Wild West 2015-06

THE AMERICAN FRONTIER California’s ‘Grape Rush’ Catlin’s Cartoon Collection PLUS: CUSTER’S ARIKARA SOLDIERS CUSTER’S ARIKARA SOLDIERS At the Little Bi...

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LONE STAR HIT MAN FELIX ROBERT JONES

THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

CUSTER’S ARIKARA SOLDIERS At the Little Bighorn At the Little Bighorn some ran, others fought to the death

PLUS:

Catlin’s Cartoon Collection Wickenburg Stagecoach Massacre

— Little Brave, an Arikara with Reno killed in action on June 25, 1876

JUNE 2015

California’s ‘Grape Rush’

Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon

We are all travelers, each of us looking for ourselves in every place we go. TRUE

FALSE

Adventure that Feeds the Soul. newmexico.org

LARRY D. EDGAR, WESTERN HERITAGE STUDIO, CODY, WYO.

FEATURES

Arikara scouts ride with Lt. Col. George Custer and interpreter Fred Gerard to the Crow’s Nest, in L.D. Edgar’s The Last Sunrise.

Cover Story

26 The Arikaras: Custer’s 13th Company

50 Stage Fright: The Wickenburg Massacre

By John Koster Although often called scouts, the Arikaras who covered Major Marcus Reno’s left ﬂank during the valley attack at the Little Bighorn were U.S. soldiers.

By R. Michael Wilson On November 5, 1871, a group thought to be Indians ambushed a stagecoach 8 miles west of this Arizona Territory town and slaughtered six travelers.

34 Catlin’s Cartoon Collection

56 Kilroy and the California Cop Killer

A portfolio of 14 oil paintings— not fully realized but certainly nothing to be sniffed at—from 19th-century artist George Catlin’s second Indian Gallery.

By R. Michael Wilson Ed Moore was, as one newspaper put it, a “lawless and desperate scoundrel,” and he proved it by gunning down a Nevada City, Calif., special policeman.

42 Lone Star Hit Man By Jerry J. Lobdill Paid assassin Felix Robert Jones came from the same Texas County as “Killin’ Jim” Miller and worked with some of the same partners in crime.

ON THE COVER: Little Brave, one of the Arikara soldiers who marched with Lt. Col. George Custer’s command in June 1876 and attacked the enemy village with Major Marcus Reno’s force on the 25th, died in action at the Little Bighorn. (Cover photo: Glenwood Swanson Collection; colorization by Slingshot Studio, North Hampton, N.H.)

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DEPARTMENTS 3 4 5 6

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Editor’s Letter HistoryNet Reader Letters Roundup

23 Art of the West By Johnny D. Boggs Photography has come a long way since the 1880s, but Texas photographer Robb Kendrick is compelled to capture cowboys on tintypes.

C. Lee Noyes, editor of the Battleﬁeld Dispatch for the Custer Battleﬁeld Historical & Museum Association, shares 10 lessons from the Little Bighorn, author Win Blevins receives the WWA’s Owen Wister Award and Wild West mourns longtime contributor Roger Jay.

24 Indian Life By John Koster The Hunkpapa Left Hand served as a U.S. Army scout but seemingly switched sides and was among the honored Lakota dead at the Little Bighorn.

12 Interview By Johnny D. Boggs Canadian author Brian Dippie is an authority on paintings by George Catlin, paintings of George Custer and the American West in general.

15 Westerners

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By Kellen Cutsforth Vroman, a cozy Colorado community on that state’s southeastern plains, owed its existence to sugar beets and the railroad.

62 Collections By Linda Wommack The village of Laws, Calif., is no more, but the Laws Railroad Museum & Historic Site still draws visitors to Inyo County.

16 Gunﬁghters and Lawmen By Chip Carlson Accused cattle thief Tom Waggoner suffered the wrath of Wyoming cattle barons. By John Koster Known to the Arikaras as Swift Buffalo, interpreter Fred Gerard was with those who crossed the Little Bighorn River and with the survivors who made a stand atop Reno Hill.

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60 Ghost Towns

Photos from two Western last stands—one featuring tamales, the other hot dogs.

18 Pioneers and Settlers

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64 Guns of the West

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By George Layman It wasn’t just frontier heroes who sought to carry or crow about embellished long arms.

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20 66 Reviews

20 Western Enterprise By Sherry Monahan Not into sour Mission grapes, early Californians, notably Agoston Haraszthy and Charles Krug, planted and pushed superior vines and wines.

C. Lee Noyes looks at notable books and movies about the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Plus reviews of recent books on the legendary Calamity Jane, Nevada lawman Tom Logan and trick roper Bee Ho Gray.

72 Go West! The cavernous realm near Carlsbad, N.M.

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Visit our WEBSITE www.WildWestMag.com for these great exclusives:

Online Extras

June 2015

An Extended Interview With Brian Dippie “When it comes to choosing between [Frederic] Remington and [Charles] Russell, my oldest loyalty means I have to give the nod to Charlie as my favorite,” says the Western art history expert from Canada.

More About Photographer Robb Kendrick “Somebody wanted me to shoot chefs in tintypes, but I had no interest,” explains the Texas photographer known for his modern tintypes of cowboys. “Then it just becomes a bit of a gimmick.”

www.WildWestMag.com Discussion: In the Southwest the U.S. Army used Apache scouts to hunt Navajos and other Apaches. To the north the Army used a handful of Lakota scouts, as well as scouts from various friendly tribes—Crow, Pawnee, Shoshone, Arikara— to track down renegade Lakotas and Cheyennes. What do you think of the use of such Indian scouts, and how do you rate their respective performances in the Indian wars?

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JUNE 2015

The Battle of the Rosebud, A to Z In Wild West circles June turns our thoughts to the Battle of the Little Bighorn. But June also brings recollections of this other Montana Territory battle, fought just a week earlier in the same campaign.

John Coleman—Art of the West In his bronze sculpture 1876 the California-born artist depicts Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Gall, three of the legendary Indian participants in—and victors of—the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

EDIT O R’ S LET T ER

Ree-membering the Arikaras in June EDITOR IN CHIEF

Michael A. Reinstein Dionisio Lucchesi William Koneval

Roger L. Vance CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER PRESIDENT ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER ®

Vol. 28, No. 1

June 2015

Gregory J. Lalire

EDITOR

Mark Drefs David Lauterborn Martin A. Bartels Lori Flemming SPECIAL CONTRIBUTORS

Gregory F. Michno Johnny D. Boggs

DIGITAL

Brian King Gerald Swick Barbara Justice

CORPORATE

Paul Zimny Greg Ferris David Steinhafel Karen G. Johnson Rob Wilkins George Clark

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PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA

hen our thoughts deploy back to the June 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, our mind’s eye sometimes looks past Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the 7th U.S. Cavalry, and we see Indians, a hell of a lot of Indians! We easily visualize the Lakotas and Cheyennes camped along the Greasy Grass. And we picture the ones allied with Custer—particularly Curley, the Crow scout who ﬁrst reported the Last Stand to outsiders, and Bloody Knife, the half-Sioux (his father, like Sitting Bull, was a Hunkpapa) who was Custer’s favorite scout, though he would die beside Major Marcus Reno during the ill-fated valley attack. But others of the Indians with the soldiers are a blur, if we see them at all. They are the Arikaras, sometimes called “Rees.” Bloody Knife himself was born to an Arikara mother, and far more Arikaras (40) than Crows (a half-dozen) rode with the 7th toward the Little Bighorn. What’s more, as John Koster points out in “The Arikaras: Custer’s 13th Company” (P. 26), while Custer sometimes called the Arikaras “scouts,” they were ofﬁcially American soldiers who, unlike Indian scouts, “received government uniforms and weapons and were subject to military orders.” The Arikaras and the Platte River Pawnees probably had the same ancestors in what would become Nebraska. The early Arikaras migrated north along the Missouri River into future South Dakota, and, after a series of smallpox epidemics, numbered about 3,000 when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark reached their villages in October 1804. The Arikaras, like the neighboring Mandans and Hidatsas, mostly grew corn and beans and sometimes hunted buffalo. The Sioux, full-time hunters, called these agriculture-minded Indians “corn eaters.” But at the time the Arikaras did join the Teton Sioux in raids on their Mandan and Hidatsa neighbors. Frontier alliances kept changing. In 1823 U.S. soldiers and Sioux allies fought the Arikaras, and after another smallpox epidemic in 1836–37 and still another in 1856 the three devastated farming tribes grew closer to one another, with the Sioux becoming their

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mutual enemy. In 1862 the Arikaras, Hidatsas and Mandans were living together at Like-a-Fishhook village in future North Dakota, and in 1870 the U.S. government established the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation for the tribes. Arikara men began scouting for the U.S. Army and served as guides for Custer’s Black Hills Expedition in 1874. “By 1876,” writes Koster, “the Arikaras, badly outnumbered and targeted as white allies, had more reason than ever to side with soldiers trying to contain the powerful Sioux.” The Arikaras at the Little Bighorn turned in a mixed performance. About a halfdozen of them rushed the Sioux pony herd, captured some horses and took off with Sioux warriors in pursuit. Nine Arikaras never crossed the river, but 22 were on Reno’s left ﬂank as his command advanced on the enemy village. In the failed ﬁght in the valley, some Arikaras fought valiantly and two, Bob-tailed Bull and Little Brave, died along with the half-Arikara Bloody Knife. When Reno and the other survivors retreated back across the river and made a defensive stand on Reno Hill, 13 Arikaras fought alongside the soldiers. “Of the 26 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors who died at the Little Bighorn (including those shot by Custer’s immediate command), I would estimate that a quarter of them were killed by the Arikaras and the Crow scouts,” says Koster. “Not all of the Arikaras and Crows were on the firing lines, but those who did decide to go to battle instead of hanging back or riding off proved that they could ﬁght well on their feet.” Visitors to Little Bighorn Battleﬁeld National Monument in Montana are bound to hear about the Crows. Their Crow Agency is nearby, and each June the Real Bird family (a Crow family) produces a re-enactment of the battle. But the Arikaras, those other Indian friends of Custer, are now part of the the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara (MHA) Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, based at the Fort Berthold Reservation in western North Dakota. The people known as the Arikaras, or Rees, by the way, now call themselves Sahnish, which means “the original people from whom all other tribes sprang.” Gregory Lalire

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A sampling of remarkable adventures, decisive moments and great ideas from our sister publications, selected by the editors of Wild West

H IS T O R Y NE T R E A D E R

American History Birth of a Nation

America’s Civil War Sullen and Deﬁant

Military History Fate of Falklands

Given the dearth of doctors on the 19th-century Western frontier, childbirth was a hardship. But even in rural areas back East the process remained risky into the 20th century. Read about how women coped in the following excerpt from “Call the Midwife,” by Christine M. Kreiser, in the June 2015 issue:

The long and bloody American Civil War ended with a whimper. With the collapse of the Virginia front and fall of Richmond, it was a matter of time before the Confederacy crumbled, though conﬂict would linger in places like Missouri, where former Southern guerrillas such as Frank and Jesse James turned to robbing banks. Following is an excerpt from “War’s Bitter End,” by Winston Groom, in the May 2015 issue:

In the 19th-century American West men contested patches of land, especially tracts with a valuable water source. Thirty-three years ago Argentina and Britain waged war over a contested patch of tundra in the bitter South Atlantic, and many still wonder why. Learn more in “Crags of Tumbledown,” by Ron Soodalter, a frequent Wild West contributor. Here’s an excerpt of that May 2015 article:

“Maternity is the young woman’s battleﬁeld,” wrote Mary Breckinridge in 1927. “It is more dangerous, more painful, more mutilating than war and as inexorable as all the laws of God.” Breckinridge’s theater of operations was Leslie County, Ky., deep in the heart of the Cumberland Mountains. There were no paved roads in the county then, and no railroads. The Middle Fork of the Kentucky River and its branches snaked through tiny communities with names like Cutshin, Hell for Certain and Thousandsticks. In this most unlikely place Mary Breckinridge made her stand for maternal and child healthcare in rural America by founding the Frontier Nursing Service in 1925. For every 1,000 live births in the United States in the early 20th century, approximately 100 babies died within the ﬁrst year. The maternal mortality rate was the highest in the developed world. In rural areas like Leslie County, where professional medical care was practically nonexistent, most births were attended by midwives, “granny women” who’d learned the trade from their mothers and grandmothers or by hard experience. When Breckinridge heard of a British program that trained women as nurse-midwives to provide vital medical care in areas where doctors and hospitals were scarce, she decided to implement a similar healthcare delivery system in the remote mountains of eastern Kentucky. 4

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The war was the most horrid experience this nation has suffered, before or since. At the end the South was totally and dismally prostrated; its infrastructure of bridges, railroads and communications wrecked, much of its commercial and private property destroyed, its fields fallow, its livestock decimated. With the agricultural economy collapsed, its millions of former slaves became wretched, for its system of feeding, clothing and sheltering them was broken. Even if they could have been employed, there was little or no money to pay them. The Southern political system was likewise in tatters. With the disenfranchisement of former Confederate soldiers and ofﬁcials, a leadership vacuum was created into which stepped a large number of incompetents and malfeasants under the harsh terms of Reconstruction. Though their armies had been defeated, their economy lay in ruins and their land was occupied by their enemy, Southerners remained sullen and deﬁant. An undercurrent of feeling ran through the populace that the North did not “fight fair” by coming at them with such overwhelming numbers of soldiers. In a “fair ﬁght,” the Southerners somehow reasoned, “we could have whupped them.”

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The conditions were hellish. For weeks the soldiers of Britain’s famed Scots Guards regiment had snatched sleep amid bone-chilling winds in holes that repeatedly ﬁlled with freezing water. Men were suffering from frostbite and trench foot, and rations were running low. Adding to their miseries, on this particular day they had come under intense artillery shelling. While this might well describe a scenario from World War I, the date was in fact June 13, 1982, and the trenches in which the British troops huddled were carved not across some stretch of French countryside but into near-frozen tundra by the base of Mount Tumbledown in the subarctic Falkland Islands. Despite the challenges, morale was high, for the British troops were preparing to end their misery by driving Argentine forces from the rugged escarpment before them. The guardsmen had been told the enemy force comprised young, ill-equipped conscripts who would scurry at the ﬁrst muzzle ﬂash. They had been grievously misinformed.

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LETTERS

‘The January 1870 Baker Massacre, the subject of Jerry Keenan’s article “Blood on the Snow,” in the December 2014 Wild West, led directly to another massacre later that year, again involving the Southern Piegans, but this time they were on the winning side’

MARIAS MASSACRE I was pleased you wrote about the little-known Baker Massacre (or, as some call it, the Marias Massacre) in the December 2014 Editor’s Letter. While researching for my third Western novel, Hunt for a Bride, I ﬁrst came upon information about this horriﬁc atrocity and decided to place it in my book, but from a different perspective. Since one of my characters, Doc Whitﬁeld, is half-Blackfoot, I wanted my readers to feel both the pain and the shame of this act. When Doc visits the site after the massacre, he ﬁnds a close friend, a medicine woman, among the victims. She played a key role in my second book, The Hunted Return, so my readers now had someone they had admired and loved suddenly killed, and in a most terrible way. It was my way of trying to bring home just how terrible this massacre was by having them know one of the victims. Emails from several readers expressed their surprise when they went on Wikipedia and found out it was true. I’m delighted there is now a memorial at the site. Jeff R. Spalsbury Murietta, Calif. ANOTHER 1870 MASSACRE The January 1870 Baker Massacre, the subject of Jerry Keenan’s article “Blood on the Snow,” in the December 2014 Wild West, led directly to another massacre later that year, again involving the Southern Piegans, but this time they were on the winning side (see my article in the February 2002 issue of Wild West). Mountain Chief’s band, the real object of Baker’s winter campaign, as Keenan states, escaped to Canada, where they joined his cousins the Northern Piegans. The following October the Crees and Assiniboines, hereditary enemies of the Blackfeet, believing the Piegans had been decimated

by smallpox and were weak, attacked but were repulsed by the Piegans, reinforced by Mountain Chief’s refugees and their new repeating riﬂes. The Crees fled across the Oldman River, and the Piegan Jerry Potts, who would become a guide for the North-West Mounted Police, stated, “It was a turkey shoot— you could close your eyes, ﬁre your gun and kill a Cree.” By unconfirmed estimates more than 200 Crees and Assiniboines died, while the Piegan casualties were fewer than a dozen, all killed in the initial attack. Modern Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, still has its Indian Battle Park in the Oldman River coulee. Terry Halden Lethbridge, Alberta WOUNDED KNEE My apologies for a late response, but at 90 that is normal. I’ve been a reader of Wild West for more years than I can remember, and though the articles about First Nation people are my favorites, I do enjoy ones about the white people. I’ve always (nearly always) found them to be well written and accurate. But I must take exception to the December 2014 Editor’s Letter “Montana’s Forgotten Massacre.” You question if Wounded Knee can be called a Massacre, since 25 soldiers died and 33 were wounded. In all the accounts I’ve read, and they are many, Big Foot’s people, about 350, were surrounded by 500 or more soldiers and several Hotchkiss guns. From my own experience, 21 years in uniform, I have found when a foe is surrounded, you have a good chance of hitting your own people on the other side, hence “friendly fire,” and most historians seem to think many of the soldier casualties were from that cause. That puts the outcome as a massacre. As you might have guessed, I am First Nation— Anishinaabe (Ojibwe-Odawa). Sergeant Colin MacKenzie British Army (Ret.) aka Growling Bear Petaluma, Calif.

MAJOR EDITING CREDIT Congratulations on another outstanding issue of Wild West. Of special interest in the December 2014 issue was the essay by Jerry Keenan on the 1870 massacre of the Blackfeet village on the Marias River in Montana Territory by units of the U.S. 2nd Cavalry. Jon Guttman’s review of Fights on the Little Horn, however, overlooks the exemplary contribution of my British colleague Gordon Richard, who edited and abridged the extensive work of the late Gordon Harper (originally over 2 million words) and who wrote the provocative, if not deﬁnitive, chapter on the fate of the ﬁve 7th Cavalry companies under Lt. Col. George Custer’s immediate command at the Little Bighorn. The publication of this exhaustive research was possible because of Richard’s effort. Harper’s book will clearly appeal to serious students of the battle for its perceptive remarks based exclusively on primary sources. It presents the best explanation of Captain Frederick W. Benteen’s scout to the left, not only of the apparent chronology of events but also the order to Benteen and his compliance with it. Harper has also resolved the apparent longstanding confusion and contradictions pertaining to the attack order to Major Marcus A. Reno by concluding that Reno, in fact, received two separate instructions at two different locations. This endeavor again illustrates the premise that the exclusive use and critical analysis of primary sources is necessary for students of this controversial subject to write an accurate rendition that places this story in proper historical context. “He believed,” Tori Harper writes of her father’s efforts, “that too much of the legend of the battle was just that—secondary interpretation founded on other secondary interpretation that had grown into common acceptance that would not withstand close scrutiny.” Fights on the Little Horn is the most important recent analytical contribution on the subject. C. Lee Noyes Morrisonville, N.Y.

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News of the West

Wild West’s Top 10

Coburn and Maynard The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum has named two 2015 inductees into its Hall of Great Western Performers: actors James Coburn (1928–2002) and Ken Maynard (1895–1973). Coburn’s debut came in the 1959 Randolph Scott film Ride Lonesome, and in 1960 he was one of the iconic riders in The Magniﬁcent Seven. In 1973’s Pat Garret & Billy the Kid he portrayed Garrett. Maynard was one of the first singing cowboys and appeared in more than 90 ﬁlms wearing a white hat. Maynard’s white stallion, Tarzan, shared in his fame. The Oklahoma City museum [www .nationalcowboymuseum.org] will recognize the two late actors (pictured above, Coburn at top) in April at its annual Western Heritage Awards banquet. It will also present its bronze Wrangler awards in various categories. Winners include A Lakota War Book From the Little Bighorn: The Pictographic “Autobiography of Half Moon,” by Castle McLaughlin (nonfiction book, Peabody Museum Press); “Not for Sale,” by Bob Welch (magazine article, American Cowboy); The Poacher’s Daughter, by Michael Zimmer (Western novel, Five Star/Cengage Gale); Montana’s Charlie Russell: Art in the Collection of the Montana Historical Society, by Jennifer Bottomly-O’Looney and Kirby Lambert (art book, Montana Historical Society Press); How the West Was Drawn: Women’s Art, by Linda L. Osmundson (juvenile book, Pelican Publishing); The Homesman (theatrical motion picture); Klondike miniseries (TV feature ﬁlm); The Road to Valhalla (documentary); and Hell on Wheels Episode 410, “Return to Hell” (ﬁctional drama). 6

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AUTHOR/EDITOR C. LEE NOYES SHARES LESSONS FROM THE LITTLE BIGHORN 1. Broken treaties spawn conﬂict: The outbreak of the Great Sioux War of 1876 hinged on the decision whether to observe Indian treaty obligations or allow the Black Hills gold rush. The latter won out, and war against deﬁant Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne bands followed. 2. Mistakes matter: The Northern Cheyennes sided ﬁrmly with the Sioux after soldiers attacked and destroyed their Powder River camp in March 1876 in the mistaken belief it was Crazy Horse’s village. 3. Reality trumps perception: The overriding military mindset (which informed Lt. Col. George Custer’s orders) was simply to “prevent the escape of the Indians,” as the Army presumed they would not ﬁght. The Rosebud and Little Bighorn battles belied this premise. 4. Intelligence is key: Believing the Plains Indians on the Little Bighorn had discovered his advancing command and would scatter, Custer attacked without first gathering accurate intelligence as to the enemy’s location, strength and intentions. 5. Personalities sway events: Custer’s tendency toward decisive, if not rash, action put his command in peril, while Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance vision of “soldiers falling upside down into camp” likely reassured his people. 6. A good leader inspires: Crazy Horse and White Bull inspired warriors to emulate their daring in battle, while Major Marcus Reno’s less than inspired conduct during the valley and hilltop ﬁghts may have discouraged, if not demoralized, his soldiers. 7. Firepower often carries the day: Archaeological evidence conﬁrms that many warriors used repeating riﬂes to deadly short-range effect, while troopers ﬁred single-shot carbines at long range with far less impact. 8. Nothing beats experience: Inadequate training, poor marksmanship and the overall inexperience of the 7th U.S. Cavalry as an Indian-fighting force all played a role in its defeat. 9. Poor research clouds history: Erroneous books and ﬂawed interpretations do not always reﬂect the inherent inabilities of researchers. They are more often the failure to base research exclusively on primary (preferably original) sources. 10. Legends shape cultural perceptions: Much as the legend of the Western frontier has shaped our nation’s culture and values, the legend of Custer’s Last Stand has shaped our perception of the “Winning of the West.”

Win’s Latest Win Western Writers of America [www .westernwriters.org] has awarded Win Blevins—the Utah-based author of more than 30 books, including the Spur Award– winning novels Stone Song and So Wild a Dream—its Owen Wister Award for lifetime contributions to the field of Western literature. The WWA will present Blevins the statuette (a bronze bison rendered by sculptor Robert Dufﬁe) at the

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organization’s annual convention June 23–27 in Lubbock, Texas. Blevins started his writing career as a music and drama reviewer in Los Angeles before publishing his ﬁrst book, Give Your Heart to the Hawks, in 1973. Historical ﬁction is his specialty, but Win has won over nonfiction readers, too,

ROUNDUP with his popular Dictionary of the American West (1993, expanded and revised in 2001). He also created, edited and co-published the Classics of the Fur Trade series for Mountain Press Publishing. Win and wife Meredith, a mystery novelist, recently published their ﬁrst joint novel, Moonlight Water (Forge Books, 2015).

