wild west - april 2014 usa
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HistoryNetShop.com • 1-800-358-6327Weider History Group, P.O. Box 8005, Dept. WW404A, Aston, PA 19014
An extraordinary anthology of work from the foremost writers on military
history today, all recipients of the Pritzker Military Museum and Library’s
annual Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing
As long as men have gone into battle,
men have studied war
James M.
McPherson
Pulitzer Prize-
winning author of
more than a dozen
books on the Civil
War and its legacy
Allan R. Millett
award-winning
military historian
concentrating on
the Marine Corps,
World War II, and
the Korean War
Rick Atkinson
three-time Pulitzer
Prize winner, author
of the Liberation
Trilogy, a narrative
history of the U.S.
military in Europe,
1942–1945
Gerhard L.
Weinberg
World War II veteran
and author of A World
at Arms: A Global
History of World War
II and other books
on that confict
Carlo D’Este
acclaimed author
of World War II
battle histories and
biographies of the
war’s major leaders
Max Hastings
author of more
than 20 books,
many of them
histories of major
battles and
campaigns of
World War II
Tim O’Brien
Vietnam War
veteran and author
of several award-
winning works of
fction based on
his experience in
that confict
1
The Capture of New Mexico’s Rustler King
By Paul CoolHis leadership skills set apart crime boss John Kinney from other outlaws, yet he was undone by his failure to pay import duties on smuggled cattle.
FEATURES
By William B. Secrest
Highwaymen stopped one stage headed for California’s Yosemite Valley, but fnding no express box aboard, they stopped a second stage before the dust cleared.
Fort Dilts and Fanny’s Bid For Freedom
By Bill MarkleyAs besieged emigrants holed up in primitive earthworks on the prairie, the surrounding Sioux sent them a message scribbled by a white captive.
Chambers of Horrors46
Chief Joseph’s Guiding Principle
24CoverStory
38
52
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ON THe COveR: To honor his father, Chief Joseph vowed to keep their Wallowa Valley homeland, but he had to flee in 1877 and was never allowed to return. (Cover photo: National Anthropological Archives, No. 1605207; colorization by Slingshot Studio, North Hampton, N.H.)
a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
After a long fight and a tough fght, Chief Joseph (1840–1904) surrenders to the Army, in this lithograph by Frederic Remington.
Stagecoach To Yosemite
32
By Candy Moulton
The Nez Perce leader is famed for vowing, “I will fght no more forever” after his surrender in Montana Territory in 1877, but he lived by the words, “Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.”
By Paul L. Hedren
William “Persimmon Bill” Chambers was a horse thief and ruthless murderer who in 1876 made life miserable for travelers on the Black Hills Road.
2 W i l D W E S T a p r i l 2 0 1 4
3 Editor’s Letter
4 Weider Reader
5 Letters
6 Roundup“No sale” was the order of the day when guns reportedly owned by Jesse James and Wild Bill Hickok came up for auction. Author Candy Moulton notes 10 great places to visit on the Nez Perce Trail. Sam Houston calls for “cool, deliberate vengeance” for victims at the Alamo and Goliad. Jim Younger scrawls his last words.
11 InterviewBy Candy Moulton
New Mexico journalist Sherry Robinson has long
listened to Apache voices and now discusses her
book on the history of the underappreciated Lipans.
12 WesternersThree men have strapped on Colt revolvers, while
a fourth wears a sash.
14 Indian LifeBy Sherry Robinson
Lipan Apache scout Johnson helped Colonel Ranald
Mackenzie track down renegade Comanches and
Kiowas during the Red River War.
16 Pioneers and SettlersBy John Koster
Seth Eastman, once married to an Indian woman,
mostly rendered respectful paintings of Indians,
but he is also the artist who painted Death Whoop.
18 Gunfghters and LawmenBy R.K. DeArment
In 1880s Colorado Sheriff “Doc” Shores called
Telluride Marshal Jim Clark “a real fghter
with a gun or any other way.”
20 Western EnterpriseBy Jim Pettengill
While manager of the Gold King mine near
Telluride, Colo., in 1889, L.L. Nunn made
good use of a controversial new technology.
22 Art of the WestJohnny D. Boggs
Inspired by early Navajo jewelry, Santa Fe
silversmith Dennis Hogan has forged his
own naja (inverted crescent) designs.
60 Ghost TownsBy Les Kruger
John O. Meusebach built a general store
and lived in Loyal Valley, Texas, for almost
30 years, but its best known citizen was
former Indian captive Herman Lehmann.
62 CollectionsBy Linda Wommack
Mountain men, miners, outlaws and lawmen
—they all get their due at the Sweetwater
County Historical Museum in Green River, Wyo.
64 Guns of the WestBy Lee A. Silva
E. Remington & Sons’ powerful double-barreled
derringer proved a most popular concealable
self-defense weapon for more than 60 years.
66 ReviewsCandy Moulton looks at books about Chief
Joseph and the Nez Perces, as well as several
on-screen presentations, plus reviews of
recent books and a DVD review of the third
season of Maverick.
72 Go West!The Durango & Silverton rides high in Colorado.
11
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16
DEPARTMENTS
14
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www.WildWestMag.com
Visit our WEBSITE www.WildWestMag.com for these great exclusives:
Onlineextras April 2014
Discussion: Chief Joseph might be overrated as a war
chief but not as a headman for his people, the Nez
Perces. In what order would you rate the following
Indian leaders overall (in war and peace): Chief Joseph,
Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Black Kettle,
Satanta, Cochise, Mangas Coloradas, Victorio, Dull
Knife, Spotted Tail, Geronimo and Quanah Parker?
More on Sherry Robinson “I’m so used to reading descriptions of Apaches as smallish and wiry that it was a surprise to find repeated descriptions of Lipans as tall, handsome people,” says the New Mexico author and journalist.
More on Dennis Hogan“I became interested in the history of early Southwestern art and admired the jewelry of early native silversmiths working long before commercial production,” the artist explains.
Stagecoach RestorationTake a close look at an 1890s Yosemite Stage and Turnpike Co. touring coach masterfully restored by a family-owned business in Letcher, S.D.
Digital SubscriptionsWild West is now available in digital versions for any device, including PC, iPad, iPhone and Kindle. Visit www.historynet.com/wild-west-digital. To add the digital edition to an existing subscription, call 800-435-0715 and mention code 83DGTL.
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PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA
ome Western Indians had a way with words. No doubt at times things were lost in trans-lation, but at other times some-thing was gained. Here’s a fa-
vorite “no bull” quote from the Lakota leader Sitting Bull: “If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man, he would have made me so in the frst place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other and different desires. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.” Lakota Chief Red Cloud, who fought and spoke well, gave this assess-ment of how U.S. government offcials treated his people: “They made us many promises, more than I can remember. But they never kept but one; they prom-ised to take our land, and they took it.”
Historians credit the oft-repeated line “A good day to die” or “It is a good day to die” to an Oglala Lakota participant at the Battle of the Little Bighorn—either Crazy Horse or Low Dog. Had Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer heard such an utterance from the enemy at Last Stand Hill, would his reply have been an au-dacious, “You bet!” or a humble, “That’s easy for you to say”? I’ll leave it to Custer detractors and Custer advocates to battle over that hypothetical dialogue.
The most lyrical and spiritual Indian words came from Black Elk through writer-ethnographer John G. Neihardt, whose 1932 book Black Elk Speaks was based on their conversations as trans-lated by the Oglala Lakota holy man’s son Ben Black Elk. How much of the book is Black Elk and how much is Nei-hardt remains open to debate, but that takes nothing away from such winning words as, “Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions.” Diamond-back rattlesnakes, I presume.
It was not a Lakota, however, who pro-vided the most memorable 19th-century Western Indian quote of them all. Credit goes to Nez Perce Chief Joseph, a leader of the fantastic 1877 Nez Perce “flight and fight for freedom”—a 16-week, 1,000-plus-mile arduous trek from the Wallowa Valley in northeast Oregon to northern Montana Territory. After the September 30–October 5 Battle of Bear’s Paw, White Bird led several dozen Nez
Perces into Canada to seek sanctuary with Sitting Bull, while Joseph was one of the 68 warriors who surrendered to the U.S. Army. “After days of siege the Nez Perce people were tired, wounded and no doubt hungry,” says Candy Moul-ton, who wrote a biography of Chief Jo- seph and the cover article about him in this issue (see P. 24). “All the headmen except for White Bird and Chief Joseph had been killed. Joseph made the deci-sion he would surrender and told this to Old George and Captain John, Nez Perce men who had been scouting for the Army but who had daughters in the Nez Perce camp.” The two scouts relayed Joseph’s words, including his famous quote—“Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fght no more forever”—to Brig. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, who had reached the battlefield on the evening of October 4. After the message was de-livered, and recorded for posterity by Lieutenant Charles Erskine Scott Wood, the general’s aide-de-camp, Joseph rode to the soldiers’ camp and handed his rife to Colonel Nelson A. Miles.
Chief Joseph’s memorable sentiments helped him achieve everlasting fame, but historians have questioned the accu-racy of Wood’s transcription. “Did Joseph utter that defining statement: ‘From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever’?” asks Moulton. “Truly only the chief, Old George and Captain John could say for certain. But because Indian culture relies so strongly on oral tradition in recording important events, I believe that while he may not have said those precise words, he did convey that precise meaning.”
Joseph was no military leader, let alone a “Red Napoleon,” as the press called him. Looking Glass, killed in action be- fore the surrender, and other Nez Perce chiefs devised the strategy during the skillful retreat from the pursuing Army. Nevertheless, Joseph was a man of prin-ciple, and no matter what his exact words were that day at Bear’s Paw, he never fought again (at least not on the battle-field) and for the rest of his life spoke eloquently against the injustices of U.S. policy toward his people. “Chief Joseph was cool.” You can quote me on that.
Gregory Lalire
EDITOR’S LETTER
®
SPECiAL CoNtriBUtorS
S‘Fight No More Forever’ Sounds Good
Vol. 26, No. 6 April 2014
GroUP MANAGiNG Editor roger L. Vance
3a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
Military History
Rebel of the Cause
After the Ameri-
can Civil War
former Confed-
erate guerrillas
such as Jesse
and Frank
James still be-
lieved in the
Lost Cause and
continued to take the war to the enemy
by robbing Yankee banks—or so the
legend goes. Later, across the ocean,
legendary guerrilla leader Michael Col-
lins paid back the British “in their own
coin” as he fought to secure Irish inde-
pendence. Ron Soodalter recounts that
fght in “Michael Collins: Rebel of the
Cause,” from the March 2014 issue.
Many in Ireland and abroad would have
thought Michael Collins the last person
to offer the hope of peace. Over the pre-
vious three years he had earned an inter-
national reputation as the most brilliant,
ruthless and effective guerrilla leader of
his day and—in the words of one recent
biographer—was arguably “the origina-
tor of modern urban terrorism.”
Collins’ involvement in the struggle for
Irish independence began when he was a
teenager. He joined the Gaelic League at
16 and, three years later, the clandestine
Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), an
order committed to establishing a repub-
lic through armed revolution. In Dublin
in April 1916, 25-year-old Collins partic-
ipated in the Republican movement’s
ill-fated Easter Rising against British
forces. In its grim aftermath 16 men were
court-martialed, put against a wall and
shot; another was hanged. Collins nar-
rowly escaped execution and was among
the hundreds of men sent to English in-
ternment camps. The British would come
to regret the blunder that allowed Collins
to escape the fring squad. Predictably,
Irish poets and ballad singers extolled the
tragic glory of “the Rising,” as new lyrics
were put to old traditional tunes.
World War II
Nazis at Madison Square
Almost 6 mil-
lion German
immigrants
came to the
United States
between 1820
and World
War I. In the
1850s Texas
had 20,000 German-Americans, but
they were a diverse bunch—from peas-
ant farmers to intellectuals, with dif-
ferent religions and customs. For a look
at some later not-so-diverse German-
Americans, see “When Swastikas Hung
in Madison Square Garden,” by Ronald
H. Bailey, in the March/April 2014 issue.
In six decades and at three locations
Madison Square Garden had hosted
spectacles ranging from circuses and
concerts to sports championships, but
never anything like this. On February 20,
1939, America’s premier indoor arena
bristled with swastikas, bulging with
22,000 people all too ready to give the
Nazi salute. The German-American
Bund’s “Pro-America Rally” ostensibly
honored the birthday of George Wash-
ington, whom Bundists referred to as
“America’s first Fascist.” But the orga-
nization really meant to dramatize the
growing strength of the nation’s most
prominent fascist movement. Hundreds
of men from the Bund’s paramilitary
Uniformed Service—wearing garrison
caps, brown shirts, swastika armbands
and Sam Browne belts—lined the aisles
and the front of the stage. Against a huge
portrait of America’s first president,
speakers spewed hatred. They vilified
President Franklin Roosevelt as “Rosen-
feld” and his New Deal as the “Jew Deal.”
American History
As Good as Coal
Early settlers in
southern Iowa
looking for cook-
ing and heating
fuel found coal
more readily
available than
timber, but not
until the 1870s
did coal mining really take off in the
state. By 1920 coal production was in
decline, but in the 1890s Iowans took no
small amount of pride in their coal, as is
evident in this excerpt from “People’s Pal-
aces,” by Richard Selcer, in the April issue:
The second half of the 19th century was
the Great Age of Expositions that dis-
played national pride and celebrated
progress and technology. Rural Ameri-
cans—72 percent of the U.S. population
in 1880—had something else to cele-
brate: nature and the bountiful produce
of the earth. Ambitious rural expos ruled
by Kings Cotton, Corn and Coal sprang
up in the heartland, where local boost-
ers were eager to attract new investment
and new blood. In 1889 three Ottumwa,
Iowa, boosters had the idea of showcas-
ing the local coal industry with a modest
“exhibition center.” The resulting Coal
Palace was a strange mix of Gothic and
Byzantine details—all built out of coal.
The turrets, recalled Carl B. Kreiner in
1922, “were veneered with cubes of coal
laid so as to expose three sides and refect
the light from the different faces.” Inside,
“corn, oats, wheat, rye, barley, millet,
blue grass, timothy, clover and fax were
skillfully arranged in brilliant masses of
color,” and there were “beautiful panels
containing pictures in corn symbolical of
agriculture, industry, mechanics, music,
art, literature, geography and com-
merce.” The most unusual feature was
a miniature working coal mine below
the main floor that visitors could tour
in mule-drawn pit cars. The Coal Palace
was such a public relations success it re-
opened for a second season in 1891.
WEIDER READERA sampling of decisive moments, remarkable adventures, memorable characters,
surprising encounters and great ideas from our sister magazines
WHG
To subscribe to any Weider History magazine, call 800-435-0715 or go to HistoryNet.com.
4 W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 4
‘Incidentally, both Frank and Ann James were cremated, thereby assisting in the elimination of possible grave/body tampering’
KINGSTON FACTS
The “Ghost Towns” piece by Melody
Groves on Kingston, N.M., in the Oc-
tober 2013 issue, perpetuates myth.
Kingston and Percha City were not the
same but distinct communities sepa-
rated by several miles. There is no doc-
umentation that Kingston swelled to
2,000 people at the end of 1882. The
1885 territorial census counted 329
souls in Kingston and Percha City com-
bined. U.S. Census data and corrobo-
rating documents show that Kingston
topped out at about 1,500 people in
1890; the town had 568 lots. It reached
7,000 people only in writings published
decades after the town was all but aban-
doned. Mark Twain never set foot in
New Mexico, though a character in his
book Roughing It, William [“Sheba”]
Hurst, died in Kingston. A prankster
signed President Grover Cleveland’s
name to the Victorio Hotel guest regis-
try on an evening when the president
was partying with his wife in Mary-
land. Victorio and Billy the Kid never
visited Kingston either; they were both
dead years before the mining camp
was founded. Kingston had more than
three newspapers; 11 operated over the
span of a decade, never in competi-
tion, and most only lasted a few months.
During the purported peak of 7,000
souls in 1885 the town lacked a news-
paper. And Percha Bank holding $7 mil-
lion in silver—that figure is probably a
mutation of the $6.9 million total value of
metal mined from Kingston and Percha
City from 1882 to 1902, as reported in a
1903 U.S. Geological Survey report. But
this is factual: The Percha Bank Museum
is one of the coolest around, and you
should visit. It’s privately owned, so leave
a donation. I am the co-author of Around
Hillsboro, a history of Hillsboro, Kings-
ton and Lake Valley. See www.hillsboro
history.blogspot.com.
Craig Springer
Hillsboro, N.M.
Melody Groves responds: It’s true that
Victorio and Billy the Kid were dead be-
fore Kingston was proclaimed a town in
1882. However, the Black Range was Vic-
torio’s hunting grounds, and there’s a
great possibility he encountered miners.
And the Kid most likely rode through the
area. It is indeed possible someone else
signed President Cleveland’s name to
the registry. Over the past 140 years doc-
uments have been lost, burned, stolen,
misplaced, changed and overall not
handled as carefully as historians would
prefer. In citing exact numbers of resi-
dents and plats of land in Kingston and
elsewhere, it’s a close to impossible task.
Who’s to say for absolute certain? I
appreciate the attention Craig Springer
gave my article. What’s most interesting
about history is that it keeps changing—
the more we search, the more we learn.
FRANK JAMES’ GRAVE
I attended the Western Writers of Amer-
ica [www.westernwriters.com] Conven-
tion in Las Vegas, Nev., in 2013 and
while there received the August 2013
issue of Wild West with Frank James on
the cover. I was previously a subscriber
when I owned a home in Tucson and
often visited Tombstone. Having that
issue as a motivator, I revisited Frank
James’ grave site in Independence, Mo.,
where I reside. Although the article did
not mention it, I’m sure you were aware
of the location. Ann Ralston, Frank’s
wife, was a member of the Hill family,
and the marker for Ann and Frank (see
my photo, above) are in the small “Hill
Cemetery” within Hill Park. Inciden-
tally, both Frank and Ann were cre-
mated, thereby assisting in the elimina-
tion of possible grave/body tampering.
Don Russell
Independence, Mo.
INDIAN WOMEN
Carole Nielson did a creditable job re-
porting about sociopath Ben Wright in
“Wright Was Might Among Oregon Indi-
ans,” in the December 2013 issue. I was
frankly shocked she referred twice to
native women as “squaws.” This deroga-
tory term went out with the buggy whip
and is, as you know, no different than
using the N word when referring to Afri-
can Americans. Frankly, I’m surprised
you let it pass your red pencil.
As to her report about the heinous
wagon train attack by the Modocs, as
I recall they had good reason to carry
out this attack (though they certainly
can be condemned for killing women
and children). That said, one must con-
sider what had been going on in the
killing felds of California ever since the
Anglos arrived. Raids on Indian villages
to kidnap Indian children for slaves
went on for decades, as did the frequent
rape and murder of native women.
Both sides—native and Anglo—fol-
lowed up any attack with racial over-
kill, murdering each other without
regard to sex or age. In the end Anglos
almost succeeded in extinguishing the
native population of California, then
placed the remnants on reservations,
starving many of them to death.
Pax Riddle
Phoenixville, Pa.
Editor responds: Paxton Riddle, author of
the 1999 novel Lost River about the Modoc
War, is right about the offensive term.
Oklahoma-born author Carole Nielsen,
who is part Cherokee (a great-great-great
grandmother was forced to walk west
from Tennessee to Indian Territory in the
“Trail of Tears”), says she meant no dis-
respect and used the term to “show the
thinking of the time.” Wild West’s policy is
to use “American Indian woman” or some
variation thereof and only keep “squaw”
in quoted material from an earlier time.
We slipped up. A Roundup news item
(see P. 8) addresses another offensive
term, “redskins,” as in the Washington
Redskins. Team cheerleaders were once
called the “Redskinettes.” No longer.
LETTERS
5 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
6 W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 4
News of the West
Another Kid Image?
Only one docu-
m e n t e d p h o t o -
graph of New Mex-
ico outlaw Billy the
Kid is known to ex-
ist, though many
p u r p o r t e d “ K i d
images” have sur-
faced over the years. The latest is a tintype
supposedly depicting the Kid (see detail
of his face, above) and his Bosque Re-
dondo friend Daniel C. Detrick. Accord-
ing to the Las Cruces Sun-News, Doña Ana
County resident Joe Soebbing claims the
tintype was from the estate of Sheriff Pat
Garrett, who shot and killed the Kid in
Fort Sumner, N.M., on July 14, 1881, and
that he bought the tintype from some-
one who got it from Pauline Garrett, Pat’s
granddaughter. Soebbing said he knows
that more research needs to be done to
satisfy historians’ standards. The only
accepted image of Billy the Kid, in which
he poses with his Winchester Model 1873
carbine, is also a tintype, one of four iden-
tical images recorded on a single metal
plate. Billy gave that plate to Dedrick, who
later gave it to his nephew Frank Upham.
In June 2011 his descendants put it up for
auction at Brian Lebel’s Old West Show
& Auction in Denver. Collector William
Koch bought the tintype for $2.3 million.
Billy Slept Here?
Did Billy the Kid
spend a night or
t w o a t t h e t o n y
C o r n E x c h a n g e
Hotel in Mesilla,
New Mexico Terri-
tory? A signature
found in a hotel
register suggests
he did. The date?
March 15, 1876. The name? William Bon-
ney. Speculation and a good bit of
evidence suggest he was in Arizona
Territory in spring 1876. Could he have
stayed at the Corn Exchange en route?
David G. Thomas’ 2013 book La Posta
includes a photo of the hotel register
with the signature “William Bonney” at
the top. Was that our Billy? The hand-
writing of the signature and that of the
Kid’s famous letter to New Mexico Terri-
tory Governor Lew Wallace bear similar-
ities. The capitals W and B are similar. It’s
quite possible Billy slept there. His pals
did: Charles Bowdre, Josiah “Doc” Scur-
lock and Richard Brewer all signed in
on September 22, 1877, paying $1 each.
The Corn Exchange was a social hub. The
building that housed it is on the National
Register of Historic Places and since 1939
has housed La Posta de Mesilla restau-
rant [www.laposta-de-mesilla.com].
—Melody Groves
ROUNDUP
AUTHOR CANDY MOULTON LISTS GREAT PLACES TO VISIT ALONG THE NEZ PERCE
NATIONAL HISTORIC TRAIL
1. Old Joseph Gravesite and Monument. Chief Joseph spent his life devoted to remaining in—or returning to—Oregon’s Wallowa Valley because the bones of his father and mother rested there (see related article, P. 24). This memorial to his father, Old Joseph, marks the spot near Joseph, Ore.
2. Dug Bar. Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce followers crossed the Snake River from their Wallowa Valley homeland at this point during high water runoff in late spring 1877. The road is steep and rough, or you can take a jet boat ride from Lewiston, Idaho. 3. White Bird Battlefeld. Walk the steep slopes of this site near White Bird, Idaho, setting for the opening battle of the Nez Perce War.
4. Big Hole National Battlefeld. Lodgepoles and prayer bundles left at this site near Wisdom, Mont., by descendants of the Nez Perces who were attacked here at dawn on August 9, 1877, are reminders of the violence that once marred this peaceful place. Visit during the annual remembrance program [www.nps.gov/biho].
5. Nez Perce Creek. Near this stream on the western side of Yellowstone National Park, between Madison Junction and Old Faithful, Yellow Wolf encountered a party of Montana tourists in 1877, taking them hostage.
6. Clarks Fork Yellowstone River. When the Nez Perces exited Yellowstone National Park, the Army believed they would head toward Cody, but instead the Indians crossed through the rugged Clarks Fork Canyon and struck out north into Montana Territory. This beautiful, rugged landscape is little changed from the time Chief Joseph and his people passed through.
7. Bear’s Paw Battlefeld. Near Chinook, Mont., just south of the Canadian border, this battlefeld remains isolated and untouched. Markers indicate the sites where Chief Joseph, Looking Glass, White Bird and the other Nez Perces put up their final defense against an army under the command of Brig. Gen. Oliver O. Howard and Colonel Nelson A. Miles.
8. Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument Interpretive Center. This museum in Fort Benton, Mont., displays the rifle Chief Joseph surrendered to Colonel Miles at the Bear’s Paw Battlefeld—a tangible reminder of Joseph’s pledge to “fght no more forever.”
9. Baxter Springs. Exiled to the Quapaw Reservation near this Kansas town, the Nez Perces with Chief Joseph suffered greatly, mainly due to the difference in climate from their homeland.
10. Chief Joseph’s Gravesite. Chief Joseph returned to the Pacifc Northwest but spent his final years in Colville, Wash., where he is buried. He never returned to his beloved Wallowa Valley.
Wild West ’s Top 10
Jesse James Gun a No-Sale
Somebody got one of Annie’s guns, but
no one took home one of Jesse’s six-
shooters. Heritage Auctions’ [www.ha
.com] Legends of the West auction last
fall in Dallas featured a Colt Single Action
.45-caliber revolver, Serial No. 70579,
confirmed by three generations of the
James family as having belonged to Jesse.
Though the gun (see photo, above) was
expected to fetch well over $1 million,
no one met the $400,000 opening bid.
After Robert Ford shot down James in
April 1882, Jesse’s Colt passed down to
his son, Jesse James Jr., who later gave it
as security for an unpaid medical bill. The
Colt next went to U.S. Sen. Harry Hawes
of Missouri, and then to U.S. Rep. Frank
Boykin of Alabama, who sold it to a col-
lector in 1975. The gun appears in a pho-
tograph of Jesse Jr.’s display of his father’s
effects, published in the 1936 book The
Crittenden Memoirs, written by Henry
Crittenden, son of Missouri Governor
Thomas Crittenden. “Put simply, it is
one of the most important frearms ever
to appear at auction,” Tom Slater of Heri-
tage Auctions said before the no-sale.
Annie Oakley’s 16-gauge Parker Broth-
ers hammer shotgun, with a $100,000
opening bid, went for $293,000 and in-
cluded the shotgun’s canvas scabbard
and documents regarding the gun’s prov-
enance. Also opening at $100,000, a gold
coin charm bracelet worn by Oakley
brought $245,000. Heritage also sold
several George Armstrong Custer items,
including his monogrammed lap desk
($37,500) and an elk skin jacket ($30,000).
Wild Bill Gun Also a No-Sale
A Smith & Wesson No. 2 revolver said to
have been carried by James Butler “Wild
Bill” Hickok on the day he was killed in a
Deadwood saloon, failed to sell at a Bon-
hams [www.bonhams.com] Arms and
Armor auction in San Francisco last fall.
Bidding started at $150,000, but the high
bid of $220,000 fell short of the reserve
price (the consigner’s expected mini-
mum bid), let alone its estimated value
of between $300,000 and $500,000. On
August 2, 1876, former lawman Hickok
was gambling in Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon
when drifter Jack McCall fatally shot him
from behind. Hickok never had a chance
to draw his weapon. The Smith & Wes-
son (Serial No. 29963) up for auction,
with rosewood grips and a blued fnish,
is rated in good condition. Documents
included in the lot relate how Dead-
wood’s sheriff got the gun and how it
then passed down through the Willoth
family of Deadwood to current owners
Leo Zymetke and family.
Why the gun failed to sell is open to
speculation. But Hickok biographer
Joseph Rosa has long had his doubts
about this Smith & Wesson and another
one, too. “As far back as 1961 I was aware
of two such pistols, both with similar
stories and non-authentic accompany-
ing materials,” he says. “Indeed, there is
nothing accompanying the pistol(s) that
is contemporary to the day or days fol-
lowing Hickok’s murder, and the claim
that Seth Bullock, sheriff of Deadwood,
took charge of the pistol(s) is garbage.
Seth did not arrive in Deadwood until
after Hickok’s death, and he was later
elected sheriff of the county, not the
town of Deadwood. So as far as I am
concerned the weapon lacks authenti-
cation, as do all the other alleged Hickok
pistols in various collections. The only
authenticated Hickok weapon is the rife
removed from his coffin in 1879 and
now owned by Jim Earle in Texas.”
Springfeld Trapdoor
A Springfield Model
1873 Trapdoor carbine
(see photo, at left) sold
for $35,650, double its
estimate, at the Cow-
an’s Auctions [www
.cowanauctions.com]
Historic Firearms and
Early Militaria Auction
in Cincinnati last fall.
