THE AMERICAN FRONTIER
Geronimo On the run but ready to fight Justice in tombstone Ghosts of sand creek DEadly DOUBTFUL CANYON
OCTOBER 2015
Features
28
GERONIMO’S GUNFIGHTER ATTITUDE By Louis Kraft
His survival skills had kept him alive, but by the 1880s the Apache leader was a wanted man and quick to reach for a gun in a standoff
38
CERTAIN DEATH IN DOUBTFUL CANYON By Doug Hocking and Carol A. Markstrom
Blessed with good graze and water, this Arizona–New Mexico pass drew travelers of every stripe—and was the scene of much violence
46
Apache followers, old and young, pose in camp before Geronimo’s March 1886 surrender to General George Crook.
54
HEART OF LIGHTNESS By John Koster
Kindhearted frontier guide Henri Chatillon introduced Francis Parkman to the West and the Lakota Sioux, forever changing the historian’s outlook
60
JUSTICE IN TOMBSTONE
GHOSTS BUSTED AT SAND CREEK
Justice of the Peace Wells Spicer judged the Earps and Doc Holliday at the post-gunfight hearing and also confronted Arizona Territory townsite manipulators
Whether one deems the tragic 1864 clash a battle or a massacre, reported ghosts on-site may be haunting the wrong spot
ON THE COVER Howard Terpning’s Legend of Geronimo captures the defiant spirit of the Apache leader, who sometimes faced down but often simply eluded his pursuers in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico. (© Howard Terpning, © The Greenwich Workshop Inc., Seymour, Conn.)
By Bob Palmquist
By Gregory Michno
TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS
Departments
4 22 6 LETTERS 24 ROUNDUP 8 14 INTERVIEW EDITOR’S LETTER
WESTERN ENTERPRISE By Jim Pettengill
The Cow-Boy Band brought its brassy mix of music to places like Dodge City, Kan., and Pueblo, Colo.
ART OF THE WEST By Johnny D. Boggs
Walter Ufer flourished in the artist colony of Taos, N.M., capturing the landscape and everyday Indian life
26 70 INDIAN GHOST 16 WESTERNERS
“Yellowstone Vic” Smith wields his Winchester
18 GUNFIGHTERS AND LAWMEN By Doug Dukes
Austin City Marshal Ben Thompson came to collect a fugitive but arrested a female deputy
20
LIFE
TOWNS
When Chiefs Smoke and Bull Bear split forces, their people became the Oglalas (Scatter One’s Own)
One of five known black settlements in Colorado, The Dry sprang from the dust, then blew in the wind
By John Koster
By Kellen Cutsforth
72
COLLECTIONS
74
GUNS OF THE WEST
76
REVIEWS
By Linda Wommack King Ranch welcomes visitors to its
sizable spread and also to its museum in Kingsville, Texas
By Jerry D. Powell When John Colt stood trial for a murder he did commit, brother Sam put on a lively gun demonstration on his behalf
Bob Palmquist profiles the best books and movies about Tombstone and Justice Wells Spicer. Plus reviews of recent books and the 2015 Western Slow West
PIONEERS AND SETTLERS
By Deanna Lee Kerr Lucy Stoddard made plenty of dough
baking pies in Hangtown, Calif., before and after her divorce
80
GO WEST Blazing trails in the Sonoran Desert
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Editor’s Letter
GERONIMO THE APACHE GUNFIGHTER?
I
THE WELL-KNOWN CHIRICAHUA APACHE GERONIMO
4 WILD WEST
OCTOBER 2015
With other headwear, a black hat perhaps, Geronimo might have passed for an Old West gunslinger.
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.
TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS
n two famous images of Geronimo he holds a gun. Think A. Frank Randall’s 1884 photo of the legendary Chiricahua Apache kneeling with Springfield carbine in hand at the San Carlos reservation in Arizona Territory, and C.S. Fly’s 1886 photo of Geronimo and three followers posing with rifles at Cañon de los Embudos in Sonora, Mexico. Later, as a prisoner at Fort Sill in Oklahoma Territory, Geronimo posed for several William E. Irwin shots in which the leathery warrior wears a buckskin shirt and grips a six-shooter. Those less familiar images call to mind an aged Wild West gunfighter, except for that crazy horned headwear and the fact many gunfighters died young. Billy the Kid was shot down in his early 20s, Wild Bill Hickok and Jesse James were assassinated in their 30s, and John Wesley Hardin made it past 40 only because he did so much prison time. Geronimo lived to be 79 and did not die by the gun, but is it far-fetched to suggest he lived much of his life as a gunfighter? In this second issue of the redesigned Wild West (you noticed, right?) Louis Kraft suggests in his cover story that Geronimo at times had a gunfighter attitude. Like Jesse he stole from his enemies, like Billy he killed for revenge, like Wild Bill he had a deadly reputation, and like John Wesley he was someone best to avoid to ensure good health. Geronimo was often a wanted man on the run—that is, the U.S. Army sought to capture him and sentence him to life on a reservation or worse. What’s more, Geronimo had at least one genuine showdown. It happened in Mexico, and his opponent on Aug. 28, 1886, was a self-assured Sonoran with a six-shooter. It wasn’t exactly a High Noon confrontation— the real West had few of those. It was, however, intense. Kraft writes, “Although [Geronimo] knew nothing of gunslingers LIVED TO BE 79 on the American frontier and didn’t sit AND DID NOT DIE BY THE GUN, with his back to a saloon wall, he had become their brethren.” BUT IS IT FAR-FETCHED TO Paul A. Hutton, whose The Lords SUGGEST HE LIVED MUCH OF of Apacheria is due out next year, calls HIS LIFE AS A GUNFIGHTER? Geronimo the best-known American Indian leader, though “certainly no grand patriot chief like Pontiac, Tecumseh or Sitting Bull.” But was he anything like Billy the Kid? “The idea of Geronimo as a gunfighter is an interesting one,” Hutton says. “Politicos like President Grover Cleveland thought of Geronimo as an outlaw, not a war leader. General Phil Sheridan wanted to turn him over to the Arizona Territory courts in 1886 so they could hang him, but General Nelson Miles saved him by shipping him off to Florida. He certainly was a killer and lived a life of unrelenting violence. Much of this has been excused as acts of war by historians, but many of the killings really crossed over the line of even those vicious times (although my book is replete with examples of both American and Mexican atrocities against the Apaches).” Makes one wonder how Hollywood churned out Billy the Kid vs. Dracula but never got around to Billy the Kid vs. Geronimo. WW
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Former sheriff Ned Wynkoop strikes a jaunty pose in 1861.
VISIT OUR WEBSITE FOR ONLINE EXTRAS WildWestMag.com Extended Interview With Larry Ball “Tom Horn’s years as an operative for Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency (circa 1890–93) were both a success and a failure,” says the Horn biographer.
More About Artist Walter Ufer “Ufer was able to develop his recognizable style by combining his classical 19th-century German training with American realism,” New Mexico artist William Haskell says of Ufer.
When Wynkoop Was Sheriff Louis Kraft, who profiles Geronimo in this issue, has also written books and articles about the man who most objected to the Sand Creek attack—Ned Wynkoop. This award-winning article covers Wynkoop’s earlier career.
APACHE TRIAL
The Apache Kid escaped on the way to Yuma Territorial Prison and eluded all pursuers. His fate remains a mystery.
WARNER’S THOUGHTFUL LETTER POINTS OUT THE COMPLEXITY OF OUR LEGAL SYSTEM, ESPECIALLY IN THE WAY IT DEALT WITH INDIAN CRIMES IN THE 19TH CENTURY. WARNER IS INCORRECT WHEN HE SAYS KID AND HIS FELLOW SCOUTS WERE NOT TRIED BY THE MILITARY 6 WILD WEST
OCTOBER 2015
I read with interest the “Legend of the Apache Kid,” by Paul Andrew Hutton, in the December 2014 issue. It is sometimes strange how research can come up with different versions of the same incident. I am referring to the legal action after Al Sieber was shot in the leg and blamed Apache Kid. My research indicates he and his scouts did not have a military court-martial, were not sentenced to death, did not have their sentences mitigated, were not sent to a military prison at Alcatraz Island and were not later released by the secretary of war. According to my past research Apache Kid and his scouts were arrested and stood trial before federal Judge W.W. Porter in the June 1888 term of U.S. District Court at Globe, Arizona Territory. Sieber, still on crutches, testified against them. They were convicted and sentenced to 10 years in an Ohio state prison under contract with the U.S. government. Jay L. Warner Mountainair, N.M.
