Wild West 2013-06

PRIVATE COLLECTION

F E AT U R E S

Montana resident Edgar Paxson crammed some 200 separate figures into his well-researched 6-by-10-foot oil CusterÕs Last Stand.

Cover Story

30 Desperate Flight From the Little Bighorn

By John Koster A few of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s troopers fled from the fierce fighting. Most didn’t get far, but one arguably got away not to fight another day.

38 Faces of the Big Bend: Texas’ Last Frontier

By Steve Mauro Photographer W.D. Smithers documented the hardworking Texans and Mexicans who made a go of it in southwest Texas’ inhospitable border country. ON THE COVER: A detail from Edgar Samuel Paxson’s 1899 oil painting Custer’s Last Stand (presented above in its entirety), which depicts Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s doomed command, with the buckskin-clad Custer still heroically standing despite a wound. (Image: Private Collection)

44 Everything You

Know About the Indian Wars Is Wrong

By Gregory Michno The public conception of many aspects of those wars is incorrect. Did you know the Snake War and Dakota War each exceeded the casualty total of the Great Sioux War?

52 Gunfights of the Arizona Rangers

By Bill O’Neal Modeled after the Texas Rangers, this special force of lawmen battled outlawry at the dawn of the 20th century in still wild Arizona Territory.

60 New Mexican Standoff: Regulars Vs. the Militia

By Sherry Robinson During the search for Geronimo in 1885, Colonel F.A. Blake of the New Mexico Militia had a spat with 8th U.S. Cavalry Captain O.B. Boyd.

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D E PA R T M E N T S 4 5 6

Editor’s Letter Letters NEW! Weider Reader

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Roundup

24 Indian Life

By John Koster Among the 150 Crow warriors with Brig. Gen. George Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud was The Other Magpie, a “wild” woman who sought vengeance against the Lakotas.

There is more to the magazine world of Weider than Wild West. Read excerpts from sister titles.

The Top 10 Custer flubs made by author Larry McMurtry, a quote about Custer from Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry, plus a wide range of news and events related to the Wild West.

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15 Interview

By Johnny D. Boggs Author Mark T. Smokov argues that historians have falsely portrayed Harvey Logan (aka “Kid Curry”) as a cold-blooded killer and only a minor member of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch.

By Carolyn Thomas and Steve Mauro The old mining town of Burke, Idaho, was the site of labor unrest and deadly avalanches.

15 68 Collections

18 Gunfighters and Lawmen

By John Koster Newspaperman Marcus Henry Kellogg finally got his big break in the summer of 1876 when George Custer allowed him to accompany the 7th U.S. Cavalry in the field.

70 Guns of the West

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By Donald W. Moore Bugler John Martin’s Springfield carbine may be the most historically significant weapon traced to the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

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73 Reviews

Author John Koster considers Custer’s Last Stand in print and on-screen, plus reviews of recent books and the Oscar-nominated Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained.

23 Art of the West

By Johnny D. Boggs New Mexican Kim Wiggins uses bold curves and vibrant colors to tackle the Little Bighorn.

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By Linda Wommack The Pioneer Museum in Bozeman, Montana, fittingly honors pioneer John Bozeman, who founded a trail and soon after a town.

A Leadville prospector stands by his loaded burro.

20 Pioneers and Settlers

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By Wally McLane The ranch built by Johnny Grant and greatly expanded by Conrad Kohrs is now a National Historic Site in Montana.

66 Ghost Towns

16 Westerners

By R.K. DeArment The very real Mart Duggan is not to be confused with the fictional Matt Dillon, though both were marshals who rode herd on famed Western towns.

28 Western Enterprise

80 Go West!

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Cheyenne Frontier Days takes the bull —er, make that steer—by the horns.

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Visit our WEBSITE

Onlineextras

www.WildWestMag.com for these great exclusives: June 2013

Covering 25 Years Wild West has been around for a quarter century. Visit the site to see all 150 covers!

More on Kim Wiggins “I believe Western art is the purest form of American art that there is,” says the native New Mexican, who has done paintings of the Alamo and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

More on Mark Smokov

www.WildWestMag.com Discussion: It is common knowledge that Lt. Col. George Custer and all the men of his immediate command perished during the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Still, some people, uncommon or not, believe there was a survivor, most likely one named Frank Finkel. Do you agree, disagree or straddle the Last Stand fence? 2

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The biographer of Harvey Logan says, “He certainly captured the hearts of many of the citizens of Knoxville, Tenn., while he spent a year and a half in their county jail.”

Interview With John Koster The author of the 2010 book Custer Survivor: The End of a Myth, the Beginning of a Legend (History Publishing Co., Palisades, N.Y.) sticks to his Last Stand guns.

Misconceptions About Fetterman In “The Falsehoods of Fetterman’s Fight,” John H. Monnett challenges some of our notions about Captain William Judd Fetterman and the decimation of his command.

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EDIT O R’ S LET T ER W E I D E R H I S T O R Y G ROUP

Wild West Turns 26

EDITOR IN CHIEF Stephen L. Petranek David Grogan Executive Editor Rudy Hoglund Design Director

“Oh, to be 25 again!”

®

Vol. 26, No. 1

June 2013

Gregory J. Lalire

EDITOR

Mark Drefs David Lauterborn Martin A. Bartels Lori Flemming

Art Director Managing Editor Senior Editor Photo Editor

SPECIAL CONTRIBUTORS

Lee A. Silva Gregory F. Michno Johnny D. Boggs

PRODUCTION

Karen G. Johnson Production Director Karen M. Bailey Production Manager Barbara Justice Senior Graphic Designer

DIGITAL

Brian King Gerald Swick Kelvin Holland

Director Editor Producer

PRESIDENT &CEO Eric Weider Bruce Forman Chief Operating Officer Pamela Dunaway Chief Marketing Officer

Rob Wilkins Partnership Marketing Director Bill Breidenstine Product Marketing Manager George Clark Single Copy Sales Director ADVERTISING

Julie Kershenbaum Advertising Director [email protected] Richard E.Vincent National Sales Manager [email protected] Kim Goddard National Sales Manager [email protected] Rick Gower Georgia [email protected] Terry Jenkins Tenn., Ky., Miss., Ala., Fla., Mass. [email protected] CSI Advertising, Inc. New York [email protected] Kurt Gardner Creative Services Director

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Subscription Information 800-435-0715 Yearly subscriptions in U.S.: $39.95 Back Issues: 800-358-6327 ©2013 Weider History Group List Rental Inquiries: Belkys Reyes, Lake Group Media, Inc. 914-925-2406; [email protected] Canada Publications Mail Agreement No. 41342519 Canadian GST No. 821371408RT0001 Wild West (ISSN 1046-4638) is published bimonthly by Weider History Group, Inc. 19300 Promenade Drive Leesburg, VA 20176-6500 703-771-9400 Periodical postage paid at Leesburg, Va., and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, send address changes to Wild West P.O. Box 422224 Palm Coast, FL 32142-2224 The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of Weider History Group.

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

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No doubt most people who contribute to or read Wild West have said that a time or two in their long lives. To us 25 sounds young. But if you’re reading this and 25 sounds old, God bless you for joining the not-now generation in appreciating and enjoying American Western history. And do keep reading. 25! That’s not a random number thrown out there by a doddering editor. It has significance—a quartercentury’s worth. The magazine you are holding, and hopefully that has a hold on you, has published out of Leesburg, Va., since June 1988 (see photo). That translates to 150 issues, not counting this one. As young as age 25 might seem to some of us, that’s pretty darn old in magazine years. Just four years ago nearly 600 titles folded. While 2012 wasn’t as dire, 74 magazines still fell by the wayside, and 24 other titles (Newsweek, Spin et al.) went from print to digital only. So thank you, Eric Weider, for buying Wild West and its sister history publications in 2006, and thanks especially to you dedicated subscribers who never miss an issue. You have allowed us to turn 26 with this issue. 25! That’s not only a long while in magazine years but also in 19th-century shoot-’em-up years. Wild West has now matched in span the heyday of the Wild West era, which ran roughly from 1865, when the Civil War ended, to 1890, when data from the U.S. census suggested the American frontier had“closed.” Of course, this magazine has also chronicled the even wilder early and mid-19th century West and the still wild post-frontier 1890s and early 20th century. 25! That’s how many years Robert Barr Smith of Oklahoma and Jerry Keenan of Colorado have been contributing to Wild West. In fact, Keenan has an article in the April 2013 issue and in the June 1988 premiere issue, which cost $2.95 at the time and is hard to find today. Larry J. Walker, who buys and sells popular Western history magazines (only two of the 30 such titles remain), recently sold his last individual June 1988 issue to a collector for

$6, a penny more than the U.S. newsstand price of current issues. But Walker offers many other single issues of Wild West in his online clearinghouse [www .magazinehouse.us] of 70,000 Western magazines, as well as several complete sets of Wild West (that would be 25 years’ worth). 25 minus one! That’s how long I have been associated with the magazine, first as a proofreader working for founding editor William M. “Mild Bill” Vogt, then as editor myself afterVogt’s death in early 1995. There have been changes (hopefully for the better) in a quarter century, but the mission remains the same—to inform and entertain with true tales and images of the Old West. It has been a small staff all along. We count heavily on special contributors Lee A. Silva, Johnny D. Boggs and Gregory F. Michno and other excellent freelance writers. As the only Weider History Group employee who works solely on Wild West, you can blame me for any mistakes. Since 1992 the masthead has listed Lori “Picture Wench” (her self-proclaimed nickname) Flemming, who spends half her work hours as our valuable photo editor. Also working half-time on Wild West are meticulous Managing Editor David “Damn Lankee” Lauterborn (SASS No. 92067) and creative Art Director Mark “My Word” Drefs. We recently lost Senior Editor Steve “Maybe Tomorrow” Mauro to Northwestern adventure, but his successor, Martin “Don’t Tell” Bartels, was raised in Colorado and can ride a horse. 25 and 60! Yes, 25 years is a long time for Wild West or any other magazine to be in business. But truth be known, True West, a friendly competitor, has been around for 60 years. Talk about old as the Western hills. It came out just a half year after me—I turned 60 last October. There is good reason for both magazines to mark the year 2013. And may we both continue to chronicle and preserve the West so that Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, George Custer and Sitting Bull never have to die and Johnny Boggs never has to complain about having nothing to do. Gregory Lalire

LETTERS

‘The current Wild West started in June 1988 and is still going strong 25 years later. The June 2013 issue, the one you are holding, is our 151st regular issue’

WILD WEST BORN IN 1988 I have a few Western history magazines from the 1960s—RealWest, True Frontier, Big West, Westerner, True West and one Wild West. The Wild West issue is dated October 1969, but it is published by Century Distributors Inc. in California. Is there a connection between this Wild West and your magazine published by Weider History Group in Leesburg, Va.? Dennis Stockton Boulder City, Nev. Editor responds: There is no connection except the name. The earlier Wild West was published by Century Distributors of Sepulveda, Calif., from June 1969 to March 1971 and then by Cadre Publishing Co. of NewYork from September 1971 to September 1972. Only 16 regular issues and one annual issue were produced. The current Wild West started in June 1988 and is still going strong 25 years later (owned in turn by Empire Press, Cowles, Primedia and, since 2006,Weider). The June 2013 issue, the one you are holding, is our 151st regular issue. See “Editor’s Letter,” opposite, for more on our 25th anniversary. BASEBALL IN COLORADO

I read with great interest “Baseball in the West” [by Gregory Lalire, June 2011; read online at WildWestMag.com]. It brought back memories of baseball in the coal camps in southern Colorado. Baseball in these camps was extremely popular, and every camp had at least one team. Mine companies, private businesses or the camps themselves sponsored the teams. In 1920, when I was 9, my father Giuseppe (Joseph) Bonacquista immigrated

to the United States from Italy. He, his brother, mother and father found a home in the coal camp of El Agua, 20 miles north and west of Trinidad, Colo. This camp was a scant few miles west of the infamous Ludlow Massacre site. As a young boy he watched the thriving sport of baseball and began learning to play. By the time he turned 16, he was playing with the teams comprised of adult men. Every weekend in the spring and summer the camps would play against each other, and eventually leagues formed. The coal camp teams would also successfully play against the big-city teams. The most prestigious tournament, sponsored by The Denver Post, was referred to as the Post Tournament. Dad became a stalwart pitcher. Most of the other coalmining men on the teams were immigrants or sons of immigrants from Italy, Yugoslavia and Mexico. These men also played against the national traveling teams like the House of David and the Kansas City Monarchs. Dad pitched against Satchel Paige (Negro leagues star who made the Baseball Hall of Fame). I am very proud of the accomplishments of these poor, hardworking men who created a baseball dynasty in Colorado. I’ve included a picture of the Mullare team from Trinidad (see photo at left). Dad is standing fourth from the right. Richard Bonacquista Gulnare, Colo. DRAGOON DRAMA As is my practice, I read the December 2012 issue of Wild West from cover to cover on the day it hit my mailbox. I was gratified to see the article on the U.S. dragoons and the Republic of Texas by John and Will Gorenfeld. The 1830s through the 1850s is a period of development I’m hoping your magazine will present more about. The Gorenfelds also have a website [www.chargeofthedragoons.com], where they share the results of their impeccable research. It is a fantastic site. I love the post–Civil War history of the American West as much as the next guy,

but the dragoon period is a new frontier for me. Thanks. Dan Strohm Torrance, Calif. The editor responds:You’re welcome.You might be interested in the following historical tidbit that appears in Gregory Michno’s article “Everything You Know About the Indian Wars Is Wrong” (see P. 44): “Overall, the unit with the most battles (208) and the most casualties inflicted (1,225) was the 1st Dragoons, redesignated the 1st Cavalry in 1861.” JAMES D. HORAN BOOKS I read with much interest “Fatal Mix-up on Fremont Street,” by Roger Jay, in the October 2012 issue. The 1881 Tombstone showdown was certainly the gunfight of the century. Thank you for publishing that and all the other articles in your magazine. In the December 2012 issue I enjoyed Gary Roberts’ Top 10 list of women in the lives of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. I have in my personal library the three books in The Authentic Wild West series by the late great author James D. Horan (1914–81): The Gunfighters, The Outlaws and The Lawmen. The last one, which I’ve read many times, has the Earps leaving Tombstone unbloodied, cavaliers in a town long ruled by the forces of evil. What do you think of Horan’s work? Tony M. Stabo Milwaukee, Wis. The editor responds: Longtime New York newspaperman Horan published some 40 books. His trilogy appeared in the late 1970s. Earlier he wrote such books as Desperate Men (1949), about the James Gang and theWild Bunch, and Pictorial History of the Wild West (1954). Horan was one of the first writers to seriously approach the history of gunfighters and outlaws, using original documents, eyewitness accounts and newspaper reports to relate the Wild West era better than many of his peers. Send letters to Wild West, 19300 Promenade Dr., Leesburg,VA 20176 or by e-mail to [email protected].

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WEIDER READER

A sampling of decisive moments, remarkable adventures, memorable characters, surprising encounters and great ideas from our sister magazines

American History Mark Twain’s Hawaiian Adventure

British Heritage The Old Bones of Richard III

America’s Civil War Emancipation in Berryville, Virginia

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) ventured to the frontier in 1861 and worked at newspapers in Nevada and California. Twain was not roughing it only in the Far West during that decade. He spent four months in the Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands in 1866 on assignment for The Sacramento Union. There he got his first glimpse of an active volcano, Mount Kilauea, on Hawaii’s Big Island, and in the article “Into the Fire,” in the June 2013 issue, he describes a “scene of wild beauty.”

Periodically in the American West, somebody digs up the bones of an outlaw (think Jesse James in Missouri and Bill Longley in Texas) or decides they want to (think Billy the Kid in New Mexico and Ike Clanton in Arizona). Same thing happens across the Pond. Researchers from England’s University of Leicester have confirmed that the bones found beneath a car park last summer are those of vilified (think Shakespeare) King Richard III. The following in an excerpt from “Discovery: The Bones of Richard III,” in the July 2013 issue.

When President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, Texas resisted along with the other Confederate States of America. Most of the slaves wouldn’t actually become free until after the Civil War was over; enforcement in Texas wouldn’t come until June 1865. But sometime in 1863 resistance to the proclamation was futile, especially in northern Virginia, as seen in this excerpt from Stephanie McCurry’s “Her War” department, in the May 2013 issue.

A colossal column of cloud towered to a great height in the air immediately above the crater, and the outer swell of every one of its vast folds was dyed with a rich crimson luster, which was subdued to a pale rose tint in the depressions between. It glowed like a muffled torch and stretched upward to a dizzy height toward the zenith. I thought it just possible that its like had not been seen since the children of Israel wandered on their long march through the desert so many centuries ago over a path illuminated by the mysterious “pillar of fire.” The greater part of the vast floor of the desert under us was as black as ink, and apparently smooth and level; but over a mile square of it was ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire! It looked like a colossal railroad map of the State of Massachusetts done in chain lightning on a midnight sky. Imagine a coal-black sky shivered into a tangled network of fire!

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“Working down the spine there were vertebrae missing,” said Jo Appleby, the osteologist uncovering the bones. “Then, there they were to the side, where they’d be with severe scoliosis.” That was the ah-ha moment. Up until then, I had convinced myself that it wasn’t Richard. Then, I knew.” “I think we’re all still reeling from it, totally reeling,” enthused Lin Foxhall, Chair of the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Leicester. After all, archaeologists don’t normally find historic people, let alone lost kings. It’s one of the most important archaeological discoveries in decades, solving one of the great mysteries of British history. Richard III, the last Plantagenet, was the only king since the Norman Conquest whose mortal whereabouts were unknown and who was not buried in a royal tomb. Some 527 years after Richard’s gruesome death on the battlefield, the body’s discovery led to a body of evidence that easily and clearly corroborated the identity of the fallen king. The discovery was akin to hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack and pulling out the needle on the first reach.

The ink was barely dry on the Emancipation Proclamation when two Union soldiers rode into Virginia slaveholder Sigismunda Kimball’s yard and demanded the release of the slave woman Farinda. Kimball lived on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley near Berryville, about eight miles fromWinchester. Her husband was in Stonewall Jackson’s army and she had been left to manage their two properties—and control the slaves—in his absence. And when the Union officers arrived in February 1863, two women (mistress and slave) were at the center of the emancipation drama that played out. In Berryville, as in so many other places in the Confederacy “stripped of men” by conscription, as one Southern woman put it, women were often the ones left on the frontlines as emancipation spread. “By what authority,” Kimball herself now asked an officer.“The authority of the Commanding General, General Milroy,” the officer answered. “[Milroy] has no right to take them!” Kimball stormed. “They do not belong to him.” “O,” the officer replied, a historical transformation condensed in a second, “they do not belong to anyone, the government has fixed that.” And with that he hitched up four horses to a wagon.

Aviation History Assassination of Admiral Yamamoto

Military History The Quality of American Soldiers

MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of American History Does This Uniform Make Me Look Fat?

On the afternoon of April 17, 1943, two U.S. Navy fliers met with a roomful of brass hats on Guadalcanal. Their goal: formulate a plan to shoot down a bomber carrying Japan’s most notorious military leader, Admiral Yamamoto, the following day. The American Indians didn’t plan that way. Kiowa raiders on May 18, 1871, had a chance to ambush a small U.S. Army party that included General William Sherman but passed it over, because of a medicine man’s dream, to attack a larger civilian wagon train that followed. Here’s an excerpt from “Death by P-38,” by Don Hollway, in the May 2013 issue:

The quality of American soldiers fighting in the Western Indian wars after the Civil War has been much debated. The various cavalry and infantry units often had to overcome poor pay and equipment, too little training, an elusive enemy and too many desertions. Some fighting men rose to the occasion, of course, as they have done in all wars, including World War II. This excerpt is from an interview with Rick Atkinson, author of The Guns at Last Light, in the May 2013 issue. He was asked if his sense of the Army’s fighting qualities changed.

Over the years women have not been so welcome in the U.S. military. But a few, such as Cathay Williams, have sneaked into the ranks. As “William Cathey,” she enlisted in the U.S. Army after the Civil War and served as a private with other black soldiers in the 38th Infantry for a couple of years before revealing her precious secret. She apparently didn’t have to shoot anyone (see more in the April 2013 Wild West). By contrast, the Soviet Union during World War II sent hundreds of thousands of women into combat. The most famous was sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who was credited with killing more than 300 Germans. Here’s an excerpt from “Why Not Send Women to War?” by Drew Lindsay, in the Spring 2013 issue.

That Saturday afternoon the “Opium Den”—the smoky, sweltering, ramshackle command bunker at Henderson Field, on Guadalcanal—was packed with Navy and Marine brass hats. Lowly flyboys Captain Thomas Lanphier Jr. and Major John W. Mitchell, commanding officer of the U.S. Army Air Forces’ 339th Fighter Squadron, arrived last but were treated like guests of honor. Mitchell was handed a teletyped radio message marked T OP S ECRET : a flight schedule for an inspection tour by Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. “Who’s Yamamoto?” Mitchell asked. Lanphier just said, “Pearl Harbor.” Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Combined Fleet, was the Harvard-educated, pokerplaying mastermind of the December 7, 1941, attack. Navy code-breakers had intercepted Japanese radio traffic indicating that the admiral would fly over Bougainville Island early the next morning, April 18, 1943—coincidentally the first anniversary of the Doolittle Raid. “We’re going to get this bird,” the Navy planners told Mitchell and Lanphier.

We were pretty incompetent in November 1942, going into Africa—“we” being the American fighting man. They were green at all levels, from the theater commander on down. By the spring of 1945 there has been a great sifting-out, so that those with a gift for command— whether as platoon leader or corps commander—had manifested themselves. There was a ruthlessness in replacing those deemed unfit for command, so by the spring of 1945 I think the U.S. Army was pretty fine. My sense of American soldiers and their competence has evolved, as they evolved. I see them warts and all. There were deficiencies. There was a reliance on firepower, in part because they had firepower, and there was a general feeling by many commanders that if you have to use 1,000 shells to take a hill, that’s better than 1,000 pints of blood. I don’t find anything wrong with that. There has long been an argument over whether, mano a mano, a German unit was superior to its American counterpart in a fair fight. I think that is a nonsense question. Who is talking about a fair fight in a global war? War is a clash of systems.

Pavlichenko was sent to the United States in 1942 to lobby the Allies to open a second front on the Germans in Europe. Americans did not send women into combat, and the novelty of a woman killer thrilled them; Woody Guthrie wrote a ballad for her that extolled her virtues: “Your smile shines as bright/As my new morning sun./But more than 300 Nazidogs fell by your gun.” The press surprised Pavlichenko with questions about her makeup and hairstyle. “Don’t they know there is a war?” she said. One reporter even questioned her fashion sense, saying her uniform made her look fat.

To subscribe to any Weider History magazine, call 800-435-0715 or go to HistoryNet.com. JUNE 2013

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ROUNDUP

News of the West Fort Worth Photo

Wild West ’s Top 10 AUTHOR JOHN KOSTER’S LIST OF 10 TINY ERRORS IN LARRY MCMURTRY’S 2012 BOOK CUSTER 1. George Armstrong Custer was of Hessian stock. Long since refuted. His father was of remote German descent, his mother Scotch-Irish. No Hessian Schweinehund appears to have been involved. 2. Custer was far from being a gracious or easy commander of men. Civil War soldiers adored him, even copying his nonregulation red scarf. Custer pressed his troopers to write home more often. He also helped win the June 1863 Battle of Gettysburg by smashing Jeb Stuart’s flank attack —an action McMurtry doesn’t mention. 3. Nowhere does he [Custer] mention the [Civil War’s] 750,000 dead. Actually, most historians put the toll at about 620,000 dead. Clara Barton, through her Missing Soldiers Office, helped grieving family and friends learn the fate of tens of thousands of Union dead.

In December 2011 WildWest ran an article by Richard Selcer and Donna HumphreyDonnell about the famous November 1900 “Fort Worth Five” (aka Wild Bunch) photo, in which the authors said photographer John Swartz’s gallery was at 705½ Main Street in Fort Worth. HumphreyDonnell recently turned up this 1937 photo (above) of the same location. The Bryant Studio pictured, she says, was formerly Swartz’s studio, where the Sundance Kid, Will Carver, Ben Kilpatrick, Harvey Logan and Butch Cassidy posed. “In this photo on the street level is the Worth Café (705 Main); in 1900 it was Sheehan’s Saloon,” says HumphreyDonnell. “The building was erected circa 1892. Over the decades the building changed owners and venue many times and became an adult theater by the early 1970s. Today the spot where the end began for the gang is a multilevel parking garage. Just a few blocks north is downtown FortWorth’s entertainment hub and development Sundance Square, named after the historic photographic event.”

Owen Wister Winner

Texas author Jory Sherman, 80, whose 400-plus books include the Spur-Award winning Medicine Horn, is the Western Writers of America’s 2013 recipient of the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Contributions to Western Literature. 8

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4. Custer treated the deserters savagely, often sending his brother Tom to shoot them. He ordered his officers to do this once, during an epidemic of desertion. Three were killed, others wounded. Custer later allowed a contract physician to treat the wounded. 5.The whites…were used to fighting but not to butchery. Both whites and Indians had mutilated enemy dead at least since King Philip’s War in the 17th century. English colonists displayed Wampanoag King Philip’s severed head on a pike outside Fort Plymouth for a generation. Revolutionary War soldiers reported skinning dead Iroquois from the waist down and using the gruesome trophies as leggings. 6. What they [the Indians] wanted was to attack a wagon train and kill all the whites in it, just as their fathers had done. Until things went bad, the Lakotas usually swapped game with pioneers for coffee, bread and other staples. Once the wars started, they often carried off women and children for adoption or ransom. Some raped their adult captives. 7. President Lincoln carefully reviewed the files [after the DakotaWar of 1862 in Minnesota] and reduced the number to be hanged to 33. Actually, 39. One Dakota got a last-minute reprieve before the mass hanging of 38 warriors in Mankato. The site of the scaffold (see P. 11) is said to be haunted. 8. Yellow Swallow [Custer’s purported half-blood son with Monahsetah] vanishes from the record. George and Elizabeth Custer and Kate Bighead mention only a full-blood Indian baby, clearly not Custer’s. Interviewer David Humphreys Miller did recount a blond Indian child of Monahsetah’s, as described to him in 1938 by a Lakota who also claimed to have killed Custer. Who didn’t? Historian Jeffry Wert surmises that Custer was sterile due to gonorrhea contracted in New York City in 1859. 9. The Northern Pacific [Railway] was punched through without serious battle. Actually Custer and the 7th Cavalry had a sharp fight with the Sioux on the Yellowstone in 1873. Custer’s orderly, John Tuttle, was shot in the head. Custer noted that many of the Indians were armed with breech-loading repeating rifles. Grim portent. The railroad shortly flopped in a stock crash. 10. In the movie version [of Cheyenne Yellow Hair’s killing] … Jeff Chandler played Cody. No. In Buffalo Bill (1944) Joel McCrea played Cody, while Anthony Quinn played the unlucky Yellow Hand (should be Yellow Hair —the screenwriters got that wrong, though McMurtry got it right).

