Wild West 2015-08

MISSOURI’s SAVAGE SON

JESSE JAMES PINKERTONS EYE

WESTERN PARIAHS HOW TO KILL A TOWN:

DEATH OF LEBEAU AUGUST 2015

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Features

ON THE COVER

This 2015 Robert Hunt painting of a teenage Jesse James (1847–82) was inspired by a July 10, 1864, photograph taken during a Rebel guerrilla raid on Platte City. Mo. (roberthunt studio.com)

Guerrillas, by Andy Thomas, depicts the raiders who fought for the Confederacy. Frank and Jesse James rode with them.

28 THE STATE OF JESSE JAMES

52

By Jim Winnerman

Missouri was central in the life of the infamous outlaw—he was born there, committed most of his crimes there and died a violent death there

ROUGH ON RATS AND SIBLINGS

TOP: ANDY THOMAS, MAZE CREEK STUDIO, CARTHAGE, MO.

36

By R. Michael Wilson

HOW TO KILL A WESTERN TOWN By Bill Markley

Once labeled the “City of Promise,” LeBeau, South Dakota, started its death spiral after the saloon shooting of a popular ranch manager

42

While not as violent as a bushwhack, the poisonings of Louis and Susie Belew in Dixon, California, still called for a hanging

58

ALLAN PINKERTON: ‘THEY MUST DIE’

WHERE THE PRONGHORNS PLAY

By Ron Soodalter

Ridding the country of the James-Younger Gang was high on the agenda of the founder of Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency

By Dan Flores

Though they resemble African antelopes, pronghorns emerged from their own line to become masters of the American Plains AUGUST 2015

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1

Departments

4 6 LETTERS 8 ROUNDUP 14 INTERVIEW EDITOR’S LETTER

22

WESTERN ENTERPRISE By Melody Groves

Sadie Orchard proved a shrewd businesswoman beyond her bordellos but never achieved Victorian ladyhood

24

ART OF THE WEST

By Johnny D. Boggs The Whitney in Cody, Wyoming, holds some 7,000 Old and New West works—every one a favorite

26 INDIAN

68 GHOST

By Mike Coppock

By Terry Halden

LIFE

The warlike Tlingits of southeast Alaska fought other tribes, Russians, Americans and one another

16

WESTERNERS

70

Working like a dog on the Deadwood Central

COLLECTIONS

By Linda Wommack Attention, museumgoers!

Bentonville, Arkansas, is also home to the Museum of Native American History

GUNS OF THE WEST

By George Layman British Bull Dogs

were the pride of a New Mexico Indian agent, a Missouri “Bald Knobber” and many others

GUNFIGHTERS AND LAWMEN By Andrew Hind

The Newton brothers spanned the era between Old West outlaws and Dust Bowl desperadoes

2

Gleeson, Arizona, lured in its population of prospectors with turquoise, gold, silver and, finally, copper

72

18 20

TOWNS

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REVIEWS

Johnny D. Boggs investigates the Pinkerton agents in books and movies. Plus reviews of recent books about Charles Russell, John Mullan and California Indians

PIONEERS AND SETTLERS

By Connie Cherba The elusive “Buckskin Jo” Phillips served

as an Army scout and later toured with a band of Indians

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AUGUST 2015

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GO WEST!

Southwest Oregon’s deep, blue and beautiful Crater Lake

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Editor’s Letter

PINKERTON MEN VS. BADMEN The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, established in Chicago by Allan Pinkerton in 1850, chose as its logo an unblinking eye over the motto “We Never Sleep.” Well, the company remains alert. Now headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich., Pinkerton provides a wide range of corporate risk-management services and uses a stylized eye logo similar to the ever-watchful CBS eye. Wells Fargo, a multinational company whose roots go back to the 1852 formation of California-based Wells, Fargo & Co., is often associated with the West (its logo is a stagecoach), while Pinkerton has ties to the Midwest (where the “Pinks” were known to bust heads to bust strikes). But Pinkerton also has

“Reno Gang’s Reign of Terror,” by William Bell, on HistoryNet.com). In June 1871, as detailed in Ron Soodalter’s “Allan Pinkerton: ‘They Must Die’” (see P. 42), son Robert was the first of his family to pursue the James boys, but he came home to Chicago empty-handed. In early 1874 Allan himIn early 1874 Allan Pinkerton himself became professionally self became professionally involved, at the request of involved, at the request of the Adams Express Co., after the Adams Express Co., the bold ex-guerrillas robbed a train at Gads Hill, Missouri after the bold ex-guerrillas robbed a train at Gads Hill, strong connections to the East (where it provided Mo. “Given Allan Pinkerton’s roster of high-profile security for President Abraham Lincoln during cases, there was no reason to assume he wouldn’t the Civil War) and the Wild West (where it sought succeed,” writes Soodalter. Rounding up the Renos, to apprehend infamous outlaws). The Pinkertons however, hadn’t prepared Pinkerton and his agents relentlessly pursued the James-Younger Gang and for what lay in store in Missouri. First Frank and Jesse James murdered agent later the Wild Bunch. The Pinkerton men might never have slept, but neither did the badmen, who Joseph Whicher, and a few days later Jim and John for the most part used cunning, experience, famil- Younger shot down agent Louis Lull (who killed iarity with their environs and support from family John for his trouble) and a local lawman hired as a guide. Devastated but determined, Allan Pinkerton and friends to frustrate the wide-eyed pursuers. After the Civil War, about the time Frank and arranged for his agents to capture the James boys at Jesse James and Cole Younger were making the their family farm, but the explosive event there on transition from Southern guerrillas to Missouri Jan. 25, 1875, was deemed an unwarranted attack bank robbers, the Pinkertons successfully pursued and certainly was a public relations nightmare for an Indiana gang. In that state’s Jackson County on the agency. Pinkerton remained on the hunt, but Oct. 6, 1866, the Reno brothers pulled off what only dead ends followed. The disastrous Northarguably was the first U.S. peacetime train rob- field Raid landed the three surviving Youngers in bery, nearly seven years before the James-Younger a Minnesota prison in 1876 and a notorious coward Gang robbed its first train. Other Reno train rob- assassinated Jesse James in April 1882, but the beries followed that first one, but dogged Pinkerton Pinkertons didn’t have a hand in either of those agents infiltrated and brought down the gang (read events or in Frank James’ subsequent surrender. WW 4

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AUGUST 2015

Allan Pinkerton and his detectives may not have been asleep, but they never did catch up to Jesse James.

Wild West editor Gregory Lalire is author of the novel Captured: From the Frontier Diary of Infant Danny Duly. His article about baseball in the frontier West won a 2015 Stirrup Award for best article in Roundup, the membership magazine of Western Writers of America.

ONLINE EXTRAS

EDITOR IN CHIEF ROGER L. VANCE MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DIONISIO LUCCHESI PRESIDENT WILLIAM KONEVAL ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

AUGUST 2015 / VOL. 28, NO. 2 GREGORY J. LALIRE EDITOR MARK DREFS ART DIRECTOR DAVID LAUTERBORN MANAGING EDITOR MARTIN A. BARTELS SENIOR EDITOR LORI FLEMMING PHOTO EDITOR GREGORY F. MICHNO SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR JOHNNY D. BOGGS SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR JOHN KOSTER SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR

DIGITAL BRIAN KING DIRECTOR GERALD SWICK EDITOR BARBARA JUSTICE SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER

CORPORATE PAUL ZIMNY EVP DIGITAL GREG FERRIS EVP STRATEGY DAVID STEINHAFEL OPERATIONS AND FINANCE KAREN G. JOHNSON BUSINESS DIRECTOR ROB WILKINS MILITARY AMBASSADOR & PARTNERSHIP MARKETING DIRECTOR GEORGE CLARK SINGLE COPY SALES DIRECTOR

ADVERTISING RICHARD E. VINCENT NATIONAL SALES MANAGER [email protected] KIM GODDARD NATIONAL SALES MANAGER [email protected] RICK GOWER GEORGIA [email protected] TERRY JENKINS TENN., KY., MISS., ALA., FLA., MASS., [email protected]

Something to howl about: Dan Flores’ story won a Wrangler.

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WILD WEST (ISSN 1046-4638) is published by World History Group, LLC 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176-6500 703-771-9400 Periodical Postage paid at Leesburg, Va., and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, send address changes to: WILD WEST, P.O. Box 422224, Palm Coast, FL 32142-2224 Canada Publications Mail Agreement No. 41342519 Canadian GST No. 821371408RT0001 The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or part without the written consent of World History Group. PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA

Extended Interview With Gregory F. Michno “It seems that it is impossible to extricate ourselves from the battle vs. massacre quagmire, but framing the question in that manner is a logical fallacy,” says this student of the Indian wars.

More About the Whitney Western Art Museum “On the ground and online I want to continue to reach out to and include the largest, most diverse audience possible,” says museum curator Karen McWhorter.

Coyote: An American Original In the 1920s the coyote began an unprecedented and historic expansion of its range, as explained by author Dan Flores in this Wrangler Award–winning article. AUGUST 2015

WILD WEST

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Letters

ANNIE OAKLEY

Sharpshooter Annie Oakley, standing proud on a period poster, wears many of the shooting medals she won.

‘ANNIE DID EVERYTHING RIGHT CONCERNING HER POPULARITY AND REPUTATION. I AM GLAD SHE WAS SO SUCCESSFUL IN FIGHTING BACK AGAINST HEARST. ATTAGIRL, ANNIE! WHEN I GET TO HEAVEN, I HOPE I GET TO MEET HER’ 6

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I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Annie Oakley [“Annie Oakley vs. Hearst’s Worst,” by Ron Soodalter] in the February 2015 issue. The colorized photo of her on the cover really brings out her beauty and elegance. Her eyes look like they are staring right at me. Wow! Being an avid shooter myself, I certainly can appreciate her skill, too. Of course, there is no way I could ever approach her talent. One thing I did not know about Annie was the awful abuse she took at the hands of her “he-wolf” and “she-wolf” foster parents. All I can say is her guardian angels were working overtime to keep her alive, because God had other plans for her. Annie did everything right concerning her popularity and reputation. I am glad she was so successful in fighting back against Hearst. Attagirl, Annie! When I get to Heaven, I hope I get to meet her. John Gercken Bellflower, Ill.

I have looked forward to receiving Wild West since reading it in Big Piney, Wyo., some 20 years ago. I have never tired of reading any of the articles, especially when the story refers to a previous article I have already read. I really enjoyed reading and rereading the February 2015 feature “Annie Oakley vs. Hearst’s Worst.” I have read several books and articles about Miss Annie, but they were not nearly as informative, interesting and entertaining as Soodalter’s. My revered recollection of Annie Oakley dates back to the TV series (1954– 57), starring a 31-yearold Gail Davis. She was in Kansas City for the 1956 American Royal horse show and made a TV-sponsored appearance at the Wonder Bread & Hostess Cakes bakery in the Armourdale district of Kansas City, Kan., just two blocks from our house! I was in cowboy heaven, outfitted with my cowboy hat and cap pistols, and I stayed there all day long, or at least as long as she was there, as I remember. My father (1915–2004) thought I was being silly for thinking that

Letters

Gail Davis (1925–97) was the “real” Annie Oakley, but I never, ever brought it to his attention that Matt Dillon was not the real marshal of Dodge City. And to this day I still believe I did meet Annie Oakley, and I will never forget that my dad held me up so she could kiss my 7-year-old cheek. Thanks for keeping the Wild West alive. Bob A. Tucker Merriam, Kan.

INDIAN TRADE I look forward to reading each issue of your magazine. I thought I might share with you a family story passed down to me. My grandmother Elsa Watgen (born May 12, 1885) traveled at 2½ months of age to Gothenburg, Neb., with her parents, Henry and Fredericke Watgen. They lived in a sod house initially and for 10 years moved around quite a bit in the area—from Gothenburg to Froid to Sidney and finally to Brady Island, where Henry could find work. Sometime in the early winter months of 1895 an Indian showed up at the house and looked around. Fredericke

and the children hid for fear the Indian would hurt them. The Indian spotted a bolt of red material and took it. Sometime during that winter the temperature dipped to 47 below zero, and the family ran out of meat. One morning Henry opened the door to go hunting and found a freshly killed deer on the doorstep. The next month the same thing happened. Henry believed the thoughtful person was the Indian who had taken the red material, but he never really knew for sure. JoAnn Munden Warsaw, Mo.

BEAR WITH HIM Thank you so much for such a great magazine! I just got your April 2015 issue and really liked the Go West! department photo of Devils Tower and info on P. 80. The first thing that caught my eye was the amazing artwork of that huge bear trying to get at the people at the top of the tower. Is it me, or does the bear have a very long tail? I wish the art was bigger so I could see it better. Can you tell me more about the folklore? Please start doing a page with such Native American folklore and

continent until 1881. It found a good home, true, and spread all over, but it was one bird not available in the mid-1800s. John Watters Virginia Beach, Va. Joe Johnston responds: Thank you for pointing out that pheasants arrived in the West about 1881. Before then available game birds were even smaller. Although most of the dates in the article are mid-1800s, there is one recipe from 1894, and it is really about the general 19th-century Western experience. Hope all you readers like Wild West’s new look. artwork, as I would really like to know more of these stories. Hope to see more! Patrick Powell Collins, Ga. Editor responds: To learn more about the folklore of Devils Tower, visit the national park website [www.nps.gov/deto]. We were able to send Patrick Powell a poster of the bear legend artwork. He replied: “I plan to have it framed. Wow, what a bear! I had my dad hold the poster at the bottom as I slowly unrolled it for him to see. ‘So that’s how the tower got like that!’ he said. ‘King Kong wouldn’t stand a chance!’ As someone who likes to draw and enjoys artwork,

I find Wild West a great source for getting ideas. I hope you like the cartoon art I’m sending you.” We do, Patrick, and we plan to have it framed! That’s it above, readers.

EARLY BIRD I enjoyed Joe Johnston’s December 2014 article (“With Cornmeal and Creativity”) on Plains homesteaders and cooking, especially as I had ancestors arriving in Nebraska and Kansas at the time. However, I question whether they had pheasants to eat, because the Chinese pheasant wasn’t introduced to the AUGUST 2015

BABY PEGGY Peggy-Jean Montgomery (“Baby Peggy in the West,” Roundup, P. 11, February 2015 issue) was the Shirley Temple of her time, cute as a button. On TCM I saw her in Captain January—just wonderful. Her TCM documentary Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room showed her sweetness to the world. Thank you for the article. James Maloney Franklin, Pa.

Send letters to Wild West, 19300 Promenade Dr., Leesburg, VA 20176 or by e-mail to wildwest@ historynet.com. WILD WEST

7

Roundup

WWA’s 2015 Awards

TOP 5 REASONS JESSE JAMES WAS A BETTER OUTLAW THAN BILLY THE KID

1 2 3 4 5 8

LONGEVITY: By most accounts Jesse’s outlaw career started in 1866 and ended 16 years later with his death. Billy was more or less on the run after killing Frank “Windy” Cahill in 1877 and dead within four years. CRIMES: Jesse was a brash, cold-blooded murderer who robbed banks, trains, stagecoaches and even a Kansas City fair. Billy rustled livestock and shot victims from ambush and/or while they were unarmed. JAILS: Billy showed gumption in his infamous—and deadly for two deputies —April 1881 escape from the Lincoln County Courthouse in Lincoln, N.M. [nmhistoricsites.org/lincoln]. Jesse, however, managed to stay out of the calaboose. BROTHERS: Frank James loved Shakespeare and could recite scripture at will. He also was acquitted in two high-profile trials after Jesse’s death. Billy’s sibling Joseph Antrim was a friendless gambler who died penniless in 1930. ACTORS: Robert Duvall ( Jesse in 1972’s The Great Northfield Raid; see photo) is a better actor than Buster Crabbe (Billy in 36 serials of the 1940s). That’s not to say Duvall could have played Tarzan as well as Crabbe. —Johnny D. Boggs

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Richard W. Etulain (see photo) won in short nonfiction for “Calamity Jane: A Life and Legends” (published in Montana), and Philip Burnham won best biography for Song of Dewey Beard: Last Survivor of the Little Bighorn. Western drama script honors went to The Homesman. See the full list online [westernwriters.org/ winners]. WWA also honored Wild West editor Gregory Lalire with its 2015 Stirrup Award for best article in its Roundup magazine (see P. 4).

TOP: © AF ARCHIVE/ALAMY

Western Writers of America honors its 2015 Spur Award winners and finalists at its convention, held this year June 23–27 in Lubbock, Texas. Jerome A. Greene’s book American Carnage: Wounded Knee took best historical nonfiction honors,

Roundup

This Sioux calumet pipe stem with catlinite bowl brought $19,200.

Two Indian Pipes Sell Well

WEST WORDS “Here [at the mouth of the Kaw River in future Kansas] I found a youth of 16 [actually 18] whose mother was of the tribe of Sho-sho-ne, or Snake Indians, and who had accompanied the Messrs. Lewis and Clark to the Pacific Ocean in the years 1804 to 1806, a interpretress. This Indian woman was married to the French interpreter of the expedition, Toussaint Charbonneau by name.… Baptiste, his son… joined me on my return and followed me to —Duke Paul Wilhelm of Württemberg Europe and has (1797–1860), writing about his June remained with 1823 meeting with Sacagawea’s me ever since.” son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.

Among the top sellers at Cowan’s [cowan auctions.com] American Indian and Western Art Auction last April in Cincinnati were two pipes—an Eastern Sioux quilled calumet pipe stem with catlinite bowl ($19,200) and a Haida argillite panel pipe ($18,600). A Crow beaded hide rifle scabbard fetched the top bid ($32,400). A Tlingit polychrome frontlet and the Allan Houser bronze Woman of the Plains each hammered down at $15,600.

Three for New Mexico Three celebrated early New Mexicans are the subjects of an extraordinary circa 1865 carte de visite recently acquired by Santa Fe’s Palace of the Governors [palaceofthegovernors. org]. Standing at center is Ceran St. Vrain (1802–70), a pioneering trader and close associate of Territorial Governor Charles Bent and frontiersman Kit Carson. Seated at left is Richens Lacey “Uncle Dick” Wootten (1816–93), who worked for Bent and St. Vrain and built a toll road over Raton Pass; and seated at right is José Maria Valdez (born in 1809), who served in the territorial Legislature, and whose wife’s sisters married Carson and Bent. The museum, which owned no original photographs of either St. Vrain or Valdez, obtained the image from collector Cliff Mills.

Small-Screen Wild West This spring Fox News Channel [foxnews.com] debuted Legends & Lies: Into the West, political commentator Bill O’Reilly’s 10-week series of hour-long historical episodes profiling the likes of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Doc Holliday and Bass Reeves. Publisher Henry Holt and Co. has released a Legend & Lies companion book, written by David Fisher with an introduction by O’Reilly. “They interviewed me for Legends & Lies,” said Reeves biographer Art Burton. “Bass Reeves is getting his due—an entire hour about him.” The American Heroes Channel [ahctv.com] has also interviewed Burton for its docudrama series Gunslingers, which kicks off its second season July 20. Meanwhile, History [history.com] has launched its eight-hour miniseries Texas Rising. Directed by Roland Joffé, this Texan Revolution drama casts Bill Paxton (who played Morgan Earp in Tombstone and Frank James in Frank and Jesse) as Sam Houston.

AUGUST 2015

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9

Roundup

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Another Eastwood Film

“I can’t get away —you’ve got me strapped tight all right.… So long, boys!”

The star of this one is Scott Eastwood, one of Hollywood legend Clint’s sons.

It sounds like a Western film buff’s dream come true—The Longest Ride, starring Eastwood. Well, sorry, this one doesn’t feature Western icon Clint Eastwood. But Clint’s son Scott Eastwood, in his first lead role, plays a bull-riding cowboy who falls for a Southern girl (Britt Robertson). A romantic drama based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, it does offer gritty bull-riding scenes. It will be available on DVD and leading digital movie sites such as CinemaNow.com.

The Hateful Eight On the heels of his 2012 box-office hit Django Unchained—which garnered five Academy Award nominations, pulled down two Oscars and grossed more than $400 million worldwide—director Quentin Tarantino is set to release his second Western this fall. The Hateful Eight, with Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell among the octet, centers on a group of stagecoach-bound Westerners who grapple with betrayal and deception amid a Wyoming blizzard. Sounds like an homage to Stagecoach and The Magnificent Seven.