Civil War in Texas Reenactors, historians and Civil War buffs will gather in south Texas the week of May 11–16 to mark the sesquicentennial of the 1865 Battle of Palmito Ranch, widely considered the last significant land battle of the war. The Palmito Ranch Battleﬁeld National Historic Landmark, 12 miles east of Brownsville, will host the events [www.ph150.us/events.html], including a battleﬁeld ceremony on the 12th, a symposium on the 14th and a reenactment on the 16th. On May 12, 1865, a month after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, Va., Union Colonel Theodore H. Barrett decided, despite an existing truce, to attack Rebel-controlled Fort Brown on the Rio Grande. He dispatched Lt. Col. David Branson and a command of 300 soldiers (250 men of the 62nd U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment and 50 of the 2nd Texas Cavalry Battalion) and later joined the action with 200 men of the 34th Indiana Veteran Volunteer Infantry. The Confederates prevailed the following afternoon when Colonel John S. “Rip” Ford’s cavalry arrived, forcing a Union retreat. Their celebration was short-lived, as on May 26 General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered all Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department, except those under Cherokee Brig. Gen. Stand Watie, who finally gave up the fight on June 23 in Doaksville, Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

Forgotten Frontier Firearm The Winchester Model 1873 riﬂe was so popular on the frontier it became known as “The Gun That Won the West” and later inspired the 1950 Western film Winchester ’73, starring Jimmy Stewart. Winchester Repeating Arms produced more than 700,000 of these rifles be-

West Words I have heard you intend to settle us on a reservation near the mountains. I don’t want to settle. I love to roam over the prairies. There I feel free and happy, but when we settle down, we grow pale and die. A long time ago this land belonged to our fathers; but when I go up to the river, I see camps of soldiers on its banks. These soldiers cut down my timber; they kill my buffalo; and when I see that, my heart feels like bursting; I feel sorry. I have spoken.

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—Kiowa Chief Satanta, to peace commissioners from Washington, D.C., in 1867

will restore the riﬂe for display next year as part of the Great Basin’s 30th anniversary events and the National Park Service centennial [www.nps.gov/2016].

Wells Fargo Robbery

tween 1873 and 1919, so the one archaeologists found last fall (see photo) leaning against a juniper tree in Nevada’s Great Basin National Park [www.nps .gov/grba] might not have been terribly missed the past century-plus. This particular Model 1873 was manufactured and shipped in 1882, according to the serial number on the lower tang and Winchester company records at the Cody Firearms Museum, part of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West [www.center ofthewest.org] in Cody, Wyo. Exposed to the elements for untold decades, the riﬂe’s weathered stock and rusted barrel had blended into the bark of the gnarled juniper in a remote part of the park. Had it belonged to a miner, a cowboy, a sheepman or perhaps a hunter? Had the owner simply forgotten where he had rested the riﬂe, or did something happen that prevented his return? Such details may be harder to discover than was the gun itself. In the meantime, conservators

We all know that road agents in the Old West used to hold up stagecoaches to get to the Wells, Fargo & Co. strongboxes filled with gold and other valuables. In 1852 Henry Wells and William Fargo founded the company and opened its first office in San Francisco, offering banking and express services. Of course stagecoaches, and certainly stagecoach robberies, are a thing of the past, but Wells Fargo (without the comma) is still going strong, and criminals on occasion still target its assets, including historic valuables. In January three masked thieves smashed a stolen sport-utility vehicle into the glassed-in entrance of Wells Fargo’s corporate museum [www .wellsfargohistory.com/museums/ san-francisco] in San Francisco’s ﬁnancial district, held a security guard at gunpoint, broke into a display case and made off with gold nuggets from the days of the Forty-Niners. While the stolen nuggets are valued at about $10,000— their sentimental value aside—damage to the entrance was estimated at more than $200,000. Two iconic red-and-yellow company stagecoaches in the museum were undamaged in the heist.

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ROUNDUP Burns Biography

Tabor Opera House

Author Walter Noble Burns (1872–1932) helped make Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp and Joaquín Murrieta household names, and author Mark Dworkin (1946– 2012) has posthumously brought Burns’ own story to light. Dworkin wrote about Burns in the October 2011 Wild West, and his article, “The Wild West’s Premier Mythmaker,” was a 2012 Spur Award ﬁnalist for best Western short nonfiction from the Western Writers of America. Dworkin received his Spur at the WWA conference in Albuquerque in June 2012, just two months before his death from cancer at age 66. Dworkin also wrote about Burns in the Journal of the Wild West History Association [www.wildwesthistory.org] and was working on a book about the author. In March the University of Oklahoma Press [www.oupress.com] published his planned biography, titled American Mythmaker: Walter Noble Burns and the Legends of Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp and Joaquín Murrieta. Historians have criticized Burns for taking a novelist’s approach when writing his mythmaking books The Saga of Billy the Kid (1926), Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest (1927) and The Robin Hood of El Dorado: The Saga of Joaquín Murrieta (1932). But Dworkin’s well-researched biography redeems Burns’ reputation and recognizes his important contributions to the body of Western literature.

The 1879 Tabor Opera House [www.facebook .com/Historic TaborOpera House], in Leadville, Colo., has a new owner, Paul Noel Fiorino of the nonproﬁt Colorado Arts Consortium, who plans to finish restoring the three-story performance hall. Fiorino is raising funds to cover the estimated $5 million renovation of the building, which includes a 500-seat theater and a museum. Horace Austin Warner “Haw” Tabor (1830–99), Leadville’s “Silver King,” built the opera house, which opened for business on November 20, 1879. In the late 1880s such entertainers as William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Oscar Wilde performed there. Fiorino himself, a former professional ballet dancer, appeared at the Tabor in the 1970s. Colorado once had some 150 opera houses. Fewer than a dozen remain.

Two-bit Homestead The U.S. Mint has issued a Homestead National Monument of America quarter, its design centered on the three survival essentials common to Nebraska homesteaders—food, water and shelter. Superintendent Mark Engler of the Homestead National Monument [www.nps.gov/ home], 4 miles west of Beatrice, Neb., said he hopes the quarter “engages the American people and creates interest in our park and the homesteading story.” The Homestead is No. 26 in the series of 56 quarters to be released by 2021. 8

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NPS Centennial Countdown The countdown has begun. The 99-year-old National Park Service will celebrate its centennial [www.nps.gov/2016] next year. It was on August 25, 1916, that President Woodrow Wilson signed the organic act creating this federal agency in the Department of the Interior. At the time there were 35 national parks and monuments to protect; today more than 20,000 NPS employees caretake the system’s 400-plus national parks, preserves, battleﬁelds, recreation areas, memorials and other areas. In August 2014 the NPS and its nonprofit fundraising partner, the National Park Foundation [www.national parks.org], unveiled a centennial logo (see above) and announced they are “teaming up with partners to present engaging programs” in support of the parks.

Tribute to Silva Garner Palenske, author of the 2011 book Wyatt Earp in San Diego: Life After Tombstone, has uploaded to YouTube a video tribute to fellow Earp biographer and

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Wild West special contributor Lee Silva, who died on August 27, 2014. In the 26-minute video [www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kcbtGdvPCxs] Palenske and other historians, including Don Chaput, Ben Traywick and Scott Dyke, discuss Silva’s life and contributions to the ﬁeld.

See You Later, Roger Jay Baltimore-based author and longtime Wild West contributor Roger David Jay, 69, died last Christmas. “His passions were the Wild West, writing and Johns Hopkins Blue Jays lacrosse,” said his wife, Ann Smith. Born in Scranton, Pa., Jay had a special interest in Wyatt Earp. His groundbreaking article “The Peoria Bummer: Wyatt Earp’s Lost Year,” about Earp’s involvement in the red-light district of Peoria, Ill., ran in the August 2003 Wild West. His last article for the magazine, “A Tale of Two Sadies” (October 2014), related the controversial early life of Earp’s wife, Josephine “Sadie” Marcus.

See You Later, Joseph Rosa Joseph G. Rosa, 82, the foremost biographer of James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok, died on January 17. Born in London on November 20, 1932, Rosa took an interest in Hickok after seeing the 1936 ﬁlm The Plainsman, starring Gary Cooper. His 1964 book They Called Him Wild Bill was considered the ﬁrst real biography of the man. Rosa later wrote much more about Hickok and other Old West subjects in books and magazines such as Wild West.

Famous Last Words “All I can say is that if you ever get caught in a scrape like this, don’t let them take you alive.” —Jochin H. Timmerman, convicted of ﬁrst-degree murder and sentenced to death, said these words before dropping from the gallows on April 6, 1888, in Goldendale, Washington Territory.

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ROUNDUP

Events of the West Custer Reenactment There will be one instead of the usual two Battle of the Little Bighorn reenactments this year, the 139th anniversary of Custer’s Last Stand. The Real Bird family’s 21st annual Battle of the Little Bighorn Reenactment, held on the river between the Crow Agency and Garryowen, Mont., is set for June 26–28. Visit www.littlebighornreenactment.com. The Hardin (Mont.) Chamber of Commerce, however, decided not to hold its Custer’s Last Stand Reenactment as part of its 2015 Little Big Horn Days, though the event may return in 2016.

CBHMA Meets The Custer Battleﬁeld Historical & Museum Association meets June 24–28 in Hardin, Mont. Email CLeeNoyes@aol .com or visit www.custerbattleﬁeld.org.

Custer City’s 140th The 1881 Custer County Courthouse Museum is commemorating the 140th anniversary of Custer City, S.D., and the 40th anniversary of the museum with special displays. Call 605-673-2443 or visit www.courthousemuseum.com.

Gold in Indianapolis “ Gold ! Ri c h es and Ruin,” an exhibit that examines how gold has helped forge the American national identity, runs at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis through Aug. 9. “The show celebrates the stories of those who struck it rich but recognizes the unlucky ones who lost everything in the quest for riches,” says curator Johanna Blume. Mining equipment, paintings, journals, diaries and gold nuggets are on display. Pictured above are a gold hair comb, cup, ring and nuggets, courtesy of Greg and Petra Martin and photographed by Hadley Fruits. Call 317-636-9378 or visit www.eiteljorg.org.

John Mix Stanley Art

Civil War and the West

“Painted Journeys: The Art of John Mix Stanley,” featuring nearly 60 of his works, runs at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo., June 6–Aug. 29. Stanley (1814–72) was an artist-explorer known for his landscapes and Indian portraits. See his untitled 1855 Teton Valley scene, above. Call 307-587-4771 or visit www.centerofthewest.org.

“Empire and Liberty: The Civil War and the West,” which examines the war from the vantage point of Western expansion, runs at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles’ Grifﬁth Park on April 25–Jan. 3, 2016. Call 323-667-2000 or visit www .theautry.org.

End of Trail The End of Trail World Championship of Cowboy Action Shooting slaps leather June 18–28 at Founders Ranch in Edgewood, N.M. Call 877-411-7277 or visit www.sassnet.com.

George Catlin in Texas

CAA 50th Reunion

“Take Two: George Catlin Revisits the West” (see P. 34) continues at the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, through May 31. The exhibit features 17 Catlin paintings on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Catlin (1796–1872) visited 48 Indian tribes in the 1830s. These paintings are from his second Indian Gallery (rendered 1860–70). Call 817-332-6554 or visit www.sidrichardsonmuseum.org.

The Cowboy Artists of America (CAA) 50th anniversary reunion gathers June 25–28 at the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Ga. Call 770-387-1541 or visit www.boothmuseum.org/ca50.

John Wayne Museum The grand opening of the John Wayne Birthplace Museum, next to the actor’s birthplace home in Winterset, Iowa, highlights this year’s John Wayne Birthday Celebration, May 22–24. Call 877462-1044 or visit www.johnwaynebirth place.museum.

WWA in Lubbock Lubbock, Texas, hosts the Western Writers of America Convention June 23–27. Visit www.westernwriters.org.

Western Legends The Western Legends Roundup comes to Kanab, Utah, Aug. 27–30. Among the celebrities expected to attend are Clint Walker, Bruce Boxleitner and Barry Corbin. Also on tap is a four-day/three night covered wagon train trip scheduled for Aug 24–27. Call 435-644-3444 or visit westernlegendsroundup.com.

Ride to Adventure Great American Adventures presents a five-day historic “Comanche Moon” ride (May 3–8) in the Palo Duro Canyon area of the Texas Panhandle and a fourday “Great Train Robbery” ride (Aug. 16–21) in the Durango and Silverton area of southwest Colorado. Call 505-2864585, email [email protected] or visit www.great-american-adventures.com.

WWHA Roundup The 2015 Wild West History Association Roundup is set for Amarillo, Texas, July 15–18. Visit www.wildwesthistory.org.

Old West in Fort Worth Brian Lebel’s Old West Show & Auction has moved its summer show from Denver to Fort Worth and will be at Will Rogers Memorial Center June 6 and 7. Call 480779-9378; visit www.oldwestevents.com.

Western Art March 20–May 3—“Cowgirl Up! Art From the Other Half of the West,” Desert Caballeros Western Museum, Wickenburg, Ariz. (928-684-2272). May 15–17—National Western Art Show & Auction, Ellensburg, Wash. (509962-2934). June 12 and 13—Prix de West Art Show & Sale, Oklahoma City (405-478-2250).

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I NT E R VIE W

Brian Dippie Sure Knows His Western Artists, With Books on Remington, Russell and Catlin The Canadian author is also well versed in U.S. Western history

lberta-born author and historian Brian W. Dippie is a recognized authority on the Western United States, especially with regard to art. Dippie’s books include Remington & Russell: The Sid Richardson Collection (1982) and Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage (1990), and he recently curated “Take Two: George Catlin Revisits the West” (see P. 34) at the Sid Richardson Museum [www.sidrichardsonmuseum.org] in Fort Worth, Texas. Running through May 31, the exhibit centers on 17 paintings from Catlin’s second Indian Gallery (or “Cartoon Collection”), which the artist compiled while living abroad in the 1850s and ’60s. But Dippie, a past president of the Western History Association [www.westernhistory.org], isn’t just an art historian. His other titles include The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (1982) and Custer’s Last Stand: The Anatomy of an American Myth (1994). Although he retired from teaching at the University of Victoria in 2009, Dippie hasn’t slowed down much. He recently took time to speak with Wild West about Western art, artists and history.

By Johnny D. Boggs

A

How did the Catlin exhibit at the Sid Richardson Museum come about? The opportunity to mount a George Catlin exhibition came about at the suggestion of Nancy Anderson, the head of American and British paintings at the National Gallery of Art [www.nga.gov], in Washington, D.C., and a longtime friend of the Sid Richardson. When the museum staff decided to explore the possibility, I was brought in to curate the exhibition. As author of the catalog of the Sid Richardson’s permanent collection (Remington & Russell), I have enjoyed a close working relationship with the museum over the years. I’ve only guest curated a few Western art exhibitions—at the National Museum of Wildlife Art [www .wildlifeart.org], in Jackson, Wyo., and the Glenbow Museum [www.glenbow .org], in Calgary (my favorite marked the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede, in 2012, and involved reassembling the exhibition Charlie Russell held at the very ﬁrst Stampede)—but I’d never had the chance to help mount an exhibition of Catlin paintings, and the opportunity proved irresistible. 12

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What spurred your interest in the West? I am a native of Edmonton, Alberta, originally a Hudson’s Bay Co. fur trading post, and though I trained in U.S. history and did my graduate work in Wyoming and Texas, I bring a Canadian perspective to American culture. One of its deﬁning features for me as an outsider is its distinctive frontier mythology. Like every kid who grew up in the ’40s and ’50s, I was smitten with the West. We played lots of cowboys and Indians, blazed away with our cap pistols, took in B Westerns at our local movie theaters, read comic books featuring the cowboy stars of the day—and a few Indian heroes, like Straight Arrow—and went to sleep at night dreaming of wide-open spaces and horses with names like Trigger, Silver and (Straight Arrow again) Fury. My friends all grew up and left the horseplay behind. I guess I never did. I ﬁlled scrapbooks with Indian pictures, attended art school and drew constantly as a kid. Indian heads were my specialty, and as a teenager, working in Eagle Prismacolors, I made a few bucks copying Winold Reiss Blackfeet portraits and an

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array of color postcards. It taught me to look carefully at pictures with an eye to connections to other pictures. I still have a good visual memory, but it didn’t take me long to realize I did not have the creativity an artist requires—a distinctive vision and the ability to express it. What role did Catlin play in the development of Western art? Catlin’s travels in the 1830s up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and down to the southern Plains, painting as he went, made him the most important artist to focus on Indians prior to the Civil War. Others, like the Swiss Karl Bodmer, followed closely on his heels and perhaps painted with more scientiﬁc precision, but Catlin led the way. How critical was government and public/private support in that era? Art patronage was still in its infancy in America, and Catlin spent a lifetime trying to capitalize on his work at home and abroad. In a republic private citizens or the government itself are the best bets for patronage, and Catlin struggled to interest Congress in acquiring his Indian Gallery. Along the way he made

a living through public exhibitions of his paintings and the publication of books and portfolios. It was a hard go, and rivals did not make things easier. Alfred Jacob Miller, who painted Indians and mountain men in 1837, like Bodmer, had a private patron to pay his way. Seth Eastman, an Army ofﬁcer, painted Indians where he was stationed, on the Mississippi and in Texas, and always enjoyed a regular salary. Eastman sought government commissions for his art but never produced an Indian Gallery as such, unlike the Irishborn Canadian Paul Kane and the American John Mix Stanley, who did in the 1840s. It was a slap in the face for Catlin when Eastman endorsed Stanley’s work as “far superior,” undercutting Catlin’s last desperate bid for Congressional patronage in 1852 before creditors closed in. Did the artists get along with their Indian subjects? Of the artists mentioned, oddly enough, it was Eastman who formed the most intimate bond with his subjects. Stationed at Fort Snelling, he sired a daughter by a Santee Sioux woman in 1831, becoming the grandfather of the noted Sioux medical doctor and author Charles A. Eastman. There’s a story for the romancers. Any little-known tidbits on Frederic Remington and Charlie Russell? Russell was interested in what other artists—especially those in his own line— painted. Remington? His critical standards were severe and unsparing when applied to his own work. In an annual purge he burned many paintings collectors today would pay a king’s ransom to own. It’s also worth noting that both men were thoughtful readers who went well beyond personal experience in their art. What’s next for you in “retirement”? As a retiree I have the pleasure of time to work on various projects that interest me. I have a few more things I’d like to say about George Custer. Western art, and especially Russell’s art, remain preoccupations. There’s always more to learn, and we are marking the centennials of high points in his career.

Read more at www.WildWestMag.com.

Panzers, Landsers and Politics Short Stories and Epic Novels Versailles to the Eastern Front Jagdpa

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www.panzerschlacht.us JUNE 2015

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WESTERNERS

Two Last Stands he late Wild West special contributor Lee A. Silva (1936–2014) of Long Beach, California, liked to collect Old West photographs that struck his fancy. He also liked hot dogs, tamales, the ocean and people of earlier eras. It stands to reason these early 20th-century photos were among his favorites, even if he didn’t recognize any of the Westerners pictured.

T

(Photos: Lee A. Silva Collection) JUNE 2015

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G UNFIGH T E R S A N D L A W MEN

‘Maggots Held High Carnival’ Over Tom Waggoner’s Lifeless Corpse eath came for Tom Waggoner at the end of a rope strung from a cottonwood tree in Wyoming on June 4, 1891. More than two weeks passed from the time of the lynching before anyone found his body, its feet resting on the ground and legs bent, as the rope had stretched before rigor mortis set in. “The rope had cut through the ﬂesh after it became rotten, and maggots held high carnival over the lifeless body,” The Newcastle Journal reported. His face had turned black, half his mustache had sloughed off, and his eyes had swollen and burst. According to the June 10 Journal, public opinion handled Waggoner’s name “rather recklessly in connection with the disappearance of livestock.” The hanging was one in a series of violent acts orchestrated by Wyoming’s “cattle barons” in the lead-up to the 1892 Johnson County War. Notable incidents included the double lynching of Ellen Liddy “Cattle Kate” Watson and Jim Averill in 1889, and the attempted murder of Nathan D. “Nate” Champion and Ross Gilbertson just five months after the Waggoner lynching. At the time of his death Waggoner was in his early 30s, of medium height and build, with a swarthy complexion and dark, beady eyes. He was not known for being particularly sociable or hospitable, which left locals in the dark about his doings. The cattlemen and their range detectives said Waggoner was an abominable thief and middleman who simply stole any horses he could catch, changed their brands and branded their colts. The district court had recently indicted Waggoner for living with a woman named Rosa Chuler. That in turn prompted a fol-

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By Chip Carlson

low-up visit by local “authorities,” including Joe Elliott, a range detective for the Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association who was developing a reputation as a ruthless enforcer. The men compelled Tom to marry Rosa, who some said was mentally deficient. She had borne two children by Waggoner and was expecting a third when he was lynched in June. The family lived a wretched existence. “Everything was squalor and misery and filth,” the Journal reported on what investigators found In his early days Joe Elliott had been a ruthless range detective. that summer. Their log hovel comprised two rooms sepa- had stolen several fine horses from a rated by a covered way in which a buggy group of passing emigrants, and once the was stored. One room was a stable. The pilgrims had “soaked long enough,” he living space held scarcely a stick of paid them a neighborly visit. When they furniture, not even a bed. There was told him their horses had been stolen, nothing but a bench, a few boxes and Waggoner, feigning ignorance, said the “big cattlemen” had stolen stock from short logs turned on end as seats. According to reports in The Buffalo him, too. He told them he knew where Bulletin, Waggoner worked as a criminal their horses were, who had them, and middleman, selling off horses other par- offered to get them back. Thanking Wagties had stolen from as far away as Idaho. goner, the unwitting group wrote out Range detective William C. “Billy” Lykins a bill of sale to cover him if confronted shared a telling story with Elliott about while bringing in their horses. Waggoner Waggoner’s doings, an account that has then brought in a bunch of cayuses he’d the ring of authority. Elliott related the found in the hills and wished the emistory to interviewer B.W. Hope in the grants well in their travels. As soon as early 1940s. Lykins claimed Waggoner they’d moved on, he took the horses he’d

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WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES

In 1891 three men lynched him for horse stealing in Wyoming

WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES

stolen down to Lincoln, Neb., and, with bill of sale in hand, sold them. Elliott claimed Waggoner had also stolen a team of good horses from him and changed their brands. The horses, however, got away and came straight back to Elliott. He learned the nature of their disappearance when a pair of Waggoner’s hired hands informed on their boss. Sometime later Elliott entered a liquor store in Merino (present-day Upton, Wyo.) to ﬁnd Waggoner perched on a barrel. When Elliott confronted him about stealing the horses and doctoring the brands, Waggoner replied, “What the hell are you going to do about it?” At that Elliott took off his hat and smacked Waggoner across the face with it. To Elliott’s surprise Waggoner did nothing. “I thought he’d get up, but he didn’t,” the cattleman recalled. “I threatened then to get him, and when he turned up missing, everybody put two and two together and knew that I was the man who had done that job. ‘Elliott said he’d get him—and he’s done it.’” Yet even as he seemed to admit his own guilt, Elliott claimed to have learned of the killing through Waggoner’s wife, Rosa. About an hour after sunrise on June 4 three riders showed up at Waggoner’s ranch with a bay packhorse in tow. Rosa thought they were dressed suspiciously, as if to avoid recognition. They asked for directions and left, then returned two hours later. Rosa said one of the men had red hair and a red mustache, which she thought looked false. He was wearing a cap with fur earﬂaps, goggles, blue overalls and a black leather coat. That man stood 6 or 8 inches taller than her husband. Another she described as heavyset and wearing a full-length slicker. The third, she said, was middle-sized. Rosa said the bigger man walked up to Tom and said, “We want to get rid of you.” That should have been warning enough for the couple, but Tom continued to chat calmly with Rosa, telling her he thought the men were “cow owners,” though he didn’t recognize any of them. But then one of the bigger men drew a gun, while the middle-sized man took Waggoner’s revolver and handcuffed him. The trio took him to the corral, retrieved a saddle from the stable and

Fred Coates, although “suspicioned” in the lynching, handled Waggoner’s estate.

readied Waggoner’s horse. After hoisting Waggoner into the saddle, the men tied his feet beneath the horse. John Waggoner, Tom’s brother, lived on the ranch and was present that morning. He claimed to have recognized one of the trio as a former hand with the Hash Knife outfit, and that two of the men had taken part in a recent local roundup. The men, however, claimed to be sheriffs from Sundance and rode off with their captive. When Tom’s riderless horse arrived back on the ranch nearly two weeks later, an alarmed John Waggoner headed into Merino to ﬁnd Ed Fitch, a local who might know something about his brother’s arrest. Fitch suggested they ask Elliott, who had been riding that country and would know of any outstanding warrants. “I had a good idea what must have happened,” Elliott recalled of his reaction to the news of Tom’s disappearance. “I said, ‘He’s been hung.’ ” According to Elliott, the men then rode out to search the ranch. “They [Fitch and Waggoner] went down one gulch,” Elliott said, “and I went down another,

and I found him.” To avoid any suspicion of involvement in the crime, however, he said nothing of finding the body and instead returned to the ranch. He wanted the other two to find it. In time they did, then the three men “lit out for Merino.” Returning to the ranch with a party of men, they lowered the body into a crude cofﬁn and buried Tom near the cottonwood tree, wearing the clothes, boots and spurs he’d had on when found. News of the lynching caused a stir in the region. On June 26 the Omaha World-Herald—noting that Waggoner’s reach had extended from Montana to Nebraska—speculated that “stockmen” from the Big Horn Basin had hanged him, as rustlers and middlemen like Waggoner had plagued them “severely” for years. “More of such work is to follow,” the paper added. “It was frequently repeated that Waggoner was to go by the necktie route.” In a strange twist, the paper reported, Deputy Sheriff Fred Coates, though “suspicioned” as one of the hangmen, was appointed administrator of Waggoner’s estate. At the time Elliott denied having had any part in the lynching, claiming instead to have been on the Rosebud River with one “Sheriff Willy,” pursuing a prisoner for Johnson County Sheriff William “Red” Angus. That may be true, but Elliott also made many self-incriminating remarks. “I know that for lots of people in that country there never was any mystery about who hung [sic] Waggoner,” he told interviewer Hope in the early 1940s. “They know and always have known that I did it.” That wasn’t the end of Joe Elliott’s shady doings in Wyoming. By year’s end he and Sheriff Coates were rumored suspects in the attempted murder of Champion and Gilbertson in a line shack on the Powder River. The lynching of Cattle Kate and Jim Averill two years earlier, the Waggoner lynching and the attempt on Nate Champion and Ross Gilbertson were all precursors of the Johnson County War, which broke out in April 1892 (see “Champion of the Johnson County War,” by Ron Soodalter, in the April 2011 Wild West) and required the intervention of the U.S. Cavalry before it was over.