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ROUNDUP Django Takes Two Oscars

Three Westerns have won best-picture Oscars—Cimarron (1931), Dances With Wolves (1990) and Unforgiven (1992). The 2007 winner, No Country for Old Men, has been called a neo-Western among other things. This year director Quentin Tarantino’s controversial Spaghetti Western (Spaghetti Southern?) Django Unchained (see review, P. 77) was one of nine films in the running for best picture. Django garnered nominations in four other categories—best original screenplay (by Tarantino), best cinematography, best sound editing and best supporting actor (Christoph Waltz, who plays the bounty hunter mentor to title character Jamie Foxx; see photo above). Not nominated were director Tarantino, actor Foxx or supporting actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson. At the 85th Academy Awards on February 24 Django captured two Oscars—Waltz for supporting actor and Tarantino for original screenplay. “We participated in a hero’s journey, the hero here being Quentin,” Waltz said.

Great Western Performers

Wes Studi, the Cherokee actor who has played memorable Indian characters in Geronimo, Dances With Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans, has been named to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s Hall of GreatWestern Performers. Other 2013 inductees include the late Robert Mitchum, who appeared in Blood on the Moon, El Dorado and many other Westerns; and Duncan Renaldo (on right in photo above) and Leo Carrillo (on left), who played the Cisco Kid and sidekick Pancho, respectively, on the big screen and TV. The Oklahoma City museum [www.nationalcowboymuseum.org] will honor the inductees at its annual West10

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West Words

“I do not tell you this to cast any reflection upon Custer. For whatever errors he may have committed, he has paid the penalty, and you cannot regret his loss more than I do, but I feel that our plan must have been successful had it been carried out, and I desire you to know the facts.” ÑBrig. Gen. Alfred Terry in a telegram to Lt. Gen. Phil Sheridan, in which Terry noted Lt. Col. George CusterÕs mistakes and negligence at the Little Bighorn in the summer of 1876. (For more see James DonovanÕs 2008 book A Terrible Glory.)

ern Heritage Awards gala on April 20. West Texas cowboy Boots O’Neal will receive this year’s Chester A. Reynolds Memorial Award for perpetuating “the legacy of the American West.” The museum will also present its Wrangler Awards for best Western films, TV, literature and music. Among the literary winners are Robert M. Utley for Geronimo (nonfiction book, Yale University Press), Jim Logan for “The Other Trail” (magazine article, Oklahoma Today), D.B. Jackson for Unbroke Horses (novel, Goldminds Publishing) and Sandra Dallas for The QuiltWalk (juvenile book, Sleeping Bear Press).

Gun-Shy in Montana

Montana legislators in February declined an opportunity to add to its state symbols (which include the duck-billed dinosaur fossil and grizzly bear) when they rejected a proposal to name theWinchester Model 1873 the official state rifle. Opponents of the measure cited the Winchester’s lethal history in Western expansion. State Rep. LeaWhitford decried use of the

repeating rifle in the decimation of buffalo herds, while State Rep. Carolyn PeaseLopez said, “I must rise in opposition of celebrating such a weapon as this that brought devastation to my people.” State Rep. Edward Greef, who carried the bill, noted the rifle was “readily available on the frontier” and even factored into the Lakota–Northern Cheyenne victory at the June 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn. Repeaters certainly provided more firepower than the singleshot Springfield Model 1873 carbines carried by 7th Cavalry troopers. Greef urged fellow legislators to view the weapon as a “symbol of a place in time” that played a “significant role in the state’s history.” The Republican-led House ultimately defeated the measure 61–39. Other states do have official guns. Utah paved the way in March 2011, adopting the Browning M1911 automatic pistol. The son of Mormon pioneers in Utah Territory, Ogden native John Moses Browning (1855–1926) founded the company that made the gun the U.S. Army adopted in March 1911. In April 2011, a month after Utah chose the Browning, Arizona designated the Colt Single Action Army revolver as its state gun. Introduced in 1873, the Colt SAA became the most popular handgun on the frontier during the shoot-’em-up days. At the October 1881 gunfight near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, several participants (Frank McLaury, Billy Clanton and Wyatt Earp) blazed away with

ROUNDUP Colts. Colt continued to manufacture the gun long after Arizona obtained statehood in 1912. “It is the most popular handgun in the history of the world,” says Lee Silva, longtime “Guns of the West” columnist for Wild West.

Petroglyphs Recovered

Bureau of Land Management officials have recovered intact five panels of petroglyphs stolen from the Volcanic Tablelands in the eastern Sierra Nevada north of Bishop, Calif. An anonymous tip led to recovery of the ancient Indian rock carvings. As reported in the April 2013 Roundup, thieves had used masonry saws last fall to chip the panels from the rock faces. If found, those responsible face heavy fines and/or imprisonment. Authorities have beefed up patrols of the site and installed surveillance cameras.

parade saddle from Keyston Bros. of San Francisco realized $138,000 (including buyer’s premium, see photo below), while an Edward H. Bohlin Cluster Special sterling silver parade saddle went for $92,000. Both far outdid the $48,875 brought by a well-worn black leather saddle presented in 1825 to Símon Bolívar, the “Liberator of South America.” The top bid for a painting was $31,625 for Charlie Dye’s Long Horn Trail. Early 20th-century spurs made by José Figueroa of Los Angeles sold for $25,875. Other notable sellers include a northern Plains tomahawk with a double batwing cutout iron head ($34,500), an 1850s Eastern Woodlands quilled dag knife sheath ($31,625) and a circa 1890s Sioux man’s quilled shirt ($20,700).

Mankato Hanging Memorial

Dedication of the long-anticipated “Dakota 38” memorial in downtown Mankato, Minn., last December drew some 500 people, including Dakota/Lakota tribe members who rode horseback to the site from South Dakota. On December 26, 1862, in the largest mass execution in U.S. history, federal authorities sent 38 Dakota men to the gallows for their roles in the Dakota War (aka Sioux Uprising) of 1862. Military tribunals had sentenced 303 men to death, but in a show of mercy President Abraham Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but 39 men, one of whom later got a reprieve. At the dedication ceremony Dakota /Lakota elder Sidney Byrd read in the Dakota language a list of the 38 men hanged, whose names are now inscribed on the monument. “Forgive everyone everything” was the Dakota mantra for the occasion. “Today, being here to witness a great gathering, we have peace in our hearts,” said Arvol Looking Horse, head of the Dakota/Lakota tribe, “a new beginning of healing.”

High Noon Auction

Two 1950s saddles were big sellers at the 23rd annual High Noon Western Americana Auction [www.highnoon.com] in Mesa, Ariz., in January. A Ute Chieftain

See You Later, Glenn Boyer

Glenn Boyer, the Arizona-based author who acquired a wealth of primary source material about Wyatt Earp and Mary Katherine “Big Nose Kate” Harony (Doc Holliday’s paramour) and wrote many books, pamphlets and articles about them, died at age 89 on February 14 in Tucson. With books like I MarriedWyatt Earp (1976) and Wyatt Earp’s Tombstone Vendetta (1993), Boyer pleased his admirers and triggered great interest in the world of Earp but also caused an uproar among detractors, who questioned his sources and called him a fraud. Where the HeartWas, his novel about the Great Depression, came out in 2009. An interview with Boyer appeared in the October 2009 WildWest and is readable online at www.WildWestMag.com.

See You Later, Evan Connell

Wounded Knee Sale

A private landowner in South Dakota has offered to sell a 40-acre parcel of the Wounded Knee National Historic Landmark to the Oglala Lakota Nation, whose ancestors died in the infamous 1890 clash with 7th Cavalry soldiers that marked the last major fight of the Indian wars. But the impoverished tribe insists the $3.9 million asking price is too high. The parcel lies within the extents of the Pine Ridge Reservation [www.oglalalakotanation.org] and adjacent to the mass grave holding the remains of some 150 Lakotas slain during the battle. It also includes the site of a trading post burned down during the 1973 Wounded Knee uprising. The landowner, James Czywczynski, says that the site’s historical significance adds value and that he will open the bidding to non-Indian buyers if the tribe won’t meet his asking price.

Evan S. Connell, who died at age 88 in Santa Fe in January, was primarily a novelist, but his 1984 nonfiction book Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn was a surprise best seller and in 1991 was adapted into an Emmy-winning ABC miniseries. In 1985 he told The New York Times why he wrote the book: “Just about all the kids in this country grew up on cowboys and Indians. Maybe now it’s Star Wars, but when I grew up in Kansas City, you could send in box tops—from Quaker Oats, I think—and get something like a color picture of Sitting Bull.”

Famous Last Words “No, and I’ll die before I ever tell you.” —Spoken on the morning of April 9, 1888, by mortally wounded Mart Duggan, former Leadville, Colo., marshal and patrolman, when officers asked him if Texas House gambling hall owner Bailey Youngson had shot him in the back of the head. (For more see P. 18.)

JUNE 2013

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SANTA FE NEW MEXICO

ROUNDUP

Events of the West

Swartz Bros. Photos

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Little Bighorn Activity

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June 19-22, 2013 At the Rodeo Grounds

(Rodeo Road & Richards Avenue)

Gates Open at 5pm for Shopping & Dining

Four Nights

of Exciting, Heart-pumping Rodeo Events! 񡑕񡑔񡑒񡑈 񡑁񡑐񡑐񡑓񡑅񡑉 񡑃񡑑񡑆񡑇񡑑 񡑆񡑇 񡑄񡑅񡑐񡑒񡑅 񡑂񡑇 NIGHTLY EVENTS INCLUDE:

• Bull Riding

The Battle of the Little Bighorn Reenactment takes place June 21–23 between Crow Agency and Garryowen, Mont.Visit www.littlebighornreenactment.com. The annual Custer’s Last Stand Reenactment will be held six miles west of Hardin, Mont., as part of Little Big Horn Days, June 19–23. Call 888-450-3577 or visit www.custerslaststand.org. The five-day “Custer’s Ride to Glory” happens June 19–23. Call 505-286-4585 or visit www .great-american-adventures.com.

Montana Gold

The historic Montana towns of Virginia City and Nevada City each mark the 150th anniversary of the spring 1863 Alder Gulch gold strike with a festival May 24– 26. Visit www.virginiacity.com and www .southwestmt.com.

Cowboy Day

The National Day of the American Cowboy falls on July 27 this year, with planned events at many locations, including the Autry National Center in Los Angeles (323-667-2000); Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo. 307-587-4771); National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City (405-4782250); High Plains Western Heritage Center, in Spearfish, S.D. (605-642-9378); and Frontier Times Museum in Bandera, Texas (830-796-3864).Visit www.national dayofthecowboy.com.

Women at Autry

• Tie Down Roping • Barrel Racing • Steer Wrestling • Team Roping • Bareback Riding • Saddle Bronc Riding

On June 1, as part of its “Women of the West” series, the Autry National Center in Los Angeles will host Ann Kirschner, author of Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp. Call 323-667-2000 or visit www.theautry.org.

End of Trail

For Information, Hotel Discounts & Tickets

Call: 1-888-583-6668 Ext 1 www.rodeodesantafe.org 12

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The Single Action Shooting Society’s End of Trail World Championship of Cowboy Action Shooting is on target for June 22– 30 at Founders Ranch in Edgewood, N.M. Please visit www.sassnet.com or call 877-411-7277.

“The Swartz Brothers: Fort Worth’s First Family of Photographers,” showcases John (he took the 1900 “Fort Worth Five” Wild Bunch photo), David (see his circa 1895 photo of a not-so-wild girl above) and Charles Swartz at the Central Library in Fort Worth, Texas, April 30– May 10. Please call 817-392-7705 or visit www.facebook.com/SwartzBrothers PhotographExhibit.

WWA Goes Vegas

The Western Writers of America holds its 60th anniversary convention at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, Nev., June 25– 29. Visit www.westernwriters.org.

WWHA Roundup

The sixth annual Wild West History Association Roundup comes to the Riverside Hotel in Boise, Idaho, July 10–13. Visit www.wildwesthistory.org.

Wyoming Days

See exciting Wyoming rodeo (see P. 80) and entertainment July 19–28 at Cheyenne Frontier Days (800-227-6336 or www.cfdrodeo.com) and at Laramie Jubilee Days July 6–14. (please visit www .laramiejubileedays.net).

Western Art

May 17–19—National Western Art Show, Ellensburg, Wash. (509-962-2934). June 7 and 8—Prix de West, Oklahoma City (405-478-2250). July 27—Coeur d’Alene Art Auction, Hayden, Idaho (208-772-9009).

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America Remembers® Honors The Spirit Of The Old West – Relive The Adventure With

The ChisholmTrailTribute Rifle It was a time and a place that will never be forgotten. For nearly two decades after the Civil War, After the vast herds of longhorn cattle were driven from ranches all over Texas, north to the railheads in Kansas. Civil War, beef The route was called the Chisholm Trail, and its story is a stirring tale of hardship, adventure, cattle were scarce dogged determination and enterprising zeal. east of the Mississippi Today, fans of the Wild West fondly recall the legendary personalities and locations that River, but plentiful played such a prominent role in this epic chapter of American history. Think of cities like in Texas. Joseph G. Fort Worth, Abilene, Dodge City, Wichita, or the legendary Red River, and you probably McCoy, a prominent conjure images of cowboys, cattle, and legendary lawmen of the Wild West, including cattleman, came up with a Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Wild Bill Hickok. profitable means of matching Now you can relive the adventures of the Chisholm Trail as America Remembers supply with demand. In 1867, he celebrates this special era in our history with “The Chisholm Trail Tribute Rifle,” arrived at Abilene, Kansas, where a a handsomely decorated rifle issued in cooperation with the Chisholm Trail railhead had been established, and he Heritage Center in Duncan, Oklahoma. built holding facilities for up to 3,000 A Favorite Cowboy Rifle head of cattle. Several years before, Indian Based on the legendary Winchester Model 1873 rifle, this Model 73 trader Jesse Chisholm had marked a 220 mile in caliber .44-40 has been recreated by the master craftsmen of route for his wagon trains from Indian Territory Uberti. Each rifle is decorated in 24-karat gold and nickel by to Wichita, Kansas. McCoy sent out surveyors along craftsmen specifically commissioned by America Remembers Chisholm’s route to mark the route from Abilene back for this Tribute. The Model 73 is a classic lever-action rifle south to Texas, a route that would become synonymous with its own unique and celebrated history; a rifle that with the great cattle drives on the Chisholm Trail. immediately rekindles images of America's Wild West, Featured on the right side of the receiver, is a typical scene along the and a favorite for cowboys on the Chisholm Trail. trail, depicting a mounted cowboy, a steer and the chuckwagon. To the right is a portrait of Jesse Chisholm, for whom the trail was named. To the left is a Only 300 Available depiction of a cowboy branding a yearling. Only 300 Chisholm Trail Tribute Rifles will ever be produced, and reservations will be accepted in the order received. Delivery of your working Tribute will be arranged through a licensed firearms dealer of your choice. The hard-riding cowboys of the Chisholm Trail and their exploits have thrilled and inspired generations. Don’t miss this unparalleled Left side depicts an image of cowboys driving a vast herd of Texas longhorn cattle, closely opportunity to remember and following a chuckwagon, as was the actual practice on the trail. The artwork was inspired by the honor the cowboys and spectacular bronze sculpture, titled “On The Chisholm Trail,” which is on display at the Chisholm cattlemen who played such Trail Heritage Center. To the left is a portrait of Joseph G. McCoy, the entrepreneur who built the shipping yard that drew the cattle and cowboys from Texas, and on the right is a vignette of a cowboy an important role in shaping roping a calf. the destiny of the West, while securing their place in our Nation’s heritage.

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INTERVIEW

Mark Smokov Brings Harvey Logan Out of Butch Cassidy’s Shadow

And the Wild Bunch outlaw (aka Kid Curry) comes into focus

F

or years Harvey Logan has been overshadowed by his Hole-in-the-Wall Gang (aka Wild Bunch) colleagues Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, not to mention ignored and/or misunderstood by many historians. Mark T. Smokov (see photo at right), a Seattle resident and University of Washington graduate, corrects that oversight in He Rode With Butch and Sundance: The Story of Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan (see review, P. 74). In it Smokov chronicles Logan’s criminal career, from his killing of Pike Landusky in 1894, to an ill-conceived 1897 bank robbery in Belle Fourche, S.D., to Logan’s forays with the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, to his capture in Knoxville, Tenn., in 1902, and escape the following year. And, of course, his death after a train robbery in Parachute, Colo.—sorry, conspiracy theorists—in 1904. Smokov recently spoke with Wild West about Logan and the book. You titled the book He Rode With Butch and Sundance.Why not Butch and Sundance Rode With Him? That is the point I try to make throughout the book. Kid Curry’s leadership abilities were soon recognized by the Wild Bunch fraternity when he switched to robbing trains after the Belle Fourche bank fiasco. Contemporary sources often relegate Cassidy to the background by referring to this bunch as “Kid Curry’s gang.” Curry and Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid) were virtually inseparable from about 1897 to 1900, pulling off several holdups together. It would have been more accurate if the movie had been titled Kid Curry and the Sundance Kid, especially since the train robberies were pulled off by these two and not Butch Cassidy. Cassidy’s early exploits in bank and payroll robberies were done mainly in company with Elzy Lay. Curry was also very close to “Flatnose” George Currie (no relation), Walt Punteney and Tom O’Day. What is the biggest misconception about Logan/Curry? There are actually two. The first is that he has often been portrayed as a coldblooded killer without conscience. The

Pinkertons, writers and historians are responsible for overindulging in this idea. The only killing that can for certain be attributed to Curry is the killing of Pike Landusky. The Pinkertons were frustrated at not being able to catch Kid Curry and attempted to portray him as desperate as Jesse James, another bandit they had much trouble trying to apprehend. Many writers and historians seemed to have a need to portray at least one Wild Bunch member as a psychopathic killer. Curry cannot be compared to a Harry Tracy or JohnWesley Hardin, the latter supposedly shooting a man for snoring. The second misconception, on which I have already touched, is the belief that Curry had limited intelligence and was capable of being only a minor member of the Wild Bunch. However, he showed great skill and cunning in the planning of several train robberies. The same could be said of his ability to break out of jails. How did he pick up the name Kid Curry? Unfortunately, it is not known where this cognomen originated. It was definitely not to honor rustling pal “Flatnose” George Currie. When Harvey Logan and his older brother Hank arrived in Mon-

By Johnny D. Boggs

tana in 1884, they were already using this alias. There is no evidence they had met George Currie at this time, not to mention that Currie would have only been 13 years old. How dangerous was Kid Curry? Curry indeed had a violent temper, and could be cruel and vicious at times, especially when drinking. When he felt taken advantage of or was threatened with losing his freedom, he didn’t hesitate to use force to defend himself. What happened in Parachute, Colo.? The running down of the Parachute train robbers and subsequent death of Curry can be blamed by and large by his uncharacteristic poor planning. Some people point to this as proof that it couldn’t have been Curry who held up the train. However, it must be pointed out that he was never the same after sustaining severe head injuries from his terrific and horrific billy club beating from two Knoxville policemen. Another factor was his forced inactivity during his yearand-a-half jail confinement. He became indecisive, which showed in his indefinite holdup plans, of which the absence of relay horses was foremost. Another puzzling mistake that contributed to the gang’s downfall was their choice of escape route, which placed them within the more populated areas near Parachute.

Read more at www.WildWestMag.com.

JUNE 2013

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15

WESTERNERS

Beast of Burden The prospector in this photo is not named—nor is his burro—but Alfred Brisbois, a studio photographer in Leadville, Colorado, in the 1880s–90s, took this image in that famous mining town in 1898. Founded in 1877 within a pick’s toss of rich ore deposits, Leadville was one of the world’s most productive silver camps by 1880. Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 forced the mines and smelters to shut down, though a gold strike in the late 1890s brought the district back to life. This prospector

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carries a suicide special revolver butt first in his holster and lets the burro tote his 1886 Winchester rifle. Lone prospectors, in frontier fact and Western fiction, relied on the burro (from the Latin word for “small horse”) to carry their gear and heavy packs to and from the wilderness. Today, as part of the annual Leadville Boom Days event [www.leadvilleboomdays.com], the first full weekend in August, participants engage in a 21-mile pack burro race. (Photo from the Lee A. Silva Collection)

For nearly three decades, Frederic Remington traveled the American West and, through firsthand experiences, documented the pioneering spirit of this new frontier and its people. A skilled illustrator, painter and author, Remington was best known for masterful bronze sculptures of the Old West. Now his classic 1909 “Bronco Buster” has been captured in a fine jewelry tribute honoring the legacy of this remarkable artist.

Superbly Crafted in an Exclusive Design Crafted of solid sterling silver, the “Frederic Remington Legacy” Commemorative Ring features a sculpted portrait of Remington’s famous “Bronco Buster,” captured in the same bronze that the master used. Here in stunning detail, we’ve recreated all the power and energy in the battle between the bucking horse and the determined cowboy. The bronze medallion is framed by a twisted rope design, and each side of the band is embellished with a bronzedplated horseshoe. Further adding to the meaning and value, the ring is engraved with “AN AMERICAN LEGACY” and Frederic Remington’s signature. Each hand-crafted ring comes with a custom case, Certificate of Authenticity and a Frederic Remington American Legacy fact card.

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Actual Size This commemorative tribute comes with a custom presentation case, Certificate of Authenticity, and an American Legacy fact card which highlights Mr. Remington’s career and the significance of his “Bronco Buster” sculpture. ©2013 BGE 01-14330-001-BI

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G U N F I G H T E R S A N D L AW M E N

Mart Duggan, Not a Believer in Regulations, Ruled Rowdy Leadville With an Iron Hand Prospecting didn’t pan out, but marshaling had its rewards

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rush to the burgeoning mining camp of Leadville in early 1878. Its first city marshal, T.H. Harrison, lasted only two days before the ruffians ran him out of town. A month later his successor, George O’Connor, was fatally shot by a deputy. Desperate for a man with enough sand to stop the toughs, mayor and wealthy mine owner Horace AustinWarner “Haw” Tabor turned to Mart Duggan.

FERN BRAY OF REMEMBER WHEN™

T

he name Matt Dillon is familiar to those who admired the fictional marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, in the long-running radio and TV series Gunsmoke. But not many Western fans recall Mart Duggan, an actual marshal with a similar name who rode herd on another famous Western town. Marshal Dillon will not soon be forgotten, but now Marshal Duggan—who made his mark in Leadville, Colorado, and was somewhat more flawed than James Arness’ iconic Dillon —is getting some recognition. Born in County Limerick, Ireland, on November 10 in either 1848 or 1847 (as his recently erected tombstone reads; see photo at right), Martin J. Duggan came to the States with his family as a child and soon learned to use his fists in the New York City slums. By 1859 the Duggans were farming in Nebraska and after a few years moved to Colorado Territory. In his mid-20s Mart left the family farm to seek his fortune in the ore-rich Colorado mountains. A contemporary said he was of “medium height, but of compact, massive build…[with] sinews of steel.” He had blond hair and blue eyes and “a square face with broad forehead and pleasing expression.…He was a man you would look at twice as you first met him.” Prospecting didn’t work out, so in 1876 Duggan became a bouncer in a Georgetown saloon. Reports in newspapers as distant as Chicago told of one altercation in which a drunk, whom Duggan had beaten badly, sought revenge in a street gunfight. Duggan killed him in an exchange of gunfire. A miners’ court acquitted Duggan on a plea of self-defense. Exaggerated reports that Duggan’s gun bore seven notches for the men he had killed followed him when he joined the

Historians found Duggan’s unmarked grave in Denver in 2005, and the Leadville Assembly dedicated this marker in 2010.

“Immediately after I was appointed,” Duggan told an interviewer a few years later, “I received a written notice from the roughs to leave town, and if I stayed 24 hours, I would follow George O’Connor. Paid no attention to notice but took every precaution to always be on guard.” The town, he said, “was not only full of thieves, thugs and desperate characters, but there was some quarrelsome, shooting miners…determined that no newcomer should have authority over them.” Duggan soon demonstrated his steel. As rowdies tore up the Tontine saloon and restaurant, he entered alone, singled

By R.K. DeArment

out the ringleader and ordered him outside. “What if I don’t go?” sneered the ruffian. “Then say a Hail Mary,” the marshal coolly responded, “because you’re a dead man where you stand.” The establishment grew quiet, and the thug slunk out. Duggan paid little heed to regulations. He fired policemen for the slightest infraction and, using a six-shooter as his authority, even deposed a municipal magistrate he found too lenient in imposing penalties on miscreants. One night August Rische, a mining magnate and partner of Tabor, became drunk and disorderly, and Duggan threw him in the calaboose. When Tabor remonstrated, Duggan replied he had treated Rische like any common drunk, and if Tabor kept jabbering, he would find himself locked up with his partner. Tabor backed down. Another night, he faced a large mob intent on lynching a black man who had stabbed a white man in a fight. “I started out alone to get ahead of the mob,” Duggan recalled. “I stood in the middle of the street with a cocked revolver in each hand and told them I would kill the first man who attempted to pass.…I managed to make them understand that some of them were sure to be killed if they persisted …and from that time on they understood that I would not do to fool with.” Duggan was normally well mannered and soft-spoken. “Sober, there was no more courteous, obliging person,” wrote a Leadville newspaper. But, the paper added, “Under the influence of liquor, he was the incarnation of deviltry and had as little regard for human life as a wild beast.” On a drunken binge in February 1879 Duggan assaulted a Tontine bartender, who accused the marshal of becoming “violent and abusive,” threatening his life with a drawn revolver, knock-

ing him down and calling him “all kinds of bad and dirty names.” Duggan was suspended but then reinstated when the bartender, not wanting the marshal as an enemy, withdrew his charges. When his term in office expired in April 1879, Duggan declined another stint. He said that he was accompanying his wife to Flint, Mich., her hometown, for an extended visit. P.A. “Pat” Kelly succeeded him but soon lost control of Leadville. The city fathers, as Duggan remembered it, asked him “to come back at once and take the marshalship, as they did not believe that anyone else could prevent the roughs from running the town.” After Duggan became marshal again that December, he replaced all of Kelly’s policemen and cracked down on the hoodlums. Duggan turned in his badge in April 1880 to open a livery stable. In May 1880 during a miner’s strike, he was a lieutenant with the Tabor Tigers, an organization of Leadville sporting men that helped the state militia maintain order. On November 22 of that year, he argued with a man, Louis Lamb, who pulled a

gun on the ex-marshal. Duggan drew and fired a round directly into Lamb’s mouth, killing him instantly. Duggan was cleared on the standard plea of self-defense, but Lamb’s widow proclaimed she would wear her “widow’s weeds” until she could dance on “murderer” Duggan’s grave. Other citizens took her side, and Duggan’s livery business suffered. In 1882 he and his wife moved to Douglass City, where he tended bar and became a deputy sheriff. In 1887 Duggan returned to Leadville to take a job as a patrolman. He often faced reprimand for brutalizing suspects. After Duggan beat up a popular businessman in March 1888, a police judge fined him $25, and the patrolman went on a two-week drinking binge. On the night of April 8–9 the hard-drinking Duggan argued with a dealer at the Texas House, and invited the man and his employer, Bailey Youngson, outside to settle the affair with pistols. Both declined. Duggan finally staggered out of the gambling hall at 4 a.m. After just a few steps, he took a bullet to the back of the head and fell to the ground, unconscious but still alive.