Paul Andrew Hutton responds: Warner’s thoughtful letter points out the complexity of our legal system, especially in the way it dealt with Indian crimes in the 19th century. Warner is incorrect when he says Kid and his fellow scouts were not tried by the military—they indeed were and were sentenced and then reprieved just as I briefly outlined in my article. The case that has Warner confused was the trial of the San Carlos Apaches who broke out with Kid and his scouts. They were indeed tried in federal court and sentenced to long terms in the Ohio prison. Efforts by humanitarian lawyers secured their release, but they were promptly rearrested and tried in territorial court and sentenced to death. That ruling led to Kid being retried in territorial court after his release from Alcatraz and sentenced with his fellow scouts to Yuma Territorial Prison. They of course escaped on the way to Yuma. A fine book on this complex topic is Clare V. McKanna Jr.’s White Justice in Arizona (2005).
CIMARRON KID In regard to “Two Robbers Thrown a Deadly Curve When Train Stopped
ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON, NO. B2F39
Letters
THE MULLAN ROAD CARVING A PASSAGE THROUGH THE FRONTIER NORTHWEST , 1859–62
EDITED BY PAUL D. MCDERMOTT, ET. AL.
at Baxter’s Curve,” by Les Kruger [Gunfighters and Lawmen, April 2015]: Your readers might be interested in Art Soule’s The Tall Texan (1995), the first and only biography of Ben Kilpatrick, as well as Jeffrey Burton’s The Deadliest Outlaws (2009), a meticulously researched account of banditry in the Southwest. One correction: Kruger mentioned the arrest of Ben Kilpatrick and Ole Hobek’s 11-year-old accomplice, who had “referred to himself as the ‘Cimarron Kid.’” That fable, which got going in the early 1970s, is the work of the self-named Harry Longabaugh Jr., a fantast and prankster who claimed to be not only the son of the Sundance Kid but also the very same Cimarron Kid. A modern-day Jack Crabb, he traveled the West giving library lectures and newspaper interviews about his supposed exploits as a Wild Bunch member. Longabaugh Jr.’s real life is a mystery, except that he was known at a Fresno, Calif., drunk tank. He died in 1972, but his pranks live on. Daniel Buck Washington, D.C.
Les Kruger responds, “I’m usually able to sift out false items, but that one is repeated in so many sources.” In her 2009 biography of the Sundance Kid, Donna Ernst writes that Longabaugh Jr.’s “photograph bears much too strong a family resemblance to Sundance for his story to be totally discredited.” She adds: “If he wasn’t
Sundance’s son, maybe he was an unknown son of Sundance’s brother, Elwood, or a son of Sundance’s cousin, Seth Longabaugh. Whoever he was, our family believes he was a Longabaugh.” Send letters to Wild West, 19300 Promenade Dr., Leesburg, VA 20176 or by e-mail to wildwest@ historynet.com.
Mullan’s famed 624-mile military wagon road provided a route through the western wilderness, from Fort Benton in the future state of Montana, to Fort Walla Walla in Washington Territory. ÓÈÊ«>}iÃÊUÊ°xÊÝÊ°xÊUÊ«>«iÀ]ÊfÎn°ää For a FREE catalog of our western books contact:
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Chief of Thieves by award-winning author Steven W. Kohlhagen
‘BIG IRON’ BALLAD As I read “Gunfights of the Arizona Rangers,” by Bill O’Neal in an old issue [ June 2013], I remembered a song from an album by Marty Robbins. The album, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, came out in 1959 and is considered by most music critics the best album ever produced dealing with the American West. Included are “El Paso,” “The Hanging Tree,” “Cool Water” and a ballad about an Arizona Ranger tracking down and killing an outlaw named Texas Red. The latter is titled “Big Iron” and reminded me of the real-life exploits of famed Arizona Ranger Sergeant Harry Wheeler, one of the major characters in Bill’s article. David T. Green Houston, Texas
Historical fiction, based on a factual group of 1862 con artists who successfully stole millions of today’s dollars, then became cattle ranchers in Oregon and Wyoming, and ultimately met their respective fates at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. “I’ve been looking forward to Steve Kohlhagen’s next book and am not disappointed!” ––Bernard Cornwell Sequel to Where They Bury You, winner of “Best Western of 2014” National Indie Excellence Book Awards
~ Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble ~
Roundup
In Tombstone (1993), Val Kilmer’s Holliday quotes the real Doc when he says, “You’re a daisy if you do!”