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P IO NE E R S A N D S E TTL E R S

Custer Interpreter Frederic Gerard Was A Man of Many Roles and Three Families He earned the respect of the Arikaras, who called him Swift Buffalo rederic Francis Gerard was a man of many roles—including one at the Little Bighorn. Fluent in French, English, Lakota, Arikara and Ojibwe, Gerard was a natural as an interpreter for the 1876 expedition, helping Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer communicate with his company of Arikara soldier-scouts (see related story, P. 26). He was also an experienced fur trader, an unlicensed frontier physician, a sometime journalist, a dabbler in gold before the intrusive Black Hills Expedition of 1874 and the head of three families, with four white children, three half-Arikara daughters, and one half-Blackfeet son. Frederic was born on November 14, 1829, to François Gerard, a French-Canadian, and Catherine Trotier, an American of French ancestry, and grew up speaking both French and English. His hometown was St. Louis—once part of the French colonial empire in North America that had extended from north of Quebec to south of New Orleans and west into the domain of the Plains Indians. Fascinated with medicine, he spent four years at St. Xavier’s Academy, and at 19 he ventured north to Fort Clark, Dakota Territory, signing on as a clerk for the American Fur Co., which supplied the wannabe doctor with medical books and bottles of pills. Arikara medicine men initially viewed Gerard as a potential rival but later sought him out for second opinions. He earned the name Swift Buffalo by quickly learning the Arikara language and for his horsemanship in buffalo hunts. The Lakotas named him Strikes the Bear after he fought off a grizzly with a knife in 1855. He soon learned their language, too. Many Plains tribes spoke rudimentary Lakota, just as many Europeans outside France spoke rudimentary French.

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Given his courage and, perhaps more important, his linguistic skills, Gerard was put in charge of the American Fur trading post at Fort Berthold in 1857. There he took up with an Arikara woman named Helena Catherine and sired three daughters— Josephine in 1860, Carrie in 1862 and Virginia in 1864. He sent his daughters down the Missouri for a Catholic education, and Josie and Virginia ultimately became Benedictine nuns in a St. Joseph convent. In 1863 Fort Berthold trader Gerard welcomed a party of prospectors headed downriver from the Montana Territory

The man of many languages hired on in July 1872 as post interpreter at Fort Lincoln and in 1876 secured a slot as interpreter for George Custer’s Arikara scouts goldfields. They proudly showed him their mackinaw boat fitted with a false bottom, beneath which they’d concealed an estimated $100,000 in gold dust. Gerard warned the men not to follow the river through Lakota country, but they did and were wiped out. Hearing of the massacre, Gerard sent an Arikara relative to recover the gold dust from the boat—and received a coffee pot and several belts full of ore. Rumor soon had it the treasure came from the Black Hills.

JUNE 2015

By John Koster

In 1869 American Fur sold Fort Berthold, and Gerard became an independent trader in Montana Territory, soon fathering a son, Frederic Francis Jr., with a Blackfeet woman named Catherine. Within a few years, however, a band of hostile Blackfeet ambushed his train and made off with the goods. Starting over, he staked a claim near Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory, and supplied meat and vegetables to the Army post—until the Northern Paciﬁc Railroad discovered his claim lay on their land grant. Fortunately, he had earlier saved from Indian ambush a railroad survey party headed by Custer’s old West Point friend Tom Rosser. In gratitude the Northern Pacific gave Gerard 40 acres of land south of Mandan that he later sold for a tidy $5,000. The man of many languages hired on in July 1872 as post interpreter at Fort Lincoln, and as the Army planned its 1876 campaign, Gerard secured a slot as interpreter for Custer’s Arikara scouts. He signed up on May 12, just ﬁve days before the Arikaras, singing their death songs, joined the 7th U.S. Cavalry on the fateful expedition into Montana Territory. Gerard was with Custer at the Crow’s Nest, overlooking the Little Bighorn, when sharpeyed scouts described the huge LakotaCheyenne village Custer couldn’t see. He and the company of 40 Arikaras were assigned to bolster Major Marcus Reno’s three companies of troopers when Custer tried to surround the village. When the village exploded with angry warriors, Gerard and the Arikaras fell back into the timber with Reno’s men, and when Reno ordered the retreat over the Little Bighorn, Gerard was stuck in the cottonwoods with a dozen other soldiers and scouts. No fan of Reno, Gerard later told Lieutenant Edward

S. Godfrey that only two or three of the boldest Lakotas had inﬁltrated the woods, and Reno probably would have lost fewer men had he stayed put. He later recalled that no one at the Reno Court of Inquiry in Chicago seemed interested in his opinion. During the retreat Gerard and Billy Jackson, a mixed-blood Blackfeet scout, had kept their horses and found cover with Lieutenant Charles De Rudio and Private Thomas O’Neill, both unhorsed. When night fell the four fugitives tried to escape by fording the river. No one knew how deep the Little Bighorn was, and Gerard supposedly took out his expensive gold watch and offered an incantation and sacriﬁce: “Oh, Powerful One, Day Maker! And you, people of the depths, this I sacriﬁce to you. Help us, I pray you, to cross safely!” With that, he threw the watch into the river, and his horse waded out and never got wet above the knees. Considering Gerard’s Jesuit education, and that two of his daughters were nuns, it’s quite possible Billy Jackson made up this story. Regardless, when a party of Lakota warriors challenged them on the opposite bank, Gerard and Jackson rode off, leading them away from De Rudio and O’Neill. All four ultimately made it to Reno Hill, where Gerard found 13 of the Arikara soldiers in the troopers’ ranks. The others, minus two dead, had just kept riding, though most rejoined the command on June 28. During the hours-long standoff Gerard, with his layman’s knowledge of medicine, assisted Dr. Henry Porter. The remnants of the 7th Cavalry soon returned to Fort Lincoln, where Gerard remained post interpreter until July 1883.

STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF NORTH DAKOTA, NO. A3278

During the hours-long standoff atop Reno Hill after the retreat from the valley, Gerard, with his layman’s knowledge of medicine, assisted Dr. Henry Porter

Gerard had fathered children by two Indian women before marrying Ella Waddell in 1877.

On November 15, 1877, at age 48, Gerard married Ella Scarborourgh Waddell, a young and respectable woman from Kansas City. He fathered four more children—Frederic Curtis in 1878, Birdie in 1880, Charles in 1888 and Florence in 1893. Carrie, his middle daughter with his first Arikara wife, lived with the family until adulthood. Fred Jr., son of the Blackfeet wife, remained a stranger. Once married to a white woman, Gerard opened a store, became active in local pol-

itics and operated a ferry across the Heart River. In 1890 he moved his third and ﬁnal family to Minnesota, where he worked in advertising for the Pillsbury Baking Co. Gerard once dryly remarked he was probably helping to sell ﬂour given to the reservation Indians who almost killed him at the Little Bighorn. He lived out the last months of his life in the care of Benedictine nuns at St. Cloud, including the two daughters from his first marriage. Fred Gerard died on January 30, 1913.

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W E S T E R N E N TE R P R I S E

The California ‘Grape Rush’ Birthed a Land of Vineyards Pioneer winemakers included Agoston Haraszthy and Charles Krug

alifornia’s grape varieties and wine business might be older than most realize. The region was a part of New Spain in 1779 when Franciscan missionaries planted the first sustained vineyard at Mission San Diego de Alcalá. French settler Jean-Louis Vignes was among the ﬁrst to establish a non-mission vineyard and is credited with introducing a better strain of Vitis vinifera (cultivated European grapevines) to Mexican-governed California around 1833. Many winemakers still consider Vignes the “father of the California wine industry.” Among the 300,000 people who joined the California Gold Rush were many Forty-Niners who never realized their dream of a golden fortune and turned to agriculture. At the time most California winemakers were still using the Franciscans’ strain of Mission grapes, which, according to 19th-century historian Lyman L. Palmer, produced “sour, unpalatable and dreggy stuff, yet it answered the purpose and was relished by those accustomed to its use from youth to old age.” But newcomers from the States and Europe demanded better, and by the 1850s vineyards had sprouted up in Sonoma, Napa, Sutter, Lake, Yuba, Butte, Trinity and El Dorado counties. By the mid-1850s Sonoma had gained notice for its non-mission wine. On December 6, 1858, the Daily Alta California ran the headline Vine Culture in Sonoma and noted, “The wine of Sonoma is different from that of the southern portion of the state, being lighter and more like the French wines.” Early popular varieties, wrote historian Hubert Bancroft, were Zinfandel and Riesling from Central Europe. Notable winemakers

By Sherry Monahan

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COURTESY OF BUENA VISTA WINERY

COURTESY OF CHARLES KRUG WINERY

C

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Agoston Haraszthy (left) and Charles Krug founded wineries that remain in business.

Grapes harvested during Prohibition were often shipped to home winemakers back East.

included Agoston Haraszthy de Mokcsa and Charles Krug, founders of two of California’s oldest wineries still operating.

JUNE 2015

Born into Hungarian nobility in 1812, Haraszthy moved to Wisconsin in the early 1840s, where he planted hops for

SHERRY MONAHAN

Despite winning accolades for its wine I made the ﬁrst lot of wine ever made in beer and grapes for wine, before joining the exodus to California in 1849. He ﬁrst in 1873 in London, Vienna, Australia, Napa County, at the place of John Patchsettled in San Diego, where he started Chile, Japan and Paris, the Buena Vista ett, Napa City. As a cellar he used an old several business and agricultural con- Winery succumbed to financial pres- pioneer adobe house built on the banks cerns, including a vineyard. By 1852 the sures, and in 1878 the society auctioned of Napa Creek. I said, ‘The ﬁrst lot of wine self-proclaimed count was buying land off the estate. Arpad Haraszthy con- ever made in Napa County.’ Allow me to around San Francisco, determined to tinued to make wine and in 1880 was correct this statement: They offered me find a better place to plant his vines. In appointed president of the California in the fall of 1859, at each of the Bale and preparation he imported from Hungary Board of State Viticultural Commis- Yount ranchos, a tin cup full of ‘elegant’ six choice rooted vines and 160 cuttings. sioners. In its 1888 annual report Ha- claret, which had been fermented in large Also in the shipment were two small raszthy noted that the number of vine- cowhides, tied to and spread out with bundles—one was Muscat of Alexan- yards in the state had tripled since 1880, lassos between four trees and ﬁlled with dria, the other Zinfandel. In 1856 Ha- and that overall wine production in grapes crushed by Indians.” In 1861 Krug founded his own winery, raszthy purchased an 800-acre Sonoma 1887 totaled 15 million gallons. But his ranch, renaming it Buena Vista. The father’s Buena Vista Winery laid dor- centered on a 14-foot-high by 20-footfollowing year he excavated tunnels in a mant into the 1940s. In 2011 the French- deep cellar a mile north of St. Helena, nearby mountain for storing and aging based Boisset wine group purchased the and introduced the cider press for winewine, and Buena Vista produced 6,500 winery [www.buenavistawinery.com], making (the first of which remains on display at the winery). By gallons of its ﬁrst vintage. By 1872 he was the fourth larg1860 he had planted more est grower in Napa and had than 250 acres of vines. Quite expanded his cellar to hold the innovator, the count crenearly 300,000 gallons of ated the first gravity-flow wine. His vineyards grew winery—in which the grapes Rieslings, Muscatel, Burger, fall gently into the fermenChasselas, Malaga, Black Maltation tanks to minimize voisie, Flame Tokay, Rose de bruising—and is credited with Peru and Zinfandel. In 1874 championing dry-farming a fire destroyed the winery, techniques and the use of but that summer Krug built a redwood barrels to age wine. new cellar of stone, concrete In 1861 Haraszthy perand wood. By fall 1880 he had suaded the state to sponsor more than doubled his capachim on a tour of Europe to study winemaking methods. Haraszthy began making wine at Sonoma’s Buena Vista in 1857. ity to 700,000 gallons. By 1892, after widespread damage He and son Arpad returned with cuttings representing more than continuing the rich heritage Count Ha- from phylloxera, an invasive insect, the St. Helena winery had been reduced to 75 400 varieties of vines. This encouraged raszthy began a century and a half ago. Within months of purchasing Buena acres, of which only 35 were bearing fruit. other California winemakers, like Charles Wetmore, to experiment with varieties. Vista in 1856, Agoston Haraszthy sold Krug wanted to keep going. He planned Haraszthy and Wetmore were among the another parcel of land in Sonoma to to replant up to 10 acres to Riparia, 30 ﬁrst to plant mixed-ﬁeld blends, with sev- friend and apprentice Charles Krug, who acres to Lenoir and ﬁve acres to Mondeeral varieties in one vineyard, to see which started his own winery. Krug, who was use, Cabernet Sauvignon, Burger, Caberworked and which didn’t. In 1863 Harasz- born in Prussia in 1825 and fought for in- net Franc and other grafts, but he died thy, with the help of investors, established dependence from Germany in 1848, had that November before seeing it through. After Krug’s death, James Mofﬁtt held the Buena Vista Vinicultural Society, a arrived in San Francisco in 1852 with little corporation dedicated to expanding and money but plenty of determination and a the winery in proprietorship through modernizing winemaking. While Harasz- willingness to work hard. He maintained Prohibition, when grapes were often thy had a successful ﬁrst year, his costly his Sonoma vineyard for two years before shipped east. In 1943 he sold it to Cesare ambitions exceeded the early demand selling it, borrowing an apple press and Mondavi, an Italian immigrant with a for California wine. Shareholders forced moving to Napa to make wine for pio- passion for wine he passed down to sons him out of the society in 1867, and the neer John Patchett. On December 19, Robert and Peter. Today the Peter Monnext year he headed for Nicaragua to look 1890, the San Francisco Star published an davi family manages the historic Charles into the sugar and rum trade. In early July excerpt of Krug’s memoir. “When I ﬁrst Krug Winery [www.charleskrug.com], 1869 the flamboyant count reportedly visited Napa County, I found less than and California’s viniculture still celefell into an alligator-infested stream on a dozen small vineyards of so-called Mis- brates the spirit and tenacity of Krug in his property. His body never turned up. sion vines,” he wrote. “In October 1858 Napa and Haraszthy in Sonoma. JUNE 2015

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21

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ART O F T HE W E S T

Robb Kendrick Turns Back the Clock To Capture Today’s Cowboys in Tintypes For the Texas photographer the results are worth the demands hotography has made great strides since the 19th century, but Robb Kendrick [www .RobbKendrick.com], a photographer who lives near Austin, Texas, is still drawn to tintypes. Kendrick—who also shoots in digital format and 35mm and large-format ﬁlm —has photographed contemporary working cowboys since the 1980s. His 2008 book Still: Cowboys at the Start of the Twenty-First Century features 148 tintype portraits with an Old West look but taken since the turn of this century. In the 19th century the tintype process was a relatively inexpensive way to have one’s photograph taken. The bestknown tintype from the era is one of Billy the Kid, snapped around 1880 in Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory. The Kid probably paid the unknown itinerant photographer $1 for four small tintype plates. In 2011 the one known surviving plate sold at auction for $2.3 million.

By Johnny D. Boggs

PHOTOS: ROBB KENDRICK

P

Chet Bartlett of Nevada’s Rhoads Ranch.

A wet-plate process, tintype photography is demanding. “All images are made and processed at the time you’re shooting the pictures,” Kendrick explains. “You have to coat the metal plate,

Quentin Marburger, Tim Stout, Cliff Foster and Steve Eytcheson pose at Texas’ JA Ranch.

soak it in silver nitrate. You have about eight or 10 minutes to go out, put it in the camera, shoot the picture, come back and process it. Everything has to be done wet. You have to have a portable darkroom and travel with all the chemicals. It’s like you’re building a house from the foundation up in one sitting, as opposed to working with an architect and working with plans. You’re building it as you go.” Exposures range from four to eight seconds to as long as 10 minutes, one reason people sitting for 19th century tintypes seldom cracked a smile. “Technically, people can’t hold a smile for eight seconds,” says Kendrick. “So if you have a family photo, and the kid is blurred, and the dad looks pissed off, he’s pissed off because the kid moved, and now he has to pay the photographer more money to shoot another picture.” Born in the Texas Panhandle town of Spur, Kendrick, 52, first discovered photography as a teen. Family members

worked some of the big spreads, including the historic 6666 Ranch, and while Kendrick was at East Texas State University (since renamed Texas A&M University–Commerce), he visited the ranches to photograph cowboys. Hooked on the craft after an internship at National Geographic, he has handled various assignments and commissions ever since. While his medium of choice varies from assignment to assignment, the tintype process holds a particular appeal, Kendrick explains, “because it produces a unique image.” He has used the process to photograph mummies in Mexico and rock bands for album covers. “Somebody wanted me to shoot chefs in tintypes, but I had no interest,” Kendrick says. “Then it just becomes a bit of a gimmick.” How about those unsmiling people in period tintypes? “1870 was a lot more comfortable than 1770,” he says. “In 150 years they’re going to look back and think that you and I had a rough time.”

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INDIAN LIFE

Left Hand Went From Custer Scout to Lakota Warrior at the Little Bighorn His role in the battle and manner of his death remain a mystery

he Hunkpapa Lakota warrior Left Hand is one of the quiet enigmas of Custer’s Last Stand —a man who served as both a scout for Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and a warrior for Sitting Bull but died without explaining why he did what he did. Left Hand signed on as a U.S. Army Indian scout on December 9, 1875, and mustered out in early June 1876 while serving with Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry’s column (including the 12 companies under Custer’s immediate command), then headed west into Sioux country. What happened between then and the battle is open to conjecture, but Left Hand’s fate is certain: In 1912 Arikara scout Young Hawk told interviewer Walter Mason Camp, “When Left Hand’s time expired, he joined the Sioux, his own people, and after the Battle of the Little Bighorn River his horse was found in the village, and his dead body among those left in the village by the Sioux.” Left Hand—also known as Chat-ka (Lakota for “left”)—was one of five Lakota scouts who had signed on with Custer in December 1875. These Lakotas were especially important to Custer, as neither the Arikara scouts he and brother Tom signed up near Fort Abraham Lincoln nor the Crow scouts he later secured from Colonel John Gibbon spoke Lakota. Arikara is a Caddoan language. The Crow language, while Siouan, is not mutually intelligible between a Crow and a Sioux. Left Hand was identified as a Hunkpapa, a people that came to be known as the “Sitting Bull Sioux.” The Hunkpapas (whose name means “Head of the Circle”) were the northernmost band of the Lakota tribe. They traditionally avoided

By John Koster

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GLENWOOD J. SWANSON COLLECTION

T

Young Hawk (above) said that Lakota scout Left Hand left the Army to rejoin his people.

JUNE 2015

any type of contact with whites—unlike the Oglalas, Brulés and friendlier Sans Arcs—although they had fought Custer during the 1873 Yellowstone Expedition. “The Indians were made up of different bands of Sioux, principally Uncpapas [sic], the whole under command of ‘Sitting Bull,’ who participated in the second day’s ﬁght,” Custer wrote to his wife. “A large number of Indians who fought us were fresh from the reservations on the Missouri River. Many of the warriors engaged in the fight on both days were dressed in complete suits of the clothes issued at the agencies to the Indians. The arms with which they fought us (several of which were captured in the ﬁght) were of the latest improved patterns of breechloading repeating riﬂes, and their supply of metallic cartridges seemed unlimited.” The year after that inconclusive campaign Custer led an expedition through the Black Hills that the Hunkpapas and other Lakotas considered a violation of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. A year later the government told the Lakotas the United States wanted to buy the Black Hills, said to be full of “gold from the grass roots down.” Some of the Lakota chiefs offered to sell for $70 million; the government offered $6 million. Delegates from the Oglala Crazy Horse and the Hunkpapa Sitting Bull refused to sell at any price, some even threatening to kill any Lakota who touched the pen. Negotiations faltered, and it was around that time Left Hand signed on as a scout. Three possibilities suggest themselves: (1) He may have been an outcast from the Hunkpapas for some personal argument or moral failure, (2) he may have realized the old free-roaming days were doomed and sought to secure his own future, or (3) he may have been a spy sent by Sitting Bull to learn what the whites were up to. In any case Left Hand signed up with the Army just as it was about to order the Sioux to report to their assigned agencies or face condemnation as hostiles. Left Hand does not figure by name in the accounts of Custer’s other Lakota scouts on the approach march to the Little Bighorn. If, as Young Hawk remembered, Left Hand mustered out in June, he probably would have done so on June 9, 1876, after a six-month term of service.