Bystanders carried Duggan into a drugstore. When he came to, he said that BaileyYoungson had shot him. Later, though, he told officers it was “one of the gang.” The officers asked if he meant Youngson. “No,” Duggan said, “and I’ll die before I ever tell you.” Those were his last words. Seven hours after being shot, he died. Duggan was buried in Denver. Louis Lamb’s wife had to content herself with dancing on the bloodstained sidewalk where he had been shot down and leaving her widow’s weeds on Mrs. Duggan’s doorstep. Authorities arrested Youngson, partner Jim Harrington and employee George Evans as murder suspects. Only Youngson stood trial. He was acquitted. After years of anonymity, Mart Duggan made news in September 2005 when historians discovered Duggan’s unmarked Denver grave. A handsome tombstone was erected in 2010. In 2011 Donahue B. Silvis featured Duggan in a screenplay based on Leadville’s history. Colorado Videos of Leadville has since announced a soon-to-be released DVD, Leadville’s Story of Marshal Martin Duggan.

PIONEERS AND SETTLERS

Correspondent Mark Kellogg Was ‘At the Death’ on the Little Bighorn

R

eporter Mark Kellogg needed a break. He landed a big one in Montana Territory in the summer of 1876—but he had to die to get it. W E LEAVE THE ROSEBUD TOMORROW, AND BY THE TIME THIS REACHES YOU, WE WILL HAVE MET AND FOUGHT THE RED DEVILS, WITH WHAT RESULTS REMAIN TO BE SEEN, he telegraphed his publisher on June 21 in the last dispatch filed before the Battle of the Little Bighorn. I GO WITH CUSTER AND WILL BE AT THE DEATH. His wording has overtones of prophecy—though “at the death” is probably an allusion to successful completion of a horseback foxhunt. Kellogg likely didn’t anticipate anything like Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s Last Stand, let alone his own death. But the fact he was killed on June 25, 1876, guaranteed him a footnote of legendary fame—and also accomplished his purpose of providing for his motherless children.

M

arcus Henry Kellogg was born on March 31, 1831, in Brighton, Ontario, Canada, the third of 10 children. His family bounced across the border several times before settling in La Crosse, Wis., where his father kept a hotel, the Kellogg House. Mark soon learned to be a telegrapher, first for the Northwestern Telegraph Co. and later for the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Co. Kellogg married Martha J. Robinson in 1861, and they had two daughters. During the Civil War he wrote for the La Crosse Democrat and continued as a telegrapher. He played shortstop on a town baseball team and ran for the office of city clerk. He wasn’t elected. Disaster struck in 1867 when Martha died. Mark sent his daughters to live in 20

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town with his late wife’s sister Miss Lillie Robinson. Sending money home when he could, Kellogg drifted around the upper Midwest as a reporter-editor and also worked as a stringer for the St. Paul Dispatch, his articles appearing under the pen name “Frontier.” (Western correspondents often wrote for bigger papers back East.) He ran for a seat on the Minnesota Legislature but was not elected. Kellogg was living in Bismarck, Dakota Territory, in 1873 when he helped Clement A. Lounsberry, a veteran Union officer of the Civil War, found The Bismarck Tribune. Kellogg substituted for Lounsberry as editor in some early editions but remained an “attaché of the Tribune,” in Lounsberry’s words. It was a living, but not enough to care for his two little girls and help out his sister-in-law. The man called Frontier, whatever his personal opinions, toed the line when it came to championing expansion at the expense of the Indians. When warriors killed a Dakota homesteader outside Fort Abraham Lincoln, Frontier/Kellogg wrote in the August 18, 1875, St. Paul Daily Pioneer Press, “I say, turn the dogs of war loose and drive them off the face of the earth if they do not behave themselves.” The story goes that when Lounsberry learned Custer and the 7th U.S. Cavalry would be riding out against the Lakotas and Cheyennes in the spring of 1876, he agreed to go along and cover what everyone expected to be a resounding victory. But at the last minute Lounsberry’s wife took ill, and Kellogg took the assignment. Maybe so, but in March 1876 George and Elizabeth Custer had happened to be on the same westbound Northern Pacific train as Kellogg, who may have been returning from a visit with his daughters

By John Koster

and their aunt. The train got stuck in massive snowdrifts. After several days of confinement, someone found a telegraph handset and Kellogg spliced a relay line into the wire beside the track, The Bighorn was tapping out a mes- Kellogg’s “break.” sage to Fort Abraham Lincoln. The ever-loyal Captain Tom Custer soon showed up with a sleigh and provisions and whisked brother George and sister-in-law Libbie back to the fort. Kellogg stayed with the train and arrived in Bismarck a week later, but he now had a solid reputation with the Custers. By then his hair was graying, and he wore eyeglasses, and he needed one big story to get his writing career back on track and earn some money for his daughters. Perhaps piggybacking on Custer’s fame, Kellogg obtained an agreement to serve as a correspondent for The NewYork Herald, James Gordon Bennett Jr.’s flamboyant and fabulous exercise in personal journalism. (Bennett had funded ill-fated polar expeditions and the 1871 expedition on which Henry Stanley found Dr. David Livingstone in East Africa.) More to the point, the Herald was possibly the best-paying newspaper in the States. Custer also had a reputation to repair. His recent indignant testimony about corruption in the appointments of lucrative post traderships at Western forts had implicated President Ulysses S. Grant’s brother Orvil. A furious Grant in turn stripped the colonel of command of the pending expedition against the Lakotas

PHOTOS: STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF NORTH DAKOTA

Though well compensated, he didn’t live to tell the story

and Cheyennes. Custer had to pull strings with Generals William Tecumseh Sherman, Phil Sheridan and Alfred Terry to lead the 7th Cavalry on the campaign. Despite an order from Sherman not to take reporters, Custer took Kellogg. The reporter’s glowing coverage reflects his gratitude. On June 21 he wrote, “During the trip no incident occurred except the display of sharp rifle shooting on the part of General Custer, who brought down an antelope at 400 yards and nearly shot off the heads of several sage hens.” The next day brought them to the Little Bighorn.

“Mr. Kellogg, the Herald correspondent …was mounted on a mule, with a pair of canvas saddlebags in which were stored paper and pencil, sugar, coffee and bacon sufficient to last 15 days,” a fellow correspondent later wrote to the Herald. “[He] was full of hope they might during the coming march overhaul the Indians and have a good fight.” After scouts reported the huge Indian village, Kellogg, mounted on a mule, struggled to keep up with Custer’s command party in advance of the column. He asked friend Fred Gerard—Custer’s

civilian interpreter for the Arikara scouts and a sometime news correspondent— for a loan of his spurs to keep the mule moving. Gerard obliged but advised Kellogg to remain with the column—neither Kellogg’s mount nor his horsemanship seemed adequate for what Gerard feared might be in store. Kellogg replied that he was“expecting interesting developments” and would keep up with Custer. No one knows exactly what happened next. Gerard was one of the survivors who left Custer’s unit before the last ride, but four days after the battle a detail found the body of a civilian in the high grass near the Little Bighorn. Colonel John Gibbon reported, “The clothing was not that of a soldier.” The man had been partially scalped and was missing an ear. A distinctive strap rigged to the instep of one boot convinced some survivors the body was that of Kellogg. In all likelihood the mule skittered at the sound of gunfire, and Kellogg was hit and fell. He had favored long Napoleonic sideburns, which may explain the missing ear. On July 6 Lounsberry’s Bismarck Tribune, Kellogg’s actual employer, still beat the world to the full story of the “Custer Massacre,” with a front-page takeout that included a casualty list (see image at left). The Bismarck telegraph office then sent a story to Kellogg’s secondary employer, The New York Herald—15,000 words at a cost of $3,000 in 19th-century dollars. The Herald scooped every other paper east of the Mississippi, thanks to Kellogg’s tragic role in the battle, and Bennett remained true to his reputation both for stretching facts and spending money. The publisher declared that Kellogg had actually been the Herald’s correspondent, and he later sent $2,000 to help support Kellogg’s two daughters and their aunt. In the 1920s old-timers in La Crosse recalled that Bennett, as grateful to Kellogg as Kellogg had been to Custer—and perhaps with far better reason—arranged to have Lillie Robinson receive $100 a month for the girls’ care and education and gave each girl $5,000 at maturity. Mark Kellogg may have been in the right place at the wrong time, but in the end he achieved his goal and saved his daughters from a life of poverty. Whatever his role at the Little Bighorn, he was a hero to his family. JUNE 2013

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21

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ART OF THE WEST

Kim Wiggins’ Last Stand Is a Unique Take on an Oft-Depicted Subject

The native New Mexican has another Little Bighorn vision

By Johnny D. Boggs

F

MANITOU GALLERIES, SANTA FE

rom Otto Becker and Edgar S. Paxson in the 1890s and just have a few options here, and one is to fight heroically to contemporary artists like Mort Künstler and and do our job as soldiers. It has that foreboding aspect to it.” Thom Ross, many painters have reimagined George Wiggins was raised on a ranch in southern New Mexico but Armstrong Custer’s final moments at the Little also grew up with art. His father,Walt, was a photojournalist who Bighorn. But few have ever approached “Custer’s worked for such magazines as Life, Sports Illustrated and Argosy. Last Stand” with Kim Wiggins’ vision. The native New Mexi- His uncle Bill Wiggins is a New Mexican modernist painter. can’s 48-by-60-inch oil-on-canvas Custer’s Last Stand is historIn 1986 Wiggins, 53, was inducted into the Society of Ameriical but contemporary, with bold curves and vibrant colors. can Impressionists as its youngest member. His work has been Wiggins paints landscapes and cityscapes as well as symbolic paintings, but he also tries to produce one or two historical subjects about the American West each year. “I had a couple of greatgreat-great-uncles who died in the Alamo,” says the painter. “I always wanted to paint the Alamo but didn’t feel I was competent enough of an artist to paint a battle scene. Then a few years ago I decided I had enough grasp to paint a night scene at the Alamo. A collector from Boston saw it, purchased the piece, and he Lieutenant Colonel George Custer has that Òlook of reckoning in his eyesÓ in Kim Wiggins’ oil on canvas. began having his own vision for his own collection. So he commissioned me displayed at the Booth Western Art Museum, Desert Caballeros to do a series of works of last stands in the American West.” Museum, Museum of New Mexico and Denver Art Museum. First up, Colonel Custer’s June 1876 defeat at the Little Bighorn He has even been invited to the Masters of the American West River in Montana Territory, more specifically Last Stand Hill, at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles. “I’m looking for before being overrun by Indians. Yet Wiggins offers more than that thing out there that causes me to stretch and become the rote depiction. “I’m always looking for something I haven’t more than I am,” Wiggins says. done,” he explains. “I wanted to capture something with that look of reckoning in his eyes. Custer realizes, We’re surrounded To see more visit www.kimwigginsart.com. JUNE 2013

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INDIAN LIFE

The Other Magpie and The Woman Chief Were Crow Warriors of the ‘Weaker Sex’ Cheyenne and Lakota women also took up arms

By John Koster

The woman, I remember, wore a stuffed woodpecker on her head, and her forehead was painted yellow. Her coup stick was big medicine that day, and she rode a black horse. She went to the war because her brother had lately been killed by the Lakota. She wanted to get even, and she did.

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FROM THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JAMES P. BECKWOURTH

W

hen the Crows sent some 175 warriors to join Brigadier General George Crook on campaign in 1876, one warrior carried no rifle— only a belt knife and a coup stick made of a willow wand. The Crow war party and Shoshone warriors, both U.S. allies against the Lakotas and Cheyennes, covered Crook’s confusion at the June 17, 1876, Battle of the Rosebud and probably staved off outright defeat. The warrior with the willow stick counted coup on a Lakota and later took his scalp—one of only 11 taken by the Crows that day before the opponents withdrew in opposite directions. When the Crows returned to their village, the warrior with the willow wand—in a gesture emblematic of the warmhearted generosity of the Crow people, and of their occasional penchant for the grotesque—sliced the Lakota scalp into pieces so other warriors would have trophies to present to their women. The warrior well understood the importance of keeping women happy—she was one herself. Her name was The Other Magpie. Pretty Shield, a contemporary Crow woman who remained at home, called this woman warrior of the Crows “a wild one who had no man of her own…both bad and brave.” Pretty Shield further described The Other Magpie’s appearance and motivation to interviewer Frank Linderman in the 1940s:

The Woman Chief, also known as Pine Leaf, was a hard-riding warrior with the Crows.

Pretty Shield said another woman had actually killed the Lakota on whom The Other Magpie counted coup. That other Crow’s name was, aptly enough, Finds-Them-and-Kills-Them. This other “woman,” however, may have been a transvestite. Pretty Shield affirmed that The Other Magpie was all girl and dressed that way, but said Finds-Them-and-Kills-Them was “neither a man nor a woman.” Finds-Them-and-Kills-Them, afraid to have the Lakota find her dead with womanclothing on her, changed them to a man’s before the fighting commenced, so that if killed, the Lakota would not laugh at her, lying there with a woman’s clothes on her. She did not want the Lakota to believe that she was a Crow man hiding in a woman’s dress, you see.

Working in tandem, the two woman warriors had rescued a fallen Crow named Bull Snake earlier in the battle, and when other Lakotas charged down on the rescuers, The Other Magpie countercharged. “She spat at them,” said Pretty Shield. “‘See,’ she called out, ‘my spit is my arrows!’” The Other Magpie then crashed her black horse into a Lakota warrior’s horse and struck him with her coup stick. As the Lakota horse and rider staggered, Finds-Them-and-Kills-Them shot the man dead with a revolver. The Other Magpie took his scalp. This was too much for the other Lakota warriors, who quickly backed off. The two woman warriors, tending the wounded Bull Snake, returned to the village ahead of Crook’s other Crows. “I felt proud of the two women, even of the wild one, because she was brave,” recalled

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Richly detailed canteen honors Civil War General Robert E. Lee

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PHOTOGRAPH BY L.A. HUFFMAN, WEIDER HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE

Pretty Shield. “Of course we had a big pretty young woman among a band of In the 1830s she joined the men on the scalp dance. I think that the party had warriors about to go up to the battle on warpath by happenstance after a hostile taken 10 scalps besides the one that The the hill, and she was singing like this: Blackfoot contingent turned up at a tradOther Magpie cut into so many pieces, ‘Brothers, now your friends have come! ing post. The big Crow girl with the Gros so there were enough for many dancers.” Be brave! Be brave! Would you see me Ventre genes, familiar with the Blackfoot The Other Magpie and Finds-Them- taken captive?’” language, volunteered to leave the safeand-Kills-Them weren’t the only women But the Plains Indians were also people ty of the post to confer with them. The to take the warpath to the Rosebud. of the dream and the vision, and if a Blackfeet abruptly charged and fired at A Cheyenne woman named Buffalo Calf healthy young woman’s dreams and her. Undaunted, The Woman Chief killed Road Woman rode out with the Lakota visions directed her to the warpath, the one with her musket and two others with and Cheyenne warriors against Crook men knew better than to stand in her way. arrows before beating it back inside the and the Crows. During a reversal that day The Crows—big, brave, rich in tempt- trading post. Her reputation was made. the young wife, also known The next time she rode against simply as Brave Woman, rode the Blackfeet, it was on the through retreating Lakotas warpath, and she killed and and Cheyennes to her fallen scalped one warrior and took brother Comes in Sight, pulled a musket from another. Simihim up onto her own horse lar exploits won her third rank and carried him off the field. in the council of Crow chiefs, The male warriors, perhaps to which no woman had even chagrined at having a woman been admitted. show them up, quickly ralHer heart, strong as it was, lied. The Cheyennes called got the best of her in 1854. the Rosebud battle “The Fight Seemingly bearing fond memWhere the Girl Saved Her ories of her GrosVentre family, Brother” in Brave Woman’s she talked four Crow warriors honor. Eight days later Brave into joining her not on the Woman reportedly fought warpath but on a peace misbeside her husband, Black sion to heal the breach beCoyote, at the Battle of the tween her native and adopLittle Bighorn. Just two years tive tribes. Veteran fur traders, after that she was dead of though admiring her courage, malaria, contracted after the tried to talk her out of it. She Army relocated the Northern went anyway, and the four Cheyennes to Indian Territory men were probably ashamed (modern Oklahoma) in the afto let her ride out alone. North termath of Crook’s campaign. of the Missouri River, The Other Cheyenne and Lakota Pretty Nose, posing here in 1878, was a Cheyenne but no warrior. Woman Chief and her escorts women assumed more tanmet a party of Gros Ventres gential roles in defense of their villages. ing horses and heavily outnumbered— returning from a trip to the trading post They often served more as cheerleaders produced some of the most formidable at Fort Union. The Gros Ventres were asthan killers but would sometimes hack up woman warriors. tonished and mystified when a big, atthe fallen troopers they saw as murderers Perhaps the greatest of them was The tractive and utterly fearless Crow woman and potential rapists. Plains Indians gen- Woman Chief (aka Pine Leaf ), born a rode up and spoke to them in their own erally didn’t want their women even to Gros Ventre but made a Crow by capture language. The parties smoked the pipe handle weapons. In an often-polygamous and adoption when she was about 10. and headed toward the Gros Ventre vilsociety, husbands sometimes married all She was a bit of a tomboy, preferring the lage together—for a while. Suddenly, the the sisters in the same family, and they bow and arrows to beadwork. She learned demystified GrosVentres lifted their musdidn’t want any family squabbles to turn to handle a musket and ride bareback as kets and shot all five Crows to death. The deadly. The women perhaps best served well as any man. The Woman Chief was irony was intense: The Woman Chief, by reminding the warriors what they were as tall and strong as many of the Crow greatest female warrior of the Crows fighting to defend. “Think of the helpless men, and while she was fairly pretty for a and terror of the warpath, died because ones at home!” was a Lakota rallying cry. girl her size, the men didn’t come court- she had organized a peace mission. Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota who was a ing. When her adoptive father died, she preteen at the time of the Little Bighorn took over the buffalo hunting for his lodge Suzie Koster, foster member of the Crows fight, recalled the scene: “I saw a very and her siblings. and Lakotas, helped research this article. 26

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WESTERN ENTERPRISE

Johnny Grant and Conrad Kohrs Founded the Montana Cattle Industry The Grant-Kohrs Ranch honors their contributions

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Above: Trader Johnny Grant started the Deer Lodge Valley ranch. Below: Conrad Kohrs was glad to buy the ranch in 1867.

PHOTOS: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, GRANT-KOHRS RANCH NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

hen westbound emigrants reached what would become Idaho and Montana in the 1840s–50s, their livestock was often severely trail-worn. Fortunately some enterprising souls at trading posts (soon to be regarded as road ranches) kept cattle, oxen and horses and were prepared to swap one of their rested animals for two of the emigrants’ stock. The traders would graze and rest their livestock acquisitions and then make the same deals with new emigrants the following year. It was a shrewd way for traders to continually increase their stock and make a profit. One of the main players in this swapping venture was Johnny Grant. Grant was born in 1831 at Fort Edmonton (in what would become Alberta, Canada) to a Mètís mother and a father who established trading forts for the Hudson’s Bay Co. Johnny’s mother died when he was 3, and his maternal grandmother and aunt raised him and his siblings in Quebec. In 1847 a teenage Johnny joined his father at Fort Hall (north of present-day Pocatello, Idaho). The fur trade was dying out by then, so the young Grant turned to trading with the emigrants and local Indian tribes. In 1857 Grant began pasturing his stock in the Deer Lodge Valley (in future Montana) at Cottonwood (later Deer Lodge) and within a few years based his operations there, with a trading post on the first floor and family living quarters on the second. In the early 1860s he provided beef and horses to prospectors rushing to the Bannack and Virginia City goldfields. By 1863 some 4,000 cattle and 3,000 horses roamed Grant’s ranch. But in 1867, prompted in part by rising crime

and taxes, he chose to return to Canada. For $19,200 he sold his ranch and herd to hardworking visionary Conrad Kohrs, who was selling beef in the gold camps and wanted a place to keep his cattle.

By Wally McLane

Carsten Conrad Kohrs was born on August 5, 1835, in the Duchy of Holstein, then ruled by Denmark and later incorporated into Germany. At age 15 he left home to serve as a cabin boy and over the next few years worked on ships that ventured as far as South America and the coast of Africa. At 18 he returned home to recuperate from a leg injury suffered while sailing. When healed, he moved to the United States, first to New York City and then Davenport, Iowa, working alternately as a butcher and sausage salesman, log raft pilot and distillery worker. He became a U.S. citizen in 1857. Gold fever soon lured him to California and then to the Fraser River diggings in Canada (present-day British Columbia). After returning briefly to Davenport, he ventured to Bannack in 1862. In that boomtown he took a job in Hank Crawford’s butcher shop, earning $25 a month plus room and board. Proving a dedicated, knowledgeable employee, Kohrs was soon earning $100 a month. His boss, the popular Crawford, ran for sheriff and won the election over ill-tempered gunfighter Henry Plummer, who promptly went after him with a shotgun. A wary Crawford shot Plummer first, wounding him in the gun arm. But fearing revenge, the sheriff/butcher left town with what money was in the till at his shop. Plummer won a new election in May 1863. Meanwhile, Kohrs now had himself a butcher shop. The budding entrepreneur soon opened shops in other boomtowns. To build his herd, Kohrs initially bought or traded for what beeves he could locally, including some from Johnny Grant. When the local cattle supply ran thin, he brought in stock from the Northwest and then Texas. Kohrs not only supplied his

own butcher shops but also sold cattle wholesale to the competition. In addition to beef, Kohrs’ shops sold pork, mutton (which did not work out), chickens and candles made from the tallow of the processed beeves. Nothing went to waste. If the hogs weren’t fat enough for market, Kohrs would feed them the entrails from the butchered cattle and sheep. He kept his beef prices reasonable, which made it the food item of choice among the miners in the 1860s. Needing help with the booming business, Kohrs brought in Ben Peel as a partner. Kohrs often went on the road to buy cattle, sometimes riding more than 450 miles in a week, while Peel stayed behind to manage the shops. The partnership continued until spring 1866, when Peel married and moved east. To buy him out, Kohrs gave Peel a gold bar minted in nearby Helena and worth $17,500. For Kohrs, buying Grant’s ranch was a natural step toward expanding the butcher business. It also marked the beginning of a cattle empire. Kohrs also invested in mining, including claims in the Pioneer Mining District. In 1868–69, to get more water to work the claims, he teamed up with other mine owners to form the Rock Creek Ditch Co., which funded construction of a 16-mile canal to bring water from Rock Creek to the Pioneer and two other mining districts. By 1885 Kohrs and half-brother John Bielenberg wholly owned the ditch company. But mining always remained a sideline to ranching. The Kohrs and Bielenberg Land and Livestock Co. thrived for more than a half-century. Kohrs and Bielenberg initially grazed most of their cattle in the Deer Lodge Valley, but when the valley became overcrowded, they expanded into the Sun River Range and then onto the open ranges of eastern Montana. Continued expansion remained profitable, as they could ship any superfluous cattle to the stockyards in Chicago. They made their first shipment there in 1874—only about 400 head. They were soon shipping 8,000 to 10,000 head annually. In the beginning, when his stock was in western Montana Territory, Kohrs had to trail cattle down through Idaho Territory and across Wyoming Territory to

Cowboys herd cattle on the Montana grazing lands of the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, which in the 1880s was headquarters of the largest cattle operation in North America.

Nebraska to ship his stock to Chicago via the Union Pacific Railroad. A railhead at Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, shortened the drive. Kohrs and Bielenberg next trailed cattle across Montana Territory and dropped down to the Union Pacific railhead at Pine Bluff, Neb. Then, in 1881, the Northern Pacific reached Miles City, near their eastern Montana cattle range. At the peak of operations in the 1880s, counting the ranches he owned and range to which he had access, Kohrs grazed his cattle across 10 million acres. The Grant-Kohrs Ranch was thus headquarters of the largest cattle operation in North America, and Kohrs bore the title “Cattle King of Montana” for decades. Kohrs also became increasingly busy in politics, serving a two-year term as county commissioner in 1869 and winning election in 1885 into the Territorial Assembly, dubbed the “Cowboy Legislature” due to the prevalence of cattlemen. While in Helena he helped found the Montana Stock Growers Association (MSGA), and at a meeting in Miles City at year’s end he helped convince the Eastern Montana Stock Growers’ Association to align with the MSGA. He also met future President Theodore Roosevelt. By the mid 1880s some 600,000 head of cattle grazed more or less unrestricted in eastern Montana, many owned in whole or part by Eastern capitalists who hardly ever ventured west. Kohrs and business partners thought it prudent to find a new range, so they leased 100,000 acres across

the border in Canada. But they failed to drive the cattle there before the winter of 1886–87 (known as the “Big Die-Up”), which was so severe that it claimed perhaps two-thirds of the cattle in Montana Territory, bankrupting many ranchers. Kohrs and Bielenberg kept operating with the help of an interest-free bank loan. While the open-range era was ending, their operation thrived, in part because they bought and bred better stock. Montana became the 41st state on November 8, 1889, and Kohrs represented Deer Lodge County at the Constitutional Convention in Helena. In 1902 he was elected state senator from Powell County (formerly Deer Lodge County). He made his last major stock purchases in 1909, when cattle sales exceeded $500,000. Kohrs and Bielenberg saw where cattle ranching and agriculture were headed, though, and between 1910 and 1915 they implemented a well-planned divestiture of their once vast holdings. They first sold their rangelands across Montana, followed by their mining interests. By 1919 the Kohrs empire was reduced to the 1,600-acre Grant-Kohrs Ranch. Conrad Kohrs died in Helena on July 23, 1920, and the ranch entered its caretaker years. The ranch was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and became a national historic site [www.nps.gov/grko] in 1972. The National Park Service continues to operate the popular Grant-Kohrs as a living history ranch, using mostly 19th century-style operations. JUNE 2013

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Desperate Flight from the Little Bighorn

HERITAGE AUCTION GALLERIES, DALLAS

The bones of men and horses lie scattered at the site of the June 1876 battle, in a cropped stereoscopic photo of the field.