A Model 1816 Spring-
field flintlock mus-
ket, frst type, realized
$11,500, and a Model
1855 Springfeld pistol-
carbine sold for $2,415.
A Colt Single Action
Army revolver realized
$18,400, and a Colt
Dragoon $7,475.
Annie Oakley Letter
Sharpshooter Annie Oakley was often
gracious when she received good re-
views, as is evident from a letter sold last
fall at Swann Auction Galleries’ [www
.swanngalleries.com] Autographs auc-
tion in New York. Her letter, dated July 6,
1889, is addressed to an editor (John S.
Gibson of the Iron Era of Dover, N.J.) and
signed “Annie Oakley/Buffalo Bill’s Wild
West/Paris France.” Oakley writes: “I am
very thankful for the very kind and fat[t]-
ering notice you gave me in your paper.
To be considered a lady has always being
[sic] my highest amb[i]tion. Again thank-
ing you and with best wishes to your es-
teemed wife.” The letter went for $6,500.
West Words“The advance of the enemy is at
San Felipe. The moment for which
we have waited with anxiety and
interest is fast approaching. The vic-
tims of the Alamo, and the names of
those who were murdered at Goliad,
call for cool, deliberate vengeance.
Strict discipline, order and subordina-
tion will insure [sic] us the victory.”
—Texian Army General Sam Houston wrote these words on April 7, 1836, two weeks before he won the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in the Texas Revolution.
ROUNDUP
7 a p r I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
Chiricahuas and Arizona
W e s t e r n e r s s t i l l
c l o s e l y a s s o c i a t e
Chiricahua Apaches
with Arizona Terri-
tory, including the
T o m b s t o n e a r e a ,
though they’ve never
officially been per-
mitted to return since
being removed from the territory in
1886. Last fall Pascal Enjady, great-great-
grandson of Perico, one of Chief Naiche’s
Chiricahua warriors, was in Tombstone
for the Arizona premiere of Two Year
Promise [www.twoyearpromise.com], a
documentary about that deportation of
523 Chiricahuas to the East, with a focus
on how Naiche’s men were detained
at Fort Pickens, Fla., separated from
their families for more than two years.
To chronicle his ancestors’ ordeal, En-
jady conducted hours of video interviews
and blended in earlier audio accounts of
talks with actual survivors. “What better
place to debut this wonderful docu-
mentary than historic Schieffelin Hall,”
said Don Taylor, Tombstone’s city his-
torian. “Tombstone is in the heart of
Cochise County, which was a large part
of the original Chiricahua Apache home-
land.” Enjady has also presented the
90-minute flm at the Chiricahua Event
Center in Rodeo, N.M., and at the Inn
of the Mountain Gods in Ruidoso, N.M.
Redskins Forever?
The movement
to have Washing-
t o n ’ s N a t i o n a l
Football League
team change its
name from “Red-
skins”—deemed offensive by many
people—has dragged on for decades.
Last fall Ray Halbritter of the Oneida
Indian Nation, a leader in the “Change
the Mascot” campaign, presented his
case to NFL Commissioner Roger Good-
ell. But Redskins owner Dan Snyder
considers the name “a source of pride for
our fans” and “a badge of honor” and is
determined to keep it. Wild West’s policy
is to refrain from using “redskins” in our
articles, unless it is in quoted material
from an earlier time. Many college sports
teams have changed their Indian nick-
names, but none of those monikers were
considered as offensive as “redskins.”
In fact, the Florida State Seminoles (with
tomahawk chops and all) are still going
strong with the blessing of Chief James
Billie, Seminole tribal chairman. In a
Washington Post article last fall Bob
Drury and Tom Clavin, authors of the
2013 book The Heart of Everything That
Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, an
American Legend (see review, P. 68),
suggested Snyder rename his team the
Washington Red Clouds. “Such a move,”
they write, “would not only ease tension
between American Indians and the NFL,
but naming the team after Red Cloud
would also signify strength, intelligence
and perseverance—qualities any NFL
team would be proud to project.” Wild
West, which featured Red Cloud on its
April 2012 cover, just might endorse such
a name change, although the Washing-
ton White Clouds and Washington Black
Clouds also warrant consideration after
the team’s dreadful season.
Speaking Yurok
In the early 18th century some 3,000
Yurok Indians [www.yuroktribe.org]
inhabited villages at the mouth of the
Klamath River in northern California.
Today roughly the same number of
Yuroks live on federally recognized res-
ervations and rancherias in the region.
However, with the passing of tribal elders,
use of the Yurok language has also faded,
the number of fuent speakers falling to
a half-dozen in the 1990s. But there’s
been a resurgence, according to an arti-
cle in the Los Angeles Times, as Eureka
High and four other Northern California
schools have launched Yurok language
programs. “At last count,” the Times re-
ported, “there were more than 300 basic
Yurok speakers, 60 with intermediate
skills, 37 who are advanced and 17 who
are considered conversationally fuent.”
Those numbers, thanks to the schools,
are clearly growing.
See You Later, T.R. Fehrenbach
Texas native Theodore Reed Fehrenbach,
88, author of the popular Lone Star: A His-
tory of Texas and the Texans (1968) and
Comanches: The Destruction of a People
(1974), died in San Antonio on Decem-
ber 1. “Rangers, cattle drives, Injuns and
gunfghts may be mythology, but it’s our
mythology,” he said in a 1998 interview.
See You Later, Michael Hickey
Michael M. Hickey, 74, an author who
published his own books about the O.K.
Corral gunfght, John Ringo’s fnal hours
and the death of Warren Earp, died in his
native Honolulu last October 6. Hickey
hosted a popular annual gunfghter sym-
posium in Arizona from 2000 to 2009. His
Talei Publishers also published books by
the likes of Richard Lapidus, Tim Fattig,
Glenn Boyer, Ben Traywick, Phyllis de la
Garza, Rita Ackerman and Ron Fischer.
See You Later, Frank Mercatante
Western bookman extraordinaire and
World War II Marine veteran Frank Mer-
catante, 91, died in Grand Rapids, Mich.,
on November 17. Many authors and
researchers drew on his expertise on
George Armstrong Custer literature.
See You Later, Andro Linklater
Scottish historian Andro Linklater, 68,
whose books Measuring America (2002)
and The Fabric of America (2007) argued
that the Wild West was won not by Win-
chester rifles or Conestoga wagons but
by the Gunter’s chain (or surveyor’s line),
died November 3 in Kent, England.
ROUNDUP
Famous Last Words
ÒAll relations stay away
from me. No crocodile tears
wanted. Reporters, be my
friends. Burn me up.Ó
—Jim Younger penned these words
on the envelope of his October 19,
1902, suicide note (as published on
the front page of the next day’s St.
Louis Globe-Democrat). Although
paroled after serving 25 years of a
life sentence at the Minnesota State
Prison in Stillwater, Jim was in de-
spair because his parole terms for-
bade him to marry Alix Mueller, whom
he had met while behind bars.
8 W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 4
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Events of the West
St. Louis at 250
In 2014 the Mis-
s o u r i H i s t o r y
Museum in St.
Louis celebrates
the 250th anni-
versary of the
“Gateway to the
West” in an ex-
hibit called “250
in 250: 50 People,
50 Places, 50 Mo-
ments, 50 Im-
ages, 50 Objects,” which runs Feb. 14,
2014–Feb. 15, 2015. Among the featured
people is James Eads (see photo, above),
a self-taught engineer who in 1874 built
the first bridge to span the Mississippi
River at St. Louis. Call 314-746-4599 or
visit www.mohistory.org.
Butch and Sundance
The documentary series American Expe-
rience premieres Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid, produced and directed
by John Maggio (Billy the Kid), on Feb. 11
at 9 p.m. ET. Check your local listings.
Yosemite Pictures
“Carleton Watkins: The Stanford Al-
bums” showcases the work of the land-
scape photographer whose iconic images
convinced Congress and President Abra-
ham Lincoln to protect Yosemite for all
time. It’s showing at the Cantor Arts
Center at Stanford University April 23–
Aug. 17. Call 650-723-4177 or visit www
.museum.stanford.edu.
Ledger Art Exhibit
“Stories Outside the Lines: American
Indian Ledger Art” shows original and
contemporary examples at the Heard
Museum in Phoenix March 27–Sept. 28.
Visit www.heard.org or call 602-252-8840.
Little Cowboy
The sixth annual Best Little Cowboy
Gathering, featuring Texas music, danc-
ing and other diversions, takes place in La
Grange, Texas, March 13–16. Visit www
.bestlittlecowboygathering.org.
Bowie Knives
“A Sure Defense: The Bowie Knife in
America,” featuring 200 examples of the
iconic American knife, runs through
June 22 at the Historic Arkansas Museum
in Little Rock. Call 501-324-9351 or visit
www.historicarkansas.org.
Polish Take on Westerns
“Rebranded: Polish Film Posters for the
American Western” runs at the Denver
Art Museum Feb. 16–June 1. Visit www
.denverartmuseum.org.
Cowboys of All Kinds
“Cowboys Real and Imagined” runs
through March 16 at the New Mexico
History Museum/Palace of the Gover-
nors in Santa Fe. Call 505-476-5200 or
visit www.museumofnewmexico.org.
WWA in Sacramento
Sacramento hosts the Western Writers
of America Convention June 24–28. Visit
visit www.westernwriters.org.
WWHA Roundup
The 2014 Wild West History Association
Roundup is set for the Denver Marriott
West in Golden, Colo., July 22–26. Visit
www.wildwesthistory.org.
Buffalo Soldiers
“The Buffalo Soldier: An American Horse-
man,” an exhibit honoring the historic
contributions of black soldiers and their
American quarter horse mounts, will
show at the American Quarter Horse Hall
of Fame & Museum in Amarillo, Texas,
February–April 2014. Call 806-376-5181
or visit www.aqha.com/museum.
Western Art
Feb. 1–March 16—Masters of the Amer-
ican West Fine Art Exhibition and Sale,
Los Angeles (323-667-2000).
March 1 and 2—Heard Museum Guild
Indian Fair, Phoenix (602-252-8848).
March 1–April 13—Western Spirit Art
Show & Sale, Cheyenne Frontier Days
Old West Museum, Wyo. (307-778-7290).
March 20–24—Exhibition and Sale to
Beneft the C.M. Russell Museum, Great
Falls, Mont. (406-727-8787).
10 W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 4
ROUNDUP
Why is oral history so important to you?
I use as much oral history as possible
because only then do I have the voices
of my subjects. The trouble is, there isn’t
that much oral history from Apaches, and
using oral history requires a lot of check-
ing. Any of us, in retelling a story, can be
forgetful or fuzzy about dates and details.
Sometimes an event has been told and
retold so many times it’s more myth than
fact. At other times oral history reveals
an undocumented event, like the Lipans’
presence at the Alamo. Oral history is
best, I think, when it provides a com-
mentary or viewpoint. For example, the
Lipans’ version of Colonel Ranald Mac-
kenzie’s raid in 1873 is riveting and tragic.
How did Apache Voices come about?
On an archaeological tour of Apache sites
in southwestern New Mexico I saw some
of the beautiful places where the Warm
Springs Apaches lived. The tour leader,
attorney and rancher Tom Diamond,
introduced me to Eve Ball’s books, which
I enjoyed. Like many women who read
Ball, I was fascinated with Lozen, the war-
rior woman, and wanted to write about
her. I found Eve’s papers at BYU, took a
week off work and immersed myself in old
fles. Eve had interviewed Apache elders
from the Mescalero Reservation over sev-
eral decades and hadn’t used all her ma-
terial. When I realized that, my mission
changed. The result was Apache Voices.
Was writing about Apaches a challenge?
The biggest challenge is writing about
people who don’t especially want to ap-
pear in any more books or flms. Because
so much nonsense has been written
about Apaches, they’re understandably
suspicious of yet another four-eyed
scholar who wants to write a book. So
you can’t just stroll onto the reservation
and expect people to open their doors.
It was only because my Lipan sources
found Apache Voices factual they were
willing to speak to me.
Why did you focus on the Lipans?
In the process of writing Apache Voices,
I came across occasional mentions of
Lipan Apaches. I wasn’t familiar with
them and got curious. When I could fnd
very little information, it became an in-
vitation to write. Journalists are always
drawn to the untold story. I fgured this
would be a small group and a short proj-
ect, but the more I learned about Lipans,
the more the proj-
ect grew. Their his-
tory is complex and
every bit as com-
pelling as those of
the better-known
Apaches.
Any signifcant research moments?
I had a great many lightbulb moments.
One of the biggest was in piecing together
the evidence of an Eastern Apache con-
federacy. As far as I know, I’m the frst to
write about it. I also tracked other Eastern
Apache groups—confederacy members
and Lipan allies—through time. All those
people the Spanish and French encoun-
tered didn’t just evaporate. Another was
discovering Apaches living under the
noses of the Comanches when many a
historian has written that Comanches
pushed Apaches out of the southern
Plains and wiped them out. Hardly.
Did Lipans and Mescaleros interact?
Lipans and Mescaleros were close allies
from the 1700s on, but their beliefs and
habits are somewhat different, as is their
language, and they occupied different
territories. They were fast friends, but
each band had different allies, and the
Lipans had many non-Apache allies.
Did you fnd any surprises?
I was pleasantly surprised at what avid
traders the Lipans were and how clever
and persistent they were in cultivating
new trading partners. And we always
hear about Apaches fighting from am-
bush, but the Lipans also were capable
of European-style combat.
Read more at www.WildWestMag.com.
Sherry Robinson Has a Ball ResearchingThe History of the Unsung Lipan Apaches
The writer relates their fght for survival in early Texas By Candy Moulton
INTERVIEW
ew Mexico journalist and historian Sherry Robinson of Albuquerque started
her writing career reporting on the Navajo Nation for the Gallup Indepen-
dent. She later focused on the Apaches, visiting important sites, reading the
books of Eve Ball (Indeh: An Apache Odyssey and In the Days of Victorio)
and going through Ball’s papers at Brigham Young University [home.byu
.edu] in Provo, Utah. The Apache oral histories collected by Ball (1890–1984) provided
the base for Robinson’s 2000 history Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as Told
to Eve Ball. Her latest book, I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches (see
review, P. 68), is based on Robinson’s own thorough research of the Lipans, whom
no other writer has fully explored. She tracked down and interviewed descendants of
the early Lipans, who once roamed Texas hunting buffalo, trading, fghting and form-
ing various alliances. Robinson (photo at right) spoke with Wild West about her work.
N
11A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
12 W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 4
A Touch of Sash
WESTERNERS
In the 1993 Western film Tombstone the bad guys (the Cowboys) are easily identifiable, though not all wear black hats. Instead, they wear red sashes. Most experts agree this assist to the moviegoer was not true to history. But that famously stylish gunfighter to the north, Wild Bill Hickok, reportedly did tie on a red sash as part of his Sunday best. Farther north, in Canada, MŽtis men (descendants of French Canadians and First Nation people) wore woven red sashes as part of their regular attire. Three of the four men in this photograph (date and location unknown) wear holstered Colt Single Action Army revolvers, introduced in the early 1870s, while the man second from right sports a sash. Author Lee Silva says the four ill-fitting hats might have been props supplied by the photographer to Òwannabe cowboy customers,Ó though the four ÒdudesÓ probably showed up at the photo studio wearing their own boots. As for the sashÑat least one poser thought it a realistic touch. (Photo: Courtesy Lee A. Silva)
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olonel Ranald S. Mackenzie
drove his 4th U.S. Cavalry
from Fort Concho north into
the Texas Caprock in August
1874, commanding three of
fve columns the Army felded to corner
renegade Kiowas and Comanches. With
Mackenzie were some of the best scouts
on the southern Plains—Tonkawas and
Lipan Apaches from Fort Griffn.
Men from both tribes had long served
as scouts for the Army and the Texas
Rangers. Following a massacre of their
people by Comanches and other tribes
early in the Civil War, the Tonkawas had
moved from fort to fort, settling at Fort
Griffn in 1868. Lieutenant Richard Henry
Pratt, who would later found Carlisle
Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania,
shaped the demoralized Tonkawas into
an effective trailing and fghting force.
The Lipans and Tonkawas had been
allied for decades, especially after Li-
pans rescued their Tonkawa friends from
Texas colonists bent on wiping them out.
In 1873, when Mackenzie raided Apache
and Kickapoo camps in Mexico, captured
Lipans asked to join the Tonkawas at
Fort Griffn and also serve as scouts. “The
Lapans [sic] are anxious to come to this
point to settle down with the Tonkawas
and to be at peace with the military,”
wrote Captain John W. Clous. “To ac-
complish all this, they claim the good
office of [Chief] Castile and his tribe,
who are the friends of the whites and
who by their friendship are in good cir-
cumstances, while the Lapans are poor.”
When the Lipans arrived in 1874, they
erected seven tepees in a pecan grove on
Collins Creek, west of the fort. On en-
listment the scouts were given English
names but still painted themselves red
and yellow. They were tall, 5-foot-8 or
more, with the scout sergeant, known to
the white men only as Johnson, brushing
6 feet. Scouting allowed them to fight
their old enemies, the Comanches. Mack-
enzie had a high opinion of the Fort Grif-
fn scouts and considered them essential
to any campaign in the Texas Panhandle.
Some claimed Johnson was half Mexi-
can, but the most reliable sources, in-
cluding Mackenzie himself, said John-
son had a Tonkawa father and Lipan
mother; in Apache tradition that made
him a Lipan. He had been living with the
Tonkawas, but in 1873 he became a Lipan
headman. Johnson trained the boys of
the tribe to become warriors. Carrying
a whip, he made them jump in the river,
even if they had to cut a hole in the ice.
The Red River War, pitting Comanche,
Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne and Southern
Arapaho warriors against the U.S. Army,
began in June 1874. The hostile tribes
usually evaded the troops, which aggra-
vated the impatient, impulsive Macken-
zie. The colonel learned on September 20
that many of the enemy had moved north
into the Palo Duro Canyon area and sent
the reliable Johnson to locate the camp.
Two days later Johnson returned, an-
nouncing the enemy was at hand.
Troops threaded the canyon trails
leading to Palo Duro, whose amber-
and rust-colored walls sheltered five
camps comprising hundreds of lodges.
On September 28, with scouts in the
lead, Mackenzie’s men scrambled down
900 feet to the canyon foor. Some of the
Tonkawa women, angry at the Coman-
ches, fought alongside their husbands.
After routing the renegade Indians and
capturing their herd of some 1,400 horses,
the troops burned the camps.
14
The Trusted Lipan Apache Scout Johnson Helped Colonel Mackenzie Find the Enemy
He and other Lipans and Tonkawas worked against the Comanches By Sherry Robinson
IND IAN L I F E
C
W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 4
As a scout sergeant, Johnson could seek
vengeance against Comanche enemies.
Johnson wanted to marry Ida Creaton, but
her brother would not permit the match.
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15a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
Mackenzie gave Johnson his choice of
40 horses to reward his discovery and let
the other scouts choose horses. The sol-
diers then shot the remaining horses to
keep the enemy afoot. The Battle of Palo
Duro claimed few lives but left the rene-
gade tribes destitute, forcing them to
straggle into the Fort Sill reservation (in
what was then Indian Territory and is
now Oklahoma) in coming months.
Johnson’s new wealth may have in-
spired thoughts of matrimony. He had
befriended the Creaton family and, dur-
ing frequent visits to their home in the
town of Fort Griffn (adjacent to the fort),
had become enamored of Ida Creaton.
One Sunday afternoon Johnson, dressed
in a suit, paid a call. In 1928 the Dallas
Morning News described the visit:
Johnson offered John Creaton 20 ponies
for his sister, saying, “She make much
pretty squaw.”
Creaton said Ida wasn’t for sale: “We
need her here. She don’t want to marry.”
Johnson argued, “Twenty ponies big
lot for one wife.”
The answer was still no. A few weeks
later an inebriated Johnson lunged at
John Creaton, who struck the scout ser-
geant on the chin and carried him to the
fort to cool off in the guardhouse.
Misinformation aside (Lipans didn’t
buy their wives but did offer generous
gifts to prospective in-laws), we might
dismiss this yarn altogether if not for an
archived portrait of Johnson and Ida; the
two struck a standard pose for husband
and wife, which tells us Ida did have
a relationship with the tall, handsome
Johnson. Her family probably objected.
Despite the scouts’ good work in the
Red River campaign, the Indians at Fort
Griffn faced starvation after an 1874 gov-
ernment order halted rations to them.
The Interior Department, however, au-
thorized $375 in 1875 to buy cows and
goats for the 119 Tonkawas and 26 Li-
pans, “whose condition,” according to
Lt. Col. George P. Buell, “ is so deplor-
able that something should be done for
them.” Buell also sent scouts out under
the protection of troops to hunt buffalo.
Johnson saw action again in spring
1877, after a small group of Comanches
left Indian Territory to hunt in Texas and
engaged in a bloody scrap with buffalo
hunters. Captain Phillip L. Lee, com-
mander at Fort Griffin, had orders to
return them to the reservation. In early
May, Johnson learned the Comanches
were camped at Silver (aka Quemado)
Lake. The soldiers reached the camp at
sunrise on May 4. Lee split his forces to
approach from the south and north. The
Comanches scrambled for their horses
as the soldiers attacked. In the brief fght
four Comanches and one soldier died. It
was the last fght for troops at Fort Griffn.
Captain Javan B. Irvine, post com-
mander and acting agent, pleaded in
1879 for supplies for his scouts. His pre-
decessor had reduced the already small
ration by a third to stretch supplies over
the fiscal year, and he was running out
of funds. He noted that even a casual
observer could see that they were “in a
destitute, starving condition.”
One rancher allowed the scouts’ fami-
lies to plant on his land and even took
them hunting. They earned a little money
selling pecans to the local mercantile.
Irvine suggested buying or leasing land
for them. The government wanted to
move both groups to Indian Territory,
but Johnson and the other headmen
objected. They were born in Texas and
had lived there in peace, they argued.
The Fort Griffin scouts got a reprieve
in 1880, when they served during the
final outbreak of Victorio, chief of the
Warm Springs Apaches in New Mexico
Territory. After returning, they helped
a sheriff’s posse now and then but had
no other work, and drought destroyed
their crops. Still they hung on.
Most frontier towns loathed their In-
dian neighbors, but not Fort Griffin. In
1881 citizens sent a memorial to the
state legislature noting that the Tonka-
was’ “sacrifce in fghting for whites” had
earned them the hatred of other tribes,
and that exposure and war had further
reduced them. They asked legislators to
buy at least 3,000 acres, appoint an agent,
build comfortable quarters, buy farm
tools, and provide food and clothing for
two years. “This is a step that should have
been taken long ago,” the petition stated.
Two months later, with the fort soon
to be abandoned, the Fort Griffin Echo
spoke up for the Tonkawas:
The Tonkawas have lived in Texas many
years, they look upon Texas as their home,
and they have no desire to leave it; on the
contrary, they dare not go where any of
the wild tribes can get at them, for then
there would be no Tonkawas left after the
battle which would certainly follow.
In October 1884 the Tonkawas and Li-
pans left Texas and eventually settled on
the vacated Nez Perce reservation in
Indian Territory. Around 1892 disease
did to Johnson, the valiant old scout ser-
geant, what bullets couldn’t. Tonkawas
absorbed the Lipan remnant, but Lipan
descendants among the Tonkawas still
visit relatives at the Mescalero Reser-
vation in New Mexico.
Remnants of the outpost remain at the Fort Griffn State Historic Site near Albany, Texas.
sh
ER
RY
Ro
BIn
so
n p
ho
to
eth Eastman was a cartogra-
pher who taught mapmaking
at West Point, while his own
career was all over the map.
Eastman was an expert on the
Dakotas and other Indian tribes, but he
abandoned his Indian wife, whose de-
scendants through their only daughter
were among the most notable Indians
of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
He was a Union general during the Civil
War—though his second wife had writ-
ten a best seller that defended slavery by
attacking Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle
Tom’s Cabin. Contemporaries described
Eastman as an accomplished artist
whose rather gentle paintings treated
Indian culture with respect and affec-
tion; yet one of his best known paint-
ings was later excised from the halls of
Congress as racist propaganda. His life
was as full of contradictions as the new
American nation itself.
The frst American Eastman was Roger,
a carpenter who arrived in 1638, in the
generation before King Philip’s War, and
died in 1694. Roger’s descendant Robert,
described as a “gentleman devoted to
scientifc pursuits and possessing much
talent as an inventor,” had hoped his
firstborn son Seth, born in Brunswick,
Maine, on January 24, 1808, would at-
tend Bowdoin College. Instead, Seth, the
eldest of 13 children, entered the new
U.S. Military Academy at West Point,
N.Y., at age 16 in July 1824. He studied
engineering and art—central to map-
making—and graduated in 1829 with a
second lieutenant’s commission in the
1st U.S. Infantry. First sent to remote
Fort Crawford (near Prairie du Chien,
Wis.), then being rebuilt of native rock by
Zachary Taylor, he was soon transferred
north to Fort Snelling, the northernmost
outpost of the new United States, facing
British-held Canada. Constructed on
bluffs near the confluence of the Mis-
souri and Mississippi rivers, Fort Snelling
was a regular castle, with a stone round
tower straight from the Middle Ages and
a garrison that quartered as many as 24
offcers and 300 enlisted men. It stood as
a peacekeeping bastion between the
lands of the Dakotas (or Santee Sioux)
and Ojibwas (Chippewas or Anishi-
nabes). Explorer Zebulon Pike had pur-
chased the site and 100,000 adjoining
acres in 1805 from Dakota warriors.
The 1830s were the era of novelist Sir
Walter Scott, and living in a castle, East-
man must have related to Scott’s pro-
tagonist Ivanhoe, whose exotic love of
the Jewish heroine Rebecca—based, ac-
cording to some experts, on real-life
heiress-intellectual Rebecca Gratz of
Philadelphia—rekindled the Romantic
fascination with “Princess” Pocahontas,
another exotic beauty. Eastman fulflled
his role as a Romantic by formally mar-
rying Stands Sacred (Wakan Inajin Win),
a 15-year-old Dakota girl whose father
was a chief known as Cloud Man. Prob-
ably from Stands Sacred, or her rela-
tives, Seth learned to speak passable
Dakota and to appreciate the culture
of the Dakotas. Eastman’s paintings of
Indians—with one notorious exception
—portray them sympathetically, mostly
in peaceful activities, as in Rice Gatherers
or Chippewa Playing Checkers.
When Eastman was reassigned to
West Point in 1832, the marriage ended,
though Stands Sacred had already borne
a child named Winona (First Girl). Stands
Sacred might have wanted to stay with
her relatives, though perhaps someone
had whispered to Eastman that Poca-
hontas had died after contracting dis-
ease in white society, or that being for-
mally married to an Indian woman was
a poor career move. Winona, raised by
her abandoned mother and Dakota rela-
tives, married and had five children of
her own. Her husband, Wakanhdi Ota
(Many Lightnings), was a full-blooded
Dakota and warrior in the Great Sioux
Uprising of 1862 who later converted to
Christianity. Their oldest son became
the Rev. John Eastman, a Presbyterian
minister. Another son, Hakadah (Pitiful
Last, because his mother died at his
birth), was rescued from abandonment
by his grandmother Stands Sacred. Ha-
kadah was renamed Ohiyesa (Winner)
and later still became Dr. Charles East-
man, a graduate of Dartmouth College
and Boston University medical school, a
major force in both the YMCA and the
Boy Scouts, and an author whose books
on Indian life remain in print.
In 1835 Seth Eastman married Mary
Henderson, the 17-year-old daughter of
16
Once Married to an Indian, Seth Eastman Wed a White Gal and Painted Death Whoop
The controversial painting shows a Dakota lifting an enemy’s scalp By John Koster
PIONEERS AND SETTLERS
W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
S
Seth Eastman was a soldier and an artist.
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a surgeon at the Military Academy. The
Hendersons stemmed from the First
Families of Virginia, who were slave-
holders. But Mary, too, was fascinated by
Indian life, and when Seth was promoted
to brigadier general and appointed com-
mander of Fort Snelling in 1841, Mary
went with him to write a book that be-
came Dacotah, or Life and Legends of
the Sioux Around Fort Snelling.