Tefertiller Revisits Earp Watch for Casey Tefertiller’s Wyatt Earp’s Last Deputy: America’s Greatest Literary Hoax and How It Unraveled (Turner Publishing) next year. His 1997 bio Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend won top reviews. The new book focuses on writers, from Stuart Lake to Glenn Boyer, who added to the Earp lore. 10

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—Franklin Pierce Rose, sentenced to death for killing wife Maude in Salt Lake City, said these words on April 22, 1904, while strapped in a chair waiting to be shot by firing squad.

DiCaprio Mauled The Revenant, a Western directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, wrapped filming in British Columbia this spring and is set for a December release. Based on the Michael Punke novel, it tells the true story of Hugh Glass, a trapper brutally mauled by a grizzly in 1823.

See You Later, Leonard Nimoy Yes, Leonard Nimoy, who died on February 27 at age 83, will logically be remembered for his TV role as Mr. Spock on the 1966–69 sci-fi series Star Trek. But Nimoy also was in such 1960s Western TV series as The Rebel, Rawhide, Gunsmoke and Wagon Train (Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry pitched his sci-fi series as “Wagon Train to the stars”).

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Roundup

EVENTS OF THE WEST “Painted Journeys: The Art of John Mix Stanley” 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 1854 oil Buffalo Hunt at left. Call 307-587-4771 or visit centerofthewest .org. The exhibition travels to the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Okla., Oct. 1, 2015–Jan. 4, 2016.

Buffalo Hunt

Arikaras Honored Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana will observe the 139th anniversary of that pivotal clash with an Arikara Old Scouts Society ceremony on June 24. The White Shield, N.D., organization comprises descendants of the Arikara scouts who served in the Army and took part (three were killed) in the 1876 battle. Call 406-638-2621 or visit nps.gov/libi.

12

WILD WEST

Edward Curtis Photos The publication of Christopher Cardozo’s Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks (Prestel, 2015) coincides with a traveling exhibition of the photographer’s images, which visits, among other museums, the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati June 12–Sept. 20; the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, Oct. 10, 2015–Jan. 17, 2016; and the Palm Springs Art Museum in California Feb. 19–May 29, 2016. The exhibition and book highlight both iconic and rarely seen Curtis photos. See edwardcurtis.com.

CBHMA Meets The Custer Battlefield Historical & Museum Association meets June 24–28 in Hardin, Mont. Email [email protected] or visit custerbattlefield.org.

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

Edward Curtis’ 1908 photo of Crow warrior Two Leggings.

Nevada’s Virginia City “Every Man Has a Right to Go to Hell in His Own Way,” running through Oct. 31 at the Historic Fourth Ward School Museum in Virginia City, Nev., explores the darker side of life in this mining boomtown. Call 775-847-0975 or visit fourthwardschool.org. AUGUST 2015

Send event submissions to Wild West, 19300 Promenade Dr., Leesburg, VA 20176. Submit at least four months in advance.

America Remembers Presents

The Stetson® 150th Anniversary Tribute Rifle THE LEGEND OF THE AMERICAN WEST LIVES ON The John B. Stetson Hat Company opened for business in 1865. From the beginning, it was clear that Stetson hats had to be different and Both sides of the they had to be better. After all, Stetson met the rugged men of the frontier. He knew how much they valued quality and integrity. Real cowboys walnut forearm and shoulder stock are appreciated the practical aspects of a Stetson hat and Stetson’s creation soon became the most famous hat in the west. Hollywood soon decorated with artwork ensured the image of a rugged cowboy in a ten-gallon hat would become a symbol of America recognized around the world. and handsome western While his cowboy clientele made Stetson a millionaire, the image of high crowned, wide-brimmed hats on the silver screen made scrollwork. The shoulder stock him a legend. In serial oaters and big-budget westerns, it was easy to tell the good guys from the bad simply by the color of their features the Stetson coat of arms hat. Put a Stetson hat on any movie or matinee idol and they became instant cowboys. No hat in history has better captured the and “STETSON” in the wood while spirit of the American West. the forearm features an elegant design honoring the 150th anniversary of the Today, America Remembers is proud to honor the 150th anniversary of Stetson’s proud tradition with the Stetson 150th John B. Stetson Company. Anniversary Tribute Rifle, in an exclusive edition of only 150 Tributes. The edition is officially licensed by the John B. Stetson Company. Craftsmen commissioned specifically for this Tribute by America Remembers decorate each Tribute in 24-karat gold with a blackened patinaed background on an elegantly polished and blued receiver.

An Iconic Western Masterpiece In our search for the perfect canvas to honor this special occasion, we looked no further than the Winchester Model 94. There isn’t a gun collector or a fan of American history that isn’t familiar with legendary Winchester rifles, and for many of us today, our image of the exciting days of the Old West revolves around the cowboys, lawmen, and outlaws wearing Stetson hats and carrying their trusty Winchester rifles. Along with Stetson, it’s a name as well-known as Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, Geronimo, Billy the Kid, or Annie Oakley. The Model 94 is a classic Old West lever-action rifle, and is still produced more than 100 years after its introduction to the Old West. Each working rifle is in caliber .30-30 with a 20-inch barrel. After its introduction in 1894, Winchester predicted that “no repeating rifle will appeal to the eye and understanding of the rifleman as this will.”

A Handsome Tribute Honoring Stetson’s Distinguished Western Heritage Only 150 Tributes will ever be produced in this edition. We will arrange delivery of your working firearm through a licensed firearms dealer of your choice. If you are not satisfied with your Tribute, you may return it in original unfired condition within 30 days for a full refund. You can mail us your order, or to prioritize your order and confirm availability, call us toll free at 1-800-682-2291. You won’t find as many cowboys on the plains these days, but there are plenty of Stetson hats. Even after 150 years, the Stetson name remains an American symbol of quality. No matter how many decades and centuries pass, history will never forget that a man named Stetson created a Western legend. This museum-quality firearm will take you back to the legendary days of the Wild West, and will be a handsome addition to any collection of fine presentation firearms.

The left side of the receiver features the John B. Stetson brand elegantly designed and surrounded with scrollwork. The text, “John B. Stetson & Co. American Manufacturer of Legendary Hats,” is featured between the years “1865” and “2015” to commemorate the 150-year Stetson tradition. Above “1865” is “Philadelphia, PA,” where Stetson first got its start, and above “2015” is “Garland, TX,” where Stetson hats are currently produced.

The right side of the polished and blued receiver features artwork in lustrous 24-karat gold with a tribute to Stetson’s most wellknown hat, the “Boss of the Plains,” which is displayed in gold. Three cowboys can be seen branding a calf while another cowboy leads a roped calf to the branding fire. The familiar mesa backdrop can be seen on the horizon.

Interview

GREGORY MICHNO TACKLES THE WEST The Indian wars expert doesn’t shy from controversy By Candy Moulton Gregory F. Michno, a special contributor to Wild West, first wrote for this magazine in June 1996, and that article, “Lakota Noon at the Greasy Grass,” won a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum [nationalcowboymuseum.org]. That piece and his subsequent book Lakota Noon: The Indian Narrative of Custer’s Defeat (1997) deal with one of Michno’s favorite topics, the June 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn. But the entire Indian wars saga interests the author, who has forged a new research trail and offered controversial perspectives on Wounded Knee and Sand Creek.

When you present an inquiry to a publisher, one of the first things asked is, “What is your target audience?” Without trying to sound glib, my answer is always, “Me.” I only write for myself, to simply learn more about a subject I find intriguing. There were no pressing reasons except to possibly learn for myself why there seemed such great controversy in depicting the event as a battle or massacre.

How did you research it? Indian accounts of the Little Bighorn fight were often seen as so contradictory and out of sync in time and space that they were considered useless, but with proper study and arranging I believe they made very good sense. You have to realize that everyone’s perspective is different. Likewise, in writing about Sand Creek, you would swear the eyewitnesses were talking about different events. I tried to show there was a significant amount of evidence that portrayed the event as a battle, and when I did, I was accused of being too pro-white. Of course, when I showed the Lakota and Cheyenne point of view in Lakota Noon, I was considered too pro-Indian. Maybe if both sides find something to complain about, you are on to something.

Your take on Sand Creek? There are a number of books about Sand Creek, written usually from one of two extremes. For the last several decades a decidedly pro-Indian, anti14

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soldier tone has been in evidence. I wanted to learn why, and in a fit of unwarranted optimism I believed I would be able to clear the waters. I had the belief that presenting the evidence, the facts, would actually allow people to objectively evaluate the situation and perhaps see the affair in a different light. Since the incident has been almost universally portrayed as a massacre, I tried to present a viewpoint that would lend credence to the minority view an actual battle had occurred, albeit one accompanied by horrible atrocities. Big mistake. I actually thought that facts would persuade. They don’t.

Battle or massacre? It seems it is impossible to extricate ourselves from the battle vs. massacre quagmire, but framing the question in that manner is a logical fallacy. It demands a choice between two answers, which are not exclusive and not exhaustive. Sand Creek could be a battle, and it could be a massacre, and it could be something in between. Just ask anyone who was there. Well, maybe not, because they certainly don’t agree.

BOOKS BY MICHNO: The Mystery of E Troop (1994), Lakota Noon (1997), Encyclopedia of Indian Wars (2003), Battle at Sand Creek (2004), A Fate Worse than Death (co-written with Susan Michno, 2007), The Deadliest Indian War in the West (2007), Forgotten Fights (co-written with Susan Michno, 2008), Dakota Dawn (2011) and The Settlers’ War (2011).

You wrote again about Sand Creek? I’ve finished The Three Battles of Sand Creek: In Blood, in Court and as the End of History, to be published this year by Savas Beatie [savasbeatie.com]. In effect it is a history book about the impossibility of writing accurate history. We invent facts in our memories, and our memories are often false. WW

Read the full interview at WildWestMag.com.

COURTESY OF GREGORY F. MICHNO

Why write about Sand Creek?

In tro Sh du oc ct kin or g yP ric e! ea ch

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Westerners

PUTTING ON THE DOG John C.H. Grabill took this formal portrait of 10 snappily dressed Deadwood Central Railroad surveyors, their measuring rods, tripod-mounted theodolites and dog in 1888 in what would soon become South Dakota. Chartered by Deadwood resident J.K.P. Miller and associates in September of that year, the 15.8-mile narrow-gauge line connected the mining operations in Deadwood and Lead City. In 1893 the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad (a subsidiary of the broader Chicago, Burlington & Quincy) bought the Deadwood Central, but by 1930, due to operating losses and an upsurge in shipping by truck, it had abandoned the line. Grabill is best known for his photos of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation after the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. (Photo: Library of Congress)

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Gunfighters and Lawmen

OH, BROTHER! THE NEWTONS

The Newton brothers pose for something other than mug shots. The author suggests the order is (from left) Doc, Willis, Joe and Jess. Willis led the criminal gang.

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illis Newton, born near Cottonwood, Texas, in Callahan County, idolized the outlaw gangs of the Old West and would boast—with justification—he had stolen more money than the James Gang and Daltons combined. But while he was reared on the exploits of these earlier bank robbers, the West was changing, and Newton and his criminal brothers changed with it. In many respects their careers marked the transition between the robbers of the Old West and the Dust Bowl desperadoes of the 1930s. The Newton boys ( Jess, born 1886; Willis, 1889; Wylie, or “Doc,” 1891; and Joe, 1901) were part of a sprawling, often desperately poor Texas family. Their sharecropper father James was never tempted to provide for his family through illegal means, but their mother, Janetta, may have winked at the career choice of her boys. When her boys were scrawny kids in patched pants, she regaled them with stories about Frank and Jesse James and the Dalton Gang, outlaws from her native Missouri. “My mother used to read all them outlaw books,” AUGUST 2015

Willis recalled in later life, “and then she’d tell us kids about them at night.” To the Newton boys the Jameses, Daltons and all the rest were folk heroes in the mold of Robin Hood. In 1907 Doc and Willis were jailed and fined for owning pistols. Two years later Doc, then 18, stole a bale of seed cotton from the loading dock of one processing gin and tried to sell it to another gin. The local sheriff couldn’t find Doc, but he arrested Willis, 20, as an accomplice, and a no-nonsense judge sentenced Willis to two years of hard labor in the state penitentiary at Rusk. Soon after, Doc burglarized a post office for stamps and also wound up at Rusk. After 11 months at the harsh prison Willis and Doc managed to escape but were hunted down and had two years added to their sentences. During their four-plus years in prison the two Newtons mixed with crooks of every stripe, picking up criminal tips and techniques and coming away with little regard for the law or the rules of society. On his release Willis eagerly pursued a life of crime. In 1914 he and crony Jack “Red” Johnson robbed a train near Cline, Texas. Hopping aboard the last car, the armed, masked pair walked through

ANDREW HIND COLLECTION

Their mother’s tales of Old West outlaws triggered their imaginations By Andrew Hind

© AF ARCHIVE/ALAMY

Gunfighters and Lawmen

the Pullmans, relieving men of their valuables, though showing a touch of chivalry by sparing the women. Stopping the train shy of the next station, they made off with $4,700. “Why should I worry about robbing?” Willis later rationalized. “I had tried to go and live right, but they wouldn’t let me.” He was now a full-fledged outlaw like those in the dime novels his mother had read him. Over the next few years, working alone or with this or that n’er-do-well buddy, Willis burglarized stores across Texas and Oklahoma and entered a revolving door with the Texas penal system, often getting locked up and almost as often escaping again. The young outlaw found that many rural sheriffs and judges could be bribed, and he once obtained a pardon through a series of forged letters. In the fall of 1916 Willis joined a gang for a daylight bank holdup in Boswell, Okla., and made off on horseback with $4,000 in his pockets. Despite the handsome take, he questioned the wisdom of robbing a bank in daylight when it was so much easier (and safer) to do so after closing hours. He joined a gang of career bank burglars in the spring of 1919 (his first job was the nighttime burglary of a bank in Winters, Texas) and served an apprenticeship of sorts, learning to blow open safes and vaults with nitroglycerin. Meanwhile, his brothers were scratching out an honest living as cowboys and broncobusters. It was grueling work, and when Willis was casting about for new partners in crime, he easily persuaded his brothers to join him. The Newton Gang was born, Joe aboard by 1920, Jesse and Doc enlisting in 1921. Over the next half-dozen years the gang plundered as many as 80 banks and six trains, mostly in small towns throughout the West, in the East and even up north in Toronto, Canada. Splurging off their ill-gotten gains, the Newton boys enjoyed a lifestyle far beyond the dreams of their parents. On June 12, 1924, the gang held up a Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul mail train in Rondout, Ill., netting $3 million in the largest train robbery in history. But things didn’t otherwise go well. During the nighttime heist gang member Brent Glasscock, mistaking Doc for an armed railway agent, shot and severely wounded him. With-

in days Joe Newton and other gang members were apprehended while seeking medical attention for the grievously wounded Doc. Authorities quickly rounded up the others. Put on trial, all were convicted but received relatively light sentences, as they returned most of the money and had shot no one except their own man. Sent to the U.S. penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., Doc served six years, Willis four years, Joe one year and Jess nine months. On their release the Newtons straightened up to a degree, but in 1934 Willis and Joe were convicted of an Oklahoma bank robbery they hadn’t committed. Each served at least seven years. In 1968 Doc, 77, was arrested for a bank robbery he had pulled off, but authorities dropped the charges due to his age and ill health. In 1973 Willis was implicated in a bank robbery in Brackettville, Texas, but released for lack of evidence. Jess, who worked ranches in Uvalde County, Texas, died at 73 in 1960. Doc died at 82 in 1973. Joe died in 1989 at 88, nine years after visiting with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Gang leader Willis died in 1979 at 90. None survived to see The Newton Boys, a film adaptation of their criminal escapades, which hit theaters in 1998. Willis never expressed guilt for their crimes. “We wasn’t thugs,” he said in later years. “All we wanted was the money. Just like doctors and lawyers and other businessmen. Robbing banks and trains was our way of getting it. That was our business.” WW

AUGUST 2015

In a scene from the 1998 film The Newton Boys the brothers pull off their ill-fated June 12, 1924, train robbery in Rondout, Ill.

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Pioneers and Settlers

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT ‘BUCKSKIN JO’? Unraveling the truth about storied Army scout Joel Phillips By Connie Cherba

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ild West tales are entertaining but challenging. Sometimes we just need to know how far the truth was stretched in the telling. The Peoria, Ill., Journal ran an incredible story about Joel “Buckskin Jo” Phillips in the late 1870s that was excerpted in The History of Dubuque County, Iowa (Western Historical Co. of Chicago, 1880). How truthful was it? Here’s how the story begins: He was living with his father and mother at Cascade, Iowa, in 1849, when the cholera broke out. His father went to Dubuque after a load of goods, was taken with the disease and died before he reached home. Jo’s real name is Joel Phillips.

So far not too bad regarding the truth. Six-yearold Joel Phillips, an Illinois native, was counted in the 1850 Dubuque County census, living just west of the Mississippi River in eastern Iowa with his parents, Clarinda and Chester, and sisters Juliette and Flany. Joel’s father and younger sister soon died—perhaps of cholera, which was rampant in 20

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the area. Left untreated, cholera could kill within hours, so it’s possible Joel’s father did die before he was able to return home. The story continues: In 1851 a Mormon preacher named Strang came along and persuaded Mrs. Phillips that she ought to go to Salt Lake. He depicted the beauties of that land in such glowing colors that in August of that year over 30 persons assembled at what is now Council Bluffs and, putting themselves under command of Strang as wagon boss, set out for Salt Lake.

Joel and his surviving family did cross Iowa, perhaps bound for Utah, as their Mormon relatives had in 1848. However, they got no farther than western Iowa. The 1856 Iowa census reported Clarinda living near Council Bluffs with her new husband, Nathan Smothers, his son and daughter and her own Joel (or Jo) and Juliette. The party reached Plum Creek, a deep gorge that comes out of the sand hills, without accident. Here a party of Indians met them and demanded Strang. It seems that, coming east in the spring, Strang had

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

This Alexander Gardner photo of Fort Harker, Kansas, dates from 1867, when “Buckskin Jo” Phillips served as a scout. A photo of Phillips has yet to materialize.

Pioneers and Settlers

wantonly shot and scalped a squaw and her papoose, and these Indians demanded him for revenge. He knew that his life was not worth an hour’s purchase if he went with them, and he persuaded his party to stand by him. The Indians insisted upon taking Strang, and the whites resisted. Someone fired a shot, and the fight began. The whites were outnumbered, and in a few minutes were all massacred. Then the Indians’ blood was up, and they charged upon the females, killing them. There were with the party two girls named Henderson. The Indians had taken a fancy to them, and thought that Jo was their brother. To this mistake he owed his life.

There was a real-life Mormon leader named James Strang, but his own followers assassinated him in Michigan in 1856. And there really was a massacre at Plum Creek, Neb., in August 1864. The Indians captured Nancy Jane Morton, 19, and Danny Marble, 9, who were both later rescued. But Joel/Jo was not kidnapped. And Indians did not kill his mother and sister; both lived long lives.

his career as a public lecturer, speaking on the customs of Indian life in Iowa and elsewhere. He is quiet, courteous, direct in speech, caring nothing for notoriety, and attending to his Indians as a small business venture.

Phillips did tour with a colorful band of Indians. Nate Smothers, Joel’s closest living relative and grandson of Joel’s half brother Charles Smothers, recalls: “I remember my father talking about a relative that ran a ‘Wild West Show’ and would show up at the house [in western Iowa] and drink and play cards and try to get my grandfather [Charles Smothers] to go with him on the road—which I believe he did once. My dad did not like this relative.” The 1880 tale in the Peoria Journal concludes: Jo is a good talker, for while his education has been wholly in the mountains and among savages, he has a quick eye, wonderful observation and an easy and graceful elocution. WW

Charles Smothers, half brother of Phillips, poses with his family in 1890. The son on Charles’ lap didn’t care much for “Uncle Joel.”