To confuse matters, Young Hawk, who knew Left Hand by sight, named only four Lakota scouts—Bear Come Out, Red Bear, White Cloud and Buffalo Ancestor—at the column’s departure from Fort Lincoln on March 17. As Indians often went by multiple names, Left Hand actually may have been with the 7th Cavalry and scouts when they left Fort Lincoln. Young Hawk was certain, however, he left some weeks before the ﬁght on the Little Bighorn. According to Young Hawk and other Arikaras, en route to the battle the Lakota scouts pointed to signs in abandoned Lakota camps indicating the enemy knew the troops were coming. But again there was no mention of Left Hand. A clue to what may have happened to Left Hand popped up in 1922, when Army officer and World War I veteran Colonel Alfred Burton Welch was interviewing Lakotas at Fort Yates, on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota. On August 17 he spoke to an educated elder named Emeron White. “The Sioux people sing a song about a Ree [Arikara] scout who died with Custer,” White told Welch. “They call him Makpia Tatonka (Buffalo Cloud). He rode a swift horse, but it was wounded, and they got around him. The scout begged for his life and named the firstborn of the families of those Hunkpapas who were around him. This is sacred to the people, to name the firstborn, and they always let an enemy get away when they do that. But this time everyone was excited, and so they killed him there. I think maybe that it was Bloody Knife, his other name. They are all sorry for that thing now and sing this song in his honor: The horse came alone Where is his rider? Where is Buffalo Cloud? Here he lays.” The man killed was clearly not the halfArikara scout Bloody Knife, who was shot not surrounded by Hunkpapa enemies but so close to Major Marcus Reno that the bullet splattered the scout’s brains and blood on Reno’s face. According to witnesses, the other two slain Arikara scouts, Bob-tailed Bull and Little Brave, were fighting when killed. No

other Arikaras were reported killed. White’s anecdote raises two questions: What language did the surrounded “Ree” speak for the Lakotas to have understood him? And how did that man know the names of the Hunkpapas’ firstborn? Is it possible Left Hand was the one surrounded and killed by his own people as a suspected traitor? Or was he a self-appointed spy who tried to forewarn his people of Custer’s attack? The Hunkpapa Nation at Standing Rock lists Left Hand, under his Lakota name

Left Hand was deﬁnitely an Army scout, deﬁnitely left the Army in June and deﬁnitely turned up among the honored Lakota dead after the Battle of the Little Bighorn Chat-ka, as a combatant and casualty on the Indian side: “Chat-ka. Hunkpapa Sioux. His body was found in abandoned tepee in the valley after the Little Bighorn battle. He was a scout at Fort Lincoln.” Young Hawk, the Arikara scout, offers one more provocative description of Left Hand’s body at the Little Bighorn: “He had on a white shirt. The shoulders were painted green, and on his forehead, painted in red, was the sign of a secret society. In the middle of the camp they found a drum, and on one side, lying on a blanket, was a row of dead Dakotas [sic] with their feet toward the drum.” Left Hand was definitely an Army scout, definitely left the Army in June and definitely turned up among the honored Lakota dead after the battle. He may or may not have been the Ree who mysteriously spoke Lakota and knew the names of the Hunkpapa firstborn. He may simply have been accepted back into his warrior society and fought to the death alongside his brothers at the Little Bighorn. Barring new information, the story of Left Hand is another mystery of Custer’s Last Stand.

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Lieutenant Charles Varnum, fourth from left, listens to an Arikara soldier under his command, in John Fawcett’s painting The Arikara Scouts.

JOHN FAWCETT

The Arikaras

CUSTER’S 13TH COMPANY

Though referred to as ‘scouts,’ even by Lt. Col. George A. Custer, these Indians enlisted as soldiers—and some fought well at the Little Bighorn By John Koster All photographs courtesy of Glenwood J. Swanson

O

n June 25–26, 1876, Lakota hired later in the campaign. A July 28, imity along the Missouri River. To endure Sioux and Northern Cheyenne 1866, congressional act, amended in the brutal northern Plains winters, they warriors on the Little Bighorn 1873, had authorized the president to lived in earth lodges thickly insulated River annihilated the ﬁve 7th enlist and employ up to 1,000 Indians with logs, soil and sod. The women raised U.S. Cavalry companies under the direct as U.S. soldiers, though department corn and beans during the growing seacommand of Lieutenant Colonel George commanders were granted the discre- son, while the men organized sporadic Armstrong Custer and decimated seven tion to release them from service. As buffalo hunts, camping out in small teother companies that barely survived to soldiers the Arikaras received govern- pees transported by dogs. Author and tell the tale of the Army’s biggest defeat ment uniforms and weapons and were illustrator Thomas E. Mails estimated in the Western Indian wars. That much subject to military orders. They earned that by 1800 the farming tribes had atis familiar even to those otherwise un- $13 a month, the same as other en- rophied to about 3,800 Arikaras, 3,600 schooled in 19th-century battles. Far listed men, though white and half-blood Mandans and 2,500 Hidatsas, while less known is the presence—and fate— scouts often received higher wages. the Lakotas—full-time buffalo hunters of a 13th company at that Montana Terri- Even Custer himself referred to the Arik- who cackled at the “corn eaters”—had tory ﬁght. Instead of white soldiers, this aras as “scouts,” perhaps to boost cama- swollen to some 27,000 members. In 1823 fur trappers clashed with the company comprised Arikara Indians, raderie among his Indian forces. Legally, mortal enemies of the Lakotas, whom however, they were soldiers and subject Arikaras, sparking a brief war in which Custer had signed up as U.S. soldiers to whatever discipline he might impose the tribe faced a force of 230 U.S. soldiers, 50 trappers and 750 at the last moment. Sioux (yes, allies of the whites The Arikaras themselves at the time). The Arikaras had mixed feelings that spring escaped extinction mostly when they learned about the through U.S. clemency, and Custer expedition of 1876. by allowing the tribe a meaThe Sioux were a formidable sure of independence, the enemy, and previous wars Americans won the Arikaras’ and two smallpox epidemcautious loyalty. A decade ics had not been kind to the later the smallpox epidemic Arikaras. Many joined up for of 1837 all but exterminated the money. Young Hawk, an the neighboring Mandans Arikara who had soldiered for and severely reduced the Custer before, chose to sit out Arikaras and Hidatsas. At that this campaign. His father felt low point, mostly out of desotherwise and stated, “I will peration, they became U.S. go, and my son too.” Young allies against their principal Hawk obeyed, as Arikaras had enemy, the Sioux. John James great respect for their elders. Audubon visited the survivors Frederic F. Gerard, a fur in 1843 and described them trader who served as civilian The Arikara Bob-tailed Bull (second from left), who enlisted at age 45, died during Major Marcus Reno’s attack in the valley. as lanky and squalid—perinterpreter for Custer’s Arikhaps because the smallpox aras, took the 40 Arikara volunteers, including the dubious Young in a fluid tactical situation. To under- had invalided so many Arikaras. Another Hawk, to the Army encampment near stand the role of the Arikara soldiers is white visitor in 1858 derided them as their village by the Missouri River for to better comprehend what happened sullen, insolent and disease-ridden. By the enlistment ceremony. Captain Tom at the Little Bighorn. The Arikaras were 1876 the Arikaras, badly outnumbered Custer was on duty, and Gerard told the combatants but also somewhat de- and targeted as white allies, had more Indians to raise their hands for the oath tached observers—and some became reason than ever to side with soldiers of allegiance (for more on Gerard see decidedly more detached as things grew trying to contain the powerful Sioux. The nominal commander of the new Pioneers and Settlers, P. 18; also see the worse for the 7th Cavalry. 13th company was Lieutenant Charles related story and photo of Younk Hawk in Indian Life, P. 24). George Custer then he Arikaras—who called them- Varnum, a 26-year-old West Point gradstrode in and, through Gerard, told the selves the Sahnish (“original uate. Custer, however, understood Arikaras the expedition was imminent, people”) and were informally enough about Indians, the Arikaras in and they were to remain at Fort Abraham known as the Rees—were the particular, to know they would be leery Lincoln and not return to their village. largest of three farming tribes (along of leadership by such a young man. The Arikaras were ofﬁcially American with the Mandans and Hidatsas) that Indeed, the Arikaras seem to have resoldiers, unlike the Crow scouts Custer since the 18th century had lived in prox- garded their own chiefs as field com-

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manders, seldom mentioning Varnum in their reminiscences. After the May 7 enlistment ceremony Custer met in his tent with two veteran Arikara warriors, Bob-tailed Bull and Soldier. The colonel, through interpreter Gerard, ﬁrst expressed his appreciation: The man before me, Bob-tailed Bull, is a man of good heart, of good character. I am pleased to have him here. I am glad he has enlisted. It will be a hard expedition, but we will all share the same hardships. I am very well pleased to have him in my party, and I told it in Washington. We are to live and ﬁght together, children of one father and one mother. The great-grandfather has a plan. The Sioux camps have united, and you and I must work together for the Great Father and help each other. The Great Father is well pleased that it took few words to coax Son-of-the-Star [the principal Arikara chief] to furnish me scouts for this work we have to do, and he is pleased, too, at his behavior in helping on the plan of the Great Father. I, for one, am willing to help in this all I can, and you must help too. It is this way, my brothers. If I should happen to lose any of the men Son-of-the-Star has furnished, their reward will not be forgotten by the government. Their relations will be saddened by their death, but there will be some comfort in the pay that the United States will provide.

Bob-tailed Bull thanked Custer and shared his readiness to die in battle. “It is a good thing you say, my brother, my children and other relatives will receive my pay and other rewards,” he answered. “I am glad you say this, for I

The 7th Cavalry employed Bloody Knife, a favorite of George Custer, as a guide and interpreter on the march to the Little Bighorn. He was half Arikara and half Lakota.

see there is some gain even though I lose my life.” Custer said further words were unnecessary and stated, “Bob-tailed Bull is to be the leader, and Soldier second in command of the scouts.”

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couts” they may have been in Custer’s view, but the Arikaras comprised their own company, and on May 17, accompanied by four mercenary

Sioux scouts assigned to them, the Arikaras formed up to leave Fort Abraham Lincoln. Theirs was the ﬁrst company to parade on the fort grounds but the last to leave, marching at the rear of the column that first day. The Arikaras spoke their own tongue, a subset of the Caddoan language family, and used sign language to converse with their attached Sioux scouts and the six Crow scouts Custer plucked from Colonel John

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In one of the Sioux sweat lodges, according to Young Hawk, ‘Red Bear [at left], Red Star and Soldier saw ﬁgures drawn, indicating by hoofprints Custer’s men on one side and the Dakota [Sioux] on the other’ Gibbons’ Montana column on June 21. The Crow scout Curley claimed Custer paid Gibbon $600 to “rent” the Crows. Custer’s favorite Indian scout, Bloody Knife, who had a Hunkpapa Sioux father and Arikara mother, also conversed with the Arikaras in sign language. As the column headed up the Yellowstone River, Bloody Knife encouraged the Arikaras to stick with the command no matter what happened. “There are numerous enemies in the country,” he told them. “If we attack their camp [and] are beaten, we must retreat in small groups. You scouts must not run away [or] go back to your homes.” Around June 22 the Arikaras arrived at an abandoned Lakota camp, where they found the skeletal remains of a soldier. “All about him were clubs and sticks, as though he had been beaten to death,” Young Hawk recalled. “Only the bones were left. Custer stood still for some time and looked down at the remains.” The detachment also found a dead Sioux warrior on a scaffold. On Custer’s orders they dismantled the scaffold and stripped the corpse, ﬁnding a partially healed gunshot wound in the dead man’s back. They threw the body in the river. On June 23 the Arikaras looked on as the steamboat Far West ferried “cannon” (referring to Gatling guns) back across the river, as Custer thought the gun carriages would only slow down the column; the Indians thought this was a mistake. Officers also detailed three Arikaras to carry mail back to Fort Lincoln. The other Arikaras received five mules to carry their supplies as the command, shifting to attack mode, moved out ahead of its supply train. 30

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“Here Gerard told us he wanted us to sing our death songs,” Young Hawk said. “Custer then ordered two groups of scouts to go ahead, one on each side of the river.” The next day, June 24, the Arikaras and scouts found an abandoned Lakota camp set up around a circular clearing for a sun dance. “The Dakota [Sioux] scouts in Custer’s army said that this meant the enemy knew the Army was coming,” Young Hawk recalled. “In one of the sweat lodges was a long heap or ridge of sand. On this one Red Bear, Red Star and Soldier saw ﬁgures drawn, indicating by hoofprints Custer’s men on one side and the Dakota on the other. Between them dead men were drawn lying with their heads toward the Dakotas. The Arikara scouts understood this to mean that the Dakota medicine was too strong for them, and that they would be defeated by the Dakotas.” Inside another sweat lodge Young Hawk found three stones, each painted red. “This meant in Dakota sign language that the Great Spirit had given them victory, and that if the whites did not come, they would seek them,” Young Hawk explained. They saw other signs, too, that shook their conﬁdence. That may explain why later that day the Arikaras and their Crow scouts “missed” the obvious travois trail that ultimately led to the Little Bighorn. Varnum, their nominal commander, took the blame for the oversight and in 1909 shared his recollections with Walter Mason Camp, the dean of Little Bighorn interviewers: “Custer told me that [Lieutenant Edward S.] Godfrey had reported that a trail of a part of the Indians had gone up a branch stream to our left about 10 miles back,

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and Custer was rather angry that I had let anything get away from me.” Custer assigned Lieutenant Luther Hare to “assist” Varnum and his Arikaras, and with Hare’s help and Custer’s rebuke fresh on their minds, the Arikaras had no trouble ﬁnding the travois trail. They and their attached Crows followed it about 10 miles that afternoon before stopping to make camp.

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hat night Custer summoned Red Star and ﬁve other Arikaras to his headquarters tent, around which the officers had clustered. Gerard gave them their instructions: “Long Hair wants to tell you that tonight you shall go without sleep. You are to go on ahead. You are to try to locate the Sioux camp. You are to do your best to find this camp. Travel all night. When day comes, if you have not found the Sioux camp, keep on going until noon. If your search is useless by this time, you are to come back to camp. These Crow Indians [known to the Arikaras as Big Belly, Strikes Enemy, Comes Leading and Curly Head] will be your guides, for they know the country.” White scout Charley Reynolds accompanied the Indians, as did Mitch Bouyer, a half-blood French-Sioux with a Crow wife who served as an interpreter. The party headed out and soon reached an overlook familiar to the Crows and later dubbed the Crow’s Nest. “I saw two of the Crow scouts climbing up on the highest peak of the hill,” Red Star recalled. “I heard the Crows call like an owl, not loud but clear.” Returning to the group, the Crows warned the Arikaras not to sing a traditional song that meant an enemy was in sight. “Then

all the scouts climbed up the peak to look for signs of the Dakotas,” Red Star continued. Crooked Horn, an older Arikara warrior, told Red Star, “Look sharp, my boy, you have better eyes than I.” Red Star saw a dark object and light smoke rising from what he assumed was the Lakota village. Reynolds scanned the horizon with his ﬁeld glasses, scrawled out a note and gave it to Crooked Horn. He in turn handed the note to Red Star and sent him and another Arikara back to the soldiers’ main camp, marked by rising smoke in the opposite direction. When Red Star reached Custer’s encampment, a fellow Arikara named Stabbed greeted him: “My son, this is no small thing you have done.” The Custer brothers, Bloody Knife and Gerard clustered around as George read Reynolds’ note. Custer then mounted up and headed for the overlook to see for himself. When the party reached the hill, Custer at first claimed he couldn’t see the village. Reynolds then handed the colonel his ﬁeld glasses, and a moment later Custer nodded. The Arikaras and Crows told Custer that while Red Star was relaying the message, they had seen six Sioux scouts, who seemed well aware of the soldiers’ presence. Custer brushed off the suggestion. “These Sioux we have seen at the foot of the hill, two going one way and four the other, are good scouts,” Big Belly, one of the Crow scouts, insisted. “They have seen the smoke of our camp.” “I say again we have not been seen!” Custer snapped back. “That camp has not seen us. I am going ahead to carry out what I think. I want to wait until it is dark, and then we will march. We will place our army around the Sioux camp.”

“That plan is bad,” Big Belly replied bluntly. “It should not be carried out.” “I have said what I propose to do,” the colonel said curtly. “I want to wait until it is dark and then go ahead with my plan.” Custer then rode back down to rejoin his command. Circumstances soon forced him to reconsider. In his absence Sergeant William Curtis had turned back along the trail to recover a box of hardtack inadvertently left behind and had encountered several Sioux. After exchanging shots, the Sioux rode off. Ironically, the warriors Curtis saw wouldn’t make it back to the Indian village until after the battle. But Custer decided to strike ﬁrst. He instructed the Arikaras, through Gerard: “Boys, I want you to take the horses away from the Sioux camp. Make up your minds to go straight to their camp and capture their horses. Boys, you are going to have a hard day. You must keep up your courage. You will get experience today.”

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he company of Arikaras, by then at the head of the column, joined in the general charge toward the village and its horse herd. Encountering a lone burial tepee, they rode around it, slapping its sides with their quirts and slashing it open: Even a coup on a dead Lakota was worth something. Custer and Gerard soon caught up, and through Gerard the angry colonel said: “I told you to dash on and stop for nothing. You have disobeyed me. Move to one side and let the soldiers pass you in the charge. If any man of you is not brave, I will take away his weapons and make a woman of him.” Red Bear recalled what a fellow Arikara

shouted back to Gerard: “Tell him if he does the same to all his white soldiers who are not so brave as we are, it will take him a very long time indeed.” The Arikaras laughed at the gibe and rushed into the brewing fight. Six or eight of them split off to rush the Sioux pony herd from two different directions. After cutting out a group of horses, they fired wildly on the Lakota village and then spent much of the day eluding angry Sioux warriors. About half of the Arikaras stuck with Bob-tailed Bull, their war chief, and Bloody Knife, who had accompanied Major Marcus Reno and three companies of white soldiers. Young Hawk was with the Arikara company, as were two Crow scouts, on the left ﬂank of Reno’s companies as they advanced on the village. Bob-tailed Bull was nearest to the opposing Sioux when they moved to flank Reno’s left, defending their village in overwhelming numbers. “All at once over the middle of the ridge came riding a dense swarm of Dakotas in one mass straight toward Bob-tailed Bull,” Young Hawk recalled. At that moment a white soldier beside Young Hawk turned and shouted, “John, you go!” apparently advising the young Arikara to run for it. The attacking Sioux bore down on the Arikaras, and men started to flee back across the river. The Arikaras claimed the other soldiers were the ﬁrst to run. In the midst of the melee Bloody Knife had taken a Sioux bullet to the head, and his brains and blood splattered Reno’s face, adding to the major’s dismay over a very bad situation. As they crossed the river, several Arikaras got separated from the command and sought cover in a grove of trees.

Red Star (at left) saw a dark object and light smoking rising from what he assumed was the Lakota village. Scout Charley Reynolds scanned the horizon with his ﬁeld glasses and scrawled out a note for Custer JUNE 2015

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missed, then reloaded and ﬁred again, killing the enemy warrior and shouting in triumph. “Some little time after this the Sioux came closer again,” he recalled. “I saw one Sioux coming right toward me, and I drew a fine bead on him and dropped him. Then I jumped up and gave the death call again.” Young Hawk could hear Sioux women crying out, urging their warriors to kill the Arikaras, but the Sioux fire soon slackened, and their attackers rode off downstream. He and Half-Yellow-Face thought Custer must have struck the village from the other side, so they helped Goose and Strikes the Enemy up on their horses and prepared to leave. Spotting

white sergeant to ride out at dusk with a message “to the President of the United States, in order that all might know what happened.” But enemy fire kept them pinned down all night. The next morning, June 26, the ﬁring resumed on all sides and persisted into the afternoon. Amid the din of battle around midday Young Hawk heard a Sioux singing a war song: “Come on, white man, come on if you are brave, we are ready for you.” All at once the ﬁring stopped, and soon, just visible in the distance, the Sioux and Cheyennes gathered in the village to dismantle all of their tepees but five—the burial tepees, as the soldiers later learned. The

JOAN PENNINGTON

Among them was Young Hawk, who resolved to die ﬁghting after his cousin Goose was severely wounded and lost his horse to Sioux bullets. After propping up Goose against a tree, Young Hawk helped Crow scout Half-Yellow-Face drag Strikes the Enemy, a wounded fellow Crow, into the shelter of the grove. “The sight of the wounded men gave me queer feelings,” Young Hawk remembered. “I did not want to see them mutilated, so I decided to get killed myself at the edge of the timber. Before going out, I put my arms about my horse’s neck, saying, ‘I love you.’ I then crawled out and stood up and saw all in front of me Sioux warriors kneeling

The Arikaras rode into trouble in the valley with Major Marcus Reno, and 13 later participated in the defensive stand atop Reno Hill.

ready to shoot. I fired at them and received a volley but was not hit. I was determined to try again and get killed.” Just then he spotted Forked Horn, an experienced Arikara warrior, who was ﬁring from behind a cluster of driftwood. “Don’t you do so again!” Forked Horn scolded. “It is no way to act. This is not the way to ﬁght at all, to show yourself as a mark.” Heeding the older man’s advice, Young Hawk fought alongside Forked Horn from behind cover. The Sioux set fire to the grass, trying to smoke out the Arikaras, but it was too green. When a Sioux on a gray horse rode into plain sight, Young Hawk ﬁred, 32

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an American ﬂag in the command’s fallback position atop Reno Hill, they rode that way under Sioux fire while Young Hawk waved a white ﬂag to avoid being shot by fellow soldiers. Just outside the skirmish line on Reno Hill a Sioux bullet dropped the horse Young Hawk loved, but the scouts made it into camp. Major Reno told them in sign language that Bob-tailed Bull was dead. Young Hawk, Goose and the 11 other Arikaras who did reach Reno Hill took position alongside their fellow soldiers, ﬁring at their attackers from behind stacked supply boxes. According to Young Hawk, an officer detailed him, four other Arikaras and a

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men atop Reno Hill then watched as the enemy warriors and their families set off toward the Bighorn Mountains. Late that afternoon the Arikaras saw what they first thought was a party of enemy hunters returning to the village. In fact the approaching party was Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry’s force, which had arrived to relieve the trapped white and Indian soldiers on Reno Hill. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was over.

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he Arikaras spent the next day gathering troopers’ bodies for burial and foraging for food. Records show that of the 40-

man company of Arikara soldiers, nine had remained at the Powder River camp or at Fort Lincoln. Of the 31 Arikaras in Custer’s command, 22 had followed Reno across the river to attack the massive Sioux and Cheyenne village. Only two were killed. Thirteen made it back across the river to join the defenders atop Reno Hill, while the others apparently just kept riding when things turned dire. Brought to battle as mercenaries to ﬁght a common enemy, and motivated by the need to feed their families, some Arikaras fought very well—to the death in the case of Bob-tailed Bull and Little Brave, and with suicidal courage in the case of Young Hawk. An equal or larger number lit out the minute the battle turned sour. That the other half proved plausible soldiers was overlooked when the booty was distributed and glory and honors bestowed. By June 28 the Arikara company had reassembled at Fort Lincoln. The Army quietly paid off the survivors and mustered them out of the service. The Crows got to retain the site of the battleﬁeld within the boundaries of their ample reservation. The Arikaras, though they boasted far more defenders on the ﬁring line atop Reno Hill, resumed life among the Three Afﬁliated Tribes along the Missouri River, largely ignored by history until the 1940s. The 1947–53 construction of the Garrison Dam— despite vocal opposition by tribal residents of the Fort Berthold Reservation —forced the relocation of 1,700 tribal members and inundated virtually all of their farmland and several burial grounds. Though the Three Affiliated Tribes remain along the Missouri in North Dakota, many harbor bitter memories of this most recent battle. In the end the Garrison Dam project did the Arikaras far more harm than anything they suffered fighting their traditional enemies for Uncle Sam in 1876. John Koster is the author of Custer Survivor. Colonel W.A. Graham collected key Arikara narratives in The Custer Myth (1953). Also see the 1920 work The Arikara Narrative of Custer’s Campaign and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, edited by Orin G. Libby.

