected horse thieves in a gunfight 5 miles east of this Nevada Territory stage depot.

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The City by the Bay

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JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION

ing a court hearing, the justice of the peace ruled the barkeep had acted in self-defense and found the shooting legal. Thus ended the first of Jacoby’s numerous shooting scrapes—some deemed justifiable, others not. From then on he drifted from one settlement to another, often drinking and gambling, his pistol always close at hand.

On June 10, 1864, Jacoby was at Sand Springs Station, Nevada Territory, a stage depot and

former Pony Express stop some 90 miles east of Reno, when ranchers Cranston Allen and James Coats, of nearby Fallon, arrived on horseback, announcing they were in pursuit of a pair of Mexican horse thieves. Allen had spotted the two passing his ranch that morning, driving four horses and four mules. As several of his horses had gone missing, Allen had approached the Mexicans and asked to examine the animals’ brands.

Refusing, one of the men drew a pistol and ordered him away. Allen then sought help from neighbor Coats, and they followed the suspected thieves 25 miles southeast to Sand Springs Station. The Mexicans detoured around each stop along the road, as if seeking to avoid notice.

Jacoby and two other men agreed to help the ranchers. Mounting up, the five-man posse, armed with rifles, shotguns and six-shooters, left the station on the eastbound road (present-day U.S. Route 50). Five miles down the road the riders caught up with the pair, whom authorities later identified as José Baldenebro and Simón Montoya. When the possemen ordered the pair to stop, Baldenebro and Montoya drew their pistols and opened fire, one bullet grazing rancher Allen’s forehead. Returning fire with their collective arsenal, the possemen shot Baldenebro and Montoya from their saddles, killing them both.

Jacoby and the other posse members then rode into La Plata, the county seat (today a ghost town), to report the shooting. After reviewing

TOP: DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION; LEFT: OLD BOOKS IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Above: In 1878 Currier & Ives published this bird’s-eye view of San Francisco, from the bay looking southwest. Left: This engraving depicts San Francisco’s Montgomery Street in 1879. As a police officer in that city Jacoby made many arrests, but in 1881 he was fined twice­­—for insubordination and for being absent from his beat.

JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION

TOP: DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION; LEFT: OLD BOOKS IMAGES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

their testimony, a coroner’s jury found they had acted in self-defense.

However, it soon developed that Baldenebro was the son of a Mexican rancher on the Reese River, and Montoya was his vaquero. The elder Baldenebro said he had given his son $300 and instructed him to ride west with Montoya to Virginia City and purchase horses for his ranch.

The pair had been driving the small remuda back to the Reese River, he said, when they encountered Allen and Coats. Baldenebro surmised his son and Montoya must have thought Jacoby and his companions had been trying to steal their horses.

Baldenebro complained to the Mexican consul in San Francisco, who in turn protested the killings to the U.S. government, insisting the pair had legally bought the horses and been murdered. As it turned out, the animals had been stolen, from Washoe City, two days before the shootout. The gunfight broke out 100 miles east of there, a distance horsemen could just cover in two days of hard riding, making it improbable other thieves had stolen the horses and sold them to an innocent duo in the interim. In the end, the coroner’s verdict of justifiable homicide stood.

But the consul had the last word. “The Mexicans in California and Nevada Territory,” he declared, “have frequently been the victims of unjustifiable attacks, and we cannot say that the authorities have shown themselves to be diligent in administering due justice in many of these cases.”

Jacoby returned to California as a prospective miner, and by 1868 he’d settled in San Francisco. As word of his skill with a six-shooter spread, he found work as a gunman in a land war over valuable bayside lots in what today is the China Basin neighborhood. Opposing Jacoby’s employers was a band of squatters led by “Dutch Charley” Duane, one of the most notorious figures in frontier California. A gunman, political “shoulder striker” and onetime San Francisco fire chief, Duane was the only man run out of the city by both its 1851 and ’56 Committees of Vigilance. On Nov. 18, 1868, the band of rival squatters for whom Jacoby worked attempted to seize the lots. Dutch Charley and his men opened fire and in the following exchange dropped one of their rivals (not Jacoby) with a bullet wound. Authorities arrested Jacoby, Duane and several others, but no one faced punishment for the violence.

In the aftermath Jacoby remained in San Francisco, returning to work as a barkeep and soon marrying a woman named Sadie. Though of medium build, Paxton was physically powerful and possessed tremendous endurance. He became a noted “pedestrian,” taking part in longdistance racewalks, a popular spectator sport of the era and the subject of heavy wagering. Jacoby’s popularity and gun-handling skills landed him appointment as a San Francisco police officer. On Feb. 12, 1874, he was sworn into the 200-man department, the biggest in the West. In that rough frontier era the San Francisco Police Department earned repute for being extremely professional and well organized. Officers found guilty of misconduct were promptly punished or fired. Over the next several years Jacoby established a good reputation and made numerous arrests.

In 1881 a citizen complained the officer had struck him with a billy club while arresting him for “fast driving” his horse. The police commission upheld Jacoby in that instance. But the following year it fined Paxton twice, for insubordination and for being absent from his beat. The lapses foreshadowed a far more troublesome episode in his police career.

Just after midnight on Sept. 6, 1882, Jacoby went off duty. He was en route home from City Hall when he encountered acquaintances

Badman About Town

In November 1868 “Dutch Charley” Duane, who twice earlier had been run out of San Francisco by Committees of Vigilance, led a band of squatters that fought over valuable bayside lots with rival squatters for whom Jacoby worked.

Ella Dunbar and Nellie Reilly, described by local newspapermen as “courtesans” and “young women of decidedly gauzy reputation.” They invited Jacoby to join them in their rented onehorse phaeton. He climbed in, and the trio drove up and down the streets of San Francisco for 90 minutes. Several times they passed officer William H. Wells, who was patrolling the intersection of Van Ness and Golden Gate avenues.

It turned out the latter was romantically involved with Reilly. Enraged at the sight of Jacoby with the two women, Wells finally stepped into the street and seized the bridle of the horse drawing the phaeton.

Not recognizing his fellow policeman in the darkness, Jacoby demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

“I am an officer!” Wells shouted.

“I am an officer, too!” barked Jacoby, leaping from the buggy. Moments later, after an exchange of heated words, the pair began hammering away on each other’s heads with the butts of their revolvers. Jacoby had the better of the fight when Wells turned and fled. Enraged and bleeding from his scalp, Jacoby fired a parting shot at Wells, the bullet tearing a hole through the latter’s coattails. Arriving on the JUNE 2022

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scene, other officers put a stop to the fray. Local newspapers gave the incident prominent coverage. “Both are married men,” one reporter noted, “and their brawl over two such women was most unseemly.” Another writer was far blunter, comparing it to the usual police court case of hoodlums fighting over prostitutes. “The only difference in the affair,” he wrote, “was that the two hoodlums wore uniforms.”

The police commission agreed. They took testimony from Jacoby, Wells, the two women and responding police officers. The commission took no action against Wells, deeming him the victim, but they fired Jacoby for unofficerlike conduct. It was an abrupt and ignominious end to his eight-year career as a San Francisco police officer.

Despite the scandal and public notoriety, Sadie Jacoby stood by her husband. By then Paxton was in his mid-40s and too old to compete in pedestrian races. He turned to breeding greyhounds, racing them on hare-coursing grounds throughout northern California. Another popular spectator sport of the era, hare coursing paired 68 WILD WEST

participants who, after flushing a wild rabbit, would simultaneously release their respective hounds. The first dog to chase down the unfortunate hare was the winner. On April 5, 1883, Jacoby attended a race at the coursing ground near Merced, in the San Joaquin Valley. When the event was over, he and several others bundled into a wagon driven

by Feliciano Flores for the ride back into Merced. A drunken Jacoby soon pulled out his knife and started skinning the rabbits the dogs had killed. Objecting to such bloody butchering in his wagon, Flores ordered Jacoby out. Paxton complied, but as Flores started to drive off, Jacoby drew and fired his six-gun. No one was injured, but authorities arrested Jacoby for assault to commit murder. He posted $1,000 bail and somehow managed to avoid punishment.