TOP 7 QUOTES FROM THE SPICER HEARING 1 2
WWHA’s 2015 Awards At its eighth annual Roundup, held this July in Amarillo, Texas, the Wild West History Association [wildwesthistory. org] presented its 2015 Six-Shooter Awards. Best book went to Larry Ball (see P. 14) for his biography Tom Horn in Life and Legend, while Drew Gomber and Wild West contributor Paul Hutton (pictured)
“Before they [the Earps and Holliday] told me [of their involvement in the attempted Benson stage robbery and murder], I made a sacred promise not to tell it and never would have told it had I not been put on the stand.” Ike Clanton in spurious testimony.
3 4 5 6 7
“Yes, we will pay rewards for them, dead or alive.” Wells Fargo official L.F. Rowell wrote this in a June 7, 1881, telegram, regarding those who had attacked the Benson stage in March 1881. “I considered the Clanton party under arrest, but I doubt whether they considered themselves under arrest.” Sheriff John Harris Behan. “I said to them [the Cowboys], ‘I want you to go up to the sheriff’s office and lay off your arms.’ Frank McLaury rather demurred.” Sheriff Behan. “You sons of bitches, you have been looking for a fight, and now you can have it!” One of the Earp party, most often attributed to Wyatt. Frank McLaury: “I’ve got you now!” Holliday: “Blaze away. You’re a daisy if you do!” This daisy of an exchange appeared in the Tombstone Nugget the next day and as something similar in the movie Tombstone. —Bob Palmquist
8 WILD WEST
OCTOBER 2015
were honored for their outstanding contributions to Wild West history. Best magazine article awards went to Jeff Broome (“Collateral Damage: Sand Creek and the Fletcher Family Indian Captivity Story,” Denver Westerners Roundup), Ann Kirschner and Paul Cool. Ron Woggon received the President’s Silver Star Award.
TOP: ©AFARCHIVE/ALAMY
“The fight has commenced. Go to fighting or get away.” Wyatt Earp testified having said this to Ike Clanton when charged by Ike at the outset of the 1881 Tombstone, Arizona Territory, gunfight near the O.K. Corral.
Roundup
WEST WORDS ‘The story of Wyatt Earp, or any portion of it, if it is to be written, must be written, only, by Wyatt Earp’
—Earp wrote this on May 24, 1927, to Walter Noble Burns’ editor Harry Maule at Doubleday, Page & Co. Regardless, Burns’ unauthorized Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest, in which he called Wyatt “The Lion of Tombstone,” was published that December.
Deadlier Than Tombstone
TOP: WORLD HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE
The deadliest gunfight in Arizona did not play out near Tombstone’s O.K. Corral in 1881 but in Rattlesnake Canyon in the Galiuro Mountains on Feb. 10, 1918. It pitted the reclusive Power family against lawmen after Thomas Jefferson (“Jeff”) Power defied the Selective Service Act of 1917 by keeping his two draft-age sons, Tom and John, at home. Jeff and three of the four officers were killed in the explosive confrontation. The story has been told in Wild West
(Gunfighters and Lawmen, by Thomas Cobb, October 2012) and elsewhere. Now director Cameron Trejo presents the documentary Power’s War. “Historian Heidi Osselaer and I spent two years researching the history surrounding the shootout and hiked to the still-standing Power’s Garden and Power’s Cabin,” says Trejo. The film, which is narrated by John Slattery (Mad Men), has screened in more than 15 theaters. For information on the forthcoming DVD, visit powerswar.com or facebook.com/PowersWar.
Captain Lewis’ Pipe Tomahawk Cowan’s Auctions [cowanauctions. com] recently sold a presentation-style pipe tomahawk reportedly carried by Captain Meriwether Lewis during the Corps of Discovery’s 1804–06 trek to and from the Pacific Ocean. “The Lewis tomahawk is quite simply an icon of American history,” says Wes Cowan, frequent guest on PBS’ Antiques Roadshow and host of PBS’ History Detectives. The sale price and identity of the buyer remain confidential, although the new owner eventually plans to donate this national treasure to an institution for safekeeping. Lewis (1774–1809) used the finely crafted tomahawk, loaded with war-peace symbolism, as a tool of diplomacy with the Indians he and Captain William Clark encountered on their epic journey. It was among Lewis’ possessions at his death in 1809 at age 35.