In 1863 [Jo] rescued the [Henderson] girls from their long detention.…As for Jo, he was taken when he was 14, and at that age a boy speedily adapts himself to a life on the prairie. He learned their language and all the arts and tricks of savagery.

Phillips was busy farming in western Iowa during his supposed captivity and heroic rescue of the Hendersons. On Aug. 14, 1861, the 17-year-old enlisted in the Iowa Light Artillery. He received a disability discharge at St. Louis on Sept. 5, 1862.

COURTESY OF CONNIE CHERBA

He was one of the best scouts, under General Sully, in the government service.

A 1926 Dubuque Telegraph Herald article positively places Joel Phillips at Fort Harker, Kan., in 1867. Colonel Charles J.W. Saunders recalled that Buckskin Jo of Cascade, Iowa, liked the West but badly missed the old Dubuque breweries.” Brevet Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully arrived at Fort Harker in July 1868 to take command of the military District of the Upper Arkansas. The article says Phillips found his way back to Cascade in 1867, but Phillips actually returned to Iowa following the closing of Fort Harker in 1872. He married Florence Parrott in Cascade in 1873 and had a son, Halbert Victor, the next year. In the fall of 1873 Buckskin Jo started AUGUST 2015

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Western Enterprise

Sarah Jane “Sadie” Creech Orchard, who rode her horses sidesaddle, was a shrewd entrepreneur in southwestern New Mexico Territory.

SADIE WAS SHADY BUT ASPIRED TO BE A LADY Sadie Orchard ran a bordello but also a stagecoach line and hotels By Melody Groves

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MELODY GROVES COLLECTION

P

eople didn’t question the newcomer’s Cockney accent. In 1885 around Kingston, the bustling, 3-year-old silver mining camp in southwestern New Mexico Territory’s Black Range, everyone hailed from somewhere else, and accents were the norm. But Sarah Jane “Sadie” Creech wasn’t like everyone else. A shrewd businesswoman and opportunist, Sadie had moved west to reinvent herself. In her mind she was a Victorian lady—respectable, fashionable, wealthy—and an Englishwoman of substantial clout. Only she wasn’t. That’s not to say she didn’t try. It simply wasn’t in her cards. What was in those cards, however, was business acumen. Prostitution made sound financial sense in Kingston and soon enough in nearby Hillsboro. And Sadie ultimately demonstrated she wasn’t a one-trick businesswoman. Creech became the leading madam in Kingston, her thick accent in part enticing customers to her business. But Sadie wasn’t English. The 1860 federal census of Lyons Township, Iowa, lists the 10-month-old girl in the Creech family household, having been born on March 16, 1859, in Mills County, the fifth of nine children. Perhaps she picked up the accent from Cornish neighbors, but more likely she affected it to appear a Victorian lady. When Sarah Jane was 12, her mother died, and her father sent her off to relatives. Her whereabouts from 1873 until 1885 are unknown, though it was rumored she married and had two children. On arrival in Kingston she set up residence on, ironically, Virtue Avenue, hired two girls and began making money. Sadie could read, write and do arithmetic, and her business sense dictated she and her employees dress and act respectably, as not to draw attention from the law or moralistic citizens. A charming, witty and congenial woman of about 100 pounds, Sadie rode her horses sidesaddle, per Victorian custom. Her clothing reflected the same sense: long dark skirts and dresses and petticoats, often with white blouses that buttoned at the throat. She wore dark button-up shoes and stylish hats and kept her hair stacked atop her head instead of wearing it loose the way many prostitutes did. Sadie wasn’t always all about making money. She also dabbled in philanthropy early on, reportedly passing the hat among her clientele so that a local pastor could build a house of worship. Kingston’s Methodist Episcopal congregation opened the doors of its stone church in 1896.

GEORGE T. MILLER, 1895–1902, PALACE OF THE GOVERNORS PHOTO ARCHIVES (NMHM/DCA), 076560

Western Enterprise

Since the 1882 discovery of silver, Kingston had boomed, with 27 mines producing well and carousing miners clogging the streets on Saturday nights. The town once had 36 saloons, 14 general stores, several bawdy houses, seven sawmills, gambling halls, a brewery, three newspapers, a bank, restaurants, hotels, two fraternal lodges and a theater. Regardless, Sadie didn’t stay long. In 1886 she took her nest egg and her girls and moved 9 miles east to the thriving gold mining town of Hillsboro, the Sierra County seat. Why she did so is uncertain, but it proved a prudent move. Seven years later, during the nationwide financial Panic of 1893, the value of silver plummeted and Kingston’s fortunes crumbled. Most of the townspeople left, many heading south to Lake Valley, others west to Arizona Territory. Hillsboro was a smaller, slightly older town, but customers were plentiful, and Sadie’s bawdy house was an instant success. As her fortunes rose, she envisioned personally giving up prostitution and investing her money in other ventures, aspiring at last to become a true Victorian woman. First she needed a husband, and fate provided James W. “Henry” Orchard, a well-heeled businessman. They married on July 17, 1895. Sadie did retire from her profession after marriage, though it’s unclear what she did with her brothel. Henry had purchased the Lake Valley, Kingston & Hillsboro Stage Line in 1888, and together the couple ran the operation. Sadie and Henry moved to Lake Valley, 18 miles south of Kingston, to manage the line, which included a Concord coach dubbed Mountain Pride, a freight wagon and a remuda of horses. When drivers proved hard to find, and mild-mannered Henry didn’t rise to the occasion, Sadie reportedly took turns at the reins— even through harrowing Percha Creek Canyon between Hillsboro and Kingston, a narrow and steep 7 miles. “Mrs. Orchard often drove the great Concord coach herself, and many of the passengers said that they would rather ride with her than any of drivers she employed,” historian Betty Reich reported in 1937. Business boomed. In 1896 Henry bought a Main Street corner lot in Hillsboro and built a one-story adobe hotel for his wife to run, though the couple continued to live in Lake Valley. Sadie called it the Ocean Grove and hired the town’s foremost cook, Tom Ying. It was so successful, she soon opened a second hotel, the Orchard.

Sadie now had a measure of respectability, but her temper proved an obstacle. Years earlier when a suitor stood her up for a date, she reportedly went to his house, yanked up her skirts and urinated on his porch. In August 1900 the Sierra County Advocate reported another incident: “[The Orchards] had difficulty over a carriage that terminated, so it is alleged, in Mrs. Orchard taking a shot at Mr. Orchard with a revolver.” Henry had

Sadie arrested on charges of “assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill” but later requested the case be dismissed. On the other hand, Sadie nursed the sick in Hillsboro through two calamities—first during a smallpox outbreak in Kingston and then in 1914 when Hillsboro suffered a flood followed by an influenza epidemic. She reportedly sacrificed her fancy silk dresses to line the coffins of children taken by the flu. After her tempestuous marriage to Henry ended in divorce in 1902, Sadie turned the Orchard into a quiet brothel, which remained in business another 30 years. The Ocean Grove provided rich food and lavish service, drawing all the political bigwigs. There, too, though, she set aside a couple of rooms for those seeking female companionship and brought in attractive new “waitresses” for her restaurant. Knowing her clientele, Sadie even hired a black woman to entertain the buffalo soldiers stationed at the nearby forts. Today the Ocean Grove building houses the Black Range Museum. Sarah Jane Creech Orchard fell ill and died in 1943 at age 84. She is buried at the Hot Springs Cemetery in Truth or Consequences, N.M. WW AUGUST 2015

Sadie, at right, stands outside her Ocean Grove, which she started as a respectable hotel before setting aside rooms for “extra services.”

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Art of the West

THE WHITNEY MERGES THE OLD AND NEW WEST Its walls hold everything from Remington to Ross By Johnny D. Boggs

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ith some 7,000 works to consider, Mindy Besaw has trouble picking a favorite at the Whitney Western Art Museum, one of five museums housed within the Buffalo Bill Center of the West [centerofthewest.org] in Cody, Wyoming. “It depends on the day,” says the museum’s former curator. “I think I’m having a Moran kind of day.” Thomas Moran is here. So is George Catlin, not to mention Albert Bierstadt, Rosa Bonheur, 24

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William R. Leigh, Alfred Jacob Miller, Alexander Phimister Proctor, Joseph Henry Sharp and, of course, Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. But the Whitney doesn’t limit itself to historical art. You’ll also find contemporary works by Thom Ross, Harry Jackson, T.D. Kelsey, Bill Schenck and others hanging right alongside the historical. For example, art (and history) buffs can peruse Custer’s Last Stand, the 6-by-9-foot epic painting Edgar S. Paxson completed in 1899 after 20 years of research. Then they can contemplate The Battle

In his 1832 oil Timberline, W.H. “Buck” Dunton (1878–1936) emphasizes color, line and form, but viewers can’t miss the true central subject.

IMAGES: BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST, WHITNEY WESTERN ART MUSEUM, CODY, WYO.

Art of the West

of Greasy Grass, a roughly 6-by-11-foot oil-on-linen completed in 1996 by Allan Mardon. Mardon spent a year researching the battle and just as long rendering the 24-hour period from 3 p.m. June 25 to 3 p.m. June 26, 1876. Earlier this year, after Besaw accepted a curatorial position at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., Karen McWhorter became the Whitney’s new Margaret and Dick Scarlett Curator of Western American Art. She has just as much trouble picking favorites. “I have several,” McWhorter admits, “including Fred-

eric Remington’s The War Bridle, W.H. “Buck” Dunton’s Timberline and the center’s collection of Thomas Moran chromolithographs of the Yellowstone area.” Of course, visitors have their own favorites. “They are drawn to the Whitney for its rich, specialized collection of Western American art,” McWhorter says. “A walk through the Whitney introduces visitors to the broad spectrum of creative output inspired by the American West. With artwork dating from the 19th century to today, the museum celebrates the longstanding and flourishing tradition of art making in our region.” Studio collections are among the Whitney’s prized possessions. The museum staff has reconstructed Remington’s and Proctor’s studios, and in 1959 they moved Sharp’s original cabin here from the Crow reservation, fitting it out with the furniture and personal items of the father of the Taos (N.M.) Society of Artists. The newest exhibit is “Painted Journeys: The Art of John Mix Stanley” ( June 6–August 29), which features all aspects of this important but practically forgotten painter of American Indians. “A major goal of this exhibition and the accompanying publication is to underscore Stanley’s position as one of the most important American painters of the West, its inhabitants and landscapes in the 19th century,” McWhorter explains, “and to attest to Stanley’s critical contributions to popular conceptions about the American West in his time.” WW AUGUST 2015

Frederic Remington (1861–1909) described his 1909 oil The War Bridle as simply “two men hobbling a ponie [sic].”

Johnny D. Boggs, a special contributor to Wild West, writes award-winning fiction and nonfiction from Santa Fe, also home to many art galleries. Read the full story at WildWestMag.com.

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Indian Life

WARLIKE TLINGITS CUT A PATH IN THE PACIFIC

Their original domain was the island mass now called Southeast Alaska By Mike Coppock

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nthropologists once believed that Alaska’s Tlingits were descendants of Polynesians whose seafaring skills had enabled them to reach North America. The mistake was understandable. Other Pacific Northwest tribes had totem poles, longhouses and massive canoes, sought out salmon, halibut and shellfish, and now and then sailed out to kill passing whales. But the Tlingits were different. They were a truly maritime people whose society did mirror elements of the Polynesian lifestyle. For example, the Tlingits used highly decorative canoes, some more than 70 feet long, and ventured onto the open sea for days on end. Their domain encompassed the patchwork of islands now called southeast Alaska, a huge area dwarfing any other tribe’s domain along North America’s Pacific coast. The islands buffered the swells of the raging North Pacific, providing a web of protected waterways. But the region ultimately proved too massive for the Tlingits to unify, and the nation fractured into warring clans. Their oceangoing war canoes carried up to 100 warriors, who painted their bodies in reds, blacks and whites and wore wooden masks with animal designs. On raids they struck quickly, attacking 26

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enemy villagers with skull-crushing clubs and ornate daggers. Those they did not kill became slaves. Those who escaped vowed revenge, and the cycle of violence perpetuated itself. Tlingit legend claims the tribe has inhabited southeast Alaska since time began. In 1996 archaeologists discovered nearly 10,000-year-old human skeletal remains within On Your Knees Cave, on southeast Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island. Yet when researchers compared DNA from the find to that of living Tlingits in the region, they found no match. Some anthropologists place the tribe’s origin around the Skeena and Nass rivers in presentday interior British Columbia, surmising the Tlingits may have been an Athabascan people driven to the coast after a horrific famine. A secondary origin story relates their migration up the coast from the south, and anthropologists have not ruled out the possibility that Tlingits may comprise two peoples who sometime in the distant past merged along the coast around present-day Prince Rupert, Canada. Nor have they ruled out the possibility that southeast Alaska was inhabited by earlier waves of migrants whom the Tlingit warriors later obliterated.

Sitka, facing the Gulf of Alaska, was once the site of a Tlingit settlement, but in 1877 it was a U.S. town under siege by Tlingits.

Tlingit shamans wore masks to summon various spirits.

Indian Life

The relationship between the Tlingits and the neighboring Haidas is an unusual and important one for each tribe. In centuries past the Haidas sailed from their 4,000-square-mile Queen Charlotte Islands domain to the mainland some 40 miles east to collect slaves, plunder and heads. Their route took them across the storm-plagued Hecate Strait, where they sometimes encountered Tlingit war canoes, and though unrelated by blood or language, the warlike tribes allied with each other. Perhaps they perceived the Tsimshians to the south as a greater mutual threat. The Tsimshians’ power peaked in the early 1800s when Tsimshian and

OPPOSITE: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; FAR RIGHT: CHARLES O. CECIL/ALAMY

A Tlingit woman poses in a potlatch ceremonial costume circa 1906.

Tlingit war canoes clashed for control of the Stikine River in Tlingit territory. It was from the Haidas the Tlingits learned how to build their oceangoing canoes. The tribes exchanged religious and social beliefs, and the Haidas added Tlingit words to their own language. A subgroup of Haidas eventually settled the southernmost third of Prince of Wales Island and in the 1850s participated in joint raids with their Tlingit allies against rival tribes and Europeans as far south as Puget Sound in Washington Territory. The Tlingits, meanwhile, spread north to extend their fishing grounds and control trade. Some pressed into the Canadian interior, where three Tlingit populations still reside. Other Tlingit war canoes skirted Alaska’s treacherous Lost Coast to the mouth of the Copper River and the land of the Eyaks. Upriver the Tlingits encountered the Ahtna tribe, which created much-desired copper plating. The Ahtnas would only take slaves for

their copper, so the Tlingits raided Eyak settlements and marched their captives upriver for trade. The Tlingit clans also remained at war with one another. But as the Russians and then the Americans encroached on their territory, the clans showed they could unite against a common enemy. In 1801, little over a year after the Russians built Redoubt St. Archangel Michael near a Sitka clan village, the Tlingits held a war council in the village of Angoon. There the Sitkans united with the Haidas, Kakes, Stikines, Auks and Chilkats, and in June 1802 the allied force fell upon the Russian fort, killing most of its residents and ransoming the handful of survivors to a passing English ship. In 1804 the Russians returned under Russian-American Co. trader Alexander Baranov and defeated the Tlingits at Sitka in a brief land battle and extended naval bombardment. The following year the Tlingits wiped out the Russian settlement at Yakutat. In 1855 the Tlingits staged an all-out assault on the Russian Alaska capital of Sitka. Only artillery fire saved the Russians. In 1856 a Tlingit war party threatened the American settlement of Port Gamble, Washington Territory, but lost two dozen men and retreated under the fire of the gunboat USS Massachusetts. In a retaliatory attack the next year, warriors canoed to Whidbey Island, where they shot and beheaded district militia commander Colonel Isaac Ebey. His scalp hung from the top of a Kake totem pole until 1860 when a Hudson Bay Co. captain acquired it in trade and returned it to Ebey’s family. After the purchase of Alaska in 1867, the United States retaliated by bombarding Wrangell and burning Kake villages. The Tlingits responded by attempting an 1877 siege of Sitka, only to be thwarted by British and American ships. By 1883, though, Southeast Alaska was rather peaceful. Tlingits worked the gold diggings and unloaded cargo at ports of entry like Skagway, and they appreciated the sincerity and courage of missionaries led by 5-foot-tall Sheldon Jackson. WW

This totem pole at Sitka National Historical Park commemorates the lives lost in the 1804 Battle of Sitka.

THE STATE OF

JESSE JAMES The notorious outlaw committed many crimes in his home state of Missouri and was often on the lam, yet he never stayed away long By Jim Winnerman

Thomas Hart Benton depicts the James Gang robbing both a bank and a train in a panel of his 1936 mural A Social History of the State of Missouri, on display at the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. Benton (1889–1975) considered it his best work, though he met with controversy for including the James boys. ART © T.H. BENTON AND R.P. BENTON TESTAMENTARY TRUST/UMB BANK TRUSTEE/LICENSED BY VAGA, NEW YORK, N.Y.

Caretakers of the James Farm in Kearney, Mo., have removed siding from the farmhouse to reveal the underlying log frame.

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Jesse James was a 16-year-old Rebel guerrilla when he posed for this photo in Platte City, Mo.

TOP: JIM WINNERMAN; LEFT: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

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issouri was a central place in the life of Jesse James. He was born there (Clay County), grew up on a farm there (near Kearney), fought there as a Confederate guerrilla in 1864–65, robbed his fellow Missourians there, was heralded there as a symbol of Rebel defiance and was assassinated there (St. Joseph) on April 3, 1882. He was buried a few steps from the family farm and later reinterred at the family plot in Kearney’s Mount Olivet Cemetery. During his criminal career Jesse James committed an estimated 20 bank, stagecoach and train robberies (though his involvement in some remains uncertain), with about half the heists taking place in his home state. Much about Jesse’s life remains uncertain. Some historians question, for example, whether he was among the dozen or so men who held up the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Mo., on Feb. 13, 1866, or was involved in three subsequent Missouri robberies—at Lexington (Oct. 30, 1866), Savannah (March 2, 1867) and Richmond (May 23, 1867). If they are correct, then his first bank robbery was with older brother Frank at Gallatin, Mo., on Dec. 7, 1869. Jesse’s first Missouri train robbery was probably at Gads Hill on Jan. 31, 1874. The James boys were definitely involved in the Otterville, Mo. (Rocky Cut), train robbery on July 7, 1876, two months before the James-Younger Gang’s grand fiasco up in Northfield, Minn. After living out of state under an assumed name for several years, Jesse led a new gang in three train robberies

JIM WINNERMAN

in Missouri—Glendale (Oct. 8, 1879), Winston ( July 15, 1881) and Blue Cut (Sept. 7, 1881). While committing robberies, Jesse used his six-shooters when needed, but exactly how many men he killed is uncertain. Most sources believe he killed Pinkerton agent Joseph W. Whicher on March 10, 1874, in Jackson County. He is most likely the bandit who fatally shot conductor William Westfall in the Winston train holdup—either because he thought Westfall was drawing a weapon or because he recognized Westfall as having conducted the train that had carried Pinkerton agents to and from an 1875 raid on the family farm. Either he or Frank murdered cashier John W. Sheets in the 1869 Gallatin bank job. Despite what has often been written, in Northfield it was Frank James, not Jesse, who shot down acting cashier Joseph Heywood. In the summer of 1881 Jesse had a falling out with gang member Ed Miller and, perhaps fearing betrayal, reportedly shot him down. Even if Jesse fired far fewer fatal bullets than many think, he remained a highly wanted but elusive man for many years. He operated at a time when law enforcement agencies had little interaction with one another, and when a man willing to travel could find hiding places not only in the wide-open West but also east of the Mississippi in the trans-Appalachian West. What Jesse James “accomplished” in his 34 years cannot be condoned, yet he is still regarded in some circles as a type of latter-day Robin Hood, a basically decent man who robbed for a cause (the Lost Cause of the Confederacy) in his protracted fight against “them damn Yankees.” In fact, most of the victims of James-Younger Gang crimes were Southerners in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and, of course, Missouri. And there is no evidence gang members shared any loot with the poor. Jesse James indisputably has become part of American folklore. The fanfare began when he was still alive and continues 132 years after Bob Ford killed him with a shot to the back of the head. The outlaw features in hundreds of books and nearly 40 motion pictures. In a panel from his 1936 mural A Social History of the State of Missouri, on display in the Capitol in Jefferson City, American artist Thomas Hart Benton depicted the James brothers in action. Each year his hometown of Kearney holds a Jesse James Festival, and the family farm operates as a museum. The St. Joseph rental house in which Jesse AUGUST 2015

Zerelda Amanda “Zee” Mimms (1845–1900) married first cousin Jesse James on April 24, 1874.