Whether anyone from Custer’s immediate command escaped the massacre is debatable, but some definitely tried to get away By John Koster

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last bullet. Not that Butler, Foley and others necessarily fled the fierce fighting in sheer panic. It is possible at least a half-dozen troopers broke out from the ring of Indians below Calhoun Ridge in a concerted charge, perhaps led by an officer and a sergeant. There is no implication of cowardice in such an escape attempt. These men, whether in a group or not, were perhaps riding wounded and/or panicked horses. One of the men on a wounded horse was probably Private Nathan Short of C Company, and he and his mount made it a surprising distance. Another member of C Company, Sergeant August Finckle, whose real name may have been Frank Finkel (see sidebar, P. 37), just may have escaped the battlefield entirely after his wounded horse bolted and possibly triggered a group escape attempt. LITTLE BIGHORN NATIONAL MONUMENT

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t Reno Hill on June 25–26, 1876, A Company Sergeant Stanislas Roy, according to his Medal of Honor citation, “brought water to the wounded at great danger to life and under a most galling fire of the enemy.” Two days later the sergeant helped bury two 7th U.S. Cavalry soldiers—Corporal John Foley and Sergeant James Butler—apparently killed while in flight from the Battle of the Little Bighorn. “On June 28 a.m. we went over to Custer battlefield to bury the dead,” Sergeant Roy told Walter Mason Camp, who interviewed dozens of Little Bighorn participants in 1910. “We did not follow Dry Creek to the river but cut straight across the battlefield,” Roy continued. “The first dead body we came to was that of Corporal John Foley. I heard several say, ‘There lies Foley of C Company.’ I saw him and recognized him easily, as he had a bald head and black hair. He was of middle age, and I knew him well. Foley was at least three-fourths mile in advance of the first group of dead at C [Company].” Foley—most likely Irish-born, who signed his enlistment with an X—is generally believed to be the soldier with stripes described by the teenage Indians who chased him from the field. Foley might have escaped, as the young warriors had run out of arrows, but the trooper panicked and shot himself in the head. Foley, who had been detailed to carry one of five regimental guidons into battle, rescued the banner and carried it off inside his blouse, where soldiers found it after the battle. The Indians are said to have left it on his body because they were superstitious about suicide. But that is unlikely. Indians are not at all superstitious about suicide— Cheyenne “suicide boys,” who vowed to fight unto death, were a factor in Custer’s defeat, and the whole Cheyenne-Arapaho Dog Soldier movement was a sort of suicide cult. The teenage Indians who pursued Foley took his cartridge belt and marked his body with arrows but simply missed the guidon, which was stained with his blood. “The next body we came to was that of Sergeant Butler,” Roy recalled, “and from him to first group of dead at C the distance was considerable. He lay probably one-half way from Foley to C. There was no dead horse near either Foley or Butler. I helped to bury the bodies on the west slope of the ridge, and we wound up with E Troop men over near the gully. I then took sick to my stomach from the stench.” Like Foley, L Company 1st Sgt. James Butler, an excellent soldier with 16 years service, was nowhere near the firing line when killed. Some historians suggest he was dispatched as a messenger. But Trumpeter John Martin (aka Giovanni Martino, or Martini), Custer’s last known messenger, doubted it, as Butler had no message on his body, and Custer would not have detailed an experienced first sergeant as an orderly. French-born Medal of Honor recipient Roy had two hitches as a 7th Cavalry trooper, serving until 1880 and living until 1913. What he saw on June 28, 1876 —the bodies of the two noncommissioned officers who had tried to get out of the dire situation at the Little Bighorn and almost made it—does not jibe with the mythology of Custer’s Last Stand that demands heroes fighting shoulder to shoulder to the last man and the

A Company Sergeant Stanislas Roy (above) helped bury Corporal John Foley and 1st Sgt. James Butler, two soldiers killed while perhaps trying to take flight from the one-sided fighting

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hree or four weeks after the Battle of the Little Bighorn soldiers discovered a trooper’s body far beyond the path taken by Butler and Foley. “I saw Nathan Short,” Ferdinand Widmayer told Camp. The German-born Widmayer, who had been on detached duty at the Little Bighorn as a private with M Company, later retired as the 7th Cavalry’s color sergeant and lived in Philadelphia. Camp’s notes record Widmayer’s recollections: [He] heard that a dead soldier was found and went to see him. Bones of man and horse and carbine were found. Sling belt still on the skeleton. Says was near the Rosebud. Body lay out in an open space near some brush but not in brush.…A good many went to see it.…Says body had been dead a long time and clothing rotted. Short may have died a few days after the battle, his body and clothing later shredded by coyotes or buzzards. The summer heat certainly didn’t help preserve the corpse. Other soldiers made anecdotal mention of Short’s remains. “Heard of Nathan Short,” recalled C Company Private Peter Thompson, who survived because “horse trouble” kept him from following Custer into battle. “He got good distance toward Rosebud.…Had initials on cartridge belt.” Thompson— like Roy—earned a Medal of Honor for his actions on Reno Hill, carrying water to the wounded under fire and despite having been shot. Some historians have dismissed his descriptions of Custer’s last moments as fantasy, but Thompson demonstrated unquestionable courage on Reno Hill and had no reason to make up details about Short. JUNE 2013

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“The dead trooper with his gun and dead horse still lariated to the picket pin was found a few days’ journey from Custer’s hill,” wrote C Company Sergeant Daniel Kanipe, the next-tolast white man to see Custer alive. Kanipe went into more detail in his July 1908 letter to Camp: It was not six months before his body was found but was somewheres about three or four weeks. General Crook’s command found him. He was over in the Rosebud country. He was in the direction of about east, or southeast from the battlefield where Custer was found. I knew the man well. His name was Short, but I do not remember his given name. He belonged to C troop, my company. How I came to know it was Short of my company was that he had his stuff numbered 50, and General [George] Crook reported that the man’s number was 50. He was with the company when I left it on Reno’s Hill.

Kanipe augmented his story in a November 1909 letter to Camp:

‘His body was found...over in the Rosebud country.... I knew the man well. His name was Short’ —C Company Sergeant Daniel Kanipe (below)

LITTLE BIGHORN NATIONAL MONUMENT

Short wore a light hat with the cross sabres [sic] drawn on the front of it with the number 7 between the sabres. …It was a common thing for the men to mark their equipment with their initials for identification. There were very few men in the company who marked their hats as Short did, but I recall very well that he had marked his in this manner. The soldiers all had their hats marked, but usually on the inside. I heard Nathan Short’s body had been found after we marched from the mouth of the Bighorn to the Rosebud, but I did not see the remains. I only heard that the scouts had found them. I did not see anyone who had seen the body, either, but it has always been my understanding that Crook’s scouts had found the body, but I have never heard if they were Sioux or Crows who found him.

Scout George Herendeen told Camp that Crow scouts had found the body, as Camp later recounted: Herendeen writes me that the body was found pinned under the horse, as though the horse had fallen and the man was too weak to extricate himself. The supposition is, of course, that both the man and the horse had been wounded and that both were so weak when the horse fell that neither of them could get up.…He also states that the man had a light-colored hat with crossed sabres drawn on the front of it with pen and ink, and the number 7 between the sabres.

“On our way up the Rosebud to meet Crook, a cavalryman’s hat was found near the Rosebud,” H Company Private George Glenn, a three-hitch trooper from Boston, told Camp in 1914. 32

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“I saw the hat. It was a white wool hat with brass crossed sabers and a brass letter C. It was passed around among the men to see if anyone could identify the owner of it.” Though Glenn was dishonorably discharged in 1880, he was later admitted to an old soldier’s home. He was only one of many enlisted men who heard about Short and saw the telltale hat.

I

saw remnants of soldiers’ bodies as far away as Rosebud Creek, 25 miles to the eastward,” recalled Thomas Leforge, a white man who lived with the Crows, in his memoirs years after the battle. “It was evident that many soldiers escaped from the immediate encirclement by the Sioux and Cheyennes, but it was evident also that they were pursued and killed, or some of them may have died of wounds and the hardships incident to solitary travel in that country.” Pretty Shield, a Crow matriarch, heard secondhand that five or six soldiers had been killed far outside the encirclement and that the stench of corpses persisted through the summer. H Company Private Jacob Adams saw the body of one soldier, possibly Short, far from the battlefield. “I saw a dead soldier and dead horse south of Yellowstone and within sight of Yellowstone—only a few miles from it,” Adams told Camp. “The body was then thought to be one of L troop men who had been with Custer and scalped. The carbine was with the body and all equipment, and the leather sling was still over the shoulder. We concluded that both the man and the horse had been wounded and had gotten that far and given out. This find was considered no unusual thing, and I do not suppose that one of our officers would have gone to see it if he had heard about it.” If Adams misidentified the Rosebud as the Yellowstone, and the dead man was actually from C Company, this may have been Short. Camp also heard from Richard Thompson, an 1864 West Point graduate who was a 6th Infantry officer in 1876 and later retired as a colonel. He was on the steamer Far West, which transported the wounded following the battle. “Thompson says that he personally saw Nathan Short’s horse and carbine but not body of man,” Camp wrote in 1911. “They lay in some brush near Rosebud and Yellowstone, and at the time it was supposed that this man has escaped from the Custer fight. He cannot account for the fact that others saw the man’s body.” Perhaps the horse was not that of Short but one described by several other officers farther along the escape route. “It is possible,” Wood wrote, “that by the time Thompson saw the horse, the remains of the man had been buried.” Camp recorded a terse description from 1st Lt. Edward S. Godfrey—later a brigadier general and a Medal of Honor recipient for his actions during the Nez Perce War. “Godfrey saw the cavalry horse near Yellowstone in August 1876,” Camp wrote after interviews in 1917 and 1918. “Bridle gone. Heard about carbine being found with it but did not see it. Horse was shot in the head. Grain sack was on the saddle.” Godfrey had first mentioned the dead horse in an 1892 Century article, placing it at the confluence of the Rosebud and the Yellowstone. “In August [1876] we camped at the mouth of the Rosebud, where we found the carcass of a horse

LITTLE BIGHORN NATIONAL MONUMENT

This ledger drawing by Oglala artist and tribal historian Amos Bad Heart Bull shows Corporal John Foley shooting himself with his Colt revolver while Indians chase him. Soldiers found a regimental guidon inside Foley’s blouse.

shot in the head; near the horse was a carbine; on the saddle was a small grain sack made of canvas and used by the 7th Cavalry only to carry oats during the march when detached from the wagons. At the time of the discovery we conjectured that some man had escaped and, on reaching the river, had killed his horse for meat and used the saddle straps to tie together a raft. An Indian would not have left the carbine, but the man may have abandoned it, either because he was out of ammunition or could not risk the extra weight on his raft.” In 1911 Camp also interviewed 7th U.S. Infantry Lieutenant Charles Booth, who toured the field several weeks after the

battle. He, too, spotted a horse carcass. “The body of the horse laid [sic] among some sagebrush, some 200 yards from a belt of cottonwood timber; saddle, blanket, and bridle were undisturbed and in order on the body,” Booth told Camp. “About the feet to the left and front a carbine (Springfield) was lying; this was in perfect working order and showed no signs of having been injured in any way and was not even rusted from exposure to weather. I have never heard of any human body being found anywhere in the vicinity.” Godfrey’s final comment came in a May 1921 letter to historian E.A. Brininstool, in which he reported that the dead horse

It is fairly certain no man escaped from the fierce fighting on Last Stand Hill, but a few troopers did break out from Calhoun Ridge.

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he inspected on the Yellowstone was either a sorrel or a light bay. Of the five companies that followed Custer down to the killing ground, only C Company rode color-matched sorrel horses. Sergeant Butler was from L Company, but Corporal Foley and Private Short were both C Company men mounted on sorrels. However, Godfrey remarked that he had heard of many survivor claims, and not one of them had mentioned a connection to this sorrel/bay left dead by the Yellowstone. The horse had been shot in the forehead.

PORTRAIT BY GREG PROCH

L Company 1st Sgt. James Butler (below) was found dead some distance from the firing line, but it is doubtful that he was serving as a messenger

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HERITAGE AUCTION GALLERIES, DALLAS

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ne survivor claimant, however, did mention a sorrel horse. In April 1920, at a horseshoe game in Dayton, Wash., a prosperous white-haired farmer named Frank Finkel blurted out that he had escaped from Custer’s Last Stand on a “roan” and that he had served in C Company. This was before Godfrey had reported the horse was a sorrel/bay. Finkel’s family and a few friends in Dayton, including Orville Smith and Robert Johnson, had already heard Frank’s account of escaping the Little Bighorn with multiple wounds. Chatting with a friend at the Dreamland Theatre in Dayton during World War I, Finkel had scoffed at the popular image of the battle as a dastardly Sioux ambush. “That’s not the way it was at all,” Finkel told Robert Johnson—but then stopped. Finkel had told his in-laws in Dayton and his old family in southern Ohio that he had used the name “August Finckle” when he enlisted. Finkel later shared his story with members of the Dayton Kiwanis Club, including his congressman, Dr. John Summers, who had studied medicine in Berlin and Vienna. The men, respected professionals, believed him. On May 20, 1921, Finkel told a somewhat more garbled version of the story to W.H. Banfill. He told Banfill he had signed up as “Frank Hall,” because he did not want his family to know he had joined the Army. (A possible reason for Finkel’s inconsistency is that if he was at the Little Bighorn, he knew he was technically a deserter, as he hadn’t reported back for duty, and his first wife may have convinced him to muddy the waters a bit to keep him out of prison. She pointedly changed the original spelling of his name to “Finkel” seven times on her last will and testament.) On June 25, 1921, having survived a few months without being arrested for desertion, Finkel was back in the papers and said that the name “Finckle” on the 7th Cavalry roster proved his story. He claimed he had been knocked silly when an Indian bullet struck the barrel of his carbine. Another bullet had clipped his horse, one had cut his bridle, and he was

John Mulvany’s Custer’s Last Rally, unveiled in March 1881, shows Lt. Col. George Custer still standing and holding two revolvers. In another version, perhaps also painted by Mulvany, Custer holds a revolver and a saber.

shot twice when the panicked horse carried him through the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. “One Long Sword escaped,” Lakota warrior Rain-in-the-Face told an interviewer in 1894. “His pony ran off with him and went past our lodges. They told me about it at Chicago. I saw the man there, and I remembered hearing the squaws tell about it after the fight.” Finkel claimed his panicked horse took him past the Hunkpapa lodges on the eastern edge of the village—where the Indian woman saw him and later told Rain-in-the-Face—then out toward Tullock Creek, headed for the Yellowstone. Finkel said that the first two branches of Tullock Creek he had crossed were alkaline, the third sweet, and he described a battle that comported well with Indian accounts he had never read and archaeological evidence discovered only after his death. Finkel insisted his horse had been “a roan”—a sorrel—and while he never claimed to have shot the horse, he couldn’t recall his wanderings in full. A pair of “trappers” (perhaps outlaw whiskey traders or gunrunners) sheltered Finkel until he recovered. When he showed up in Dayton a few years later, he was still signing his name “Finckle,” with German spelling and American penmanship. Finkel was a forensic twin for “August Finckle,” also styled “George August Finckle,” second sergeant of C Company: over 6 feet tall—at least 2 inches over the height limit for the

PHOTOS: JOHN KOSTER COLLECTION

U.S. Cavalry—with gray eyes and dark hair, and anecdotally fluent in both English and German. Finkel never tried to cash in on his claim to fame, but when his second wife learned of the story, she muddied the account into quicksand. Canadian-born Herminie (“Hermie”) Bassett Sperry Finkel had been married before she met Frank but apparently never told him. She claimed after his death that Frank had never told his first wife, Delia, that he was a Custer survivor, even though the story had run in several local newspapers and was men-

tioned in Delia’s own obituary. Hermie ignored both sides of the Finkel family when they said he had enlisted as August Finckle. The Finkels shunned her in turn after she drove too hard a bargain with Frank’s other heirs. She remarried to yet another widower, her third, and moved to Oshkosh, Wis. When Hermie learned after Frank’s death in 1930 that “August Finckle” had given his birthplace as “Berlin, Prussia” —fearsome lair of “The Kaiser, Beast of Berlin” of World War I propaganda infamy—she desperately revived the story that Frank had enlisted as “Frank Hall” and rode it into the ground, even though the real Frank Hall was 5-foot-6¾, 14 years older than Finkel and a deserter who left the 7th Cavalry a year before the Little Bighorn. To the end Hermie insisted that Frank Finkel and August Finckle had been two distinct people, even though that would have placed two bilingual, pale-eyed, dark-haired, German-speaking 6-footers with simiClockwise from far left: Frank Finkel with first wife Delia and their children; looking dapper in 1886; and posing for a formal tintype in 1874 or 1875.

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GLENWOOD J. SWANSON

Second Lieutenant Henry Harrington (below) was left in charge of C Company. His body was said to be ‘missing’ for years, but much later his skull was ‘discovered’

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NATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHIVES, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 72-3917

lar distinctly American handwriting in the same 50-man company. Four out of five handwriting experts concur Finckle and Finkel had the same handwriting; one thinks it dissimilar but finds the escape plausible based on other forensics. Sergeant Kanipe did claim to have seen “Finkle,” as he spelled the name, “very badly mutilated” but that was the extent of his description. This report in turn may have influenced Lieutenant Godfrey to log discovery of Finckle’s body—though Godfrey was from K Company, he had served in the South during most of Finckle’s enlistment and would not have known Finckle by sight, especially after two days in the sun “very badly mutilated.” Kanipe’s brief mention of the corpse At top right in this pictograph by Little Bighorn Lakota participant Red Horse, a bearded he thought was Finckle’s was nowhere 7th Cavalry trooper rides a sorrel roan with white “socks.” Could this be Finckle/Finkel? near as detailed as either his description of the body of their mutual friend Sergeant Jeremiah field expressly to look for Finckle’s body. “Most of the troopers Finley or even Nathan Short’s notorious white hat. Kanipe’s had been stripped of clothing and scalped,” Windolph relate-in-life remembrances—Custer shot once and not twice, membered. “Some of them had been horribly mutilated.… 65 or 70 dead Indians in three burial teepees when other I tried to find the body of my German friend, trooper Finsoldiers saw 11 Indians and the Lakota claim to have lost only kle [sic], the tallest man in the regiment. But I could not 16 warriors—were summed up by Colonel W.A. Graham: “The identify him.” many inaccuracies in Sergeant Kanipe’s story are characteris“After the battle Daddy says he looked everywhere for him— tic of the accounts of most of the enlisted survivors recounted as he was like a brother to him—but the bodies were so disduring the ’20s.” Kanipe, however, had described Finckle’s figured that he was unable to find him,” Windolph’s daughter struggles to keep his winded horse with the C Company told one researcher in the 1940s. “He has never forgotten him column just before Captain Tom Custer detailed Kanipe to and has spoken of him through all these years.” (Contrary to take a message to the pack rumor, Frank Finkel hadn’t turned down any chances to retrain. Private Thompson lat- unite with his buddy Windolph—neither knew the other had er saw Finckle on the same survived before Finkel died. Finkel did turn down chances to winded horse, trailing C Com- attend 7th Cavalry reunions, but for an obvious reason— pany down to the river before deserters are seldom welcomed as honored veterans.) Thompson gave up on his own Others further muddied the waters with claims that Finckle horse and walked to Reno Hill. —not Frank, but August—had served Prussia as a captain in Before riding off to find the 1870–71. The Prussian Privy State Archives in Berlin confirm pack train, Kanipe also saw that no man named Finckle, Finkle or Finkel ever served in Nathan Short with C Com- the Prussian officer corps. pany. Neither Finckle nor Short The only other candidate who might have left a dead horse fled before battle was joined. with a carbine and a bag with ample oats was C Company Their reported escapes were Private Charles Anderson, who deserted from the 7th Cavalry not premeditated but based on on June 20 and was never apprehended. The vanished Anderpanic by man or, more prob- son would have been riding a C Company sorrel—but Custer ably, by wounded horse—or didn’t issue the bags of oats until June 22, two days after perhaps as part of a sponta- Anderson took “the grand bounce.” No oats on Anderson’s neous group escape attempt. cantle. Five other 7th Cavalry troopers deserted after the H Company Private Charles battle, and all were recaptured hungry but alive, in some Windolph, Finckle’s friend and cases after eating frogs. None was from C Company. Finckle’s a Medal of Honor recipient wounded horse may have been in too much pain to eat many for his actions on Reno Hill, oats, and Godfrey said the grain bag on the dead horse he had returned to the battle- inspected “had not been disturbed,” meaning nobody stole

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he name of another soldier who likely dodged the fierce fighting on Calhoun Ridge only emerged in the 21st century—C Company 2nd Lt. Henry Moore Harrington. Tom Custer was the nominal commander of C Company— Kanipe said Captain Custer was leading C Company when he was dispatched to the pack train—but when the burial detail arrived, they found Tom Custer beaten to a pulp on Custer Hill near brothers George and Boston. Tom Custer had earned two Medals of Honor in the Civil War and had a reputation for courage, but descriptions of him “serving as his brother’s aide-de-camp” are somewhat charitable. Regardless, company commanders are expected to stay with their men once battle is joined. In Custer’s absence, 2nd Lt. Harrington was left in charge of C Company, and Harrington’s body was never found—at least not in one piece. A year after the battle Lieutenant Robert Wilson Shufeldt, an Army surgeon, recovered a partially shattered skull and vertebrae, with remnants of a double yellow trouser stripe, well east of the battlefield and sent the remains to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C. The skull was later transferred to the Smithsonian Institution. A century later Sharon Long of the Smithsonian did a facial reconstruction on the skull. It bears a resemblance to Lieutenant Harrington. Shufeldt’s discovery of the skull, beside an arrowhead in the chest cavity, suggests Harrington was a better officer than most people thought. What is clearly a trail of fugitives from C Company may have been the remnants of a responsible attempt to charge through the Indians once the overwhelming gunfire showed that the battle was hopeless. Lieutenant Harrington, Sergeant Finckle, Corporal Foley and Private Short were all from C Company. They all headed in the same direction—eastward, back toward the Yellowstone and the steamboat. The nameless bodies found by the Crows may also have been from C Company. The idea of a group escape attempt, however, flies in the face of the Custer Myth—doomed heroes fighting to the last man. Relatives of Crazy Horse told Indian agent Valentine McGillycuddy that one trooper had escaped. Could it have been Finckle? Wooden Leg, a young Cheyenne, also saw a soldier fleeing toward the end of the battle and presumed the man was killed but never saw him die. Wooden Leg’s trooper was likely Sergeant Butler. Rain-in-the-Face may have described Finckle, who was known to have visited Chicago, as the

man who rode past the Hunkpapa village and turned up in Chicago in 1893. Overwhelmed by the unexpected discovery that a sleeping village was full of wakeful warriors, and by the gunfire from some 200 repeating rifles and another 200 breechloaders, the troopers found outside the perimeter made a break for it—possibly under Harrington’s leadership. A half-dozen of them briefly got through the Indians, though most were killed in flight or dead within days. Frank Finkel’s heavily documented case may or may not account for the sole Last Stand survivor. It remains a matter of controversy. But the case for a number of Custer men having at least temporarily escaped the heat of battle isn’t controversial. It’s fact. John Koster, who writes from New Jersey, is the author of Custer Survivor: The End of a Myth, the Beginning of a Legend (2010). That book, published by History Publishing Co. in Palisades, N.Y., is recommended for further reading along with The Custer Myth, by W.A. Graham; and Custer in ’76, edited by Kenneth Hammer and based on the notes of Walter Mason Camp.

Finckle to Finkle to Finkel

JOHN KOSTER COLLECTION

it as they apparently stole the carbine. Since Finckle carried his carbine slung over his shoulder, he would have let it slide back around his torso when the Indian bullet thunked into its barrel at the Little Bighorn as he claimed. Only one officer said the recovered carbine was in working order— quite possible, since the soft-lead slug fired by an Indian wouldn’t have broken the barrel of a hand-held weapon. The logical time to have dumped the carbine would have been when the wounded Sergeant Finckle left the horse and had to carry the 7-pound carbine, exhausted, afoot and with an injured left shoulder and side.

Finckle made the top signature, Finkel (right) the middle two, and Frank Hall made the fourth.

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he recruit called August Finckle signed up in Chicago in January 1872 and gave his birthplace as “Berlin, Prussia”—in distinctly American handwriting (top). He shows up on 7th Cavalry rosters as George August Finckle. When Frank Finkel married Delia Rainwater in Dayton, Wash., in 1886, he signed the marriage book as “Finckle” (copy not available) but signed other marriage papers and subsequent land deeds as “Finkle.” Delia deliberately changed the spelling from “Finkle” to “Finkel” in 1916 at the height of the antiGerman propaganda campaign designed to bring the United States into World War I. Frank’s 1921 signature on the probate of Delia’s last will and testament (second from top) and his scrawled 1930 signature on his own last will and testament (third from top) preserve Delia’s preferred spelling, as does his tombstone in Dayton. The ornate signature of Frank Hall (above) shows that Hall and Finckle/Finkle/Finkel had distinctly different handwriting. J.K. JUNE 2013

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FACES OF THE BIG BEND:

Texas’ Last Frontier

W.D. Smithers, a tireless photojournalist and amateur anthropologist, documented life along the Rio Grande in Texas’ remote Big Bend country By Steve Mauro • Photography by W.D. Smithers

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lutionary general Pancho Villa, he worked as a teamster on an Army mule train. He followed with stints in the Cavalry and Signal Corps, all the while keeping a photographic record. Returning to San Antonio in 1920, he opened a studio and traveled often to the Big Bend on photojournalism assignments for the San Antonio Light, San Antonio Express and the Underwood & Underwood news ser vice. He also earned money photographing traveling circus acts and serving as a guide and photographer for films shot in Texas. Smithers’ photographic collection, which he donated in the 1960s to the University of Texas at Austin [www.utexas.edu], centers on the hardworking Texans and Mexicans who called the Big Bend home. Mexican topics— folk culture, religion, medicine, trade and domestic life—comprise about half of the 9,000 photographs he took over seven decades of fieldwork. Smithers was especially interested in the curanderos (folk healers who roamed the desert for medicinal plants and often worked gratis) and avisadores (signal ALL PHOTOS: HARRY RANSOM CENTER, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

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ettlement came late to the Big Bend,” historian Kenneth Ragsdale once wrote about Texas’ relentlessly rugged southwest border country. “By the time the population had penetrated most other regions in the state, the area around Terlingua Creek was still an unknown, uninhabited wasteland.” Raiding Comanches and Apaches, to say nothing of the harsh desert landscape—mountains, mesas, buttes and sand-choked arroyos—kept out settlers during the early frontier era. The Texas & Pacific Railway finally pushed west of the Pecos River in the early 1880s, but for hundreds of square miles south of the tracks, all the way to the Rio Grande, the land remained sparsely populated and inhospitable. Horseless carriages (automobiles) were slow to round the Big Bend; into the 1930s horses, sure-footed burros, and mule-drawn stages and freight wagons remained the transport of choice. Wilfred Dudley Smithers (1895–1981) was born to American parents working in the Mexican city of San Luis Potosí. In 1905 his family moved to San Antonio, where young W.D. soon apprenticed for a photographer. By 1913, tired of lugging around glass negatives and an 8-by-10-inch view camera, Smithers fashioned wooden apple crates into his own sturdy, lightweight camera—a design that proved capable of withstanding the trying conditions of the Big Bend. A variety of jobs offered Smithers unique access to the border country and its people. From 1915 to 1917, during the U.S. Army’s border clash with Mexican bandit and revo-

Working Family A hungry family waits as a wife and mother flattens masa, a corn batter for tortillas, near Glenn Springs in 1917. Her husband worked at the nearby candelilla wax factory. For this hot and hard work—boiling stems in vats of water and adding sulfuric acid to separate the wax—he earned $1 a day. He crafted the family dugout with dried candelilla stems. In May 1916 Villistas raided Glenn Springs and set fire to the factory. By 1920 the border business had vanished, and the region soon returned to desert.

messengers that functioned as a rapid-response Mexican grapevine). He also trained his lens on Texas lawmen, bandits, smugglers, the last of the Big Bend cattlemen, and the soldiers, horsemen and airmen of the U.S. military. Scholars have criticized SmithersÕ artistic sensibilitiesÑ his images sometimes lack clarity and are haphazardly composedÑbut the photojournalist never viewed his camera as a creative tool. Instead he sought simply to depict daily human endeavors as they occurred before the great changes of the 20th centuryÑbarefoot boys collecting water from the Rio Grande, liquor smugglers balancing kegs across the backs of their overtaxed mules, cowboys riding hard at dayÕs end to

catch up to the chuck wagon. As Smithers recalled in his 1976 autobiography, Chronicles of the Big Bend: A Photographic Memoir of Life on the Border, ÒI began to feel that my photography should direct itself to historical and transient subjects Ñvanishing lifestyles, primitive cultures, old faces and odd, unconventional professions.Ó Virginia native Steve Mauro was associate editor of Wild West for five years before he went West as almost a young man in 2012 to further educate himself in the ways of the world. Suggested for further reading is W.D. Smithers’ Chronicles of the Big Bend, with a foreword by Kenneth Baxter Ragsdale. JUNE 2013

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Smuggler A smuggler crosses the Rio Grande astride a burro bearing two 5-gallon kegs of sotol, a distilled spirit similar to tequila. Smugglers relied on lookouts to warn of approaching lawmen. Smithers reported his own 1923 encounter: “I was awakened by two smugglers and their many pack burros as they passed within 20 feet of my bedroll, unaware of my presence. I pretended to be asleep. …‘Es el fotografo,’ I heard them whisper, and they proceeded in silence with their forbidden cargo.”