OCTOBER 2015
WILD WEST 9
Roundup
Colts and Winchesters As they did in the Wild West, Colt revolvers and Winchester rifles performed well at Cowan’s and Little John’s [littlejohns.cowanauctions.com] Spring Historic Firearms and Early Militaria Auction in Cincinnati last May. The top lot was an original Colt Texas Paterson revolver (see Guns of the West, P. 74), which hammered down at $205,625. A factory-engraved Colt Single Action Army revolver (pictured) went for $37,600. Among the Winchesters sold was a Model 1876 deluxe lever-action rifle for $44,000 and a factory-engraved Model 1866 for $23,500. A Civil War factory-inscribed Henry rifle brought $58,750.
Twain’s Territorial The Territorial Enterprise, the Nevada newspaper Mark Twain wrote for in the early 1860s, is back in business as a monthly print and online publication [territorialenterprise.com]. Founded in Genoa, Nev., in 1858, it is the state’s oldest printed newspaper. It was based in Virginia City when Twain cut his journalistic teeth. Capitol Publishing Group in Jefferson, Mo., is spearheading this latest effort to resurrect Twain’s old rag, which will be based in Carson City, Nev. Besides solid news reporting, the paper spins tall tales in true Twainian fashion.
Russell-ing up Funds The Russell, the annual fundraising exhibition and sale to benefit the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana, raised a record $7.8 million this spring via three live auctions and other events. The March 21 Russell live auction featured 157 lots, including nine works by Charles M. Russell. The top sellers were his paintings Scouting Party (1900), which sold for $950,000, and For Supremacy (1895), which fetched $1.5 million, the highest price yet paid for an artwork at the auction. The top seller at the March 20 First Strike live auction was Randy Van Beek’s painting Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Camped on the Big Hole River, which brought $14,000. For lot details and sales results visit cmrussell.org/the-russell. 10 WILD WEST
OCTOBER 2015
FAM OUS L AS T WORD S
‘Boys, I am killed’
—Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones said these words during a gunfight with Mexican outlaws near San Elizario, Texas, on June 30, 1893. Moments before one of his men had asked Jones if he was hurt, and he had replied, “Yes, shot all to pieces.”
Chapter 11: The Gun Maker The 179-year-old gun maker Colt Defense (which in 2013 acquired Colt’s Manufacturing to reunite the military and civilian firearm businesses) filed for bankruptcy in June, though it remains in business with plans to restructure. Back in 1842 founder Samuel Colt (1814–62) declared bankruptcy and closed his Paterson, N.J., plant after six years. But in 1847, buoyed by the Walker six-shooter, he mounted a comeback in Connecticut. Since Colt’s death the company [colt.com] has repeatedly been sold and restructured.
See You Later, Michael Blake
Michael Blake, 69, who adapted his own 1988 novel into the Oscar-winning screenplay of the 1990 film Dances With Wolves, died on May 2 after a long illness. The film, which also won a best picture Academy Award, stars Kevin Costner as a Civil War veteran who heads to the frontier, where he encounters Lakotas and a white woman adopted by the Sioux. Blake also wrote a sequel, The Holy Road (2001). The author named his son Quanah and daughters Monahsetah and Lozen after historical American Indians.
A Classic Tribute of Heroic Stature y Masterfull6 sized at 1 h inches hig
COLD-CAST BRONZE MASTERPIECE SCULPTURE Stirring, fully-dimensional Duke portrait gure sculpted in cold-cast bronze atop his horse Dollor Remarkable sculptural detail captures Duke’s expression and riding stance Duke holds real leather reins, adding to the realism of the presentation Mahogany-nished base; includes handnumbered Certicate of Authenticity
John Wayne: A Grand Western Icon From ancient Greek statues to Frederic Remington’s visions of the Old West, some of the world’s greatest heroic sculptures have been crafted in bronze. Now the John Wayne Cold-Cast Bronze Masterpiece Sculpture pays tribute to an all-American hero in this rich medium. Limited to only 5,000 worldwide this gallary-quality work of art portrays Duke on horseback. Fittingly, considering Duke’s stature, stands 16 inches high, making it the largest cold-cast bronze sculpture ever offered by The Bradford Exchange.