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was killed has also been preserved. Some buildings that once housed banks he robbed still note the event with historic plaques And tourist attractions throughout the Midwest claim some association with Jesse, whether he hid in the area, stashed his loot in a nearby cave or bought horses from local farmers. But it is with the “Show Me State” Jesse James will always be most closely associated.

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esse Woodson James was born on Sept. 5, 1847, four years and eight months after brother Frank. The James family supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. Many of their relatives still lived in the South, and Jesse’s parents—Robert and Zerelda—had been married in Kentucky and owned slaves after settling in Missouri in 1842. Outside of the fact his mother had been married three times by the time Jesse turned 9 (Robert and a second husband died), little is known about his boyhood. Clay County, which bordered “Bleeding Kansas,” had a large slave population and was in full turmoil when proslavery Border Ruffians clashed with abolitionist Jayhawkers in the lead-up to the nation’s Civil War. Frank James joined the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard in May 1861 ( Jesse was too young) and in 1863 became an active guerrilla, swearing particular vengeance after homegrown Union militiamen raided the family farm. Jesse, who hated the Yankees as much as his brother did, most likely joined the guerrillas in the spring of 1864. The following spring, toward war’s end, Jesse was shot in the chest while apparently trying to surrender near Lexington, Mo., and spent much of the summer recovering from his wound while staying with relatives in Harlem (present-day North Kansas City). His first cousin Zerelda “Zee” Mimms (named after Jesse’s mother) tended to him and some nine years later would marry him. Meanwhile, Missouri was reeling from its own war wounds. In February 1866 a band of former guerrillas, perhaps including Frank James but probably not Jesse, pulled off the daylight bank robbery in Liberty. Soon enough, though, Jesse employed his robbery skills, ultimately emerging as the best known of all guerrillas who graduated from wartime raids to peacetime robberies. Jesse James remains a household name, not just in Missouri but worldwide. The James brothers and the Younger brothers (also from Missouri) pulled off a AUGUST 2015

Alexander Franklin “Frank” James, about 21 when he posed for this portrait, was four years older than Jesse.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; PRIVATE COLLECTION/PETER NEWARK AMERICAN PICTURES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; JIM WINNERMAN

Frank and Jesse were popular fare in dime novels (above). Known first for robbing banks, the boys also held up many trains, as depicted in an 1881 Police Gazette illustration (above right).

TOP: JIM WINNERMAN; RIGHT: © GL ARCHIVE/ALAMY

Zerelda Samuel stands by son Jesse’s grave on the James-Samuel farm outside Kearney, Mo.

series of daring robberies that fascinated people then and now. Consequently, the press and the public embellished the reputation of the James-Younger Gang, with Jesse getting, and actively seeking, most of the attention. Kansas City Times founder and editor John Newman Edwards, a Confederate veteran, wrote glowing accounts of the James-Younger Gang that other papers picked up and spread. In one account he wrote: “With them, booty is but the second thought; the wild drama of the adventure first. These men never go upon the highway in lonesome places to plunder the pilgrim.” After another bold robbery Edwards acknowledged that while the James brothers had broken the law, the bandits were “so diabolically daring and so utterly in contempt of fear that we are bound to admire it and revere its perpetrators for the very enormity of their outlawry.” Penny dreadfuls, the salacious adventure novels of the time, wildly exaggerated tales of the gang’s exploits, lending them fairy tale qualities only loosely based on fact. One edition relays an imaginary conversation between Jesse and Frank that ends with them agreeing to “right the wrongs that exist in society.” Even a noteworthy attempt to capture the James brothers swayed public sentiment in their favor. Fed-up with their losses, the banks and railroads had hired Allan Pinkerton to track down Frank and Jesse, but the agents’ attack on the family farm near Kearney on the night of Jan. 25, 1875, was a fiasco. The crude incendiary device they pitched into the house killed Frank and Jesse’s 8-year-old half brother, Archie, and shattered their mother’s arm (see related story, P. 42). Long after his 1882 death Jesse remained “news” due to persistent rumors he hadn’t been the one shot his St. Joseph home—that the dead man had been a substitute. The real Jesse, according to these far-fetched stories, escaped the law by taking on a new identity. A number of Jesse James pretenders have emerged through the years. A much-hyped 1995 exhumation of Jesse’s remains and subsequent DNA testing only confused matters. “The legend of Jesse James,” wrote James biographer Ted Yeatman, “if not quite consistent

PENNY DREADFULS, THE SALACIOUS ADVENTURE NOVELS OF THE TIME, WILDLY EXAGGERATED TALES OF THE GANG’S EXPLOITS

This .45-caliber Smith & Wesson Schofield is reportedly the last gun that Jesse used.

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with historical fact, brought America a populist antihero, an undefeated holdout of the Lost Cause, a Robin Hood who stole from the rich and gave to the poor in an era of corrupt politicians and robber-baron industrialists. He remains a cultural icon, a creation of the mass media… a legend that refuses to die.”

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IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF MY BELOVED SON JESSE W. JAMES DIED APRIL 3, 1882 AGED 34 YEARS, 6 MONTH, 28 DAYS MURDERED BY A TRAITOR AND COWARD WHOSE NAME IS NOT WORTHY TO APPEAR HERE After Jesse’s murder his family subsisted on earnings from his legend. His mother opened the family farm in Kearney for tours. She sold visitors stones from his gravesite, and when the supply got low, she replaced them with more rocks from the nearby creek. Frank later returned to the farm and personally led the tours till his death at age 72 on Feb. 18, 1915. WW 34

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This cast was made of Jesse’s skull during a 1995 exhumation.

A freelance journalist based in Missouri, Jim Winnerman has written more than 750 articles. For further reading he recommends Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend, by Ted P. Yeatman., and Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, by T.J. Stiles.

SKULL: JIM WINNERMAN

On April 3, 1882, Bob Ford shoots Jesse in the back of the head while brother Charlie Ford looks on.

till it is in Missouri that Jesse’s legend is best remembered. Back in 1881 The Chicago Times dubbed that state “The Outlaws’ Paradise,” while another newspaper asserted, “In no state but Missouri would the James brothers be tolerated for [as many] years.” One of the surviving landmarks from that lawless era is the red-frame Winston depot, where Jesse’s new gang boarded a Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific train in July 1881. The five bandits who pulled off the Winston holdup—Jesse and Frank, along with Wood and Clarence Hite and Dick Liddil—escaped with only a small amount of loot and left behind two dead men—conductor Westfall (likely shot by Jesse) and passenger Frank McMillan (Frank James was later acquitted of the crime at a trial in Gallatin). Editor Edwards of course insisted the James boys were not responsible, but other newspapermen were up in arms. Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden pledged his “solemn determination to overthrow and to destroy outlawry in this state whose head and front is the James Gang.” That fall Jesse James, calling himself Tom Howard, moved with Zee and their two children to a rented house on Lafayette Street in St. Joseph. It was there in April 1882 that gang member Bob Ford shot Jesse in the back of the head while Jesse was adjusting a framed needlepoint on the wall. “There never was a more cowardly and unnecessary murder committed in all of America than this murder of Jesse James,” wrote Edwards. Others agreed to varying degrees. Jesse’s mother had the following inscription carved on his monument:

FINDING JESSE JAMES

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A daylong itinerary out of St. Joseph. For more information call 800-785-0360 or visit stjomo.com.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: © NANCY HOYT BELCHER/ALAMY; © BOB PARDUE-MIDWEST/ALAMY; © DON SMETZER/ALAMY; © IAN DAGNALL/ALAMY

ST. JOSEPH The Patee House Museum and Jesse James Home (816-232-8206, ponyexpressjessejames. com) are at 1202 Penn St. In Jesse’s day the home was at 1318 Lafayette St. This is the house in which Jesse was killed. KEARNEY The town holds its annual Jesse James Festival (816-507-5503, jessejamesfestival.com) each September, while the James Farm (816-628-6065, jessejames.org) is open for tours and has an on-site museum. Nearby is Mount Olivet Cemetery, site of Jesse’s grave; he was originally buried on the family farm.

LIBERTY The Jesse James Bank Museum (816-736-8510, facebook.com/JesseJamesBankMuseum) is the site of the Feb. 13, 1866, robbery. WINSTON The Rock Island Depot Museum, on U.S. 69 south of town, is the site of the James Gang’s July 15, 1881, train robbery. The annual Jesse James Days (816-785-2536) is held each June. GALLATIN Site of a Dec. 7, 1869, Frank and Jesse holdup and Frank’s 1883 trial and acquittal (812-257-0301, daviesscounty historicalsociety.com). Clockwise from top: The James Farm in Kearney; exhibits at the Jesse James Home in St. Joseph; a monument at the James Farm; and the exterior of Jesse’s home.

Top: In 1904 a pontoon bridge spanned the Missouri at Evarts, South Dakota. Above: Bud Stevens (in the vest, third from right) poses in front of the jail at Selby, South Dakota. Right: The stockyards at LeBeau.

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HOW TO KILL A WESTERN TOWN The shooting of a prominent cowboy, a railroad company’s broken promise and back-to-back fires snuffed the life out of LeBeau, South Dakota By Bill Markley

The death of David G. “Dode” MacKenzie, depicted in this sketch from a photo, started LeBeau’s down spiral.

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After Dakota Territory split into the states of South and North Dakota on Nov. 2, 1889, Texas cattlemen, including Scottish-born Murdo MacKenzie, were seeking new ranges on which to expand their herds. MacKenzie, general manager of the Scotland-based Matador Land and Cattle Co., determined that cattle could thrive in the northern climate near Belle Fourche, north of South Dakota’s Black Hills. He and other cattlemen petitioned the U.S. Department of the Interior to open grazing leases on the Sioux reservations, and in 1904 the government did just that. The two largest bid winners on the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock reservations were the Matador and the Scottishowned Hansford Land and Cattle Co. (aka Turkey Track), each of which received some half-million acres. Both tracts of land were on the eastern halves of the reservations, with the Missouri bordering on the east. The Matador was to the north, the Turkey Track to the south. The first railroad shipping town to boom on the Missouri across from the reservations was Evarts, end of the line for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway, or “Milwaukee Road” in company parlance. The railroad brought the cattle to Evarts and unloaded them, and cowhands then crossed them to the west shore of the Missouri, usually by pontoon bridge or ferry. In the fall the hands rounded up the market-ready cattle and crossed them back over the river to Evarts, where the railroad loaded them into cattle cars for transport east to the big stockyards and slaughterhouses. The Milwaukee Road engineers determined there was no good place to build a bridge at Evarts, but they found a good spot farther north. In 1906 that crossing site grew into the town of Mobridge (short for Missouri Bridge), and rail service ended in Evarts in 1907. The bridge spanning the Missouri opened in March 1908. Downriver from Evarts was the sleepy little river town of LeBeau. Back in 1875 French fur trader and trapper Antoine LeBeau had established a trading post on the east bank of the Missouri near the mouth of Swan Creek. The town boomed to life when the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway arrived in 1907. Cowhands now crossed the herds at this spot, loading the fattened bovines on eastbound cattle cars. The Matador and Turkey Track outfits gave most of their business to LeBeau, where everything from banks to gambling halls appeared practically overnight and the population

ALL IMAGES: SOUTH DAKOTA STATE ARCHIVES, UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED; LEFT: GREGORY PROCH ILLUSTRATION, BASED ON A PERIOD PHOTOGRAPH

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hots rang out in a LeBeau, South Dakota, saloon on a cold December morning. A man staggered across the saloon floor and made it through the door before collapsing on the sidewalk of Main Street. Blood oozed from multiple bullet wounds in the man’s body. Shootings in saloons have long been associated with the Wild West, but in places like Dodge City and Deadwood. The shooting in LeBeau, on the east bank of the Missouri River, occurred on Dec. 11, 1909—two decades after South Dakota had achieved statehood and not long after a railroad booster had labeled LeBeau the “City of Promise.” The dead man was certainly no drifter or gunman. He was David G. “Dode” MacKenzie, 31-year-old manager of the Matador Ranch across the river. No one knew it that morning, of course, but MacKenzie’s death marked the beginning of the end for LeBeau. Today the former town site rests at the bottom of Lake Oahe, the fourth largest reservoir in the United States.

rose to 500. The outlook was so good that hopeful entrepreneurs broke down their buildings in dying Evarts and moved them to LeBeau. Thomas Way, the railway’s townsite agent, was the one who called LeBeau the “City of Promise.”

COURTESY OF TOM HOUCK

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y 1909 the cattle operations were shipping tens of thousands of head of beef through LeBeau. Yes, there were saloons and a small red-light district, but there were also homes, churches and a school. Way was not the only one to see promise in the new river city. “LeBeau will lead all other cities in the United States in the number and value of its livestock business,” Edward McBride, publisher and editor of the LeBeau Phenix, predicted in July 1909. Three years earlier Murdo MacKenzie had appointed son David manager of the Matador

in South Dakota. David, or “Dode,” was generally considered a good and generous person except when drinking. Ike Blasingame, a cowboy friend of Dode’s who rode for the Matador, recalled that on one drunken spree Dode bought a half a railcar load of pork, far more than the Matador hands could consume in a year. That time he saved his own bacon by giving away the extra meat to the Indians. During another spree in LeBeau, Dode shot out the lights of a saloon, and one of his bullets nicked the ear of a deputy sheriff. Dode’s problem got so bad that his father shipped him off to Hot Springs, Ark., to dry out. By late fall 1909, however, Dode was doing just fine managing the Matador, and LeBeau was having an excellent year—with 150,000 head of cattle, worth $5,500,000, shipped east. The approaching crash would be sudden. The Matador had originally had its offices in rooms over Phil Du Fran’s saloon in Evarts. When

Dode MacKenzie was the 31-yearold manager of the Matador Ranch at the time he was shot in LeBeau.

THE OUTLOOK WAS SO GOOD THAT HOPEFUL ENTREPRENEURS BROKE DOWN THEIR BUILDINGS IN DYING EVARTS AND MOVED THEM TO LEBEAU AUGUST 2015

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In about 1910 Bud Stevens, at far left, stands beside the sheriff in front of Phil Du Fran’s saloon in LeBeau.

Dode took over management, he moved the offices across the street to Joe Arens’ saloon. As LeBeau eclipsed Evarts, Dode moved the Matador offices closer downriver, while Phil moved his saloon to the new town. Du Fran hired bartender Benjamin “Bud” Stevens, who was 60 and hard of hearing. Stevens was also a former Matador employee MacKenzie had fired for reasons unknown. On Dec. 10, 1909, Dode and three friends— Matador cowhands Walter McDonald, Ambrose Benoist and Jackey Wilson—went out on the town, and in early morning shuffled into Du Fran’s saloon. MacKenzie argued with Stevens, but the Matador foursome left before things got out of hand. Trouble was they came back, and when they reentered the saloon, Stevens fired his revolver four times at MacKenzie. Three bullets found their

mark—one in Dode’s chest, one through his side and the last in his back. MacKenzie staggered outside, collapsed and died. Authorities arrested Stevens without a struggle, and a grand jury sent him to trial in March 1910 in Selby, the Walworth County seat. Murdo MacKenzie was in Scotland at the time and did not return to see what fate awaited his son’s killer.

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he Matador cowboys claimed there had been lingering bad blood between Bud Stevens and Dode MacKenzie ever since Dode had fired Bud from his Matador job five years earlier. After a night on the town Dode and friends were still on a spree. They entered Du

The LeBeau rail yards in 1909. By then cattle operations were shipping tens of thousands of head through town annually.

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Fran’s saloon in the early morning hours of December 11. Bartender Stevens was quarrelsome and due to his deafness was convinced Dode and the others were making him the butt of their jokes. Dode accused the bartender of not filling his glass high enough. They argued until MacKenzie left the bar. At a hardware store across the street, Dode picked out a .45 Colt revolver. When clerk P.H. Knoll told him the store was out of .45 cartridges, MacKenzie instead loaded it with .38 cartridges, though he must have known they wouldn’t work in the larger-caliber gun. He was an accomplished shootist, his friends said, but he intended only to scare Stevens, not shoot him. Once back at Du Fran’s, Dode kept the Colt in his coat pocket. “Bud, I won’t have any trouble with you in your own house,” he told Stevens. “I will meet you on the street.” “I will be prepared for you,” the bartender replied as he reached into a drawer and pulled out a handgun. “God damn you!” he blurted just before shooting Dode in the chest point-blank. MacKenzie spun around, clutching his chest. Making no effort to draw his own gun, Dode made for the door. Not satisfied, Stevens fired three more times. Stevens and his friends saw things differently. Bud, despite having been fired by MacKenzie, had always considered Dode a friend. He only shot the Matador manager when he believed his life was in danger. Stevens and his witnesses said MacKenzie drew first. They believed Dode was either going to shoot at Bud’s feet to “make him dance” or kill him outright. Saloon owner Du Fran told the grand jury MacKenzie had walked in, pulled the pistol from his coat pocket and laid it atop the bar with the muzzle pointing at Stevens. After about 30 seconds MacKenzie again pocketed the gun and put his hands back up on the bar. But he also told the bartender to get his gun. It was at that point Stevens pulled a .45 Colt from the drawer and rapidly fired four shots at MacKenzie. After the shooting Du Fran took the pistol from his bartender and turned the gun over to City Marshal Bert Thornton. The March trial lasted less than a week. The jury deliberated for four hours before delivering a not-guilty verdict by reason of self-defense. Bud Stevens was a free man, but he soon left for Mobridge, lingered there about a week, then disappeared from history. Meanwhile, the Matador boycotted LeBeau, driving its cattle north to ship

them east on the Milwaukee Road. “No Matador cowboy ever again trod her streets in the same friendliness as before,” Ike Blasingame wrote in his 1958 book Dakota Cowboy. “All of us knew the deep personal grief our chief, Murdo MacKenzie, had suffered over his beloved David—Dode—good cowboy and always one of us, regardless of his position as Murdo’s son. And we stayed away from LeBeau!”

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bout the time of the trial Timber Lake, on reservation land west of the river, secured the regional land office, and the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway decided not to build a bridge across the Missouri. If that wasn’t bad enough, more misfortune struck LeBeau at 1:30 on the morning of Sept. 8, 1910, when a fire flared up at the Phenix newspaper office and swept through the business district. Citizens found the fire hoses cut, along with the telegraph and telephone lines, and later discovered that someone had splashed kerosene on several buildings. Du Fran’s saloon survived, but 23 commercial buildings lay in ashes, with the damage estimated at as much as $200,000. It was undoubtedly arson, but nobody was apprehended. While some townspeople rebuilt, many people and businesses moved away. Then, on the night of Dec. 4, 1911, another fire swept through the business district, this time destroying Du Fran’s saloon. After this second blaze only four buildings remained on Main Street. By the mid-1920s only two families remained in LeBeau, and in September 1924 the Minneapolis & St. Louis ended rail service to town. Dismantling crews tore out the rails, and eventually the once-promising town was reduced to just its cement sidewalks and the brick bank. In a final ignominy, in 1959 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished its Oahe Dam, on the Missouri north of Pierre, and flooded LeBeau. WW AUGUST 2015

Bud Stevens used this .45-caliber Colt to shoot Dode MacKenzie, and the tagged slug was taken from the victim’s body. Both are on display at the Walworth County Courthouse in Selby.

South Dakotan Bill Markley writes for Wild West and other publications and is the author of the historical novel Deadwood Dead Men. He thanks Tom Houck, Lila Houck, the South Dakota State Archives and the folks at the Walworth County Courthouse for their assistance with this article. For further reading Markley suggests Dakota Cowboy: My Life in the Old Days, by Ike Blasingame.