In 1885, despite his tarnished reputation, Jacoby secured appointment as a deputy constable in Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco.

While he seemed to perform his duties well, the constable soon exhibited his tendency to be quick on the trigger. One night in mid-April 1889, on entering a local saloon, he spotted a man he thought was fugitive Frank Burnham. After summoning a fellow officer, who confirmed he had the right man, Jacoby placed Burnham under arrest. But the constable failed to handcuff his suspect, and as they emerged from the saloon, Burnham broke into a dead run. Running in pursuit, Jacoby drew his pistol and fired five times. Fortunately for the fugitive, the constable’s aim was poor.

Regardless, Burnham slipped on the sidewalk and fell, enabling Jacoby to recapture him. “Jacoby is considered a sharpshooter,” one local reporter noted, “and it seems remarkable that Burnham escaped with his life, as Jacoby shot to hit.”

Two years later Jacoby’s wife died, and he moved south to Los Angeles.

There he took up with 38-year-old widow Maggie McGoldrick. In 1892 she opened a restaurant in Redondo Beach, on the coast just southwest of the city. Paxton helped her run it, and they employed Alex “Scotty”

TOP: JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION; BOTTOM: HUNTINGTON LIBRARY

City police pose during the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition. During the frontier era the police department had earned a reputation for professionalism and superior organization. In 1882 the police commission fired Jacoby for unofficerlike conduct, abruptly ending his eight-year career as a San Francisco police officer.

CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY

San Francisco’s Finest

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TOP: JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION; BOTTOM: HUNTINGTON LIBRARY

Having Hit Bottom

In 1892 Jacoby was helping widow Maggie McGoldrick run a restaurant in Redondo Beach (see period photo, below) when they scuffled, and he mortally wounded her with a shotgun. Above is his mug shot from San Quentin, where he served three uneventful years for unintentional murder.

accounts of the Baker-Fancher wagon train prior to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. But his violent life on the frontier, with seven recorded shootings in which three men and a woman were slain, had gone forgotten—until now.

Wild West special contributor John Boessenecker is an award-winning San Francisco–based author. For further reading see his book Against the Vigilantes: The Recollections of Dutch Charley Duane and Massacre at Mountain Meadows, by Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Glen M. Leonard.

CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY

Longmore as a dishwasher. The trio shared lodgings in an adjacent boardinghouse, one room occupied by Maggie and her children, the other by Paxton and Scotty. On the night of June 4 Paxton and Maggie, both drunk, got into a heated argument. Resolving to leave her, Paxton began packing his things. When Longmore intervened, Jacoby snatched up his double-barreled shotgun and struck his roommate over the head with the heavy barrel.

Shielding the injured dishwasher, Maggie shrieked, “Are you going to kill the man?”

“I’ll kill everyone in the house!” the enraged Paxton shouted. The couple reportedly got into a scuffle when the shotgun roared. A load of bird shot tore into Maggie’s left arm.

“My God, see what you have done!” she cried.

Summoned to the scene, a doctor found Maggie had lost a great deal of blood. He amputated her hemorrhaging arm, but she only got worse.

Though in great pain, she gave conflicting accounts of what happened.

McGoldrick first insisted she’d tried to wrest the shotgun from Jacoby when it accidentally discharged. Later she claimed she’d shot herself.

The doctor, however, reported no powder burns on Maggie’s arm or nightgown, suggesting Paxton had shot the widow from some distance.

He also expressed his belief she was trying to protect her lover, Jacoby, from prosecution. McGoldrick lingered for a week before dying. Authorities charged Jacoby with murder, and a Los Angeles jury found him guilty of manslaughter.

Jacoby’s reckless use of firearms had finally caught up with him. As his killing of McGoldrick was unintentional, the judge sentenced him to a lenient three-year term in San Quentin State Prison. He served his time without incident, and on his release he returned to Los Angeles. In 1898, when Jacoby was 61, news accounts reported his arrest after a fight in which he tried to pull his pistol on an adversary. “Jacoby has a reputation as a gunfighter,” declared the Los Angeles Times, “or at least is in the habit of making gun plays.”

Beating the odds, Paxton Jacoby died of natural causes at age 67 on Feb. 3, 1904. He was interred in an unmarked grave at Los Angeles’ Rosedale Cemetery. Historians recall him for having provided one of the few

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Grandson of a Kiowa Warrior

OPPOSITE: OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY; RIGHT: RON J. JACKSON JR. COLLECTION

A young Parker McKenzie poses with his trusty typewriter. He documented the oral history of his Grandfather Queton (opposite), who was captured in Mexico by Comanche raiders as a child and later sold to the Kiowas, with whom he became a respected warrior.

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KIOWA KEEPER OF THE FLAME

OPPOSITE: OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY; RIGHT: RON J. JACKSON JR. COLLECTION

V

Linguist Parker McKenzie devoted his life toward preserving tribal history and culture

By Ron J. Jackson Jr.

ivid and gruesome acts of violence cluttered Queton’s mind in his final years. Yet the elderly Kiowa warrior—who’d been born into a Mexican family and captured in childhood by Comanches—felt compelled to recount the most harrowing events of his past before his death. He did so with the person he probably trusted most with his life story, his grandson Parker Paul McKenzie.

The inquisitive McKenzie faithfully documented Queton’s memories for posterity sometime between 1924 and ’26 at the family’s old homestead near Mountain View in Kiowa County, Okla. Fueled by passion and perhaps a sense of duty, McKenzie spent the entirety of his adult life amassing thousands of oral histories, folklore and government documents pertaining to the Kiowa tribe. A self-taught linguist, he also helped develop a phonetic alphabet for the Kiowa language that resulted in the publication of two pioneering books (see sidebar, P. 75).

None of McKenzie’s work touched him as personally as the stories related by his grandfather. They held their intimate conversations fittingly near Rainy Mountain, a landmark knoll on an otherwise flat prairie and a place sacred to the Kiowa people. By then Queton was a Christian convert who spared no details his aged mind could recall. He told Parker in Kiowa how he remembered his given name was Esteban, though he couldn’t recall his surname. His earliest memories tumbled from his mind in a plain-spoken narrative as Parker scribbled notes. Some memories were distinct—Queton’s mother pulling him from a school classroom because of a coming war…the black smoke of the battlefield near his home…his father (“either an officer in the [Mexican] army or a soldier”) being taken away in an ambulance. “It seemed to be in this battle that my father was killed,” he added.

Soon after his father’s death Queton and his mother set off for a northern mountain range escorted by two men—one of whom he supposed had married his widowed mother.

Suddenly, on reaching a distant trail below a high mountain, whooping Indian warriors clad in war paint and other decorative paraphernalia sprang from behind large rocks and brush.

“The Comanches are on us!” one of the two escorts yelled.

Though both men carried guns, they elected to run. “My mother dragged me off the wagon, and we began running for our lives,” Queton recalled. “I remember the whoops and war cries of those savage Indians. It seems like a dream to me now, but I still remember them.”

The war party captured all four of them. In their shame the two men were forced to remove their shoes and walk across a harsh landscape strewn with rocks and cactus. The war party and their captives eventually arrived at the populous mountaintop camp of Chief Big Looking Glass. Queton recalled key aspects, including other captives, hundreds of mules and chunks of meat set out to dry on animal hides.

“I saw some horrible scenes on this mountain,” Queton told McKenzie. “Men were tied on hurriedly made crosses, probably made of mesquite branches. They were dead. I don’t know whether they were killed while on the crosses or killed before being placed on them.” As for the two men with Queton and his mother, he witnessed their chilling fate firsthand, as warriors grabbed them by the wrists and ankles and slung them “up and down upon the rocks until they were dead.”