Tr a d e r s Elmo Johnson (far right) buys hides at his trading post in the lower Big Bend. The vast region was home to just 12 such posts, and traders often obtained the furs from isolated families in exchange for food. According to Smithers, bartering was the order of the day. “Many large deals were made where not $1 was exchanged, except a few who thought they could decide better what they would buy if they had the money in their hands.” Changing fashions and synthetic furs stifled the trade in the ’30s.

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Curandero Smithers described this old man as “a typical type of Mexican that was an authentic curandero, avisador and chivero [goat herder].” Big Bend residents held curanderos in high regard. The photographer himself relied on folk medicine for cases of jaundice and sunstroke. “Kindheartedness, community spirit, patience and a desire to help were the real motives of the dedicated curandero and curandera,” wrote Smithers. “Payment was only in gratitude—all the dedicated curanderos would want or expect.”

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Lawmen Officers of the lower Big Bend in 1919 included, from left, Texas game warden Pete Crawford, Justice of the Peace Ray Miller, Texas Rangers Bob Pool and Arch Miller, and Constable Steve Bennett. Even as revolution-era banditry subsided, a new menace—liquor smuggling —beset the region. “The smuggling business was messy,” recalled Smithers, “and it was punishable by a prison term and a stiff fine. Smugglers were always armed, and most preferred a shootout with American officers to capture.”

“The smuggling business was messy,” recalled Smithers, “and it was punishable by a prison term and a stiff fine. Smugglers were always armed, and most preferred a shootout with American officers to capture” 42

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Zacatera The wife of a zacatero (hay farmer) has just completed negotiations with U.S. Cavalry officers for the sale of two burro loads of chino grass for $1. During the Mexican Revolution (1910– 1920), U.S. border authorities allowed Mexicans to cross the Rio Grande one day each month—known as Port Day—to sell needed firewood and chino grass. “Burros provided the basic means of transportation for Mexican families in the Big Bend,” noted Smithers.

Water Carrier A Mexican boy on the Rio Grande fills canvas bags— waterproofed with candelilla wax and fitted with cowhorn spigots—with water for delivery to homes in the Big Bend, where drought was an ever-present threat. In the mining town of Terlingua, 12 miles from the river, water was in such short supply that it had to be rationed. According to one turn-of-the-century resident, “The current system…is to allow one bucket for each single man per day and from two to five buckets for a family.”

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Everything You Know About the Indian Wars Is Wrong

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Cheyenne–Northern Arapaho artist Eugene Ridgely’s elk-hide depiction of the November 1864 Sand Creek attack gets things wrong, says author Gregory Michno. “There was no mounted charge through the village, no fight in the village, and no one was killed within the tepees, let alone while standing beside an American flag.”

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©WISKERKE/ALAMY

ost Amer icans know something about the Indian wars on the Western frontier, if only that a U.S. Army officer named George Armstrong Custer fought and died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Of course, Wild West subscribers know more than the average Joe about not only George Custer but also George Crook, Nelson Miles, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, the Battle of the Rosebud, Wounded Knee and many other events and personalities from the era (the latter half of the 19th century) when the U.S. Army collided with Western tribes. Yet the public conception of many episodes and aspects of the Indian wars is false. The problem stems in part from what I call “Everybody Knows” history —oft-repeated platitudes that have little basis in truth but are accepted as fact. Reiterate the same tale in enough films, TV shows, books and magazines, and it becomes “true” by dint of saturation. The Western Indian wars are replete with examples of this phenomenon.

Well, perhaps not everything—but following are some of the biggest misconceptions to have rumbled down the frontier pike onto the modern information superhighway By Gregory Michno

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dropped to a low of between 500 and 1,000, civilian deaths from Indian attacks also dropped, from 25 to 12, respectively. In 1863 Texas and the Confederacy increased troop strength on the frontier from 1,000 to 2,000, and casualties climbed to 66. In 1864, incorrectly said to be the worst year of Indian raiding during the Civil War, troop strength decreased from 2,000 to 1,200, then leveled off at 1,500. The number of settlers killed by Indians also fell to 23—the second lowest number of civilian deaths during the decade. By mid-1865 all organized Confederate and state forces had disbanded, and tens of thousands of Union soldiers had arrived, though most of them did not serve on the frontier. That year also saw the end of a 15year drought. With good grass and plenty of water, the Indians again swept into Texas, and the killings increased to 34. In 1866 the Comanches and Kiowas were not at war with the United States, were largely at peace with surrounding tribes and had no ratified treaty with Texas. Thus, they could devote their attentions to the sparsely patrolled Lone Star frontier. Civilian killings did climb to 65, but that is still fewer than in 1863 when 1,000 to 2,000 soldiers patrolled the frontier. By late 1866 U.S. cavalry regiments finally rode to the frontier in force. In 1867 records logged 2,479 soldiers and 37 settler deaths. In 1868 frontier troop strength reached 3,226 men, yet civilian killings increased to 42. In 1869 the Army consolidated its frontier forces. Troop strength dropped to 2,257, and casualties fell to 17. Again, the lowest numbers of settler deaths correlates with the lowest numbers of troops on the frontier, while some of the highest numbers of deaths occurred while troop levels were at their peaks.

GILLESPIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, FREDERICKSBURG, TEXAS

ne popular misconception is that clashes with Indians on the frontier during the Civil War increased because the Union withdrew troops from the West to fight in the East, leaving the Indians free to raid at will. In fact, the number of soldiers in the West increased during the Civil War. Between the Mexican War and the Civil War only three mounted U.S. regiments patrolled the entire West. Counting both mounted and foot soldiers, about 5,000 men were stationed west of the Mississippi between 1853 and 1863. By 1863 volunteer units were arriving in number, increasing the available force in the West to between 15,000 and 20,000 men by war’s end. An examination of primary sources on the Indian wars— including government reports, letters, journals, period manuscripts and news accounts—reveals that the region witnessed 24 Indian battles in 1861, when the Regulars marched east. But the volunteer regiments soon swelled the ranks on the frontier, and the number of Indian battles also increased. There were 45 in 1862, 58 in 1863, 64 in 1864 and 72 in 1865. When the Civil War ended in 1865, there was a corresponding drop-off in fighting as the volunteer units disbanded, falling slightly to 63 battles in 1866. What this illustrates is a selffulfilling prophecy—more soldiers translates to more fighting and more casualties, at least in terms of sheer numbers. Such patterns also appear in microcosm. With regard to the fighting in Texas in the 1860s—the bloodiest decade in state history—historians often compare troop strength and tactics to Indian raiding patterns. Here we find a pattern matching the rest of the West: In 1861 and 1862, when troop strength

Friendship with Comanches, depicted in this 1928 painting by Lucy Meusebach Marschall, was not the usual state of affairs in Texas.

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HERITAGE AUCTION GALLERIES, DALLAS

In this Battle of the Washita painting, Frederic Remington depicts Lt. Col. George A. Custer’s daybreak attack on November 27, 1868.

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he evidence suggests that increased troop numbers did not necessarily curtail the number of raids or killings. Other measures seemed to have as little impact. The Texans had put forth great effort to solve the problem of Indian raiding, from increasing troop numbers to shifting force strength, reorganizing units, employing rangers and militia, and changing tactics from passive patrols to search-and-destroy missions. The frontier still experienced quiet periods and active raiding periods, with no seeming correlation to the shifting military situation. So what did influence the ebb and flow of raids? One surprising factor was climate. In 1865 farmers and ranchers almost certainly greeted the end of Texas’ long drought as auspicious. Unfortunately, more water and better crops meant better feed for Indian ponies. For many years learned men and land promoters alike adhered to the adage that rainfall followed the plow—a trope finally and dramatically disproven in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. What did appear true, however, was that raiders followed the rainfall. Indeed, it was more of a factor in shaping raiding patterns than Texas Rangers. More often than not Indians were pursuing their own agendas, not reacting to white initiatives; if anything the whites reacted to the Indians’ moves. But as they learned, in a guerrilla war pure military force does not always prove decisive, or even effective. Smallpox and cholera accounted for far more Indian deaths on the frontier than did soldiers’ bullets.

Another commonly repeated assertion is that the U.S. Army had learned total war from its experience in the Civil War and then applied that strategy to the Western Indian wars. In fact, the military had used such tactics on Eastern Indian tribes at least as early as the American Revolution, Maj. Gen. John Sullivan’s 1779 scorched-earth campaign against the Iroquois in western New York being one example. The Pequots could certainly testify to the tactic, as they were nearly exterminated as a people in 1630s New England. Another common misconception regarding warfare is the suggestion that Generals Miles, Crook, William Tecumseh Sherman and Phil Sheridan, drawing on their Civil War experience, determined that winter campaigns were the surest way to bring the Indian tribes to submission. This accepted wisdom also withers under examination. From 1850 to 1865 just 43 percent of all Western Indian battles occurred in winter (October–March), 57 percent in summer (April–September). From 1866 to 1880 winter campaigning accounted for just 36 percent of the total fights. Another commonly held assertion regarding arms is that the Plains tribes needed the government to supply them with guns and ammunition for hunting game. But mixed-blood soldier-warrior-trader-interpreter George Bent, who lived half his life with the Cheyennes, explained that Indians used arrows, not bullets, to hunt buffalo. Each man’s arrows bore his personal feathering, coloring and marking, Bent explained, JUNE 2013

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thus avoiding quarrels as to which buffalo belonged to which man. “If guns had been used,” Bent said, “there would have been constant squabbling.” Firearms were for killing humans.

achieved a place in the American consciousness as did the wars with the Lakotas, Cheyennes, Comanches and Apaches. There are two main reasons. First, the Paiutes—often labeled with the pejorative “Diggers,” as their scarce f we believe our novelists and food supply largely comprised filmmakers, Indians always edible roots—were never taken attacked at dawn. Wrong. seriously as warriors. Second, Between 1850 and 1890, in the war itself was followed by fights for which the time of day more spectacular battles, waged was recorded, Indians attacked in by headline-grabbing Army and broad daylight 110 times and at Indian personalities. The Snake dawn 10 times. Likewise, during War lacked a Custer, Sheridan, the same span the Army mounted Miles or Ranald Mackenzie. Crook 221 daylight attacks and 44 at was present but had not yet made dawn. The soldiers and Indians a name for himself. There was each made only six nighttime asno Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Crazy saults. Both sides were apparently Horse, Cochise or Geronimo. There hesitant to chance entering the was no 7th U.S. Cavalry. Few respirit world in darkness. porters covered the battles. The On November 29, 1864, Colonel Paiutes never attracted the artists John Chivington attacked a camp and photographers the way the of Cheyennes and Arapahos on John Chivington incurred 76 casualties at Sand Creek. Plains tribes did. They drew no Sand Creek in Colorado Territory. Frederic Remington, Charles RusHistorians have often termed the affair the worst massacre of sell, Charles Schreyvogel, Laton Alton Huffman or Will Soule. Plains Indians and claimed that the resultant reaction by the The other contender for most casualties is the Dakota War infuriated tribes led to greater retaliatory slaughter and even of 1862. Whites waged four Sioux wars against the Dakota, sparked the Indian wars. This is another assertion that does Nakota and Lakota people: the First Sioux War of 1854–56; the not stand up to the facts. In Colorado Territory in 1864 records Dakota War, or Dakota Uprising; Red Cloud’s War of 1866–68; ascribe 91 white casualties to Indian fighting. In 1865, after and the Great Sioux War of 1876–77. The Dakota War tallied the supposed furious Indian retaliation, casualties dropped to about 1,390 soldiers and Indians killed or wounded. Add the 42, and in 1866 there were only four. In Kansas over the same 600 white civilians killed in the initial uprising and massacre three-year span white casualties numbered 33, five and zero, that began the war, and the casualties number almost 2,000. respectively. In Nebraska Territory the numbers dropped from In either case, casualties of the Snake War and Dakota War 88 to 39 to two. In New Mexico Territory they dropped from 12 each exceed those of the Great Sioux War—widely thought of to three to one. Rather than prompting retaliation, then, the as our deadliest frontier conflict. Whether “Great” refers to Sand Creek attack seems to have had an ameliorating affect the battles or the Sioux Reservation, that war was not so on the fighting in Colorado and great in retrospect, accounting for surrounding states and territories. an estimated 847 casualties. But With regard to casualties, the historians give it top billing begreatest numbers came in two cause of the iconic Battle of the wars: one with a tribe in the foreLittle Bighorn, perhaps for the sinfront of the Indian wars, the other gle fact that it resulted in the Last with a tribe few people—then or Stand Hill death of Custer, today’s now—considered a major threat personified lightning rod of ramto white settlement. The “winner” pant American militarism. Regardin this contest depends on how less, in terms of casualties, numwe do the counting. bers of men engaged and cost to The dark horse finalist is the taxpayers, the Dakota War trumps Snake War, fought mostly among the Great Sioux War. soldiers, white civilians and the Next on the Western war list Northern Paiutes. This conflict, would be the Red River War of lasting from 1864 to 1868, tal1874, with an estimated 684 casulied 1,782 casualties, yet it never This Sand Creek marker avoids the word “massacre.” alties. The Yavapai War of 1871–75 BOB STINSON

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tallied 652 casualties, the Nez Perce War of 1877 recorded 418 killed and wounded, while the Modoc War of 1872–73 accounted for 208 casualties.

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hich were the most and least effective of the 10 Indian-fighting cavalry regiments in the West—effectiveness equating to numbers of fights and casualties inflicted? The most effective certainly was not the 7th Cavalry, which many people seem to automatically assume was the premier regiment, given the fascination with Custer and his infamous Last Stand in Montana Territory. Those regiments organized earliest did not necessarily participate in the most actions, and those organized last didn’t necessarily engage in the fewest. Overall, the unit with the most battles (208) and the most casualties inflicted (1,225) was the 1st Dragoons, redesignated the 1st Cavalry in 1861. Second or third is a close contest between the 8th Cavalry (organized in 1866 along with the 7th Cavalry), with 166 fights and 682 casualties inflicted, and the Mounted Rifles (which became the 3rd Cavalry), with 140 fights and 885 casualties. Near the bottom are the two black regiments, the 9th and 10th Cavalry (the buffalo soldiers), with 64 and 63 fights, respectively. Among the least effective of the regiments was the 7th Cavalry, with only 40 fights (10th place out of 10) and 645 casualties inflicted (sixth place). Then again, perhaps the 7th was more “effective” in an ironic sort of way than its poor battle record suggests. By losing half its number at the Little Bighorn, the regiment spurred the U.S. government to bring the Indian wars to a close. The June 25, 1876, Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors killed Lt. Col. George Custer and about 268 soldiers and civilians, is often termed the largest battle loss by the U.S. military at the hands of American Indians. While that is true with regard to the fighting west of the Mississippi River, another iconic battle east of the river claims the title. On November 4, 1791, on the presentday Ohio-Indiana line, perhaps 1,000 Shawnees, Miamis and other warriors under Little Turtle and Blue Jacket, attacked General Arthur St. Clair’s 1,400-man encampment, ultimately slaughtering 832 soldiers and civilians. History records the battle as St. Clair’s Defeat. Back in the West, Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully’s August 7–9, 1864, fight with the Sioux in the Dakota Territory Badlands cost him 109 soldier casualties. The August 23, 1862, Dakota attack on New Ulm, Minn., inflicted 105 white casualties, and the subsequent fight at Birch Coulee on September 2–3 tallied 91 soldier and civilian casualties. The Dakota War accounted for its fair share of the top fights in terms of white soldier and civilian casualties. The Sand Creek fight in 1864— popularly recalled as a massacre of innocent, unarmed Indians—recorded 76 soldier casualties, putting it in eighth place on the list of 1,400-plus fights in the West between 1850 and 1890. Yes, some still assert that the cause of many of those soldier casualties was “friendly fire,” but the documented reports of soldier deaths and wounds from arrows contradicts that assertion.

Debate continues as to whether the civilian volunteer soldiers who fought Western Indians during the Civil War were more aggressive and bloodthirsty than their Regular Army counterparts. Certainly volunteers participated in some of the infamous “massacres” of the West. On January 29, 1863, Colonel Patrick Connor led his California vols against the Shoshones at Bear River, Idaho, killing 224; and Colonel Chivington and his Colorado troops killed about 130 Cheyennes and Arapahos at Sand Creek in November 1864. Then again, on January 23, 1870, Major Eugene Baker led his 2nd Cavalry Regulars in a massacre of Blackfeet at the Marias River in Montana, killing 173, including 53 women and children; and at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota on December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry under Colonel James Forsyth killed 128 and wounded 33 surrendered Lakotas. Just who was “bloodier” is a toss-up. We must remember, too, that about the only difference between a Regular and a volunteer was that one man joined a Federal force while the other joined a state unit.

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number of Indian wars episodes stick in the public imagination due to the irony of the situations. For example, on the morning of December 21, 1866, Captain William J. Fetterman supposedly said, “Give me 80 men, and I’ll ride through the whole Sioux Nation.” With those words he promptly rode out of Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming Territory, with 80 men and was duly massacred. John H. Monnett addressed this in his 2008 book Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed and could find no record of such a statement until 38 years after it was supposedly uttered. Fetterman’s commanding officer at the time, Colonel Henry B. Carrington, and Carrington’s first and second wives, were instrumental in starting the story, and author Cyrus Townsend Brady gave literary form to the suggestion in his 1904 book Indian Fights and Fighters. Bottom line, Fetterman never said it, but as Monnett argues, “Irony often outlasts historical fact.” It is often said that George Custer didn’t listen to his scouts at the Little Bighorn, with fatal consequences. This is not irony but a moral lesson similar to those found in a 19th-century McGuffey Reader. But the actual situation is ironic. Although one of Custer’s scouts did report a large Indian camp on the river, the majority warned that the 7th Cavalry had been discovered, and if Custer wanted to bring the Sioux to battle, he would have to attack them immediately. Custer was reluctant, preferring to wait until the next day and thus allow other Army units to catch up. Unfortunately, as it turns out, Custer did listen to his scouts, and that is why he died. This is one case in which the great irony of the situation is relatively unknown and fails to supplant the preferred depiction of Custer as an arrogant hawk refusing to heed good advice. Another irony surrounds the infamous phrase, “If they are hungry, let them eat grass.” Trader Andrew J. Myrick is supposed to have said this to hungry Dakotas in Minnesota in August 1862. For generations historians have passed down Myrick’s phrase, almost always as an illustration of white JUNE 2013

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In his fanciful Wounded Knee Hostiles, American artist Ernest Chiriacka (1913–2010) shows wellarmed warriors, and it doesn’t look like winter.

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man’s insensitivity, meanness and stupidity. But did he say it? glory hunter with delusions of grandeur, movies such as 1970’s Studying the correspondence of those present and the histo- Little Big Man have painted him as a certifiable lunatic. That rians who later wrote about it, it is impossible to establish the film, based on Thomas Berger’s 1964 satirical novel, was hiswords, the place and the time of the alleged incident. Those torical fiction and an obvious burlesque of American history. who observed the confrontation and later wrote reports and Far too many people, however, get their “history” from such books about it did not mention the incident. Neither did John fictional movies and incorporate the ideas into their world P. Williamson, the translator that day. picture. Like irony, these popular lampoons make such “good” The first time Myrick’s phrase was attributed to a white eye- stories they will likely appear for years to come. witness and printed in its popular context is in Winifred Today we can witness a myth in the making. The National W. Barton’s 1919 book about her father, John P. Williamson: Park Service seems to be on a mission to include the ArapaA Brother to the Sioux. Thus, the first time a white eyewitness hos as a tribal force in the Little Bighorn story. “The fact reis said to have heard Myrick’s mains that the Arapahos as “grass” statement came 57 a tribe were never a part of years after the fact. From that the alliance of Lakotas and time on Myrick has been Northern Cheyennes in 1876– pilloried as having told the 77,” explains historian Jerry Indians to eat grass. Greene. “At Little Bighorn It does make good copy: there were five individuals An obstreperous white man who happened on the scene telling starving Indians to and were at first held as eat grass, only to get his just prisoners by the Sioux, who desserts by being killed and suspected they were scouts having grass stuffed in his for the Army [see John Kosmouth. It is such great historter’s “The ‘Arapaho Five’ at ical irony, in fact, that it will the Little Bighorn,” in the probably never be excised June 2012 Wild West]. To acfrom the annals of legend. cord the Arapahos as a tribe We can trace the origins full membership in the inof other myths to specific tertribal coalition that deauthors. Mari Sandoz for feated Custer is nonsense, one, although a fine writer, but because of political corwas sometimes rather rerectness this error will likely laxed with her sourcing. For never be corrected and will instance, her depiction of prevail as such in the park’s Sioux warrior Crazy Horse as interpretive program.” head of the decoy party that Many Americans relish stoled Captain Fetterman to his ries about the Wild West and death at Fort Phil Kearny in worship the frontier heroes December 1866 appears to whom they believe define have been purely concocted. our nation’s very characEvidence suggests the young ter. Much of what we think Oglala was somewhere in the we know about their daring vicinity, but as historian John Did George Custer hope to become president? There is no proof. deeds, however, is part of the Monnett has discovered, vir“Everybody Knows” history tually no primary sources place Crazy Horse as a decoy in the that collapses under scrutiny. Yet it seems we will always Fetterman Fight, let alone leading the party. The story origi- love the old fables and legends. We prefer myth to reality, nates with Sandoz’ 1942 biography of Crazy Horse, and other and thus it will echo down through the years. authors have since cited her assertion as fact. Sandoz also claimed that George Custer had a desire to Colorado author Gregory Michno is a special contributor to become president of the United States. Again, virtually noth- Wild West (his article “Ten Myths at the Little Bighorn” is availing in the historical record would lead us to this conclusion. able to read on our website, www.WildWestMag.com) and Craig Repass puts the myth to rest in his 1985 book Custer for the author of many books that challenge myths about the West. President?, concluding that “no documented statements by Suggested for further reading are his Lakota Noon (1997), Custer, either private or public, pertaining to his presidential Encyclopedia of Indian Wars (2003), A Fate Worse Than Death aspirations exist,” and that Sandoz was only adept “at fabri- (2007), Forgotten Fights (2008), Circle the Wagons! (2008), cating the truth.” Far beyond the depictions of Custer as a Dakota Dawn (2011) and The Settlers’ War (2011). JUNE 2013

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Overshadowed by the famed Texas Rangers, this small band of lawmen roamed Arizona Territory in the early 1900s administering justice, sometimes in deadly frontier fashion By Bill O’Neal

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BILL AHRENDT, PINE, ARIZ.

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alf an hour before midnight on October 23, 1904, Joe Bostwick slipped through the rear door of the Palace Saloon in Tucson, Arizona Territory. His face was shrouded in a red bandana, complete with eyeholes, and he brandished a long-barreled Colt .45. “Hands up!” he shouted. Four regulars were on duty in the Palace: a bartender, a craps dealer, a roulette dealer and a porter. There were four customers, one of whom, M.D. Beede, slipped out the front door onto Congress Street. Perhaps not noticing the missing customer, the masked desperado nervously ordered, “Throw up your hands and march into the side room.” As the men filed by, the jittery bandit snapped, “Hold ’em up higher— hold up your digits.” Then Bostwick edged toward the craps table, where money lay scattered beside the dice. Outside on Congress Street, Beede spotted an officer wearing the star badge of an Arizona Ranger. Sergeant Harry Wheeler had just emerged from Wanda’s Restaurant. “Don’t go in there,” Beede said when the Ranger turned toward the Palace. “There’s a holdup going on!” “All right,” Wheeler calmly replied. “That’s what I’m here for.” The sergeant pulled his single-action Colt .45 and stepped to the front door of the saloon. Bostwick spotted him and whirled to fire his revolver, but Wheeler triggered the first shot. The heavy slug grazed Bostwick’s forehead above the right eye. Bostwick fired wildly, then Wheeler drilled him in the

right side of the chest. Mortally wounded, the stricken bandit groaned and collapsed to the floor. When interviewed by a reporter for The Tucson Citizen, Wheeler commented: “I am sorry that this happened, but it was either his life or mine, and if I hadn’t been just a little quicker on the draw than he was, I might be in his position now. Under the circumstances, if I had to do it over again, I think I would do exactly the same thing.” Indeed, Wheeler did exactly the same thing—with exactly the same results— in 1907 and again in 1908. And so did other fast-shooting men who wore the star during the brief existence of the early 20th-century Arizona Ranger company.

Sergeant Harry Wheeler is quicker on the trigger than masked robber Joe Bostwick in Tucson’s Palace Saloon on October 23, 1904, in Bill Ahrendt’s Harry Wheeler of the Arizona Rangers.