Young Hawk was ready to die after the Sioux wounded his cousin Goose (above).

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Catlin’s Cartoon Collection

Long after completing his noted Indian Gallery in the 1830s, painter George Catlin dashed off this second Indian Gallery

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Catlin rendered his “cartoons” with oil on card stock, which he then mounted on paperboard. For easier handling during his travels, he painted a border around many of these similarly sized works instead of using an actual frame. On the following pages are some of the paintings from the Cartoon Collection, which appear in the exhibit “Take Two: George Catlin Revisits the West,” running through May 31 at the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The works are on loan from the Paul Mellon Collection at the National Gallery of Art. “This second take on his subjects is important in understanding his circumstances and in understanding the enlarged record of the American Indian that he provided,” says Catlin biographer Brian W. Dippie, a specialist in the history of Western American art and guest curator for “Take Two.” (Each image that follows this page: 1861–69, oil on card stock mounted on paperboard, by George Catlin, Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The “cartoon” Indians of George Catlin (1796–1872) bear little resemblance to Little Beaver, the young Navajo sidekick to comic book hero Red Ryder, and look nothing like Chief Wahoo, the Cleveland Indians’ cartoon logo. But the most influential 19th-century painter of American Indians did produce a group of paintings—his second Indian Gallery —that he referred to as his “Cartoon Collection.” In the 1830s Catlin had visited dozens of Indian tribes and rendered 507 paintings (portraits and scenes of everyday life) known as his Indian Gallery. With limited time to paint, he often worked at great speed, averaging nearly two pictures a day when documenting the tribes on the Upper Missouri in 1832. The quality of his work no doubt suffered, but “the fastest brush in the West” was more interested in accurate portrayals of Indian life than aesthetics. After failing to persuade Congress to buy his Indian Gallery, he took the collection overseas in 1839. While he exhibited and traveled in the 1840s, he added 100 paintings, including portraits of the Indian troupes with whom he exhibited. Unable to ﬁnd a patron in Europe, Catlin faced bankruptcy in 1852. Philadelphia industrialist Joseph Harrison stepped in to pay the artist’s debts, but for Catlin it came at a steep price—ownership of the Indian Gallery (which by then numbered 607 paintings). Catlin then traveled (bouncing between North, Central and South America) while creating his second Indian Gallery, which also numbered around 600 paintings. Half of those replicated subjects from his first Indian Gallery, while the other half depicted subjects from his travels in the 1850s. Catlin referred to these oils thinly painted on paper as “cartoons,” as he did not consider them ﬁnished works. In 1870 the artist exhibited his Cartoon Collection in Brussels and then returned to the United States to show it in New York and Washington, D.C. He died on December 23, 1872, having failed to secure government patronage. Seven years later, though, Harrison’s widow donated Catlin’s original Indian Gallery to the Smithsonian Institution, in the nation’s capital. In 1912 his heirs sold the Cartoon Collection to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and in the 1960s philanthropist Paul Mellon bought works from the collection and donated 357 of them to the National Gallery of Art.

William Fisk (1796–1872) painted artist George Catlin in 1849.

Mandan War Chief with His Favorite Wife

A Cheyenne Warrior Resting His Horse

Four Kiowa Indians

Nine Ojibbeway Indians in London

Camanchee Horsemanship

The Scalper Scalped––Pawnees and Cheyennes

Buffalo Chase––Bulls Protecting the Calves

Catlin and Two Companions Shooting Buffalo

Caddoe Indians Gathering Wild Strawberries

Sham Fight of the Camanchees

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The Cheyenne Brothers Starting on Their Fall Hunt

The Cheyenne Brothers Returning From Their Fall Hunt

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Encampment of Pawnee Indians at Sunset

American Pasturage––Prairies of the Platte

Lone Star Hit Man Felix Robert Jones hailed from the same Texas county and worked with the same partners in crime as paid assassin par excellence ‘Killin’ Jim’ Miller By Jerry J. Lobdill

t was a Monday morning in Dallas, Texas, July 28, 1913. In a small real estate ofﬁce at 110 Field Street 32-year-old stenographer Florence T. Brown was alone and busy preparing for the day’s work. Fellow employee S.B. Cuthbertson had headed over to the courthouse at 8:20 a.m., leaving her in charge of the ofﬁce. Within minutes a man she knew only slightly showed up. Murder, not property, was on his mind. He delivered several hammer blows to Florence’s head and then cut her throat from ear to ear with a sharp knife or razor, nearly decapitating her. Scratches and fingernail marks on her face, neck and upper torso, teeth marks on her arm and wrist and deep cuts to her ﬁngers showed she had put up a desperate ﬁght for her life. The killer left her body in a pool of blood and washed up in a nearby sink, leaving it full of bloody water, before making his escape into the busy street. About 8:50 a.m. Cuthbertson returned from the courthouse, but he noticed nothing wrong and sat down to begin his work. Two other employees—junior partner W.R. Styron and rentals manager G.W. Swor—soon arrived. Within a minute or two Swor discovered Brown’s body and raised the alarm.

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COURTESY OF BILLY RAY JONES

Felix Jones (right) was about 20 in 1895 when he and older brother Wesley shared this musical interlude in Coryell County, Texas.

he killer was Felix Robert Jones. It was neither his first man in July 1884 in Coryell County, Jones was 9. Most ﬁrst murder nor his last. But it was typical of his work, everyone in Coryell County knew of Miller. He was a man exhibiting brazen risk-taking, unspeakable brutality one did not anger, as that might well be a lethal mistake, and cool deliberation. Records document three other with retribution coming unexpectedly. Jones and Miller were murders by Jones, and there were perhaps more as yet un- both psychopaths, killing for convenience, revenge or money known, for he was a professional killer in the mold of infamous without a second thought. There is little doubt Jones was well acquainted with Miller’s fellow Texan James B. “Killin’ Jim” Miller. Born on March 1, 1875, on a farm along Owl Creek in southeast Coryell County, relatives, as the Joneses and the Bashams (Miller’s mother’s Felix had ﬁve siblings (including brother Wesley, two years his family) have intermarried. A third Coryell County family, the Evetts, also shares ties with senior) and three half-siblings. He the Jones and Basham families. was the only badman in the family. The most notable Evetts family Thomas A. Morrison, born in member, the late historian J. Evetts 1852 on Owl Creek within 20 miles Haley, took a snapshot of Tom of the Jones farm, became a close Morrison in 1931, and wrote on associate of both paid assassin the back that Morrison was an Miller, who was born in October old friend of the Evetts family. 1861 and raised in Coryell County, There is no proof Jones considand Jones. At Jones’ 1918 trial for ered Miller (see “The Lynching the murder of cattle baron Thomof Assassin Jim Miller,” by Ellis as Lyons, Morrison testified he Lindsey, in the October 2012 had known the accused all his Wild West) a role model, but it is life. Miller was 13 when Jones was born, and when Miller killed his Jim Miller (left) and John Wesley Hardin in 1895 El Paso. a possibility, and certainly Jones COURTESY OF MARY CURRY

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stretch Jones would kill four people, either on contract or to prevent his arrest, in each case assisted or commissioned by Miller’s former associates. Two days after his fourth murder he participated in a planning session with Morrison in Colorado City, Texas, for hits on banker Bill Johnson of Snyder, Texas, and Johnson’s son-in-law Frank A. Hamer, the Texas Ranger who later hunted down Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. And murder wasn’t Jones’ only game. In 1915, in a further demonstration of his ruthlessness, he cold-bloodedly put fellow passengers in peril when he arranged the derailment of a train on which he was riding in order to sue the railroad company. Here is a look at the four known murders committed by Jones.

eventually followed in Killin’ Jim’s deadly footsteps, working closely with Miller’s partners in crime. At age 19 Felix married Virginia “Virgie” Dixon, born in Coryell County exactly one day after Felix. In 1900, according to census records, they were living on East Leon Street in Gatesville, the Coryell County seat, with two young daughters. Felix is listed as a barber. By 1907 they had moved to Merkel, in Taylor County, where T.J. Coggin, an associate of Jim Miller, also lived. Merkel, 17 miles west of Abilene, was on the Texas & Pacific Railway, which connected Fort Worth, Dallas, El Paso and points beyond. It was in association with Coggin that Jones began his career as a killer for hire in December 1909, some eight months after a lynch mob strung up Miller in Ada, Okla. Over an eight-year

Alf Cogdell Murder n December 22, 1909, in Abilene, Texas, Felix Jones shot a man in an upstairs room of a building in the downtown business district. One other person was present during the shooting, T. Earl Baldwin, who didn’t actually see the seven rapid-ﬁre shots Jones delivered to the neck and upper torso of Alf Cogdell, but he said he heard them and saw Cogdell and Jones in an argument and a struggle just before the shooting. Jones pumped all seven rounds from a .45-caliber Colt Model 1905 semiautomatic pistol into Cogdell at point-blank range. The shots rang out just after the two men left the room Baldwin was in. Jones then walked out of the building and calmly surrendered to Sheriff T.C. Weir. T.J. Coggin bonded Jones out of jail. The next day a letter extolling Jones’ peaceful nature, signed by 26 citizens of Merkel, appeared in the Abilene Daily Reporter. Jones hired Abilene defense attorney J.F. Cunningham and pleaded self-defense. Several questionable defense witnesses testiﬁed they had heard Cogdell threaten to kill Jones the day of the shooting, though none provided a reason for the threats. One such witness was barber Gene Petty, whose name didn’t appear in reports of the killing until he testiﬁed at the trial more than three months later. According to Petty, Cogdell had told him he would take Jones’ gun away from him and beat him to death. During the trial it came to light that Baldwin was under indictment for attempted murder in Fort Worth. Police there had possession of his .44 Colt six-shooter, and he now carried a rented .32 semiautomatic pistol. He testiﬁed he had known Jones about 18 months in Merkel and Abilene. The prosecution asserted Jones and Baldwin had gotten Cogdell drunk and then lured him up to the office where Jones killed him. The day before, Cogdell had sold his share of the Palace of Sweets confectionery shop, and he was planning to move away from Abilene within a few days. He was carrying about $400 and the buyer’s note for $1,750 before his murder, but the cash and note were not on the body. The prosecutor suggested Jones had taken them. Considerable credible testimony supported his theory, but in Texas selfdefense was a powerful legal argument if you could marshal sufficient testimony to the peaceful nature of the shooter, provide witnesses testifying to threats made by the deceased against the defendant and pack the courtroom with partisans —all signatures of Miller and Jones trials.

Tom Morrison was an associate of both Miller and Jones.

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PHOTO BY J. EVETTS HALEY, COURTESY OF NITA HALEY MEMORIAL MUSEUM, MIDLAND, TEXAS

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COURTESY OF CLIFF BOGLE

T.J. Coggin, another associate of both Miller and Jones, poses here (third from left, back row) with his sister’s family, circa 1920.

The trial convened in the Big Bend town of Alpine, the Brewster County seat, with a population of about 600. On the third and last morning, April 13, 1910, the courtroom was overflowing with 500 mostly partisan spectators. Jury members deliberated for 18 hours and then told the judge they were deadlocked 10-to-2. The judge sent them back to continue deliberations. They returned six hours later, at 3:30 p.m. on April 15, and delivered a verdict of not guilty. But that wasn’t the end of the matter. In the last week of August 1912 the Taylor County grand jury in Abilene indicted Jones’ principal witness, Baldwin, for Cogdell’s murder. Authorities arrested Baldwin in Springfield, Mo., and brought him to Abilene for trial. Jones and attorney Cunningham met with the accused as soon as he arrived in town. The trial was set for September 16. Cunningham paid Baldwin’s bond and estimated the case would take no more than two days. Just what new evidence justiﬁed Baldwin’s indictment was not reported, but the defense and the prosecution each had one new witness. The trial was delayed until March 13, 1913, and a jury returned a verdict of not guilty on March 15. No details of the arguments were published. Why Baldwin was in Missouri when indicted is not known, but, curiously, Jones was running a real estate scam in that area at the time. That ended the Alf Cogdell murder case. No one was ever

convicted of the crime. Jones, the killer, was free to take on his next project, the murder of Florence Brown.

Florence Brown Murder ometime in 1911 Felix Jones met T.H. Vinson, a real estate trader in Abilene, and they began to collect land abstracts on west Texas properties in preparation for a planned “business” trip back East. In 1912–13 Vinson and Jones traveled to Iowa and Missouri, seeking fraudulent real estate transactions with dealers there. Something went wrong in these transactions, and Florence Brown, a stenographer with the Robinson and Styron realty firm in downtown Dallas, came into possession of fraudulent deeds Jones had created on the company’s printed forms. Jones found out about it. Lee Starling, a Dallas attorney who knew Florence, saw her speaking with a man and woman he did not know on Main Street on the evening of July 27, 1913 (the evening before Brown’s murder). Starling interrupted their conversation to speak brieﬂy with Florence. The couple turned their backs and feigned interest in a display window. After Starling and Brown finished their chat, Florence and the couple resumed their conversation and walked away. Starling would positively identify the man as Felix Jones after the latter’s arrest in El Paso.

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DALLAS MORNING NEWS, IMAGE ENHANCED AND COLORIZED BY GREGORY PROCH

The next morning, the 28th, someone entered the real estate ofﬁce and brutally murdered Brown, as described earlier. The three male employees who arrived later moved the body before the police arrived, tracking blood about the ofﬁce. The company vault was locked, its contents intact. Brown’s uncle, J.D. Robinson, hired Bill McDonald, U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Texas and a former Texas Ranger captain, as a private investigator in the case. McDonald worked the case independently until the Thomas Lyons murder in 1917. His previous investigations into the crimes of Jim Miller and his ever-present associates gave him an edge over Dallas police. Jones was a suspect early on, but when interrogated in August 1913 he told Dallas authorities he’d been in Abilene at the time of the murder and could produce at least “100 prominent citizens” to testify to that fact. The case went nowhere until October 1913 when a painter named Fetner came forward. Fetner testified that shortly before the July 28 killing Jones had told him he was going to Dallas to retrieve some documents from Brown. “I am going to get them peaceably if I can,” the painter quoted Jones as saying. “If I can’t, I’m going to get them.” Fetner also told authorities Jones had approached him just a few days before his testimony, reminded him of the earlier conversation and said, “For God’s sake, forget it!” Still, in the absence of hard evidence, no indictment was forthcoming. The case stagnated until June 1917. After Jones’ June 1917 arrest in connection with the murder of Lyons in El Paso, Dallas authorities investigating Stenographer Florence Brown was murdered in a Dallas real estate ofﬁce in July 1913. Brown’s murder obtained a warrant to search the Fort Worth rental house at 1319 Washington murder. Vinson had been dealing in real estate in Abilene Ave., where Jones had moved with his family in 1916 or early before linking up with Jones and may have been the master1917. There authorities found the forged deeds in a trunk. mind behind the scam. Vinson testified he and Jones had That evidence and news that Lyons had received crush- traveled to Iowa and Missouri in April or May 1913, and the ing blows to the skull with a blunt object—much in the two of them had been jailed for a short time in Kansas City manner of Florence Brown’s fatal wounds—brought a in connection with one of “the deals” they did. Still, Vinson quick indictment of Jones by a Dallas grand jury on June claimed ignorance of fraud in any of the deals in which he participated. He also told Pierson he was afraid of Jones. 30, though the case didn’t go to trial until May 1919. When asked by Pierson whom he thought had murdered In 1918 District Attorney J. Willis Pierson interviewed Vinson in connection with the Brown murder. The transcript Brown, Vinson replied that if Jones hadn’t done it, then he of his interview reveals interesting details about the real believed the killer was likely barber Gene Petty. Vinson said he estate scam Jones was running and its connection to Brown’s had known Jones and Petty in Abilene, and Jones had tried to

get him to sign Petty’s bond on a bootlegging charge there. The sheriff in Abilene had warned Vinson not to sign the bond, as Petty was a “mean fellow, and he is hard to catch.” If he signed the bond, the sheriff warned, Petty would likely ﬂee, and Vinson would forfeit his bond. Vinson declined to sign. Jones’ defense attorney in the Brown case was El Paso Judge L.A. Dale (who also served as Jones’ lead defense attorney in his February 1918 trial for the Lyons murder). Attorney Starling, a critical prosecution witness, was absent when the case was called for trial on May 7, 1919; he may have had a conﬂicting court appearance. District Attorney Pierson consequently requested dismissal of the charges against Jones. Felix and wife Virgie were ecstatic. The district attorney said he had no further plans concerning the murder, and the case was closed. The Florence Brown killing remains one of the most egregious unsolved murders in Dallas history. U.S. Marshal McDonald had insisted his private retention by Robinson be kept secret, so his ﬁndings were not part of the ofﬁcial case ﬁle until Jones came up on charges four years after the crime. District attorneys had come and gone over the period, and by then there was little public pressure to convict Jones. McDonald died the month before the trial, and Jones had already been convicted of the Lyons murder and was facing a 25-year prison sentence.

Frank Battle Murder t 9:30 p.m. on August 20, 1913, just 23 days after Florence Brown’s murder, someone waylaid Frank J. Battle in Gatesville and shot him four times with a .41-caliber revolver. The shooter had been waiting in the dark

JERRY LOBDILL COLLECTION

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at the rear of Battle’s bakery/grocery store on the east side of the square in Gatesville. The assailant ﬁred three shots into the victim’s back as Battle was entering through the rear door. One of the slugs exited in the center of Battle’s chest. The shooter then ﬁred a fourth shot that grazed Battle’s forehead. About an hour later, after a doctor had given the mortally wounded store-owner pain medication, Battle told the district attorney he hadn’t seen the shooter and could think of no reason for the crime. Battle died at 4 o’clock the next morning. An investigation revealed Felix Jones had sent a telegram from Abilene to Battle’s father-in-law on August 2, 1913, and 10 days later had sent a registered letter containing $400 from Gatesville to the Fort Worth Trading Co. Jones, who had arrived in Gatesville from Abilene 10 days to two weeks before the August 20 shooting and left two days after it, became a suspect. Coryell County Sheriff E.B. McMordie and McClennan County (Waco) Deputy Sheriff Lee Jenkins left Gatesville on the morning of August 26 after receiving a tip Jones was in Fort Worth, and they arrested him that night as he prepared to board a train. Jones was carrying a loaded .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver and an extra supply of cartridges in a grip. He refused to discuss the murder and seemed cool and self-possessed when arrested. After a grand jury indicted Jones on August 27, authorities released him on $7,500 bond. His defense attorney was again J.F. Cunningham of Abilene. That evening W.W. Hammack, Battle’s father-in-law, was found unconscious in his front yard and died soon after. “I am a persecuted man,” his suicide note read. “I cannot stand the publicity any longer.” A coroner determined the cause of death

Abilene defense attorney J.F. Cunningham (right) defended Jones after the shootings of Alf Cogdell in 1909 and Frank Battle in 1913.

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to be strychnine poisoning. Hammack had been summoned to testify before the grand jury the next day. According to a Hammack family genealogist, the family suspects Hammack had hired the assassin Jones, as Hammack disapproved of his daughter’s marriage to Battle, an Italian and Roman Catholic. The trial was held at the U.S. District Court in Gatesville. The ubiquitous Gene Petty was a defense witness. The jury debated for 2½ days and reported a 6-to-6 deadlock before the judge sent them back to debate some more. The jury ultimately reached a verdict of not guilty on February 16, 1914. The case was closed, and no one was ever convicted of Battle’s murder. Although it didn’t involve murder, Jones’ callous disregard for human life was on exhibit the night of December 13, 1915, when he and accomplice W.G. Clark removed spikes and a stabilizing bar from the outer rail of the Wichita Valley Railway tracks on a curve 2 miles north of Abilene. The next morning Jones boarded the four-coach daily train at 6:30 and braced himself in the toilet of the smoking car near the engine. Just before 7 a.m. the train hit the damaged section of track. There was a 7-foot drop on the outside of the curve, and though neither of the ﬁrst two coaches went off the crossties as the rail slipped outward, the intense shaking splintered the crossties like so much kindling. The last two coaches fared worse, the fourth coach coming to a stop with its back end hanging over the embankment and its front end still coupled to the coach ahead. Had the coupling failed, the last car would have overturned, almost certainly wounding or killing passengers, many of whom were women and children. As it happened, the only person to claim injury was Jones. His plan was to sue the railway company for $50,000 in damages. The lawsuit failed, and Jones and Clark were indicted. The case against Jones was dismissed at trial in August 1918, as he had already been convicted and sentenced in the Lyons murder case. Clark, however, received a six-year sentence at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville.

Thomas Lyons Murder elix Jones seemed untouchable when it came to getting away with murder—that is, until his 1918 conviction in the Thomas Lyons slaying netted him a 25-year prison sentence. The murder was a contract hit, arranged by T.J. Coggin and Tom Morrison and executed in El Paso on May 17, 1917. Felix had used a hammer to smash in Lyons’ skull. The case drew the largest crowd of spectators in El Paso history to date. It was all quite bizarre and complex, the conspiracy beginning in late April 1917, and the trial ending with Jones’ conviction on February 21, 1918. The key witness in the Lyons case was none other than W.G. Clark, whose previous association with Felix was not revealed during the trial. Clark’s testimony included details of a conversation he had had with Jones, Morrison and a third man, Gee McMeans, two days after the Lyons murder, in which the men discussed plans to kill banker Bill Johnson and lawman Frank Hamer. On October 1, 1917, McMeans ambushed Hamer in Sweetwater, Texas. In the ensuing shootout Hamer, despite leg and shoulder wounds, killed his assailant.

Killing this man, Thomas Lyons, landed Jones in prison.

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COURTESY OF IDA FOSTER CAMPBELL

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COURTESY OF JANE EVETTS CARTWRIGHT

Jones and siblings pose in the 1930s: (from left, back row) Charley Ann, Parilee, Amecia and Charlotte; (front) Wesley, China and Felix.