“I was beginning to think my time was coming,” Queton admitted. But the Comanches spared his life. He assimilated into the tribe before being sold around JUNE 2022

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age 10 to a Kiowa couple, both of whom were also Mexican captives.

Queton seamlessly made the transition into his new family, learned to speak Kiowa fluently and, despite his diminutive stature, even rose to become a respected warrior. He participated in several raids and battles against other tribes and federal troops, although no episode caught McKenzie’s attention more than a desperate shootout with three Texas freighters in January 1871.

Queton told his grandson how he’d led some two dozen Kiowa warriors on an attack against three black freighters. The men were hauling supplies from Weatherford to Fort Griffin when the Kiowas swarmed them. One of them, McKenzie later learned, was noted frontier scout Britt Johnson, who’d famously entered Indian Territory to retrieve his kidnapped wife and children and other captives from the 1864 Elm Creek Raid.

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Johnson and fellow freighters Dennis Cureton and Paint Crawford fought bravely and desperately before being killed. Happening on the scene, American soldiers reportedly counted 173 shell casings around Johnson’s mutilated body before burying the freighters in a common roadside grave. All three had been scalped. McKenzie later learned one other gruesome footnote to the encounter—a detail that wouldn’t find its way into print until the University of Oklahoma Press published Wilbur S. Nye’s classic Carbine and Lance in 1937.

On the journey back to their village the Kiowa warriors playfully tossed the kinky scalps of the freighters at one another. Finally deciding the scalps were worthless because of the short hair, the Kiowas discarded their grisly trophies along the trail.

As for Queton, he lived another 60 years, the last 37 of those as a faithful Christian. Pastors eulogized him on Feb. 1, 1931, as a warrior who remained a respected farmer and rancher among the Kiowas after having laid down his bow and firearms.

Queton’s riveting origin story—if not the fate of Britt Johnson’s scalp—would likely have been lost to history had it not been for his grandson. McKenzie’s love of his tribal heritage would in itself become legendary by the time of his own death at age 101 on March 5, 1999. He is revered as a prolific preservationist of his tribe’s language, history and culture.

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OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY (2)

Queton adapted well to life among the Kiowas and lived until 1931, his last 37 years as a faithful Christian. Grandson McKenzie, who was born on Nov. 15, 1897, developed a phonetic alphabet for the Kiowa language (see sample at right), finishing his final version in 1950.

TOP: OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY; LEFT: RON J. JACKSON JR. COLLECTION

Kiowa Camp and the Tribal Alphabet

OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY (2)

TOP: OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY; LEFT: RON J. JACKSON JR. COLLECTION

BEHEADING MOUNTAIN No oral history is more emotionally stirring to the Kiowa tribe than that of the Cutthroat Gap Massacre of 1833.

Since that darkest of days for the tribe Kiowa elders have faithfully handed down the story so future generations would never forget. In later life Set’tan (Little Bear), born in 1832, created a calendar history of the tribe on which he marked the summer of 1833 as the “Summer They Cut Off Their Heads.”

The site of the massacre is known to the Kiowas as Beheading Mountain.

Recognizing the import of the event, Parker McKenzie asked his mother, Ahkaundonah, to recite it for him. Though she’d been born in 1878, nearly a half century after the massacre, her brief account, translated into English by her son, closely matches the oral histories that have survived from that day.

“In the bend in the Washita River where my land is,” Ahkaundonah began her recitation, “there were three bands of the Kiowas encamped, when two young men rode in hurriedly and told that they had killed a buffalo on the stream [Washita River] that carried an Osage arrow. Without processing their kill, they then hurriedly rode into camp to report the presence of Osage warriors in the area.”

The news triggered fear throughout the camp, as the Osages had obtained from white traders flintlock rifles, weapons superior to anything the Kiowas possessed. The Kiowas felt especially vulnerable, as most of their warriors were absent, having headed north to fight the Ute. Those who remained were mainly women, children and old men. Three of the four Kiowa bands promptly dismantled their tepees, packed their belongings and scattered in different directions.

A’date (Island Man), the principal Kiowa chief, led the fourth band southward through a pass in the Wichita Mountains. He and his followers emerged in a plush, green canyon speckled with wildflowers and cedar trees. Otter Creek framed the gently sloping canyon to the north and west.

To the south rose a rocky hill, while to

the west lay a vast open prairie.

The Kiowas soon had their tepees erected and campfires glowing.

Corralled by the natural contour of the canyon, their horses grazed the tall prairie grass.

A’date assumed the danger had passed. But he had tragically miscalculated the Osages.

Shortly before sunrise the next day a Kiowa boy ventured from his tepee to check his ponies. He instead saw the frightful sight on Osage warriors slinking through the canyon. The boy bolted into A’date’s tepee to sound the alarm. The chief rushed out yelling, “Tso’ batso! Tso’ batso!” (“To the rocks! To the rocks!”)

His warning came too late.

Osage warriors led by Chief Chetopah (Four Lodges) ambushed the sleeping villagers, indiscriminately killing panic-stricken women, children and old men alike.

Ansote, keeper of the Kiowa Taime, shamefully abandoned the sacred idol in his desperate bid to flee the Osage wrath. His wife dutifully tried to unfasten the Taime from a lodgepole, only to be killed in the process.

A’date’s wife, Sematma (Apache Woman), was captured but lived to tell of her daring escape. As for A’date, he survived the massacre with a slight wound, an otherwise fortunate outcome that prompted his removal as chief.

Several Kiowas ran for the craggy hill, hoping to make a stand. Few reached it. Those chased down were killed instantly. Merciless Osages snatched up Kiowa children by their ankles and dashed their heads against the rocks. Heroic deeds stand out. A boy named Aya (Sitting on a Tree) was saved by his father, who shot arrows at their pursuers while clenching the buckskin straps of his son’s cradle in his teeth.

Osages vs. Kiowas

Left: The man in the unusual hat is likely a grandson of Osage Chief Chetopah, who led the 1833 murder raid. Above: In his infancy Kiowa Chief Stumbling Bear survived the massacre.

One woman carrying an infant girl on her back was seen dragging an older girl to safety.

Grabbing the girl in tow, an Osage warrior held a knife to her throat until viciously beaten away by the woman.

Another woman told her daughter to run while she turned to face the enemy with a raised tomahawk. She too miraculously escaped. In years to come survivors too young to recall the attack were told how they narrowly cheated death that day. One such survivor was the infant Setimkia (Stumbling Bear). He grew up to become a prestigious Kiowa chief and at the time of his death in 1903 was the last of the tribe’s chiefs to have led his warriors into battle on the Great Plains.

Other villagers weren’t as fortunate.

The Osages left a ghastly calling card. Survivors found their loved ones’ bloody, headless corpses strewn about the scorched remains of the camp.

Beside the bodies were brass buckets the Kiowas had obtained from Pawnee traders. Inside the buckets were the victims’ severed heads. —R.J.J. JUNE 2022

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“Parker was very special,” recalled friend Bill Welge, a retired cultural preservation director for the Oklahoma Historical Society. “He was the ‘Sequoyah of the Kiowa Tribe’ for his linguistic work, but Parker’s legacy was really much greater in my opinion. A lot of people don’t realize he was also a prolific historian.”

The magnitude of McKenzie’s historical and cultural preservation efforts will likely reverberate for generations of scholars. Yet the impact of his lifelong work was already manifest before his death.

In November 1997, on the eve of his 100th birthday celebration, McKenzie entertained a reporter at his cozy, yet cramped Mountain View home. It sat on Queton’s original 1901 Kiowa land allotment. By then McKenzie’s hearing was 74 WILD WEST

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TOP: OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY; RIGHT: ANDREW MCKENZIE/KCUR

Top left: McKenzie grew up learning about Kiowa oral history and cultural customs, but he also attended the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, where teachers forbid students to speak Kiowa. Top right: McKenzie transcribes documents at his Mountain View, Okla., home while wife Nettie catches him up on local news. Above: A dapper McKenzie poses with Nettie. The sweethearts married in 1919 and remained inseparable until her death in 1978.

OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY (3)

The Life of a Linguist

all but gone, and he’d spent the previous 20 years eating almost exclusively baby food. He walked with the aid of two wooden canes.

Still, McKenzie’s mind remained sharp. Stacked boxes of paperwork and full bookcases topped with family photographs towered around him as he graciously greeted his guest. At one point he wheeled his creaking office chair to one of two tall metal cabinets, opened a drawer and instantly plucked out several yellowed files he wanted to share, knowing their precise location. A desk cluttered with notes and papers abutted the cabinets, and among the clutter sat a birthday card from then President Bill Clinton. Like Queton before him, McKenzie seemed anxious not to leave behind any unfinished business. “Some nights are real harrowing,” he admitted, scratching his crop of bushy gray hair. “Sometimes I think, Is this the night I pass on? That’s when I get up to get a good drink of water.”

McKenzie’s own life story began Nov. 15, 1897, when he was born to a Kiowa named General McKenzie and wife Ahkaundonah in a canvas tepee just north of Rainy Mountain. Like Queton and his adoptive Kiowa parents, General McKenzie was also of Mexican descent and taken captive as a child. Sometime in the mid-1860s, when the boy was about 5, a band of Mescalero Apaches kidnapped him as he and an elder brother herded sheep near their home in New Mexico Territory. Fate later carried the boy into the hands of “a kindly Kiowa couple,” who helped him assimilate into the tribe.

Parker McKenzie grew up between two worlds—one steeped in the historical and cultural customs of his tribal elders, and one that placed him in the Rainy Mountain Boarding School, where teachers forbid students to speak Kiowa. McKenzie learned not only to navigate between these two worlds, but also to thrive in each. He met his future bride, Nettie Odlety, while attending the boarding school. The couple married on Aug. 23, 1919, and remained inseparable until Nettie’s death at age 80 in 1978. Parker never remarried.

In 1926 McKenzie landed a job that would change the course of his life when the Bureau of Indian Affairs hired him as a stenographer in the agency’s Indian Monies Section in nearby Anadarko, Okla. For the next 30 years he handled a stream of government documents pertaining to the Kiowa tribe. He translated the documents for the agency and on his own time spent countless hours meticulously copying them on his trusty Underwood typewriter for his personal files. Many times he corrected the names of tribal members he knew or had known and made additional handwritten notes where he thought appropriate.

McKenzie amassed an extensive collection, ranging from oral histories and biographical details of tribesmen who’d once roamed the Great Plains to a sketch of the original layout of the Rainy Mountain Kiowa Indian Baptist Church, founded in 1894. He sketched the latter from memory.

Kiowa Centenarian

archives of the Oklahoma Historical Society, in Oklahoma City.

“Parker was meticulous in everything he did,” Welge said. “Fortunately, he saw the value of copying a lot of these documents.

If he hadn’t, the information would have been lost long ago. Parker recognized what was important, and he had the foresight to preserve it for future generations.”

And he did so as Queton would have desired—straightforward and unvarnished.

Born in a canvas tepee just north of Rainy Mountain, McKenzie was the eldest living member of his tribe at the time of his death at age 101 on March 5, 1999.

His papers largely honor tribal members who might otherwise be forgotten by time, some of whom he knew only from stories told by elders. In one typewritten document, for example, McKenzie listed the eldest living Kiowa in each decade and noted whether they had ever been Mexican captives—a nod to his own roots and a priceless find for anyone studying frontier kidnappings.

McKenzie’s voluminous collection resides in the

Ron J. Jackson Jr. is an award-winning author from Rocky, Okla. and a regular contributor to Wild West. For further reading see his book Blood Prairie: Perilous Adventures on the Oklahoma Frontier, as well as Carbine and Lance, by Wilbur S. Nye; Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, by James Mooney; and The Kiowas and the Legend of Kicking Bird, by Stan Hoig.

TOP: OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY; RIGHT: ANDREW MCKENZIE/KCUR

OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY (3)

LOVE beyond words Throughout his long life Parker McKenzie seldom saw roadblocks—only new routes. He discovered how to live a progressive, transformative life while remaining rooted in the traditional ways of his Kiowa people. That was no small accomplishment for a man who’d been born in a canvas tepee in 1897. His chosen path is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the story of his development of the Kiowas’ first written language and the extraordinary journey that followed. It is a popular story he recounted repeatedly in his lifetime. McKenzie especially loved the fact it involved Nettie, his beloved wife of nearly 60 years.

“My wife and I were high school sweethearts,” McKenzie recalled in a 1997 interview. “My desk was right behind hers at the Rainy Mountain Boarding School. We used to pass notes to each other. Sometimes our teacher would intercept a note and read it to the class to embarrass us. So we developed a phonetic way to write in Kiowa.”

McKenzie ended his schooldays memory with a low, raspy laugh. Yet with their love notes he and Nettie planted the roots of something far

more meaningful to their tribe. In 1918 the Smithsonian Institution sent linguist and ethnologist John Peabody Harrington to Oklahoma to study the Kiowa spoken language. At the time the tribe still had no written language. McKenzie served as Harrington’s translator.

The venture sparked a decade of intensive study and recordings of Kiowa elders. Finally, in 1928 Harrington, thanks in no small part to McKenzie, published the groundbreaking Vocabulary of the Kiowa Language. The two later collaborated on Popular Account of the Kiowa Language, published in 1948 by the University of New Mexico Press, earning McKenzie a byline as co-author.

By 1950 McKenzie had finished his final version of the Kiowa alphabet.

Decades later McKenzie collaborated with linguist Laurel J. Watkins on A Grammar of Kiowa, published in 1984 by the University of Nebraska Press.

By then the Kiowa elder, despite his lack of formal academic training, had earned an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado and widespread respect in linguistic circles. Scholars, journalists and fellow tribal members compared him to the legendary Sequoyah, who in

A Language All Their Own

Parker poses with his young bride, Nettie, circa 1919. As students at Rainy Mountain Boarding School the couple passed notes in a phonetic language they developed.

the early 19th century had developed a written form of the Cherokee language.

Once when asked about the comparison, McKenzie chuckled, flashed a grin and savored the moment before finally saying, “I guess I’m the Kiowa Sequoyah.”

He had no more words. —R.J.J. JUNE 2022

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COLLECTIONS

A DYNAMITE DESTINATION

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he Puget Sound region is integral to the history of Washington, which became a territory in 1853 and a state in ’89. Among the regional highlights is the DuPont Historical Museum, in the namesake company town once known for explosives manufacturing. What truly blows museumgoers minds is the astonishing list of firsts celebrated in its exhibits and displays. Among other milestones, the area was home to both the first European trading post on Puget Sound (Fort Nisqually, dating from 1833) and the first American settlement in what would become Washington (Nisqually Mission, active from 1840–42); was the home port of the first steamboat to ply the Pacific Northwest coast (Beaver, launched in 1835); recorded the region’s first overland road (1834); hosted the first known Independence Day celebration (1841) north of the Columbia River; and was the first named location in Oregon 76 WILD WEST

Territory (organized in 1848). In 1906 the DuPont chemical company bought land at the Fort Nisqually site to build the first industrial plant in the Pacific Northwest. Completed in 1909, the DuPont Powder Works opened the way for roadbuilding, canals, rail lines, mining and other applications worldwide, and it kept manufacturing explosives until 1975.

The museum building, which dates from 1917, was originally a butcher shop and later served as DuPont’s first City Hall.

In 1977 city officials earmarked the building for use as a museum to showcase company artifacts and photographs. Today, with continued support from the city, the DuPont Historical Society and volunteers, the museum has expanded to highlight regional human history.