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he Arizona Territorial Legislature created the Rangers in 1901 (various short-lived ranger forces had come and gone in the territory during the 19th century), more than a decade after the 1890 U.S. census had pronounced the frontier closed. For more than seven years Arizona Rangers rode across mountains and deserts in pursuit of cattle rustlers and horse thieves, and, blazing away with Colts and Winchesters, shot it out with desperados in saloons, dusty streets and desolate badlands. Outlawry was rampant in the territory at the dawn of the 20th century, and Congress consequently refused to consider statehood. Arizona cattlemen, mine owners, railroad offi-

cials and newspaper editors pressured Territorial Governor Nathan Oakes Murphy to combat lawlessness with a special force modeled on the famed Texas Rangers. As early as October 1898 an editorial in The Phoenix Gazette decried rustling and proclaimed the need for a band of Rangers: “When such conditions exist, a company of paid ‘Rangers’ are required to stamp out and destroy the characters that bring about such a state of affairs. Let us have a Territorial Ranger Service.” In early 1901 Governor Murphy presented a Ranger bill to the Republican-dominated 21st Territorial Legislature, which quickly enacted it. The company would be launched on September 1. Murphy asked cattleman Burt Mossman, who JUNE 2013

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had helped frame the Ranger Act, to serve as founding captain. The act authorized a 14-man force—one captain, one sergeant and 12 privates. Two years later the Legislature expanded the force to 26 men—one captain, one lieutenant, four sergeants and 20 privates. Captain Mossman recruited outdoorsmen for his force— men who could ride and trail and shoot, men who had experience as cowboys or peace officers. Murphy questioned some of the captain’s selections. “Now, governor,” replied Mossman, “if you think I can go out in these mountains and catch train robbers and cattle rustlers with a bunch of Sunday school teachers, you are very much mistaken.” Men with the instincts of a manhunter could take on a rare challenge remaining in Arizona Territory. Even in the early 1900s bank and train robbers, murderers, rustlers and any other lawbreaker with a fast horse stood a reasonable chance of remaining free from arrest in the vast sweep of sparsely settled land. Rangers were given carte blanche to pursue badmen, authorized to make arrests anywhere in the territory. A Ranger could pin on a badge, saddle up and, in the righteous cause of justice and the territorial statutes, ride up into the mountains and across deserts in pursuit of society’s enemies. And just like in the old days on the frontier, these early 20thcentury lawmen sometimes had to match bullet for bullet. Two of the first Rangers to enlist, Carlos Tafolla and Duane Hamblin, found themselves in a deadly gun battle within weeks of joining the new company. Privates Tafolla and Hamblin had joined a posse in pursuit of the Bill Smith Gang. The men trailed the rustlers into the rugged mountain wilderness of eastern Arizona Territory. At sundown on October 8 the lawmen moved into position to attack the outlaw camp in a gorge at high elevation. Tafolla, Hamblin and Bill Maxwell, an excellent scout, approached the camp from the front in open snow. Maxwell called out an order to surrender. “All right,” answered Smith. “Which way do you want us to come out?” “Come right out this way,” directed Maxwell. Hamblin flattened onto the snow as Smith walked toward the lawmen, dragging a new .303 Savage rifle behind him. Smith suddenly brought up the lever-action repeater and opened fire from a distance of 40 feet. Tafolla went down, shot twice through the torso, while Maxwell, hit in the forehead, died on the spot. Smith darted back to camp as gunfire exploded from both sides. Tafolla gamely worked his Winchester. Hamblin moved to the outlaw remuda and scattered the mounts, putting the gang afoot. Two outlaws were wounded, and Smith led a retreat into the surrounding timber. With a sudden mountain nightfall the outlaws escaped on foot. Back in the clearing Tafolla lay on his back, begging for water. Before he died, the Ranger pulled a silver dollar from his pants pocket. “Give this dollar to my wife,” he gasped. “It, and the month’s wages coming to me, will be all she’ll ever have.” Tafolla left three children and his poor widow. His wages for less than a month’s service totaled only $53.15. The Legislature voted Mrs. Tafolla a small pension, and Mossman dutifully brought her the silver dollar.

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ossman resigned after one year to return to the cattle business. The new captain was Tom Rynning, a cavalry veteran and lieutenant with the Rough Riders in Cuba. With his military background, Captain Rynning imposed training and marksmanship practice. The Ranger Act required that each man carry a single-action Colt .45 revolver and an 1895 Winchester, the first lever-action repeater to use a box magazine instead of the old tubular magazine. Invented by John Browning, America’s foremost genius in arms design, the Model 1895 carried five rounds in the box, with the chamber accommodating a sixth. Rynning moved Ranger headquarters from Bisbee, a thriving mining town near the Mexican border, to Douglas, a new mining boomtown to the southeast and smack on the border. The Cowboy’s Home Saloon was the center for drinking, gambling and dancing in Douglas. One of the three men who ran the saloon was Lon Bass, a Texan who resented the presence of Rangers and who threatened to kill Private W.W. Webb the next time he entered the Cowboy’s Home.

The Arizona Rangers assembled in Morenci in 1903 to control labor unrest at the local mines. Captain Tom Rynning sits crosslegged at far left. W.W. Webb is the leftmost seated man in the front row. Frank Wheeler is in the second row, fourth from right.

On Sunday evening, February 8, 1903, the town dives were doing a roaring business when shots went off near the Cowboy’s Home. Privates Webb and Lonnie McDonald heard the gunfire and hustled to the scene. As the Rangers entered the Cowboy’s Home, Bass sighted them from a rear room where he was dealing monte. He promptly stormed into the main saloon, ordering Webb off the premises and threatening to “beat the face off him.” Webb responded by whipping his Colt .45 from its holster, cocking it and firing point-blank at Bass. The bullet spun the saloonkeeper around, but Webb thumbed back his hammer and fired again. The second round also went true, hurling Bass to the floor. “Oh, my God!” he gasped as he went down. Both slugs had torn into Bass’s torso, and one apparently struck his heart. He died on the floor. A few feet away McDonald also sagged to the floor, struck in the midsection by a stray bullet, perhaps a slug that had passed through Bass. Captain Rynning and Private Frank Wheeler (no relation to Harry Wheeler), patrolling the streets on horseback, quickly

arrived at the saloon. So did a couple of other Rangers, along with Town Constable Dayton Graham, who had signed on as the first Ranger sergeant in 1901. Graham arrested Webb, but since there was no jail in Douglas, the constable conveniently directed the Rangers to take their comrade into custody. (Webb did eventually stand trial, but a jury found him not guilty in June 1903.) Physicians probed unsuccessfully for the slug that struck McDonald. Douglas had as many hospitals as jails, so his fellows carried the bandaged lawman to the two-room adobe that served as Ranger headquarters. Captain Rynning’s house was nearby, and his wife tended the wounded McDonald. The next morning she was horrified at the breakfast the Rangers had cooked for her patient: “a big round steak with a lot of greasy spuds and some gravy that a fork could stand up in.” Instead, Margaret Rynning fed him soft-boiled eggs and other light fare, and McDonald slowly recovered. One of Rynning’s most notable recruits was Sergeant Jeff Kidder, a superb pistol shot who practiced incessantly with his silver-plated Colt. 45. Normally stationed in Nogales, he JUNE 2013

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Left: Rynning (second from left), Speed (fourth) and Harry Wheeler (far right) in Bisbee. Right: Ranger Jeff Kidder holds his horse.

was called to Douglas to help control troublemakers on New Year’s Eve 1906. That night Kidder and a local peace officer were patrolling in the vicinity of the railroad roundhouse when they encountered local saloonkeeper Tom T. Woods, who emerged from a rear door and scurried through the rain across the railroad tracks. “Hold on there!” shouted Kidder. “We want to look at you.” Woods instead broke into a run, then turned and fired a pistol shot at Kidder. The Ranger quickly drew his Colt and blasted out three rounds. One slug slammed into Wood’s right eye, dropping him on the spot. He died later that night. Another deadly Ranger was Sergeant James T. “Shorty” Holmes, who was stationed at Roosevelt, northeast of Phoenix, where the Roosevelt Dam was under construction. On October 31, 1905, Holmes intercepted Bernardo Arviso, a bootlegger suspected of selling liquor to Indians. Arviso tried to fight his way past Holmes, sparking a furious pistol duel. A government teamster named Bagley tried to help Holmes but caught a bullet in the arm from the bootlegger. The Ranger fired back with lethal aim, killing Arviso on the spot. Within four months Holmes again engaged in a fatal gunfight near Roosevelt. On February 18, 1906, he clashed with an Apache known as Matze Ta 55 and shot the outlaw to death. In 1907 Holmes was in action again, this time trading shots with smugglers. During his years as a Ranger, Holmes never suffered a wound, and he was cited for distinguished service in the 1906 and 1907 engagements. Arizona malefactors became wary of the sureshooting Holmes. In 1907 a man named Baldwin murdered a Mrs. Morris and her daughter near Roosevelt. A couple of months later Holmes intercepted the murderer just outside town. Baldwin surrendered to Holmes, but the Ranger—never kindly disposed toward murderers—beat him over the head with a frying pan. Then he tied a rope around Baldwin’s neck, mounted his horse and spurred away, dragging the prisoner into Roosevelt.

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n late June 1907 Ranger Frank Wheeler, by then a sergeant, rode for five days through the desert of southern Arizona Territory in pursuit of rustlers Lee Bentley and James Kerrick. Yuma County Deputy Sheriff Johnny Cameron and two Indian guides accompanied the sergeant. Saturday, June 29, was the worst day—35 miles of blazing heat through cacti and blistering sands. “Our horses went without water the entire day,” reported Wheeler, “and the water in our canteens was so hot we couldn’t even drink it.” The next morning the guides found the outlaw camp at Sheep Dung Tanks, about three miles west of the mining settlement of Ajo. Approaching furtively on foot, Wheeler and Cameron found six horses staked out, while the two rustlers slept, rifles close by their sides. The officers readied their own rifles, and then Wheeler called out a command to surrender in the name of the law. Both rustlers scrambled up, groping for their rifles. Wheeler and Cameron again directed them to give up, but Bentley raised his weapon and triggered a shot. For a moment the flat explosions of Winchesters broke the desert silence as each man brought his rifle into play. Kerrick, a killer and exconvict, fired a shot at Cameron, but the deputy dropped his antagonist with the first round from his .30–30. Wheeler emptied the five-shot magazine of his Model 1895 into Bentley. The first slug punched into Bentley’s belly, but the outlaw held his kneeling position. The Ranger pumped three more .30–40 bullets into Bentley’s torso. Yet somehow the stricken rustler stayed up, gamely trying to get his gun back into action. Wheeler’s final shot drilled into Bentley’s left temple, ripping through his head and out his right ear. Bentley fell face forward, dead when he hit the ground. Wheeler later testified that Bentley “showed more nerve under fire than he had ever seen displayed by a man before.” Harry Wheeler, sporting his cavalryman’s mustache, joined the Rangers in 1903 and was involved in three deadly shootouts. ARIZONA STATE ARCHIVES, PHOENIX

ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON

Private W.W. Webb stands on the outskirts of Douglas, where in 1903 he killed Lon Bass, co-owner of the Cowboy’s Home Saloon.

Wheeler and Cameron cautiously walked over to the fallen rustlers, but both were dead. The Rangers collected several new Winchesters from the camp, threw the two bodies across a pair of stolen horses, packed everything else that needed to be hauled out and headed north. By the time they reached Ten Miles Well, a journey of 25 miles, the corpses had swollen badly in the heat. The officers sent word to Sentinel to wire for the Pima County coroner, but he refused to come. The justice of the peace at Silver Bell, who had jurisdiction over the Ajo area, also refused to come. While waiting for Sheriff Nabor Pacheco, Wheeler and Cameron fashioned two rudimentary coffins and lowered the bodies into temporary graves. But the sheriff did not get there until Monday afternoon, and even though Pacheco brought ice, by then the bodies had decomposed beyond recognition.

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arry Wheeler, who had enlisted as a private during the Ranger expansion of 1903, soon earned promotion to sergeant, then lieutenant. In 1907 Tom Rynning was appointed superintendent of Yuma Territorial Prison, and Lieutenant Wheeler was elevated to Ranger captain. Of 107 men who served as Arizona Rangers, Wheeler was the only one who held all four ranks: private, sergeant, lieutenant and captain. He was a superlative lawman. Harry Cornwall Wheeler was the son of a West Point graduate and colonel in the U.S. Army. Harry grew up on a series of military posts, learning to shoot on the post ranges and becoming an expert marksman with rifle and pistol. Enlisting in the U.S. Cavalry, Wheeler rose to the rank of sergeant. His last duty post

was Fort Grant, Arizona Territory. Leaving the Army in 1902, he joined the Ranger company the next year. He brought to the Rangers a strong sense of duty, meticulous administrative skills, a love for fieldwork and his extraordinary gun skills—as he proved to holdup man Joe Bostwick in Tucson in October 1904. Lieutenant Wheeler was in Benson, north of Tombstone, when he engaged in one of the great mano a mano duels in Western history. On February 28, 1907, Wheeler was made aware of a life-endangering love triangle. En route to town by train, a newly arrived couple at Benson’s Virginia Hotel had sighted the woman’s former sweetheart, J.A. Tracy. The jilted lover had pursued the couple to Benson, arriving on a night train. Presenting Lieutenant Wheeler a photograph of Tracy, the couple appealed to the Ranger for help. Wheeler left the hotel and crossed to the depot. He found Tracy sitting on the steps of a dining car, but as the Ranger approached, the man’s former lover emerged from the hotel with her new beau. Tracy jumped up cursing and pulled a revolver from his pocket.“Hold on there!” barked Wheeler. “I arrest you. Give me that gun.” A furious pistol duel ensued. Wheeler advanced relentlessly, firing methodically and ordering his quarry to surrender. Tracy’s third shot wounded Wheeler in the upper left thigh near the groin, but the Ranger drilled him four times, in the stomach, neck, arm and chest. Tracy tumbled onto his back. “I am all in,” he gasped. “My gun is empty.” Wheeler dropped his Colt, having fired his five rounds (many Westerners carried only “five beans in the wheel,” leaving the hammer at rest over an empty chamber for safety). The

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Benson’s Southern Pacific railroad station was the site of the 1907 shootout between Lieutenant Harry Wheeler and J.A. Tracy.

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wounded officer limped forward to secure his prisoner. But Within an hour they found Arnett’s corpse no more than Tracy had two bullets left and more cartridges in a pocket. He a quarter of a mile from the site of the shooting. The outlaw treacherously opened fire again, striking Wheeler in the left had been hit twice. At dawn authorities brought a coroner’s heel. The fearless Ranger began hurling rocks at the downed jury to the rocky canyon, and an inquest was conducted that man, whose revolver finally clicked on an empty cylinder. afternoon. “I have heard a relative state that Arnett had said “I am all in,” Tracy repeated. “My gun is empty.” he would never submit to arrest,” testified Wheeler. The jury But Tracy still refused to surrender his gun to Wheeler. exonerated Wheeler and Humm, finding it “the general opinMen in the gathering crowd threatened the gunman, but the ion of the public that a dangerous man has met his end.” bleeding Wheeler managed to calm onlookers and disarm Tracy. Someone brought a chair for the wounded Ranger. n April 1908, the month before Captain Wheeler bested “Give it to him,” said Wheeler, gesturing to Tracy. “He needs it Arnett, Sergeant Jeff Kidder was not so fortunate in more than I do.” a gunfight just across the border. Wheeler had moved Wheeler turned over Tracy to a Benson peace officer, then Ranger headquarters to the border town of Naco and extended his right hand to the wounded man. ordered his men not to cross into Mexico. But when Kidder “Well,” said Wheeler, “it was a great fight while it lasted, rode into Naco from his post at Nogales, Wheeler was away, wasn’t it, old man?” and the sergeant—his Colt .45 concealed in his waistband “I’ll get you yet,” muttered Tracy with a hint of a smile. The beneath his coat—sauntered with friends into Mexican Naco. two men shook hands. In a cantina Kidder had trouble with a senorita. Two memWheeler then retrieved his revolver and limped away to bers of the policía hurried to the commotion, and one officer seek a physician. Authorities decided to send the grievously gutshot Kidder. The wounded Ranger palmed his Colt and wounded Tracy to a hospital in Tucson and placed him on a dropped both officers with leg wounds. Kidder then staggered cot in the baggage car. The train had not gone 10 miles down outside and reached the border fence a quarter mile away. the tracks before he breathed his last. Wheeler later learned Under fire he wounded the chief of police, who was the broththat J.A. Tracy had been wanted for two separate murders in er of the officer who shot Kidder. Once out of ammunition, Nevada, with a $500 reward on his head. One of his victims the Ranger surrendered. was the brother of former Ranger Dick Hickey. Nevada offiThe chief and his men dragged Kidder to jail, where they cials offered Wheeler the reward, but he promptly turned it robbed him and roughed him up. Although permitted visidown. Wheeler would have no part of blood tors from the American side, including phymoney, instead urging that the $500 be given sicians, he died 30 hours after being shot. to the widowed Mrs. Hickey. Jeff Kidder was 33. As a sergeant Harry Wheeler had killed Joe That summer Ranger Billy Speed had a conBostwick, as a lieutenant he had killed J.A. frontation with hard-driving ex-convict William Tracy, and in May 1908 as a captain he killed F. Downing, a terror in Willcox, Arizona TerriGeorge Arnett. Considered by Wheeler “the tory, where Speed was stationed. Downing, who worst man in Cochise County,” Arnett for toted a revolver in his hip pocket, ran the Free months had been stealing horses in the county and Easy Saloon and clashed openly with many and driving them across the border to sell in local men. Although threatened repeatedly by Mexico. Acting on a tip, Wheeler enlisted DepDowning, Speed was not intimidated, and he uty Sheriff George Humm to help set a trap in remained mindful of Wheeler’s admonition that Badman William Downing a canyon east of Bisbee. “if anyone must be hurt, I do not want it to On the fifth night of their vigil, the two law- was the bully of Willcox. be the Ranger.” Kidder’s recent death was on men heard a horseman approach. The rider Wheeler’s mind, and he wrote Speed “to take was leading another horse. As the rider apno chance with this man in any official dealing proached within 20 feet, Wheeler and Humm you may have with him.” Wheeler left no doubt each beamed a bull’s-eye lamp at the man as to his meaning: “I hereby direct you to prelater determined to be Arnett, ordering him pare yourself to meet this man … and upon to surrender. his least or slightest attempt to do you harm, Wheeler had leveled his revolver, and when I want you to kill him.” Arnett snapped off a shot, the Ranger captain On the night of August 4 Downing hit and instantly triggered his .45. He heard Humm’s then gouged the eyes of saloon girl Cuco Leal, revolver go off beside him. The rider bolted, who lived and worked in the Free and Easy. firing a second pistol shot before disappearing She swore out a warrant, and Constable Bud over a ridge. After retrieving their own horses, Snow—a former Ranger—sought Billy Speed’s Wheeler and Humm searched the area by help. Speed advised they wait until mornlamplight. Finding Arnett’s two horses, they Ranger Billy Speed downed ing. Early on the 5th the still drunk Downing realized the outlaw probably had been injured. Downing with a Winchester. emerged from his saloon shouting crude threats ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON

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Texas State Historian Bill O’Neal is an award-winning author of many books and magazine articles about the Old West. For further reading see two of his books: The Arizona Rangers (1987) and Captain Harry Wheeler, Arizona Lawman (2003).

On-screen Rangers

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nlike their Texas Ranger counterparts, the Arizona Rangers were the subject of few movies. In 1933 Bob Steele made a B-Western called Trailing North. The opening scene is at a “Ranger station,” where Bob learns that his father figure, an Arizona Ranger, has been slain. Bob is handed the man’s badge, and he rides in pursuit of the killer. Within three weeks Bob has trekked to Alaska, abandoning his horse for snowshoes and a dogsled, and trading his broadbrimmed hat for a fur cap. In a final shootout Bob kills the murderer, Flash Ryan (George “pre-Gabby” Hayes). Filmed in 1948, The Arizona Ranger (see poster, right) co-starred Tim Holt and father Jack Holt. Appropriately, Jack and Tim played father and son in the movie. Jack is an Arizona rancher, and Tim is a Spanish-American War veteran who returns home with two fellow Rough Rider friends. Tim and his buddies accept appointment as Arizona Rangers (there was a real-life Ranger–Rough Rider connection), and Jack eventually helps them round up the bad guys. A decade later ABC-TV produced a weekly series based on the adventures of the Arizona Rangers. 26 Men (1957– 59) starred tall, silver-haired Tris Coffin as Captain Tom Rynning. But the series ran for only 78 episodes. It seems the Arizona Rangers have captured neither television nor movie audiences. B.O.N.

ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON

against Speed and Snow. The lawmen armed themselves and split up to corral Downing. As Speed turned down an alley, a bystander shouted that Downing was coming up the street. Winchester at his shoulder, the Ranger emerged and ordered Downing to throw up his hands. The saloonkeeper raised his arms and walked unsteadily toward Speed. When he was less than 30 feet from the Ranger, Downing suddenly groped with his left hand at his hip pocket, apparently forgetting he had left his revolver at the Free and Easy. Still he kept advancing, and Speed again shouted for him to throw up his arms. Left with little choice, Speed finally squeezed the trigger of his Model 1895 Winchester. The .30–40 slug ripped into Downing’s right breast, exiting beneath his right shoulder blade. The impact threw him onto his back, and within minutes he was dead. Captain Wheeler took the first train to Willcox, where a coroner’s jury had ruled Ranger Speed “perfectly justified” in killing Downing. Wheeler reported to Governor Joseph H. Kibbey, “This is the first time I have ever known a killing to meet absolute general rejoiceing [sic].” The deaths of Downing and Armett in 1908 left no other prominent badmen in Arizona Territory. The Rangers had relentlessly hounded most other criminals. For instance, during the fiscal year of 1904–05 they made 1,052 arrests. But by late 1908 the company had virtually achieved its goal of cleaning up the territory. Harry Wheeler’s report for the month of August 1908 revealed the Rangers had made fewer than two-dozen arrests. He reported, “The whole country seems remarkably quiet, and scarcely any crimes are being committed anywhere.” With obvious disappointment, he added, “There has been absolutely no trouble of any kind, and I am getting tired of so much goodness, as are all the men.” The Rangers had worked themselves out of a job. Several Arizona sheriffs complained about the authority Rangers exercised within their jurisdictions. Many Democrats, resentful that the Ranger company was a creation of Republicans, clamored that to continue it would be a waste of funds. In February 1909 the Democrat-controlled Territorial Legislature abruptly disbanded the company—with Rangers still in the field. Wheeler had not been permitted to testify on behalf of his beloved Rangers. From late 1901 until early 1909 the hard-riding, quicktriggered band of riders had brought into a new century the crime-fighting traditions of Wild Bill Hickok, Pat Garrett, Commodore Perry Owens and other members of an earlier generation of frontier lawmen. The gunfights presented here were the ones with fatal consequences, but there were many other shooting incidents involving Rangers. While there was occasional gunplay during Arizona’s early statehood period, the Rangers had claimed the last sustained gunfighting adventure of the no-longer-so-Wild West.

Badges of Honor Badges were issued to the Rangers in 1903. The officers’ badges bore their ranks, while the badges for privates were numbered (that’s No. 11 above). When a man resigned, he turned in his star, which was issued to his replacement. Given their limited number, the Arizona Ranger stars are prized collectibles. Although I have seen a Ranger badge in a private collection, the only one I’ve seen on public display was in the Arizona State Capitol. A thief has since made off with this rare piece of history. B.O.N.

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NEW MEXICAN STANDOFF:

Regulars vs. Militia In 1885, during the hunt for Geronimo, Captain Boyd of the 8th U.S. Cavalry and Colonel Blake of the 1st Regiment of the New Mexico Militia confronted each other By Sherry Robinson

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ing—he had just 15 men with him. He did allow Blake to ask one woman the whereabouts of Geronimo. “I want no intimidation,” he insisted. Boyd doubled the guard at the adobe house sheltering the women. “I will not allow these squaws to go as long as there

Fechét wrote up Boyd’s comments and reported to their superiors. Blake had a different story about his “confrontation” with Boyd but found himself arguing with a dead man.

FROM CAVALRY LIFE IN TENT AND FIELD, BY FRANCES BOYD

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n July 1885 seven half-starved Apache women emerged from the hills and sought refuge in Cañada Alamosa, a New Mexico Territory village that had always been friendly to them. They had been on the run since Geronimo broke from the hated San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona Territory six weeks earlier. Their July 3 surrender to 8th U.S. Cavalry Captain Orsemus Bronson Boyd led to a standoff—not between troops and Geronimo’s men but between the New Mexico Militia and U.S. Army Regulars. Colonel Fletcher Americus Blake, commanding the 1st Regiment of the New Mexico Militia, learned about the prisoners a few days later and rode to the village, where Boyd and his troops from Fort Stanton had them under guard. Blake concealed his men nearby and visited Boyd. The colonel demanded “those squaws,” to wring from them information on the whereabouts of the renegade warriors. Boyd refused. The women were wards of the federal government and prisoners of war, he stated. The territory had no jurisdiction. “Supposing I come with the writ, backed by all my men?” Blake asked. “Would you give them up then?” “No, you have not men enough,” said Boyd. “Neither could you get enough to take them from me.” Boyd was bluff-

Captain O.B. Boyd “stood off” the militia.

is a man of us left,” he stated. Blake’s men made threats that night but left the next morning without the captives. A couple of weeks later Captain Edmond G. Fechét asked Boyd if he had met Blake. “Oh, Fechét, I have got a hell of a report to make against that man,” Boyd replied. “I wish I was well enough to make it out now. They ought to know it at Santa Fe as soon as possible.”