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ALLAN PINKERTON:

‘THEY MUST DIE’ The head of the world’s largest detective agency was determined to stop the James-Younger Gang By Ron Soodalter

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he Civil War spawned a breed of desperate men, none more dangerous than the former bushwhackers and guerrilla raiders of the Confederacy. After Appomattox many who had followed the likes of William Clarke Quantrill and William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson refused to convert their proverbial swords into plowshares, choosing instead to take up the life of the outlaw. The most notorious of these were brothers Alexander Franklin (“Frank”) and Jesse Woodson James and their sometime associates the Younger brothers—Thomas Coleman (“Cole”), James Hardin (“Jim”), John Harrison and Robert Ewing (“Bob”). For more than a decade they cut a swath of brigandage that stretched from their native Missouri north to the farm country of southern Minnesota, south to Texas and east to West Virginia. And no one was more determined to bring them

Allen Pinkerton looks to have a good grasp of the situation at Antietam, Maryland, in 1862, when he was head of the Union Intelligence Service, a precursor of the U.S. Secret Service.

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to bay than Allan Pinkerton, patriarch of the world’s largest and most celebrated detective agency.

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orld-class criminologist Allan Pinkerton had the unlikeliest of beginnings. Born in the slum district of the Gorbals in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1819, Pinkerton lost his father as a teen and to support his family apprenticed to a cooper, making and selling barrels. In 1842, fleeing an arrest warrant for his involvement in reformist activities, he immigrated with his wife to the United States and settled in the Chicago area. It was there his penchant for crime solving took root. In 1846 Pinkerton reportedly tracked down a gang of counterfeiters, gaining him a degree of local celebrity. Four years later, after serving as a Cook County deputy sheriff and Chicago police detective, he started a private detective agency. Coining the motto “We Never Sleep” and adopting an unblinking eye as the logo, Pinkerton ultimately employed a virtual army of agents, many of whom worked undercover to infiltrate criminal organizations and bring them to justice. His incorruptibility, skill and energy brought him success, and by the time the Civil War broke out 11 years later, “Pinkerton” had become a household name. AUGUST 2015

OPENING SPREAD AND LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RIGHT: © CORBIS

Allan Pinkerton (left) poses with President Abraham Lincoln, whom he was hired to protect in 1860. En route to Lincoln’s inauguration he managed to uncover an assassination plot.

The 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, champion of the nascent Republican Party’s antislavery platform, inspired countless death threats against the president-elect. Hired to ensure Lincoln’s safety, Pinkerton uncovered an assassination plot en route to Lincoln’s inauguration. He was assigned to head the Union Intelligence Service (a precursor of the U.S. Secret Service), in which capacity Pinkerton assigned his agents the perilous task of infiltrating the armies, cities and towns of the Confederacy in search of vital intelligence. Through his agency’s efforts Pinkerton became a major cog in the wheels of the Union war machine. After the war Pinkerton returned to Chicago to run Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. Over the next several years he and his two sons, Robert and William, developed the business from a case-by-case outfit to a criminology laboratory. Pinkerton established the nation’s first database of criminal activity, sending photographic mug shots of offenders to police and detective agencies even as his field agents continually added images and descriptions to the files. In a very few years Pinkerton had the world’s largest collection of criminal data. Folders on lawbreakers would remain in the files until the offenders died—and sometimes beyond. In some cases the detectives reportedly had bodies exhumed and photographed for positive identification. Allan Pinkerton was his own best promoter, not the least bit shy about touting his ability to detect and capture criminals. In his book Criminal Reminiscences and Detective Sketches he recalled, “On reading a telegraphic newspaper report of a large or small robbery, with the aid of my vast records and great personal experience and familiarity with these matters I can at once tell the character of the work, and then, knowing the names, history, habits and, quite frequently, the rendezvous of men doing that type of work, am able to determine, with almost unerring certainty, not only the very parties who committed the robberies, but also what disposition they are likely to make of their plunder and at what points they may be hiding.” However, none of his resources (agents, informants or impressive cataloging system) would prepare Allan Pinkerton for what lay ahead in the West. When he focused his unblinking eye on the far side of the Mississippi, he saw much unseemly post–Civil War activity involving former Southern guerrillas. He was about to face what

Former guerrilla leader Fletch Taylor (left) and Jesse James (right) flank Frank James, who wears a prop officers’ uniform, in a portrait believed to have been taken in a Nashville, Tenn., studio in June 1867.

‘I KNOW THAT THE JAMES-YOUNGERS ARE DESPERATE MEN, AND THAT IF WE MEET IT MUST BE THE DEATH OF ONE OR BOTH OF US’ —Allan Pinkerton, April 17, 1874 would become his most challenging, and ultimately most frustrating, case.

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wenty-year-old Frank James left the family homestead in Clay County, Mo., in May 1863, soon to fight as one of Quantrill’s Raiders. The following spring, when 16-year-old Jesse joined “Bloody Bill” Anderson’s savage crew, Frank rode along with him. Both Cole and Jim Younger rode with William Quantrill. Brothers John and Bob were too young and remained home. Quantrill and Anderson steeped the pairs of brothers in robbery, mayhem and murder and taught them the finer points of staging a guerrilla raid. And they soon put that training to use in civilian life (see related story, P. 28). On the bitter afternoon of Feb. 13, 1866, some dozen armed men robbed the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Mo., thus initiating a Wild West tradition: the peacetime robbery of

In early 1874 Adams Express Co. hired Allan Pinkerton and his renowned “sleepless” agents to hunt down and terminate the James-Younger Gang—by then the most infamous outlaws of the Wild West era.

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a bank. They also established another precedent; when they galloped out of town with more than $60,000, they left a dead citizen in their wake. Locals immediately identified the robbers as former bushwhackers. Indeed, they comprised, as Jesse James biographer T.J. Stiles described them, “the surviving core of Bill Anderson’s terrorist gang,” and were led, in all likelihood, by the notorious Archie Clement, young Jesse’s friend and former mentor. Most of the men were identified by name, including the James brothers. Of the two, Frank was the more taciturn, while Jesse was gregarious and had a tendency to boast. After their robberies he often wrote long, rambling letters to various newspapers, protesting their innocence and levying scathing attacks on carpetbaggers, railroad officials and those lawmen with the temerity to pursue them—albeit unsuccessfully. The public, especially the citizens of rural Missouri, empathized with the young bandit, accepting his standing claim that the war and its fallout had driven him to a life outside the law. Yet not until 1871, after one of the gang’s more successful robberies, did the Pinkertons target the Jameses and Youngers. On June 3 of that year Frank and Jesse, Cole Younger and fellow Quantrill veteran Clell Miller rode into Corydon, Iowa, and robbed the Ocobock brothers’ bank. The outraged Ocobocks lost no time in wiring the Pinkerton agency in Chicago, requesting their highly touted services. Allan’s son Robert took the next train west and joined the Wayne County sheriff’s posse. The outlaws, thinking themselves safe after crossing the state line into Missouri, were lounging over dinner at a friend’s house near Gallatin, when posse members arrived and opened fire. Although one of the bandits was wounded and left behind a bloody coat, all four eluded the posse. All but two of the possemen elected to return to Corydon. Only the sheriff and Robert Pinkerton continued the pursuit. Soon the sheriff’s horse, which had been hit in the exchange with the gang, gave out, and Robert went on alone. He tracked the gang to Clay County

and made his way to the James family home near Kearney, wherein lived Frank’s and Jesse’s stepfather, Dr. Reuben Samuel, and their mother, Zerelda, a she-bear of a woman who was fiercely protective of her “boys.” Pinkerton then interviewed several of their neighbors and, not surprising, came away empty-handed. Given that he was rooting around in the outlaws’ lair, where sympathizers abounded at every hand, he was fortunate to leave the county alive. Other “Pinks,” as the agents came to be called, would not be so lucky. By then even the Ocobocks had called off the search, and Robert returned to Chicago, his hunt for Younger, Miller and the Jameses a bust. While Allan Pinkerton was most certainly aware of the gang’s activities, he would remain professionally uninvolved for the next 2½ years.

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esse James, meanwhile, busied himself writing a letter to The Kansas City Times, vehemently denying participation in the Corydon robbery. Enhancing Jesse’s composition with flourishes of his own was rabidly pro-Southern Times founder and editor John Newman Edwards, who volunteered his services whenever Jesse wrote one of his diatribes. His editorials turned Frank and Jesse into veritable knights of the Lost Cause. So supportive was Edwards that Jesse later named his son in part after the newspaperman—Jesse Edward, born Aug. 31, 1875. By late January 1874 the Jameses and Youngers had graduated to train robbery, and Jesse was finally admitting in print that he, his brother and the Youngers were indeed bandits, claiming, “We are not thieves—we are bold robbers…[who] rob the rich and give to the poor.” It was pure nonsense, but countless readers bought into it, as penny dreadfuls trumpeted the flowery, fictitious deeds of the “Robin Hoods of the West.” On January 31 the James-Younger Gang rode into the hamlet of Gads Hill, Mo., flagged down the train and leveled their weapons at the surprised crew. After emptying the safe, Jesse scrawled a wry entry in the express company’s waybill registration book: “Robbed at Gads Hill.” The masked outlaws informed the passengers they wished only to rob “plug-hat gentlemen” and would spare women and workingmen. As one of the bandits (likely Frank) recited Shakespeare, they inspected the men’s hands for callouses. According to popular lore, one of the outlaws, perhaps Jesse, then asked

if anyone aboard was named “Pinkerton.” When no one responded, he chose a passenger at random, marched him to a sleeper car and ordered him to strip to see if he had a secret identifying mark that the outlaw said all Pinkerton agents bore on their bodies. No mark was found. If true, this interlude was likely an elaborate joke, but with a message for Allan Pinkerton. While the gang had not been on his agenda of late, he was in their thoughts. Before leaving the train, the robbers handed the conductor a prewritten telegram, with instructions it be sent to the St. Louis Dispatch:

Younger brothers (from left) Bob, Jim and Cole were inmates at the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater when they posed with sister Henrietta for this 1899 portrait. Citizens of Northfield, Minn., and environs, not the Pinkertons, had stopped the Youngers in 1876.

THE MOST DARING TRAIN ROBBERY ON RECORD! The southbound train on the Iron Mountain Railroad was stopped here this evening by five heavily armed men and robbed of _____ dollars.…There is a hell of excitement in this part of the country. AUGUST 2015

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William Pinkerton, one of Allan’s two detective sons, poses with a pair of Southern Express Co. agents —Pat Connell (left) and Sam Finley. Brothers William and Robert led the agency after Allan’s 1884 death.

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PINKERTON PURSUITS he Pinkertons’ long campaign against the James-Younger Gang was not the agency’s only Wild West failure. They also devoted considerable time, energy, agents and resources to the pursuit of the Wild Bunch—and were met with frustration at every turn, eventually nabbing only a couple of lesser functionaries. Still, the pursuit was arguably worth while. “Even though the Pinkertons did not capture any of the major Wild Bunch members,” explains Dan Buck, an authority on that gang, “their network of detectives and informants kept the heat on, chasing, for example, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid out of the United States, which in a roundabout way led to the duo’s demise.” The Pinkertons did manage to bring a number of other Western outlaws James McParland to justice. They succeeded through a combination of inspired fieldwork, their innovative (1843–1919) cataloging system—and some questionable practices. Much of the controversy emanated from James McParland, head of Pinkerton’s Denver-based western division and the most famous (or infamous) supervising agent in the company’s long history. In the 1870s he had single-handedly infiltrated the notorious Molly Maguires in the Pennsylvania coalfields, bringing about the hangings of 20 men—a number of whom may have been guilty only by association. He later developed a reputation as a fervent anti-unionist who would go to any lengths to bring labor organizers to jail or the gallows. Known as the “Great Detective,” McParland was involved in several high-profile cases, including the Idaho murder trial of union leader “Big Bill” Haywood. According to a 1915 memoir by famed cowboy, lawman and Pinkerton agent Charlie Siringo, his onetime boss McParland was guilty of kidnapping, fraud, jury tampering, fabricated testimony, bribery, intimidation and the use of hired killers. —R.S.

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Once again the outlaws managed to elude the large posse that pursued them, returning to the safety of Clay County. Predictably, Kansas City Times editor Edwards followed up with an editorial defending the perpetrators as “daring highwaymen” and excoriating the “iron hand of Radicalism” that had brought the curse of “tyranny and oppression” to the still-suffering South.

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fter the Gads Hill robbery the express companies realized they faced a real threat in these former Confederate guerrillas. The Adams Express Co. took a proactive role, hiring the world’s most renowned and dependable detective agency to hunt down and terminate the James-Younger Gang. Given Allan Pinkerton’s roster of high-profile cases, there was no reason to assume he wouldn’t succeed. Through informants Pinkerton learned the Youngers had split off from the Jameses and ridden to St. Clair County, while Frank and Jesse had holed up at their mother’s farm near Kearney. Pinkerton’s son William later recalled, “Operatives were detailed to go into the respective vicinities to obtain evidence of the guilt or innocence of the parties charged with the robbery.” Pinkerton dispatched agents John Boyle and Louis J. Lull (a former Chicago police captain) to St. Clair

County in search of the Youngers and assigned the Clay County foray to 26-year-old Joseph W. Whicher, who had a reputation for what biographer Stiles termed “iron nerve and soft discretion.” In mid-March 1874 Whicher arrived in Liberty disguised as a farm worker. He revealed his true identity to Sheriff George Patton, who assured him that the James boys were away from home and advised him to avoid the Samuel farm. But Whicher pressed Patton for directions. The avid young agent then revealed his identity to the local bank president, who called in former Sheriff O.P. Moss. “The old woman,” Moss warned the agent, “would kill you if the boys don’t.” Incredibly, Whicher disregarded the warnings. Catching a train to Kearney, he sent a telegram to the home office before walking to the JamesSamuel homestead and knocking at the door. Years later a former gang member recalled Jesse admitting that he, Frank and two confederates were in the farmhouse when the young agent came calling. In the early morning darkness three riders—two of whom the ferryman identified as Frank and Jesse James—escorted a bound Joseph Whicher across the Missouri River into Jackson County, where they shot him dead. Within days the Pinkertons learned of Whicher’s death through an obscure item in The Chicago Times, reporting a “mysterious murder…near AUGUST 2015

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Independence.” William Pinkerton immediately sent word to Captain Lull “to be on his guard.” The warning did no good. While riding through St. Clair County with former local lawman Edwin Daniels, Lull and Boyle stopped to ask directions at a farmhouse in which Jim and John Younger were eating dinner. Suspicions raised, the Youngers galloped after the trio and confronted them at gunpoint. Boyle immediately spurred his horse, as Jim gave chase and then fired his double-barreled shotgun. He missed, and the agent escaped. The Youngers took the belt pistols of Lull and Daniels, but Lull drew a concealed handgun. He fired at John, just as John triggered his second load into Lull’s arm. Jim then shot Lull in the side and turned his pistol on Daniels. Lull’s panicked horse bolted, but Lull would die of his wounds three days later. John Younger and Edwin Daniels, both shot in the throat, died on the spot. Allan Pinkerton had lost two agents and an ally in a matter of days. Nothing like this had ever happened to his agency, and he took it very personally. “My blood was spilt,” he wrote, “and they must repay. There is no use talking—they must die.” After ordering Whicher’s body returned home, he updated the director of Adams Express: “When the time comes when we find the men can be arrested, then recollect, I shall be with my own men in charge.… I am going myself and will carry my own musket.

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ecrecy, enforced through fear as well as loyalty, continued to enshroud the James brothers throughout Clay County. Meanwhile, Allan Pinkerton had been gathering intelligence on Jesse and Frank’s comings and goings from a secret core

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group of Clay County Unionist supporters. He named Robert J. Lindon to command a raid on the family farm and confidently wrote, “It makes me feel almost like laughing at the great preparations we are making to tackle two or three men.” On Jan. 25, 1875, Lindon and six handpicked agents boarded a special train loaded with weapons, gear and a mysterious incendiary device provided by the U.S. Arsenal at Rock Island, Ill. Linden also carried orders from Pinkerton: “Above all else, destroy the house, wipe it from the face of the earth. How the logs will burn.…Burn the house down.” As darkness fell, the party disembarked at a wooded stretch of tracks north of Kearney and, guided by allies, made it to the board-sided log house, which Pinkerton later described as a “perfect citadel.” The agents pried off several lengths of siding and inserted what has been described as “hollow tubes, shaped like a roman candle and filled with combustible and inflammable material.” After lighting the tubes, they produced the device given them by the arsenal—a 7½-inch diameter cotton-covered cast-iron ball with a tiny hole through which flammable liquid drained, creating a veritable sheet of flames as it rolled. The agents lit the device and tossed it into the house. Their intelligence had been faulty—the outlaw brothers were not at home. But their mother and stepfather were, along with other family members and three black servants. When pitched into the house, the device knocked down Reuben Samuel and rolled along the floor, leaving a trail of its liquid contents. The old man got up and shoveled the ball into the fireplace. The contents of the now glowing ball heated it far beyond its intended purpose. The device exploded, sending iron shards

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The James-Samuel home two years after the Pinkertons’ firebomb raid that crippled Zerelda Samuel (right), the fiercely protective mother of Frank and Jesse James.

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flying in all directions. One piece of shrapnel pierced the abdomen of 8-year-old Archie Samuel, Frank and Jesse’s half-brother, while another shattered their mother’s right arm. The stunned raiding party ignominiously fled into the darkness. Neighbors sent for doctors, but Archie died before morning, while the doctor amputated his mother’s arm below the elbow. “I had often thought of what might happen to Jesse and Frank and was prepared to hear most everything,” she later said, “but I never expected to see this.” Newspapers described the event as an unwarranted attack by the Pinkertons on an innocent family. Leading the pack, predictably, was Kansas City Times editor Edwards. He parlayed the debacle into a well-crafted amnesty bill for the James and Younger brothers, which almost passed. For the Pinkertons the raid proved a public relations nightmare. A frightened agent Linden went into hiding, and Allan Pinkerton himself faced indictment by a Clay County grand jury, along with Linden (under an alias) and another agent. Meanwhile, the James brothers drove off several men suspected of sympathizing with their enemies and killed a Pinkerton supporter in front of his house, telling a neighbor, “We have killed Dan Askew tonight, and if anyone wishes to know who did it, say the detectives did it.” As Allan Pinkerton finally understood, “A reign of terror prevails all through Clay County at the present time.” Jesse stepped up his letter-writing campaign, reserving his most acidic comments for the Pinkertons. When William Pinkerton responded to a charge that he participated in the farmhouse raid, he unintentionally legitimized Jesse’s rants. In a letter printed in the Nashville Republican Banner on Aug. 4, 1875, Jesse noted that Pinkerton had grained great notoriety as a detective, “but we have so easily baffled him & he has got his best men killed by him sending them after us.…Pinkerton, I hope and pray that our Heavenly Father may deliver you into my hands, & I believe he will.” In the wake of the botched raid Adams Express withdrew its support, whereupon Pinkerton put up $10,000 of his own money to continue the pursuit of the Jameses and Youngers—without success. While robbing a train near Otterville, Mo., on July 7, 1876, Jesse instructed the express company messenger, “Tell Allan Pinkerton and all his detectives to look for us in hell.” Pinkerton lost no more agents, but he came no closer to stopping the gang.

It was a trusted gang member, Bob Ford, not the Pinkertons, who ended the life of Jesse James, posed here in death.

Two months later Frank and Jesse, along with Cole, Jim and Bob Younger and three accomplices, botched their robbery of the First National Bank in Northfield, Minn. The Youngers were captured, their cohorts killed. Only the James brothers escaped, eventually returning to Clay County. Gang member Bob Ford would be the one to shoot down Jesse, on April 3, 1882. Within months Frank turned himself in to the Missouri governor. He was subsequently acquitted of all charges and walked out of court a free man. Allan Pinkerton died on July 1, 1884, and his two sons took charge of the agency. Allan had lived long enough to see Jesse James in his grave and the Youngers in prison. But he had also seen his own vaunted organization fail in its all-out attempt to capture the outlaws, most especially the one whom his son Robert had called, “the worst man, without any exception, in America.” WW AUGUST 2015

New York author Ron Soodalter is a frequent contributor to Wild West. For further reading he suggests: Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, by T.J. Stiles; Thirty Years a Detective, by Allan Pinkerton; and Pinkerton’s Great Detective, by Beau Riffenburgh.