The first room relates the history of the Nisqually, a Coast Salish people who have lived in the Nisqually River delta for

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DUPONT HISTORICAL MUSEUM (3)

WASHINGTON’S DUPONT HISTORICAL MUSEUM RELATES THE HISTORY OF THE EXPLOSIVES FACTORY, THE COMPANY TOWN AND PUGET SOUND

BY LINDA WOMMACK

COLLECTIONS

DUPONT HISTORICAL MUSEUM (3)

Opposite: The building that houses the DuPont Historical Museum was a butcher shop in 1917 and later the first City Hall of DuPont, Wash. Right: Beneath a protective canopy behind the museum rests the state’s last intact “dynamite train,” whose Plymouth engine once pulled explosives-packed cars. Below right: Artifacts highlight the company town, which provided housing and goods to employees at the 1909 DuPont Powder Works.

some five millennia. In 1855 territorial officials confined them to a reservation farther inland along the river. Related artifacts on display include baskets and tools made and used by the Nisqually and other Salish bands.

In 1833 British-owned Hudson’s Bay Co. (HBC) established Fort Nisqually, a trading post along the sound, to facilitate the exchange of European goods for beaver and other furs. A decade later HBC built a larger fort a mile inland along Sequalitchew Creek. By then Beaver, a stout side-wheel steamboat captained by company man William Henry McNeill, had arrived in the sound to serve the fort. In 1840 HBC started the subsidiary Puget Sound Agricultural Co., whose workforce centered on the fort and provided wool, beef, cheese and other products to regional and international markets. Among the artifacts in the museum collection are handmade tools, period firearms, and trade blankets and beads.

Americans soon made their presence known.

In the spring of 1841 a wide-ranging expedition led

by U.S. Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes surveyed Puget Sound, pausing long enough to mark the Fourth of July. In 1846 signatories ratified the Oregon Treaty, officially recognizing all land south of the 49th parallel part of the United States. HBC continued to operate its fort until the Americans bought it out in 1869. Edward Huggins, who was managing Fort Nisqually when it shuttered the following year, promptly became an American citizen and filed a claim on 1,000 acres, including the grounds of the fort. Huggins farmed the tract until 1906, when he sold it to DuPont.

Founded in 1802 in Wilmington, Del., E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., the era’s largest supplier of gunpowder to the U.S. military, purchased 3,600 acres of land from Huggins and neighboring farmers to establish a presence on the West Coast.

To house workers the company initially threw up temporary tar paper homes on the site of the fort. The company town grew up in their midst and by 1917 boasted more than 100 family homes, a hotel for single employees, a post office, company clubhouse, infirmary, schoolhouse, church, newspaper and stores, including the aforementioned butcher shop. DuPont also built wharf near the mouth of the creek from which to ship dynamite for such major industrial projects as the Panama Canal and the Grand Coulee Dam. Narrow-gauge trains shuttled supplies and products to and from the factory.

The company town remained exclusive to employees until 1951 when DuPont sold the homes, enabling residents to incorporate as an official town. The second room of the museum

re-creates a typical kitchen from one of the employee homes, many of which are still standing. Exhibits in the third room span the company town era and include a display reminiscing about the local high and previous schools in District No. 7, which dates back to 1860. Another display covers the 1976 purchase of the company grounds by the Weyerhaeuser Co., which intended to build a deepwater port from which to export timber. When those plans fell through, it repurposed the land to create the Northwest Landing master-planned community. In 1987 the historical society successfully lobbied to have the remaining buildings of the company town, known as DuPont Village, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Recent additions to the museum include a replica of a 1906 tar paper shack, a mural of a 1910 company home, and a wooden porch and pillars reflective of a present-day home in Northwest Landing. Beneath a protective canopy behind the museum building rests the last intact “dynamite train” in the state of Washington. Built in 1941, the 12-ton narrow-gauge Plymouth engine pulled its explosives-packed cars—very gently—from the factory to the wharf, supplying American forces throughout the Pacific during World War II. The Dupont Historical Museum is at 207 Barksdale Ave. For more information call 253-964-2399 or visit dupontmuseum.com.

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GUNS OF THE WEST

1901 The self-loading, semiautomatic Mauser C96 pistol’s distinctive fluted wooden grips inspired its “Broomhandle” nickname.

Debuting in Germany in 1896, the Mauser hit the U.S. market five years later. Below: The New York–based German-American firm Von Lengerke & Detmold was one of its prime importers.

BROOMHANDLE OF THE NEW WEST

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struktion 96) for their employer, Mauser, of Oberndorf am Neckar, Germany, though founder Peter Paul Mauser patented the pistol in his name only. Through 1937 the company turned out more than 1 million C96s.

Chambered for the high-velocity 7.63x25 mm (.30-caliber) Mauser cartridge, the 10-shot pistol features an internal box magazine just forward of an integral trigger guard.

The cartridges fit in 10-round stripper clips one inserts from the top of the magazine, enabling almost instantaneous loading. The unique design of its fluted wooden grips earned the C96 the nickname “Broomhandle.”

Noted for its long range and deep penetration, the C96 became a must-have weapon for many European officers, including a young Winston Churchill. He used a Broomhandle to telling effect against the Dervish “Fuzzy-Wuzzies” in Sudan in 1898, then against the Boers in South Africa the following year. Most Spanish officers (and a handful of Americans) carried the C96

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TCD/PROD.DB/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

A

mong aficionados of Old West firearms the handgun that first pops to mind is the .45-caliber Colt Single Action Army (aka “Peacemaker”), or perhaps the Colt 1851 Navy, followed by a host of percussion and cartridge revolvers from a score of American manufacturers. By the turn of the 20th century, however, foreign-made revolvers had also made their mark in the states and territories west of the Missouri.

Notable among them were Britain’s double- and single-action Webleys and ubiquitous Belgian-made copies of the double-action British Bulldog. For a time such handguns gave their pricier, heavier counterparts—the Colts, Smith & Wessons, Merwin & Hulberts, etc.—a run for their money.

Another contender of note often goes overlooked, perhaps because it wasn’t introduced until 1896 and didn’t hit the U.S. market until 1901. But the self-loading, semiautomatic Mauser C96 pistol rates as one of history’s truly iconic firearms. Brothers Fidel, Friedrich and Josef Feederle designed the C96 (Con-

TOP: JUDE STEELE; ABOVE LEFT: GEORGE LAYMAN COLLECTION

AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY TEXAS RANGERS AND OTHERS OUT WEST DISCOVERED THE SEMIAUTOMATIC MAUSER C96

BY GEORGE LAYMAN

TCD/PROD.DB/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

TOP: JUDE STEELE; ABOVE LEFT: GEORGE LAYMAN COLLECTION

GUNS OF THE WEST

during the 1898 Spanish-American War. Ultimately, officers in the military forces of three continents carried these pistols into 20th-century conflicts.

Later versions were chambered in 9 mm Luger and .45 ACP, and copies were produced under license as well as pirated in the latter caliber in China and other countries.

By 1901 Mauser was exporting the C96 to a willing, albeit curious, customer base in the United States. One of the primary importers was the German-American firm Von Lengerke & Detmold of New York City. Among the earliest ads for the pistol appeared in the January 1902 issue of Shooting and Fishing. Geared to the hunting, self-defense and general sporting crowd, the C96 was never an inexpensive arm, nor were its accessories and ammunition. While Colt soon made a splash with its M1902 and M1903 semiautomatic pistols, the Mauser and its fellow German entrant the Luger (produced until 1943) made dents in the American market.

Available with a detachable wooden shoulder stock that doubled as a holster, the rapid-firing C96 soon caught the attention of Western lawmen. An optional set of straps allowed the pistol to be carried as a shoulder rig, which appealed to officers on horseback, who didn’t like having a pistol flapping about on their waist when in the saddle. Several Texas Rangers bought the new foreign-made wonder gun. A photo taken around 1902 in Brownsville, Texas, shows Captain J. Abijah Brooks of Company A posing with his Mauser C96, complete with shoulder stock, beside seven of his Rangers, all of whom carry Colt Single Action

Army revolvers and Winchester rifles. Another period photo captures the sheriff and three deputies of Anadarko County, Oklahoma Territory.