Limited to just 5,000 sculptures!
Shown much smaller than actual size of 16 inches high
An exceptional value; satisfaction guaranteed. Strong demand is likely for this limited-edition tribute, so act now to acquire the John Wayne Cold-Cast Bronze Masterpiece Sculpture at issue price, payable in four interest-free installments of $37.49 for a total of $149.95*. Your purchase is risk-free, backed by our 365-day money-back guarantee. Send no money now. Just return the Reservation Application today! JOHN WAYNE, , DUKE and THE DUKE are the exclusive trademarks of, and the John Wayne name, image, likeness and voice, and all other related indicia are the intellectual property of, John Wayne Enterprises, LLC. ©2014. All rights reserved. www.johnwayne.com
RESERVATION APPLICATION
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*Plus $17.99 shipping and service. Limited-edition presentation restricted to 5,000 issues. Please allow 4-8 weeks after initial payment for shipment. Sales subject to product availability and order acceptance.
Roundup
EVENTS OF THE WEST
Autry Acquisitions Recent additions to the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, including 49 paintings and sculptures (including Raven Transformation Mask, by Tlingit artist Preston Singletary, above) from the collection of Loretta and Victor Kaufman, will be featured in an exhibition that runs Aug. 8, 2015–July 9, 2017. Call 323-667-2000 or visit theautry.org.
Nevada’s Virginia City
Three Historic Trails
“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 19th-century mining boomtown. Call 775-847-0975 or visit fourthwardschool.org.
The All Trails Lead to Santa Fe conference, which centers on the Camino Real, Santa Fe and Old Spanish trails, meets at the Santa Fe Convention Center Sept. 17–20. Call 505920-4970 or visit 3trailsconferencesantafe.org.
Civil War in New Mexico
Great American Adventures is hosting two new historic horseback rides—“Great Train Robbery” (Aug. 16–21) and “Billy the Kid’s Regulator” (Oct. 4-9). Visit great-american-adventures.com.
Photos and a U.S. flag from the March 1862 Battle of Glorieta Pass are part of the exhibition “Fading Memories: Echoes of the Civil War,” which continues at the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe through Feb. 26, 2016. Call 505-476-5200 or visit nmhistorymuseum.org.
Civil War and the West “Empire and Liberty,” which looks at the Civil War from a Western perspective, runs through Jan. 3, 2016, at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles. Call 323-667-2000 or visit theautry.org
Indigenous Beauty Browse some 120 works in the exhibit “Indigenous Beauty: Masterworks of American Indian Art From the Diker Collection,” which runs through Sept. 13 at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth before traveling to the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta (Oct. 8, 2015–Jan. 3, 2016). Call 817-738-1933 or visit cartermuseum.org. 12 WILD WEST
OCTOBER 2015
Send upcoming event notices to Wild West, 19300 Promenade Dr., Leesburg, VA 20176. Submit at least four months in advance.
Ride to Adventure
Remington & Russell
Compare two iconic artists in “Remington & Russell, Retold,” which runs through Jan. 10, 2016, at the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. On display will be 38 works, including The Dry Camp, by Frederic Remington (1861–1909), and The Bucker (at left), by Charlie Russell (1864–1926). Call 817-332-6554 or visit sidrichardson museum.org.
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Interview
LARRY BALL ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF TOM HORN Seeking the elusive truth about the storied frontier figure By Johnny D. Boggs
Given his career as an Apache wars packer/scout and later as a hired gun in Wyoming—a stint that led to his 1903 execution in Cheyenne—Tom Horn has long attracted Western historians, including Doyce Nunis, Dean Krakel, Mark Dugan, Jay Monaghan and Chip Carlson. The latest is Larry D. Ball, professor emeritus of history at Arkansas State University, whose biography Tom Horn in Life and Legend (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014; reviewed in the December 2014 Wild West) earned 2015 Spur Award finalist honors from Western Writers of America [westernwriters.org]. How hard is it to discern myth from fact regarding Horn? It is very difficult, in part because writers have relied so heavily on his autobiography—Life of Tom Horn, Government Scout and Interpreter (1904)—which covers his life up to the time he arrived in Wyoming. While this book ends abruptly in 1892, he became such a notorious figure in Wyoming that many legends arose about his years as a stock detective and hired assassin.