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ROUGH ON RATS AND SIBLINGS

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usie E. Belew kept house for brother Louis at his modest home in Dixon, California, in the 1890s. Louis owned and managed the Arcade livery and feed stable, three blocks from the house, and his one employee, Bruno Klein, boarded with the Belews. The two men rose early each morning and walked to the stable to ready things for that day’s work. Then, per their custom, Louis would return home to eat breakfast with his sister. When Louis arrived back at the stable, Bruno would walk home to be served breakfast by Susie. The employee/ border would then rejoin Louis at work. On Monday, Nov. 8, 1897, Louis and Susie shared a breakfast of eggs, mush and coffee, and then Louis returned to the stable, freeing Klein to have his breakfast. When Klein got to the house, he found Susie too ill to serve him, so he served himself coffee and a small portion of mush and eggs. Susie grew sicker, with severe stomach cramps, purging and vomiting. Klein hurried back to the stable to report Susie’s illness to her brother, only to find Louis had also taken ill with similar symptoms. Klein summoned Dr. William A. Trafton, but soon after he too began to feel ill. In short order the doctor determined all three must have eaten something that had spoiled. He examined their vomit and found sauerkraut, which the trio had consumed the previous day.

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His initial diagnosis: They were suffering from acute indigestion. The doctor ordered rest and hot drinks to ease the stomach pain. The ill men rested in the stable, while neighbors Mrs. Eugene Ferguson and Mrs. George Ehmann cared for Susie in the Belew home. (Louis was engaged to the Fergusons’ daughter Clara, while Susie was engaged to George Ehmann’s brother Charles.) Frank Belew, a brother to Susie and Louis, soon arrived at the house and sat up with his sick sister, holding her hand and trying to comfort her. But her pain persisted, and in the stable their brother and Klein continued to suffer. By sundown all three were noticeably worse, and Louis died at midnight. Earlier in the day Mrs. Ferguson and Mrs. Ehmann had prepared beef broth for Susie, but she would not drink it. To encourage Susie to at least taste the broth, the neighbor ladies each swallowed a teaspoonful of it. Both promptly vomited and later suffered from symptoms similar to those of the three victims. They would recover in a day, but Susie was not as fortunate. She died at 5 o’clock on Tuesday morning, November 9. Bruno Klein’s health was touch and go for a few tense days, but he managed to rally. In time he would come to realize how fortunate he’d been to have eaten a small breakfast on the 8th. In the latter half of the 19th century California, like the rest of the Wild West, had more than its

LEFT: R. MICHAEL WILSON COLLECTION; RIGHT: GREGORY PROCH ILLUSTRATION BASED ON A SAN FRANCISCO CALL ILLLUSTRATION

The mysterious deaths of Susie and Louis Belew turned out to be a poisonous family affair By R. Michael Wilson

On Feb. 3, 1898, authorities arrested Frank Belew at his ranch house, 8 miles from Dixon, Calif.

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share of badmen and deaths by shooting, with males most often in the roles of killer and victim. The episode that played out at the Belew house in Dixon was something different—two deaths by poisoning, with one of the victims a young lady.

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olano County coroner F.W. Trull started his inquest on November 10, though jurors could not arrive at a conclusion until the stomach contents of the dead siblings had been analyzed. Early suspicion fell upon Harry Allen, a jilted suitor of Susie Belew’s who, the rumor mill suggested, could have been motivated to act rashly on the premise, “If I can’t have her no one will.” Could he or someone else have poisoned the Belews’ well water? A local chemist ran tests, but the well water proved uncontaminated. Next, high school chemistry teacher J.K. Grinstead tested for arsenic in the water from the Belew teakettle. Mrs. Ferguson and Mrs. Ehmann had used water from the kettle to brew the beef broth they had sampled, just as Susie had used kettle water to prepare breakfast for herself, her brother and Bruno Klein. Grinstead found that “the water was strongly impregnated with the death-dealing poison,” and that a white powder residue found on the lid of the kettle was indeed arsenic. San Francisco chemist William T. Wenzell tested the beef broth and on November 12 confirmed it, too, contained AUGUST 2015

a strong dose of arsenic. Wenzell later examined Susie’s liver and found one-tenth of a percent of arsenic present. In most cases of fatal arsenical poisoning the arsenic is absorbed by the body and not still detectable in the victim’s liver, but Susie’s dose had been so large it could not be fully absorbed. This evidence confirmed the suspicions of many—Susie had been murdered, and brother Louis as well. Thomas Belew, another brother, then posted a reward of $250 for the arrest of the murderer. By November 13 Bruno Klein was up and about, though he lapsed into a spasm and collapsed during a visit to the doctor that afternoon. It proved a temporary setback. Klein improved rapidly and would fully recover from his ordeal. Meanwhile, Frank Belew joined Harry Allen on the list of suspects, despite having sat up with his dying sister on November 8. Frank quickly provided an alibi. As he told it, on Sunday, Nov. 7, he had come from his ranch to Louis’ house, arriving at 4:30 p.m. and an hour later sitting down to dinner with brothers Louis and Thomas, sister Susie and a woman named Lou Bremley. Frank claimed that at 6:30 p.m., when Susie’s fiancé, Charles Ehmann, arrived, he left for town. Susie and Charles were left alone together. According to Charles, at 9:30 p.m. he went to the well for a drink of water, and before returning to the parlor, he locked the exterior doors to the house, so no one could have entered un-

GREGORY PROCH ILLUSTRATION BASED ON A SAN FRANCISCO CALL ILLUSTRATION

The main victims of the Nov. 8, 1897, poisoning were (from left) Louis Belew, Susie Belew and Bruno Klein. Klein later realized his luck at having eaten so little for breakfast that day.

CATS: © AMORET TANNER/ALAMY; TEAKETTLE: © GABE PALMER/ALAMY

noticed after 9:30 p.m. Charles stayed at the house until 11 p.m. Frank said that by 8:30 p.m. he had returned to his ranch, some 8 miles from Dixon. But others claimed they had seen him in Dixon at a later hour. On November 14 officers set up a meeting with the two suspects in a room in the Brinckerhoff and Ehmann building in Dixon, and each accused the other of the murders. Harry Allen insisted he and Susie Belew were never more than friends and remained on good terms, even though Frank had insisted that Harry not visit her anymore. “I hope that the guilty man hangs,” Harry told the gathering. “So do I,” Frank said. “No, you don’t,” Harry replied. “You want to hang an innocent man.” For the sake of the officers, Harry asked Frank, “Did you ever hear Susie say one word against me?” Frank admitted he had not. Harry then leveled his accusation: “You murdered your own brother and sister for their money.” Frank denied the charge and shot back with his own accusation: “It was you who killed them because you were jilted.” Allen claimed he was in a certain saloon between 7 and 11:30 p.m. on November 7, and his alibi proved out. Still, the three surviving Belew brothers—Frank, Thomas and Arthur—all insisted that Allen had made threats, and that both Susie and brother Louis had feared him. The meeting with Allen and Belew apparently did not settle much, as two days later San Francisco–based detective John Curtin took over the investigation, summoned all witnesses to the Arcade Hotel and interrogated each one. During his interview Frank told Curtin he had left Dixon for his ranch at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, November 7 (an hour earlier than his prior claim), while a night watchman saw him in town an hour later, and others placed him there as late as 9:30 p.m. In any case Frank likely did not return to his brother Louis’ house after leaving there at 6:30 and certainly did not do so after Charles Ehmann locked the door at 9:30. But that didn’t let Frank off the hook. He or someone else could have dropped poison in the teakettle before 6:30. Detective Curtin determined the poisoner must

have been a person familiar with the house and with the routines of Susie and Louis Belew, because their “savage little watchdog” (as a San Francisco Call reporter termed it), which typically barked at strangers, had been silent that night. Frank said he had taken ill at supper on November 7 and entered the kitchen to take a headache powder his sister had given him. But when investigators checked with Kirby’s drugstore, they learned the Belews had purchased neither headache powders nor any prescription for headaches. At the same time they found no evidence any Belew had purchased arsenic. On November 17, the morning after the meeting at the Arcade Hotel, Frank went to Woodland and hired attorney Reese Clark, explaining to reporters, “I am being hounded by detectives and followed by officers, who are trying to trap me.” About that time Grinstead examined a pot of boiled potatoes from Louis Belew’s house and determined they, too, contained a large quantity of arsenic. Susie had cooked up these potatoes for the breakfast mush on November 8. As evidence continued to mount, Frank Belew remained on his ranch and did not go into town, likely on the instructions of his attorney. The inquest resumed on Monday, November 22. After hearing two days of testimony, the jurors retired for an hour before reaching their conclusion: Louis and Susie Belew had been killed by arsenic administered by a person or persons unknown.

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The teakettle water Susie used to make breakfast on the 8th had been tainted with Rough on Rats poison, advertised below in a circa 1885 trade card.

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On Feb. 6, 1898, Frank Belew (seated to the right of the desk) made a full confession to authorities at the district attorney’s office in Dixon. “This is the whole story of my crimes,” he began.

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siblings had cheated him out of his fair share of the estate, and he had vowed to take revenge. Bird told investigators he had tried to dissuade Frank. “Do not do anything foolish, old man,” he said. “Think of the consequences of such a crime.” Bird had kept Frank’s admission a secret for nearly two months, hoping the courts would exonerate his brother-in-law and spare the family the embarrassment of having a relative named a murderer. But finally he became convinced Frank had had at least some part in the poisoning. On Friday, January 28, Constable Frank Newby went to Sacramento and convinced Bird to come to his photo gallery in Dixon and arrange a meetAUGUST 2015

ing with Frank Belew. That Sunday morning Bird arrived in town at 9 o’clock and opened his gallery. Newby was in hiding within hearing distance when Frank arrived just before noon. After some idle conversation Bird said, “Well, Frank, you fooled them all in grand shape in this poisoning case, not to get caught,” and Frank replied, “Yes.” Bird then tried to pry an overt confession. “Frank, that was a terrible thing,” he began, “but you would not have poisoned Louis and Susie if they had treated you right with the estate before, would you?” Frank only replied, “No.” Bird persisted. “They were after you pretty hot for a while. You must have been pretty slick in getting the poison so they could not find out where you got it, for they hunted every drugstore in Sacramento and all around.” Frank agreed but would not divulge where he got the poison. After some further discussion, and assurances Bird’s wife knew nothing of the matter, Bird said, “It’s enough for you and I to know you poisoned them.” Frank again answered with a simple, “Yes,” but then changed the subject to a planned trip to Alaska. When Constable Newby reported what he’d heard to Sheriff Benjamin F. Rush, the authorities sought an arrest warrant. On Thursday evening, February 3, Sheriff Rush, Undersheriff T.L. Robinson, a deputy named Fitzpatrick and correspondent John F. Conners of the San Francisco Examiner traveled in two carriages the 8 miles from Dixon to Frank Belew’s ranch. It was after 10 p.m. when the sheriff knocked on the door and called for Frank to open up. “Who is there?” Frank replied from his bedroom. At that point Robinson and Fitzpatrick entered the house, while the sheriff and newspaperman covered the other exits. Fitzpatrick ordered Frank to put on his clothes and at gunpoint told him, “You are the man who killed your sister.” Frank denied his guilt and offered no resistance when the lawmen handcuffed him and brought him in a buggy into Dixon. In the following days dark details of Frank Belew’s past came to light. A man named Charles Hough, who had done some work for Frank in 1893, claimed his boss had made two attempts on his life on the same day, most likely because Belew owed him $47 in wages. First, Frank shot off the brim of Hough’s hat, claiming the shotgun he was holding had gone off by accident. That very night, according to Hough, Frank served biscuits for dinner, but his first bite of biscuit was so bitter, Hough

SAN FRANCISCO CALL ILLUSTRATION

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ome months earlier Frank’s wife had left her husband, but she would not discuss her reasons. Nothing significant turned up in the investigation until late January 1898 when Sacramento photographer John W. Bird, Frank Belew’s brother-in-law (married to one of Frank’s sisters), stepped forward and informed authorities that on November 7 Frank had made a shocking admission to him: “I’ve just been down to see Susie. She showed me her wedding clothes and said she and Charley Ehmann are going to Nevada on a tour. They have not treated me right in regard to the estate, but I’ll have some of it yet. They’ll not live to enjoy it. Bird, I’m going to commit a terrible crime tomorrow. I’m going to commit a tragedy that will shock the whole community.” Frank had been convinced since his father’s death that his

spit it out. On the sly he pocketed the remainder and had it tested the next day for poison. The test proved positive, Hough claimed, but authorities wouldn’t press charges on the respected rancher. Soon after Hough quit his job and moved away. It also came out that Frank had stolen $400 from his father-in-law and had stolen and butchered a neighbor’s hog. It was this pattern of criminal behavior that had prompted Frank’s wife to leave him. Late on Feb. 5, 1898, Frank Belew admitted to newspaperman Conners he had poisoned sister Susie and brother Louis. At the district attorney’s office the next morning, he made a full confession. “This is the whole story of my crimes,” he began. “It’s too late now, for it is all over, and I must stand the consequences.” Frank claimed that his motive for murder had nothing to do with his father’s estate. He said that while Susie had always been good to him, she and Louis had spoken “evil words” against his wife, whom he loved dearly. Authorities told Frank from the outset he was under no obligation to tell them anything. “I understand the situation,” he replied, “and I know I am free, so I will make a voluntary confession that I am guilty and that I want to confess. I slept better last night after talking with the reporters.” And then he provided a flood of details:

CALIFORNIA STATE ARCHIVES

I poisoned them with Rough on Rats [a chemical used to kill rodents], which I had had for six years or so. I put the poison in a paper, a piece of newspaper, before I left home. I came into town to the house where Susie and Louis lived after Tommy and Miss Brimley [sic ] came in. Tommy and his sweetheart, Miss Brimley, had left the supper table. There was some delay at the carriage while they were all saying goodbye. I then went through the kitchen and dropped the poison through the top [of the teakettle], after lifting the lid. After I was sure that the poison was in the water, I walked into the room where Susie was preparing to meet Charley Ehmann, who was soon to marry her. She was fixing her hair at the time, and we chatted as if nothing had happened.

Frank’s wife and brothers Tom and Arthur visited him in jail. “Frank, is that confession all right?” Arthur asked him, still not convinced it could all be true. “Yes, I poisoned them both,” Frank coolly replied. Breaking down, Arthur cried out in anguish. “Why did you do it? Oh, why did

you do it? You must have been out of your head.” If Frank made any reply, it went unrecorded. At his February 24 arraignment Frank pleaded not guilty, but five days later he changed his plea to guilty, perhaps realizing his insanity defense would not work. On April 13, after several delays, Frank was sentenced to hang at Folsom State Prison on June 16. He later fingered Bird as an accomplice in the double murder, but it was clearly a false assertion and dismissed as such. Frank Belew, prisoner No. 4361, was delivered to a death row cell at Folsom on June 14, and the next day he made out his will, leaving everything to his children and naming his wife administrator. Over the objections of their brother Thomas, Arthur Belew agreed to arrange Frank’s burial in the family plot at Sacramento’s Helvetia Cemetery. On the morning of the 16th, Frank professed religion to a Methodist minister, but while standing on the gallows’ trapdoor, he made no statement. At 10 a.m. sharp the trapdoor was sprung, and 11½ minutes later doctors in attendance pronounced him dead. The body was then cut down, placed in a cheap prison coffin and taken to the train station for transport to Sacramento. WW AUGUST 2015

Inmate Frank Belew poses for a mug shot at Folsom State Prison in April 1898. Moved to a death row cell on June 14, he was hanged two days later.

R. Michael Wilson, a retired sergeant from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, has written more than a dozen books, including a Crime and Punishment series for Arizona, Nevada and Wyoming and a Legal Executions series for 17 Western jurisdictions (except California) through Dec. 31, 2010. For this article he relied mostly on San Francisco newspapers of the time.

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WHERE THE PRONGHORNS PLAY Their size, form and speed call to mind the antelopes of Africa, but the pronghorns of the Great Plains have the run of their own family

IN THE FOOTHILLS, BY CARL RUNGIUS, BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST, CODY, WYO.

By Dan Flores

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President Thomas Jefferson received word of the gazelle of the West from Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, as well as naturalist Peter Custis, who offered but a single intriguing line about a “species of Antilope.” 60

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rom the accounts of all the Indians, I have seen, it is probable there may be a species of Antilope near the head waters of R. River.” Those words, penned for the eyes of President Thomas Jefferson, were written by Peter Custis, the official naturalist attached to Jefferson’s Red River Expedition, the president’s follow-up to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Corps of Discovery Expedition into the Louisiana Purchase. When Custis conveyed to Jefferson accounts from the Indians and their guides about the mysteries that lay farther up this river of the South, he was writing at a portentous time in the early exploration of the West. His brief mention of “Antilope” also captured a critical moment in time in the long history of one of the true marvels of the American Great Plains, the pronghorn antelope. The year was 1806, and Custis was with a party of scientists, soldiers and guides that a Spanish army had just turned back from the edge of the southern Plains. In almost a final, dying gasp of its North American empire, Spain had risen to the occasion to keep the Americans out of the Southwest. Naturalist Custis was taking one last wistful look upriver before returning to civilization. On his mind was this rumored African-like creature that roamed the horizontal yellow prairies just beyond his reach as an Enlightenment Age scientist. When Americans did finally make it to the Great Plains at the turn of the 19th century, we called these fabled animals antelope for good reason, as in size, form and speed they resembled no other wildlife quite so much as the antelopes and gazelles of Africa. But pronghorns, it turned out, were not true antelope. The Antilocapridae (“antelope-goats”) emerged roughly 25 million years ago as a distinctly American family of animals. They probably evolved from an ancient line that produced both pronghorns and deer, though there are modern biologists who argue that their closest living relatives are in the family Giraffidae—the AUGUST 2015

giraffes, whose legs do resemble those of pronghorns. But Antilocapra americana, our present-day pronghorn, is the sole surviving representative of the Antilocapridae family.

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n 1997 University of Idaho zoologist John Byers, after studying pronghorn behavior on western Montana’s National Bison Range, offered up a provocative argument explaining much about an animal that since Jefferson’s time has seemed almost “alien,” even to admirers. A grasslands creature shaped by the open country niche it occupied, the pronghorn never

JAMES J. HILL LIBRARY, ST. PAUL

experienced any selective pressure to jump obstacles, which ultimately became a maladaptation to the modern world that has played a central role in pronghorn history across the past 150 years. The pronghorn is one of only a handful of Great Plains species that managed to survive the epic extinction some 10,000 years ago that ended the Pleistocene. What if, as Byers would have it, much about the behavior of the modern pronghorn has little to do with present circumstances? What if most of its physical characteristics and behaviors are adaptations to a lost world that winked out 100,000 years ago, leaving the pronghorn to live out its existence among us, reacting to a world of “ghosts”?

The primary predators of pronghorns for the past 10 millennia have been wolves and coyotes, neither of which can run over 45 mph. Pronghorns, the Ferraris of the natural world, have broad nostrils and a huge windpipe to deliver turbocharged oxygen to their outsized lungs and heart. The 120-pound males can top 55 mph, and the slighter females can reach 70 mph. That’s as fast as a cheetah. Pronghorns, like horses, adapted gigantic eyes to detect predators at great distances. But why? Why so much protective excess? Pronghorn behavior features other oddities. Like Thomson’s gazelles and other African ungulates pursued by big cats, pronghorns have a AUGUST 2015

Karl Bodmer depicts pronghorns in the foreground of his 1833 painting Junction of the Yellowstone River With the Missouri. The artist painted the scene while out West with German Prince Maximilian.