Displayed prominently atop the deputies’ stacked rifles and six-shooters is the proud sheriff’s Broomhandle Mauser.

By those sunset years of the Old West, lawmen, outlaws and the general public had increasing access to more sophisticated arms designs. The Mauser stood out, not only for its design but also for its efficiency. Certainly, many regarded them as the greatest thing to come along since denim jeans. There were those, however, who considered them expensive novelties.

A formidable weapon, the Mauser C96 most likely made an appearance in post1900 gunfights in the real West. Its intimidating looks also garnered the Broomhandle roles in the “reel West.” One of the German versions chewed up the scenery (and several bad guys) in the 1972 film Joe Kidd. In that Western Clint Eastwood’s title character carries a Single Action Army as his primary weapon, while the Mauser belongs to New Mexican mercenary Lamarr Simms (portrayed by Don Stroud). Later in the film, as he evades a posse, Kidd gets hold of the C96 and fires some 30 rounds from its 10-round magazine before it locks empty.

(No average Joe, indeed.) In 2015 the prop Mauser from that film, stock included, fetched just north of $1,800 on eBay. In the 1963 James Bond spy thriller From Russia With Love the assassin played by Robert Shaw makes use of a C96.

Of course, as the Mauser came in so late in the game, it was never a contender for the title “The Gun That Won the West.” Had it been around in the 1870s and ’80s, one might argue the West could have been “won” much sooner.

The Mauser stood out, not only for its design but also for its efficiency

In John Sturges’ 1972 Western Joe Kidd star Clint Eastwood’s title character fires some 30 fantastical rounds from a 10-shot Mauser C96.

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GHOST TOWNS

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: KAREN SCHUDSON; JOHN HOUSE (2); RWI FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

After a useful life on the rails this boxcar was converted into a home. Cuervo was founded in 1901 as a siding for the Chicago, Rock Island & Gulf Railroad. Trains still rumble by, but these days they have no reason to stop.

CUERvO, NEW MEXICO

E

ven in the offbeat world of ghost towns Cuervo, New Mexico, stands apart. Unlike other ghosts, many of which sprouted up in remote places that spelled the community’s doom after residents’ livelihoods disappeared, Cuervo was and still is readily accessible. Though largely abandoned decades ago, the desert village remains in full view of I-40, along which thousands of vehicles speed every day. Curious visitors can take Exit 291 to a frontage road and then meander dirt roads through what remains of Cuervo. Even the railroad tracks that gave it life keep busy, trains rumbling by on schedule. Regardless, this once vibrant community seems destined to be a ghost town, though on at least two occasions it looked as if it might rally.

Cuervo was founded in 1901 as a siding when the westering Chicago, Rock Island & Gulf Railroad extended its tracks from the Texas Panhandle into east-central New Mexico Territory.

Cuervo (pronounced “CUHR-voh” by locals) is the Spanish word for raven, a ubiquitous bird in the region, though the roadrunner is the state bird. The CRI&G likely named it after one of two nearby hills—either 5,366-foot Cuervo Hill (9 miles to 80 WILD WEST

the northwest as the crow flies) or 4,984-foot Cuervito Peak (a mile northwest of town).

A post office opened in 1902, and the town took root when ranchers moved into the area around 1910. Not long after their arrival, however, the CRI&G abandoned the siding in favor of Tucumcari (40 miles to the east) and Santa Rosa (17 miles to the west). Any hope of growth as a cattle shipment point or supply hub was lost before Cuervo could become firmly established.

Offered a lifeline when road crews laid Route 66 through the center of town in 1926, Cuervo added gas stations, hotels and stores to cater to passing motorists and two churches, two schools and two doctors to tend to residents. Its population peaked at 300 in the early 1940s, though there was little to recommend it—even less so in 1946 when travel writer Jack D. Rittenhouse dashed off this description in A Guide Book to Highway 66: “Pop. 128…few gas stations; groceries; no cafe, garage or other tourist accommodations. A scant dozen dwellings comprise this small town.”

Another opportunity for rebirth beckoned from the horizon in the late 1960s as I-40 approached Cuervo. But the four-lane highway, with its broad median and shoulders, barreled through

TOP: JOHN HOUSE

BORN WHEN THE RAILROAD ARRIVED IN 1901, THIS ABANDONED VILLAGE REMAINS ON THE BEATEN TRACK—IN PLAIN VIEW OF I-40

BY JIM WINNERMAN

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the middle of town like a bowling ball through pins, leaving the community split in two. By then the last school had closed, and most residents had moved on down the line.

“I have been to more than 70 ghost towns, and I have been to Cuervo four times,” says ghost town aficionado John M. Mulhouse, author of Abandoned New Mexico: Ghost Towns, Endangered Architecture and Hidden History. “It is the creepiest one I have been to. There are numerous reports of unsavory activity in the abandoned buildings. Cuervo is also different because it is relatively intact. There are lots of adobe houses still standing, but just a general lack of overall disturbance. It is particularly unusual because I-40 runs right through it. So does Route 66.”

Yet amid this array of deserted buildings is a beacon of hope—the tidy red sandstone Santo Niño de Atocha Catholic Church, which still holds occasional services. A carved stone over the entryway records it was commissioned in April 1915 by

P. Martinez, Vic Segura and Max Salas, the latter of whom built the church. Their names are a reminder Cuervo is certainly not a mirage and that hundreds of people once lived there. “The priest at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Santa Rosa had me install a new roof about four years ago,” says Josh Pacheco, owner of Pacheco Construction & Trucking in Tucumcari.

It is difficult to imagine tiny Santo Niño would entice enough people to move back and resurrect the old homesteads. Yet despite having lost its post office in 2011, Cuervo still has a handful of residents and retains its own zip code—88417.

Clockwise from top left: The red sandstone Santo Niño de Atocha Catholic Church holds occasional services; schoolhouse No. 6 is made from the same red sandstone; this clapboard house retains its tin roof. Below: Route 66 runs through the heart of town, as does I-40.

TOP: JOHN HOUSE

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: KAREN SCHUDSON; JOHN HOUSE (2); RWI FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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REVIEWS

MUST SEE, MUST READ

EDITOR GREGORY LALIRE PICKS FAVORITE WESTERN HISTORY BOOKS AND FILMS

Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West (1960, C.L. Sonnichsen): Here’s the powerful opening sentence that promises gritty frontier tales: “The Tularosa country is a parched desert where everything, from cactus to cowman, carries a weapon of some sort, and the only creatures who sleep with both eyes closed are dead.” Charles Leland Sonnichsen (1901–91) delivers an easy-to-read, ripsnorting history of New Mexico’s Tularosa Valley.

Among the memorable characters who show up on these pages are Pat Garrett, Albert Jennings Fountain, Albert Fall, Oliver Lee and Bill McNew. The real story of Tularosa, Sonnichsen notes, is the story of Texas cattlemen, “proud riders who kept the Old West alive in that lonely land until yesterday.”

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Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman (1973, Leon C. Metz): While majoring in history at the University of New Mexico in the early 1970s, I took an interest in the unofficial state outlaw, Billy the Kid, but ended up reading instead this biography of the man who killed the Kid. Am I ever glad I did.

The ups and downs of Garrett’s life on the frontier held my interest more than any history lecture class and got me hooked on the real West, not just the TV Westerns I watched while growing up in the East. Later, I had the good fortune of getting to know El Paso author Metz (1930–2020), a great guy who no doubt would have gotten along well with both Pat and Billy. I went on to read his books about gunfighters John Wesley Hardin, John Selman and Dallas Stoudenmire, and finally I got around to Garrett’s own The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid (1882) and Frederick Nolan’s excellent The West of Billy the Kid (1998).