Mary Eastman’s book perhaps wish-
fully incorporates the legend of the death
of the lovelorn Princess Winona—though
both Seth’s daughter, Winona Eastman,
and former wife, Stands Sacred, were still
living at the time of publication in 1849.
The tone of Mary’s books, however, is
sympathetic to Indians, and Seth’s illus-
trations for her books are also humane—
with one exception: Death Whoop.
Seth Eastman’s health had slumped
during a posting to Texas after leaving
Fort Snelling. He pulled strings to get a
transfer east “to the duty of painting.”
Through his and Mary’s persistence he
was able to finagle a government com-
mission to illustrate Henry Rowe School-
craft’s multivolume study of North
American Indian tribes. One of his key
illustrations was Death Whoop, a melo-
dramatic portrayal of a Dakota warrior
ululating as he scalps a fallen enemy.
Art curator Felicia Wivchar of the U.S.
House of Representatives says Death
Whoop first appeared in the 1851 vol-
ume The American Aboriginal Portfolio
—by Mary Henderson Eastman.
“Every nerve in his body is thrilling with
joy,” Mary wrote of the Dakota warrior.
“His bloodstained knife he grasps with
one hand, while high in the other he holds
the crimson and still warm scalp.…Right
joyfully falls upon his ear the return of his
death-whoop; it is the triumph for his vic-
tory, and the death song for his foe.” The
anthropology is a bit skewed—a “death
song” is sung by a dying person, not by
one about to kill—but the image caught
on so mightily that Death Whoop, the
least typical of Eastman’s Indian paint-
ings, appeared as the title illustration for
fve out of six of Schoolcraft’s volumes.
Having artistically, perhaps, disowned
his former in-laws, Seth next saw Mary
pen an attack on Uncle Tom’s Cabin
called Aunt Phillis’s Cabin, or Southern
Life As It Is, in which she defended slav-
ery as benefcial to the slaves. The 1852
publication sold between 20,000 and
30,000 copies. Abolitionists remained
more impressed with the works of Har-
riet Beecher Stowe or Frederick Douglass.
In 1867 the U.S. House Committee on
Indian Affairs commissioned Seth East-
man to depict nine scenes of Indian life
for display in the Capitol. One of the
paintings was an oil version of Death
Whoop. The painting hung in the Capi-
tol until 1987, when U.S. Rep. Ben Night-
horse Campbell, a Cheyenne from Col-
orado, said he found Death Whoop in-
sulting and depressing. Campbell added
that none of the other Capitol art de-
picted either African slavery or Japa-
nese-American relocation during World
War II, and he felt Death Whoop was the
only work defamatory to a significant
American minority group. “If it offends
you, it offends me,” concurred commit-
tee chairman Rep. Morris Udall of Utah,
and the painting came down.
Death Whoop—which may have been
removed and replaced once before in
the 1940s—returned to a Capitol hear-
ing room in 1995, when the curator at
the time sought to restore the integrity
of the historically signifcant collection.
But down it came again in 2007. It hasn’t
reappeared since, though Eastman’s
more benign paintings of Indian life are
regarded as Western classics, and his Ro-
mantic landscapes of the Hudson Valley
near West Point are widely appreciated.
During the Campbell push to remove
the gory painting in 1987, Udall told
Campbell that Frank Ducheneaux, a
Lakota attorney and counsel to the com-
mittee, had told him Death Whoop was
one of his favorite paintings. “He’s a
Sioux,” Campbell reportedly replied. “In
that part of the country some of them
haven’t given up yet.”
A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
Eastman’s Death Whoop was a cut above his other works in terms of gruesomeness.
18 W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 4
s the mining camp of Tellu-
ride on the western slope of
the Colorado Rockies boomed
in the 1880s, the usual assort-
ment of crooked gamblers,
muggers, stickup men and rogues of all
sorts descended on it. The town fathers
needed a tough fighting man as city
marshal. In 1888 they turned to Jim
Clark, a big, burly 47-year-old with a
wide reputation as a formidable fight-
ing man with fsts or guns.
Clark had no previous experience as
a lawman but plenty of experience with
the lawless class. Born in Missouri’s Clay
County in 1841, James Clark was still
quite young when his father died pre-
maturely and his mother married a man
named Cummings. The young man
rejected his stepfather’s name and re-
tained the surname “Clark.” As a teen he
also showed little respect for the prop-
erty rights of his stepfather, stealing one
of his mules and heading for the wilds
of Texas with a boyhood friend. In San
Antonio he and his pal sold the mule and
bought six-shooters, new clothes and
boots that a contemporary described as
“high top...with stars on the front.” The
clothes and boots would wear out over
the years, but the six-shooter would be
a part of Clark’s apparel the rest of his
life. Brandishing his new weapon, Clark
committed his second felony, relieving
a rancher outside San Antonio of $1,400.
When he returned to Clay County, his
mother abetted in his crimes by con-
cealing the ill-gotten cash for him, but
his stepfather never spoke to him again.
Tradition has it a schoolteacher named
William Quantrill boarded at the Clark
home and became quite friendly with
young Jim Clark. When the Civil War
broke out, Quantrill enlisted into his
Confederate guerrilla band this 20-year-
old admirer who had grown into a big,
broad-shouldered bear of a man and a
crack shot with pistol or rife. Clark later
claimed he was a favored lieutenant of
the infamous partisan leader and con-
ducted secret missions for him. Later
newspaper editors accepted this fction
and added, with no reliable evidence,
that during the war and subsequent ban-
A Formidable Fighting Man, Jim Clark Served as Marshal of Telluride, Colorado
Bad behavior cost him the job, but he later got back his badge By R.K. DeArment
A
Jim Clark had plenty of experience on the wrong side of the law before being elected town marshal of Telluride, Colo., above.
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GUNFIGHTERS AND LAWMEN
19a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
dit period Clark rode with the outlaw
gang of fellow Quantrill partisans the
James and Younger brothers, killing
more than a score of men. The same
journalists reported Clark also found
time to serve as a government scout
and Indian fghter.
Clark may well have fought as a Con-
federate guerrilla during the war, for
in later years he made no secret of his
deep-seated Southern sympathies, but
historians recording the activities of
Quantrill, the James boys and the Youn-
ger brothers, both during and after
the conflict, have found no mention of
Clark’s participation. Newsmen evidently
confused the name Cummings, the sur-
name of Clark’s stepfather and mother,
with the history of a well-documented
veteran of the guerrillas and the James
gang named Jim Cummins.
Other contemporary newspaper ac-
counts claimed Clark participated in
stagecoach robberies in the Black Hills
in the 1870s, but his name hasn’t turned
up in histories of that period.
How Jim Clark spent the years be-
tween the end of the war and his 1887
appearance in Telluride, Colo. remains
a mystery. By the time he showed up in
that mining boomtown, however, he
was reckoned, as the papers noted, a
gunman of the first order, “one of the
best shots in the world.” He frst took a
menial job as a ditchdigger, bending his
powerful back to excavate for a pipe-
line into town. But when he noticed the
town peace officers seemed incapable
of controlling the rowdies and toughs
terrorizing the citizenry, he strode into
the mayor’s offce and said, “If you give
me a special appointment as a police-
man or special deputy I will arrest those
fellows for you.” Presented with a badge,
he marched out into the street and be-
gan collecting troublemakers, cracking
them over the head with his six-shooter
and dragging them to the hoosegow. Im-
pressed that Clark had restored order
without firing a shot, the city fathers
promptly dismissed the city marshal
and installed Clark in the office until
voters confirmed their decision in a
special July 1888 election.
One veteran of Telluride’s early years
recollected: “I remember Jim Clark, the
town marshal. He was a good marshal,
but he was a very brutal man. He knew
he had lots of enemies, so he kept a
Winchester rifle in each of four stores
just to have one handy in a hurry, and
he carried two guns in his pants. He
was a dead shot and kept in practice
by shooting out the letters in the signs
on the Lone Tree Cemetery fence.” An-
other old-timer, son of a Telluride store-
keeper, related how Clark served as a
bill collector for his father. “A lot of Cor-
nish miners traded at our store, and
when they owed us money, they’d duck
away from it as they came by. My father
would tell Jim who they were, and he’d
walk around town and spot them when
they were drinking or gambling. All he
had to do was tap them on the shoul-
der and mention father’s name, and
they’d hotfoot it to the store and pay up.
Jim used to come in the store whenever
he wanted a hat, and he never paid for
one either. I guess he thought he was
entitled to them.”
Cyrus Wells “Doc” Shores, sheriff of
Colorado’s Gunnison County, frst met
Jim Clark during the winter of 1888–89
and described him as “a large, effcient-
looking brown-eyed man with a dark
mustache.” He was, said Shores, “sort
of a legendary figure.…I had heard,
among other things, that he was a
great fighting man, and physically a
strong man—in fact a real fighter with
a gun or any other way.” Clark was,
Shores admitted, an impressive figure
of a lawman, but he had also heard
that he had ridden with the likes of
Quantrill and the James boys. Worse,
it was suspected he still “stood in” with
outlaws, tipping road agents to gold
shipments by stagecoach to enable
lucrative holdups and then sharing
in the proceeds.
On June 24, 1889, three men held up
the Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride,
making off with $20,750. The three were
identifed as Tom McCarty, Matt Warner
and a 23-year-old cowboy named Robert
LeRoy Parker, later to become legendary
under the alias “Butch Cassidy.” Marshal
Clark was conspicuously out of town
when the stickup occurred, and it was
widely believed he was complicit in the
crime and a recipient of part of the loot.
Such suspicions, compounded by his
frequent violent outbursts of temper
and brutal treatment of arrestees, lost
him his job. A man named A.M. McDon-
ald replaced him as city marshal.
Clark went to Leadville where he re-
mained several years, working in the
mines and frequently giving vent to his
violent temper. One of these outbursts
almost cost him his life. On Christmas
Eve 1889 he got into an altercation with
Mike McGreavey, who pulled a pistol,
pushed the muzzle into Clark’s stomach
and eared back the hammer. But as he
pulled the trigger, a bystander knocked
down his arm, and the bullet went into
Clark’s leg instead of his gut.
Clark worked for a time as a detec-
tive for the Denver & Rio Grande Ex-
press Co., but by 1893 the ruffan crowd
had again taken over Telluride, and city
offcials called him back as city marshal.
He served in that capacity until the night
of August 6, 1895, when an unseen and
never identified assassin gunned him
down on the streets of Telluride. Ironi-
cally, the man who had fought for the
Confederacy and always espoused the
“Lost Cause” was buried in the Grand
Army of the Republic section of Tellu-
ride’s Lone Tree Cemetery.
When killed in 1895, Clark, above, was
packing this Allen & Wheelock revolver.
he year was 1889, and L.L.
Nunn had a problem. He was
manager of the Gold King
mine, a few miles south of
Telluride, Colorado. The Gold
King sat at 12,000 feet, and operating
costs of $2,500 per month were pushing
it into bankruptcy. But Nunn had a plan,
one that would use a controversial new
technology and help transform energy
use worldwide.
Born in 1853 into a large Medina, Ohio,
farming family to parents who encour-
aged education, Lucien Lucius Nunn
kept studying whether in school or not.
He attended classes at the Cleveland
Academy and studied law in Germany
and at Harvard before heading west
in 1880 to seek his fortune. In Leadville,
Colo., he and business partner Malachi
Kinney opened a fancy restaurant called
the Pacific Grotto, which failed almost
immediately. Nunn and Kinney moved
to Durango, Colo., and opened another
Pacifc Grotto, but they failed again.
The pair had planned to move next
to Tombstone, Arizona Territory, but
stories of Apache attacks in the area
convinced them to stay in Colorado.
Although just 5-foot-1 and 115 pounds,
Nunn was known for his physical stam-
ina. In 1881 Nunn and Kinney walked
some 70 miles from Durango to Tellu-
ride, where they found work as carpen-
ters. Carpentry proved more lucrative
than the restaurant business—they built
the first bathtub in town, lined with
zinc, and ultimately rented it to miners
—but Nunn continued to study law and
in 1882 was admitted to the bar. His legal
practice concentrated on mining law,
and he invested in area mines as well
as real estate. Nunn’s businesses pros-
pered, and by 1888 he had acquired con-
trolling interest in the San Miguel Valley
Bank and become manager of the Gold
King and other mining properties.
Ore at the Gold King had to be milled
to concentrate the mineral values be-
fore shipment. The problem was fuel to
power the mill. Mining operations in the
district had already stripped the slopes
at higher elevations of trees for fuel and
mine timbers, and hauling in coal by
mule train was breaking the budget.
Nunn was a progressive man who read
voraciously. He knew about the “battle
of the electric currents” raging between
Thomas Edison, committed to direct
current, and George Westinghouse,
proponent of alternating current, aided
by former Edison engineer Nikola Tesla.
The fght to control the distribution of
electric power could not have been more
vicious. Edison backhandedly promoted
the use of “more lethal” alternating cur-
rent for executions by electric chair,
which he called “Westinghousing,” even
as Tesla gave almost magical demonstra-
tions of AC passing harmlessly through
his body to illuminate lightbulbs. While
direct current worked well for lighting,
DC generators could not send suffcient
current long distances. Although un-
proven, alternating current could theo-
retically deliver power to locations far
from its generating plant and might be
just what Nunn needed to power his mill.
Nunn contacted George Westinghouse
and had him supply a single-phase 100-
horsepower generating plant and Tesla-
designed synchronous motor to drive
his stamp mill. A 6-foot Pelton water im-
pulse turbine would drive the generator.
The equipment began arriving in mid-
1890, and Nunn’s brother Paul, a talented
engineer, supervised construction.
Few engineers knew much about alter-
nating current at that time, so L.L. Nunn
hired a number of promising young en-
gineering students and offered them
specialized training, a modest salary and
room and board in return for hard work
L.L. Nunn Made His Mine ProftableBy Running His Mill With AC Power
The Coloradan also educated engineers on the new technology By Jim Pettengill
WESTERN ENTERPRISE
T
W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 420
L.L. Nunn used an AC generator at his Ames plant, right, to power the Gold King mill.
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and innovative thinking. This work-study
program became known as the Tellu-
ride Institute. Nunn reportedly tracked
the locations of the students with pins
in a map in his front hallway, thus the
students became known as pinheads.
By spring 1891 the plant was nearing
completion at the small settlement of
Ames, 2.6 miles from the Gold King and
3,000 feet lower in elevation. On June 19
a small group of workers gathered to
watch as Nunn threw a switch to put the
plant online. A 6-foot electric arc snapped
across the small control room, and the
motor at the remote Gold King surged
into action. The moment marked the
world’s frst commercial transmission of
AC current for industrial use. The plant
produced 3,000 volts at 133 Hertz and
ran fawlessly for 30 days. After a routine
inspection it was returned to regular ser-
vice. Gold King’s operating costs imme-
diately dropped from $2,500 per month to
just $500. The mine was turning a proft.
In 1892 Westinghouse engineer Charles
Scott announced that the Ames plant had
lost less than 48 hours of planned oper-
ating time over three-quarters of a year of
operation, despite the trying operating
conditions and severe weather, and that
service was being expanded to other area
mines. Nunn’s plant in the remote moun-
tains of southwest Colorado had proved
the practicality of AC power.
Within a year Nunn had extended AC
power to several other mines and con-
verted Telluride, Colo., to the new form
of power after a legal struggle with the
existing DC company. Each year saw
more pinheads graduate from the Tellu-
ride Institute, many going on to com-
plete degree pro-
grams at Cornell.
In 1896 the Nunn
brothers formed
the Telluride Pow-
er Co. and installed
upgraded machin-
ery in the Ames
plant. Nunn ex-
panded into Utah
in 1897, building
a plant at Provo
Canyon with a line
that carried 44,000
volts and trans-
mitted power 32 miles to the mines at
Mercur. He later expanded Telluride
Institute to the Provo plant.
The Nunn brothers opened AC plants
in Montana, Idaho, Mexico and, in 1905,
on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls for
the Ontario Power Co. In 1906 Nunn had
a new stone powerhouse built at Ames,
and its 1904 General Electric generator
with twin Pelton wheels continues to
produce power for today’s electrical grid.
Nunn’s educational efforts also thrived,
highlighted by construction of Telluride
House at Cornell University, which pro-
vided free room and board to promising
male engineering students. In 1917 he
established Deep Springs College in Cal-
ifornia for young men willing to do hard
physical work and to study intensely.
Despite his outward energy and suc-
cess, Nunn paid a price for his hard work.
He regularly drove himself to work 20-
hour days and suffered periods of deep
depression. Clandestinely homosexual
in a time when society would have reviled
him for such a disclosure, he despaired
at the inability to have a relationship.
Although diagnosed with tuberculosis
in 1910, he maintained his schedule, his
philanthropic educational foundations
and his dignity in the community.
L.L. Nunn died at age 72 in California
on April 2, 1925, leaving a legacy few can
match. Alternating current has become
the dominant electrical system world-
wide. Telluride House at Cornell, Deep
Springs College and the Telluride Associ-
ation, which developed from the Telluride
Institute, continue to help gifted students.
And the tiny Ames powerhouse that Nunn
built still stands in Colorado.
21a p r I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
Nunn’s 1906 stone powerhouse at Ames continues to operate.
ww
w.c
olo
ra
do
pa
st
.co
m
www.duderanch.org
1-866-399-2339
& Western Museum
Preserving and Protecting
Dude Ranches and
Their History Since 1926.
OriginalWesternVacation
The
he naja—an inverted cres-
cent—is an iconic shape pres-
ent in Navajo jewelry since the
mid-1800s. And it was that tra-
dition that led Dennis Hogan,
a silver, turquoise and leather artist in
Santa Fe, New Mexico, to create a series
of tufa-cast, hand-forged najas of silver
and turquoise. “I was just fascinated with
it, because it’s just one of those great,
archetypical designs,” explains Hogan.
“I love the history behind the naja.” But
while many believe the naja a true
Navajo design—consider the squash
blossom necklaces that dominated the
Southwestern jewelry scene in the 1970s
—Hogan believes the design is much
older. “I don’t think we can put any
ownership to the design,” the artist says.
It is known that Spanish Moors added
crescent-shaped pendants to their
horses’ bridles to ward off evil spirits.
And when conquistadores arrived in the
Southwest, the Kiowas, the Utes and the
Navajos soon picked up on the design.
When the latter began silversmithing in
the 1860s, they incorporated the naja.
“The Navajos adapted a lot,” Hogan says.
So has Hogan. Reared and educated in
Indiana, Hogan shucked a career as a f-
nancial planner and the Midwest lifestyle
in 1996 to become a “corporate dropout,
almost a society dropout,”in New Mexico.
“I studied painting at DePauw Univer-
sity,” he says, “and always enjoyed the
Western landscape.” He first landed in
Abiquiú, N.M.—Georgia O’Keeffe coun-
try—and tried his hand at fne-art paint-
ing. Then he met Charlie Favour [www
.charliefavour.com], who taught him the
art of braiding leather. Before long Ho-
gan was making a name for himself as a
leatherworker. He still does leatherwork,
and his silver and turquoise pieces often
incorporate hand-braided Italian leather.
Hogan’s love of history then led him in
another direction. “I became interested in
the history of early Southwestern art and
admired the jewelry of early native silver-
smiths working long before commercial
production,” he explains. Once again
he adapted. Having learned such classic
methods as tufa casting and hammering
ingot silver, Hogan creates his jewelry
using late 19th-century techniques.
“Silver became my canvas,” he says,
“and hammering became my process.”
Upscale stores such as Garland’s Indian
Jewelry [www.garlandsjewelry.com] in
Sedona, Ariz., and Ortega’s on the Plaza
[www.ortegasontheplaza.com] in Santa
Fe carry his creations. The Sundance
catalog [www.sundancecatalog.com]
has showcased his works, and he has de-
signed logo-branded jewelry for the non-
proft Western Writers of America. “I’m
just interested in history and Southwest-
ern art,” he says. “Jewelry has allowed me
to combine those passions.”
Visit www.dennishoganjewelry.com.
Santa Fe Silversmith Dennis HoganCrafts Modern Jewelry With History
The corporate dropout learned classic 19th-century techniques By Johnny D. Boggs
ART OF THE WEST
TIm
ag
es
: c
ou
rt
es
y o
f d
en
nIs
Ho
ga
n
Here are two of Dennis Hogan’s tufa-cast, hand-forged najas with Royston turquoise.
Hogan’s Western Writers of America bolo.
22 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
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imple words, and who would even imagine doing
such a thing? But for Joseph, chief of the Wallowa
band of Nez Perce Indians, they had great mean-
ing when his father shared them. Joseph had seen
the white people come into his land with their
canvas-topped wagons, and he had seen an erosion of tribal
lands in the Columbia Basin when Washington Territorial
Governor Isaac I. Stevens, who doubled as territorial super-
intendent of Indian Affairs, conducted a treaty council in
1855. The chief knew that the men and women traveling
to the West—particularly those coming into the region long
used by the Nez Perces, Cayuses, Umatillas, Wanapums and
Palouses—would want more territory.
As Joseph’s father lay near death in 1871, his eyes clouded
with age, he told the son who shared his name: “My son, my
body is returning to my mother earth; my spirit is going very
soon to see the Great Spirit Chief. When I am gone, think of
your country. You are chief of these people. They look to you
to guide them. Always remember that your father never sold
his country. You must stop your ears whenever you are asked
to sign a treaty selling your home. A few years more and white
men will be all around you. They have their eyes on this land.”
These fnal instructions for the young man who would step
into his father’s shoes upon his death went deep into his heart
and became the guiding principle for the remainder of his life.
Chief Joseph is most remembered for his surrender state-
ment to federal troops commanded by Brig. Gen. Oliver O.
Howard and Colonel Nelson A. Miles at the Bear’s Paw (or Bear
Paw) battlefeld in northern Montana Territory in 1877: “I am
tired of fghting.…Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart
is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight
no more forever.” But this man who had been fghting for the
rights of his tribe for more than a decade would not rest for
the next quarter century in his desire to return to the Nez Perce
land of his youth—the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon.
What had brought Chief Joseph and the Nez Perces to that
windswept battlefeld in north-central Montana? And what
would Chief Joseph do in surrender?
Famous for vowing, ‘I will fght no more forever,’ the Nez Perce leader never gave up the fght to return to his homeland in Oregon’s Wallowa Valley
By Candy Moulton
24 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
th
e g
re
en
wic
h w
or
ks
ho
p,
se
ym
ou
r,
co
nn
.
‘Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.’
25a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
he Nez Perces alternately call themselves the Nimí-
ipuu (“The People”) and Iceyéeyenim mamáy’ac
(“Children of the Coyote”). Once they had acquired
horses, sometime in the early 1700s, they separated
into bands that ranged through the Columbia Basin from the
central and northern mountains of what would become Idaho
and western Montana to the valleys of what would become
northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. Born in
early 1840, Joseph spent much time at the Christian mission
in Lapwai (in present-day Idaho), was baptized, learned to
speak English and studied the Bible until age 7 when his
father, in anger over treaty terms, withdrew from Christian
infuence and reverted to the Nez Perce “Dreamer” faith, in
which men and women lived from the bounty of the land,
roamed freely throughout their territory and received guid-
ance from spiritual visions. When he was around 11 years old,
Joseph, following tradition in his tribe, went on a vision quest.
By the time he returned to his village, he had received a spirit
helper who gave him a song and power related to thunder,
thus his name Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (roughly translated
as “Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain”).
Fifteen-year-old Joseph rode with his father in 1855 to the
council near the Walla Walla River organized by Governor
Stevens in Washington Territory and Joel Palmer, superin-
tendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon Territory. There he wit-
nessed the first erosion of Columbia Basin Indian country
and sovereign rule. “After the council was opened,” Joseph
recalled some years later, “[Stevens] made known his heart.
He said there were a great many white people in the country,
and many more would come.”
Accompanied by five of his
cold and tired fellow Nez
Perce tribesmen, Chief Joseph
Rides to Surrender, in an 1982
painting by Howard Terpning.
“I think you intend to win our country,” Walla Walla head-
man Yellow Bird (or Yellow Serpent) told white offcials. Palm-
er said the treaty would protect the Indians from those “whose
hearts are bad” who were scheming “to get your horses.”
Yellow Bird knew that Stevens, who was survey leader for a
northern railroad route across the country, clearly wanted the
Indian land cessions to aid the project. In the end, while other
tribes saw erosion of their territories, the Nez Perces retained
most of their lands, including the Wallowa Valley. Old Joseph,
satisfed he still controlled the homeland, scrawled an awk-
ward X on the treaty beside his name. Returning to the valley,
he promptly found a piece
of parchment 16 inches wide
by 18 inches long and drew a
map of his territory.
By 1863 young Joseph stood
nearly 6 feet and weighed
more than 200 pounds. He
was strong and handsome.
He parted his hair on the
right, twisting it into braids,
and swept his pompadour
up and to the left, sometimes
coating it with white powder
to make it more prominent.
Already he was stepping in his
father’s tracks as spokesman
for the Wallowa band.
That year the Nez Perces
gathered at Lapwai in anoth-
er council with federal Indi-
an Affairs representatives to
work out an agreement that
would halt the march of
white settlers and miners
onto their lands. The coun-
cil document, which became
known among the Nez Perces
as the “Thief Treaty,” led to
the permanent fracturing of
Nez Perce power.
Twenty-three-year-old Joseph rode with his father, his 20-
year-old brother, Ollokot, and others from the Wallowa band
to the treaty grounds, where they intended to make it clear
that whites on Nez Perce land must leave. Although no
settlers or miners had yet encroached upon the isolated
Wallowa Valley, Joseph and his companions supported the
other Nez Perce bands on whose land whites were already
building cabins and tearing the ground as they dug for gold.
From the moment the council opened, the Nez Perce
Dreamers faced trouble. White negotiators proposed trim-
ming the reservation from nearly 12,000 square miles to less
than 1,200 square miles, a reduction that included all of the
Wallowa band’s territory. But the headmen had behind them
some 3,000 members of the Nez Perce Nation. Unable to col-
lectively bully the Indian leaders into signing a new treaty, the
commissioners resorted to personal pressure. They adjourned
the council and held private meetings with tribal headmen,
starting with those who had indicated support for the govern-
ment position—most of whom were Christian Nez Perces.
Talks resumed during the official council, but the real
action occurred late into the night and early morning of
June 4–5, 1863, when the Indians gathered at their own
council fire in the center of their extended village. The
smoke of their pipes drifted around the council lodge and
into the night air as the debate began. It still wafted hours
later when Big Thunder, according to eavesdropping Ore-
gon cavalry Captain George
Currey, “made a formal an-
nouncement of their deter-
mination to take no further
part in the treaty.”
Currey and 20 Oregon cav-
alrymen rode to the council
grounds after midnight on June 5. On seeing the fire still
burning in the Nez Perce lodge, the captain and his troopers
quietly moved closer, then watched and listened as the 53
Nez Perce headmen talked. After Big Thunder’s frst formal
comment, Currey sat in shocked silence as the Indian head-
man, “in an emotional manner, declared the Nez Perce nation
dissolved.” The Dreamers from the anti-treaty faction and
those supporting Lawyer and the pro-treaty Christian Nez
Perces shook hands. Then, Currey later recalled, Big Thunder
announced “with a kind but frm demeanor that they would
be friends, but a distinct people.”
The powerful Nez Perce Nation had just split apart, but
unlike the American republic even then embroiled in Civil
War, the Nez Perce people would never fully reunite. “I with-
drew my detachment,” Currey wrote in his official report,
26 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
Chief Joseph (left) and his
younger brother, Ollokot
(above), cherished their
valley as their father did.
we
ide
r h
ist
or
y g
ro
up
ar
ch
ive
na
tio
na
l a
nt
hr
op
ol
og
ica
l a
rc
hiv
es
, n
o.
10
08
90
0,
su
itl
an
d,
md
.
27a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
“having accomplished nothing but witnessing the extinguish-
ment of the last council fires of the most powerful Indian
nation on the sunset side of the Rocky Mountains.”