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ike most wild ungulates then or now, pronghorns follow a routine that varies considerably with the seasons. At the conclusion of the September rut, the exhausted bucks, which would have been prime targets for ancient predators, disguise themselves in a form of mimicry, shedding the outer sheaths of their

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horns and joining the female herds. Since the Pleistocene, winter has been a time of migration for northern pronghorns. A few years ago, with a friend who lives in Jackson Hole, I photographed the storied Sublette pronghorn herd, which summers in Grand Teton National Park but still migrates some 200 miles south, to near Green River, Wyo., in winter. This inclination to migrate was adaptive in the wild but, coupled with their inability to jump obstacles, would produce tragic results in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the spring, young pronghorn bucks form bachelor bands, sparring and practicing moves they will later use in earnest. Around age 3 males split off on their own for much of the spring and summer, during which time they set up territories, whose perimeters they scent mark and use to cloister a harem of females during the rut. Bucks fight over females, to the death in 15 percent of the encounters. Reproductive success is the prime directive. Some bucks win the lottery, while others sporadically mate or never sire offspring. Female pronghorns reach sexual maturity at around 16 months and are capable of giving birth every spring for the rest of their lives. During the September rut females regularly break away from

AMON CARTER MUSEUM, FORT WORTH, TEXAS

powerful inclination toward a form of grouping known as the selfish herd. The lower-ranking, less dominant animals get pushed to the outer margins, where, were they on the African veld, they would face greater danger from predators. The fascinating question, then, is whether the whole suite of pronghorn behaviors is connected to the lost world of the Pleistocene Great Plains, which featured such formidable predators as shortfaced bears, an ever-shifting lineup of wolf and coyote packs, steppe lions, particularly swift and leggy hunting hyenas and two species of large, long-legged American “false” cheetahs. These fearsome American predators, long since vanished from the continent, are the creatures that “overbuilt” pronghorns for the modern world.

John James Audubon made a research trip up the Missouri in 1843, which inspired the naturalist/painter to render Pronghorned Antelope.

JOSELYN ART MUSEUM, OMAHA, NEB.

PRONGHORN AND BISON POPULATIONS WERE COMPARABLE IN NUMBER their cloistered harems, joining those of other bucks and/or inviting males to compete for them. Apparently they are setting up contests to find the bucks that demonstrate genetic fitness by running faster and longer than their rivals. Thus is the pronghorn’s ancient acceleration maintained even in the absence of predatory hyenas or cheetahs. After a long gestation period, averaging some 252 days, females give birth, usually not to single offspring but to litters, typically twins. Twinning is likely a response to predation, another adaptation to that distant past with three or four different predators. Today it means that coyotes, the principal remaining predators of pronghorn fawns, are able to cull 50 to 80 percent of an annual fawn crop without appreciably affecting a pronghorn population that no longer suffers from adult predation. As cud-chewing ruminants capable of processing forbs and shrubs, pronghorns demonstrate yet another adaptation to the ancient savanna ecology of the West. Bison and pronghorns cropped the same range, producing mutually beneficial results. Bison, which cropped the grasses while ignoring the often-toxic species like locoweed, rabbitbrush and sagebrush, encouraged the growth of forbs and shrubs in their wake. Coming along after the bison and browsing on flowering plants and shrubs, pronghorns shifted the advantage back to the grasses. Both preferred freshly burned areas. Pronghorns increased into the millions—40 million according to naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton, 15 to 25 million according to more recent estimates. On the Great Plains, where their ranges overlapped most precisely, pronghorn and bison populations were comparable in number. We’ve long thought of the historic-era Great Plains as the great bison belt. In truth it was just as much the great pronghorn savanna. Bison were able to graze midheight grasses, and when the climate was favorable and times flush on the Plains, overflow bison populations did pool westward but more often went eastward, to the Mississippi and beyond. Pronghorns, by contrast, are animals of the shortgrass plains and desert grasslands. They don’t appear to have advanced eastward beyond about the 97th meridian in Texas and Mexico and the 93rd meridian (into Iowa and Minnesota) farther north, but they ranged west-

ward all the way to Baja California and eastern Oregon and Washington. Adapted to tundra climates, bison survived winters better on the Canadian plains. But pronghorns were able to colonize the desert grasslands, much farther south than bison ever ventured. Pronghorns drink about 3–4 quarts of water a day during hot weather, which limited their numbers in the Great Basin and desert Southwest.

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s with their evolutionary behavior, we have only recently come to understand something about the role pronghorns played in the Indian world. Abundant and widespread, they long attracted the attention of Indian hunters. Archaeologists have unearthed butchered pronghorn remains at Clovis and Folsom sites. But it required 15–20 pronghorns to equal the caloric possibilities of a single giant bison, and as pronghorn flesh was so lean, the animal commonly ranked well down the list of commonly pursued prey. Nonetheless archaic hunter-gatherers and even historic-era Indian hunters killed them in large numbers. Ancient pronghorn corrals, such as the Bridger antelope trap site in southwestern Wyoming, evince one such method, in which Indians enclosed local Bodmer painted this watercolor, Head of an Antelope in 1833. To detect predators at great distances pronghorns, like horses, adapted gigantic eyes.

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PRONGHORN OF THE GREAT PLAINS Mapping its natural history. Tan outline shows the animal’s traditional range. 1 John James Audubon paints and describes the “prong-horned antelope”

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2 Market hunters kill massive numbers of wintering pronghorns in the 1870s 3 Sublette pronghorn herd summer/winter migrations 4 Lewis and Clark collect the type pronghorn specimen for Western science 5 Titian Ramsay Peale renders the first pronghorn art most Americans ever see 6 Ten-thousand-year-old Folsom archaeological site with pronghorn remains

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7 Biologist Vernon Bailey in 1899 sees only 32 pronghorns on the Llano Estacado, where 2 million had once roamed. 8 Peter Custis in 1806 writes Thomas Jefferson there is probably “a species of Antilope” farther up the Red River

herds in rock and sage corrals, pushed them to run in circles until exhausted and then clubbed them to death. Historical references also describe how horse-mounted Plains Indians engaged in a kind of “surround,” again with the goal of getting a pronghorn band to run in circles until bow-wielding hunters could ride down the spent and stumbling animals. Lewis and Clark watched the Shoshones try this for three hours with no result but sweatdrenched horses. In the late 19th century, when pronghorns gathered by the thousands in winter, some tribes used rifles from horseback. “The antelope crowd together in their fright,” Richard Irving Dodge observed of such hunts, “and present a mark not easy to miss.” While hunters could tan leather from pronghorn skins, most considered the hides inferior to those of bison or deer. There were exceptions. When Dr. John Sibley, Jefferson’s Indian agent in Orleans Territory, held a council for southern 64

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Plains Indians in Natchitoches in 1807, among the assembled tribes were the Comanches, a soonfamous Plains people with a band known as the Kwahadis (“Antelope”). “They dress the skins of the Antelope most beautifully,” Sibley recalled, “and Colour [sic] them of every shade from light Pink to Black of which they make their own and Husbands’ Clothing, the edges Pinked and scalloped resembling lace.…You would take them for fine Black Velvet.” About the time Custis, Jefferson’s naturalist on the Red River, was writing the president of the rumored Western “Antilope,” Charles Willson Peale was in Philadelphia unpacking and preparing to mount Meriwether Lewis’ collected specimen from the fall of 1804. The Lewis and Clark party had seen their first pronghorns on September 5 of that year, not far from present-day Niobrara, Neb., during the same two-week stretch in which they crossed that magical boundary from woodland to

JOAN PENNINGTON MAP

9 Dr. John Sibley describes Comanches’ pronghorn clothing like “fine Black Velvet”

JOHN SYME, THE WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

prairie and first encountered (and began collecting) a whole suite of Great Plains animals: bison, prairie dogs, coyotes, mule deer, magpies, etc. The pronghorn’s turn came on September 14 when William Clark, fruitlessly searching for a rumored volcano, shot what he described (rife with the explorers’ usual misspellings) as “a Buck Goat of this Countrey, about the height of the Grown Deer…verry actively made…his Norstral large, his eyes like a Sheep—he is more like the Antilope or Gazella of Africa than any other Species of Goat.” A few days later, finding “Antelopes…in every direction feeding on the hills and plains” but discovering them to be “extreemly shye and watchfull,” Meriwether Lewis penned a classic line about pronghorns. Hoping to collect a female for science, Lewis could only watch as the harem of seven he was stalking whirled away and vanished. Within minutes he spotted them some 3 miles distant. “I had this day an opportunity of witnessing the agility and

superior fleetness of this anamal, which was to me really astonishing,” he wrote in his journal. “When I beheld the rapidity of their flight along the ridge before me, it appeared reather the rappid flight of birds than the motion of quadrupeds.” It fell to George Ord, a naturalist who worked up many of the Lewis and Clark specimens, to publish a scientific description and propose a Linnaean binomial for the pronghorn in 1815. To his credit Ord recognized that despite their similarities to African antelopes and gazelles, pronghorns were unrelated to any existing family of animals then known. Antilocapridae, the family name he devised, and Antilocapra, the genus Ord fashioned for a creature combining the traits of both antelopes and goats, have stood ever since. In 1820 U.S. Army Major Stephen Long led a scientific party, including painter-illustrators Samuel Seymour and Titian Ramsay Peale, up the Platte River westward across the central Plains to the Rockies before returning eastward across the southern Plains. From his own animal drawings and a landscape sketch by Seymour, Peale rendered an oil painting that served as the American public’s introduction to what pronghorns looked like in the wild. In 1843 naturalist/painter John James Audubon—with The Birds of America under his belt— was on the Missouri River researching Western species toward a guide to North American quadrupeds. Audubon noted Pronghorns “often die from the severity of the winter weather” and “are caught in pens in the manner of Buffaloes and are dispatched with clubs” by Indian women. One of the 19th century’s best-selling books about the West was trader/naturalist Josiah Gregg’s Commerce of the Prairies, first published in 1844. In it Gregg made the following contemporary observations about the pronghorn: That species of gazelle known as the antelope is very numerous upon the high plains.…The antelope is most remarkable for its fleetness: not bounding like the deer, but skimming over the ground as though upon skates.…The flesh of the antelope is, like that of the goat, rather coarse and but little esteemed: Consequently, no great efforts are made to take them. Being as wild as fleet, the hunting of them is very difficult.

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Far more famous for his bird studies, Audubon noted on his 1843 trek up the Missouri that pronghorns “often die from the severity of the winter weather.” WILD WEST

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he commercial market hunt of wildlife in the West had been underway in earnest since at least the 1820s, but for almost three-quarters of a century it left pronghorns largely unaffected. Unlucky animals fell prey to hungry emigrants along the pioneer trails, foreign hunters on safari in the American Serengeti, or game hunters providing food to railroad crews on the Great Plains or miners in California. But not until bison numbers began to drop did pronghorns finally draw attention in the slaughter of Great Plains animals for profit. By the 1880s—with more than 5,000 professional hunters operating out West and Plains Indians both invested in the market hunt and hunting for subsistence on their new reservations—only two primary charismatic animals remained on the Great Plains in significant numbers: wild horses and pronghorns. Mustangers would round up the horses, selling them for use in various European

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wars or, by the 1920s, to the American pet industry as a source of dog food. The pronghorns were hit on multiple fronts. Homesteaders in western Kansas and Nebraska steadily tore up pronghorn habitat. Ranchers overstocked the Plains with cattle and sheep that undermined the vegetation on which pronghorns depended. The new barbed-wire fences went straight to the pronghorns’ evolutionary weakness. Pronghorns could get through loose or downed fences, but tight fences bounded them in, preventing the herds from migrating and from escaping winter blizzards. The historically bad winters of the 1880s devastated pronghorn populations. In the winter of 1882 homesteaders in the Texas Panhandle discovered and killed 1,500 pronghorns trapped against a fence. And then there was the market hunt. With everything else gone and a deathly silence descending across the Great Plains, market hunters finally turned their rifles on pronghorns. In places like the Black Hills hunters managed to slaughter the winter concentra-

IMAGES: DAN FLORES

With its large eyes, a pronghorn is ever watchful. If it does choose to run, there is no catching it.

Pronghorns cross the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park. Wyoming holds half of the estimated 700,000 pronghorns. Below: Ancient rock art depicts two pronghorns.

tions of pronghorns in two or three seasons. Plains hunters desperate to keep in business sold pronghorn meat to butchers for 2 or 3 cents a pound. Naturalist George Bird Grinnell alerted conservationist and future president Theodore Roosevelt to the impact of market hunting, but by the time Roosevelt became president in 1901, only about 13,000 pronghorns roamed the West. Naturalist Vernon Bailey, of the Bureau of Biological Survey, crossed the Texas Panhandle by train in 1899 and counted just 32 pronghorns. Rescuing them from almost certain extinction required pronghorn stocking in Yellowstone, on the national wildlife refuges Roosevelt created, and eventually on a scattering of state parks and national monuments on the Great Plains. Between 1925 and 1945 state and provincial game departments regularly captured pronghorns to recover the animals in places where they had disappeared. Today the North American pronghorn population hovers at around 700,000 animals, half of them in Wyoming, with another 1,200 in Mexico. A series of highway overpasses now allow some of them, including the Sublette herd, to continue their winter migrations. For a few years in the 1880s and ’90s the two ancient Americans, pronghorns and mustangs, held out almost alone on the vastness of onceteeming American prairies. In April 1884 a cowboy named George Wolfforth, rounding up strays for the Kidwell Ranch in west Texas’ Yel-

low House Canyon, rode his horse up over the rim of the canyon about where present-day Lubbock stands. The scene that unfolded seared into his memory. “As far as we could see,” he wrote, “there were antelope and mustangs grazing in the waving sea of grass,” the whole tableau “rendered misty and unreal by the mirage that hovered over the plains.” They were almost the sole surviving Pleistocene megafauna of the Great Plains. Many of their compatriots had died out in that mystifying extinction 10,000 years before, and almost all the rest had suffered extinction or extirpation across the previous 30 years. But even this moment was brief, a romantic flickering to hold in one’s mind. Wolfforth was right—that last vision really was a mirage. WW

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New Mexico historian Dan Flores has won National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum Wrangler awards for his Wild West articles on bison and coyotes. His book The Natural West: Environmental History in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains is recommended for further reading, along with American Pronghorn: Social Adaptations & the Ghosts of Predators Past, by John Byers; Prairie Ghost: Pronghorn and Human Interaction in Early America, by Richard McCabe, Bart O’Gara and Henry Reeves; and Antelope Country: Pronghorns, the Last Americans, by Valerius Geist. WILD WEST

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Ghost Towns

The jail dates from the early 20th century.

GLEESON, ARIZONA

I

n the latter half of the 19th century the threat posed by Chiricahua Apaches deterred all but the most daring prospectors in southeastern Arizona Territory. Cochise boasted his “Stronghold” in the Dragoon Mountains, while farther east Sulphur Springs Valley served as the Chiricahuas’ main corridor whenever they jumped the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation bound for Mexico. Turquoise was abundant in the hills southeast of the Dragoons, however, and proved irresistible. By 1878 venturesome prospectors had dubbed the area the Turquoise mining district. With the founding of Tombstone a dozen miles west in 1879, and the Apache threat somewhat abated, prospectors stampeded to the Turquoise district, though more in search of gold and

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AUGUST 2015

silver than turquoise. The March 6, 1882, Tombstone Epitaph reported no fewer than 10 working mines. Amid all this activity Turquoise camp was born. By the mid-1890s, however, the gold and silver grew scarce, and the district went into decline as men headed south to work the Bisbee copper mines. About this time Irish immigrant John Gleeson arrived and dug a little deeper, striking copper. He named his mine the Copper Belle. Others reopened mines and also found copper. As the town came back to life, it took the name Gleeson. Gleeson sold an interest in the Copper Belle to Eastern investors, who soon went bankrupt, and the Shannon Copper Co. of Clifton stepped in to lease and eventually take over the mine. The fortunes of the town fluctuated accordingly. With the construction of a 50-ton smelter, the population picked up, peaking at 500 by 1909. A new school

LEFT: © PATRICK LYNCH/ALAMY; ABOVE: TERRY HALDEN

A wealth of turquoise and copper built this Chiricahua country town By Terry Halden

Ghost Towns

ABOVE LEFT AND TOP: TERRY HALDEN; ABOVE RIGHT: © ARCO IMAGES GMBH/ALAMY

Only the walls remain of a hospital built for the town by Shannon Copper. Below: The last stand of a miner’s cabin.

hired Anne Fraser as its first schoolmarm, while Shannon Copper built a hospital that was accessible to all townspeople. The town also had its own bank. In 1909 the Southern Pacific built a depot in Gleeson after laying a spur to town from a connecting line between Cochise and Douglas. Gleeson already had a post office, but the June 21, 1909, Arizona Republican reported the Gleeson camp would become “a town” on July 1. Unlike the mines in Bisbee, which banned Mexicans from working underground, Gleeson hired many of them to work the mines. This caused resentment, especially after 1910 when the Mexican Revolution went into full swing. Weather also stirred things up. The Jan. 30, 1916, Tombstone Epitaph reported on the effects of one big snowstorm:

The Big Stope Hotel, well-known and oldest landmark of Gleeson, owned by Bob Stone, is no more, the big frame building having collapsed during the heavy snowstorm of last week. Twenty-one inches of snow fell.…The Big Stope was one of the first buildings in the camp and could not withstand the heavy weight of snow.

From 1921 on the ore petered out, and the population dropped to 60 by 1939, The railroad had already ceased operation. Today the remnants of the town stand along Gleeson Road 12 miles east of Tombstone. Look for Joe Bono’s general store, scattered ranch houses, and the walls of the hospital and school. The renovated jailhouse serves as a local museum, open by appointment. To learn more call 520609-3549 or visit gleesonarizona.com. WW AUGUST 2015

Centuries before white men dared tread in what is today’s Cochise County, Arizona, Indians dug for turquoise in the hills south of the Dragoon Mountains. They used the decorative stones in jewelry and art, for personal use and as trade items. The gems vary in color, but in general Arizona produces blue turquoise, while green turquoise predominates in Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico.

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69

Collections Bentonville’s Museum of Native American History holds one of the nation’s largest collections of North American Indian artifacts.

ARKANSAS MUSEUM SPANS AMERICAN INDIAN HISTORY The variety of items on display would make a Walmart manager jealous By Linda Wommack

B As settlement took hold, works such as pottery proliferated.

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entonville, Arkansas, is best known today as the corporate headquarters of Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, but this area was once the hunting grounds of the Osage Indians, and the town was in fact known as Osage from 1837 to 1843, when renamed to honor that champion of westward expansion Thomas Hart Benton. Bentonville is also home to the Museum of Native American History, which relates the saga of America’s earliest inhabitants with one of the nation’s largest collections of Indian artifacts. The exhibits are arranged in chronological order and cover five time periods—Paleo, Archaic, Woodland, Mississippian and Historic —making for an easy and informative stroll through time. The Paleo exhibit depicts early man’s migration to North America some 14,000 years ago. The Paleo people lived primarily on wild game, while small groups of the nomadic hunters took on woolly mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths and larger versions of present-day bison. They used the bones of such animals for AUGUST 2015

Human hair hangs from this Plains scalp shirt.

tools and the hides for clothing and shelter. Among the artifacts on display are fluted projectile points, tools and knives from Blackwater Draw near Clovis, N.M., one of the oldest archaeological sites in the American West. Another standout is the skeleton of a woolly mammoth, the shaggy, extinct ancestor

MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY, BENTONVILLE, ARK.