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970, by Dee Brown): It’s no secret that antiestablishment views ran rampant on college campuses in the early 1970s. Though barely on the fringe of the “movement,” I did read this groundbreaking, controversial book. If nothing else, it was an eye-opener. Brown, whose grandfather reportedly had rubbed elbows with David Crockett, provided a historical account of U.S. conquest of the West told from the Indian perspective. That, of course, challenged traditional views of American Indians promoted by contemporary TV Westerns, Hollywood oaters, Western novels and even history books. Not that it eliminated all misconceptions and myths about the Indians wars. In an attempt to achieve more historical balance Peter Cozzens wrote The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West (2016). Fair-minded people would do well to read both books.

Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend (1999, by Casey Tefertiller): The most famous lawman of the Wild West operated in Dodge City and Tombstone and all across the West, including Alaska, in his long life of adventure. No, he wasn’t always a defender of law and order. But after reading Stuart Lake’s mythmaking 1931 biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal and some of the offerings of Glenn Boyer, I figured the legendary Wyatt had been elevated to a standard that could be outmatched only by Hugh O’Brian’s 1950s TV version of Wyatt.

Other authors also muddied the waters when it came to the truth about Wyatt.

Then along came San Francisco newspaperman Tefertiller, who was fascinated by the divergent legacies and set out to get past the frauds and fantasies and write a balanced biography about the most famous of the “Fighting Earps.”

Casey made a big hit.

Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer’s Defeat (1997, by Gregory F. Michno): The immediate command of Lt. Col. George Armstrong’s 7th U.S. Cavalry took to their graves what happened on June 25, 1876, at the Little Bighorn, having all died on that battlefield. But some of the victorious Lakotas and Cheyennes (about 40 of them) provided firsthand accounts of the most famous fight in the Indian wars. Michno utilized their testimony to relate from start to finish how the Indians attacked

by Custer gained the upper hand. These participants, as one might expect, sometimes said contradictory things about what they did or saw, and of course none of the Indians could read Custer’s mind. So, certain mysteries will never be solved, which opens the door even wider for the endless flow of Little Bighorn offerings. This book with a different perspective should stand the test of time.

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REVIEWS

The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History (2016, by Paul Andrew Hutton): Apaches warriors didn’t employ tactics the U.S. military was used to, but the cumulative effect of all that ambushing and raiding made for arguably the most interesting wars fought by the Plains Indians.

Hutton’s book is 528 pages, but to be fair the awardwinning Western historian could have written a book twice this length about the fascinating Apaches (including Geronimo, Mangas Coloradas, Cochise and Victorio) and the men who fought them (notably Kit Carson, O.O. Howard, George Crook and Nelson Miles).

The captive boy in the subtitle is Mickey Free, whose engaging story includes his pursuit of fellow scout turned renegade the Apache Kid. To those seeking even more on the subject I recommend the even longer (a whopping 720 pages) From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, 1874– 1886, by Edwin R. Sweeney.

other says, “See you later”) can’t be topped in any other Western film. I consider it director Sam Peckinpah’s best, though The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) and The Wild Bunch (1969) are close behind.

MOvIES

Ride the High Country (1962, on DVD and Blu-ray): Randolph Scott, in his cinematic swan song, and Joel McCrea play aging lawmen who ride the high country (mostly Inyo National Forest, in California’s beautiful Owens Valley) to transport bullion at a time when the Western frontier is dying. There’s a shifting line between good and evil here, along with memorable secondary characters—a young, smart-alecky wouldbe outlaw (Ron Starr); a runaway bride (Mariette Hartley); her holier-than-thou father (R.G. Armstrong); a mean drunk groom ( James Drury), who is one of the wonderfully lowlife Hammond brothers (L.Q. Jones, Warren Oates, John Anderson and John Davis Chandler are the others); and a drunk judge with a few sober words about marriage (Edgar Buchanan). The ending (in which one of the heroes dies and the

The Tall T (1957, on DVD and Blu-ray): Everything about this film, adapted by Burt Kennedy from an Elmore Leonard short story and directed

by Budd Boetticher, is spot-on except the title—no “Tall T” is ever mentioned. Lean and lanky Randolph Scott, a middle-aged rancher struggling to finally be his own boss, stars as the hero, but he must share the spotlight with a ruthless outlaw trio (spoiler alert: offscreen they toss a young boy down a well) headed by Richard Boone, who keeps the hero alive because he likes the rancher’s quiet dignity and sense of honor. The two younger gang members (Skip Homeier and Henry Silva) are more prone to violence, all for the love of money, though they also have a passing fancy for their captive, held for ransom, played by Maureen O’Sullivan.

Unforgettable character actor Arthur Hunnicutt appears, albeit briefly, as a stagecoach driver.

This is one of seven

gritty, to-the-point Scott vehicles filmed

by Boetticher between 1956 and ’60. Standing nearly as tall as the mysterious “T” are three others— Seven Men From Now (1956), Ride Lonesome (1959) and Comanche Station (1960).

The Magnificent Seven (1960, on DVD and Blu-ray): A remake of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s excellent Seven Samurai (1954), this gathering of would-be heroes—yes, seven of them—employ sixshooters, rifles and at least one effective knife instead of swords as they ride south of the border to defend a Mexican farming village from a band of bandidos led by a brutal chieftain (Eli Wallach).

Yul Brynner, who plays the leader of the seven gunfighters, was already a Hollywood star. Four of the others would soon rise to fame on the big and little screens —Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Robert Vaughn. Only No. 6, Brad Dexter, proved forgettable, while No. 7, Horst Buchholz, who played the hotheaded kid of the group, could annoy at times. The rousing theme music

by Elmer Bernstein adds to a picture that is mostly action but includes catchy

dialogue, some memorized by me as a child in 1960 and by my son as a child 40 years later (“We deal in lead, friend,” heading the list).

The Big Country (1958, on DVD and Blu-ray): Everything about it seemed big when my father took me to see it on the big screen in 1958, and it almost seems as big today. What vistas (some shot at Red Rock Canyon in California’s Mojave Desert)! What stars (Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Carroll Baker, Jean Simmons, the Oscarwinning Burl Ives, Charles Bickford, Alfonso Bedoya, Chuck Connors)!

What direction (by legendary filmmaker William Wyler)! What a score (composed

by Jerome Moross)!

What length (166 minutes)! Peck plays a retired sea captain turned tenderfoot in the Wild West who eventually makes good (and ends up with Simmons instead of Baker) amid feuding cattle barons.

When I watched it at the theater the first time, I had no idea Wyler intended the Western to be an allegory for the Cold War (diplomacy beats fighting). I also didn’t dwell on a bit of dialogue between Rufus Hannassey (Ives) and son Buck (Connors)—

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REVIEWS

Rufus: “You want me, Pa?” Buck: “Before you was born I did.” That was probably just as well, but I do wonder now what my father had thought.

Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969, on DVD and Blu-ray): This Western spoof makes it on my list, because sometimes laughter and not flying bullets (although there are some of those, plus one wild shot from an old cannon) are the best medicine, because it stars my favorite actor ( James Garner, think the classic Maverick TV series and the short-lived Western series Nichols, if anyone else remembers it), and because my son loved the film (almost as much as The Magnificent Seven and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which would have been No. 7 on this list had there been a No. 7). This parody of a town-taming sheriff (Garner), directed

by Burt Kennedy, also features a special sidekick ( Jack Elam in a lovable role); a somewhat kooky love interest ( Joan Hackett); a suitably grumpy outlaw gang leader (Walter Brennan); and his kill-happy son (Bruce Dern).

Garner and Elam returned for the 1971 sequel, Support Your Local Gunfighter.

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High Noon (1952, on DVD and Blu-ray): Gary Cooper won an Oscar for his role as Marshal Will Kane, the paragon of a dedicated lawman. Though the townspeople of Hadleyville usher the newlywed marshal and his Quaker bride (played by the graceful Grace Kelly) out of town for his own good, he returns to fight a quartet of vengeful badmen. Kane does his duty without the town’s help (although his violence-abhorring bride finally lends a hand, with a gun in it no less) and then throws his badge in the dirt (a gesture iconic Western film star John Wayne said at the time he didn’t approve).