Even before that landmark tribal gathering Old Joseph and
White Bird, the Nez Perce headman from Salmon River coun-
try (in present-day Idaho), had departed the council grounds.
They did not agree with the treaty and by leaving would not be
bound by it. In their culture a headman could negotiate only
for his own band, not for people from another part of the tribe.
The headmen who put their names or marks on the 1863
treaty “sold what did not belong to them,” Joseph’s cousin
Yellow Wolf said. Joseph put
it another way: “Suppose a
white man should come to
me and say, ‘Joseph, I like
your horses, and I want to
buy them.’ I say to him, ‘No,
my horses suit me; I will
not sell them.’ Then he goes
to my neighbor and says to
him, ‘Joseph has some good
horses. I want to buy them,
but he refuses to sell.’ My
neighbor answers, ‘Pay me
the money, and I will sell you
Joseph’s horses.’ The white
man returns to me and says,
‘Joseph, I have bought your
horses, and you must let me
have them.’ If we sold our
lands to the government, this
is the way they were bought.”
Old Joseph did not sign the
Thief Treaty, and when he re-
ceived a copy of it, he tore
it to pieces. And that was not
all he did. “In order to have
all people understand how
much land we owned,” Jo-
seph later recalled, “my fa-
ther planted poles around it.”
Piling rocks into cairns and
placing 10-foot-high poles
in them along a high ridge
above Minam Creek on the western edge of the Wallowa
band lands, Old Joseph, like a mountain lion or a grizzly bear,
again marked his territory, telling his sons as they helped
him, “Inside is the home of my people—the white man may
take the land outside. Inside this boundary all our people
were born. It circles around the graves of our fathers, and
we will never give up these graves to any man.”
oseph did not witness the breakup of his nation. He
had mounted his horse and begun the 75-mile ride
back to the Wallowa Valley before that fateful tribal
council started. By 1867 he had a new role. “My father
had become blind and feeble,” he said, “He could no lon-
ger speak for his people. It was then I took my father’s
place as chief.” It was four years later the dying Old Joseph
warned his son of white men eager to grab the tribal home-
land and demanded of him, “Never sell the bones of your
father and your mother.”
By then the decision was out of the younger man’s hands. On
May 28, 1867, a month after ratifcation of the 1863 treaty, the
U.S. General Land Offce had offcially included the Wallowa
Valley in the public domain, thereby opening it to general
settlement. The frst white stockmen pushed cattle into the
area in the spring of 1871.
Before his father’s death
Joseph had spoken for him
in council with government
agents; after burial he wore
the title Chief Joseph with
a dignity and solemnity that
belied his age. At 31, he was
the youngest and least ex-
perienced of the Nez Perce
leaders, but soon he would
be catapulted onto a nation-
al stage, all due to the power
and pull of a piece of land.
“There is nothing should su-
persede it,” he told treaty
officials. “There is nothing
which can outstrip it. It is
clothed with fruitfulness. In
it are riches given me by my
ancestors, and from that time
up to the present I have loved
the land and was thankful
that it had been given me.”
Although some advocated
violence, the young chief did
not want blood spilled in his
beloved Wallowa Valley and
avoided sparking a war, while
insisting the settlers who had
moved in must leave. He
maintained the position his
late father had taken: “If we
ever owned the land, we own it still, for we never sold it.”
Joseph led the Wallowa band through the quagmire of gov-
ernmental negotiations, relying on diplomacy to preserve his
homeland and in the process becoming the best known of
the Nez Perce anti-treaty leaders. Federal investigators agreed
with Joseph’s claim he had not relinquished the Wallowa
Valley, President Ulysses S. Grant issued a June 1873 executive
order that restored the valley to his people, and government
officials recommended removal of encroaching settlers.
The U.S. Congress, however, rescinded Grant’s order, and as
a result settlers stayed and pressure mounted to relocate the
Nez Perces, as had been done with dozens of other tribes.
Chief Looking Glass, posing in 1871 when he was about 40, was
one of the Nez Perce leaders during the 1877 fght and fight.
we
ide
r h
ist
or
y g
ro
up
ar
ch
ive
28 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
General O.O. Howard wrote of his frst encounter with the
Nez Perce leader, in the spring of 1875 on the Umatilla Indian
Reservation, northwest of the Wallowa Valley: “Joseph put
his large black eyes on my face and maintained a fxed look
for some time. It did not appear to me as an audacious stare;
but I thought he was trying to open the windows of his heart to
me.” Initially Howard supported Joseph’s claim to the Wallowa,
writing: “I think it a great mistake to take from Joseph and his
band of Nez Perce Indians that valley. The white people really
do not want it.…Possibly Congress can be induced to let these
really peaceable Indians have this poor valley for their own.”
While Howard may have considered the Wallowa Valley
“poor,” Joseph saw it as a most special place. “[It] had always
belonged to my father’s own people, and the other bands
had never disputed our right to it,” he said. “Our fathers were
born here. Here they lived, here they died, here are their
graves. We will never leave them.”
The issue of removal of non-treaty Nez Perces centered on
Joseph’s band. The chief’s oratorical ability, and his people’s
wealth of cattle and horses, made him the lead Nez Perce
spokesman and diplomat in the estimation of the whites.
Frontier newspapers in Oregon and Idaho ascribed to Joseph
an authority over all bands he simply did not have. Other
tribesmen had a stake in the issue. Each band had its own
headman and so retained autonomy. The tribe had occasion-
ally designated one prominent man to speak for all bands, but
it never recognized that individual as supreme over all others,
as did the frontier military and popular press of the period.
The 1863 treaty provisions that affected Joseph’s people
also required removal of Nez Perce bands under White Bird,
Toohoolhoolzote and Looking Glass. On May 3, 1877, the
military and the non-treaty Nez Perces convened yet another
council. By its conclusion days later the decision was made:
The bands had until mid-June to move permanently to the
reservation centered at Lapwai, Idaho Territory.
iolence over the forced removal erupted in mid-June
when warriors Shore Crossing, Red Moccasin Top
and Swan Necklace attacked and killed several
white settlers on the Salmon River in Idaho Terri-
tory. Days later, on June 17, 1877, U.S. volunteers and Nez
Perce warriors fought the opening battle of the Nez Perce
War at nearby White Bird Canyon. The Indians killed 34
soldiers, while the Nez Perce had three wounded.
That summer thousands of the Nez Perce people zigzagged
across Idaho and Montana territories, mostly seeking to
outrun pursuing federal soldiers, though warriors fought
skirmishes and battles along the way. On July 11 in Idaho
Territory the Nez Perces withstood a surprise attack by Gen-
eral Howard and again inflicted stiffer casualties on the
soldiers in the Battle of the Clearwater. Chief Joseph joined
other warriors in confronting the soldiers along a ridgeline,
but recognizing the enemy’s superior numbers, he retreated
to warn families in the village and prepare a withdrawal. In
their rush to flee the people left behind many of their pos-
sessions. They crossed Lolo Pass and headed south through
the Bitterroot Valley. On the morning of August 9 in western
Montana Territory, Colonel John Gibbon attacked the Nez
Perce encampment near the Big Hole River, killing or wound-
ing dozens of tribal members. There Joseph played a vital role
Chief Joseph was not considered a Nez Perce war leader, but he fought well during the flight and surrendered with great dignity.
29 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
in controlling the Indian horse herd, which was essential
for the people to maintain their fight. The soldiers suffered
some 30 killed and 40 wounded. Gibbon did not pursue.
Between August 23 and September 7 in Yellowstone National
Park the feeing Nez Perces had several encounters with white
visitors, killing two of them and holding one group of tourists
hostage for three days. The Indians managed to stay one jump
ahead of the soldiers, though. After leaving the park, they
slipped through an Army juggernaut, crossed through Crow
country—where they had thought they might find sanctu-
ary—and pushed north toward Canada. There, they believed,
they could join the great Lakota leader Sitting Bull.
But as Joseph and his young daughter caught horses early in
the morning of September 30, Colonel Nelson Miles’ troopers
attacked with a vengeance in what became known as the
Battle of Bear’s Paw. Joseph put his daughter on a horse and
sent her toward Canada, while he returned to defend the
camp. Yellow Wolf watched as “hundreds of soldiers charging
in two wide, circling wings…were surrounding our camp.”
Shot in Head described the attack: “We rode the lead-cut air.
Bullets were buzzing like summer fies.”
“I called my men to drive them back,” Chief Joseph said.
“We fought at close range, not more than 20 steps apart.”
Bullets few in every direction, felling soldiers and Indians alike,
including Joseph’s brother Ollokot, struck in the head by a
soldier’s bullet. “The soldiers kept up a continuous fre,” Jo-
seph recalled. “Six of my men were killed in one spot near me.”
By nightfall on the first day of battle all Nez Perce leaders
except Joseph, Looking Glass and White Bird had been killed.
For the next four days the Nez Perces held out against the
besieging troops. White Bird and Looking Glass remained
adamant against surrender. Then Looking Glass was shot and
killed, becoming the last Nez Perce casualty of the battle and
leaving only Joseph and White Bird to lead the tribe. Having
tried for years to avoid war, and after enduring four months
of constant movement that had debilitated his people, Joseph
made a decision. “I could not bear to see my wounded men
and women suffer any longer; we had lost enough already,”
he later recalled. “My people needed rest—we wanted peace.”
From the shelter pits, with his weary people around him,
Joseph sent the message to Howard that became one of the
most famous quotations of the Indian wars: “I am tired of
fghting. Our chiefs are killed.…The little children are freez-
ing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the
hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where
they are—perhaps freezing to death.…Hear me, my chiefs.
I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now
stands, I will fght no more forever.”
oseph’s surrender speech became the defning state-
ment of his life and of his people. Relayed to Miles
and Howard by two old Nez Perce men who scouted
for the Army, the speech was recorded by the general’s
aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Charles Erskine Scott Wood. After
In the September 1877 Battle of Bear’s Paw, Colonel Nelson Miles’ troopers attacked the Nez Perce camp, which Joseph helped defend.
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the scouts delivered his message, Joseph mounted a horse
and rode toward the soldiers’ camp. He rested his Winchester
carbine across the saddle pommel and clasped a gray blan-
ket around his shoulders. Face stoic, his long hair hanging in
two braids over his chest and pompadour tied up with a piece
of otter fur, he wore buckskin moccasins, leggings and war
shirt, the latter ripped and torn by bullets. Welts on his wrists
and forehead marked where bullets had grazed him. Joseph’s
most loyal warriors walked beside him as he approached
camp and extended the Winchester to Colonel Miles. “We
could have escaped from Bear’s Paw Mountain if we had
left our wounded, old women and children behind,” Jo-
seph later said. “We were unwilling to do this.” Of the 700
Nez Perces who had camped
along Snake Creek near the
Bear’s Paw Mountains, 448
became Miles’ prisoners of
war, 25 died on the battlefeld
and the remainder, many fol-
lowing White Bird, made their
way toward Canada.
Joseph second-guessed his
decision to surrender. “Gen-
eral Miles had promised that
we might return to our own
country with what stock we
had left,” the chief said. “ I
thought we could start again.
I believed [him], or I never
would have surrendered.” Instead Joseph and those Nez
Perces who followed him into surrender were removed to
Fort Keogh, Montana Territory, then down the Yellowstone
and Missouri rivers to Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota
Territory. In November they were sent farther downriver to
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Fort Leavenworth defned “hellhole” for Chief Joseph and
his desperate, suffering people. In a camp two miles from
the fort, situated between the Missouri River and a lagoon,
the Nez Perces suffered from fevers lurking in contaminated
water and from the early summer plague of mosquitoes that
spread malaria through the “miserable, helpless, emaciated
specimens of humanity,” wrote a contributor in the monthly
journal Council Fire and Arbitrator. “I cannot tell you how
much my heart suffered for my people while at Leavenworth,”
Joseph later said. “The Great Spirit Chief who rules above
seemed to be looking some other way and did not see what
was being done to my people.”
On July 21, 1878, the Nez Perces, now under jurisdiction
of the federal Offce of Indi-
an Affairs, were herded onto
railroad cars and shipped to
Baxter Springs, Kan., for set-
tlement on a portion of the
Quapaw Reservation. At Bax-
ter Springs many others fell
desperately ill with malar-
ia, and with no quinine for
treatment more than a quar-
ter of the band perished. “It
was worse to die there than
to die fighting in the moun-
tains,” Joseph recalled. Indi-
an Affairs Commissioner Ezra
A. Hayt, a 55-year-old New
Yorker, met with Joseph in October 1878, and the two rode
across southern Kansas and northeastern Indian Territory
(present-day Oklahoma) in search of a better place for the
tribe. Thus, in June 1879 the Nez Perces moved to northeast-
ern Indian Territory, where the red soil did little to nurture
their souls. They called it Eeikish Pah (“The Hot Place”).
W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 430
Miles accepts Joseph’s rifle in this depiction of the surrender. Some of the Nez Perces, including Joseph’s daughter, fled to Canada.
Brigadier General Oliver O. Howard poses beside Joseph in 1904.
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Joseph, who had told Nelson Miles
and O.O. Howard he would fight no
more, turned to the only weapons left
to him: oratory and diplomacy. He sent
his first petition seeking relief for the
Nez Perces in December 1877, appealed
to Commissioner Hayt in the fall of
1878 and in early 1879 took his cause to
Washington, D.C. There Joseph stepped
up to the podium seeking justice and
reform, and for the rest of his life he
would remain relentless in the pursuit
of better conditions for his people and
a return to the Wallowa Valley. Aware
of the chief’s unrelenting campaign,
Howard encouraged him, “You, Joseph,
will show yourself a truly great man, and
your people can never be blotted out.”
Joseph lobbied Congress and presi-
dents, military commanders and Indian
Affairs officials to return to his home-
land, winning his battle in the court of
public opinion by enlisting the support
of Christians and Indian reformers.
Agents serving the Nez Perces took up
their cause, but it was the 1880 promo-
tion of Nelson Miles to brigadier gener-
al and his assignment as commander of
the Department of Columbia that made
it possible for the Nez Perces to return
to the Columbia Basin. Miles backed
Chief Joseph’s claim that the Indian sur-
render entitled them to again live in
their homeland.
In May 1884 the U.S. Senate approved
an appropriation bill that would repatri-
ate the Nez Perces. It took nearly a year
for the federal order, issued on April 29,
1885, that sent the 268 survivors home. But not all would go
to Idaho. “When finally released from bondage,” as Yellow
Wolf put it, those who endorsed the Christian religion would
settle at Lapwai in Idaho Territory, while those who adhered
to the Dreamer faith would be sent to the Colville Indian
Reservation in Washington Territory. The question an inter-
preter asked, Yellow Wolf said, was, “Lapwai and be Christian,
or Colville and just be yourself?” Only Joseph had no choice.
He would be sent to Colville.
In 1887, when Congress approved the Dawes Act that appor-
tioned tribal lands to individual Indians, some Nez Perces at
Colville took advantage of the provisions and returned to
Lapwai for acreage, but Joseph and his most steadfast sup-
porters did not. Joseph held firm to his claim on Wallowa,
believing he would one day be allowed to resettle in the land
of his younger days. “Never for a moment did his heart turn
from his old home to the new one,” missionary Kate McBeth
recalled. “The grave of his father was there.”
Joseph continued his efforts to return to the Oregon valley of
his childhood. In 1903 he presented his case for the Wallowa
Valley over a shared meal of bison with President Theodore
Roosevelt. He appealed to residents and university students
in Seattle. He had backing from infuential men who admired
his grit and determination, but with his goal unachieved,
Joseph died on September 21, 1904, in his lodge at Colville.
A regular Wild West contributor and the executive director
of Western Writers of America, Candy Moulton is a lifetime
member of the Nez Perce Trail Foundation [www.nezperce
trail.net] and author of the Spur Award–winning biography
Chief Joseph: Guardian of the People, which is recom-
mended for further reading along with Let Me Be Free: The
Nez Perce Tragedy, by David Lavender; Nez Perce Summer,
1877, by Jerome A. Greene; Children of Grace: The Nez
Perce War of 1877, by Bruce Hampton; and The Flight of
the Nez Perce, by Mark H. Brown.
31A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
Chief Joseph was not happy about never being allowed to return to the Wallowa Valley.
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First described by members of an 1851 military
expedition, central California’s awe-inspiring
Yosemite Valley soon became one of the most
popular natural attractions in the world, draw-
ing visitors from far and wide. There to greet
them were men with darker motives. Travelers always car-
ried money, and by the early 1880s, with the coming of the
Sierra snowmelt and spring tourists, robbers gathered along
stage roads into the canyon.
On the evening of May 22, 1885, Phil Toby was driving his
stage from the railroad town of Madera headed for Raymond
and on to Yosemite. Temperatures were already on the rise,
and the foothill grasses were turning from green to golden.
Oak trees gave way to towering pines as the road climbed to
Raymond. A second stage, driven by Jake Foster, kept just far
enough behind Toby’s coach to avoid the dust. Around 5 p.m.,
about nine miles below the Wawona stage stop, two masked
men appeared. They had blackened their hands and any ex-
posed skin on their faces and wore their clothes inside out.
“Phil, stop and throw down the express box!” shouted one
gunman, pointing a shotgun at the driver of the frst coach.
“The box is not in my stage,” Toby replied. “If you don’t
believe me, get in and see.” The other robber jumped up
on the stage and confirmed there was no express box. The
holdup men then ordered the passengers from the stage and
robbed them of money, jewelry and other valuables. “The
ladies were not interfered with,” noted a local account, “not
even to admire the beautiful and costly diamond earrings
that one of the lady passengers wore.” The outlaws then
ordered the passengers back into the coach and told Toby
to drive on. The stage lurched forward, the horses urged on
by several pistol shots into the air.
The highwaymen then calmed
the excited horses of the second
coach and called for driver Foster
to throw down the box. Foster
did not argue the point—the ex-
press box contained little of val-
ue. After robbing the two male
passengers, the duo then ordered
Foster to also resume his drive
to Yosemite. A rider soon brought
news of the robberies to Wawona.
Informed by telegraph, the sher-
iffs of Fresno, Mariposa and Mer-
ced counties promptly rounded
up posses and hit the trail in
search of the two robbers. An ini-
tial reward of $1,200 for the capture of the pair provided
some inspiration. John Washburn joined the Mariposa
posse. He and his brothers were big property owners with
holdings that included mines, hotels and the Yosemite Stage
& Turnpike Co. Tom Beasore, a half-blood Indian tracker,
accompanied Washburn.
The robbing of Yosemite stages was serious business, af-
fecting the local economy in various ways. A drop in stage
traffc due to fear of crime also meant a drop in sales for local
merchants. The Wisconsin State Journal, half a continent
away in Madison, reported at the time: “Highwaymen are
The back-to-back robbery of two stages headed for California’s Yosemite Valley led to more than a few trials and tribulations
By William B. Secrest
32 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
Turn-of-the-century tourists
take in the majesty of the
Yosemite Valley. Getting there,
though, could be hazardous.
to Yosemite
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33 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
infesting the Yosemite Valley route. A few days since a stage-
coach filled with California tourists was waylaid and the
members of the party plundered to their last cent. Several
robberies have occurred on the route during the past month.”
Dour as the stage holdups might be, it did prompt some
humorous responses, as reported by the Madera stage offce
clerk at the time. Learning of the robbery while purchasing
a ticket, a portly traveler denounced the cowardly passenger
victims. Demonstrating what his own response would have
been, he frantically searched his pockets for the key to his
valise, then unlocked it and produced a small bundle. He
spent additional minutes undoing knots to expose a small
pistol that, according to an observer, “would make a high-
wayman as mad as blazes if he were shot with it.” The owner
then carefully rewrapped the gun and restored it to his valise.
“Do you think they will rob us?” giggled a beaming wom-
an passenger in the office. “Oh, no, madam,” said a male
passenger, “there is no danger at all. You needn’t be in the
least alarmed.”
“Oh,” she said, “I do wish they would!” and her face fairly
beamed with enthusiasm at the idea of a romantic encounter
with real, live robbers in the dark mountain forests.
34 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
A Mariposa report stated that passengers in the stages
driven by Toby and Foster had lost $1,300, along with
rings and watches. The two men in Foster’s stage
were not named, but the Mariposa Gazette listed Toby’s pas-
sengers as “W.H. Waite and wife, of Providence, R.I.; Mr.
Chance and wife [English], of Raymond’s Excursion Party; Mr.
Harris, of Los Angeles; and Mr. Duncan, with a party of four.”
Mariposa Sheriff John Mullery and Undersheriff William
J. Howard, a former California Ranger who in 1853 helped
track down outlaw Joaquín Murietta, left at 2 the following
morning, May 23. At Wawona they joined forces with Wash-
burn and Beasore, and the four proceeded to the robbery site.
The holdup had taken place in Fresno County, and Sheriff
Oliver J. Meade took the frst train north for Merced. There
he joined Deputy Sheriff Hiram Rapelje, whom he knew
to be a former Yosemite stage driver. The two met up with
the other offcers at the crime scene. The lawmen soon found
the outlaws’ campsite. From the food the robbers had eaten
and the fact they had known the stage drivers by name, the
offcers were certain they were looking for two local men.
Mullery, Howard and Beasore checked out a mountain pass
before Howard followed another lead, agreeing to meet the
others later at Wawona. Meade and Rapelje rode to Gertrude
to search for any sign of the outlaws. Returning from their trek,
Mullery and Beasore went over the holdup site once more.
In the lawmen’s absence Scott Burford, who operated a
stage stop near the robbery site, had discovered overlooked
footprints beneath some foliage. He pointed them out to
Mullery, who noted the tracks led south toward Fresno Flats.
Certain the highwaymen had left the marks, the sheriff was
elated. Mullery needed a fresh mount and alert Howard, so
he and Beasore headed for Wawona. En route they ran into
Howard and arranged to meet him later at Fresno Flats.
Once Mullery found a horse, he and Beasore resumed fol-
lowing the tracks. Howard eventually joined them, along
with Constable George Moore and four other men. The trail
did lead toward Fresno Flats, ending at a small cabin out-
side of town owned by Charley Myers, who did farming and
handyman work in the area. His parents lived nearby.
The posse was contemplating its next move when Meade
and Rapelje rode up. The lawmen obtained a search warrant
and decided that Howard, Meade, Rapelje and Moore should
make the arrest. Entering the cabin, the four men found Myers’
brother-in-law, William Prescott, asleep in the bedroom and
woke him up. The startled Prescott, who ft the description of
one of the robbers, said Myers had gone south to Coarsegold.
Meade and Rapelje went after Myers while Howard continued
to question Prescott. Before long the lawmen had both suspects
before the local justice of the peace. Neither Myers nor Prescott
could make bail. The justice of the peace set a hearing date, and
Meade took the prisoners to Fresno. On June 17 The Fresno
Weekly Expositor announced the arraignment of the two sus-
pects and remarked that “travel to Yo Semite [sic] has fallen
off greatly since the robbery of the coaches a few weeks ago.”
In late August 1885, three months after the robbery and
just before the trial was to begin, the San Francisco
Morning Call published a letter that had first appeared
in The Times of London. The author was “W. Chance,” one of
the passengers on Phil Toby’s stage that fateful day. Chance
wrote it “as a warning to those of my fellow-countrymen who
intend visiting the ‘Far West.’” It read in part:
We had arrived at San Francisco from Japan and were on our
way to visit the celebrated Yosemite Valley. Leaving the railway
at Madera on the morning of the 22nd of May last, we were con-
A photographer staged this Yosemite stage “holdup” around 1900 in the vicinity of the May 22, 1885, double stage robbery site.
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veyed the remaining 100 miles by stage (a chara-
banc drawn by six horses), the road journey
occupying two days. Our party consisted
of 12 persons—six men, four ladies and
two children—all Americans except our-
selves. Late in the afternoon of the frst
day, at a spot called Fresno Flats, some
20 miles from Clark’s Hotel, our rest-
ing place for the night, the stage was
stopped by two masked men armed
with guns and revolvers. One with his
gun covered the driver while the other
leveled his at the passengers.
We were all completely taken by surprise.
They threatened to shoot upon the slight-
est move on the part of any of us. “If any man
moves, I’ll shoot him, or woman either” were the
exact words used. We were none of us armed, nor,
indeed, with the ladies present, would resistance in either
case have been justifiable. We were then ordered
to alight, ranged in line and made to hold up our
hands under a threat to shoot if we disobeyed.
One of the robbers, revolver in hand, went
down the line and relieved us of our watch-
es and chains and money, while the other,
standing a short distance behind, kept
his gun leveled at us, as he had been
doing all along, ready to shoot if we
made any show of resistance.
The robber actually had the cowardice
to hold his revolver to the face of each
lady as he searched her. Our stage carried
the box of the Wells, Fargo Express Co.,
containing money and valuables. The high-
waymen asked for and were given this, and
for its sake, doubtless, the stage was attacked,
the unfortunate travelers suffering themselves in
consequence. As long as the Wells, Fargo Co. are allowed
to send the treasure entrusted to them in an ordi-
nary stage, the attacks will continue. But travel-
ers can be warned what to expect. My advice
to them is to leave behind valuable watch-
es, not to take with them more money
than they actually require for the visit to
the valley. The tourist must not expect
to hear anything of these robberies
at any of the ticket offices or hotels in
San Francisco or elsewhere. In fact, the
possibility of their occurrence is certain
to be denied. I may add that we found
American tourists from the East quite as
ignorant as ourselves of their occurrence
and equally indignant at their possibility.
The Mariposa Gazette account of the rob-
bery had named Chance among the passengers
in Toby’s stage, but the Englishman had fled no
complaint at the time and apparently wasn’t
around to testify at the trial, which didn’t
begin until early September. James Daly,
the newly elected Fresno County district
attorney, enlisted Mariposa County dis-
trict attorney George Goucher, who was
also a state assemblyman, to assist in
prosecuting the case. Goucher enjoyed
his liquor in barrooms, but he knew his
way around a courtroom.
Attorney Walter D. Grady, owner of a Fresno
opera house, was a co-counsel for the defense. He
was also a known drinker, whose booze-induced
brawls were fodder for the local press, particu-
larly the time he bit off part of a San Fran-
cisco waiter’s ear. Joining Grady on the
defense was Patrick J. Reddy, one of the
most feared attorneys in the West. Reddy
had lost an arm in a shootout in Virgin-
ia City, but the disability never slowed
him down. He was also a state sena-
tor and a wealthy mine owner. He too
enjoyed a few drinks at the end of the day,
with Grady or otherwise. In 1880 Wells, Fargo
& Co. had retained Reddy to prosecute stage
robber Milton Sharp. After securing Sharp’s con-
viction, Reddy presented Wells, Fargo with a bill for
$5,000. The company balked, offering the attorney
half the amount. Reddy rejected the offer and
said he would take nothing. From then on,
though, the attorney worked pro bono for
stage robbers being prosecuted by Wells,
Fargo. His vindictiveness haunted the
company until Reddy’s death in 1900.
Hi Rapelje, summoned as a witness in
the September trial of Myers and Prescott,
was waiting in Fresno on September 1
when local Deputy Sheriff Johnny White
asked for his assistance in arresting a fugitive
working at a nearby sheep-shearing camp. Rapelje
Charley Myers, who worked as a
farmer and a handyman, was one
of the two accused stage robbers.
William Prescott, the other accused
robber, was Myers’ brother-in-law
and was arrested in Myers’ cabin.
Fresno County Sheriff Oliver Meade
helped capture the robbery suspects
and took them to jail in Fresno.
35 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
and White were pals from their stage-driving days, and Hi
readily agreed to go along. The fugitive, Gervasio Romero,
had vowed never to be taken alive. When White informed
Romero he had a warrant, the fugitive pulled a pistol from his
vest. He fred a shot at White and then at Rapelje, missing both
times. The two offcers returned fre, and each was on target.
The coroner later stated the dead man had marks from wounds
all over his body, including a large buckshot scar.
Jury selection in the Myers-Prescott case came the next day,
and the trial opened in the Fresno County Superior Court on
September 3. Judge James B. Campbell presided.
On the first day stage driver Phil Toby testified the
robbers had used his name, and others corroborated
his statement. William Howard took the stand next.