Denver newspapers praised his achievements in hunting train robbers, but during one assignment he was arrested in Reno, Nev., for the robbery of a casino. Yet the agency stood by him and employed the lawyers necessary to get him off. Even after leaving the agency, Horn maintained contact with other operatives.
Did Horn kill Willie Nickell?
Much of Life of Tom Horn is fiction and should be used with great care. He portrays himself as a scout from the beginning and has himself hobnobbing with the generals. Since he was such a minor figure in the early 1880s, factual material about his participation in the Apache wars is very difficult to locate. At the same time Horn was literate, and one of his lesser-known talents was that of a “romancer” and storyteller. While his book is a rousing and entertaining tale, he is boastful and self-serving. While he was actually present in many engagements with the Apaches, only toward the end of the pursuit of Geronimo, in 1885–86, did he become a civilian chief of scouts.
Horn was convicted of the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell, son of Kels, who was mysteriously assassinated in July 1901. To this day much controversy exists as to whether Horn was guilty. One of the problems has been motive. Horn partisans declare that he had no motive, but that the guilty party was Jim Miller or one of his teenage sons. Nonetheless, the prosecution had a powerful case resting on a confession Horn made (unwittingly) to Deputy U.S. Marshal Joseph Lefors. The presiding judge admitted the confession as evidence; today it would be considered entrapment and thrown out. My impression is Horn was probably guilty of the murder of Willie Nickell. While I did not find a smoking gun, there is enough circumstantial evidence (beyond Horn’s own confession) to tilt the probability of his guilt in his direction.
He was later a Pinkerton detective?
How should we remember Horn?
Horn’s years as an operative for Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency (circa 1890–93) in the Denver branch office were both a success and a failure.
Although he possessed some talents, he was not a likable person.…He willfully went about the business of killing men for money. WW
His autobiography isn’t useful?
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BOOKS BY BALL: The United States Marshals of New Mexico & Arizona Territories, 1846– 1912 (1978), Desert Lawmen: The High Sheriffs of New Mexico and Arizona, 1846–1912 (1992), Elfego Baca in Life and Legend (1992) and Ambush at Bloody Run: The Wham Paymaster Robbery of 1889 —a Story of Politics, Religion, Race and Banditry in Arizona Territory (2000).
Read the full interview at WildWestMag.com.
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Westerners
VICTOR WITH A GUN
Victor Grant “Yellowstone Vic” Smith (1850–1925), known for his prowess as a crack shot frontiersman, is not dressed to kill in this 1886 portrait taken when he was about 36—but he is dressed for a shooting exhibition in Livingston, Mont. Tony Sapienza, owner of the photo, notes that the Winchester Model 1873 Smith holds has a silver-scrolled buttstock and was a gift from French-born Dakota Territory rancher the Marquis de Morès. Among Smith’s other associates, Sapienza says, were John “Liver Eating” Johnson, Luther Sage “Yellowstone” Kelly, John “X.” Beidler and Theodore Roosevelt. “Yellowstone Vic is not a well-known Westerner today,” adds Sapienza, “but he was a government scout, Indian fighter, professional hunter, trapper, guide and exhibition shooter. To really be captivated by him, get a copy of his memoir, The Champion Buffalo Hunter, edited by Jeanette Prodgers.” (Photo: Tony Sapienza Collection)
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OCTOBER 2015
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Gunfighters and Lawmen
In December 1880 Ben Thompson, by then a well-known gunfighter, became Austin city marshal.