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ome two months earlier, on May 17, 1885, Geronimo had slipped away from San Carlos, a reservation established in 1871 for the Chiricahua Apaches. With Geronimo were Chiefs Naiche, Chihuahua, Mangas and old Nana, along with 34 men, eight large boys and 92 women and children. They headed east for New Mexico Territory’s Black Range, onetime home of the great Apache Chief Victorio. But what had been a refuge was now dotted with ranches and pocked with mines. Apache raiders descended on the settlers to take livestock, weapons and ammunition—and lives. Word flew back to territorial authorities, and newspapers spread the warning. On May 22 The Silver City Enterprise blared, INDIAN DEPREDATIONS: F IFTY B LOODTHIRSTY RED DEVILS, WITH THEIR SQUAWS AND PAPOOSES, ON THE WARPATH. Both volunteers and Army Regulars were in pursuit, the paper reported. Colonel Luther Prentice Bradley, commander of the Army’s District of New Mexico, ordered four companies of the 6th U.S. Cavalry from Fort Bayard, just

PHOTO BY SHERRY ROBINSON

It wasn’t hard for Geronimo and the renegade Apaches to disappear into the rugged Black Range of southwestern New Mexico Territory

outside Silver City. On May 22 Apaches ambushed Captain Allen Smith’s command at Devils Canyon, about 20 miles northeast of Alma (see map, P. 63). The Apaches initially camped in the Mogollon Mountains. Chihuahua and Naiche operated separately from Mangas and Geronimo. Over the next few weeks these bands would seek hidden canyons and remote parks, always moving, often parting and reuniting later. Small parties splintered off to steal horses and loot cabins or divert troops. Pursuers exhausted themselves and their horses but found only deserted camps. (For details on the Apaches’ movements, see Edwin R. Sweeney’s book From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, 1874–1886.) Mangas and about 40 followers (including a dozen men) went into camp near Kingston, while Geronimo continued east toward the Black Range with six men and two women and crossed the Continental Divide. Near the mining camp of Grafton they ambushed and killed three white men, taking their weapons and stock. Geronimo proceeded with his wife, She-gha, another woman and two men along an Indian trail between Chloride and Fairview (present-day Winston) and crossed the Rio Grande. The two women continued alone to recruit Mescalero Apaches at their reservation in south central New Mexico

Territory. If the Mescaleros would meet Geronimo in the San Andres Mountains, the women promised, they could join in raids east of the Rio Grande. Mescaleros had ridden with Victorio, but they had no desire for further hardship or deaths. Mescalero police arrested the women when they arrived on May 26. Outside Kingston, Major James Biddle picked up the trail of Mangas, who had abandoned camp and later met up with Geronimo about 10 miles northeast of Fort Cummings. A detachment from Biddle’s command cut the trail of 54 Apaches, including 19 men, but there would be no confrontation. On May 29 Geronimo and Mangas crossed into Mexico. On June 8 Chihuahua did the same, and the next day Naiche followed.

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n late May, New Mexico Territorial Governor Lionel Allen Sheldon scrawled hasty notes ordering Blake, Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain and other militia officers to quickly turn out their troops. Volunteers usually get little mention in the stories of manly action during the Apache wars, while Regulars get ink, medals and biographies, and yet the ranchmen, supplying their own horses and rifles, were often the first line of defense. Territorial officials had fielded two militia companies during the 1880 Victorio outbreak, but Apaches weren’t the only danger. The boomtowns of south

central New Mexico Territory remained unruly. After Victorio’s death in 1880, settlers and prospectors had streamed in, along with rustlers and the usual purveyors of vice. Rustler John Kinney’s energetic gang alone had in two years run off some 10,000 head from as far north as Socorro to the Mexican border. Sheldon empowered local militia units to pursue outlaws and promised to clean up the region “if it [took] every man and dollar in New Mexico.” In 1883 the Mesilla militia under Colonel Fountain captured Kinney. As Sheldon contemplated disbanding the militia at Socorro in early 1884, he received a petition signed by every prominent citizen, including Blake, asking that it be retained to guard the jail and its notorious guest, murderer Joel Fowler. Sheldon apparently didn’t act on the petition, as vigilantes plucked Fowler from the lockup in late January and promptly lynched him. By then Blake, a land broker in Socorro, was commander of the 1st Regiment of New Mexico Militia and apparently well respected by his men and peers. Fellow militia officer Fountain— a prominent territorial attorney who would disappear in 1896, courtesy of his political enemies—referred to Blake as “my old friend” and wrote to New Mexico’s Adjutant General Edward L. Bartlett: “Colonel Blake is a good, energetic officer, and can, I think, organize

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militia, reported The Silver City Enterprise, aided by some Silver City citizens, “will move upon them tomorrow, and hot work is expected.” In mid-June Blake was ordered to muster out his men, but the Apaches continued raiding, and the colonel soon planned to ride out again. The governor had a change of heart, and at month’s end he ordered Blake to enlist companies and distribute them as he saw fit.

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he arrest of Geronimo’s wife, She-gha, and the other Apache woman at Mescalero on May 26 set Fort Stanton in motion. The following day, Major James J. Van Horn left with two troops of 6th U.S. Cavalry and Mescalero scouts under Chief San Juan. They searched the San Andres and Oscura ranges and watched river fords but found nothing. In late June Major John A. Wilcox sent 8th Cavalry troops from Fort Stanton and scouts from Mescalero to four mountain camps near Hillsboro, Grafton, Alma and Malone. Captain Orsemus Boyd and his men occupied Grafton, a silver mining town in the foothills of the Black Range. In late May raiding Apaches, probably Geronimo’s group, had killed a ranch foreman and the teenage sons of two local families. In the wake of those killings Grafton’s nervous population had melted to three women and 15 men, and they had guarded the town around the clock.

HERITAGE AUCTION GALLERIES, DALLAS, BEN WITTICK PHOTOGRAPH

a regiment that would be of value in case of emergency. Such a regiment is badly needed.” Dr. Jesse Thompson, who recruited 40 men in the mineral mecca of Lake Valley, also wrote in praise of Blake: “I am willing to be placed under Colonel Blake’s orders, as nearly all my men are (cattlemen).…Though it is hard work, I would be glad to take to the field under an experienced officer to fight Apaches.” To Blake, Adjutant General Bartlett wrote, “Be as prudent as possible, but use every effort to protect people.” Blake suspended business and rode from settlement to settlement to organize units. Fountain advised him to enlist “men who were their own masters,” namely farmers and stockmen. Miners and prospectors were good material, Fountain said, but too transient; farmers and stockmen knew the country. Fountain also visited the Mescalero Reservation, where Chief San Juan said his people would fight Geronimo. Blake sometimes sent companies in search of hostiles. One company led by Captain Charles T. Russell, Socorro’s sheriff, left town on May 28 and rode 200 miles southwest through the mountains. Evidence of Apaches was scant until they reached the Mogollons, where they found a large, recently abandoned camp. But Russell’s command was out of supplies and turned back. “The country was fearfully rugged, and men and horses were exhausted,” Blake said, adding that the Indians broke into small parties, making it almost impossible to find them in the steep, wooded mountain recesses. “No men or officers ever worked harder than did this company. Some of the men marched over 500 miles during the time we were out.” Captain James Blain and his Chloride militia company also found signs of Indians, mostly afoot, but then lost the trail. The elusive Apaches prompted Blake to consider reorganizing his regiment and, as he put it, “adopting a more practical plan of protecting the people and killing off these Red Devils whenever they start on a raid.” On May 30, 1885, Apaches attacked a ranch between Lake Valley and Hillsboro and took horses. Fountain and his

An Apache woman poses in the 1880s.

The only water for Boyd’s men was two miles away in a 45-foot well, and it was rank. Soon all the officers and most of the enlisted men had diarrhea or dysentery. The Apache scouts, whose people moved often for sanitary reasons, must have wondered why the soldiers did not go elsewhere. The answer was buried in Boyd’s personal history. During the Civil War Boyd had distinguished himself in action with the 89th New York Volunteer Infantry, rising from color bearer at 16 to second lieutenant at 18, commanding a company in which his older brother and father served. After his appointment to West Point, the battle-hardened Boyd refused to submit to freshmen cadet hazing, which made him a target for worse treatment. In 1865 he was falsely accused of stealing money, and although a court of inquiry found him not guilty, his fellow cadets ostracized him. Boyd steadfastly remained at the academy two more years until he graduated. When the accusation followed him into his regiment, his response was to be a model soldier. In 1872 a former fellow cadet— the very one who had conducted the investigation of Boyd—admitted having planted the evidence. “It engendered in him a great unwillingness to demand even his just dues,” wrote his wife, Frances Mullen Boyd, in her 1894 memoir Calvary Life in Tent and Field. “He submitted without a murmur.” To escape the East, Boyd chose the 8th Cavalry and served in Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico territories and Texas. At Fort Stanton in 1871 Boyd had the post carpenter build a boat so that he and another officer could explore Fort Stanton Cave and its underground river. The boat turned over but remained in the cave for decades. (In 2009 Bureau of Land Management archeologists identified its wooden remains.) Boyd “greatly disliked” the Grafton camp, his wife wrote. The country was rough, and the drinking water had sickened him. In early July, informed of the seven Apache women in Cañada Alamosa (present-day Monticello), Boyd led a detachment there and took them into custody, while a scouting party went in search of a party of 18 Apaches reported

JOAN PENNINGTON

to be in Alamosa Canyon. A concerned citizen in the village begged Boyd to rest a few days, as he was obviously very sick, but Boyd was anxious to return to camp with the women. Arriving within days, Colonel Blake told Boyd, according to a fellow officer’s later report, he “wanted those squaws.” Boyd refused and doubled the guard in case Blake tried to seize the women. Blake and his militia, though, left without them. On July 11 Boyd returned to the Grafton camp with the seven women, send- The Apaches who broke out of San Carlos found new ranches and mines in New Mexico Territory. ing them on by wagon to Fort Apache in Arizona Territory. the colonel, he and his men had been Blake said he left Boyd on cordial terms, An army surgeon visited the camp on scouting for hostiles near Cañada Ala- only later learning that the militiaman July 22 and ordered Boyd hospitalized, mosa when the two officers exchanged mourning his murdered son had made but he died the next day. He was 41. courteous notes pledging cooperation. threats against the women while the volHis wife later wrote that bad water and After sending most of his volunteers to unteers were in Cañada Alamosa, even other privations during his Civil War scout the San Mateo Mountains, Blake though Blake had forbidden such loud service had weakened him. “That Indi- took a small detail with him to visit Boyd. talk. Army officials berated the militia. an campaign resulted in some terrible He arrived about 11 p.m., and Boyd rose Three days later Blake was still fuming. deaths,” wrote Frances Boyd, “but none from bed and spoke to Blake at length. “It is evident the whole matter has grown was more shocking than this sad ending “There was some feeling among the out of a petty supercilious dislike of the to a long and most faithful career.” men with me that the squaws ought to militia by the Regular Army officers, and The army surgeon told Major Wilcox be turned over to the civil authorities, they are sensing or trying to sense an opthat the crowded camp violated sanitary especially on the part of one man whose portunity under cover of a dead man to and hygienic standards, the water was son had been killed by the Indians,” bring the militia into discredit.” District poor, and it was difficult to obtain fresh Blake wrote. He shared that sentiment commander Bradley had put his foot in meat and vegetables. Wilcox quickly had with Boyd, but the captain insisted he his mouth, Blake added, “and I intend to the camp moved, a step he might have couldn’t relinquish his wards without help him keep it there until it chokes taken earlier had Boyd complained. orders. Blake said that’s what he told his him, if he doesn’t drop that dirty pack of men. “This settled talk in that direction.” lies pretty expeditiously.” aptain Fechét wrote up Boyd did grant Blake’s request to have Blake’s superiors had other concerns. his late friend’s comments an interpreter question the women. The new governor, Edmund Ross, didn’t about Colonel Blake and on The captain, according to Blake, also share his predecessor’s zeal for cleaning August 16 sent the report to confessed that “the people placed no up the territory at any cost and ordered district commander Colonel Bradley, confidence in the U.S. troops,” and the militia commanders to quickly muster who demanded the governor instruct settlers might be more satisfied after out volunteers to avoid further expense. his militias they had no authority over Blake spoke to the women and scouted Ross, convinced no hostile Apaches reRegular troops. The letter filtered down the country. The statement has a ring mained in New Mexico, took issue with to Blake, who penned an indignant of truth. Las Cruces’ Rio Grande Repub- Blake’s expenses. Blake reported: “Many response: “The statement as to my lican summed up the prevailing opinion: citizens have sent their families away, demand from Captain Boyd for those “The entire uselessness of the United and all are on the defense. … We shall squaws is wholly false.” He denied that States troops in fighting Indians has been try and make it interesting for the Red Boyd had made any such statement well demonstrated lately.…The troops Devils in case they remain in the vicinor that he had threatened to use force. are being charged with cowardice. But ity much longer.” Blake’s version of the story varies con- we have hopes that our militia boys will Blake then revealed motivations that siderably from Boyd’s. According to do some good work.” cast a different light on his actions. Many

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PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS (NMHM), SANTA FE, NO. 07764

ritory than all of the money it cost.” Governor Ross directed Blake to reorganize the militia and gave him command of the four southwester n counties to establish a militia line between New Mexico and Arizona and along the Mexican border. “It is a weary, thankless job, so far as I am concerned,” the coloRegulars in dress uniform on parade at Fort Stanton in 1885. nel wrote, “and I settlers, he explained, were “in a very ex- shall cheerfully retire from the work if the cited frame of mind.” They didn’t trust governor so desires.” By early August he the Apache scouts and thought little had a cavalry regiment of 12 companies. better of Army troops. There was “a quiet When the renegades returned, the milbut determined move” to raise a force itia was ready, and so was the Army. to attack reservation Indians By that time all was forgiven. “The air was full of rumors of Indians in all directions, which was keeping up n September 11, 1885, Gethe excitement,” he said, and cattlemen ronimo and a small band and miners were impulsive. Blake conof Apaches shot a man cutcluded that the only way to keep his hotting poles, killed another in headed volunteers in line was to chan- ambush, murdered a teen herding cattle nel the fear and anger by ordering out and kidnapped his 11-year-old brother. Captain Blain’s company from Chloride Cavalry started from Fort Bayard and “and show the people that the governor militia from Hillsboro. The Apaches and territorial authorities were able and moved rapidly from the Mimbres River willing to do all that was necessary to toward the Gila wilderness, looting a protect the lives and property of the cabin and exchanging shots with milipeople in a legitimate way.” tiamen in close pursuit. The soldiers’ Blake wasn’t blowing smoke. New Mexi- horses were worn out, but so were the cans had previously threatened to orga- Apaches’ mounts. Captain Jesse Thompnize and wipe out reservation Apaches, son’s volunteers also rode west from and peaceful Mescaleros were even Lake Valley, covering some 200 miles then suffering attacks. Settlers were so in just two days. But once again the irate that they threatened to shoot on Apaches managed to slip the noose sight the Apache scouts. Major Wil- and find places to hide. cox complained that he couldn’t send Regulars and volunteers crisscrossed his scouts anywhere without an es- the region through October to no avail. cort. “I regret to have to make this state- Blake, meanwhile, working with Capment, coming from a people in whose tain Henry W. Sprole of the 8th Cavalry, interest these scouts were sent here,” proposed a plan to distribute soldiers he wrote. On August 17 he sent his “to act most effectively against hostile scouts back to Mescalero. bands of Indians and allow militia to Blake’s strategy worked, improving aid them with the least expense to the morale and silencing talk about attack- territory.” The Army accepted. ing the reservation, which, he wrote, In early November, Chihuahua and his “has been worth much more to the ter- group surprised a wood camp near Lake

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Valley, killing a man and looting the camp. The Indians continued north to the Mimbres Mountains and over the next several days openly stole stock, showing little concern of pursuit by military or militia. Blake and three militia units responded. On November 7 Chihuahua’s brother Ulzana, in his infamous raid, attacked two ranches farther south. Blake, Sprole and a militia unit investigated. At a ranch 22 miles from Deming they found the bodies of Andrew Yeater and his wife and heard the harrowing story of the Yeaters’ neighbor John Shy, who fought his way out of a burning house and saved his family. Ulzana, like his brother, roamed and raided in the Black Range and the Mimbres before recrossing the border in late December. Nine months later the Apache wars ended with Geronimo’s surrender. Colonel F.A. Blake remained in Socorro for a time, where he bought and sold land, dabbled in mining, ran a newspaper and involved himself in civic activities. The late Captain O.B. Boyd also gained a higher profile, thanks to his widow, Frances, who, like Elizabeth Custer, was determined that her husband not be forgotten. Mrs. Boyd, too, memorialized her husband in a memoir, and she pressed to have his body buried in the San Antonio National Cemetery, despite resistance from the secretary of war, who quibbled over cost. In 1967, a century after O.B. Boyd’s graduation from the U.S. Military Academy, his grandson Francis Orsemus Boyd, of Boonton, N.J., served as adjutant of the centennial event at West Point that brought more than 150 descendants from 26 states to honor the class of 1867. Sherry Robinson of Albuquerque, N.M., writes often about Apache Indians, including the story of the Apache couple Massai and Zanagoliche in the December 2012 Wild West “Indian Life” department. She is the author of Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as Told to Eve Ball (2003) and I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches (2013). For this article Robinson relied primarily on period military and militia correspondence.

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GHOST TOWNS

• An idyllic ghost town readily accessible from I-90, Burke, Idaho—3,700 feet above sea level in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains —was once a crowded site of violence and intrigue. Rich ore strikes at nearby Wallace in the early 1880s lured prospectors northward into Burke Canyon, where they hit valuable silver and lead deposits. In 1888 railroad crews completed a narrow-gauge line to Burke, and within a few years smelters and stamp mills dotted the valley. The district soon drew hundreds of hopeful miners and entrepreneurs, including Wyatt Earp and brothers, who ran a tent saloon in nearby Eagle City. • Built in a constricted canyon a mere 300 feet wide at its narrowest, Burke had scant room for its expanding population. Shop owners reportedly had to raise their awnings to allow trains to pass. Space was at such a premium that the 150-room Tiger Hotel, built on the canyon floor in 1887, necessarily straddled the main stream, and the railroad ran through its lobby. “Only heavy sleepers were put in the rooms above the railroad tracks,” noted the Spokane (Wash.) Daily Chronicle. • The Tiger’s lobby was the heart of Burke, through which coursed the businessmen and miners that were the town’s lifeblood. In a typical day during the hotel’s 1890s heyday five trains ran through the lobby, and its attached boardinghouse served 1,200 meals. • Famous for its space-saving ingenuity, Burke is also infamous for violent clashes between striking miners and company guards in July 1892. Tensions had heated

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By Carolyn Thomas and Steve Mauro

ALL PHOTOS BY CAROLYN THOMAS AND STEPHEN MAURO

Burke, Idaho

State Highway 4 is the only road to and through Burke, which is seven miles from I-90.

up when mine owners sought to break the strike by advertising in Midwestern newspapers for replacement workers. When groups of armed strikers met the newcomers, the owners hired Pinkerton guards to protect the replacements. • On the morning of July 11 replacement workers at Burke’s Frisco Mill noticed large numbers of armed union men gathering on the mountainside above them. Shots rang out, and a gun battle was soon raging. Unionists got the upper hand when they sent a boxful of stolen black powder careening down a flume into the four-story mine building, blowing it sky high. The replacement workers and guards raised the white flag, but the mine owners had the last word, expelling many strikers and prosecuting others. Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg declared martial law and sent hundreds of soldiers and national guardsmen into the canyon to keep the peace. • Violence erupted again in 1899 when, during another labor dispute, armed union miners seized a train in Burke and later dynamited the nearby Bunker Hill Mine. The violence in Burke Canyon was a precursor to similar episodes in Colorado, Montana, Nevada and Arizona.

• While silver wealth continued to flow from the region, canyon residents suffered further trials. In February 1910 successive avalanches erased neighboring Mace and hammered Burke, killing at least 20 people in the cramped canyon. (See “Disaster at Burke Canyon,” by Robert C. Belyk, December 2010 Wild West.) • A 1923 fire destroyed the Tiger Hotel and much of Burke. When rebuilt, most buildings were set back from the tracks to allow trains more passing room. • The canyon yielded silver into the 1970s, though the volume steadily diminished. People drifted away, and in 1954 the Tiger Hotel was demolished. “Most of the single mine workers stay in Wallace and drive back and forth to work,” the Spokane Daily Chronicle explained. “But many an old-timer will breathe a nostalgic sigh at the passing of a famous old landmark.” Burke’s mines had all closed by 1991, but in 2012 the Star Mine reopened. •Burke’s population peaked at 1,400 in 1910. About 300 people live in the canyon today. In 2001 residents rejected a buyout offer from the Environmental Protection Agency, which has declared the canyon one of the most contaminated reaches of the Coeur d’Alene basin.

Far left: In a narrow canyon bisected by Burke-Canyon Creek, Burke has limited real estate for any kind of residential housing. Left: The shells of longabandoned homes in the once overpopulated region dot the road leading to Burke. Some 300 people still live in the canyon.

Top: The Hecla Mining Co. built the concrete Star Mine building to replace a wooden mill destroyed in the 1923 fire. Above: These brick buildings followed the fire. Left: This fancy corbel-and-brick office building also lies abandoned.

COLLECTIONS

Within the Former Gallatin County Jail, The Pioneer Museum Captivates Visitors

Celebrates such Montanans as John Bozeman and Gary Cooper

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ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE PIONEER MUSEUM

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t is fitting that the pioneer most celebrated by the Pioneer Museum, operated by the Gallatin Historical Society in Bozeman, Montana, is the town founder— John Merin Bozeman. The Georgia native came to what would soon become Colorado Territory during the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush of 1858–61, but in 1862 he left, nearly broke, for a new gold strike at Grasshopper Creek in what would soon become Montana Territory. Before a town came to bear his name, a trail did. In spring 1863 Bozeman and trail guide John Jacobs scouted an overland wagon route from the Oregon Trail along the Platte River (in what would becomeWyoming Territory) to the goldfields of Virginia City. Between 1863 and 1866 some 3,500 people used the route. Before reaching the Gallatin Valley, the 450-mile trail passed through Cheyenne and Sioux country, posing a major problem for both would-be prospectors and the U.S. Army. By 1867 hostilities had all but shut down traffic on the Bozeman Trail, sparking Red Cloud’s War (aka the Bozeman War). After blazing his trail, Bozeman had taken to the Gallatin Valley, where in August 1864 he platted an agricultural community to raise wheat, corn and potatoes to feed the miners. The town of Bozeman was born. Bozeman himself recorded land claims, recruited new businesses, encouraged construction of the first flour mill in the valley and was later elected probate judge. In April 1867 Bozeman and partner Tom Cover, seeking a lucrative flour contract, headed for Fort C.F. Smith, the northernmost and newest of the three U.S. Army military posts on the Bozeman Trail. Along the way, on the south side of the Yellowstone River, Cover claimed Black-

The Gallatin Historical Society operates the Pioneer Museum in Bozeman, Mont.

feet Indians attacked the pair, although later historians have raised questions about his story. Cover suffered wounds but managed to escape. Bozeman died by the very trail named for him. The following year the Army abandoned the three forts and officially closed the trail to traffic, making Chief Red Cloud the victor— for the time being—of his war. The Pioneer Museum recounts the life of the trail/town founder, centering on an exhibit of various personal items. You’ll also learn about Fort Ellis. Four months after Bozeman’s death the United States established the fort just outside town to protect and support settlers moving into and through the Gallatin Valley. Townspeople in turn benefited financially from the presence of the fort, although twice in December 1867 soldiers destroyed the buildings of merchants found to be selling alcohol to other, less temperate sol-

By Linda Wommack

diers. In April 1876 the “Montana Column” departed Fort Ellis as part of the Army campaign to locate and conquer hostile Plains Indians, and troops from the fort also participated in the Nez Perce War of 1877. The museum itself shares space with the Gallatin Historical Society in the 1911 county jail. In 1977, when the jail was still operating, the newly formed society moved into the historic building. Once the last prisoners were transferred to other jails in 1982, the society made extensive renovations and turned the building into a museum. Many of the artifacts remain, as do a few of the original jail cells. The balcony above the main floor is partially supported by springs from former inmates’ beds. Other pioneers and artifacts get their due. Among the artifacts are wagons, stagecoaches and a keelboat. A main floor gallery considers the impact of the Great Sioux War of 1876–77 and features an arrowhead display. The museum’s gun collection includes 19th-century rifles and revolvers and a cannon used in skirmishes with Sioux warriors. One popular balcony exhibit commemorates actor Gary Cooper (1901–61), a Helena native and onetime Bozeman resident. The display includes some of Cooper’s personal items as well as memorabilia from his many Hollywood films, which include High Noon, The Westerner, Man of the West and The Hanging Tree. The Pioneer Museum more than lives up to its mission statement to preserve and promote the history of Gallatin County and southwest Montana. You’ll find it at 317 W. Main Street in downtown Bozeman. For more information visit www.pioneermuseum.org or call 406-522-8122.

Above: The lobby of the Pioneer Museum serves as a gateway to the rich history of Bozeman and environs. Right: This reconstructed cabin on the main floor reminds visitors of the hard but simple life on the Montana frontier. Far right: When possible, settlers strove for a civilized look.

Far left: This agricultural exhibit showcases a variety of farm implements used in the Gallatin Valley. In August 1864 John Bozeman platted the farming community to raise wheat, corn and potatoes to feed miners. Left: One of the original cells in the old Gallatin County Jail now welcomes short-term visitors.