Two El Paso newspapers published some 140 articles about the Lyons case, invariably representing Coggin and Morrison as well-to-do cattlemen, while failing to disclose their criminal history. Morrison, clearly a conspirator in the murder, was never indicted, and T.J. and brother Millard Coggin, though indicted for conspiracy, saw their cases dismissed. Jones was the only one convicted. After sentence was pronounced, a cheerful Jones remarked to a nearby reporter, “I dusted the gallows that time.” The comment has a detached, analytical quality about it, worthy of a psychopath. The inevitable appeal, decided on June 25, 1919, failed, and on July 1 Jones was transferred from the El Paso County Jail to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. In November 1926 Texas Governor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson granted Jones a pardon, and Huntsville authorities released him. The pardon was later announced in a December 16 Associated Press article. Governor Ferguson’s explanation for the pardon was specious and inconsistent with records in the Texas State Archives. Over her two nonconsecutive terms she averaged about 100 pardons per month, ostensibly to relieve overcrowding conditions in the prisons, though she and her husband—the previous governor, who had been impeached and removed from ofﬁce— were suspected of selling pardons for campaign contributions. Jones returned to Fort Worth after his pardon and spent the next quarter-century working in real estate and as a sometime barber. Although he never again saw the inside of a prison, you can bet Frank Hamer kept him in mind as a potential suspect. Felix and Virgie bought the house at 1323 Washington Ave.,

next door to the house they had rented before his conviction for Lyons’ murder, and they lived out their lives there. She died on November 5, 1948, he on October 25, 1951. They are buried beside each other in Fort Worth’s Shannon Rose Hill Cemetery. Psychopaths can affect normal human emotions and morals when it benefits them. Flashing his disarming smile, Jones seemed harmless to casual observers. His neighbors in Fort Worth were shocked in 1917 when they learned he was under indictment for murder. They told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that while he was seldom home, “when he appeared, he always wore a genial smile and had a most pleasant address.” In 2012 Jones’ great-grandniece Jane Evetts Cartwright told me she too was shocked to learn the truth about her ancestor. She recalled him as an avuncular, kind, smiling visitor with a sack of gumballs when she was 5 and met him at her aunt’s home in 1948. She immediately recognized him and his straw fedora, striking a pose with his siblings in a photo she found online. B.R. Jones, Felix’s great-grandnephew, was 10 years old when he heard stories about his ancestor at a family gathering in Coryell County. He later asked his grandfather, Henry Clay Jones, “Was Uncle Felix really that mean?” The answer spoke volumes: “He would have killed his mother for a dime.” Retired R&D physicist Jerry J. Lobdill thanks Rhonda Mohler, a relative of Felix Jones through marriage, for her assistance. See Lobdill’s Last Train to El Paso (www.LastTrain2ElPaso.com, reviewed on P. 68) and Triumph and Tragedy: A History of Thomas Lyons and the LCs, by Ida Foster Campbell and Alice Foster Hill. JUNE 2015

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STAGE FRIGHT:

In 1871 ambushers struck a California-bound coach in Arizona Territory and murdered six of the eight people aboard. Were Indians really the culprits? By R. Michael Wilson

The Wickenburg Massacre

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n the 1870s Arizona Territory could be a hard place to live and to stay alive. Indians, particularly Apaches, periodically went on rampages, raiding homesteads and torturing and murdering settlers—men, women and children. Outraged citizens sought vengeance and sometimes got it, such as in April 1871 when Tucson citizens orchestrated a Tohono O’odham Indian attack on sleeping Apaches in what has come to be known as the Camp Grant Massacre. The attackers slaughtered dozens of Apaches. On the morning of November 5 that same year others carried out a smaller massacre after ambushing a stagecoach 8 miles west of Wickenburg. The attackers, presumed at the time to be Indians, killed and butchered six travelers, scalping two of their victims. One body was missing hair and skin only at the top of the skull. Apaches didn’t ordinarily scalp their victims, but when an Apache brave killed an especially courageous enemy, he might scalp him in this manner to “absorb” the man’s power. The other scalping victim was missing the skin of his neck, head and face, which was the practice of the Yavapai tribe. So who made the brutal attack, Apaches or Yavapais? San Francisco’s Daily Alta California reported a week later: “We can get no particulars as to the cause of the attack, further than a supposition that it was in retaliation for the shooting of an Indian recently. The supposition is strengthened by the fact 50

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that the Indians took nothing from the stage.” But one might also wonder why Indians would stop a stagecoach and kill a half-dozen men yet leave the horses, harnesses and jewelry. In any case, this gruesome incident seemed to change the mindset of many Easterners. Particularly after the Camp Grant Massacre they had expressed only sympathy for the “noble red men” and contempt for Arizona Territory’s warring settlers. But they began to suspect lasting peace could not exist in the territory unless the Indians were ﬁrst whipped and subdued. Immediately after the Wickenburg Massacre, however, some suggested that Indians, regardless of possible motives, were not the ones responsible for the heinous crime. One story headlined Were They Indians or Mexicans? in the November 11 Arizona Miner created a stir about who had done it. Citizens of Wickenburg and other area towns no doubt believed Indians were capable of such a horror, but they also saw another possibility—stagecoach robbers. Various alternative theories cropped up even after a 10-month investigation by Brevet Maj. Gen. George Crook not only pointed to Indians as the culprits but also named names. In an article in the June 17, 1911, Los Angeles Mining Review Yavapai County pioneer Charles Genung insisted that Mexican bandits had perpetrated the Wickenburg Massacre. The bloody event remains shrouded in mystery and a subject of debate, as some people persist in believing the version put forth by Genung, who after all was a renowned Arizona pioneer.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

A smiling newspaper correspondent Fred Loring poses two days before his death at the hands of ambushers west of Wickenburg.

n Sunday morning, November 4, 1871, a celerity on schedule at 7 a.m. Two miles outside town Barnett, saying (or mud wagon) stagecoach left Prescott, Arizona he had “forgotten something important,” hopped down and Territory, headed south toward Wickenburg. walked back to town. His forgetfulness likely saved his life. Lance drove on. It was his ﬁrst trip westbound on that route, The seven passengers on board included chief topographer Peter M. Hamel, teamster William but he had driven the coach east from Ehrenberg to WickenGeorge Salmon and newspaper correspondent burg the previous day and was familiar with the road, mostly a and secretary Frederick Wadsworth Loring. The trio, which dry wash. At about 8 a.m., with the coach 8 miles west of town, had just completed a seven-month trek with a contingent of Dutch John suddenly cried out, “Apaches! Apaches! Apaches!” Lieutenant George M. Wheeler’s surveying expedition west as more than a dozen Indians rose up from the brush on of the 100th meridian, were bound for San Francisco. Hamel the left. They all ﬁred two rounds from their repeating riﬂes, and Salmon lived there, while Loring intended to embark there either Spencers or Henrys. A shortage of ammunition kept by ship for his Boston home. Passenger Charles S. Adams, the Indians from ﬁring additional rounds. Nevertheless, they did plenty of damage. Driver recently of the W. Bichard & Co. Lance, seated on the right, took ﬂour depot in Prescott, was also bullets to his head, arm and chest returning home to San Francisco. and died instantly. Shoholm, Passenger Fred W. Shoholm, who was riding inside, also took who had just sold his share of a fatal bullet right away. The a Prescott jewelry shop, planned coach surged ahead a few yards to return by ship to hometown but came to an abrupt halt when Philadelphia via Panama. The one of the wounded horses colother two passengers were a lapsed. As the coach lurched to a couple, at least on a temporary stop, the badly wounded Loring, basis. The reportedly roguish who was riding atop on the left, William Kruger, who worked was thrown onto the roadway. for Army quartermaster Captain He had suffered bullet wounds Charles W. Foster, planned to to his chest, eye and temple but go only as far as headquarters was still alive. Adams, seated in Ehrenberg, Arizona Territory. This simple memorial, erected sometime after 2000, atop between Loring and Lance, His paramour Mollie Sheppard, stands near the site of the 1871 stagecoach attack. was shot in the back twice and the archetypal soiled dove with a heart of gold, intended to ride on to San Francisco. Over a tumbled onto the roadway next to Loring. One of the bullets period of several years the wives of the county supervisors had severed his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the neck had browbeaten their husbands into using their influence down, though like Loring he remained alive. Inside the coach things were just as grim. Shoholm was to drive Sheppard out of Prescott. The celerity wagon raced over a newly improved road that dead. Kruger had taken a slug to the shoulder. Another bullet whisked the party to Wickenburg before midnight instead had drilled through the side of the coach and struck Sheppard of by morning, which would have been the case on the old in the right arm, also driving splinters into her wound. Salmon route. Ironically, Genung had completed the road improve- was mortally wounded with a bullet to the belly. Only Hamel ment using Date Creek Indians, whom he paid just 50 cents seemed to have escaped the two volleys unscathed. He exited each for a 12-hour workday. In 1870 Camp Date Creek, some the coach on the side of the attackers, apparently intent on 60 miles southwest of Prescott, was tapped to oversee one of attacking them. How much damage the ﬁghting topographer Arizona Territory’s ﬁrst Indian reservations, and Date Creek might have done is unknown, but once the attackers subdued Indians were the ones General Crook would blame for the Hamel, they scalped him in the Apache way, carving off just 1871 stagecoach massacre. Genung may have had reason the topknot of hair and ﬂesh. Salmon, who must have known he was dying, exited the coach on the side opposite and stumto want to exonerate his Indians. After a brief rest and a hearty breakfast the seven travelers bled eastward 60 yards, perhaps trying to intentionally draw from Prescott boarded a deluxe Concord stagecoach bound away the attackers. Someone ultimately thrust a lance through for Los Angeles (where six of them would connect with a his chest and then scalped him in the more thorough Yavapai coastal steamer to San Francisco). While boarding, Kruger way. Whether Hamel or Salmon were alive when scalped pressed Loring to arm himself with a pistol for protection is unknown. But their actions certainly drew the attackers’ against murderous Indians. Loring said he did not need a attention, which bought Kruger time to help Sheppard escape weapon, as he hadn’t seen an Indian in seven months—a westward through an arroyo. Some of the ambushers folcurious response, since Hamel, Salmon and he had almost lowed them and got within shooting range, but they had run certainly seen Indians during their ﬁeldwork. Also boarding out of ammunition. Back on the roadway the raiders ﬁnished at Wickenburg was Aaron Barnett, though he would soon off the badly wounded Loring with a lance to the chest, and disembark. The Concord, driven by “Dutch John” Lance, left the paralyzed Adams also breathed his last—one report said R. MICHAEL WILSON

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his throat had been cut ear to ear, while another claimed he’d been shot in the head with his own pistol.

loging the surveyors’ maps and sketches of ﬂora and fauna drawn by the team’s scientists. Loring’s offhand comment in Wickenburg that he had not seen an Indian in seven months was simply not true, as he had published an article titled “A Council of War,” describing a northern Nevada peace conference with a large party of Shoshones. The strange antics of the “bug collectors” had aroused the Indians’ suspicions, but the council convinced them the white men were their friends. Wheeler made a practice of hiring an Indian guide from among the tribes inhabiting the area he was about to cross. In August 1871, as the party was about to enter Death Valley, Loring wrote of “the great delight of an Indian—‘a heap good Indian,’ of course, who is stealing ‘muck-a-muck’ from us daily.” This Indian may have been a Yavapai hired as a guide when the expedition prepared to enter Arizona Territory. It is rumored that Loring, Hamel or Salmon might have inadvertently or accidentally shot and killed this Indian, which if true would account for other Yavapais wanting revenge and targeting the stagecoach. If Loring was the one who pulled the trigger, that might have been reason enough for him to tell Kruger on November 5 he had not seen any Indians and did not want to arm himself for the stagecoach trip. Of course, for all this to hold true, there had to be a dead Yavapai somewhere, and there is no record of such a killing. Whether or not the attack on the stage was done out of revenge, there is little reason to doubt the attackers were in fact Yavapai Indians. Within a week of the massacre General Crook, then commanding the Department of Arizona, began an investigation that lasted from November 12, 1871, through September 1872. Crook examined the original, detailed report Captain Charles Meinhold had made after going over the scene of the crime the day after the massacre. The captain had

istory records few such attacks on stagecoaches by Indians (see “Stagecoach Attacks—Roll ’em,” by Gregory Michno, in the April 2015 Wild West). That aside, why would Indians of any tribe travel such a distance to ambush a coach? The November 16 Sacramento Daily Union provided one possible answer: “Parties are in pursuit of the savages, who seem to have been incited by revenge rather than hopes of plunder.” A month before the Wickenburg Massacre Indian commissioner Vincent Colyer had taken the same westbound stagecoach for his eventual return to Washington, D.C. President Ulysses S. Grant had sent Colyer to Arizona Territory to negotiate peace with the Apaches following the Camp Grant Massacre (see “Massacre at Dawn in Arizona Territory,” by Carol A. Markstrom and Doug Hocking, in the October 2013 Wild West). But in the wake of the November 5 massacre the commissioner faced ridicule for fueling the Indian unrest with unfulﬁlled promises. Perhaps in response to this criticism, Colyer shared an anecdote he had heard from a rancher near Date Creek—a story that supported the revenge motive. According to this rancher, a Yavapai who sometimes did odd jobs at the ranch was working there when three white men stopped by and admired his ﬁne Henry riﬂe. The Indian refused to surrender it and for his trouble suffered a beating with the butt of his own riﬂe. Then one of the white men, angered by the Yavapai’s arrogance, shot him to death with a pistol. After the trio rode off with the Henry, the rancher buried the Indian in his garden. On the morning the stagecoach carrying Colyer was due, the rancher saw 20 Indians headed down the road toward his ranch. Fearing they had come for revenge, the rancher ﬁred into them, wounding several in the party. Expecting the enraged Indians to attack again that evening, he then put his wife and daughter aboard the coach to spirit them out of harm’s way. That incident could have been the reason Indians attacked the stage on November 5. It is also possible the Indians specifically targeted that particular stagecoach because they knew a man who had killed another Yavapai was aboard. That man could have been one of the survey men—Loring, Salmon or Hamel. Lieutenant Wheeler’s recent survey had lasted seven months, traveling through northern Nevada and Utah Territory, swinging southwest into California and ﬁnally crossing Death Valley eastward into Arizona Territory to wrap things up in Prescott in mid-October. Loring was along as a correspondent for the Boston Globe and Appleton’s Journal, but he had also collected voluminous notes for a book he planned to write once back in Boston. He had made himself useful by keeping the survey party log and cataYavapais from the Date Creek reservation most likely ambushed the stage. JOAN PENNINGTON

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Where Are They Buried? ebate persists regarding the burial locations of the six men murdered on November 5, 1871. The bodies of ﬁve of the dead were delivered the next day to Wickenburg for a coroner’s inquest and later buried on Henry Wickenburg’s property in coffins donated by a man named Sexton, superintendent of the Vulture Mine. The body of W.G. Salmon was not among them, as a posse, arriving at the crime scene on the morning of the 6th, had buried the teamster on the spot. Some citizens of Wickenburg objected to the hasty burial, and several months later they exhumed Salmon’s remains and buried him beside the other massacre victims. But that was not the end of it. By 1947 Arizonans had circulated conﬂicting stories about the location of the remains. The Wickenburg Saddle Club reported that its members had exhumed all six bodies and reburied them at the site of the massacre. The club erected a cross (see above) and a memorial plaque that subsequently disappeared, likely stolen by hunters who frequented the area. In 1949 a doctor and his wife who had relocated to Wickenburg were on a tour of their new hometown when their guide told them of the massacre and showed them six carefully aligned depressions in the earth that resembled old graves. By then the site was known as Wickenburg’s cemetery, not for the town but after the original owner of that plot of land. A construction project was underway, and the couple watched as a bulldozer blade turned up one of the graves, exposing rotted wood and human bones. The bulldozer operator did not look as if he wished to be bothered by the matter, so the touring couple and the guide departed. It is unknown whether the massacre victims or others were buried in those six graves. In 2000 a grave-dowsing (divining) club claimed to have pinpointed many graves at the massacre site, far more than a half-dozen. Club members gathered rocks and outlined a number of the plots. Six of the graves, they insisted, hold the remains of the 1871 massacre victims, though it has yet to be determined if there are any human remains on the site, let alone the remains of Lance, Loring, Hamel, Salmon, Shoholm and Adams. R.M.W.

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secured evidence and mentioned Mexicans and Indians in his report but had reached no conclusion as to who was guilty. Crook also heard the testimony of an Indian boy being raised by a local white man. The boy said that in the wake of the massacre he had explained the denominations of stolen currency to the Indian attackers, who could not understand why paper of the same color and size could be worth different amounts. On January 2, 1872, Crook sent Captain George H. Butcher to the Mohave Indian reservation on the Colorado River to hear a report from Chief Irataba. The chief, through agent Dr. John A. Tonner, told Butcher he had heard the guilty Indians boast of their successful attack and seen them dispose of the few bobbles and dollars they had stolen. Crook determined through his investigation that 50 Indians had been involved in the planned attack on the stagecoach. Most of these Indians, including all of the leaders, were Yavapais. He further concluded that 15 of the 50 had carried out the actual attack, another 15 had stood in reserve, and 20 had gone out from the Date Creek reservation to create a distraction by raiding nearby ranches to the west. Crook named the ringleader of the band—Yavapai Chief Ocho-cama, who apparently had ordered his braves to leave untouched anything that might identify them as the murderers. Ocho-cama had learned a lesson from a previous raid, during which one of his warriors had left behind a single identiﬁable arrow. The other leaders of the Wickenburg Massacre, according to the general, were Hock-AChe-Waka, Ocho-cama’s brother Tee-Yee-Made-Yee, Indian Jim, What-E-Ora-Ma, Chimhueva Jim, Chimhueva Sal and Ah-Pook-Ya. In 1872–73 Crook orchestrated his Tonto Basin campaign against the Yavapais and Tonto Apaches, who were historically and culturally linked with the Yavapais. In late

September 1872 he sent out a 5th U.S. Cavalry column commanded by Captain Julius W. Mason to chastise the Yavapais, many of whom had had nothing to do with the November 1871 massacre. The young captain was successful, killing 40 and wounding many more. Ocho-cama already had been arrested and then wounded in an a tte mp t to e s ca p e . He wou ld recover and live for years afterward. Most of the Yavapais were placed on the Camp Verde Reservation, where the land was fertile, and they built an irrigation ditch to grow crops. As settlers on both sides of the Verde River coveted the land, the Army forced the Yavapais to relocate in February 1875 during a blizzard. More than 100 died during the 180-mile trek (dubbed the “March of Tears”) to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, where the Yavapai tribe remained for a quarter-century. Today the Yavapais are split between the Fort McDowell, Camp Verde and Yavapai-Prescott reservations in Arizona. If a party of Yavapais was indeed responsible for the Wickenburg Massacre, the whole tribe paid a heavy price for it. But, as mentioned earlier, not everyone was convinced Chief Ocho-cama and his Yavapais did the dirty deed. One early theory suggested white men had stopped the stage after learning that evicted soiled dove Mollie Sheppard was carrying a great deal of money. But that theory was based entirely on conjecture, and Captain Meinhold immediately dismissed it. Another theory suggested a Mexican gang led by Anglo strongman Chuck Stanton had robbed the stagecoach, but this was disproved; in fact, there was no conﬁrmed robbery of a stagecoach in Arizona Territory until 1876. The involvement of other Mexicans was possible, though the man who floated that theory, Charles Genung, had no use whatsoever

Bear in mind that by 1911 for Mexicans. In fact, several Genung himself was an exMexican men who ended convict, and that June he up dead, including some claimed in the Los Angeles killed by members of GeMining Review he had gotnung’s inner circle, had ten most of his information been fingered as particiabout the Mexican bandits/ pants in the Wickenburg killers from J.M. (“George” Massacre. For example, Joaor “Crete”) Bryan, a memquín Barbe and companion ber of the original 1871 —shot down in Phoenix in posse. One thing Genung early 1872 for arguing with failed to mention is that on lawmen while being escortNovember 18, 1871, Bryan ed out of town—were said had sent a signed letter to to have been the massacre the Arizona Miner identileader and one of his men. fying the Date Creek IndiLegendary Arizona rancher ans as the actual attackers. and notorious Indian ﬁghter By 1911 Bryan was unable to King S. Woolsey claimed to refute Genung’s tale about have information (never rethe Mexicans, as he had died vealed) implicating outlaw A stagecoach ﬁttingly tops the Wickenburg Massacre marker. on August 29, 1883. In any Ramon Cordova in the massacre; arrested and held in Phoenix on an unrelated charge, case, General Crook had already refuted it years earlier. Cordova was lynched when a mob broke into the jail. Genung said another Phoenix prisoner named Juan Revel, who was Henderson, Nevada, resident R. Michael Wilson, who served facing a life sentence, told him the names of 15 other massa- for 24 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, cre participants, but Genung never produced a list, and there is often writes about Old West crime in his own books and no written record of the alleged interview. According to Genung, for Wild West. For further reading see his 2007 book Massacre ﬁve of the 15 had been killed and the rest had ﬂed the territory. at Wickenburg: Arizona’s Greatest Mystery.

Stagecoach to Stagecoach n 1937 Collier’s Weekly published Ernest Haycox’s story “Stage to Lordsburg.” John Ford soon bought the rights to the story and adapted it for his 1939 Western Stagecoach, starring John Wayne (as the Ringo Kid) and Claire Trevor (as Dallas). There are enough parallels in the original story and movie to make one wonder if Haycox hadn’t researched the Wickenburg Massacre. The stagecoaches begin their trips in the high country of Arizona Territory—the November 1871 stagecoach at Prescott, and the Haycox/Ford stagecoach east of Payson at Tonto. Both headed south out of the mountains, but the Haycox/Ford coach turned east, while the November 1871 coach turned west. There were seven passengers and a driver aboard the celerity coach from Prescott to Wickenburg, but the passengers then transferred to a

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Concord coach and were joined by an eighth passenger (Aaron Barnett), while the driver made nine. Haycox’s coach had nine aboard, as did Ford’s coach after picking up Ringo along the road. The November 1871 coach had three riding atop; Haycox’ coach had two atop, but at Gap Station “Malpais Bill” ordered a cattleman to ride atop, making three; Ford’s coach had three atop after Ringo climbed up en route to Lordsburg, New Mexico Territory. While the November 1871 coach was not carrying an Army officer’s pregnant wife (played by Louise Platt in the movie), Mollie Sheppard was traveling with her paramour, an Army clerk. Mollie would seem to represent two characters in the ﬁctional stage-

coach—the officer’s wife as well as the pretty soiled dove, Dallas, run out of town by the respectable ladies. In both Haycox’s story and Ford’s movie the terrifying name of “Geronimo” gets a mention, and it is Apaches who attack the stage to Lordsburg. In real life General George Crook concluded that Ocho-cama of the Yavapais had directed the attack on the November 1871 stagecoach. But who ever heard of them? R.M.W.

Fed up with being shadowed, badman Edward Moore confronted Nevada City lawman William Kilroy, gunned him down and headed for the hills By R. Michael Wilson

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rospectors and merchants settled Nevada, California, during the 1849 gold rush but didn’t settle on a name until 1864 when they chose Nevada City to avoid confusion with the neighboring state. By August 1850 the first mine, the Gold Tunnel, had sunk shafts on the north side of Deer Creek, and Nevada County soon became the leading gold mining region in the state. The wealth in outgoing gold shipments and incoming payrolls also attracted road agents and footpads to the settlement. During California’s ﬁrst half century as a state 71 lawmen died (56 by gunﬁre) in the line of duty. Criminals in Nevada County shot down ﬁve of them—three sheriffs, a city marshal and, the last, a special policeman named William H. Kilroy. During the early months of 1899 Nevada City experienced a rash of saloon burglaries. Kilroy, recently widowed with a 3-year-old son named Elza, was sure the burglar was Edward H. Moore. Prospector Moore had a cabin and claim at nearby Canada Hill on Little Deer Creek. Locals had long considered Moore an obstreperous rogue, or what the April 1 San Francisco Call termed a “lawless and desperate scoundrel.” In 1882 Moore was caught in the act of delivering lurid, suggestive letters to local women, and Nevada City authorities sentenced him to 90 days in jail. Though word of his reputation spread, his record remained free of criminal convictions for more than a dozen years. In 1896, however, he shot a neighbor’s cabin full of holes after the man persisted in working a contested claim on Little Deer Creek. The cabin

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shooting earned Moore another 150 days behind bars. For years authorities had also suspected him of far more serious crimes—murders committed during two failed highway robberies. In the first incident the superintendent of the Derbec mine was murdered in 1891 while transporting gold bullion to Nevada City; three years later a lone highwayman shot and killed stagecoach driver Arthur Meyer on the road from North Bloomfield to Nevada City. Lawmen failed to turn up enough evidence in either case to proffer charges, but Moore remained the prime suspect.