He told of his interview with Prescott at the Myers home and
produced a written statement he had taken from the suspect.
Reddy questioned every detail of that interview. Prescott and
Myers had each told the offcers they had been hunting hogs in
the mountains at the time of the robbery. But when the offcers
took Myers into the mountains to show where he and Prescott
had been hogging, he had gotten “lost.” Witnesses confrmed
the suspects had borrowed a rife and a shotgun from friends.
A great deal of testimony related to the footprints that led
from the robbery scene to Myers’ cabin. Tracker Tom Beasore
attested to a worn spot on one track that was consistent from
the robbery site to the cabin. The attorneys then addressed
other evidence. For instance, the bandits’ faces and hands had
been blackened, and the offcers found a can of blacking in
Myers’ barn. Reddy countered with a long diatribe about how
such an item could be found in any paint shop in the country.
Goucher fnally asked if he was through with his speech. “You
don’t call that a speech, do you?” replied Reddy. “If you call
that a speech, you will be astounded when you hear one!”
After brief testimony by Wells, Fargo detective Jonathan
Thacker, Hi Rapelje took the stand. The lawman and former
stage driver was well known and respected in the area. In 1879
he had been given the privilege of driving ex-President Ulysses
S. Grant into Yosemite. Rapelje was hot-tempered, however,
and the exchange was sharp when Reddy went into his bad-
gering routine. The offcer described how under a bale of hay
in Myers’ barn he had found a sack containing two under-
shirts, two overshirts and a pair of trousers. The undershirts
were black around the cuffs and collars—damning evidence.
But nothing fazed Reddy. “Couldn’t that black,” he asked the
deputy, “be from the perspiration of a hardworking man?”
Rapelje shot back, “I never worked hard enough to know.”
Testimony fnally closed on September 22. Reddy spent an
entire day delivering a defense summation described as “able,
eloquent and ingenious.” Goucher, though, gave a convinc-
ing argument, and on the following day the jury brought in a
unanimous verdict of guilty. Sadly, Charley Myers’ infant son
died the very hour the verdict was delivered. Judge Campbell
scheduled sentencing for the following month.
W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 436
Myers and Prescott were tried and convicted in the Fresno
County Courthouse, but the pair later stood trial twice more.
This document is from the second trial, which was required after
the California State Supreme Court reversed a guilty verdict.
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On October 22, after reading the charge, Campbell asked
if there was any reason sentence should not be passed. The
well-prepared Reddy stepped forward with affdavits showing
that during the trial the jury had not obeyed the admonitions
of the court, having separated at various times and commu-
nicated with outside parties. Regardless, in early November,
Campbell denied the motion for a new trial and sentenced
each of the defendants to 20 years at San Quentin State Prison.
On November 7 the San Francisco Chronicle responded to
what the complaining passenger Chance had written about
stagecoach robbery in the Wild West:
The two young men who robbed the stage-load of Yosemite
tourists last spring were sentenced yesterday at
Fresno to 20 years each in San Quentin. This
will probably be balm to the lacerated feel-
ings of Mr. Chance, the English tourist,
who metaphorically frothed at the
mouth in the London Times over
his treatment in the Wild West. The
sentence for a similar crime in the
suburbs of London would not be
more severe than this.
But the Chronicle had spoken
too soon. Reddy was not done
fghting for his clients. He took
his case before the State Su-
preme Court, claiming the con-
viction was based solely on cir-
cumstantial evidence and charging
the sheriff with misconduct for hav-
ing taken the jurors to saloons and
bought them drinks. “He paid out some
considerable money in and about the
trial,” noted Reddy, “and had no expecta-
tion of being repaid therefore except in case of
conviction.” At least twice the sheriff had taken the jury
to saloons and bought them drinks. On two other occasions the
jury had been treated at saloons—once by a fellow juror, and
once by one of the defendants’ counsel. The State Supreme
Court reversed Campbell’s ruling and ordered a new trial.
Reddy had been impressed by Goucher’s performance at
the frst trial. Prior to the new trial Reddy offered him a part-
nership. Goucher would man a Fresno office, while Reddy
would live in San Francisco “and visit Fresno from time to
time as business requires.” Goucher would not be assisting
the prosecution this time.
For the second trial a new district attorney, Aurelius “Reel”
Terry, headed the prosecution, assisted by local lawyer
S.J. Hinds. Nephew of the notorious David S. Terry, who had
killed U.S. Senator David C. Broderick in an 1859 Califor-
nia duel, Reel was just as cantankerous as his uncle. He had
been wounded by Walter Grady in the latter’s opera house
during a shootout over politics. Of course, Pat Reddy would
again be in charge of the defense.
On January 3, 1887, the second trial began with several
fresh faces, but a mostly familiar scenario played out. “The
trial of the case of Prescott upon the charge of robbing the
Yosemite stage drags along,” reported the The Fresno Weekly
Expositor, “with nothing new and but little interest. The trial
is simply threshing over the old straw of the previous trial.”
The second trial took just over two weeks. The jury was se-
questered at 11 p.m. on January 18, 1887, and at 4 p.m. the
next day reported to be seven for conviction and five for
acquittal. It was a hung jury. Reddy took the local train for
San Francisco, while the judge lowered bail for the defen-
dants, and they scrambled to gain their release from jail.
The third trial began on the last day of November
1887. There were no surprises or new evidence,
although several new corroborative wit-
nesses testifed. Surprisingly, on Decem-
ber 4, according to The Fresno Morn-
ing Republican, “Hon. Pat Reddy
scored a point because Sheriff
Mead and deputy, in the kind-
ness of their hearts, gave the
jurors a drink. Yesterday, look-
ing at the wistful ones, he
[Reddy] said, ‘As two or three
of the jurors like a toddy, I move
the sheriff allow them to have
one, whenever convenient.’”
On Christmas Eve the third and
final trial ended with a gift for the
defendants. When the jury foreman an-
nounced they were deadlocked once again,
Judge Campbell discharged them. Reel Terry
then moved the prisoners be discharged, and this
was done. More than $25,000 had been spent on the trials,
and the county could stand no more. “The prosecution,” re-
ported the Republican, “made a gallant fght, and if ever any
men had cause for gratitude, Prescott and Myers certainly
owe Senator Reddy more than they can ever repay.”
Stagecoach robberies on the road to Yosemite persisted
into the 20th century. In summer 1905 highwaymen allowed
one passenger to take a remarkable photograph of the rob-
bery in progress. In 1911 robbers hit the last stagecoaches
just before auto stages took over the route. And, yes, you
guessed it—a new era was initiated on July 24, 1920, when
highwaymen stopped and robbed fve auto stages.
Californian William B. Secrest writes often for Wild West and
is the author of more than a dozen books. For further reading
see California Desperadoes, Lawmen and Desperadoes and
Perilous Trails, Dangerous Men, all by Secrest, and John Boes-
senecker’s Badge and Buckshot and Gold Dust and Gunsmoke.
Defense attorney Pat Reddy
had a ready tongue and held
a grudge but won cases.
37A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
Prohibition-era crime boss Al Capone could
have learned a valuable lesson from 19th-
century boss rustler John Kinney: Be sure
to pay the taxman. Capone was famously
convicted in 1931 not for illegal bootlegging
or murder but for failure to fle his tax returns.
Riding as high in the American Southwest as Capone would
in Chicago a half-century later, Kinney was on the verge of
escaping justice when federal Treasury agents, investigating
his failure to pay import duties on smuggled cattle, alerted
New Mexico Territory’s militia to the rustler king’s where-
abouts. Instead of the high life he was planning to enjoy,
Kinney would spend three years in the slammer.
Kinney was a young man in a hurry. He was but 22 when he
frst exhibited a taste for mayhem, just 24 when he displayed
a talent for violence on a scale surpassing his peers, perhaps
only 27 when he turned his organizational skills to his own
beneft rather than others. He was but 30 when his misdeeds
caught up with him.
John Kinney’s place and date of birth are uncertain, but
family tradition, prison records and Kinney’s own statements
suggest he was born in Massachusetts sometime in 1853. His
widowed mother moved the family to Chicago, and there the
teenage Kinney enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1868.
The Army marched Kinney through much of the West during
his fve-year tour. After his discharge, he chose to make his
mark in New Mexico Territory. There he threw in with a
bunch of lawless and homicidal desperadoes that included
such career criminals as Jessie Evans, Jim McDaniels and
Charles Ray (aka “Pony Diehl”) and quickly learned the trade
of rustler. Soon—inevitably—they and other criminals like
them became infamous members of what historian Frederick
Nolan has called the “Chain Gang,” a small army of inter-
linked bands of rustlers “working” from the Great Plains to
California and on both sides of the Mexican border.
Reckless men like these soon found themselves sharing
another profession. Repeatedly during the decade after Kin-
ney’s arrival in the American Southwest, corrupt movers and
shakers discovered a need for his type. Here the law too
often wilted before the power tucked in scabbards and
holsters. Southeast New Mexico Territory warehoused scores
of young men with testosterone to burn. Hardscrabble farm-
ers, ranchers squatting on watered land, merchants one
mistake away from dashed dreams and saddlers with no
particular purpose in life provided the muscle that unscru-
pulous authorities and monopolistic businessmen needed
to lock out their would-be replacements.
Between 1877 and 1882 any borderlands county sheriff
—from El Paso, Texas, to Lincoln, New Mexico Territory,
to Tombstone, Arizona Territory—needing a small army of
gunmen to enforce order could hire such men as killers.
What set John Kinney apart from his equally lawless friends
were his leadership and organizational skills. More than
once it was Kinney who got the assignment to commit under-
color-of-law mayhem on a scale useful to corrupt politicians
up and down the Rio Grande.
The Capture of
New Mexico’s
Rustler King‘The days of the rustler are ended,’ said John Kinney,
whose failure to pay import duties played a hand in his downfall
By Paul Cool
38 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
In July 1878, as depicted in a Gary Zaboly painting, John Kinney leads his gang into Lincoln, New Mexico Territory, to fight in
the Lincoln County War on the side of the “House.” The previous year Kinney and his gang saw action in the El Paso Salt War.
kin
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po
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e r
idin
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inc
ol
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by
ga
ry
za
bo
ly
40 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
His frst opportunity came in December 1877 during
the El Paso Salt War. Kinney was in Silver City,
New Mexico Territory, when El Paso County Sheriff
Charles Kerber sent him an urgent telegram ask-
ing him to raise volunteers to rescue the Texas Ranger detach-
ment besieged in San Elizario, Texas. Within the day Kinney
raised a posse of 25 men and rode east. He picked up more
men in Mesilla, New Mexico Territory, including Jessie Evans.
Grant County Deputy Sheriff “Dangerous Dan” Tucker was
ostensibly in charge of the Silver City men, but the worst of the
bunch, the ones who raped and plundered in El Paso, were
identifed as “Kinney men.” They were a gang with badges,
perhaps the frst Southwest border area criminals to be sworn
in on a large scale to fght
a local war. The activi-
ties of the Kinney gang
in the Rio Grande Valley
established a precedent
for future wars in places
as widespread as Lincoln
and Tombstone.
Kinney stayed on in El
Paso, dually occupied as
a saloonkeeper and Ker-
ber’s deputy sheriff, until
he abruptly departed for
Lincoln County. The trig-
ger, according to rumor
and tradition, was a sum-
mons from District At-
torney William Ryner-
son to fght in the Lincoln
County War. Kinney and
his Rio Grande posse took
the side of the Lawrence
Murphy–James Dolan
“House,” the business
monopoly supported by
corrupt politicians of the
Santa Fe Ring. The Kin-
ney gang’s dramatic gal-
lop into Lincoln on the
first day of the climac-
tic fve-day battle (July 15–
19, 1878) turned a devel-
oping victory by Alex-
ander McSween’s Regulators into a standoff, broken only
by the Army’s intervention.
The war petered out following the Lincoln fght. Billy the Kid
and many other unemployed hard cases turned to hit-and-
run thievery, but Kinney had grander ideas. He and his follow-
ers returned to El Paso, where they attempted to hijack the
November 1878 elections and secure virtual control of county
government. Kinney and ally Charles Kerber, the unpopular
incumbent sheriff, expected little opposition from the only
other armed force in town. The Texas Rangers charged with
keeping the election honest had racked up a sorry record since
their surrender to the insurgent Tejano militia in the El Paso
Salt War. But Sergeant Marcus Ludwick was in charge that
day. He and 10 Rangers backed down Kinney’s men, granting
El Paso its frst honest election since the end of the Civil War.
Kinney returned to New Mexico Territory. During the next
few years he cleared up old criminal charges, briefy pinned
on another deputy’s badge to escort the Kid from the jail in
Mesilla to the one in Lincoln and may have found time to
scout for the Army in the Victorio campaign. But hiring out
his services to others was losing its attraction. Kinney’s ex-
pansive imagination soon conjured up designs much more
lucrative than protecting someone else’s empire.
In March 1879 Kinney
opened up a butch-
er shop in Mesilla,
the harbinger of a
much larger scheme al-
ready germinating in his
mind. Under the radar
he began constructing the
early Southwest’s most
organized criminal en-
terprise. His operations
surpassed anything ever
witnessed in neighboring
Arizona Territory. There
rustling was largely the
work of the so-called Cow-
boys, small gangs with
ever-changing lineups—
bandits acting as inde-
pendent contractors, hir-
ing themselves out like
Caribbean pirates for each
raiding voyage.
Kinney operated on a
wholly different scale, us-
ing scores of rustlers who
routed both livestock and
profts to just one man—
Kinney himself. His oper-
ations ranged from Socor-
ro, New Mexico Territory,
south to the Mexican state
of Chihuahua, and from El Paso west toward Silver City and
down into Sonora, Mexico. While other rustlers worked closely
with cooperative butchers to quickly eliminate evidence of
their crimes, Kinney was savvy and systematic enough to elim-
inate the middleman whenever he could. His ranch just south
of Rincon, New Mexico Territory, locally dubbed “Kinneyville,”
included a slaughterhouse and dressing station. This gave
Kinney the fexibility to ship either beeves or choice cuts by
rail to wherever he could find buyers. With no middleman
taking a cut of his profts, Kinney made the most of an opera-
Some historians believe that’s John Kinney standing between the
two seated men in this photo of well-armed “New Mexico Rustlers.”
ne
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ico
ru
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rs
, b
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& b
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, p
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ive
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ne
ga
tiv
e n
o.
01
42
64
41 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
tion that reportedly stole thousands of horses and cattle from
honest ranchers. Eventually, people began to talk, and the
press took notice. The Santa Fe New Mexican took to calling
Kinney “King of the Rustlers.”
Threats of violence and violence
itself were tools of Kinney’s trade.
Like any effective crime boss, he, as
author Nolan put it, “played the role
of holy terror to the hilt.” Fear of
crossing the rustler boss and his pri-
vate army rendered the various law-
men in his kingdom impotent, though
friendship with Kinney, rather than
fear, seems to have motivated Grant
County Sheriff Harvey Whitehill. The
sheriff’s cozy support of the rustler,
even after Kinney’s kingdom fell apart,
is otherwise unfathomable.
As 1883 opened, reported thefts
of livestock skyrocketed. The New
Mexican claimed Kinney’s men rus-
tled an estimated 10,000 head in Jan-
uary alone. The number was doubt-
lessly exaggerated. When later ar-
rested, Kinney henchman Margarito
Sierra confessed to knowledge of 17
separate thefts of 171 horses, cattle
and oxen over six months. At that
rate Kinney’s men would have had
to carry out 1,000 thefts in January to meet the New Mexican’s
estimate. No matter how dubious the fgures, however, other
reports indicated Kinney’s wife and brother were banking
huge sums for him in El Paso.
Anger and frustration over
mounting thefts of livestock
convinced Territorial Gov-
ernor Lionel A. Sheldon it
was time to eradicate Kin-
ney’s operation. Short of a
presidential finding of in-
surrection, the U.S. Army
was forbidden by the 1878
Posse Comitatus Law from
taking out such criminals.
Fortunately, Sheldon had
another force at hand: New
Mexico’s volunteer militia.
On February 12, 1883, he or-
dered the militia’s com-
mander, Major Albert Jen-
nings Fountain, to take the
field and treat the rustlers
as public enemies.
Throughout his life as a sol-
dier, lawyer, crusading news-
paperman and rough-and-
tumble politician, 44-year-old Fountain’s accomplishments
were many. Sheldon’s orders handed him a fresh opportu-
nity for further glory, this time against an old adversary, John
Kinney. Fountain quickly got
to work, putting three com-
panies into action in a series
of sweeps up and down the
Rio Grande Valley and west
into Lake Valley. So effective
were these measures that by
the end of March the militia
had broken the back of large-
scale organized rustling in
the territory. And among the
first to fall prey to Gover-
nor Sheldon’s offensive was
Kinney himself.
The rustler king fled west
across New Mexico Territory
to escape capture, but not
even Arizona Territory was a
safe haven. On March 7, 1883,
the Shakespeare Guards un-
der Captain James F. Black
apprehended the fugitive.
Kinney and brother Tom were
taken completely by surprise
on the Gila River, five miles
into Arizona Territory, be-
yond present-day Duncan. Kinney’s wife, Juana, was also
present, which perhaps explains why Kinney offered no
real resistance when confronted by Captain Black’s force.
The circumstances that led Black
to Kinney’s camp have never been
fully explained. Historian Philip J.
Rasch stated, “Sheldon learned that
Kinney himself was on the Gila and
ordered Black to capture him at
any hazard.”
Although Rasch did not identify
the source of Sheldon’s information,
Sheriff Whitehill’s biographer, Bob
Alexander, provides the added detail
that “Frank Cartwright, superinten-
dent of the Sierra Grande Co. at Lake
Valley, one way or the other learned
of John Kinney’s visit and promptly
telegraphed Fountain, who at the
time had not a precious clue as to the
slippery fugitive’s whereabouts.” By
the time Black’s Shakespeare Guards
reached Silver City, they “began cut-
ting for meaningful sign west of town.”
Obviously, then, they knew where
to hunt, but how they knew has been
until now a mystery.
El Paso Sheriff Charles Kerber asked Kinney for help
during the Salt War and then made him his deputy.
District Attorney William Rynerson reportedly called
on Kinney to lend a hand in the Lincoln County War.
ro
be
rt
g.
mc
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bb
in c
ol
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ct
ion
ro
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mc
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ct
ion
A newly discovered report to Secretary of the
Treasury Charles J. Folger by acting Special
Agent William Penn Howland of the U.S.
Customs Service describes how federal
agents located John Kinney on the Gila and assisted
in organizing the columns necessary to surround the
rustler and prevent his escape.
Howland’s involvement in the search for Kinney
began on Thursday, March 1, in Benson, Arizona
Territory, where he and U.S. Customs Collector Abner
Tibbets met to investigate the smuggling of cattle
from Sonora. They determined that rustlers had
brought a smuggled herd across the border, tracing
the cattle to Lordsburg, New Mexico Territory, and
from there north to the Gila River. Tibbets dispatched
a mounted inspector named Wilson, who knew the
country well, to fnd the herd. What Wilson and other
unidentified scouts found on the Gila was a party
under Kinney reportedly in possession of several
hundred animals. Wilson needed reinforcements.
Wilson got word to Howland at Lordsburg. The
special agent immediately wired Kinney’s where-
abouts to Tibbets, who was already at El Paso. Tibbets
lost no time in telegraphing Governor Sheldon before
heading for Lordsburg, reaching town on Sunday,
March 4. A day was lost as Tibbets, Howland and
Deputy U.S. Marshal S.L. Sanders waited for the gov-
ernor’s men to arrive. At last, on Monday, Captain
Black, a saloonkeeper by trade, and 17 other men of
the Shakespeare Guards arrived on Sheldon’s orders.
That night they started with Sanders for the point
on the Gila where Wilson had spotted Kinney.
Meanwhile, Howland and Wilson rode all night
across the Burro Mountains to Silver City, arriving
there at 4 a.m. on March 6. They hoped to raise a force
in town but could not fnd men they could trust. As
Howland reported, “Men ordered out promiscuously
would be worse than none as nine-tenths of them
would be in league with Kinney and would betray and
frustrate any plan.” Silver City’s leading men offered
no help. All were said to be in mortal fear of Kinney and his
gang. The customs men split up. Wilson rode down the Gila to
meet Deputy Sanders and Captain Black. Howland rode to Fort
Bayard to plead for the Army’s help. Colonel William Bedford
Royal was apologetic, but he could not bring his 4th Cavalry
into play without orders from Brig. Gen. Ranald S. MacKenzie,
the department commander at Santa Fe.
Sanders and Black had also ridden all night after leaving
Lordsburg. As they approached the Gila, the deputy marshal
led one party in a long detour into Arizona Territory, pass-
ing through the Peloncillo Mountains to Whitlock’s Cienega,
then turning north and east, hitting the Gila at a point
beyond where Kinney was expected. The other party, led
by Captain Black, took a more direct path but split up, with
half going down each bank of the river.
On the morning of Wednesday, March 7, Kinney’s party
relaxed at Ash Springs, five miles inside Arizona Territory,
not far from York’s Ranch, to water the horses and mules.
This deteriorating onionskin map belonged to Special
Agent William Howland of the U.S. Customs Service.
The “+” (circled by us) in the fold marks the spot
where Captain James Black’s Shakespeare Guards
took Kinney and party by surprise on March 7, 1883.
W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 442
na
tio
na
l a
rc
hiv
es
an
d r
ec
or
ds
ad
min
ist
ra
tio
n
The water hole lay in a hollow with high rocks on either side,
too narrow for cattle, so Kinney pushed them downriver to
an open pasture. For the unwary traveler the hollow was also
a natural ambush site, as the late George York discovered
during the Apache outbreak 17 months earlier. Kinney, brother
Tom, wife Juana and their companions were just breaking
camp at about 8 a.m. when Black’s Shakespeare’s Guards took
them by surprise. At almost the same moment Sanders’ envel-
oping party, weary from their 30-mile march through Arizona
Territory, appeared from the west, closing the trap. Kinney
surrendered without a struggle. Instead, he tried to talk his way
out, but nobody, not even Harvey Whitehill, who some reports
placed at the scene, was buying what Kinney had to sell.
The militiamen escorted Kinney’s party, along with three-
dozen horses and mules, back to Lordsburg. There the rustler
king was thrown unceremoniously into a sidetracked boxcar
to await the arrival of A.J. Fountain and transportation to
Las Cruces for trial.
43A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
44 W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 4
Special Agent Howland begged his superiors for an Army
escort to Arizona to gather up Kinney’s “great number of
smuggled stolen cattle on the Gila and its cañons.” Howland
also urged the Treasury secretary to remain on the offen-
sive. With Kinney and his lieutenants captured or killed,
continued pressure, according to Nolan, “would so crush the
combination of CowBoys and desperadoes that [they] would
hardly rally again this summer, and if so, feebly, as the great
combination which now extends from the Pecos River in
Texas to Arizona would be without leaders for a time at least.”
Kinney faced 17 separate indictments for larceny and buy-
ing stolen cattle, handed down by the grand jury of New
Mexico’s 3rd Judicial District. Fountain, now the govern-
ment’s attorney, concentrated on prosecuting the territory’s
best case, a single charge of stealing 16 beeves. Fountain
did the job in two days, and on April 13, 1883, Kinney’s jury
took just eight minutes to convict the surprised crime boss.
Fountain escorted Kinney to prison at Leavenworth, Kan.
As the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe train carrying the deposed
king, eight other prisoners and Fountain’s guards rolled into
Kansas City on May 2, an Illustrated Police News reporter
was there to greet them. The journalist reported that Kinney
“expressed himself freely and did not appear to worry over his
fate.” Kinney told
the reporter: “The
days of the Rustler
are ended anyway in
New Mexico. All his
property have [sic]
been swept away,
and he might as well
be in Leavenworth
prison as out of it
without money.”
When his convic-
tion was reversed
less than three years
later, he went home
for a retrial that nev-
er took place. From
this point on, says
author Nolan, “Kin-
ney sinned no more.”
He may have served in Cuba during the Spanish American War
as a civilian scout and quartermaster, although the Army reject-
ed his pension claims. He owned a couple of mines and lived
comfortably—perhaps on his ill-
gotten savings accounts in El Paso.
By the time John Kinney died of
Bright’s disease at age 66 on August
25, 1919, he had thoroughly rewrit-
ten his life story. His obituary in the
Prescott Journal-Miner proclaimed
that he “was known in the Southwest
as one of the most daring and cou-
rageous in the annals of men who
were sacrifcing and unfinching to
preserve law and order.” In death, if
not life, he became “one of the most
generous and best loved men ever
to grace the early life of the thrilling
days of the border.” Not bad for the
Southwest’s frst crime boss.
The Pima County Public Library
[www.library.pima.gov] in Tucson
named Salt Warriors: Insurgency on
the Rio Grande, by Paul Cool [www
.paulcoolbooks.com], a Southwest
Book of the Year. For further reading:
The Lincoln County War: A Docu-
mentary History, by Frederick Nolan,
and Sheriff Harvey Whitehill: Silver
City Stalwart, by Bob Alexander.
Albert J. Fountain helped break the
back of the rustling operation and
then prosecuted crime boss Kinney.
Kinney, at left, poses in Cuba in 1898,
his criminal career a dozen years in
the past. He would rewrite his life
story before he died at age 66 in 1919.
ro
be
rt
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mc
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bb
in c
ol
le
ct
ion
ro
be
rt
g.
mc
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in c
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ct
ion
As needed, the men of the
Shakespeare Guards left their
silver mines, shops and sa-
loons to defend Grant Coun-
ty from Indian raids and rustler dep-
redations. Formed in 1879, they were
officially designated Company F, 1st
Regiment, New Mexico Volun-
teer Militia. The unit’s autho-
rized complement was 45 offcers
and men, but the usual strength
on patrol was closer to 20. The
guards were issued uniforms to
match those of the U.S. Army, but
New Mexico Territory had trouble
funding and supplying the men
with first-rate weapons. (Some
territorial militia units carried
old Austrian needle guns.) Follow-
ing Kinney’s capture, the guards
received praise from Governor
Lionel Sheldon and new carbines.
They were reorganized as one
of four companies in the new 1st
Cavalry Regiment.
It is doubtful any of Captain
James F. Black’s Shakespeare
Guards ever forgot the eventful
five weeks that began with the
bloodless capture of John Kinney.
After turning over their prison-
er to A.J. Fountain, Black’s men
came home to applause and free
drinks from strangers. The back-
slapping and return to everyday
life was short-lived.
Just two weeks after Kinney’s arrest
some two dozen Chiricahua Apaches
crossed from Sonora into Arizona Ter-
ritory just west of Tombstone in a raid
to secure ammunition for their Win-
chester repeaters and other modern
rifles. Under the leadership of Chatto,
they ripped across southeast Arizona
at a lightning pace, covering 50 miles or
more each day. Attacking any isolated
party in their path, Chatto’s band soon
killed a dozen miners, freighters, stock-
men and others. Some bloody corpses
revealed the most savage butchery. The
Army chased but never caught sight
of the marauders. Hysteria rose as the
death toll mounted.
Word that Chatto’s raiding party was
sweeping east brought the Shakespeare
Guards back into the feld. Blocking the
Apaches’ path to the settlements of New
Mexico’s bootheel, with the chance of
ambushing them, seemed the best strat-
egy. Captain Black’s riders headed
southwest to the Peloncillo Mountains,
aiming to stop the ferocious Chatto’s
advance at Stein’s Pass, which was the
likeliest crossing point.
The militia miscalculated. Anticipating
the white man’s strategy, Chatto turned
his Chiricahuas northeast. The maraud-
ers raced from the San Simon Valley
to the Gila. On Tuesday, March 27, they
crossed into New Mexico Territory near
present-day Virden, killing another nine
settlers before seeking shelter in the
Burro Mountains. Sometime around
noon on Wednesday, in Thompson Can-
yon and quite by accident, the raiders
crossed paths with Judge Hamilton Mc-
Comas, wife Juniata and their 6-year-
old son, Charley. The warriors killed the
adults and carried off the child.