Collections

of the Asian elephant. The museum’s sizable specimen stands 12 feet tall, is more than 17 feet long and weighs 2,000 pounds. The Archaic exhibit transitions to weapons and tools in use some 10,000 years ago following the extinction of many large herd animals. The hunters and gatherers of this period lived in huts in semi-permanent villages, the hunters taking down game with atlatls (spear throwers), the gatherers collecting nuts, berries and roots. Here you’ll find representative spears as well as such foodprocessing implements as manos and metates (grinding stones and troughs). The Woodland period (1000 BC – AD 900) saw dramatically rising populations and the establishment of permanent villages. Out of necessity people in these settlements developed agricultural techniques, and such crops as maize, beans and squash became a substantial part of their diet. The era has also become known as the Mound Builder period, as varying cultures raised earthen mounds for ceremonial and burial purposes. Artifacts here include agricultural tools, ornate smoking pipes and the earliest bows and arrows, which came into use toward the end of the period. The Mississippian period (900–1450) saw further population growth, settlement and strides in agricultural technology. For example, Cahokia, a settlement across the river from present-day St. Louis, covered six miles and boasted a population estimated at more than 20,000. To protect their gains, villagers raised fortified walls and guard towers. Artifacts in this section are correspondingly domestic, including Caddo bottles, beaded jewelry and a rare Quapaw teapot. Look for a striking double-headed effigy portraying two dog heads atop a single body, one of only two known to exist in North America. Also on display are spears, nets, fishing knives and fishhooks made out of deer leg bones. Last in order, the Historic period covers the era that began some 500 years ago when Europeans arrived on the continent. Artifacts here trace the meeting of disparate cultures. Among the more interesting artifacts is a storage chest full of herbs and medicines that belonged to Moses Decorah, a Winnebago medicine man who toured with William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West. Also not to be missed are a magnificent Blackfeet headdress; an 1870s Southern Cheyenne scalp shirt bearing locks of actual human hair; and a stunning

The museum’s relics date from PaleoIndian times to the historic period.

array of Indian dance fans, festooned with peacock, pheasant, quail, turkey and eagle feathers. Navajo sand-painted rugs grace the walls. Little Bighorn aficionados are drawn to a display of tools, utensils and weapons fashioned from gun parts, barrel rings and other metal objects found in the aftermath of the June 1876 Montana Territory clash. Another fascinating item is a persimmon-handled ax found in Le Flore County, Okla., that depicts the possibly extinct ivorybilled woodpecker, whose bills Indians prized for decorative use. Museumgoers will find plenty of examples of Indian clothing, including buckskin shirts, dresses and moccasins, as well as beautiful accessories, including a mother-of-pearl and abalone shell pendant and an Arikara bracelet made of hammered copper from the Great Lakes region. The Museum of Native American History, at 202 SW O St. in Bentonville, is open Monday through Saturday year-round. At the door you’ll receive an audio wand to enhance your tour. For more information please call 479-273-2456 or visit monah.us. And, yes, Bentonville visitors can also tour the Walmart Museum [walmartmuseum .com], at 105 N. Main St. WW AUGUST 2015

This hand-carved stone speaks to the symbolic importance of birds to many Indian peoples.

Linda Wommack also writes books about her native Colorado. Her latest title is Historic Colorado Mansions & Castles (2014).

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71

Guns of the West

AN INDIAN AGENT AND A VIGILANTE EACH TOOK PRIDE IN A BULLDOG The double-action revolvers were both handy and powerful By George Layman

Bulldog owner Alonzo Prather was a constable and a vigilante.

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AUGUST 2015

came in .44 Webley caliber, but other calibers soon followed—.32, .38, .45 Webley and even a whopping .50. No matter the caliber, the compact revolver provided a fistful of repeating firepower. It didn’t take long for gunsmiths on the European continent and in the United States to replicate the Bulldog, and these revolvers became a sensation on the American frontier. Cheaper Belgian-made replicas (by 1900 more than 100 Belgian manufacturers were making Bulldogs) sold best worldwide, with those produced in the United States by Forehand & Wadsworth of Worcester, Mass., running a close second. Webley’s British Bull Dogs were superbly constructed with quality materials, while most of the cheaper variations did not stand up to continual, hard use. A .44-caliber British Bull Dog cost $3, which was a good buy when you consider that a customer could purchase six of them for the price ($18) of a Colt Model 1877 double action or a Peacemaker single action. British Bull Dogs were available with myriad personalized extras, such as having one’s name engraved on the frame or backstrap. Between 1875 and 1914 both the lawless and the law-abiding often selected Bulldogs as their weapon of choice. Larry Zeug, a Bulldog collector in Washington state, owns a pair of historically significant Belgian-made .44 Webley

The revolver stamped with the Prather name is fitted with the checkered walnut grips common to Belgian-made Bulldogs.

ALL IMAGES: COURTESY OF LARRY ZEUG , VIA GEORGE LAYMAN

T

he big-bore, double-action British Bull Dog revolver was perhaps the most well-received “smoke wagon” in the latter half of the 19th century. English arms manufacturer Philip Webley introduced the gun in the mid-1870s and generally used the two-word spelling, sometimes inserting a hyphen (Bull-Dog). Most of the revolver’s many imitators made it one word, and Bulldog has fallen into popular usage. The first Bulldogs

Guns of the West

Frederick C. Godfroy’s handy, beautifully engraved self-cocker is marked WESTERN BULL DOG atop the frame and is fitted with ivory grips. Right: GODFROY is engraved on the base of the butt. The agent to the Mescaleros likely carried this gun during the 1878 Lincoln County War.

Bulldogs with good proveBAD BULLDOG: On July 2, 1881, in Washington, D.C., spurned nance. One belonged to federal office-seeker Charles J. Guiteau used a Belgian-made a federal official in New .44-caliber Bulldog to mortally wound President James A. Garfield. Mexico Territory charged Guiteau’s Bulldog had checkered walnut grips and cost him $10, with maintaining law and cartridges and penknife included. Garfield died on September 19. order, the other to a Missouri constable who en1877 and 1878 catalogs. St. Louis-based E.C. Meagaged in activities that were extralegal at best. The first is a beautifully engraved, well-preserved cham, a large mail-order gun dealer that priexample marked WESTERN BULL DOG atop marily catered to clientele west of the Mississippi, the frame and fitted with ivory grips. GODFROY is carried the Western Bull Dog in its catalogs into scroll-engraved on the base of the butt. From 1876 the 1880s. Obviously Godfroy special ordered his to 1879 Frederick C. Godfroy (1828–85) was the with ivory grips and his surname scroll-engraved Indian agent at the Mescalero Apache Indian on the butt. Frederick Godfroy died on June 15, Agency in South Fork, Lincoln County, New Mex- 1885, in Plattsburg, New York. Zeug’s second documented Bulldog is a plain, ico Territory. He likely carried this nickel-finished example stamped with the hyBulldog in 1878 phenated BRITISH BULL-DOG logo in two rows during the re- atop the frame. Engraved on the rear of the backgional upheaval strap in an Algerian-style block-stamped font is known as the Lincoln COL. A.S. PRATHER. Alonzo Prather’s original County War. His wife deputy constable badge came with the revolver, ran the restaurant at nearby along with the 1988 book Bald Knobbers: Vigilantes Blazer’s Mill, site of an April 4, on the Ozarks Frontier, by Mary Hartman and Elmo 1878, shootout between Buck- Ingenthron. Prather was one of the 13 founders of shot Roberts and a number of Reg- the Bald Knobbers, which organized in the midulators, including William Bonney 1880s in Missouri’s Taney County and then spread (aka “Billy the Kid”). Godfroy, to adjacent counties. In 1880 Prather moved his though, was best known for re- family to Taney County, where he practiced law, solving an incident in which Apaches published a weekly newspaper and was at some had been wrongly accused of stealing point a deputy constable. He later served in the horses and hoarding them for sale in the Puerto Missouri Legislature. Indiana-born Prather and de Luna canyon. The horses actually belonged most of the other men in the vigilante group— to the Mescaleros, and Godfroy proved that the named for the grassy bald knob summits in the illegal horse trade in the area was the work of Ozarks—had sided with the North in the Civil War. white rustlers not Indians. Their intention was to eliminate the murderous The “Western” prefix to “Bull Dog” on the marauders that had plagued the area since the Godfroy gun appeared on Bulldogs produced by war. However, the Bald Knobbers, who sometimes several mail-order gun dealers, notably Turner & wore masks with horns, also faced accusations of Ross of Boston, which listed such revolvers in its criminal activity, including murder. The Bulldog stamped with the Prather name is fitted with the checkered walnut grips common to Belgian-made Bulldogs. Unlike the Colts, Remingtons, Smith & Wessons and other large-frame revolvers of the period, Bulldogs seldom bear markings or names linking them to particular individuals. Zeug was fortunate to have discovered the Godfroy and Prather revolvers. By having their names imprinted on these Bulldogs, these very different men unknowingly provided a service to the present-day gun collector. WW AUGUST 2015

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Reviews

MUST SEE, MUST READ Allan Pinkerton and his detectives—easy to spot in books, but shadowy figures on film By Johnny D. Boggs

BOOKS Mackay): Scottish historian Mackay attempts a balanced portrait of Pinkerton, but he glosses over the detective’s dealings with Jesse James, particularly the 1875 raid on the James family farm that maimed the outlaw’s mother and killed his stepbrother. Butch Cassidy gets even less attention, but Pinkerton had died in 1884, well before the Wild Bunch began robbing.

Thirty Years a Detective: A Thorough and Comprehensive Exposé of Criminal Practices of All Grades and Classes (1884, by Allan Pinkerton): Pinkerton wrote several books, ranging from The Expressman and the Detective (1874) and The Mollie Maguires and the Detectives (1877) to Strikers, Communists, Tramps and Detectives (1878) and Bank-robbers and the Detectives (1882). This one, neither memoir nor history, discusses criminals’ various methods. Its purpose, Pinkerton writes, is to “convince the dishonestly inclined of the utter futility of the success of criminal actions.” A Cowboy Detective (1912, by Charlie Siringo): For 22 years, beginning in 1886, Texas-born cowboy turned agent Charles Angelo Siringo worked for Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, but you won’t 74

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find Pinkerton in this book. The agency sued, delaying publication for two years and forcing the author to delete all Pinkerton references. In 1915 Siringo published Two Evil Isms, Pinkertonism and AUGUST 2015

Anarchism, which the agency successfully suppressed, though it couldn’t get Siringo extradited to Chicago for criminal libel. Allan Pinkerton: The First Private Eye (1996, by James

The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War (1996, by Edwin C. Fishel): A comprehensive analysis of the Army of the Potomac’s undercover operations, zeroing in on the Eastern front from 1861–63. It goes beyond Pinkerton’s exaggerated estimations of enemy forces and shows the complexity of both Union and Confederate spy operations. The thorough author is a former chief intelligence reporter for the National Security Agency.

Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend (2000, by Ted P. Yeatman): Named a Spur Award finalist by the Western Writers of America, this is among the most thorough extant biographies of the outlaw brothers and includes a detailed review of Allan Pinkerton (who “discovered his life’s work when he accidentally stumbled upon and exposed a counterfeiting operation” near Dundee, Ill., in 1847), his operatives and the raid on the James family farm.

MOVIES Love Me Tender (1956, on DVD, 20th Century Fox): In his acting debut, a serious Western, Elvis Presley plays one of the Reno brothers— but not history’s Reno brothers. His Confederate soldier brothers have robbed a Union payroll train, only to learn the war had ended, so now they are wanted criminals (not a unique plot device in B Westerns). A Pinkerton agent

N EW

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Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS

named, of all names, Siringo (Robert Middleton) pursues them. Antics and songs ensue. Not as good as Flaming Star, but maybe better than Charro. The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972, on DVD, Universal): Director Philip Kaufman’s offbeat, quirky look at Jesse James (Robert Duvall), Cole Younger (Cliff Robertson) and their ill-fated bank robbery attempt in Minnesota (though filmed in Oregon). Some of the movie works, but much doesn’t, including the portrayal—an attempt at comic relief—of Pinkerton (Dana Elcar) and his agents as idiots. The Molly Maguires (1970, on DVD, Paramount/Warner Archive): In northeastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite country during the mid-1870s detective James McParlan (Richard Harris) infiltrates the title group, a secret society of Irish coal miners/anarchists led by “Black Jack” Kehoe (Sean Connery) who are sabotaging a coal mine to protest horrible working conditions. Based on actual events, the film starts slowly, remains grim and won’t appeal 76

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The Tall Target (1951, on DVD, Warner Archive): Set almost entirely on a train, this unheralded gem ranks among the best film noirs by director Anthony Mann (Winchester ‘73, The Naked Spur) and showcases one of Dick Powell’s finest tough-guy roles, as a New York cop seeking to thwart a plot to assassinate President-elect Lincoln in Baltimore. James Harrison has a bit part as Allan Pinkerton.

to all, but stick with it. Producer/director Martin Ritt used a Pinkerton agent, albeit in a much smaller role, again in the Oscarwinning Norma Rae (1979), which chronicled labor union activities in the 20th century. American Outlaws (2001, on DVD, Warner Home Video): For historical purists or Western fans, this is one of the worst movies about the James-Younger Gang AUGUST 2015

—and remember, that list includes Hell’s Crossroads (1957) and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966). Starring Colin Farrell as Jesse James, it is practically unwatchable, except when Timothy Dalton is onscreen. Dalton steals every scene he’s in (not hard to do here) as Allan Pinkerton, and he’s probably the only actor ever to give the Glasgow-born Pinkerton a Scottish accent.

Charles M. Russell: Photographing the Legend, by Larry Len Peterson, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2014, $60 Charles Marion Russell (1864–1926) was born into privilege in bustling St. Louis, Mo., though from an early age he wished instead he’d grown up on the back of a cow pony in the frontier West. So it was in 1880 the 16-year-old boarded a train bound for Helena, Mont., and spent a summer as a hand on various ranches. The next year he bought his first horse—a pinto he named Monte—and in 1882 he returned to Montana for keeps. While pursuing work as a cowhand, Russell also honed his natural artistic ability by capturing the vanishing cowboy life in romantic illustrations and in wax, clay and, later, bronze sculptures. He got commissions from local merchants and ranch owners, and in 1893 he retired from cowboying to pursue art full time. But it wasn’t until after his marriage to Nancy Cooper in 1896 that he became the internationally known cowboy artist Charlie Russell. She was his business

manager and relentlessly marketed both Charlie’s work and the artist himself through the burgeoning medium of photography. What better medium to relate a life lived in pictures than a biography filled with pictures? Montanabased author and art collector Larry Len Peterson, a recipient of two Western Heritage Awards for prior art books, follows Russell from childhood to death—and beyond into posthumous legend—with photographs from every stage of his life. Peterson recognizes Nancy’s influence, and his book is thus a dual biography of sorts. Peterson dedicates the book to Russell biographer Brian Dippie, who penned the brief but insightful foreword. “Russell was good copy,” Dippie notes, “and Nancy was not wrong in putting his face on his art. After all, his appearance mirrored his perspective. He posed, but he was no poseur.” Thus the cowboy artist became inseparable from his art—indeed, a part of its appeal and a factor in its value. (His works now fetch in the millions of dollars at auction.) As Charlie gained fame, Nancy bent ears

and pulled strings to have him photographed in company with other contemporary celebrities, including William S. Hart, John Ford, Harry Carey Sr., Douglas Fairbanks, Will Rogers and Jack Dempsey. While many of those photos were snapshots, Nancy also arranged posing sessions for Charlie with renowned portrait photographers of the era, including Edward S. Curtis, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Roland Reed and Dorothea Lange.

Peterson sheepishly admits his own infatuation with Russell’s image. “It is a bad business to fall in love with dead people, yet biographers often do that. Many of us have fallen for the cowboy artist.” Here he presents 344 images from Russell’s life and time, tracing Charlie’s career and path to celebrity in words, while transporting us to specific moments in pictures. “Charlie and Nancy understood that photography had the uncanny ability to jar

the memory and bring places and people back to life—just what Charlie achieved in his art,” Peterson explains. “What has been caught on film is captured forever. Photographs remember little things about Charlie’s life long after they have been snapped, his life has passed, and copious words have been written.” —Dave Lauterborn A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions, by Elias Castillo, Craven Street Books, Fresno, Calif., 2015, $19.95 In the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol, California is represented by two prominent figures: President Ronald Reagan and Father Junípero Serra. The latter is honored for setting the standard for the 21 Spanish missions that helped establish civilization in the future state, in which Franciscan friars and the Indian “neophytes” they converted tilled the land in pastoral harmony. Or so, for centuries, we have been told. Serra’s place in the Capitol comes under some dispute in A Cross of Thorns,

in which journalist and three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee Elias Abundis Castillo unearths evidence in Serra’s own time describing the nightmarish realities of the missions. Even in the eyes of visitors from other colonial powers, such as Russia, France and Britain, the missions were, in practice, feudal fiefdoms on which the Chumash and countless other tribes served as virtual slaves. Pope Francis— or St. Francis of Assisi, for that matter—would have difficulty finding the principles by which they lived in the attitudes of the Spanish Franciscans, who regarded the Indians as subhuman, their lives in this world being of no concern against the cleansing of their souls in preparation for the next. After

four Indians tried to flee Mission Carmel, Friar Serra sent a letter on July 31, 1775, to military commander Fernando de Rivera y

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Moncada, requesting he arrange to have his recaptured “lost sheep” flogged two or three times, adding, “If your Lordship does not have shackles, with your permission they may be sent from here.” Political authorities frequently challenged mission practices, but the Franciscans had the Roman Catholic Church and the power of excommunication behind them, as well as control of vast tracts of arable land and the foodstuffs it produced. From their establishment in 1769 they used a combination of torture and conversion AUGUST 2015

to eradicate all vestiges of Indian tradition, language and culture. That state of affairs finally changed in 1821 when the newly independent Mexican Republic brought the mission system to an end. As the author points out in his epilogue, however, the damage to California’s Indian heritage had been done. The Indians, newly freed but devoid of education or skills, continued to be degraded and victimized by the Mexicans and, from 1848 onward, by Americans, whose sympathy for their WILD WEST

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plight, if any, took a perpetual back seat to the discovery of gold. The author favors restoration of the surviving missions for their historic value, but he believes their preservation should include more accurate descriptions of their role as “death camps.” —Jon Guttman

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John Mullan: The Tumultuous Life of a Western Road Builder, by Keith C. Petersen, Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2014, $32.95 Sections of I-90, the longest U.S. interstate highway, follow what was once called Mullan Road or sometimes Trail (though never by John Mullan). In 1858–62 the “Road Builder” pushed ahead like a bulldozer at a time when, of course, there were no bulldozers and most of the divided nation had no interest in his link between Fort Benton (in what would become Montana) and Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory. By the mid-19th century Americans had about given up on the idea of a Northwest Passage, but Mullan built the closest thing to such a passage. Fort Benton was at the head of navigable waters for

riverboats on the Upper Missouri, and the Walla Walla River is a tributary of the Columbia. “When we reached Benton,” Mullan recalled, “we

had completed a route over which a loaded wagon could journey a distance of 624 miles, crossing three mountain ranges and connecting with navigable waterways, reaching from ocean to ocean.” That was easier said than done in the 1860s, as bridges often collapsed and trees regularly fell across the roadway. Though Mullan Road was constructed for military use, the Army only traversed it once end to end. Wagon-bound emigrants found the route tough going and used it sparingly, avoiding it altogether after 1867. The middle section across the mountains was daunting and risky, but it’s wrong to think of Mullan Road as a failure. “The military, like civilians,” notes Idaho historian Keith AUGUST 2015

Peterson, “made extensive use of its western and eastern portions as north and south passages.” In the 1860s traffic moved both ways on the road as would-be prospectors flooded to the goldfields in future Idaho and Montana. Missoula, Mont., owes its start to a favorable location on the road. General William Tecumseh Sherman used the old road in 1877 and wanted it reopened for travel, so in 1879 soldiers began clearing timber, constructing bridges and smoothing the grade. After several summers of such work the road, Peterson writes, “for the first time, became the wagon highway that Mullan had originally intended.” The road took a hit from the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad, but with automobile enthusiasts leading the way, Mullan’s route became a thoroughfare once again in the 20th century not long after Mullan’s death in 1909. The road, rightfully, is what drives this excellent biography, but Peterson presents a complete portrait of Virginia-born Mullan, a driven man who could rub politicians the wrong way. —Editor WILD WEST

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CRATER LAKE, OREGON

Born out of fearsome violence, Crater Lake is among the most serene spots in the Pacific Northwest. At 1,943 feet it is the deepest lake in the Western Hemisphere. It fills the caldera of an ancient volcano that blew its top some 7,700 years ago in shattering explosions witnessed by ancestors of the local Klamath people. Later eruptions created Wizard Island, a 755-foot cinder cone on the west end of the lake (above center). In 1886 geologist Clarence Dutton led a survey team onto the lake (inset) with piano wire and lead weights to measure its depth. Today visitors to the national park [nps.gov/crla] can hike, tour 33-mile Rim Drive or even venture onto the lake in one of the park’s tour boats. WW

PHOTOGRAPHY BY INGE JOHNSSON, INGE-JOHNSSON.ARTISTWEBSITES.COM; INSET: OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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