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n late January 1899 ofﬁcer Kilroy took to shadowing Moore whenever the prospector came into Nevada City. Kilroy was certain he would ultimately catch Moore committing another burglary. Tellingly, when Moore became aware of Kilroy’s scrutiny, the burglaries ceased. Moore waited for Kilroy to lose interest, but the lawman showed great patience. A month passed with no burglaries, and Kilroy continued to watch Moore’s movements. Moore ran out of patience ﬁrst. By mid-March he was telling anyone who would listen how he would “ﬁx” Kilroy and “pump him full of lead” if the lawman didn’t stop following him. Moore must have anticipated his threats would reach Kilroy’s ears, and perhaps they did, but Kilroy kept his cool and his distance. So Moore took direct action, confronting the ofﬁcer in the lobby of the Union Hotel and making his threats face-to-face. Kilroy brushed them off. He refused to be intimidated or provoked

IMAGES: CALIFORNIA DIGITAL NEWSPAPER COLLECTION, COLOR AND ENHANCEMENT BY GREGORY PROCH

William H. Kilroy, a special policeman in Nevada City, Calif., hoped to catch Edward Moore in a criminal act.

into a confrontation. Determined to get Moore off the streets, Kilroy continued his surveillance of the suspected burglar. On the evening of March 30 Moore stopped by Fred Ellerman’s saloon on Broad Street in Nevada City. When Kilroy entered the saloon, Moore confronted him and reportedly “reviled and deﬁed” the lawman with taunts and every imaginable epithet. After midnight the men stepped outside and continued arguing as they walked down Broad Street toward Pine. About 20 minutes till 1 a.m. they reached the intersection, stopped and faced off. Local barber Robert O. Gates watched the confrontation from behind an electric lamppost overlooking the intersection. Gates was hard of hearing, but the adversaries spoke loud enough for him to hear. “You dare not arrest me!” shouted Moore, who was also nearly deaf. “I will kill you if you try.” “I could arrest you, but I do not want to,” Kilroy replied, “and you cannot kill me.” At that moment Kilroy put both hands on Moore’s shoulders and leaned in, as if to shout something in the miner’s face. Before Kilroy could say another word, however, Moore pulled his revolver and shot Kilroy twice in the left torso, both bullets entering just below the officer’s heart. Kilroy collapsed to his knees, which sent Moore sprawling. Spotting Gates by the lamppost, the ofﬁcer called out, “Oh, Bob, come here!” Just then Moore sprang to his feet, slipped the barrel of his revolver beneath Kilroy’s chin and fired again. That bullet penetrated the ofﬁcer’s brain, killing him instantly.

The San Francisco Call termed Moore, depicted here after his arrest, a “lawless and desperate scoundrel.”

As Kilroy collapsed face down, Moore yelled out to bystanders: “Keep away! I don’t want any trouble!” He then bolted down Commercial Street directly to his cabin, where he outﬁtted himself with blankets, provisions, his ear trumpet, a Winchester riﬂe and two revolvers. After calling for his two dogs—a black-and-white shepherd and a yellow mutt—he ﬂed with them into the surrounding rugged hills.

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evada County Deputy Sheriff J.S. Gregory enlisted the aid of E.W. Schmidt to carry Kilroy’s body to the undertaker’s parlor. They noted that the ofﬁcer’s loaded revolver remained in its holster, his billy club still secured in his back pocket. The city trustee immediately issued a proclamation, offering a $300 reward for the arrest and conviction of Moore. Sheriff D.B. Getchell then personally offered another $250 for the fugitive, dead or alive, and released the following description of Moore: “5 feet 11 inches tall, wiry and strongly built, of dark complexion, hazel eyes and dark hair and mustache. He is quite deaf and has a conﬁdential way of speaking to anyone.” Immediately after the killing Sheriff Getchell deputized William Pollard and W.T. McClure and posted them outside Moore’s cabin. That night they saw the shadowy ﬁgure of a man approach the cabin door and fired at him. Convinced they had dropped Moore, Pollard and McClure returned to their place of concealment till morning. There they found that some animal had eaten their food, and at daybreak they plainJUNE 2015

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with a deadly weaply saw tracks they were on. We recognized convinced belonged to each other immedione of Moore’s dogs. ately last evening and The pair then scoured shook hands. He said the area around the he was going to the cabin, expecting to lower country on a fin d M o o re’ s bo dy, little trip. He had a but came up emptybundle of blankets handed. A search of and looked travelthe cabin turned up a stained and weary. bill for $20 in groceries. But he had no gun, It was clear Moore had and I saw no pistols prepared his getaway on him. He seemed in advance, suggesting glad to see me, and the murder had been there was nothing premeditated. unusual about his Sheriff Getchell and manner. After a City Marshal Edward pleasant chat he A. Tompkins organized started leisurely a posse to go after down the road toMoore. The sheriff also ward Auburn.” sent Undersheriff PasNotiﬁed of Taunt’s coe and Deputy WilNevada County Deputy Sheriff D.B. Getchell (left) chased Moore. a s sured sighting, liam Ashburn by train Contra Costa County Sheriff R.R. Veale (right) caught up to him. Sheriff Getchell acted to Dutch Flat, instructswiftly, laying plans ing them to scout back overland and try to cut off the fugitive. Meanwhile, Kilroy with other lawmen in Nevada and Placer counties to interwas laid to rest the afternoon of April 2. The funeral cortege cept Moore. Newly elected California Governor Henry Gage comprised 250 members of the ofﬁcer’s lodge. Every ﬂag in authorized Company C of the National Guard to join in the the city ﬂew at half-staff, and every ﬁrehouse and church bell search. On April 3 some 50 men under Lieutenant R.R. Walker tolled. “William Kilroy was an ofﬁcer who knew his duty, and scoured several abandoned mines on the far side of Banner because he had the nerve to perform it, he died the death of a Mountain for any evidence of the fugitive. That same day dog,” said the Rev. Patrick J. Clyne at the service in St. Canice Captain George A. Nihell of the National Guard accompanied Catholic Church. “When his epitaph is written it will be, Marshal Tompkins to Spencerville to interview Taunt. They ‘He was faithful to his duty.’ He was murdered because he doubted the rancher’s story, and when Nihell’s force beat represented the honest and law-abiding people of this city, through the woods and underbrush where Taunt claimed to and there is no man, not a hoodlum or a rogue, who does not have seen Moore, they found no trace of the murderer. By April 4 authorities were pursuing every lead, knowing mourn for him today.” More than 2,000 people thronged the Moore’s provisions must soon give out. Lawmen issued service, spilling out the door into the churchyard. The outpouring of sympathy concerned Sheriff Getchell, warnings, and area residents took them seriously. Every man who feared that if Moore was taken alive, the outraged citi- up in the mountains secured his cabin at night and slept with zens were likely to rise up and lynch him. To prevent such an a weapon within easy reach. No teamster took to the roads embarrassment, Getchell sent word back from the mountains without arms at the ready. Braver men were determined to for his men to prepare to defend the jail. Meanwhile, the re- capture Moore themselves, or at least slow him down so he ward rose to $1,000, still dead or alive. Over the next few weeks would have a harder time eluding lawmen. The fugitive had a Moore sightings poured in from across the region, sometimes big advantage in his shepherd, whom he’d often boasted was at the same time many miles apart. More than once Moore the smartest dog in the state. Although Moore was nearly deaf, the dog would alert his master at any sniff of danger, and not was reportedly “cornered with no chance for escape.” Not until April 3, three days after Kilroy’s murder, did rancher by barking but by licking Moore’s face or acting in an animated William Taunt learn that Moore was on the lam. “Do you mean fashion. For more than three weeks Moore eluded all pursuers. Ed Moore, the half-deaf prospector up at Nevada City?” he asked. When assured the murderer was indeed that Ed Moore, n the morning of April 24, acting on a tip, Taunt said he had seen the fugitive the night before near the Contra Costa County Sheriff R.R. Veale North Star mine, 2 miles from Grass Valley. “I could not be hopped a westbound train from Bay Point mistaken,” he added. “He and I were in the county jail together in search of a suspicious armed man walking in March 1896, I serving for disturbing the peace, and he assault the tracks. When the train stopped at a flag 58

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attached to one leg to keep a prisoner off balance and unable to flee. Moore returned to court on June 26. Judge Frank T. Nilon denied the usual petition for a new trial based on a claim of new evidence, but then surprised everyone by sentencing Moore to life in Folsom prison instead of a trip to the gallows. Moore arrived at Folsom on June 28 and registered as prisoner No. 4606. He was paroled on September 1, 1913, after serving 14 years and two months. To be eligible for parole he needed to be employed, and Fred Wren of Vacaville attested to hiring Moore. For nine years the parolee, who seemed to have no friends or living family members, worked for Wren. When diagnosed with carcinoma of the parotid gland, an aggressive form of mouth cancer, Moore voluntarily checked in to the prison hospital at San Quentin. He was under the care of Dr. Chester A. DeLancey until his death on August 2, 1922. In his last will and testament he requested burial in the family plot at Nevada City’s Pine Grove Cemetery. He also asked that, after expenses, the remainder of his $894.79 estate be divided among the eldest daughters of the Wren brothers and the oldest daughter of the Eichoff family (his connection to latter is unknown). Finally, he left his “violin and outﬁt” to one Mary Bruno of Dixon, Calif.

station a few miles above Martinez, Veale peered from his car and spotted his quarry headed up the tracks with a doublebarreled shotgun at full cock. Veale soon recognized the man as Moore. Armed with a Winchester riﬂe, the sheriff quickly jumped from the train and ducked out of sight into the station. When Moore closed to within 40 feet, Veale stepped out, leveled his riﬂe and shouted, “Hands up!” Seeing his predicament, the exhausted Moore threw down the shotgun and surrendered without resistance. Three weeks of making his way through some of northern California’s roughest country to avoid lawmen had left him a wreck. Once the food ran out, even his dogs had abandoned him. At gunpoint Veale marched Moore back to town, locked him in the Contra Costa County Jail and notified Sheriff Getchell, who arrived the next morning to escort the prisoner to jail in Nevada City. Promptly indicted for murder, Moore went to trial on June 13. Testimony lasted three days, with Moore taking the stand on June 16. He tried to convince jurors Kilroy had raised his billy club to strike him down, and he had only fired his revolver at the officer in self-defense. Moore then re-enacted his version of the confrontation, nearly knocking down his attorney as he rushed him in the role of Kilroy. Among the parade of prosecution witnesses, however, were Deputy Gregory and E.W. Schmidt, who testiﬁed that when they went to move the sheriff’s body, the club remained secured in his pocket. The jury dismissed Moore’s claim of self-defense and, after brief deliberations, found him guilty of ﬁrst-degree murder. Moore was remanded to the custody of the sheriff and ﬁtted with an Oregon boot, a heavy metal shackle with braces

R. Michael Wilson, a retired Southern California law enforcement officer, writes from Henderson, Nev. He has authored books about crime and capital punishment in the West for more than a decade and is a frequent contributor to Wild West. This article was adapted from his 2014 book Cop Killer: California, 1850–1930, which is recommended for further reading along with Wilson’s Stagecoach Robberies in California and Wells, Fargo & Company vs. the Train Robbers, 1871–1912.

IMAGES: SAN QUENTIN ARCHIVES

Moore, who had avoided a trip to the gallows, sat for this mug shot on arrival at Folsom in June 1899.

With head and face shaved, prisoner No. 4606 poses in prison garb while doing time at Folsom.

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G H O ST T OW N S

• Established on Colorado’s southeastern plain around 1891, this Otero County ghost town stands between the small towns of Rocky Ford and Manzanola. The settlement sprang up around a railroad siding bearing the name Weitzer. Its namesake, Frederick Weitzer, was an American of German descent who lived in Rocky Ford with his family. Weitzer had managed a sugar beet factory in Norfolk, Neb., and by 1901 was managing the newly opened American Beet Sugar Co. factory in Rocky Ford. • The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, which had run trains through the area since 1876, helped the fledgling town develop. The post office, which doubled as a general store, opened in 1908, and a blacksmith started up beside the railroad station. Weitzer served mainly as a beet dump (or drop point for beet shipments) for American Beet Sugar. As farming and ranching flourished, Weitzer and surrounding towns grew. By the time Weitzer got its post office, Rocky Ford’s population was approaching 3,000, and Manzanola’s stood at around 400. (Weitzer’s population is unrecorded.) The crop from these towns helped Colorado remain the nation’s leading beet sugar–producing state for much of the 20th century.

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By Kellen Cutsforth

CHARLENE LINDAHL COLLECTION

Vroman, Colorado

The children of Colorado sugar beet farmers pose in 1918 on the steps of the Vroman School, which opened its doors that year after the closure of two previous schools.

• During World War I, due to anti-German sentiment, town officials dropped the name Weitzer in favor of Vroman (Dutch in origin), after businessman and eventual Otero County commissioner John C. Vroman (1847–1926). Vroman is buried alongside family members in the Manzanola Mountain View Cemetery. • Following the closure of two previous schools, Vroman School—offering classes

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through eighth grade for the sugar beet farmers’ children—opened its doors in 1918. The Denver architectural firm of Mountjoy, French & Frewen designed the two-story brick building in Mediterranean Revival style. • At its 1930 peak Vroman had a population of 605, but the Great Depression ﬁnancially devastated the area, and the town spiraled into decline. The post office closed in 1954, and the school followed in 1971, its students shifting over to the public schools in Rocky Ford. Rocky Ford and Manzanola managed to survive hard times. • Today the largest town within a 50-mile radius of the Vroman townsite is Pueblo (pop. 108,000). In 2005 a ﬁre gutted the Vroman School building, leaving just a partial framework. Few other structures remain. Foliage has claimed the rest. • To reach Vroman from Pueblo, drive east on U.S. 50 about 50 miles. The townsite, accessible year-round by passenger car, stands just north of the highway about 4 miles east of Manzanola and 5 miles west of Rocky Ford.

PHOTOS BY JUSTIN MILLER

Clockwise from top left: The framework of the Vroman School, which taught local children from 1918 to 1971; a clapboard house in the town named for businessman John C. Vroman; the Vroman post ofﬁce, which closed in 1954; foliage has reclaimed the school; the Vroman family grave marker in the Manzanola Mountain View Cemetery; and a peek inside the school.

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C O L L E C T IO N S

A Village Built for a Railroad, Laws Was a Ghost Town Before Its Rebirth It survives as a railroad museum in California’s Owens Valley

By Linda Wommack

at the depot; an old sheep aws, California, was rancher described loading built in anticipahis “woollies” onto train cars; tion of a railroad— and a former cattle rancher the narrow-gauge recalled the sound of the Carson & Colorado train whistle blowing once to be exact. The Carson & his stock was all aboard. Colorado Railroad Co., formed The main attraction at the on May 10, 1880, envisioned site remains the trains. Parked its line running from Mound on the tracks beside the origHouse, Nevada, on the Carinal 1880s depot is the 1909 son River, to the Colorado Baldwin 4-6-0 steam locoRiver. By the time the tracks motive No. 9. Visitors are arrived in California’s Owens encouraged to climb into the Valley three years later, the budding settlement—then The museum posts its “laws” just outside the boardwalk entrance. cab and ring the bell. Trailing behind are several freight known simply as Station— comprised a depot, an agent’s house, a after Southern Paciﬁc ofﬁcials presented cars and an 1883 C&C caboose. Another section supervisor’s house, a water tank, a gift deed to Inyo County and the city intriguing railcar on display is the 1929 a railway turntable and outhouses. of Bishop for “steam locomotive No. 9 self-propelled Brill Co. car, donated by Other structures soon followed, includ- together with other rolling stock and the the Death Valley Railroad and fully reing homes, two general stores, a hotel, Laws station building and surrounding stored in 2004. Summer visitors can hop a boardinghouse, a blacksmith’s shop, installations for safekeeping in behalf aboard and ride the historic train. The village holds its own appeal. Near a dance hall, a barbershop, warehouses of generations to come.” With a groundswell of public support the depot are the original agent’s house, and (in 1887) a post ofﬁce. The 300-mile C&C railroad never did the Bishop Museum and Historical water tank and oil tank, as well as the reach the Colorado, but it provided a Society purchased additional land for an working turntable. Stroll farther into boost to Station and environs, shipping outdoor museum to preserve the area’s town to find the post office, a general livestock and crops from local ranches railroad era. The society saved the few store and a saloon, to name just a few and ore from district mines. In 1900 the remaining buildings in the town of Laws of the historic buildings. In all you’ll ﬁnd C&C sold the line to the Southern Paciﬁc and moved in other historic buildings more than 30 structures, including an Railroad, which changed the town’s from around the Owens Valley to re- icehouse from Bishop, an early gas staname to honor longtime Southern Pa- create the village. Film crews working tion and its pumps, the 1909 North Inyo ciﬁc superintendent R.J. Laws. The town on the 1966 Western Nevada Smith, schoolhouse and Bishop’s ﬁrst Catholic of Laws became the main shipping point starring Steve McQueen, shot at vari- church. At the east end of town, nestled for supplies to such Nevada gold boom- ous locations in the Owens Valley and amid a grove of trees, are several small Inyo National Forest, using Laws as a restored Victorian homes, which house towns as Tonopah and Goldﬁeld. exhibits of 19th-century clothing, appliLaws remained a close-knit, solid set and building additional structures. As the Laws Railroad Museum and His- ances, musical instruments, children’s community for another half-century. Its decline in the 1950s was attributed toric Site took shape, several old-timers toys and other artifacts. The Laws Railroad Museum & Historic to, among other things, the closure of visited to share their memories—a relocal mines and the lower cost of ship- tired engineer stood beside locomotive Site, off U.S. Highway 6 in Inyo County, ping by truck vs. rail. By 1959 it was No. 9 and envisioned his hand “on the 5 miles from U.S. 395, is open year-round. virtually a ghost town. The last train left throttle”; an elderly couple remembered For more information call 760-873-5950 the depot on April 30, 1960, and soon the day the man greeted his bride-to-be or visit www.lawsmuseum.com. 62

PHOTOS: LAWS RAILROAD MUSEUM AND HISTORIC SITE

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Clockwise from above: The carriage house displays saddles and tack; a weathered saloon is one of many buildings saved from demolition and moved to the museum grounds; exhibits in the wheelwright’s shop explain what it took to keep Westerners rolling; Southern Paciﬁc donated the 1909 Baldwin 4-6-0 steam locomotive No. 9 to the museum in 1960; the pioneer building holds a piano and other period treasures; the 1929 self-propelled Brill Co. car, donated by the Death Valley Railroad, was fully restored in 2004 and is available to summer visitors for rides.

GU NS O F T HE W E S T

Old West Riﬂes of a Fancier Sort Weren’t Only for Frontier Heroes Everyday Westerners also sought embellished long arms

ost of the single-shot and repeating rifles recorded in Old West photographs are of a utilitarian nature. For hunting and self-defense purposes these long arms needed to be functional, serviceable and efﬁcient, not necessarily attractive. But not all riﬂes were created equal; some were plenty fancy. Many examples survive of highly embellished shoulder arms presented to, or carried as a vanity by, frontier Westerners. In the latter half of the 19th century it was customary for grateful townsfolk or businesses such as Wells, Fargo & Co. to present exemplary lawmen, soldiers and other ﬁgures in the line of duty with special ﬁrearms. One such ﬁgure was Stephen Venard, former marshal of Nevada City, Calif. In the early morning hours of May 15, 1866, a trio of armed bandits held up a Wells, Fargo stagecoach near Nevada City and made off with $7,900 in gold dust and bullion. Venard, armed with a 16-shot Henry riﬂe, took chase later that day as part of a posse. After the posse split up, Venard happened upon the robbers and ﬁred just four shots to kill all three. He recovered the stolen loot to boot. From an appreciative Wells, Fargo he accepted only half of the $3,000 reward, sharing the rest with the other posse members. The company also presented him a gold-mounted Henry riﬂe with an inlaid plaque on the left side of the buttstock, engraved with thanks for His Gallant Conduct, May 15th, 1866. James H. Cook—hunter, rancher, amateur paleontologist and author of the 1923 book Fifty Years on the Old Frontier—came to appreciate his own Henry in Texas in the early 1870s after trading his Spencer for it. “This rifle proved to be a most accurate shooting piece,” he recalled, “and I had

By George Layman

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ALL PHOTOGRAPHS: GEORGE LAYMAN COLLECTION

This highly engraved Model 1860 Henry repeater sold at auction in 1998 for $10,000.

The Model 1866 Winchester “Yellow Boy” was another popular presentation piece.

the satisfaction of knowing that nobody in Texas had a better shooting iron than I.” Cook also became the proud owner of a Winchester Model 1873 with an engraved frame and checkered high-grade buttstock. Presenting an embellished, engraved rifle to oneself was not out of the ordinary. Montana pioneer Granville Stuart owned a .44-40-caliber Winchester Model 1873 “One of One Thousand” rifle engraved with his name and the model year. Not that he wasn’t deserving. Known as

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“Mr. Montana,” Stuart proved his worth in the territory and, later, the state as a prospector, cattleman, businessman, vigilante leader, politician, civic leader and author. Lieutenant William B. Wetmore, who served with the 6th U.S. Cavalry on the Kansas and Colorado frontier between 1872 and 1875, was repeatedly cited for gallantry, notably for his role in a successful engagement with renegade Southern Cheyennes on the Red River in Texas on August 30, 1874. It is not known whether

The Marlin-Ballard No. 6 ½ Rigby offhand pistol-grip riﬂe was engraved at the factory.

The left frame panel of this Model 1893 Marlin repeating riﬂe centers on an engraved elk.

Here is a ﬁne example of a Stevens Ideal Model 51 Schuetzen riﬂe (made 1896–1916).

he received a riﬂe for his achievements, but as a personal vanity he was known to have owned a Winchester Model 1866 and a Model 1873, each engraved on the left side of the frame with his name and regiment. Lever-action repeaters were not the only fancy rifles on the frontier. Prized

single-shot riﬂes got the same treatment. In the late 19th century the first-rate match shooters of Colorado’s Central City Riﬂe Club used Stevens, Ballard and Winchester single-shot rifles, some bearing finely engraved game scenes, as well as checkered walnut buttstocks and Swiss-

style butt plates that were indispensable in maintaining a steady grip when shooting offhand (standing unsupported). Officials at high-stakes matches sometimes presented fancy riﬂes as prizes. But more often a well-to-do individual would purchase such a fancy piece so that he could carry his “Sunday best” seven days a week. Antique gun collectors are always on the hunt for superbly engraved riﬂes, whether repeaters (Winchesters and Henrys) or single-shot models. Among the more sought-after engravings are the works of “steel canvas” artisans Louis Daniel Nimschke and Gustave Young, both of whom were born in Germany. Between 1850 and his 1904 death Nimschke, working out of his shop in New York City, engraved more than 5,000 ﬁrearms for Colt, Winchester, Remington, Sharps, Smith & Wesson and other makers. Young, who worked for Colt and then Smith & Wesson, was known for his dog’s head and other animal designs. Examples of these 19thcentury works of art (rendered on sixshooters as well as rifles) can reap tens of thousands of dollars from collectors. Given that such embellishments didn’t prevent some owners from using their expensive weapons as working ﬁrearms, it’s fortunate collectors can still ﬁnd pristine examples—the ﬁnest with engraved frames and barrels and finely checkered and highly ﬁgured walnut stocks. At middle left is a beautifully engraved Model 1893 Marlin repeating rifle that retains nearly 98 percent of the case colors on its receiver, boasts a beautiful game scene on the left side of its frame and bears fine-lined checkering on its walnut stocks. The Model 1860 Henry and Model 1866 Winchester on the previous page are particularly well-preserved examples of engraved riﬂes from the early metallic cartridge era. The single-shot Marlin Ballard No. 6 ½ at top left is an example of an artful ﬁrearm that was used regularly, not simply hung on a wall to be admired. This particular riﬂe was not a special order but available in this engraved form straight from the catalog, though at no small cost—$35 in 1880 (more than $800 in inflation-adjusted bills). It was likely owned by a wealthy member of an organized rifle club and saw, like many other embellished Western guns, both showy and utilitarian service.