Four outstanding Wayne pictures—Stagecoach (1939), Red River (1948), The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)—barely missed this highly subjective list. Other near misses include Shane (1953), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Will Penny (1968), Unforgiven (1992) and a couple dozen more.

BOOK REVIEWS Confederates and Comancheros: Skullduggery and Double-Dealing in the Texas–New Mexico Borderlands, by James Bailey Blackshear and Glen Sample Ely, University of Oklahoma Press,

Norman, 2021, $32.95 While the American Civil War may have been a simple conflict of blue against gray in the Eastern and Western theaters of operation, the transMississippi West spanned a range of more complicated shades. In Confederates and Comancheros Texans James Blackshear and Glen Ely combine their research to focus on the borderlands between Unioncontrolled New Mexico Territory and the Confederate state of Texas —to be more specific, the roughly 1,800square-mile area between the Rio Grande and the Canadian River, encompassing the Pecos River and the Llano Estacado (Staked Plains), where few other than Comanches and Kiowas dared venture.

Adding another wild card to the deck was Mexico, caught up in a war of its own between Austrian-born Emperor Maximilian’s backers and Mexican republicans under Benito Juárez. Amid these contending sides, exploiting the chaos to steal from or trade

with any and all parties, were bands of freebooters known as the Comancheros.

In the wake of Confederate Brig. Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley’s failed 1862 invasion of New Mexico Territory, Union Brig.

Gen. James Henry Carleton arrived in force that August to place New Mexico Territory and Texas’ trans-Pecos under martial law. Although the territory’s predominately Mexican-American population had already had their fill of Texan invasions since 1841, there remained enough secessionist sympathizers to aid such Rebel spies as the aptly named Henry Skillman from reconnoitering both sides of the border despite Union efforts to catch him, all in hoped-for preparation of a renewed Texan effort that never materialized. Military activity in the territory centered on skirmishes with the Indians and pursuit of the Comancheros, both of whom found their most profitable currency in the cattle drives they raided —the Comancheros often adding to their beef stock through trade with the Indians in firearms and goods.

Perhaps the biggest surprise Confederates and Comancheros has to offer is a list of Comancheros, their employees and bondholders, revealing that these

“renegade” bands, when not stealing, rustling or kidnapping, were fencing their ill-gotten goods to buyers on either side the Pecos. The Comancheros were engaging so broadly in such activity, both on and off the books, as to make them an integral part of the regional economy.

Changing times finally caught up with them, however, with the defeats of the Confederacy in 1865 and lingering Indian resistance in the late 1870s.

By the 1880s Quahadi Comanche war chief Quanah Parker was a cattle baron himself, siding with New Mexican authorities and the revamped Texas Rangers in shutting down the Comancheros for good.

—Jon Guttman George Armstrong Custer: A Military Life, by Sandy Barnard, South Dakota Historical Society Press, Pierre, 2021, $14.95 Why another George Custer biography? To author Sandy Barnard the answer is clear: “Custer’s death and defeat at Little Bighorn assured that he would forever remain more than a footnote in America’s military legacy.” The retired professor of journalism is well qualified to tell the story of this controversial soldier and does so in an engaging manner.

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The U.S. Mint Just Struck Morgan Silver Dollars for the First Time in 100 Years!

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t’s been more than 100 years since the last Morgan Silver Dollar was struck for circulation. With a well-earned reputation as the coin that helped build the Wild West, preferred by cowboys, ranchers, outlaws as the “hard currency” they wanted in their saddle bags, the Morgan is one of the most revered, most-collected vintage U.S. Silver Dollars ever.

Struck in 90% silver from 1878 to 1904, then again in 1921, these silver dollars came to be known by the name of their designer, George T. Morgan. They were also nicknamed “cartwheels” because of their large weight and size.

Celebrating the 100th Anniversary With Legal Tender Morgans

Honoring the 100th anniversary of the last year the Morgan Silver Dollar was minted, the U.S. Mint struck five different versions in 2021, paying tribute to each of the mints that struck the coin. The coins here honor the historic New Orleans Mint, a U.S. Mint branch from 1838–1861 and again from 1879–1909.

These coins, featuring an “O” privy mark, a small differentiating mark, were struck in Philadelphia since the New Orleans Mint no longer exists. These beautiful coins are differO PRIVY MARK ent than the originals for two reasons. First,

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REVIEWS Part of the South Dakota Biography Series, this brief bio provides necessary historical background and then wisely sticks to the subject without detailed diversions on the Civil War or the Plains Indian wars.

The military portrait Barnard deftly paints is that of two different soldiers. First is the aggressive, courageous and largely successful Union cavalry leader, who played, for example, a critical role on East Cavalry Field at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. Civil War’s end posed a challenge to the former general, for whom civilian life was

unlikely. The author asserts the former “Boy General” sought to reinvent himself within the confines of a reorganized Regular Army tasked with guarding the frontier and enforcing Reconstruction in the South.

Notwithstanding Custer’s literary prowess and self-promotion, the accomplishments

Knight Museum & Sandhills Center & Sallows Military Museum

of his second military career were at best mixed, given, for example, his few Indian fights and 1867–68 suspension from duty.

Contrary to popular film and fiction, Indian campaigns did not consume all of Custer’s energy and efforts after his assignment to the West. When stationed in Kentucky on Reconstruction duty, for example, “he took leave for seven months to dabble in investments, hobnob with the rich and famous and discuss politics, largely to no personal ad-

vantage.” The author portrays a far more complex figure than the controversial Indian fighter who died at the Little Bighorn.

The book’s clear, concise overview of Custer’s last campaign and his legacy correctly underscores the Army’s strategic miscalculations during the Sioux War of 1876 and the Plains Indian wars in general. The military incorrectly “believed the Indians would always flee in the face of an armed force attacking their village” (see related feature, P. 40).

George Custer, Barnard concludes,

Chart your Course to experience the unexpected discoveries in and around Alliance, Nebraska where there is history at every turn.

From scenic drives, to our local brewery, remarkable parks, rich art and the legendary Carhenge; you will be transported to a nostalgic place where quaint shops line our historic downtown brick paved streets and folks you’ve never met will smile and wave. Our hospitality and beauty of our city will leave you wanting to come back for more.

“was an imperfect man asked to take on dangerous challenges on the nation’s battlefields.”

That is a fair assessment. However, one might question if he was “no more bloodthirsty, if at all, than most American army officers who served alongside him in the Civil War, as well as those in subsequent American wars.” Barnard’s book is a pleasure to read if for no other reason than as an example of effective historical biography.

The author tells an interesting story.

—C. Lee Noyes

Veteran's Cemetery

Plan your getaway now by visiting www.visitalliance.com

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GO WEST

I

t was a love for his people that drove Kiowa photographer Horace Poolaw (1906–84) to document life in and around hometown Anadarko for a half century. A favorite subject was the annual American Indian Exposition, first held in 1924, shortly after Poolaw got his first camera and started snapping.

In 1941 he captured Kiowa Tribal Princess Evalu Ware Russell and entourage perched atop a Chevrolet Special Deluxe Coupe in that year’s parade. A similar love for his people and their cultural traditions inspired Kiowa painter, dancer and flute player Stephen Mopope (1898–1974), a member of the “Kiowa Six” artists of international repute. In 1937 Mopope was commissioned to render a series of 16 murals depicting tribal culture and history on the interior walls of the post office in Anadarko. Among them is Kiowas Moving Camp (inset), which captures a family on the move long before the advent of city streets and Chevy coupes.

Life hasn’t changed much in Anadarko, the Caddo County seat, some 50 miles southwest of Oklahoma City. Thanks to the efforts of Poolaw’s daughter, Linda, his images have since shown in museums to great acclaim. And Mopope’s murals, restored in 1974, still grace the post office. The pandemic put the American Indian Exposition on hold, but the Kiowa people keep rolling along.

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© ESTATE OF HORACE POOLAW, REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION; INSET: USPS

ANADARKO, OKLAHOMA

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