The McComas family was still
alive, relaxing in the shade of a
walnut tree, when Captain Black’s
company, disappointed at its fail-
ure to find the Apaches at Stein’s
Pass, returned to Shakespeare
(which is a present-day New Mexi-
co ghost town). Within hours the
telegraph brought word of the mas-
sacre. The guards’ horses were worn
out, and fresh mounts were hard to
secure. Not until noon on Thursday
could Black’s company, 22 strong,
ride south in pursuit.
Over the course of six days the
Shakespeare Guards followed Chat-
to’s trail, lost it, returned to Lords-
burg for provisions, headed back
south, took a detour for more sup-
plies and resumed the search.
Despite their wanderings, Black’s
men outpaced two companies of
the 4th Cavalry and, incredibly,
gained on the Apaches. After fnd-
ing fresh signs, the guards crossed
five miles into Mexico and set up
camp. Then, on April 4, they broke
camp and rode back north.
The homecoming of the Shakespeare
Guards two days later brought both
relief they had not been “annihilated”
and consternation at their failure to
retrieve the captive boy. One contem-
porary news account indicates Black’s
scouts had stumbled upon Chatto’s
band, their strength doubled by rein-
forcements. If so, withdrawal was a
wise choice. Still, there was no dis-
guising that this time the Shakespeare
Guards had failed, an outcome erasing
the pride gained by Kinney’s capture.
P.C.
Unlike Kinney, the Apache Chatto, posing above
in a 1903 photo, eluded the Shakespeare Guards.
The Shakespeare Guards’ Pursuit of Chatto
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In 1876, during the heady, freewheeling days
of the Black Hills Gold Rush, the name William
F. “Persimmon Bill” Chambers curdled Hillers’
imaginations. News of his lawlessness was head-
line fare in the Cheyenne and Laramie news-
papers—he the fancifully monikered horse thief,
ruthless murderer and coy newshound, with Wyo-
ming and Dakota landmarks like Fort Fetterman,
Hat Creek, Indian Creek, the Cheyenne River and Red Canyon
his lair and oozing with the blood of victims. Travel on the
Black Hills Road north of Fort Laramie and through Red Can-
yon was treacherous enough, especially beyond the Hat Creek
Breaks, where an Indian trail to Powder River country crossed
this citizen’s road. But Chambers also hit that span hard,
dishing mayhem with seeming impunity. Persimmon Bill
Chambers’ outlaw run was mercifully short-lived, but his
legacy is tied to several of the most heinous murders com-
mitted on the Cheyenne–Black Hills Road in 1876. During his
spree this critical avenue to a prosperous new gold country
was one of the most dangerous roads in America.
Much of what is known today about the early life of William
Chambers comes from the outlaw himself and is mostly
derived from a chance encounter in April 1876 with a news-
man traveling the Cheyenne–Black Hills Road to the Dakota
goldfelds. Evincing a beguiling charm and a certain eager-
ness to tell his story, Chambers told of his North Carolina
roots and of his Civil War service, supposedly first with a
Confederate infantry outfit and then, after a desertion and
another enlistment, with a Union cavalry regiment. As with
much about Chambers, such details do not always check out.
Chambers’ propensity for gunfghting reportedly stemmed
from those Civil War years, as Bill related having shot a fellow
Union soldier in Bowling Green, Va., over a woman’s atten-
tion. Chambers said he fled and rejoined the Confederates,
was captured and served out the war in the Union prison
on Johnson’s Island in Sandusky Bay, Lake Erie, Ohio.
The newsman in 1876 described a pleasant featured, well-
dressed man about 5-foot-9, rather well built and weighing
perhaps 140 pounds, with short brown hair, bright blue eyes,
a small, well-shaped nose, thin lips shaded by a blond mus-
tache, and a chin covered with a short brown beard. “The only
features indicating his ferocious disposition,” wrote the cor-
respondent, “[were] his very heavy protruding eyebrows and
his thick, heavy lower jaws.” Albert W. Merrick, publisher of
The Black Hills Daily Pioneer, supposedly also encountered
Persimmon Bill, at a stage station in mid-1876, and recalled
quite a different character, being “tall,” he said, “swarthy,
keen-eyed, with coal-black hair, straight as an Indian’s.”
By his own account Chambers was several years making his
way to Cheyenne, drifting through Fort Collins, North Platte
and Sioux City, always in trouble but eventually taking ranch
employment in Wyoming with Malcolm Campbell, not yet the
famous Wyoming lawman but then a businessman holding a
contract to produce charcoal for Fort Fetterman. Campbell is
one of the few, aside from that frst newsman, to speak kindly
of Chambers, whom he recalled as the best herder he ever had,
who stayed with him for two years before going “to the bad.”
It is hard to imagine Campbell knew about Chambers’ nefar-
ious background, but that changed as the name Persimmon
Bill became regular fodder in Wyoming newspapers.
The frst known mention of the nickname “Persim-
mon Bill,” or “Persimmons Bill” as it sometimes
appears—a name never explained but likely re-
fecting the same astringency as that unique fruit
when unripe—appeared in the March 9, 1875, Cheyenne Daily
Leader. Chambers was then serving time for horse rustling in
the Cheyenne jail, the “Hotel d’O’Brieno” as the paper called
46 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
In 1876 ‘Persimmon Bill’ Chambers committed several ruthless murders and dished general mayhem on folks traveling
to and from gold country on the Cheyenne–Black Hills Road
By Paul L. Hedren
47a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
it—a teasing reference to Laramie
County Sheriff Nicholas O’Brien.
The Leader observed that Cham-
bers and an accomplice both had
reputations as “very hard char-
acters, with a weakness for hov-
ering occasionally on the outskirts
of the Indian horse herd near Red
Cloud,” meaning the Red Cloud
Agency in northwestern Nebraska.
A grand jury would soon investi-
gate, the mention continued, but
in the meantime, “Indian horses
will become scarce in the horse
markets at Sidney, Cheyenne and
Laramie City.” But Persimmon Bill
seems to have evaded any con-
sequences in this instance and
was soon free.
Chambers was singled out in the
Laramie Daily Sentinel a few weeks
later when three Indians appeared
in town on the trail of horses sto-
len from them by a rustler named
“Persimmon Bill.” Bill later boast-
ed of his skill at thieving horses
and the enterprise it spawned,
telling some chance-encountered
Black Hills travelers he was the
“leading spirit” of a regularly or-
ganized band of horse thieves. Its
members, he said, were stationed
at different points between the
Black Hills and the San Juan coun-
try in southwestern Colorado, and
that horses stolen in Colorado were
brought north and disposed of, and
when rustled in Wyoming were
taken south and sold. Bill noted
that every case of horse theft in
Colorado or Wyoming over the
past four or five years could be
traced to members of this gang.
Another chance encounter north
of Cheyenne, this time between
a young bullwhacker working for
the Charley Clay freighting outft
and Chambers, painted a believ-
able picture of the outlaw. The
herder, William Francis Hooker,
was on the trail of a stray bull. When topping a hill he spotted
a horseman coming on. As that rider drew near, he raised
his carbine and pointed it straight at Hooker. Hooker recog-
nized the rider almost immediately. “He was a tough-looking
customer, filthy dirty, hair hanging far down his back, and
face covered with [a] straggling beard.”
“Do you know me?” Chambers asked, still pointing the gun.
“Sure,” young Hooker replied. “Sure I know you; you’re
Persimmons Bill. I saw you last year at Hunton’s place
near Fetterman.”
A short conversation ensued, with Chambers begging for
food and explaining he had not eaten since leaving Fort Lara-
Artist Herman Palmer sketched the confrontation between herder William Hooker, top left,
and outlaw William “Persimmon Bill” Chambers for Hooker’s 1924 book The Bullwhacker.
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mie the day before. Hooker noticed Chambers rode “a big
American horse that bore [an] uncanceled ‘U.S.’” Hooker fna-
gled some bacon and corn pone for Chambers, who admon-
ished him to keep the encounter quiet. “If you squeal on me,”
he said, “they won’t get me, for I’ll be a long way from here
before they can start; but, boy, I’ll get you.”
Bill’s rustling and petty thievery surfaced as occasional news
in Wyoming during the winter of 1875–76. But an episode
near Fort Fetterman on March 4, 1876, thrust ill-tempered,
hair-triggered Persimmon Bill into the headlines. When a
band of Arapaho Indians living near Fort Fetterman tracked
stolen horses to a ranch on the Medicine Bow Road, three
miles south of the fort, they lodged a complaint with the
post commander, Major Alexander Chambers of the 4th
U.S. Infantry. Major Chambers dispatched Sergeant Patrick
Sullivan of Company F, 4th Infantry, with the Indians, and on
returning to the ranch, they encountered Persimmon Bill and
two partners. Bill claimed the ponies as his own, but Sullivan
attempted an arrest. The moment Sullivan’s back was turned,
Bill and an ally fred shots at the sergeant, one entering the
sergeant’s back and exiting his left breast, killing him instant-
ly. The Indians fled, and Bill and his accomplices robbed
Sullivan’s body of a gold watch and money, later claimed to
be $300 but according to the Army amounting only to $30,
and alighted for cover south in the Laramie Mountains.
The Army identifed Sullivan’s killer as the “desperado named
William Chambers, (alias) Persimmon Bill,” and marshaled
a considerable response—the government offering a $1,000
reward for Bill’s apprehension, and Major Chambers enlisting
the services of the U.S. marshal in Cheyenne and support from
Fort Sanders on the Union Pacifc Railroad near the other end
of the Medicine Bow Road, the supposed route of the out-
laws’ escape. Three days later one of Bill’s accomplices, named
Brown, was arrested at Fort Fetterman. Some 10 days later an
offcer from Fort Sanders apprehended the other accomplice,
William Madden, at Medicine Bow. But Persimmon Bill eluded
the chase, evidently making his way to Rawlins, a rowdy rail-
road town west of Medicine Bow, and then doubling back
toward the Black Hills. Stealing horses as he moved, Cham-
bers was spotted at Medicine Bow, Owen’s Ranch, Bull’s Bend
and south of Hat Creek on the Cheyenne–Black Hills Road.
Keeping tabs on Bill made good news in Cheyenne, as on
April 21 when the Daily Leader reported he was now in the
Black Hills, “and when not engaged in his thieving busi-
ness, loafs about the towns there, having plenty of money and
spending it freely.” In hindsight such reports provide critical
evidence linking Bill to the most notorious killing spree in
early Black Hills history, frst the heinous murders of the four-
member Charles Metz party and then Henry E. “Stuttering”
Brown, a Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage Co. manager.
Each episode bore Chambers’ imprint and earned the outlaw
another nickname, “Scourge of the Black Hills Trail.”
News of the so-called Red Canyon Massacre, or
Metz Massacre, a sordid affair occurring on the
Cheyenne–Black Hills Road some 10 miles north
of the Cheyenne River crossing, splashed across
the Cheyenne newspapers beginning on April 21. The location
48 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
Above: The Cheyenne–Black Hills Road was dotted with stagecoach stations like this one at Hat Creek, near the heart of Bill’s lair.
Below: Charles Metz prospered here in Custer City, then he cashed out, but on the dangerous road to Laramie, Metz cashed in.
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49a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
itself, Red Canyon, was a unique Black Hills feature. A narrow
defle some seven miles long from its mouth to its head, Red
Canyon sliced through luminous brick-red sandstone that cast
a vibrant crimson tone on virtually everything, with high-rising
red stone sidewalls, an ever-present red powdery dust and
even the creek running the canyon’s foor fowing a tinged red.
The canyon was an easy avenue leading from the surrounding
prairie directly northward into the Black Hills and on to Custer
City and was a favored route used by early Hillers, freighters
and the Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage. But Red Canyon
also featured blind corners, masking groves of cottonwoods
and scrub vegetation, and secluded side canyons, all perfect
for ambush. From the earliest days of the Black Hills Gold
Rush, Red Canyon was a fearful passage from which there
was no escape. One Hiller captured that anxiety perfectly in
a few apt verses, scrawled on a sign at the canyon entrance:
Look to your rifles well
For this is the Canyon of Hell
The Red Canyon
Charles Metz, a Laramie City baker lured to Custer City in
February 1876, made a quick and prosperous living there
until the placer boom drifted from French and Spring creeks
in the central hills northward toward Deadwood. Instead of
joining the northbound rush, Metz seized an opportunity in
mid-April to cash out, for a goodly sum of placer gold some
said, and return to Laramie. Although freighters advised Metz
against traveling alone south from Custer, on April 16 he em-
barked, believing his danger was from Indians lurking the
prairie and Powder River Trail and not short of there. The party
of four—Metz, his wife, their black cook, Rachel Briggs, and
their driver, a teamster named Simpson—was dining under
the shade of cottonwoods midway through Red Canyon when
attackers struck. Metz fell dead instantly, shot through the
head and body. Rachel Briggs fell nearby, an Indian arrow in
her back. Simpson fell dead about a half-mile from the wagon,
and Metz’s wife was killed still farther away, shot through the
heart. Freighters who discovered them the next day noted the
victims had been atrociously mutilated, the two women, in
the term of the day, “ravished,” and the party’s trunks and
boxes broken open and their contents strewn about.
The freighters carried the Metzes to the Cheyenne River ranch
for burial, while Simpson and Briggs were buried where they
fell in the canyon. The murders were attributed to Indians,
and the arrow recovered from Briggs’ body was displayed at
the Stebbins, Post & Co. Bank in Cheyenne. But many early
Hillers also quickly surmised Persimmon Bill was involved and
likely even led the assault, as he’d been lurking about Custer
City beforehand, and the massacre had the look of murder for
money. Although searchers later gathered Metz family papers
and opened letters from a hilltop overlooking the canyon, no
cash or gold ever turned up. Jesse Brown, a Black Hills pioneer
and early chronicler, was among those fngering Persimmon
Bill, writing that he personally explored the killing ground and
saw where “persons had concealed themselves behind pine
bushes that had been cut and planted in the ground, and foot-
prints all show[ed] boot or shoe tracks, besides…knee prints
in the ground [that] showed the weave of cloth.”
Barely had news of the Metz Massacre settled across Chey-
enne and the gold country when another murder occurred,
this time of the well known and respected H.E. Brown of Oma-
ha and Salt Lake City. Brown had come to Cheyenne in Feb-
ruary to manage the Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage, Mail and
Express Co., owned by the Gilmer, Salisbury & Patrick part-
nership of Salt Lake City. As the fedgling company’s business
expanded that spring, Brown was named superintendent of the
danger-fraught “up line” north of Fort Laramie to Custer City.
Stocking stations with hay, grain, horses and equipment
was steady business for Brown, a man of sound character but
also a quick temper and pronounced stutter. Thieves preyed
on company stock, especially on the leg between Hat Creek
and Red Canyon, and when a fine team intended for use
on the run north through Red Canyon went missing, Brown
investigated and in due course encountered none other than
Persimmon Bill at the Cheyenne River stage station immedi-
ately south of Red Canyon. A mere fve days had elapsed since
the Metz killings. Chambers’ reputation as a rustler was well
Left: The Metz murder site in Red Canyon, photographed by D.S. Mitchell of Omaha in September 1876, was ever after a point of
morbid curiosity on the storied Cheyenne–Black Hills Road. Right: With some effort the curious can fnd the massacre site today.
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50 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
known, and Brown accused him of the theft and threatened to
kill him if he did not quit the stage road. Chambers denied any
involvement and melted into the darkness, quietly remarking
to others at the station he would get even with Brown.
As Brown and two companions, Charlie Edwards and stage
driver Silvin Bishop “Curly” Ayres, sped southward toward
Hat Creek, making a night run on April 21 in one of the com-
pany’s fast freight wagons, they came under attack around
midnight some 18 miles north of the Hat Creek station. A
shower of bullets rattled the wagon, but only Brown and a
mule were struck. Brown’s wound was serious, the ball slicing
the cartridge belt at his waist, smashing a shell, and the ball
and torn cartridge cutting deeply into his abdomen. Brown,
laid out in the wagon, told his companions to save themselves
and the surviving stock by riding on to Hat Creek. Sometime
after the companions had departed, Brown recovered enough
to mount the wounded mule and resume the trail himself.
At Hat Creek the company men formed a party to recover
Brown, whom they presumed to be dead. Instead, the riders
found him slumped over but alive on the road several miles
from the Indian Creek station, his mule at his side. They re-
turned to Hat Creek with Brown and summoned a surgeon
from Fort Laramie, 70 miles south. The stage man was still
alive when Dr. Charles V. Petteys arrived many hours later,
but there was little to be done, and Brown expired. Sol-
diers brought Brown’s body to Fort Laramie for an autopsy.
Doctors there retrieved the fatal bullet, and his body was
packed and forwarded to Omaha for burial.
By now Persimmon Bill Chambers’ reputation was
in full fower. The U.S. Army wanted him. Wyoming
law offcers wanted him. He was implicated in the
Metz Massacre, despite the probable participation
of Indians. And since witnesses had seen the face-off between
Stuttering Brown and Persimmon Bill at the Cheyenne River
station just hours before the stage man was struck down,
it was immediately assumed Chambers was connected.
A critical element in the case linking Chambers with the Metz
slayings came from the outlaw himself in a rambling interview
that frst appeared in the Laramie Daily Sentinel on April 29,
1876, and was reprinted widely thereafter. The interview had
occurred about a week earlier, putting it in timely proximity
to both the Metz and Brown slayings. While en route to the
Hills a Sentinel correspondent had chanced upon a band of
Sioux on Indian Creek “out on a lark from one of the agencies,”
the writer presumed. “In the party of redskins was a pleasant-
featured, well-dressed white man, who, upon being asked if
he was a captive with the Indians, laughingly responded: ‘No;
I am Persimmon Bill; some call me Sogerkilling Bill, while
those who desire to be polite call me Government William.’”
As the visit progressed, some 18 or 20 Indians escorted the
newsman into their camp, and Bill drew the reporter to his
own fre, making him welcome and assuring him of his safety.
After stretching out on a buffalo robe, Chambers commenced
telling his story, visiting his upbringing in Carolina, his es-
capades in Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa, and his killing
of Sergeant Sullivan at Fort Fetterman, where he derived the
name “Sogerkilling Bill.” Chambers’ remorselessness troubled
the reporter, and in his story he labeled the outlaw a “cold-
blooded murderer” and noted how Bill laughed at Sullivan’s
slaying, saying, “I am death on soldiers and government
property, and that’s why they call me Government Bill.”
The irony of Chambers consorting with Indians barely days
after the Metz killings was apparently not grasped by the
reporter, who closed his tale by recalling that Lt. Col. Luther
P. Bradley at Fort Laramie offered a $1,000 reward for the
outlaw, “dead or alive.” Chambers’ ironic friendship with
Indians from the Red Cloud or Spotted Tail agencies had
another twist, too, but apparent only much later.
On June 2 the Cheyenne Daily Leader reported that William
Hawley, former sheriff of Rawlins, had struck Persimmon
Bill’s trail and with a chosen band of daring men was attempt-
ing his capture, though there is no record of an arrest or death.
Meanwhile, the Army moved to better secure the landscape
From Cheyenne a freight wagon and a stagecoach head for the Black Hills together—not a bad idea on a road fraught with danger.
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51 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
Telltale reminders of Per-
simmon Bill Chambers’
1876 murder spree remain
at the scattered burial sites
of his victims.
Fourth U.S. Infantry Sergeant Pat-
rick Sullivan was initially buried in the
Fort Fetterman Cemetery. After the
Army abandoned that post in 1882,
it reinterred soldiers’ remains at the
Fort McPherson National Cemetery in
Maxwell, Neb. There visitors will fnd
Sullivan’s marked grave.
Charles Metz and his wife, whose
name seems lost to history, were frst
buried at the Chey-
enne River stage
station and then
reburied in the Greenhill Cemetery
in Laramie, Wyo. One source sug-
gests a stone was placed atop their
graves on which was inscribed Killed
by Indians in Red Canyon. That stone
is lost today, and the Metz graves are
not marked
In 1876 H.E. “Stuttering” Brown’s
remains were interred in Omaha’s
Prospect Hill Cemetery per his wife’s
instructions, but the grave was never
marked. She by then had relocated to
Salt Lake City. Some 135 years later
the nonprofit Omaha Corral of the
Westerners undertook a campaign to
recognize this notable Omahan and
Wild West plainsman and placed a
marker atop his grave (see photo,
above). Today Brown’s grave is a fea-
tured attraction on many Omaha
Old West tours. P.H.
terrorized by Chambers, in June establishing infantry camps
on the Cheyenne–Black Hills Road north of Fort Laramie—
one at the head of Sage Creek, in the Hat Creek Breaks adjacent
to the stage station, the other at the mouth of Red Canyon, a
few miles north of the Cheyenne River station. Bill’s world was
being hemmed in, and just as quickly his trail went icy cold.
Persimmon Bill’s name occasionally appeared in local news-
papers after this, but he was never again linked to outlandish
episodes. One brief mention placed him with Sitting Bull in
the days following Lt. Col. George Custer’s June 25 loss at the
Little Bighorn, while another had him feuding with Deadwood
outlaw “Texas Joe.” But one passing mention in the Omaha
Daily Bee, on October 14, 1876, said more in a few words than
anyone immediately grasped. A Hiller, having just returned to
Omaha from the goldfields, told the paper that Persimmon
Bill, the noted horse thief, had been reported killed. Faint and
false reports of sightings cropped up a while longer, but then
Chambers’ name simply dropped away altogether.
On May 3, 1879, The Cheyenne Daily Sun related a tale of
Persimmon Bill’s death, a report confdently offered by Nick
Janis, a credible old French-blood Missourian married to a
niece of Red Cloud, long an interpreter at Fort Laramie and
more recently a rancher in the North Platte River valley 30
miles east of that post. “Persimmon Bill’s dead,” Janis said,
“and I know the man that killed him. He was killed in the Red
Canyon in the fall of ’76 by a party of injuns from the agency.
How was he killed? Why, this way. A train had been taken in,
and that imp of Satan got up a row about dividing the plun-
der and got shot by a young buck before he knew there was
danger. Oh, yes, Persimmon Bill is dead, boys, you can bet
on that.” One might infer that one of the Indian cohorts who
had joined Chambers in raining death on the Metz party,
then camped with him when visited by the Laramie Daily
Sentinel correspondent, had rained death on Bill too.
Several other versions of Chambers’ demise exist, but while
colorful, they are neither well timed nor confirmed. Only
Janis’ version of Persimmon Bill’s death rings true. He had
no stake in Chambers’ story and functioned in that quixotic
fringe of the Indian frontier, at places like Fort Laramie, on
the North Platte River, and on the margins and in the midst
of the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Sioux agencies. He was a
respected and trustworthy individual in both the white and
Indian worlds, a man noted for his honesty and unimpeach-
able integrity. He said he knew Persimmon Bill’s killer, an
Indian, and in every probability he did. In the end it appears
that horse rustler and murderer Persimmon Bill Cham-
bers, the “Scourge of the Black Hills Trail,” died about as
he lived: cold-blooded, quick-triggered, ruthless and alone
in Dakota’s Red Canyon in 1876.
Paul L. Hedren is a retired National Park Service superintendent
and the author of many books exploring the history of the north-
ern Plains, including Ho! For the Black Hills: Captain Jack Craw-
ford Reports the Black Hills Gold Rush and Great Sioux War.
Hedren adapted this version of Persimmon Bill’s story from a
longer article in the Autumn 2009 issue of Annals of Wyoming.
Persimmon Bill’s Victims
In 1875 Laramie County Sheriff Nicholas O’Brien (inset) held
Chambers in the Cheyenne city jail, within the county courthouse.
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Josiah Kelly and Andy, a black hired hand, watched
helplessly from their hiding place where they had
been gathering wood as Oglala Sioux (Lakota) war-
riors murdered three members of their wagon train
and took four others captive on July 12, 1864. Josiah,
his 19-year-old wife Fanny, Fanny’s 7-year-old niece
Mary Hurley and hired men Andy and Franklin had
joined a train of fve wagons heading to the Montana Territory
goldfelds. Josiah’s health was poor, and he and Fanny thought
it might improve if they headed west to seek their fortune.
The trip from their home in Geneva, Kansas, had been typical
of westward emigrants at the time—hard travel, but also some
pleasant experiences—until they neared Little Box Elder Creek,
about 14 miles west of present-day Douglas, Wyoming. As they
crossed the creek that late afternoon, more than 200 Oglala
warriors rode up to the wagons.
At frst the visitors seemed friendly. When they requested
gifts, Josiah and the others willingly gave them items, includ-
ing Josiah’s prized thoroughbred. The warriors, seemingly
content, urged the emigrants to move on and steered them
toward an ominous looking rocky glen. When the emigrants
balked, the Oglalas insisted they make supper for the warriors.
While the travelers were preparing camp, the warriors fred on
them without warning, instantly killing Franklin, Noah Taylor
and a Methodist minister named Sharp. William Larimer and
Gardner Wakefeld were seriously injured, but escaped. The
52 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4 The Greenwich workshop, seymour, conn.
Fort Dilts and
Fanny’s Bid forFreedomSioux raiders, while besieging emigrants holed up in primitive earthworks,
forced a captive white woman to communicate their demands —she added a plea of her own
By Bill Markley
53a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
warriors ransacked the wagons and rode off with Fanny and
the only other woman, Sarah Larimer, as well as the two chil-
dren—Mary Hurley and Sarah’s 8-year-old son, Frank. That
night Sarah and Frank successfully escaped the Oglalas. Fanny
helped Mary escape, but the girl wasn’t as lucky as the Lari-
mers. Her captors tracked her down. A search party that
included Josiah Kelly later found Mary, scalped, with three
arrows protruding from her back. There was no sign of Fanny.
But Fanny Kelly did not disappear from the historical record.
Amazingly, two months later in what would become North
Dakota, she appeared again. Captive Mrs. Kelly found herself
part of a highly dramatic trail incident in which another emi-
grant wagon train party fell under attack, cobbled together a
fortifcation dubbed “Fort Dilts” and held out under siege as
they waited more than two weeks for help.
Three days after Fanny Kelly’s capture and 700 miles
to the east, 29-year-old Captain James Liberty Fisk
of the U.S. Quartermaster Corps led a civilian wag-
on train out of Fort Ridgely, Minn., westbound for
the Montana goldfelds. The party comprised 170 men, women
and children in 97 wagons pulled by mules and oxen. Fisk had
led wagon trains to the Montana goldfelds twice before, but
during a more peaceful time in Dakota Territory, before ar-
mies led by Generals Henry Sibley and Alfred Sully battled
the Dakota and Lakota Sioux and infamed the countryside.
Lakota warriors are Watching the Wagons, in a painting
by Frank McCarthy. In September 1864 Lakotas did
more than watch the James Liberty Fisk wagon train,
harassing it and besieging it for more than two weeks.
Fisk’s July 1864 train would
have to pass through hos-
tile territory.
In 1862, due to the insensi-
tivity of Indian agents and a
scarcity of promised food and
supplies, the Dakotas were
beginning to starve. After
some of the frustrated young
men murdered several white
farmers, the tribe rose in sup-
port and killed hundreds of
Minnesota settlers. The Army
retaliated for this Sioux up-
rising, fighting and chasing
the renegades into Dakota
Territory, where the Dakotas
joined forces with their sym-
pathetic Lakota relatives.
Generals Sully and Sibley
were operating in Dakota
Territory against them, build-
ing forts and attempting to
defeat them. By 1864 it was
a mighty unfriendly region.
The federal government had
commissioned Fisk—captain
and assistant quartermas-
ter, commanding the North
Overland Expedition—to pro-
tect the wagon trains headed
for the goldfelds. The Union
sought to boost the gold min-
ing industry to help finance
its war effort.
Near Minnesota’s western
border in eastern Dakota Ter-
ritory, Major John Clowney’s
encamped troops were build-
ing Fort Wadsworth (later
Fort Sisseton). On reaching
the camp, Fisk asked Clow-
ney for an escort. Clowney
assigned 50 men command-
ed by Lieutenant Henry F.
Phillips to accompany the
wagon train as far as Fort
Rice, then under construc-
tion on the Missouri River.
There Fisk expected to join General Sully’s expedition, re-
maining with it until reaching the Yellowstone River, where
they would part company. Fisk reasoned at that point the
wagon train would be out of Sioux territory, and it would be
relatively safe to continue to the goldfelds.