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R E VIE WS

Must See, Must Read Notable books and movies about the Battle of the Little Bighorn By C. Lee Noyes, editor of the Custer Battleﬁeld & Historical Museum Association’s Battleﬁeld Dispatch

BOOKS No American battle (except perhaps Gettysburg) has been the subject of as many books and movies as the June 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. Custer’s Last Stand became a legend in its own time, and no such conﬂict on our soil has been the subject of as much debate and second-guessing. What the niche has sorely lacked, however, are well-written and -researched tomes for the general reader that relate both sides of the story. A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn (2008, by James Donovan): This insightful contribution to the Little Bighorn genre ﬁlls the need for a book that appeals to general readers as well as students of the battle. It devotes attention to the Lakota perspective through such leaders as Sitting Bull and focuses on Lt. Col. George Custer and the 7th U.S. Cavalry to document the military reasons for the battle’s outcome. Donovan presents a balanced, realistic assessment of all major themes and concludes that the primary reason for Custer’s defeat was the inexperience of his regiment and that “the reputation of the ‘Fighting Seventh’ was a hollow one.” The clear, articulate prose of his persuasive analysis should hold the attention and interest of anyone unfamiliar with this controversial subject as well as Little Bighorn students. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (2010, by Nathaniel Philbrick): Best-selling author Philbrick appeals to the unfamiliar reader 66

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by probing the depths of the Little Bighorn story, though not always to the satisfaction of the Little Bighorn expert. Throughout the book he provides details about people, places and events in ﬂashbacks that generally do not distract or detract from the story line. Philbrick offers a judicious interpretation of the military strategy of the 1876 Sioux War, and his insights on the critical role of expedition commander Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Terry are a notable contribution to the ongoing study of the subject. Notwithstanding several factual errors, since corrected in the paperback edition, this rendition of the Little Bighorn story is compelling and well organized. An impressive 30-page bibliography shows the author has done his homework. The Custer Myth: A Source Book of Custeriana (1953, by Colonel W.A. Graham): Anyone wishing to learn more about the Little Bighorn after reading the previous or other general books should devour this Custer classic comprised entirely of primary sources, including facsimiles of original documents. Colonel Graham knew and corresponded with several of the ofﬁcers who had survived the battle and other important sources (among them the son of Captain Frederick W. Benteen). These contacts and his access to confidential military ﬁles were critical to the compilation of this indispensable anthology that has served as an inspiration and valuable source for many researchers (this writer included). Although The Custer Myth in-

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cludes important Indian testimony (such as General Hugh Scott’s interviews with Custer’s Crow scouts), Graham questioned the reliability of these sources in his opening chapter (“A Word to the Wise”), because of his own inability to reconcile such contradictory accounts. Given the colonel’s credibility and reputation, this warning probably discouraged at least a generation of researchers, until Kenneth Hammer, Gregory Michno, Richard Hardorff and others rediscovered the Plains Indian side of the Little Bighorn story and its historic value. Custer’s Fall: The Indian Side of the Story (1957, by David Humphreys Miller): This easy read suggests Lt. Col. George Custer was mortally wounded as the ﬁve companies of the 7th Cavalry under his immediate command moved to attack the Cheyenne-Lakota encampment by crossing the Little Bighorn River at Medicine Tail Ford. The resulting panic led to the rapid annihilation of the two battalions marked by several soldier suicides, little troop resistance and few warrior casualties. Although archaeological and historical evidence supports what Richard Fox describes as “tactical disintegration,” the claim regarding Custer’s early death has been disputed if not discredited. (Had Custer been killed or wounded early in the fight, Captain Myles Keogh would have assumed command as the senior officer, and the regimental staff would have been killed with him; they were not.) What makes this pioneering work a must-read, however, is its successful attempt to relate the Indian experience of the battle without completely disregarding that of the soldier. Miller interviewed 71 Indian veterans of the Little Bighorn (including Sitting Bull’s nephews) to balance, if not tip, the scales, though he didn’t always quote his Plains Indian and other sources accurately.

A Mighty Afternoon: A Novel of the Battle of the Little Big Horn (1980, by Charles K. Mills): If one were to select a favorite Little Bighorn book, logic might dictate one of several important scholarly works that have enhanced our understanding, advanced new arguments, postulated different theories or brought new facts to light. However, the choice might be more inspirational, such as this compact piece of historical fiction that rekindles a personal passion for the subject. Mills makes no scholastic pretense as he simply allows the reader to follow the story of the Little Bighorn with ease in this short volume that constitutes an afternoon’s reading. Through dialogue we understand, if not sympathize with, the characters that engaged in this historic clash. And its depiction of events is as accurate and insightful as many books that purport to higher scholarly standards. This well-written novel belongs in the library of every student of the Little Bighorn (if not every historian) as an inspiration to effective writing.

MOVIES Custer’s Last Stand (2012, DVD, PBS): Subject matter experts might cringe at several basic factual errors in this PBS American Experience broadcast. However, neither the Custer buff nor Little Bighorn/Plains Indian Wars scholar is the intended audience. Producer-director Stephen Ives has generally succeeded in his purpose to focus on the military career of Custer, to assess that officer’s personality and accomplishments and to study his relationship with his wife, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, for the benefit of those with a general interest in American history and prominent Americans. As Paul Andrew Hutton and other recognized authorities point out, Custer’s military service after 1865 was a striking contrast to his fame and fortune during the Civil War. His accomplishments as an Indian ﬁghter before the Little Bighorn were limited to three military actions (two of them minor) against Plains Indians. The most signiﬁcant, his controversial 1868 attack

on a Southern Cheyenne village on the Washita River in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), is portrayed here in a graphic yet generally accurate manner. Custer’s Last Stand is on the mark when it judges the broad historical context of Custer and his impact on our culture. Son of the Morning Star (1991, VHS and DVD, Republic Pictures): Adapted loosely from Evan S. Connell’s award-winning book of the same title, this TV miniseries directed by Mike Robe follows Custer (portrayed by Gary Cole) from his 1867 frontier assignment to his death at Little Bighorn. The tightly written script reﬂects an almost rigid reliance on the known dialogue of Custer and other participants in this saga, complemented by accurate renditions of cavalry uniforms and weapons and American Indian appearance and demeanor in 1876. In one scene Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry (Terry O’Quinn) complains (quite correctly) that Army ammunition corroded by leather cartridge belts has caused trooper carbines to fail, and he attributes (again correctly) the complaint to his unnamed ordnance ofﬁcer. Such unprecedented respect for historical detail is a credit to film consultant John Carroll, although some of the dialogue appears out of context, and characters such as guide Mitch Bouyer and reporter Mark Kellogg failed to make the final cut. Cole’s somewhat stilted performance is perhaps a casualty of this admirable attempt to stick to the facts and not an awkward effort to imitate Custer’s deportment and speech. The Glory Guys (1965, DVD, United Artists): Based on Hoffman Birney’s novel The Dice of God, this Western at first appears to be just another generic war film. However, as one views this adaptation written by Sam Peckinpah, the references to George Armstrong Custer, the 7th Cavalry and the Little Bighorn are clear. When Cap-

tain Demas Harrod (Tom Tryon) reports for duty with the cavalry regiment commanded by General Frederick McCabe (Andrew Duggan), there is clearly bad blood between the two, due in part to the sacrifice of a soldier named Harris at Wishbone Creek—enmity reminiscent of that between Benteen and Custer after the Washita ﬁght. Against the colorful background of untrained raw recruits, the obligatory saloon brawl, a contentious love triangle and the daily routine of a frontier post, Harrod rigorously drills his untested company for the inevitable Indian war ahead. When conﬂict comes, McCabe commands one of two military columns sent to attack an Indian village in concert, leaving behind (in another Little Bighorn parallel) the Gatling guns and regimental band. Refusing to wait for the arrival of the other column at the scheduled date, he divides his command and attacks. Filmed in Mexico, this production has well-executed battle scenes. Tonka (1958, DVD, Disney): To be sure this schoolboy classic does not accurately portray the Little Bighorn or the broader Indian wars. However, the ﬁlm, based on David Appel’s book Comanche, does provide a valid contemporary cultural snapshot as well as fair entertainment. Directed by Lewis R. Foster, the ﬁlm centers on White Bull (Sal Mineo), a young Sioux warrior who captures and tames the wild stallion Tonka Witan (Great One), later acquired by Captain Myles Keogh (Philip Carey) of the 7th U.S. Cavalry. (Keogh rode to his death with Custer at the Little Bighorn, and his horse Comanche is long remembered as the only Army “survivor” of Custer’s Last Stand.) The film does not adequately depict Custer (Britt Lomond), but it does capture the dramatic transformation of his popular image from cultural icon to historical villain. Despite subsequent scholarship that has reassessed, if not resurrected Custer’s character, he remains in the cultural doghouse. What Frederic F. Van de Water’s revisionist biography Glory-Hunter started, the ﬁlm Tonka ﬁnished.

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They Died With Their Boots On (1941, DVD and VHS, Warner Brothers): No Little Bighorn must-see list would be complete without the inclusion of this classic, starring Errol Flynn as George Armstrong Custer and Olivia de Havilland as Elizabeth Bacon Custer. Directed by Raoul Walsh, this fictionalized biography of Custer portrays him in a far more favorable light than subsequent endeavors in ﬁlm and print. However, judged in the context of America’s pending involvement in World War II and the ﬁght against tyranny, the world needed heroes; and Custer/Flynn admirably ﬁll that role, which includes a ﬁght against corrupt politicians and businessmen willing to start an Indian war after the discovery of gold in the sacred Black Hills. (Although Custer’s 1874 expedition to the Black Hills in fact paved the way for the gold rush, in the ﬁlm he seeks strict enforcement of the 1868 treaty guaranteeing the land to the Sioux and seems opposed to conflict.) Reflecting the cultural bias of the times, Crazy Horse (Mexican-born actor Anthony Quinn) is the only Indian identiﬁed in Custer’s last battle. The scene of the gallant Custer as the last white man standing, saber in hand, was well worth the price of admission in 1941 or cost of the video today.

BOOK REVIEWS The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane, by Richard W. Etulain, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2014, $24.95. Let it be said—as does author Richard Etulain—that the definitive biography of this wild woman of the West is James D. McLaird’s 2005 book Calamity Jane: The Woman and the Legend (University of Oklahoma Press). Before McLaird produced that title and his 2008 work Wild Bill Hickok & Calamity Jane: Deadwood Legends, most of us found it nigh impossible to separate fact from ﬁction in the life of Martha “Calamity Jane” Canary. Misinformation kept circulating year 68

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after year for a number of reasons—scattered and minuscule records; Calamity’s own highly suspect autobiography; sensationalized tales of her exploits by dime novelists and muckrakers; shallow or faulty research by journalists and other nonﬁction writers; the many false trails blazed by Jean Hickok McCormick, who claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of Calamity and Wild Bill; portrayals of Calamity on film by the likes of Jean Arthur (The Plainsman, 1936), Doris Day (Calamity Jane, 1953) and Robin Weigert (HBO’s Deadwood series, 2004–06); and the power of legend-making in general. And then came McLaird’s extensive biography. “Published more than a century after her death, McLaird’s thorough, measured and thoughtful book is, by far, the most important publication on Calamity,” writes Etulain. “It is a tour de force of diligent, far-reaching scholarship.” McLaird was equally generous toward Etulain in the acknowledgments of his Calamity biography: “Dick’s enthusiasm for the subject is contagious. Besides sharing information and sources, Dick meticulously combed through a draft, providing detailed suggestions to improve style and content. I cannot thank him enough.” Well, that was a decade ago. And though Etulain covers much of the same ground (a dependable account of Martha Canary’s life and a solid overview of the Calamity Jane legends), he delivers the story with such enthusiasm and careful detail that anyone who read the earlier biography will still enjoy this one. There is also the matter of all those folks who failed to notice or grasp the truths about Calamity that McLaird provided. “Not all writers in the next decade or so beneﬁted as much from his volume as they should have,” writes Etulain, who of course did, but he has also studied Calamity Jane off and on for two decades. Given the continuous exaggerations, distortions and blatant lies about her life before and after her 1903 death, and the fact she could neither read nor write, Calamity is no easy subject. When one gets past (if one can) all of that, another question emerges: Do this illiterate woman’s actual accomplishments even warrant a full-ﬂedged biography? Although definitely an unorthodox woman, she

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didn’t scout for the Army as much as she said she did (and certainly not for George Custer), and she wasn’t the only female in the West to ever get drunk (though she did it more thoroughly than most), engage in prostitution (actually, no irrefutable evidence in her case), have several “husbands” (none named Hickok, in her case), struggle to care for a child (in her case daughter Jessie) and administer to the sick. In other words, it’s easy to argue she wasn’t biography-worthy. Then again, do the likes of Hickok, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday really deserve as much attention as they’ve received, while so many other accomplished lawmen, gamblers and dentists have been forgotten? Few Wild Westerners have become legends of the West, and very few of these few are women, so let’s not hold Calamity Jane’s dubious fame against her. It is also clear that such a biography requires more than just a biographical section if it is to be long enough for a book. Etulain delivers by thoughtfully commenting on the early, often misleading, accounts of her life and devoting his last four chapters to the novels, movies and biographies about Calamity. He also draws an interesting comparison between Calamity and another Western woman to achieve legendary status, Belle Starr (Myra Belle Shirley), although he might have fleshed out that comparison a bit more—perhaps in another book? There are no footnotes (in adherence to the guidelines of the Oklahoma Western Biographies series), but the author provides an “Essay on Sources” and an extensive bibliography. McLaird might have made it clear to some of us 10 years ago, but Etulain makes it doubly clear—Calamity Jane was a far more complex character than legend has it. Editor Last Train to El Paso: The Mysterious Unsolved Murder of a Cattle Baron, J. Healy, by Jerry J. Lobdill, Cross Timbers Press, Fort Worth, 2014, $24.95. Texan James B. Miller is well known in Western circles for killing people and for

his most accurate nickname, “Killin’ Jim.” Another Texan cut from the same unholy cloth—both were paid assassins—was Felix Robert Jones, who, according to a great-grandnephew, “would have killed his mother for a dime.” Jones is not well known and lacks a catchy nickname (“Felix the Killer Cat” might have to do), but he conspired with some of the same men as Miller and killed for hire at least four people, as Jerry Lobdill writes about in this issue (see P. 42). His best-known victim, though still no household name, was No. 4, Thomas Lyons, the cattle baron of the book title. Lyons and partner Angus Campbell grazed some 60,000 head on their southwest New Mexico cattle empire. That story is well documented in the 2003 book Triumph and Tragedy: A History of Thomas Lyons and the LCs, by Ida Foster Campbell and Alice Foster Hill. They refer to Lyons’ 1917 murder in El Paso as “one of the great unsolved mysteries of the old Southwest.” Well, Felix Jones did the dirty deed, according to Lobdill, but knowing that won’t spoil this fascinating tale based on the author’s detective work. The murder weapon was a hammer blow to Lyons’ head, and it was a contract hit arranged by two other questionable characters. Only Lyons was convicted; he did time in the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville starting in July 1919 but was pardoned in 1926. All the juicy details unfold in ﬁne fashion in this well-researched book. Jones lived until 1951 and apparently didn’t resume his old assassin job or other criminal activities. “Of course if he did,” writes Lobdill. “He got away with it, and we would not expect to ﬁnd any written trace of it.” Editor Logan: The Honorable Life and Scandalous Death of a Western Lawman, by Jackie Boor, Cable Publishing, Brule, Wis., 2014, $25.95. Born in Franktown, Nevada in 1861, Thomas Walter Logan grew up to see the territory achieve statehood, undergo a series of booms and busts and enter the 20th century at a

time of profound change for the nation. Amid that change, on January 3, 1899, Tom Logan, the 37-year-old father of six daughters and a son, was sworn in as the 11th sheriff of Nye County. Operating from the county seat of Belmont, his task was to uphold the law in a region of mountains and desert the size of New Hampshire and New Jersey combined. In contrast to so many lawmen who shot ﬁrst and asked questions later, Sheriff Logan performed his duties with gunplay strictly as a last resort. The Tonopah Daily Sun recorded an incident in which a drunken Wyatt Earp slapped wife Josie and, when a young miner tried to intervene, ran to the saloon he then owned in town and returned with two six-guns in hand. “Tom Logan was told of the row,” the account said, “and he hastened at once to the scene. Pushing his way to the center of the mass, he caught Earp by arm and, without raising his voice, talked him into giving up his guns.…It was a common occurrence. The man did not know what fear was, and he always tried to stop trouble by peaceful means, although there was not better hand with a gun in this country than he.” It is just another of history’s sad ironies that this lawman, reputedly without fear and without reproach, met his end in a house of ill-repute, with whose madam he had spent the night, and who he was protecting from an unruly customer who violently refused to leave on the morning of April 7, 1906. After Logan was shot ﬁve times by Walter Barieau, his last act, true to form, was to prevent the piano player who came to his aid from shooting his assailant, thus averting further bloodshed. Jackie Boor’s biography uses a wealth of available documentation to revive the memory of her great-grandfather and re-create his life and times, his family and the Nevada county that grew up around him. She bestows equally ample details upon his postmortem—consequences to the family and the people he knew, and the trial of the murderer, whose outcome many thought as astonishing and scandalous as Logan’s death. For those who may have overlooked him, as well as the history of the state he served, Logan should catch you up on both counts. Jon Guttman

Death for Dinner: The Benders of (Old) Kansas: The Biography of a Family of Mass Killers, by Phyllis de la Garza, Silk Label Books, Unionville, N.Y., 2014, $14.99. The Bender family, motivated by greed, got away with mass murder on the early 1870s Kansas frontier. They looked like any other homestead family and were right neighborly, serving home-cooked meals to travelers who stopped at their farm. They weren’t satisﬁed with a thankyou and a generous tip, however. They murdered (hammers came in handy for this purpose) the diners, stole their clothes, money and horses, and buried their victims on the farm. The four Benders—supposedly a mother, father, brother and sister—then disappeared before authorities could nab them. It’s an irresistible story (and one told well here) for those who like a helping of the macabre. Arizona author Phyllis de la Garza’s Death for Dinner was originally published in 2003, and at that time she thought the mystery of what became of the Bender family would never be solved. In fact she titled the last chapter “An Unsolved Murder.” Now comes the first paperback edition, with a new afterword and a 13-page addition titled “Solving the Bender Mystery.” Well, part of it, anyway. “While I still have no new information regarding the whereabouts of Ma and Pa Bender, I think we found Katie and John,” the author writes. “If we have solved at least part of the Bender mystery, perhaps the tormented spirits murdered by the Benders in (Old) Kansas can now rest a little easier.” Not to give everything away, but sufﬁce it to say de la Garza believes John and Katie Bender—husband and wife, not brother and sister—are buried in the Linwood Cemetery in Glenwood Springs, Colo. In that same historic cemetery is Doc Holliday’s grave, though it doesn’t mark the actual site of his remains. Doc could be somewhere else in the graveyard, but some folks suggest his body might have been removed from Colorado and reburied in his native Georgia.

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NOW AVAILABLE, the most famous depiction of the Battle of Little Bighorn The Anheuser Busch Company has granted permission for the Custer Battlefield Museum to issue a special high quality 36x27 limited edition print of the famous painting.

CUSTER BATTLEFIELD MUSEUM, Garryowen, MT

To order call (406) 638-1876. The print is available for $79.99 delivered. Partial proceeds from the sale of this print will go towards maintaining the Peace Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the battlefield.

DON’T MISS A SINGLE ISSUE!

July 14, 1881: BILLY THE KID

is shot dead under suspicious circumstances. The young outlaw may be the most misunderstood character in the history of the Old West.

A NEW look at his short life. CALL ME BILLY by Patrick Manley Now available at Amazon.com

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With that in mind, perhaps John and Katie Bender should be removed from Colorado and reburied in Kansas near the scene of their crimes. Or would that only add to the torment of their victims? In the meantime, if anyone locates the resting places of Ma and Pa Bender, do let Phyllis de la Garza know. Editor

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The Legendary Life of Bee Ho Gray, by Clark Gray, John M. Hardy Publishing Co., Houston, 2014, $19.95. Most old-timers know that among his other talents Will Rogers (1879–1935) was a trick roper from Oklahoma (born in what was then called Indian Territory). Well, so was Bee Ho Gray (1885–1951), the great-uncle of the author. “He is great with either hand and is the best one handling one rope over the other that I ever saw,” Rogers once said of Gray. The two trick ropers performed together at Colonel Cummins’ Wild West Indian Congress at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. They appeared together later in the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West show, even though Rogers was never officially employed by the 101 Ranch. “In many ways,” writes Clark Gray, “Bee Ho was viewed as following in Rogers’ footsteps, even though he is said to have taught Rogers many of his rope tricks.” Rogers, the author says, once told Bee Ho, “You have a $10,000 arm but a 10-cent mind.” Clark Gray explains that Rogers, in his own comical way, “was paying Bee Ho a compliment, suggesting that he wasn’t aware of the real value of his talent as an entertainer.” Yes, Bee Ho Gray was far more than just a trick roper. He was also, among other things, a trick rider, knife thrower, whip artist, banjoist, silent film actor and comedian. Born Emberry Cannon Gray in Leon, Chickasaw Nation, to a mother who was one-quarter Chickasaw and a father who was once a Texas Ranger, the boy received his nickname from none other than Quanah Parker, who had once been a Comanche chief. Quanah called him Bee Ho (“Brother of the Cripple”) because his older brother had been

disabled by polio and used a crutch. “Bee Ho’s childhood in Indian Territory planted the seed that would grow into his Western persona,” the author writes. Bee Ho was about 17 when he ﬁrst saw Pawnee Bill’s Wild West. He started performing his own rope tricks and soon joined Colonel Cummins’ Wild West. Clark Gray devotes 16 chapters to Bee Ho’s career in such shows and 12 chapters to Bee Ho’s vaudeville days and silent ﬁlms. In 1934 Bee Ho was a bit down on his luck when he revived his career with a successful act in which his partner was a yodeling coyote named “Chink.” Bee Ho said, “A coyote is harder to tame than a red-headed woman,” but he was still working acts with Chink as late as 1942. Gray’s biography, enhanced by a gallery of photos, honors a man who was a cowboy entertainer for a half-century and achieved his share of fame but was overshadowed by Will Rogers and others. Editor Z.S. Liang: Native Trails, Fresh Tracks, by Tom Saubert, Greenwich Workshop Press, Seymour, Conn., 2014, $60. Z.S. Liang has come a long way—he was born and raised in China—to become one of today’s top painters of American Indians in the Old West. Liang trained to be an art teacher, but after receiving an MFA from Boston University in 1989, he launched his career as a portrait and commercial artist. He’s now based in Southern California [www.liangstudio .com]. For the past 14 years his focus has been on portraying Indians, and now comes this compelling book that showcases 72 of his full-color paintings. The book is divided into three chapters: “Hunters-Gatherers and Indian Traders,” “Defenders of Land and Lifestyle” and “United by Family and Spirituality.” For pure action one of Liang’s best works is The Charge of Crazy Horse on Fort Laramie, 1864. For pure serenity don’t miss Water Lily, in which a lone Indian reaches out from his birch bark canoe to collect a ﬂower not yet closed for the night. Editor

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WILD WEST

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Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

© JACOB W. FRANK, WWW.JWFRANK.COM; INSET: SOUTHEASTERN NEW MEXICO HISTORICAL SOCIETY, NEARLOVINGSBEND.NET

GO WEST!

In 1898 16-year-old southeastern New Mexico cowhand Jim White spied a funnel of bats swirling over the scrub near Eddy (present-day Carlsbad). A closer look brought him to “the biggest and blackest hole I had ever seen, out of which the bats seemed literally to boil.” White had discovered Carlsbad Caverns, a vast limestone system that houses nearly 1 million bats. All those bats produce tons of, ahem, guano, and a local fertilizer entrepreneur was soon hauling it up in a winch-operated iron bucket. White served as foreman and in his spare time took tourists into and out of the caverns via the same bucket (see inset). Today visitors to the national park [www.nps.gov/cave] can explore the caverns on lighted, paved trails.

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