GUNS OF THE WEST

This Springfield Trapdoor Carbine Belonged to Trumpeter John Martin

He carried more than a message at the Little Bighorn

I

was a breechloader with a hinged breechblock that opened like a trapdoor. The infantry rifle model had a 32 5∕8-inch barrel; the cavalry carbine a 22-inch barrel. Even though the 7th was one of the better-armed U.S. Army units at the time, historical and archeological studies have demonstrated that the Indians—many with Henry and Winchester repeaters— had the cavalry outgunned at the Little Bighorn. More than a century after the June 25–26 battle, sculptor and frontier militaria collector Glen Swanson bought the carbine that had been issued to John Martin. This Springfield, Serial No. 19573, may be the most historically signifi- The serial number remains legible on cant weapon traced to the this Battle of the Little Bighorn survivor. West’s most famous Indian wars engagement. which they are issued by the Ordnance The main evidence link- Department.” This regulation seems to ing the carbine to John forbid engraving or otherwise defacing Martin are the name J. a weapon. But Army book rules were not MARTIN crudely carved into always the rule on the frontier. In frontier Evidence that the Army issued this Springfield carbine the left side of the fore- Texas, Sergeant John B. Charlton—subto Martin includes the carving J. MARTIN in the fore-end. end and a letter “H” (for H ject of Captain Robert G. Carter’s 1926 VILLAGE. BE QUICK. BRING PACKS.W.W. COOKE. Company) carved into the stock. Indeed book The Old Sergeant’s Story—noted a P.S. BRING PACS [sic]. Custer, who wanted John Martin was with that comthe packs of ammunition for his immi- pany. A Corporal James Martin nent attack on the Indian village, did was also present at the Little not survive what followed on the battle- Bighorn, but he was in G Comfield. Martin, who remained with Cap- pany and was killed during tain Frederick Benteen, did survive. So, Major Marcus Reno’s retreat too, did his carbine. from the valley fight. Most members of the 7th Cavalry who Skeptics may quote from the rode toward the Little Bighorn in Mon- U.S. Army regulations of 1861, tana Territory in June 1876 carried Model which state in part, “All arms 1873 Springfield “Trapdoor” carbines and in the hands of the troops, 100 rounds of .45-70 ammunition in their whether browned or bright, belts and saddlebags. The Model 1873 will be kept in the state in The “H” carved into the stock points to H Company. ALL IMAGES: GLENWOOD J. SWANSON

talian immigrant Giovanni Crisostomo Martino (or Martini) is best known as John Martin, the 7th U.S. Cavalry bugler at the Battle of the Little Bighorn who delivered Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s famous last message (scrawled down by regimental adjutant 1st Lieutenant William Cooke): BENTEEN, COME ON. BIG

By Donald W. Moore

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A look at either side of John Martin’s Springfield, owned by sculptor and militaria collector Glen Swanson.

missing man who had left his horse beDuring their service, firing pins wear to hind, adding, “We discovered his name a unique shape, and guns leave distincscratched on his carbine: O SWALD , of tive extractor marks on the cartridge case I troop.” That inscription is like head. Similar to fingerprints, the J. MARTIN on this carbine. these markings can match As part of the Custer Batthe case to an individual tlefield Firearms Identiweapon. Only 17 Little fication Project (which Bighorn weapons have ran from 1984 until been so certified. For completed in 1996), further information archeologist Douglas about the firearms Scott and firearms exidentification analysis, pert Dick Harmon docsee Chapter 6 (written umented more than 150 by Scott and Harmon) firearms with good proveof Swanson’s 2004 book nance and potential ties to the G.A. Custer: His Life and Times. Battle of the Little Bighorn. In the The sling ring is missing from wake of an August the Martin carbine. 1983 range fire that Above: This original cartridge case In d i a n s o f t e n re burned off some 700 was a 90 percent match to Martin’s moved these rings acres of ground cov- carbine. Below: The test cartridge because they rattled er at the battlefield, fired to study the gun’s “fingerprints.” too much, but the a search with metal carbine shows no detectors turned up more than other signs—brass tack deco2,000 cartridge cases and rations, rawhide or wire bullets. Scott and Harrepairs—that Indians mon certified that a carmight have used it. Still, tridge case found withan Indian or some othin 10 feet of the moner soldier besides Marument on Custer Hill tin probably fired this (aka Last Stand Hill) weapon during the was a 90 percent match fight on Custer Hill. to Martin’s carbine, even Benteen pointed out though Martin was not at that Martin’s horse was that location himself (havtwice hit by gunfire on his ing earlier delivered the message ride to deliver Custer’s message. to Benteen and remained at the Reno- One of the bullets might have hit the Benteen defensive position). sling ring, breaking it and causing the

carbine to become detached. It’s also possible that before his hard ride Martin discarded the carbine to avoid it banging against him and his horse, perhaps handing it to a fellow trooper who was having trouble with his own carbine. During the fierce fight several carbines failed when heat-swollen copper cartridge cases

A close-up of the hammer, which someone other than Martin worked at the Last Stand.

jammed the breeches and had to be dug out with pocketknives. One can speculate on several scenarios involving this particular carbine (as is the case with Custer’s movements after Martin rode off to deliver the message). Strong evidence suggests the gun had been issued to Martin, and that at some point in the battle he and it parted company. But someone else almost certainly fired the carbine at the Last Stand. JUNE 2013

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REVIEWS

Must See, Must Read

George Armstrong Custer and his June 1876 Last Stand—in print and on-screen By John Koster

getting killed twice—to see the Indians’ side of it. He believed they would have reported to their agencies, given adequate time, and that battle was forced on them. Or maybe he just had the sense to be scared.

BOOKS

Custer in ’76 (1976, by Walter Mason Camp, edited by Kenneth Hammer): Inveterate researcher Camp (1867–1925) interviewed every Little Bighorn survivor he could find—officer, trooper, scout or friendly or hostile Indian. Those firsthand accounts, allowing for some tricks of memory, make this book indispensable. Camp spoke to veterans’ groups without provoking outrage, but Custerphiles sometimes find him hostile, as the verbatim accounts by enlisted men and Indians alike suggest the battle was a bit of a mess, and because his research shows that several troopers died away from the central battle. The Custer Myth (1953, by Colonel William A. Graham): W.A. Graham collected detailed officers’ accounts, enlisted men’s recollections and Indian narratives along with period newspaper accounts. Second only to Camp, he offered a firsthand look at the Little Bighorn by survivors of both sides. Custerphiles find Graham hostile to Custer, perhaps because he freely sourced 7th Cavalry Captain Frederick Benteen, who was critical of his commander. Graham also mentioned a possible Little Bighorn survivor—which was a no-no. Indian Fights and Fighters (1904, by Cyrus Townsend Brady): Brady (1861– 1920), a journalist and historian who was ordained a priest in 1890, collected accounts from previous writers and firsthand sources, including the blunt and

ferocious account of the Little Bighorn fight that Lakota warrior Rain-in-theFace related to interviewerW. Kent Thomas in 1894. Rain provided gory details and claimed that superior Indian firepower had broken the soldiers’ morale and induced panic. His account, though deeply offensive to some Last Stand aficionados, is largely substantiated by the work of Richard Fox (see below). Archaeology, History and Custer’s Last Battle (1993, by Richard Allen Fox Jr.): Fox attributes the destruction of Custer’s command to massive Indian firepower, as claimed by Rain-in-the-Face and other witnesses. This version splits the difference between Custer as bungler and Custer as betrayed genius. Nobody, hero or maniac, could have stood up to the kind of gunfire Fox describes. His archaeology was brilliant, though his writing is dense in places. Custerphiles try to detour around this book, which centers on the examination of spent slugs, cartridge cases and skeletal remains with forensic precision. The detour does not work. With Custer on the Little Bighorn (1996, by William O. Taylor, edited by Greg Martin): Taylor, a private with Major Marcus Reno’s contingent, reports a similar avalanche of lead, and he was there to flinch at it. His description of the Reno attack and rebuff and the frantic flight from the timber across the stream doesn’t do either Reno or Custer any favors, but this one-hitch trooper in the 7th Cavalry was objective enough—despite nearly

ON-SCREEN

On the Little Bighorn, or Custer’s Last Stand (1909, not available on VHS or DVD): This silent-era reenactment directed by the opportunistic William Selig featured actual Indian veterans of the battle, including 7th Cavalry scout Curly (or Curley, pictured), who looks embarrassed on-screen as a man in his 50s trying to lure a fearless, laughing Custer away to safety as his command collapses around him. This grainy film exists only in fragments from later documentaries—a full version would be worth its weight in Black Hills gold dust. They Died With Their Boots On (1941,on DVD, Warner Home Video): You bet your boots they did! The most rousing Custer film ever made makes itself unforgettable by casting Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Anthony Quinn and 16 real Indians speaking Lakota, despite its fair share of factual howlers —e.g., a charge in echelon with sabers followed by a total wipeout. Director Raoul Walsh also unfairly depicts the entire 7th Cavalry as a collection of drunks, helpless without Custer. The action scenes were filmed in Southern California, but the U.S. Army still had horse cavalry in 1941, and the mounted drill in this movie puts it in a class by itself.

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Chief Crazy Horse (1955, not available on VHS or DVD): Victor Mature plays the Lakota warrior as a muscular monogamist. The film’s account from the Indian point of view was not a novelty: Preceding it were the pro-Indian Broken Arrow (1950) and White Feather (1955). Director George Sherman beautifully handles the Crazy Horse power dream scene, but brand-name actors and solid production values stretched the film’s budget to the point where Sherman had to leave out Custer’s Last Stand. Black Shawl (Suzan Ball) mentions Custer as a menace, but the colonel never shows up on camera. Crazy Horse dies at the hands of Little Big Man (Ray Danton), a jealous Lakota, not those of a U.S. post guard. Son of the Morning Star (1991, on VHS, Republic Pictures): This made-for-TV movie was a massacre in terms of ratings but still nabbed four Emmy Awards. Melissa Mathison based her screenplay on the late Evan S. Connell’s nonfiction book of the same name, and the Last Stand is a lot closer to reality than the one depicted in They DiedWith Their Boots On. Unfortunately, Gary Cole and Rosanna Arquette are not Errol and Olivia. Rodney Grant was a plausible Crazy Horse, but Floyd Red Crow Westerman as Sitting Bull looked about 90 and feeble. The real Sitting Bull was half that age and tough. Western film buffs take note: The interpreter in the White House scene gets so far ahead of Red Cloud (Nick Ramus) that we hear the noble speech translated into English before he says it in Lakota. Twilight Zone:“The 7th Is Made up of Phantoms” (1963, Season 5, Episode 10, on DVD): This Twilight Zone episode gives us a National Guard crew in an obsolescent M5 Stuart tank beguiled by spooky noises as they ap74

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proach the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn on maneuvers. They press on without the tank—bad move. Director (and ex-paratrooper) Rod Serling’s take was “poor Custer” patriotism and sheer fantasy, but so was just about any cinematic version you can name.

BOOK REVIEWS

He Rode With Butch and Sundance: The Story of Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan, by Mark T. Smokov, University of North Texas Press, Denton, 2012, $29.95. Opening his biography of the outlaw known as Kid Curry, Mark Smokov writes, “Harvey Logan…has generally been portrayed as a cold-blooded killer, without any compassion or conscience, possessed of limited intelligence.” The author then proceeds to shatter that myth with mesmerizing detail in this definitive biography of a member of the Holein-the-Wall Gang, aka the Wild Bunch. Born in Iowa in 1867, Curry came of age in Kansas City, Mo., and ultimately moved with an older brother to cowboy in Montana Territory. There Curry killed a neighboring rancher and fled, turning to rustling and, eventually, robbing banks and trains. Smokov argues that Curry wasn’t just a member of the Wild Bunch’s “Train Robbers’ Syndicate” but its head, adding that no solid evidence even links Butch Cassidy to any train robbery. Finally, he argues persuasively that Curry indeed was killed after a train robbery outside Parachute, Colo., in 1904. He Rode With Butch and Sundance is one of the most revealing offerings to Hole-inthe-Wall Gang history published in years. Johnny D. Boggs The Last Outlaws: The Lives and Legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, by Thom Hatch, New American Library (a division of Penguin Group), New York, 2013, $26.95. Tradition holds that Butch Cassidy was

the leader of the Wild Bunch outlaw gang and that the Sundance Kid was his right-hand man. Author Thom Hatch goes along with that sometimes-debated notion in his 350-page dual biography of these legendary Western characters. He calls Cassidy “the mastermind” and says that members of the loosely organized gang “would come and go depending on whether or not Butch needed their help with a robbery, or if their own criminal endeavors beckoned them elsewhere.” Hatch, the author of Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn: An Encyclopedia and an award-winning book about Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle, adds, “If Butch was the brains of the gang, the man who ascended to stand at Butch’s side with six-guns in his hands was Harry Longabaugh [Sundance].” The author does concede that Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan was “perhaps the most dangerous character involved with the Wild Bunch.” Richard Patterson wrote the solid Butch Cassidy: A Biography (1998) and Donna B. Ernst the well-researched The Sundance Kid: The Life of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh (2009). But it’s understandable that someone would go for a two-in-one biography, since Butch and Sundance, though they weren’t blood brothers, are linked in our heads as much as Frank and Jesse James. Not that Butch lacked other good friends, but he and Sundance (with Ethel Place) did escape together to Argentina and, after additional robberies in South America, died side by side in Bolivia. That last point is still debated. According to Hatch, “Every indication from a logical perspective” points to their violent deaths, though the author does allow for alternative “endings” in his last chapter. Editor Colorado’s Landmark Hotels, by Linda R. Wommack, Filter Press, Palmer Lake, Colo., 2012, $16.95 (comes with a four-song CD). In her sixth book about the history of her native state LindaWommack examines in 205 pages (with plenty of black-and-white photos) 30 Colorado

hotels, 22 of which began operations in the 19th century, and all of which are on national, state or local historic listings. Included here are such early lodgings as the 1862 Peck House (running water arrived in 1872), in Empire, and the 1874 Cliff House (tunnels once ran from the hotel to a natural spring spa across the street), in Manitou Springs. Other gems include Denver’s 1892 Brown Palace Hotel, which became one of the most luxurious hotels in the West, and Glenwood Springs’ 1893 Hotel Colorado, the acclaimed “Grande Dame” of Colorado. “Colorado’s landmark hotels not only brought a sense of refinement to their town, but often became the social hub of the town,” writes Wommack, who regularly pens Wild West’s “Collections” department. “Many of these hotels hosted celebrities, U.S. presidents and European royalty.” And let’s not forget ghosts: The October 2011 WildWest told of such spirits in the Brown Palace and Hotel Colorado.Wommack relates more about those haunts as well as other “visited” inns, such as the 1909 Stanley Hotel, where, reportsWommack, “Ghosts have reportedly roamed since long before Stephen King’s visit that resulted in the best-selling novel The Shining.” The book includes a bonus CD of four hotel-themed songs by Denver musician Jon Chandler. It all makes for good nighttime reading and listening, whether or not you have a reservation. Editor With Golden Visions Bright Before Them: Trails to the Mining West, 1849–1852, by Will Bagley, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2012, $45. So Rugged and Mountainous, Will Bagley’s history of the overland trails from their formation through the 1840s emigrations to Oregon Territory and the Salt Lake Valley, amassed an impressive collection of firsthand accounts, in effect allowing the emigrants to relate their own stories. In his novel approach Bagley culled numerous emigrant accounts of particularly important sites—the start of a cutoff, say, or a particularly difficult mountain passage—

and presented them chronologically, thus relating a cohesive account of the march west and its associated hardships. Bagley’s skill at unearthing a variety of firsthand accounts has again born fruit in With Golden Visions Bright Before Them, the second volume in his planned threepart series on the overland trails. Golden Visions details trail life during the California Gold Rush years 1849–52. The narrative inches along with the Forty-Niners, sharing their views on the passing geography, flora and fauna from the wideopen plains along the North Platte River to the death march of the Forty-Mile Desert and the harsh, forbidding peaks of the High Sierras. The detailed, almost day-by-day description of the 1849 march of the goldseekers is both the book’s greatest strength —especially for fellow researchers— and the greatest source of frustration for readers wanting a complete history of the Gold Rush. Bagley’s fixation on the trails eschews a more macroscopic view of the socioeconomic factors that propelled men and women to seek gold and the effects of the rush on Indian tribes and U.S. policy, beyond what may be contained in the journals and letters he quotes. After an exhaustive look at each major geographic barrier the westbound Forty-Niners faced, Bagley frustratingly halts his subjects’ narratives just when they reach the goldfields, while he doubles back to describe unwise cutoffs like the Lassen Trail and Hudspeth Cutoff. Still, Bagley’s fidelity to the gold rushers on the trail and dedication to relating their stories as they lived them, including both the banality and transcendence of their passage, makes With Golden Visions the most accurate and exhaustive history of the overland trails during the Gold Rush years. Steve Mauro Custer, by Larry McMurtry, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2012, $35. In the wake of such monumental books on George Armstrong Custer by writers like Frederick Whittaker, W.A. Graham, Jay

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Monaghan, Robert M. Utley, Evan S. Connell, James Donovan and Nathaniel Philbrick, what else could Larry McMurtry say? Plenty. The prolific Pulitzerand Oscar-winning writer tackles the Boy General and the Battle of the Little Bighorn in this “short” history. Though best known as a novelist (The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dove), McMurtry has also penned brief nonfiction books about Western figures (Crazy Horse: A Life, The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America). Clocking in under 300 pages, Custer is rich in illustrations and in McMurtry’s pontifications. One photo is captioned “Custer With His Horse, Comanche,” but Comanche belonged to Captain Myles Keogh, and it is enlisted man Gustave Korn that holds the horse in the photo. McMurtry covers little new ground, and while this book is rather sloppy for a writer of his stature, it does offer insight when he puts history in contemporary context. While writing a screenplay in southern Montana in the late 1970s, McMurtry spent time on the Crow and Cheyenne reservations and astutely noticed the following difference between the Crows, who served as Army scouts, and the Cheyennes, who fought alongside the defiant Lakotas against Custer: “In two weeks on the Cheyenne reservations I had maybe two conversations,” the author writes. “In one day on the Crow reservation I had at least a dozen.” Custer scholars might scoff at McMurtry’s history, but he certainly has the ability to put the legendary, controversial figure before the masses—one more time. Johnny D. Boggs Canadians With Custer, by Mary Thomas, Dundurn, Toronto, Canada, 2012, $24.99. Historians have dissected the Battle of the Little Bighorn into a multitude of aspects and foci, now including the nationalities of some of the 7th Cavalry troopers. In Canadians With Custer, Ontario journalist Thomas fo76

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cuses on the 17 Canucks who, for motives ranging from money to adventure, went south of the border to serve in the U.S. Army during the Civil War and in the Indian wars thereafter. Thomas weaves these individuals into a running narrative of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s activities, from his arrival at Fort Riley, Kan., in 1866 to that final 1876 rendezvous on the Greasy Grass in Montana Territory. Much of the story is a recap of events familiar to WildWest readers, though perhaps a bit less so to lay readers north of the 49th parallel. For more than half the book the only Canadian careers pursued are those of 1st Lt. William Winer Cooke, who got to know George and Tom Custer during the Civil War and rode with them through their Indian campaigns, and two subsequent enlistees, 1st Lts. Donald McIntosh and James George McAdams. More joined up from 1875 on, and each played a role in the drama culminating in that Last Stand, in which Cooke—and his distinctive whiskers—would play a prominent role. Subsequent chapters describe the fates of the survivors and the oftenperipatetic dead alike, such as the return of Cooke’s body to his hometown of Hamilton, and McIntosh’s shift at the hands of farmers in the 1920s, followed by a return to the Reno Battlefield in 1995. In any case, Thomas makes her case for the Canadians’ place in the Custer saga. Jon Guttman Custer Catastrophe at the Little Big Horn 1876, compiled and introduced by Richard Upton, Upton and Sons, El Segundo, Calif., 2012, $55. Volume 11 in the fine Battle of the Little Big Horn series also has a long subtitle: Early Rare Accounts and Publications by Early Writers That Form the Basis for Much of the Current Books and Programs of Today. Buffs of the most written-about Indian wars catastrophe will delight in seeing all in one volume nine scarce publications, now in nine chapters—“Major Reno Vindicated,” by Colonel William A. Graham; “General George A. Custer and

the Battle of the Little Big Horn,” by General Edward S. Godfrey; “General Custer’s Last Fight as Seen by Two Moons,” by Hamlin Garland; “Custer’s Last Battle,” by Captain Charles King; “The Custer Fight,” by Fred Dustin;“A Story of the Custer Massacre,” by Jacob Adams; “General George A. Custer: A Lost Trail and the Gall Saga,” by Charles Kuhlman; “Last Summer’s Expedition Against the Sioux and Its Great Catastrophe,” by General John Gibbon; and “Hunting Sitting Bull,” also by Gibbon. In case you missed it, Volume 10 in the series was Where the Custer Fight Began: Undermanned and Overwhelmed, the RenoValley Fight, by DonaldW. Moore (who acknowledges a big assist from collector Glen Swanson). Editor Deliverance From the Little Big Horn: Doctor Henry Porter and Custer’s 7th Cavalry, by Joan Nabseth Stevenson, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2012, $24.95. Not every soldier died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, of course. The many wounded in Major Marcus Reno’s command received treatment from 28-yearold Henry Porter, the only one of three surgeons to survive the 7th Cavalry’s June 1876 ordeal in Montana Territory. Reno’s disastrous attack in the valley was followed by a marathon fight for survival and then transportation of the wounded to the steamer Far West for the 700-mile journey down the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers to the hospital at Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory. Author Joan Stevenson examines the battle and aftermath from a medical perspective and shines the spotlight on the unsung Porter, who was an acting assistant surgeon (a civilian surgeon serving the Army under contract). Porter, writes Stevenson, “attended to the wounds of 68 soldiers and two Indian scouts and performed surgeries, including two amputations.” The surviving surgeon missed out on greater recognition 22 years after the battle when nominated for—but not awarded—the Medal of Honor. At the field

hospital on what became known as Reno Hill, Porter spent the moonless night of the 25th doing the best he could to stop the bleeding and ease the pain despite the scant water supply and his expectation at any moment “to be murdered and, perhaps, tortured and burned.” Porter was a first responder and so much more. Editor Modoc Vengeance: The 1873 Modoc War in Northern California & Southern Oregon, compiled and edited by Daniel Woodhead III, self-published in San Francisco, 2012, $19.95, [email protected]. The subtitle says it all: As Reported in the Newspapers of the Day. The Modoc War was well covered by reporters at the front, and their most descriptive day-to-day accounts in the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Herald, New York Times, San Francisco Call-Bulletin, Yreka Union and Yreka Journal appear here, arranged chronologically by dateline. Author Daniel Woodhead III provides brief background information on the war and the aftermath. He points out the war was costly both monetarily ($420,000) and in casualties (68 soldiers killed, 75 wounded). Captain Jack’s Modoc might have lost as few as 16 of his followers. The back of the book is loaded with period sketches, modern color photographs and maps. A Modoc War Map makes a fine touring map. Most of the area where the Modoc War was fought is now the Lava Beds National Monument, well worth a visit. Editor

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MOVIE REVIEW

Django Unchained, The Weinstein Company, 2012, R. Director Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, Django Unchained, an Antebellum South– Spaghetti Western, is no history lesson. It’s a flashy, crude, 165minute exercise in historical fantasy that, despite its deficiencies in pace and plot, JUNE 2013

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makes for a bloody good time. Like his Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django more than happily bends history for the sake of entertainment purposes, which is just fine, as it is so thoroughly entertaining. A third of the way through the film our heroes, Django (Jamie Foxx) and Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), come in conflict with a bumbling group of Ku Klux Klan members. The history books explain that the Klan showed up post–Civil War, while the action here unfolds entirely in 1858. But by the time the film’s absurdly hilarious KKK scene takes place, in which a number of raid-minded Klansmen quibble about their subpar white hoods with misshapen eyeholes, the viewer realizes that these not-so-tallin-the-saddle individuals are not necessarily planted in the Old West but, like characters appearing in Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and Basterds (among others), in the very mad and fun “Tarantino World.” And throughout Django’s first act, which takes place “somewhere in Texas,” it is assuredly mad and fun. A well-spoken bounty hunter and German immigrant, Dr. Shultz, purchases a slave named Django to help him catch and kill the Brittle brothers for reward. Django, presumably, is one of the few people who knows what the brothers look like, and in exchange for his help, Shultz will give him his freedom. But as Shultz himself points out, Django is a “natural” at the bounty-hunting business, and the duo stay on together throughout the winter. It appears the film will turn into something resembling a buddy cop flick (in this case buddy bounty hunters), and part of me wished it had. But a montage and a title card later, our duo is suddenly off to take care of a matter more serious and personal (at least to the title character)—going to Mississippi to free Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). She’s a “pleasure slave” at Candyland, the plantation owned by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a Southerner who is a Francophile but can’t speak French, who has his alcohol served in coconuts, and who is a little too close to sister Lara Lee (Laura Cayouette). Candie is deliciously evil, and DiCaprio dives headfirst into his insanity, delivering probably the most off-the-wall performance 78

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of his career. Candie also has a penchant for the fictional“Mandingo fighting,” gladiatorial death matches between slaves. It is by posing as rich Mandingo-buyers that Schultz and Django plan to infiltrate Candyland and save Broomhilda. Tarantino’s knack for long, dialogueheavy, sometimes tense, sometimes hilarious, sometimes both at once scenes defines his authorial style, and such scenes prove the highlights of Django. The best usually involve either Samuel L. Jackson’s conniving and vulgar Stephen (Candie’s right-hand slave) or the long-winded, Oscar-winning Waltz. But this formula wears thin as the film ventures into its third hour, during which Tarantino subjects us to not one but two cartoonish gunfights, with blood spurting out like shaken Big Red soda, and to an overly long exchange with Australian (why Australian?) slave traders in the desert. Tarantino is guilty of overwriting in places, and as the film winds down, so may its audience, even amid all the violence. If that’s what keeps Django Unchained from being a great movie, it still remains a very good one—good enough to receive a best-picture Oscar nomination. Both duos of the film—Christoph Waltz and Jamie Foxx (the good), and DiCaprio and Jackson (the bad and ugly rolled into one) —work splendidly against one another. As a result the audience is rewarded with some of the most entertaining scenes of the year, such as the climactic dinner at Candyland or the Brittle brothers’ bounty at the plantation of Big Daddy (Don Johnson). Yet one hesitates to place Django at the summit of Tarantino World pictures, because even though Django ultimately proves himself worthy of the handle “the fastest gun in the South,” it just takes him a little too long to get there. Louis Lalire

DVD REVIEW

Custer’s Last Man: I Survived Little Big Horn, History, 2011, 88 minutes, $19.99. Wouldn’t we all like to know every detail surrounding the last hour or so of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer’s imme-

diate command at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876? And more than a few of us are dying to know whether any soldier survived that one-sided fight known as Custer’s Last Stand. Call it “the great 19th-century history mystery,” as does James Donovan, the author of A Terrible Glory and a contributor to this documentary from History (formerly, the History Channel). Custer’s Last Man opens by prefacing and outlining the Battle of the Little Bighorn—a 7th Cavalry defeat at the hands of Lakotas and Northern Cheyennes that struck the nation with 9/11 proportions. The traditional view holds that the “famous, celebrated and reviled” Custer and every member of his five companies (the other companies under Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen were elsewhere on the battlefield) perished that day. Through the years, however, historians have argued for the existence of survivors, or at least soldiers who were able to evade the center of the storm and temporarily cheat death. This documentary centers on Frank Finkel, who 44 years after the battle told a newspaperman he was, as a C Company sergeant, the lone survivor of Custer’s Last Stand. Custer’s Last Man analyzes Finkel’s detailed claims of having enlisted in the U.S. Army under the name “August Finckle,” been bloodied and blinded in the battle but still able to ride far from the battlefield and, eventually, become a fugitive deserter from Custer’s fiasco. It is no tall tale, insists talking head John Koster, the author of the book Custer Survivor and an article on that subject in this issue of Wild West (see P. 30). Koster lays out his argument, while other speakers comment pro or con, a treatment that raises many interesting questions, such as, Why did Finkel wait so long to come forward? Don’t expect any concrete answers. It’s a fascinating story nonetheless, even if one ultimately rejects Koster’s assertion that Finckle and Finkel was the same person. The documentary leaves one feeling that perhaps instead of arguing over what’s truth and what’s a lie, it is best just to relish the mystery. Of course, for some Little Bighorn buffs that is impossible. Louis Lalire

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Cheyenne Frontier Days, Wyoming

© 2013 BY SCOTT FOLEY, SFPHOTO.PHOTOSHELTER.COM; INSET: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

On Saturday, August 27, 1910, “First King of the Bulldoggers” Buffalo Vernon (inset) introduced steer wrestling to a standingroom-only crowd at Cheyenne Frontier Days.“Bullying”him on from a flag-draped review stand was Theodore Roosevelt. “[Vernon] wore a leather bandage around his wrist,” the president recalled.“Told me he had broken his wrist the day before.” That comes with the territory when a man throws himself from the back of a galloping horse to quite literally grab a steer by the horns and wrestle it to the ground. Consider the bulldogger at right, a recent Frontier Days competitor. Better yet, see for yourself at this year’s“Daddy of ’em All” rodeo [www.cfdrodeo.com],July 19–28.

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