The wagon train reached Fort Rice in mid-August with little
mishap. On arrival Fisk became upset when he learned that
Sully had left on his cam-
paign without him and, worst
still, was escorting a competi-
tor’s wagon train. Fisk tried to
order Phillips to escort them
to the Yellowstone, but the
lieutenant followed his orders
to return to Fort Wadsworth.
Undeterred, Fisk asked Col-
onel Daniel J. Dill, command-
er of Fort Rice, for an escort.
At frst Dill told Fisk he could
not spare any troops. But
after listening to Fisk’s argu-
ments, he reluctantly agreed
to provide an escort of men
Sully had left behind to recov-
er from sickness and injury.
Dill had asked for 50 volun-
teers and got 45. Sully had left
behind a number of horses
that were also in poor condi-
tion, and the volunteers chose
the fittest of these as their
mounts. Second Lieuten-
ant Dewitt C. Smith, who
was awaiting the decision
of a court-martial against
him, would command them.
Smith’s orders were to ac-
company the emigrants only
as far as the Yellowstone and
then return to the fort. Sec-
ond in command was Ser-
geant Willoughby Wells of
Brackett’s Battalion, Com-
pany B; he and his guard de-
tail had just arrived with
a steamboat loaded with
supplies for the fort. Fisk
had obtained a 12-pounder
mountain howitzer from
Fort Snelling, Minn., with a
limited supply of canister
and powder. With the escort,
howitzer and armed men of
the wagon train, Fisk believed
he had enough firepower
to withstand a Sioux attack.
The wagon train and its escort headed westward from Fort
Rice on August 23. During the frst night on the trail fve of the
volunteers had a change of heart and returned to the fort.
Sully’s army had marched west pursuing hostile Lakota and
Dakota tribes. Fisk followed their trail about 80 miles west of
Fort Rice until it swung north, not the direction he wanted to
head. He determined to blaze a new, shorter trail through
54 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
ka
ns
as
sT
aT
e h
isT
or
ica
l s
oc
ieT
y
we
ide
r h
isT
or
y G
ro
up
ar
ch
ive
sT
aT
e h
isT
or
ica
l s
oc
ieT
y o
f n
or
Th
da
ko
Ta
Captured by Oglala warriors on July 12, 1864, Fanny Kelly was
traded to a band of Hunkpapas, who later encountered Fisk.
Captain Fisk, left, expected to join up with Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully,
right, at Fort Rice, but Sully had departed with another train.
55a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
unknown territory, due west between the Black Hills to the
south and the Little Missouri River badlands to the north.
Every Sunday was a day of rest for hu-
mans and beasts. Fisk arranged shoot-
ing matches each Sunday. The second
Sunday out from Fort Rice, Fisk held a
contest between the best civilian shot in
the wagon train and the top marksman
from among the soldiers for a $10 prize.
Sergeant Wells won and used his money
to buy tobacco for the troops from one of
the emigrant storekeepers.
In late afternoon on September 2, some
180 miles west of Fort Rice, one of the
wagons upset while trying to cross Deep
Creek. Fisk directed the wagon train to
continue, leaving behind a second driver
with his wagon and a rearguard, 12 men
altogether, to right the wagon, fx it and
then rejoin the rest of the train.
Within minutes more than 100 Hunk-
papa Sioux attacked the two wagons and
rearguard, cutting them off from the rest
of the wagon train. Gall and Sitting Bull,
who would later both become famous,
participated. Two warriors teamed up against Corporal
Thomas Williamson of the 6th Iowa Cavalry, beating him
with their clubs and stabbing him with
their knives. Williamson fought them off
in hand-to-hand combat, but then Sitting
Bull rode up and shot an arrow into the
corporal’s back. Williamson turned and
fred his pistol at Sitting Bull, hitting him
in the hip and knocking him out of the
fight. Despite his many wounds, Wil-
liamson mounted his horse and returned
to the wagon train, reporting to Fisk on
the situation. Williamson later died from
his wounds. The Hunkpapas killed the
rest of the rearguard and ransacked the
two wagons.
Fisk and the wagon train were about a
mile beyond the creek crossing when they
heard the shooting. Sergeant Wells was
ahead of the wagons with an advance
party when he saw in the distance Hunk-
papas surrounding the rearguard and two
wagons. Wells and his men galloped their
horses back to protect the rear of the train
from attack. Jefferson Dilts, a scout and
lib
ra
ry
of
co
nG
re
ss
he
riT
aG
e a
uc
Tio
n G
al
le
rie
s,
da
ll
as
Sitting Bull, posing in 1881, took a bullet
to the hip at the September 1864 siege.
This engraving of the July 1864 attack frst appeared in Fanny Kelly’s 1871 Narrative of My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians.
56 W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
former Army corporal, urged
his horse far ahead of the res-
cue party to reach the rear-
guard. Dilts shot down some
half-dozen warriors, but as
he finally turned to retreat,
three arrows struck him in
the back. (The brave scout
would travel on with the Fisk
wagon train but would die
from his wounds after 16 days
of agony.) Undeterred, the
Hunkpapas continued to ran-
sack the wagons, taking new
Sharps carbines, thousands
of rounds of ammunition,
liquor, cigars, canned goods,
stationery, silverware and
other valuables. After two
hours of fighting the rescue
party temporarily drove off
the Hunkpapa attackers and
had enough time to recover
the bodies for later burial.
As the wagon train contin-
ued west, the Hunkpapas ha-
rassed it. The emigrants soon
found a good defensive posi-
tion between two ridges with
a bowl-shaped depression
in which they could corral
the animals. Here they made
camp for the night. The war-
riors sporadically shot their
new frearms into the camp,
but fortunately for the emi-
grants, the Hunkpapas were
not very accurate with them
—yet. The besieged party did
not light fres that night. But
they did make time to bury
their fellow travelers who had
been killed that day. Wolves
outside camp howled at the
scent of blood and death.
Adding to the misery, a vio-
lent thunderstorm struck.
September 3 dawned to
reveal the emigrants’ cattle
standing in 2 feet of frigid
water. The wagon train re-
sumed its journey, while the
Hunkpapas continued their
long-distance harassment by
ima
Ge
s:
lib
ra
ry
of
co
nG
re
ss
Kelly herself fnally arrives at Fort Sully, three months after she let the Fort Dilts defenders know she was being held captive.
Kelly hands Jumping Bear a warning letter to take to Fort Sully.
57 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
shooting at people and animals. They managed to kill several
oxen and horses. The emigrants made camp after a nine-mile
advance. When a large number of Hunkpapas gathered for a
massed attack, the soldiers loaded the howitzer and fred a
shot of canister at them. After that they kept their distance but
continued to mill around and fre at the emigrants. They did
not attack the camp that night.
The next morning some of the emigrants, without
Fisk’s knowledge and with the Minnesota massa-
cres still fresh in their minds, left behind a box of
strychnine-laced hardtack for the Indians to fnd.
Just how many Hunkpapas died from eating the poisoned
hardtack is unknown, but according to one account, by the
end of the campaign “more had died from eating bad bread
than from bullets.”
The Hunkpapas stepped up their attacks on the wagon train.
Lieutenant Smith believed the warriors were again forming
to make a massed attack, so after progressing only a few miles,
the emigrants stopped at a good defensive position near water.
As they were circling the wagons, unhitching the livestock and
bringing them into the wagon corral, the warriors advanced
close enough to shoot arrows into the enclosure. One Hunk-
papa leader, a good rifle shot, ventured a bit too close and
was shot and killed. That prompted the other warriors to with-
draw, though they remained within sight of the train. The emi-
grants were elated at the turn of events. A would-be saloon-
keeper by the name of McCarthy toted around a bucket of
whiskey and tin cup and served a drink to whoever wanted
to celebrate with him, until Fisk put a halt to it.
The Hunkpapa warriors still meant business. Their number
had increased to at least 300 warriors, and they were closing
in on all sides. Fisk realized his group would not be able to
move ahead or, indeed, get out of this situation without help.
Lieutenant Smith and 14 men volunteered to try to break
through Hunkpapa lines and ride the nearly 200 miles back
to Fort Rice for a rescue party. They selected the fttest horses,
muffing their hooves, and left the defensive enclosure that
night during a storm. The Hunkpapas did not discover their
escape until the next morning when they spotted the horses’
tracks. A large group of warriors sped after the troopers, hoping
to overtake them before they reached Fort Rice.
Resolved to fortify their position, the emigrants unpacked
plows, hitched oxen to them and plowed up prairie sod to
erect an encircling wall. When fnished it was 2 feet thick and
6 feet high with rife pits and loopholes from which to shoot
at attackers. They named their sod fortification Fort Dilts
after mortally wounded scout Jefferson Dilts.
Later that September 5 three Hunkpapa riders rode toward
the fort bearing a white flag on a makeshift staff. The emi-
jo
an
pe
nn
inG
To
n
Two months after her capture Kelly alerted the besieged Fisk wagon train to her plight. By then Sully had returned to Fort Rice.
58 W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 4
grants held their fre as the trio planted the fag between the
two groups. Once the riders had returned to the main body
of Hunkpapas, Fisk sent a detail out to investigate. Beside
the fag, stuck in the ground, they found a message wedged
in a forked stick.
Written in English, the message demanded that all the emi-
grants immediately depart Hunkpapa territory and leave be-
hind wagons loaded with goods in tribute. But the message
said far more than that. It also said that Fanny Kelly had writ-
ten the note and was being held captive. She pleaded with
them to rescue her.
Indeed it was Fanny Kelly who had scribbled the note.
Sometime after taking her captive that July, the Oglalas
had traded her to the Hunkpapas. Some of the Hunk-
papas could speak English, but none could write it,
so they told Fanny what to write and warned her not to add
anything. They watched her closely, counting her words, but
Fanny outfoxed them by combining words, enabling her to
inform the wagon train of her plight.
Fisk did not trust the note. He wrote back, telling Fanny to
show herself. She did so, standing atop a nearby bluff, and the
men at Fort Dilts spotted her through a spyglass. Appreciat-
ing the risk she had taken,
Fisk negotiated two days
for her release, including
driving out a wagonload
of goods between the hos-
tile camps. But the Hunk-
papas demanded too high
a ransom, and in any case
Fisk and the others did
not trust them to actually
release Fanny.
Meanwhile, Smith and
his men were riding hard.
At one point they lost the
trail but later regained it,
only to discover that the
pursuing Hunkpapa war
party was on the trail—
ahead of them. Fortu-
nately for Smith and his
men, the war party never
discovered the troopers.
Believing Smith and his
men had already reached
Fort Rice, the war party
eventually broke off and
rejoined the main Hunk-
papa band, still harassing
the emigrants at make-
shift Fort Dilts. Smith and
his exhausted troopers
reached Fort Rice after
three days.
General Sully had just
returned from his cam-
paign against the Sioux,
having fought them at the
Battle of Killdeer Moun-
tain on July 28 and the
Battle of the Badlands on
August 7–9. He was furi-
ous Fisk had proceeded
for Montana Territory with
such a small escort. Sully
would now have to mount
bil
l m
ar
kl
ey
ph
oT
o
This marker at the Fort Dilts State Historic Site in North Dakota relates the Fisk wagon train siege.
59a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
a rescue operation. He ordered
Colonel Dill to lead a 900-man
relief expedition. By the time
Dill reached Fort Dilts on Sep-
tember 20, the Hunkpapas
were gone. They had grown
weary of sniping at the fort and
left to hunt buffalo.
Fisk requested an onward
escort to the goldfields. Dill
told the emigrants they could
return with him to Fort Rice
but would be on their own
if they continued west. Fisk
couldn’t win this argument,
and he and the other emigrants bid their stout little sod fort
farewell and returned to Fort Rice with Dill. The 1864 expedi-
tion disbanded, but Fisk persevered and would lead a fourth
emigrant group west in 1866.
Meanwhile, the news was out about Fanny Kelly. The mili-
tary let it be known among friendly Hunkpapa contacts it
wanted the captive woman returned and would give presents
to whoever returned her to Fort Sully, near present-day Pierre,
S.D. On December 12, 1864, three months after the Fort Dilts
fight, Hunkpapas arrived at Fort Sully with Kelly. Some of
the Indians claimed they had negotiated Fanny’s release and
brought her to the fort out of friendship and for the presents
the military had offered for her safe return. Kelly believed the
Indians intended to use her return as a ruse to get a large num-
ber of warriors into the fort to take it over. She apparently was
able to persuade Jumping
Bear, a Hunkpapa friend,
to get word to Major Alfred
E. House, Fort Sully’s com-
mander, about the ruse.
When more than 1,000
Hunkpapas showed up with
their captive, Major House
allowed just 10 chiefs into
the stockade with Fanny
and then ordered the gates
closed. “In my opinion, had
the Indians attacked the
fort, they could have cap-
tured it,” recalled 1st Lt. Gus-
tav A. Hesselberger. Fanny was free. Husband Josiah was
informed of her rescue and joined Fanny as soon as he could.
In later years Fanny wrote a memoir of her ordeal, Narrative of
My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians, which remains in print.
Fort Dilts is not forgotten. The sod wall, wagon ruts and
graves are preserved within Fort Dilts State Historic Site [www
.history.nd.gov/historicsites/dilts], eight miles northwest of
Rhame, N.D. A site marker, interpretive sign, fagpole, registra-
tion box and barbed wire fence are modern, but the fort made
out of desperation looks much as it did 150 years ago.
Bill Markley of Pierre, S.D., is a member of Western Writers
of America [www.westernwriters.org]. Suggested for further
reading: Fanny Kelly’s 1871 narrative; Terrible Justice, by
Doreen Chaky; and The Dakota War, by Michael Clodfelter.
bil
l m
ar
kl
ey
ph
oT
os
Scout Jefferson Dilts’ heroics inspired the namesake “fort.”
Five markers at the site of makeshift Fort Dilts, which served the Fisk party well, honor soldiers who died in the September 1864 siege.
• Settled in 1858 in the southeastern
corner of Mason County, the community
was first called Cold Springs after the
source waters that fed nearby Cold Creek.
German immigrant farmers heavily pop-
ulated the area. Even today the German
influence remains prevalent around
Fredericksburg, 25 miles to the south.
• In 1869 one of the early pioneers, John
O. Meusebach, built a general store and
named the place Loyal Valley, reportedly
out of his personal loyalty to the Union
during the Civil War. He platted the town
and served as its postmaster, justice of
the peace and notary public. Meusebach
remained there until his death in 1897.
• As the town grew in the 1870s it opened
a church, a school, several small stores
and a livery stable. Loyal Valley’s primary
agricultural products were cotton and
cattle. A two-story inn served as a stage-
coach stop for the route between San An-
tonio and El Paso. Operating the inn
was Auguste Buchmeier (or Buchmeyer),
whose frst husband, Moritz Lehmann,
had died in 1862. A year later she had
married stonemason Philip Buchmeier.
• A notable story out of Loyal Valley con-
cerns the Buchmeiers’ children. One
afternoon in May 1870 in a wheat field
near the family home, Apache raiders
accosted their sons, Herman and Willie,
and daughters Caroline and Gusta. The
Apaches took Herman, 10, and Willie, 8,
captive. After shooting arrows at young
Caroline, the Indians assumed they had
killed her, but she had fallen when she
fainted. Baby Gusta was also unharmed.
• A few days later Willie was able to escape
when a passing cavalry patrol spooked
the Apaches, one of whom tossed the
boy from horseback in his haste to fee.
Herman remained with his captors. Over
the next several years they raised him as
an Apache and taught him their ways.
• In his fifth year of captivity
Herman was forced to kill
a medicine man in a fight.
Knowing this meant certain
death at the hands of vengeful
warriors, he left the Apaches.
Quanah Parker’s Comanches ulti-
mately accepted Herman into
their tribe, and he lived with
them for four years.
• Herman found his return
to white society at age 19
traumatic. It was difficult
to give up the Indian life-
style he had learned. White
man’s clothing and food
was foreign to him, and be-
coming “civilized” again was
an arduous process for both
Herman and his family.
• Eventually Herman married
and had his own family. At nearby
Cherry Springs he opened a saloon
and dance hall on the main route
between Mason and Fredericks-
burg. In 1927 he published the
memoirs of his captivity in Nine Years
Among the Indians: 1870–1879, often re-
garded as a defnitive look at frontier life
among the Indians. Herman Lehmann
died in February 1932 and is buried in
the small cemetery in Loyal Valley.
• Around the turn of the century a
local baseball team, the Loyal Lads,
began competing against other
communities. Horse races on the ad-
joining prairie were also popular. The
population numbered fewer than 200
at the time and would decline, es-
pecially after the stage stopped
running and weary travelers no
longer stopped in Loyal Valley.
By 1919 the post office had
closed. People gravitated to
Mason and Fredericksburg to
do business. By the mid-1930s
the population had plum-
meted to some two dozen res-
idents, and the San Antonio
highway bypassed the town in
the 1950s. Today Loyal Valley,
just east of I-87, is undergoing
preservation efforts.
60
Loyal Valley, Texas By Les Kruger
GHOST TOWNS
W I L D W E S T a p r I L 2 0 1 4
Herman Lehmann poses for a family portrait in 1899, after he became “civilized” again.
Even after returning to his
family, Lehmann liked to dress
up in his favorite Indian regalia.
le
ft
an
d b
elo
w:
Pio
ne
er
me
mo
ria
l l
ibr
ar
y,
fr
ed
er
ick
sb
ur
g,
te
xa
s
Clockwise from top left: Former Indian
captive Herman Lehmann’s grave in the
Loyal Valley cemetery; the building in which
Auguste Buchmeier ran her inn and stage
stop; the Loyal Valley church; a marker
highlighting the Lehmanns; the cemetery
itself; and overgrown roadside ruins.
ima
ge
s t
his
Pa
ge
: le
s k
ru
ge
r
62
he rich history and cultural
heritage of southwestern Wyo-
ming is on proud display at the
Sweetwater County Histori-
cal Museum in Green River.
Established in 1967, the museum occu-
pies the renovated 1931 post offce build-
ing, since added to the National Register
of Historic Places [www.nps.gov/nr].
Most of the exhibits and artifacts date
from 1820 to the present. Collections cov-
er such major themes as the fur trade,
mining, transportation, communication,
civic and economic development, and
ethnic diversity. Among the standouts is
a display of the six fur trading rendezvous
held along the Green River in the 1830s
and for the last time in 1840. Indians took
part in each of these annual gatherings of
mountain men, and the museum offers
several Indian-related exhibits. One col-
lection of remarkable Sioux ledger art
pieces dates from the 18th century.
The town of Green River sprang up
before the Union Pacifc Railroad arrived
in 1868, and it was later designated the
county seat. South Pass City was the frst,
from 1867 to 1873. The museum houses
a desk frst used in the county offces in
South Pass City and then moved to the
new Sweetwater County Courthouse
in Green River. Rock Springs attorney
Douglas A. Preston later acquired what is
now known as the “Preston desk,” which
is stamped on one corner with the words
Sweetwater County. In 1869 one-armed
Civil War veteran Major John Wesley
Powell mapped the area, including
Sweetwater County, and named Flam-
ing Gorge and other land features. That
was the year Powell frst went down the
Green River, or Seeds-ke-dee (Crow for
“prairie hen”) by boat. An exhibit high-
lights Powell and his expeditions of 1869
and 1871, while a life-sized bronze of the
explorer graces the museum grounds.
An Overland Stage crossing two miles
from Green River brought commerce and
prosperity to the town, whose stores and
blacksmith shops supported the stage
operations. One excellent exhibit cen-
ters on early Green River resident William
A. Johnson, who came north from Texas
in 1846 at age 13 and went on to become
a legislator in the Wyoming Territorial
Assembly in 1875. Before turning to poli-
tics, Johnson was a fur trapper. He lived
among the Shoshones and had a family
with his Indian wife, Jonny; rode for the
Pony Express; and in 1868 provided sup-
plies for soldiers at Fort Bridger. Elected
sheriff of Sweetwater County in 1878, he
kept busy for the next two years dealing
with the outlaw element, mainly cattle
rustlers, and reportedly shot down a crazy
killer named “Mountain Jack.” During
the 1885 massacre in Rock Springs, in
which rioting white miners killed close
to 30 Chinese miners, Johnson hid a Chi-
nese immigrant known as “China Joe.” He
later employed the man, who took the
name Joe Johnson. When former Sheriff
Johnson died in Green River in 1910, he
was wrapped in a Navajo blanket and
buried in a wooden coffin he had fash-
ioned years earlier. The exhibit includes
a .45-caliber Colt Model 1873 revolver and
holster and a .45-caliber Sharps Model
1874 rife—both of which Johnson used
while sheriff of Sweetwater County.
Even more than the stagecoach, the
railroad brought business to the area
and served to promote mining. On dis-
play are mining artifacts from the Union
Pacific Coal Co. and the personal be-
longings of 19th-century Chinese resi-
dents. Besides working as miners, the
Chinese served as “tie hacks,” cutting
timber in the mountains and floating
the logs down the Green River to town,
where they were made into railroad ties.
Outlaws and lawmen get plenty of ex-
hibit space. Among the guns on display
are a .44-caliber Army Remington Model
1863 revolver taken from outlaw “Big
Nose George” Parrott before he was
lynched in Rawlins, Wyo., in April 1881;
a .36-caliber Navy Colt Model 1851 taken
from a member of Big Nose George’s
gang; and a .44-40-caliber Winchester
Model 1892 saddle ring carbine that
Green River Chief of Police Joseph Payne
Sr. used during his two terms (1896–98
and 1900–01). Also look for a section of
hanging rope from the Rawlins prison
and shackles used to restrain William
L. Carlisle, who was imprisoned after
robbing a train at the Green River station
in February 1916. Certain exhibits high-
light more recent history. To help relate
the 1978 Rock Springs murder trial of Ed
Cantrell, curators present the cowboy
hat worn by the accused, who had ad-
mired defense attorney Gerry Spence’s
hat and asked to wear it during the trial.
The Sweetwater County Historical Mu-
seum, which also boasts a large pictorial
collection and makes local history ma-
terials available to researchers, is at
3 E. Flaming Gorge Way in Green River.
For information call 307-872-6435 or visit
www.sweetwatermuseum.org.
Mountain Men, Miners, Outlaws and Lawmen Get Their Due in Sweetwater
This Wyoming museum also honors explorer John Wesley Powell By Linda Wommack
COLLECTIONS
W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
The museum calls Green River home.
T
ph
ot
os
: s
we
et
wa
te
r c
ou
nt
y h
ist
or
ica
l m
us
eu
m
Clockwise from top left: A life-size bronze of one-armed
Green River explorer John Wesley Powell; a .44-caliber
Remington revolver used by outlaw “Big Nose George”
Parrott; this 19th-century ledger lists criminals and their
crimes; the desk of Rock Springs attorney Douglas A.
Preston; a portrait of Sweetwater County Sheriff William
A. Johnson; a leather-sheathed blackjack; an invitation to a
Wyoming hanging; the pair of shackles used on train robber
William L. Carlisle; a .45-caliber Sharps rife used by Sheriff
Johnson; and a portrait of badman Parrott, big nose and all.
64
n 1850 Henry Deringer produced
his namesake gun, a big-bore, back-
action-lock, single-shot, cap-and-
ball pocket pistol. The unique de-
sign became so popular in the West
that dozens of competitors and outright
counterfeiters copied it, often calling their
versions “derringers” (with two “r’s”) to
avoid a lawsuit. After the Civil War, E. Rem-
ington & Sons manufactured a small,
two-shot pistol that the company called a
“deringer” (with one “r”) in early advertis-
ing. But as far as present-day terminology,
Flayderman’s Guide to Antique American
Firearms notes, “Either spelling is permis-
sible, acceptable and correct.” In a 2008
book called Dr. William H. Elliot’s Rem-
ington Double Deringer the four authors
explained they used the one “r” spelling to
honor Henry Deringer. But no matter how
you spell it, this popular double-barreled
Remington pistol became the most iconic
cartridge derringer of the Old West.
William Harvey Elliot, born in Leicester,
Mass., on April 23, 1816, practiced den-
tistry, wrote articles about it and invented
dental instruments, but he was more inter-
ested in developing new gun designs. He
was living in Ilion, N.Y., when he received
his frst gun patent, for a pepperbox pistol,
on August 17, 1858. It was about this time
that percussion firearms were being re-
placed by guns that would fre breech-load-
ing, self-contained cartridges. In May 1860
Dr. Elliot’s original design evolved into a
six-shot .22 Short caliber cartridge pepper-
box now known as the Remington Zig-Zag
Deringer. E. Remington & Sons produced
it in 1861 and 1862, while Elliot’s own Elliot
Arms Co. marketed it. The Zig-Zag, in turn,
evolved into two other multibarreled “pep-
perbox” pistols with a rotating firing pin
that fred stationary barrels instead of the
barrels themselves revolving—a .22 Short
caliber fve-shot and a .32 Rimfre caliber
four-shot. Also produced by E. Remington
& Sons, they are now more commonly
known as the Remington-Elliot Deringers.
The basic design of Elliot’s legendary
double derringer grew out of his desire
to produce a “repeating” pistol that could
shoot a larger man-stopping caliber than
his .22- and .32-caliber pepperboxes. At
that time in the evolution of the self-con-
tained cartridge the .41 Short Rimfre was
the most powerful pistol cartridge that had
been developed. But that caliber would
Remington Double Derringers Were Sometimes Twice as Nice
They were the longest-lived of all the Old West handguns By Lee A. Silva
GUNS OF THE WEST
W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
I
A late derringer (top), one in a pipe case, and one with a knife with matching inscriptions.
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have made Elliot’s pepperboxes too large
to be the kind of concealed pistol he wanted
to make. So he settled for a spur-trigger,
bird’s head–gripped, two-barreled, over-
and-under “repeater,” with a fring pin that
moved up or down for each barrel each
time the hammer was cocked. A small lever
on the right side of the frame released the
barrels so that, hinged at the top rear of
the barrels and the top of the frame, the
barrels pivoted up and back to load or
unload the gun. In later production a
simple sliding ejector was added to the
left side of the 3-inch-long barrels.
The little pistol with the big punch came
in either blued or nickel fnish. At frst the
grips were walnut, but after about 1888
they were made of black rubber. Prices
ranged from $6.50 in the beginning up
to $9.50 after the turn of the century. And
gold or silver plating, engraving, and pearl
or ivory grips could be added at extra cost.
Remington manufactured the derringers
from 1866 to 1935 without a major change
except for a handful made with 4-inch bar-
rels and a spelling change from “deringer”
to “derringer” after the company went
bankrupt in 1888. Altogether about 150,000
were produced. This production run of 69
years makes the Remington-Elliot double
derringer the longest-lived handgun of the
Old West period, beating out the fabled
Colt Single Action Army, made from 1873
to 1940, by two years.
Out of the hundreds of double derrin-
gers that are known to have Old West his-
tory, one, Serial No. 5181, resides in the
Autry National Center in Los Angeles. It
is nickel-plated, ivory-gripped, engraved
and inscribed from Buffalo Bill Cody to
Colonel Prentice Ingraham, one of the
dime novel authors who helped create
the legend of Buffalo Bill. Another double
derringer, this one silver-plated, pearl-
gripped and engraved, bears the inscrip-
tion Wm. Fielder from Buffalo Bill.
Fielder was an Indian agent friend of Cody.
A third—nickel-plated, walnut-gripped
and engraved—is inscribed with the name
of James C. Fargo of Wells, Fargo & Co.
James Congdell Fargo’s brother William
was one of the company’s founders. A
fourth, Serial No. 4851, is plain and nick-
el-plated, bearing ivory grips on which
is inscribed Sen. J.P. Jones/Gold Hill Nev.
It is accompanied by a matching spear-
point bowie knife with ivory grips carved
with the same inscription. John Percival
Jones was a deputy U.S. marshal in Cali-
fornia and in 1868 went to Nevada, where
he served as a U.S. senator for 30 years.
An article in the August 10, 1872, Army
and Navy Journal speaks glowingly of the
Remington, noting, “The weapon is es-
pecially designed as a defensive one…its
convenience for the pocket…and its cer-
tainty of execution in cool hands—we
do not know of a rival to the ‘Double
Deringer.’” Author Irvin Anthony writes
melodramatically about the gun in his
1929 book Paddle Wheels and Pistols :
“For the gambler’s service was invented
the derringer. This was a short, double-
barreled pistol. It fired a heavy slug of
a bullet from its rimfre copper cartridge.
The bore was .41 caliber, well on its way to
a half-inch diameter. Thrust at one across
a pile of money, which had tempted eager
hands to seize it, the effect of a derringer
was tonic. On more serious occasions it
defended the gambler’s life from a mur-
derous attack of some player whose losses
had turned his head. A glance at a derrin-
ger’s ugly snout had a tendency to check
an uplifted knife in mid-air, or to make
a haste-fushed face turn ashy white.”
And in his 1881 book On the Border With
Crook, Captain John G. Bourke tells a story
that illustrates one reason a powerful
pocket pistol was so popular on the fron-
tier. In 1870 Tucson, according to Bourke,
former U.S. marshal of Arizona Territory
Milton Duffeld tangled with town tough
“Waco Bill.” After Duffield knocked him
down with one blow, Waco Bill started
to pull a revolver from his holster. Bourke,
tongue in cheek, ends the story this way:
“In Arizona it was not customary to pull a
pistol upon a man; that was regarded as an
act both unchristian-like and wasteful of
time—Arizonanas [sic] nearly always shot
out of the pocket without drawing their
weapons at all, and into Mr. ‘Waco Bill’s’
groin went the sure bullet of [Duffeld].”
Early flmmakers discovered the menac-
ing look of Elliot’s double derringer, and
it appeared in many Hollywood Westerns.
Designated in later years as the Model 95,
it remained so popular during World War II
that many GIs carried it as a backup gun.
Eventually, William Harvey Elliot re-
ceived more than 130 patents for improve-
ments and inventions of frearms. He died
a wealthy man on March 27, 1895. In 1872 Remington ran this ad showing the price list for the “double repeating deringer.”
This original box for the double derringer
came with instructions on how to load it.
65 A P R I L 2 0 1 4 W I L D W E S T
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66 W I L D W E S T A p r I L 2 0 1 4
BOOKSChief Joseph, Guardian of the People
(2005, by Candy Moulton): The frst title
in Forge Books’ American Heroes series,
this biography won the Spur Award from
Western Writers of America and has re-
ceived praise for the author’s engaging
narrative and fast-paced retelling of the
Nez Perce leader’s story. Charlie Moses, a
member of the Chief Joseph band of the
Nez Perces, credits it for continuing the
story of Joseph’s life beyond his famous
surrender speech in 1877 Montana Ter-
ritory, following the chief into exile
in Indian Territory (present-day Okla-
homa) and ultimately back to the Pacifc
Northwest (though he didn’t make it
back to his ancestral home in Oregon).
The Nez Perce Indians and the Open-
ing of the Northwest (1965, by Alvin M.
Josephy Jr.): Josephy—one of the finest
historians ever to write about the Amer-
ican West, particularly Indians—relates
the history of the Nez Perces in this en-
gaging narrative. It is the frst book you
should read to learn about the overall
history of the tribe that was friendly to
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.
Yellow Wolf: His Own Story (1940, by
Lucullus Virgil McWhorter): This is a
first-person account of the Nez Perce
War by one of the men integral to the
fight, often in the thick of battle, who also
served as an advance scout for the tribe.
Virtually every writer who ever penned
an account of the Nez Perce hegira has
drawn on Yellow Wolf’s recollections.
Nez Perce Summer, 1877: The U.S. Army
and the Nee-Me-Poo Crisis (2000, by
Jerome A. Greene): An account of the 1877
Nez Perce War from the military point of
view, this blends solid writing with pre-
cise details of the Army’s role in the fight
of the Nez Perces. Greene followed up
with Beyond Bear’s Paw: The Nez Perce
Indians in Canada (2010), which relates
the history of White Bird and the other
tribal members who fed the Bear’s Paw
battlefeld to live in Canada.
Following the Nez Perce Trail: A Guide
to the Nee-Me-Poo National Historic
Trail With Eyewitness Accounts (second
edition, 2005, by Cheryl Wilfong): If you
want to actually get on the ground and
follow the route the Nez Perces took in
their 1877 fight, you must get a copy of
this book, which highlights important
sites on the route along with precise di-
rections on how to fnd them.
Nez Perce Nation Divided: Voices From
Nez Perce Country (2004, by Dennis
Baird): The focus here is on the division
of the Nez Perce tribe, refecting on both
historical and contemporary aspects.
Let Me Be Free: the Nez Perce Tragedy
(1992, by David Lavender): This detailed
account of the Nez Perce people, from
their early encounters with Lewis and
Clark through the war they waged in
1877, earned Lavender a Spur Award for
history. This was one of the first ac-
counts to demythologize Chief Joseph.
ON-SCREENThe West: Episode 6,
“Fight No More For-
ever” (1996, on DVD,
PBS): Episode 6 of this
eight-part documen-
tary on westward ex-
pansion, produced by
Ken Burns and Stephen Ives, focuses
on the period 1874–77 and profles three
main characters: Chief Joseph, Sitting
Bull and Brigham Young.
I Will Fight No More
Forever (1975, on DVD,
Echo Bridge Home En-
tertainment): This David
Wolper Productions TV
movie features Ned Ro-
mero as Chief Joseph
and James Whitmore as Brig. Gen. Oliver
O. Howard. Sam Elliott portrays Captain
Charles Erskine Scott Wood, and re-
releases feature him on the flm case, no
doubt for his selling power. The history
is so powerful and moving that producers
managed for the most part to stick to the
facts. The film received two primetime
Emmy nominations, one for writers Jeb
Rosebrook and Theodore Strauss, an-
other for flm editor Robert K. Lambert.
Sacred Journey of the
Nez Perce (1997, on DVD,
PBS): Nez Perces have a
big voice in this hour-
long documentary, co-
produced by Idaho Public
Television and Montana
Must See, Must ReadBooks and movies about Chief Joseph and other Nez Perce IndiansBy Candy Moulton
REVIEWS
Public Television. In oral history fash-
ion, tribal members, including descen-
dants of those who participated in the
1877 war, tell the different parts of the
fascinating story. The narrator is Hattie
Kaufman, a Nez Perce news anchor on
CBS at the time (her memoir, Falling
Into Place, came out last September).
Horse Tribe (in development): Written
and directed by Janet Kern, this docu-
mentary focuses on the Nez Perce con-
nection to the Appaloosa horse in both
historic and contemporary times. The
film screened in early form in Moscow,
Idaho, but the final cut is not yet avail-
able. Creating such a flm is diffcult for
an independent producer, as fnancing
is always a hurdle.
BOOK REVIEWSFrontier Cavalry
Trooper: The
Letters of Private
Eddie Matthews,
1869–1874,
edited by Douglas
C. McChristian,
University of
New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque, 2013, $55.
Douglas C. McChristian, a retired re-
search historian for the National Park
Service, has penned six excellent chron-
icles of the American West, including
his Spur Award–winning Fort Laramie:
Military Bastion of the High Plains. In
this tome he acts instead as editor of a
voluminous treasure of letters penned
by Private Eddie Matthews to his family
during the post–Civil War era. The book
serves as a chronicle of a man’s life and
also as a journal of westward expansion.
Wild West contributor John Koster
earns a nod from the author in his intro-
duction. It was Koster who brought the
Matthews letters to light in a 1980 Amer-
ican Heritage article and preserved the
trove Matthews’ granddaughter Ora Bub-
litz had industriously typed out. Thus
the letters are largely uncorrected; orig-
inal spellings (or misspellings) are com-
mon, and in some spots are minor gaps
where words were illegible or missing.
Such peculiarities make the overall ex-
perience not unlike peeking into some-
one’s personal diary, albeit without the
accompanying guilt.
The book retains a remarkable narrative
cohesion thanks to McChristian’s exten-
sive footnotes. The life of a solider was,
as Matthews candidly admits, often mun-
dane—not that he was necessarily inter-
ested in risky adventure:
As regards myself, [I] can’t say that I felt
very rejoiced at the prospects of a fight
with Indians, $13.00 a month is not an
incentive to throw ones life away. And as
to my patriotic feelings, I candidly say,
I have none. I have never been blessed
with the inspiration. And while riding
along my thoughts went back to little
Maryland, to green felds, friends, Loved
parents, Brothers and Sisters, and the
day I would be free to enjoy the plea-
sures of my home and the company of
those ‘loved Ones at Home.’
Matthews’ journey takes him across the
country, from his home in Maryland to
his Army service in Arizona, New Mexico,
Colorado and California. He witnesses
the expansion of rail service to the West,
as well as confrontations with Indians in
which he played a direct role. There are
a number of rousing scenes, including
this entry during his post at Fort Bascom,
New Mexico Territory, in August 1872:
About 1 o’clock a.m., I awoke from a
sound sleep by the report of several
Carbines, connected with the most un-
earthly yelling it has ever been my mis-
fortune to listen to. It sounded to me
like all the Devils incarnate, and all the
Demons of Hell had issued forth in that
one lonely spot to make the night hid-
eous with their orgies. No pen is capable
of describing my feelings at that moment.
Sometimes, too, a gentle humor per-
vades his insights, such as the day he
attempted to iron his own clothing:
As I had never done any ironing before [I]
had some doubts about the success of the
thing. Thought I had better experiment a
67a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
little before trying my hand on a white
shirt, had no starch, but that made no
difference. Spread out my towel, grasped
the iron firmly, burnt my sore hand a
little and made a lunge out. Result: towel
looked like a yellow cat singed. Iron was
too hot.…Concluded a man couldn’t
iron cloth[e]s unless he knew how.
That simple story belies the under-
lying and mostly unspoken premise of
the book: That Matthews’ story is not
so much that of a soldier as an intimate
view into an era long past.
Martin A. Bartels
I Fought a Good
Fight: A History of
the Lipan Apaches,
by Sherry Robinson,
University of North
Texas Press, Denton,
2013, $32.95.
When it comes to
Apaches on the fron-
tier, the Chiricahuas—thanks in no small
part to such notable warriors and chiefs
as Geronimo, Cochise, Mangas Colora-
das and Victorio—are by far the best
known. Lacking the Chiricahuas’ highly
publicized individuals and notoriety,
Mescaleros, Jicarillas, Western Apaches,
Plains Apaches (formerly the Kiowa-
Apaches) and Lipans often fall under
the historical radar. The last group fnally
gets its due in this book by Sherry Robin-
son, who previously wrote Apache Voices
and is interviewed in this issue of Wild
West (see P. 11). She meticulously covers
the Lipans from their interaction with the
Spanish to their present-day effort to re-
claim their identities (and receive federal
recognition). “For a small group they had
an outsized impact through three cen-
turies and were often described as the
second most powerful tribe in Texas after
the Comanches,” she writes in her intro-
duction. “Lipans were as clever, fearless
and resourceful as their better publicized
cousins [Chiricahuas] to the west, and as
a group far more diverse.”
The warlike Comanches, as noted in
most histories of the Southwest, stymied
Spanish ambition, but Robinson argues
the Lipans did their part to frustrate vice-
roys and generals. Lipans and their allies
(many whose names would disappear;
sorting them all out was no small task)
also battled the Comanches. The Lipans,
usually outnumbered by their enemies,
survived in Texas by becoming not only
guerrilla fghters but also guerrilla traders
and guerrilla hunters. “Historians have
often written that the Comanches drove
Lipans from their territory, and thereafter
the Lipans were inconsequential,” Rob-
inson writes. “Subsequent records reveal
bitter conflict between Lipans and Co-
manches; farther along the time line
chroniclers describe an alliance be-
tween the two, followed by warfare. And
so on. Snapshots in time aren’t reliable.”
The greatest of the 18th century chiefs
in the area was Picax-andé of the Lipiyans
(affliated with the Lipans but not part of
the tribe proper). The viceroy gave him a
formal commission as head chief of the
Lipiyans, Lipans, Mescaleros and three
other groups, but later the Spanish with-
held their support, and he died in battle
with the Comanches in 1801. “Picax-andé
should take his place alongside Cochise,
Geronimo and Victorio as one of the
greatest Apache leaders in history—pos-
sibly the greatest,” suggests Robinson.
The Lipans had their share of nota-
ble chiefs, including two friends of the
Texians and the Texas Rangers—Castro,
captain of his own Lipan Ranger com-
pany, and Flacco, a reliable scout and
spy during the Texas Revolution. Later,
Lipans and Texans didn’t get on so well.
But during the Red River War in 1874 the
Lipan known as Johnson served under
Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie (see “Indian
Life,” P. 14). In the appendices of her
book, Robinson lists all the Lipan chiefs
whose names she uncovered.
Editor
The Heart of
Everything That
Is: The Untold
Story of Red Cloud,
an American
Legend, by
Bob Drury and
Tom Clavin,
Simon & Schuster,
New York, 2013, $30.
The subtitle of this book doesn’t hold
much weight in some circles. Wild West
readers have encountered Red Cloud
many times on these pages over the last
quarter century, and as recently as the
April 2012 issue the Lakota legend was
on the cover in glorious color. In the late
1990s Red Cloud got much deserved at-
tention with Robert W. Larson’s solid
biography Red Cloud: Warrior-Statesman
of the Lakota Sioux and the too-long-for-
gotten Autobiography of Red Cloud: War
Leader of the Oglalas, edited by R. Eli
Paul. Earlier books of note on the subject
include James C. Olson’s Red Cloud and
the Sioux Problem (1965) and George
E. Hyde’s 1937 classic Red Clouds Folk:
A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians.
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, two other
Lakota standouts who didn’t accomplish
as much as Red Cloud, remain more visi-
ble in the public eye (even if there are
no fully accepted images of Crazy Horse).
And considering how many books have
come out about George Armstrong Custer
and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (with
mentions of participants Sitting Bull and
Crazy Horse), there is certainly room for
another book or fve about Red Cloud and
the Indian war of 1866–68 that became
known as Red Cloud’s War. Yes, the Lako-
tas and Cheyennes won the Battle of the
Little Bighorn, but they didn’t have long
to celebrate that triumph, as the Great
Sioux War of 1876–77 ended as expected
with the defeat of these so-called hostiles.
But on December 21, 1866, Red Cloud
achieved an earlier Plains Indian military
rout known today as Fetterman’s Fight.
What’s more, he is credited with win-
ning his war, since the U.S. Army aban-
doned its three Bozeman Trail forts, and
in 1868 Red Cloud’s people gained legal
control of the Powder River country.
That triumph endured for eight years.
Red Cloud needs to be put in context
to understand his full story—as a ferce
warrior who showed little mercy for his
tribal enemies, as an effective guardian
of the Powder River country against white
invaders in what became the state of Wy-
oming and, fnally (he lived until 1909), as
an Indian wars survivor who tried to min-
imize the damage the U.S. government
inficted on his people and their culture.
Coauthors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin,
though they have no background in Old
West writing or research, have done quite
68 W i l D W E S T a p r i l 2 0 1 4
well in that regard. They cover consid-
erable ground in frontier history and
the history of white-Indian relations,
enabling the lay reader to better grasp
Red Cloud’s actions and statements.
Occasionally they move a bit too swiftly,
such as when they mention Sand Creek
and seem to rest blame for that deadly
affair on the shoulders of Ned Wynkoop.
And their insistence on using the in-
correct spelling “Fort Kearney” (the Ne-
braska fort was named after General Ste-
phen Watts Kearny) might annoy those of
us who have long made an effort to delete
that extra “e.” Others no doubt could care
less. The authors make Red Cloud come
alive as a fesh and blood man, albeit one
with extraordinary qualities, and they
seem to have done plenty of homework
on that never-dull era. In short, their
hearts are in the right place. In The Heart
of Everything That Is they tell a good yarn,
even if the story has been previously told.
Editor
Glorious
Misadventures:
Nikolai Rezanov
and the Dream of
a Russian America,
by Owen Matthews,
Bloomsbury
USA, New York,
2013, $28.
The exploration and conquest of the
American frontier required a rare breed
of bold, ruthless, often eccentric vision-
aries, whether they came westward from
Spain, the Netherlands, France, Britain or
the newly minted United States…or east-
ward from Russia, as did the remarkable
protagonist of Glorious Misadventures. In
1803, while President Thomas Jefferson
was ordering Meriwether Lewis and Wil-
liam Clark to explore the newly acquired
Louisiana Territory, Tsar Alexander I sent
Nikolai Rezanov on a mission with mul-
tiple ambitions—among other things, to
establish Russian diplomatic and trading
relations with Japan, to expand the hege-
mony of the Russian American Co. from
its Alaskan base deep into Spanish Cali-
fornia and beyond, and perhaps to com-
plete the frst Russian circumnavigation.
As journalist Owen Matthews discov-
ered in the course of researching Rezan-
ov’s writings and the impressions of
those who knew him, Rezanov harbored
a larger-than-life ambition to carve out
an American empire. When he returned
to California in 1806, Rezanov wrote to
the Russian minister of commerce, “Not
through petty enterprise but by great
undertakings have mighty commercial
bodies achieved rank and power.” Marry-
ing the 15-year-old daughter of the garri-
son commander at Yerba Buena—later
to be the great city of San Francisco, but
in May 1806 a town dwarfed in size and
importance by the Russian port of Sitka
—Rezanov envisioned the Russian Amer-
ican Co. eclipsing Spain as the dominant
colonial power in the New World.
Like so many Western pioneers, how-
ever, Rezanov harbored weaknesses as
outsized as his strengths. A charming
and skilled diplomat and daring gam-
bler, he could also be a volatile bully.
Rezanov’s saga ended somewhat anti-
climactically in 1807, but his death left
a legend that Russian posterity and even
the Soviet Union proudly embraced.
The author’s project to retrace Rezan-
ov’s steps was largely inspired by the
hottest show in 1986 Moscow— Junona
i Avos, a rock opera named for two of
Rezanov’s ships and centered around
his ill-starred romance in California.
Jon Guttman
Billy the Kid on
Film, 1911–2012,
by Johnny D. Boggs,
McFarland & Co.,
Jefferson, N.C.,
2013, $39.95.
No doubt the Billy
the Kid legend would
have endured absent
motion pictures, which more often than
not have distorted his legend. Think The
Left Handed Gun, starring Paul Newman
as the Kid; Billy in truth was no southpaw.
Think Howard Hughes’ censor-vexing
1943 curiosity The Outlaw, in which Billy
(portrayed by the otherwise forgotten
Jack Buetel) and Pat Garrett (Thomas
Mitchell) cross trails with their some-
time friend (in Hollywood fiction only)
Doc Holliday (Walter Huston), and Billy
gets tangled up with Doc’s untamed gal,
Rio (Jane Russell). Their flawed history
aside, those two flms are far from great
(arguably a great Kid film has not yet
been made), but they get great cover-
age by author Boggs, who earlier wrote
Jesse James and the Movies. In the silent
era studios filmed more pictures about
Jesse than Billy, and Boggs says it took
the 1939 box-offce success of 20th Cen-
tury Fox’s Jesse James to convince a major
studio, MGM, to put Billy on its A-list,
with 1941’s Billy the Kid (starring Robert
Taylor). “This strange Billy film, billing
itself as ‘the first true story’ about the
outlaw, is pure fiction,” writes Boggs,
who adds it was “ full of history-twisting
and moral whitewashing [and] wasn’t
anywhere near as entertaining as Jesse
James.” Nevertheless, Hollywood never
completely gave up on Billy, and Boggs
discusses 75 Kid movies, from awful
ones like 1966’s Billy the Kid vs. Dracula
(starring John Carradine—no, not as the
Kid) to the 1988 blockbuster Young Guns
and its 1990 sequel, Young Guns II.
Editor
Radio Rides
the Range:
A Reference
Guide to Western
Drama on the Air,
1929–1967, edited
by Jack French
and David S.
Siegel, McFarland
& Co., Jefferson, N.C., 2013, $49.95.
Watching Gunsmoke on TV was (and
remains) a treat, but no more so than
hearing Gunsmoke on the radio. The
radio version ran from April 26, 1952,
to June 18, 1961, overlapping with the
TV version for four years (when 90 per-
cent of the small-screen episodes were
adapted from radio scripts). The rather
rotund William Conrad was radio’s Mar-
shal Matt Dillon, the role associated with
TV’s towering James Arness, but it didn’t
matter. It was the voice that counted,
not the body, and what a voice Conrad
(later the title character of the TV detec-
tive show Cannon) possessed.
In the Golden Age of radio, though,
Conrad couldn’t top John Dehner, who
turned down the radio Dillon role be-
cause he didn’t want to be typecast as
a Western actor, but then went on to
69a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
appear in nearly half the 480 Gunsmoke
episodes and was the leading man in two
other CBS radio adult Western series—
Frontier Gentleman (1958) and Have
Gun–Will Travel (1958–60). Yes, Dehner
played gun-for-hire “Paladin,” just like
Richard Boone on the TV version, which
actually preceded the radio version.
Dehner also was a supporting actor on a
fourth superb CBS radio show, Fort Lara-
mie (1956), which starred Raymond
“Soon to Be Perry Mason” Burr. That
show was created by Norman Macdon-
nell, who earlier teamed up with writer
John Meston to capture the gritty realism
and details of Gunsmoke’s Dodge City.
The programs mentioned above are
just four of more than 100 American West
radio programs (with half-hour or 15-
mintute episodes) discussed by various
knowledgeable authors in a book that
provides everything but sound effects.
For the history-minded, some entries—
like the ones on Fort Laramie, Tales of the
Texas Rangers (1950–52), Wild Bill Hickok
(1951–56) and Death Valley Days (1930–
44)—not only describe each series but
also say to what extent it was based on
facts. The Lone Ranger, which frst rode
onto the radio airwaves on January 31,
1933, and made 3,377 broadcasts in 21½
years, gets plenty of attention, but so do
lesser-known shows, including ones that
might not have actually aired, such as The
Adventures of Annie Oakley and Tagg.
The Western radio world was a relatively
small one and, as one might expect, a
man’s world. But Kathleen Hite wrote
some of the best Gunsmoke episodes and
29 of the 40 Fort Laramie episodes, while
Ruth Woodman (née Cronwell) created
the long-running anthology show Death
Valley Days. Many of the more popular
shows were juvenile Westerns, starting
with Bobbie Benson, the frst version of
which ran from 1932 to 1936. I took a spe-
cial interest in that one, because my late
mother regularly listened to this Hecker
H-O cereals–sponsored show when she
was a 6-year-old New York City “cowboy”
(never a cowgirl). The book says no audio
copies are extant, which is unfortunate.
But I can read all about it here and settle
for listening to the 474 (out of 480) avail-
able episodes of Gunsmoke.
Editor
Chronicling
the West for
Harper’s: Coast
to Coast with
Frenzeny &
Tavernier in
1873–1874, by
Claudine Chalmers,
University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2013, $45.
Harper’s Weekly, which frst rolled off the
presses in 1857, provided enough news
about the United States and the world to
proudly call itself “A Journal of Civiliza-
tion.” What made it extra special to many
people then (and now, too), though, was
not so much the text (stories and adver-
tising) as the wood engravings. A decade
later, the work of two young French art-
ists, Paul Frenzeny and Jules Tavernier,
caught the eye of brothers John and
James Harper. In 1873 the Harpers hired
the duo for a coast-to-coast sketching
tour that would include “the most inter-
esting and picturesque regions” of the
West and Southwest and cover perhaps
as many as 7,000 miles.
Like the old Harper’s Weekly itself, this
272-page book has solid text (about the
life and work of Frenzeny and Taver-
nier), but also a wealth of images (119
black-and-white illustrations and 13
color illustrations). These “special art-
ists,” the label Harper’s Weekly gave to
its illustrators in the field, viewed the
frontier with the same fresh eyes as some
of the emigrants they sketched—the
difference being, of course, that Fren-
zeny & Tavernier (as they signed their
work) documented what they saw with
100 vivid sketches. They didn’t merely
draw landscapes or portraits. Instead, as
Chalmers notes, they drew action scenes
“with accurate, practical details and
specifc places so that future emigrants
could use these reports as a reliable
source of information.” Among the sub-
jects the Frenchmen cover so well are
the Plains Indians’ Sun Dance, San Fran-
cisco’s Chinatown, a bear hunt in the
Rockies, a prairie windstorm, a Mor-
mon domestic scene titled “Bringing
Home the Fifth Wife” and a gory buffalo
carcass (at least it is in black and white)
labeled “Slaughtered for the Hide.”
Editor
DVD REVIEWMaverick:
The Complete
Third Season,
26 episodes,
six discs,
1300 minutes,
Warner Archive
Collection, $59.99.
Sadly, James Garner’s third season (1959–
60) was his last as gambler Bret Maver-
ick, although Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly)
would carry on for two more seasons, and
a couple other Mavericks (Roger Moore’s
Beau and Robert Colbert’s Brent) would
appear in the fourth season. Bart did it
alone in the ffth and fnal season. Writer/
creator Roy Huggins had left after two
seasons, during which time Bret and
Bart’s highly quotable Pappy, the original
Beau Maverick, never actually appeared.
But he does in the third season’s frst ep-
isode, fttingly titled “Pappy,” with Garner
taking on the old man’s role as well.
The third season shifted Maverick
more into the realm of a traditional
comedy, rather than a drama with comic
elements, in that more characters and
scenes present themselves merely for
the sake of a punch line. A prime exam-
ple is the notorious team in the epi-
sode “Full House.” Cole Younger, Jesse
James and about every other household
outlaw mistake Bret for the never-before-
seen “brains” of their all-star organi-
zation. Each badman introduces him-
self through his wanted poster: “Sam
Bass, $10,000 Dead or Alive,” “Jesse
James, $25,000,” etc. Lastly, a small kid
comes up and introduces himself as
“William Bonney, $1,000.” Bret asks,
“Only $1,000?” To which Billy deadpans,
“I’m just getting started.” Even Belle
Starr shows up, with an eye for Bret
that angers Younger. Such scenarios are
quite ridiculous, but Maverick has pre-
viously dipped its polished boots in his-
tory with enjoyable results, as when Bret
encounters Doc Holliday in season one.
Overall, season three might not be as
consistently excellent as the frst two sea-
sons, but it provides some of the show’s
funniest episodes. In “The Sheriff of Duck
’n’ Shoot,” which seems a sort of prequel
to Garner’s 1969 Western Support Your
Local Sheriff, Maverick brings his own
form of law and order to control a rowdy
town when hired as sheriff. Other stand-
outs include the Bart episode “A Tale of
Three Cities,” guest starring the likable
Pat Crowley; “Maverick & Juliet,” which
involves a family feud that culminates in
a one-on-one poker duel between broth-
ers Bret and Bart; “A Flock of Trouble,” in
which Bret wins a sheep ranch in a pok-
er game; and “Greenbacks, Unlimited,”
where Bret and Foursquare Farley (Gage
Clark) rob the Denver Bank multiple
times to foil the plans of a professional
safecracker played by the brilliant John
Dehner, who in the second season was
equally good as a dishonest banker in
“Shady Deal at Sunny Acres.”
The quality of the show would dip with
the departure of Garner, who was able
to escape his day player contract with
Warner Brothers. It’s a shame WB was
too stubborn to realize how iconic the
Maverick character was, and how large
a part of that was due to Garner. We all
deserved to see Bret dealt another hand.
Louis Lalire and Greg “Pappy” Lalire
71a p r i l 2 0 1 4 W i l D W E S T
72
Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, ColoradoGO WEST !
In 1880 the Denver & Rio Grande Railway founded the
town of Durango to serve the mines high in southwest
Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. From completion of the
45-mile narrow-gauge spur to Silverton in 1882, trains
hauled more than $300 million in ore from the district’s
mines to smelters in Durango. Photographer William
Henry Jackson later made his fortune selling colorized
images of the Western rail lines, including this stretch of
the Durango & Silverton along the Animas River (inset).
Today summer visitors can take restored trains [www
.durangotrain.com] from Durango upriver to Silverton,
a memorable 3½-hour ride into the high country.
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W I L D W E S T A P R I L 2 0 1 4
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Who he was
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