A PEACE OFFICER WITH MORE HIP THAN HOLSTER Austin City Marshal Ben Thompson saw fit to arrest the ‘sprightly’ deputy By Doug Dukes
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COURTESY OF AUSTIN, TEXAS, POLICE DEPARTMENT
I
n a July 6, 1877, article headlined LADY SHOT the Austin Daily Democratic Statesman reported that a man “carelessly handling a pistol” had accidentally shot Emelie Sckerls, but it was only a flesh wound. By 1879 the 23-year-old Prussianborn divorcée owned a grocery store in the Texas capital, and the newspaper reported “considerable excitement” one day in October 1880 when Emelie emptied her five-shooter at a man inside her store but missed all five times. By July 1881, according to the San Antonio Daily Express, Emelie had not only divorced Charles Sckerls but also married and divorced “an old German from Bastrop County” named Schooman. On learning Emelie “had too many lovers,” Schooman had decided to let his new bride “shift for herself.” So it seems Emelie was a hellcat and a hussy, and later that summer she was wrapped up in an incident with celebrated Texas lawmen James Madison Brown and Ben Thompson that would further scandalize the good folks of Austin. In 1881 Lee County Sheriff Brown, a former Texas Ranger who had officiated at the hanging of William “Wild Bill” Longley, was informed that George Keith, a suspect from an 1874 murder, had been apprehended in Louisiana. Learning that Sheriff Brown and a deputy were transporting the fugitive back through Austin, City Marshal Thompson met them at the train depot on July 12, 1881. The crime rate in Austin had dropped since the noted gunfighter took over as marshal the prior December. That spring Mason County War veteran John Ringo had pointed his six-shooter at a few men in “Guy Town” (Austin’s red-light district) and was later arrested in his hotel room. Thompson, according to the Statesman, had “cheerfully kicked open the door and, to the infinite disgust of Mr. Ringo, scooped him in.” After a night in jail and paying his fine, Ringo had reportedly “settled with the city and left a wiser if not sadder man.” At the Austin train station, Marshal Thompson paid little mind to Sheriff Brown or prisoner Keith. His undivided attention was soon on what the Statesman termed Brown’s “sprightly looking deputy.” Thompson disarmed and arrested the deputy, identified by the newspaper as “Mrs. Amelia Schooman, formally of this city and well known here as Mrs. Sckerls.” The Daily Express story, headlined A FEMALE IN BREECHES CREATES A SENSATION, reported Emelie was decked out in men’s clothing
Gunfighters and Lawmen
TOP: COURTESY OF AUSTIN, TEXAS POLICE DEPARTMENT; RIGHT: COURTESY OF CHUCK PARSONS
Austin’s Municipal Building was a mob scene following the arrest of a deputy named Emelie.
with “a six-shooter swinging from her hips.” The deputy, the Express continued, wore a “nobby suit of dark brine, her hair was cut short, and she was wearing a daisy straw hat. In her hip pocket was a pair of nippers, a 10-cent print scarf covered the bosom of her woolen shirt. She has small blue eyes, a small mouth, retroussé nose and a naiveté manner which made her quite attractive.” In Austin cross-dressing was against the law— a misdemeanor. Article 746 of the city ordinances stated, “Whoever shall in this city appear in any public place in a state of nudity, or in a dress not belonging to his or her sex,” would be subject to a fine of between $5 and $100. Thompson had never known or seen a female deputy or lady police officer, so he assumed the woman was a civilian who had no right to be toting a Colt .45 in Austin. At City Hall, Thompson agreed to release Emelie on her own recognizance if she would don the proper feminine attire before her appearance the next day before the Mayor’s Court. According to the Daily Express, “The streets were crowded when the news got abroad, and the stairway to the city hall was thronged with people of all colors to behold a woman in male attire acting as a deputy sheriff, and the police had to be stationed at the foot of the stairs to keep back the crowd.” The unmarried Sheriff Brown was not amused by the city’s reaction to his deputy. Adulterous gossip
ran rampant. One jab in the July 13 Daily Express charged the sheriff had forgotten “the dignity of his office as to go about with a woman masquerading in men’s clothing and should be degraded from his place, and those who honored him election should drive him out of the community.” Emelie appeared before Austin Mayor L.M. Crocker, and Brown explained he had deputized her to help “identify his man and work up the case.” The sheriff then queried the court: “Under the peculiar language of our law it is said women have the right to vote, and why have they not the right to wear men’s apparel and act as a deputy sheriff? Inasmuch as the masculine gender includes the feminine in our code, possibly this case, if it is properly managed, will be of more than usual interest.” The court fined Emelie $25, and Sheriff Brown, his deputy and their prisoner continued on their way to Giddings in Lee County. In September 1881 Sheriff Brown was back in Austin and ran into Marshal Thompson at the fairgrounds. Rumor was rife of six-shooter trouble, but nothing happened. A VERY SERIOUS DIFFICULTY A VERTED, the San Antonio Daily Express noted in a headline. In 1884 gunmen would ambush Ben Thompson at a San Antonio theater, and in 1892 a policeman would shoot down Brown at a Chicago racetrack. As for Emelie Sckerls, history has allowed her to “shift for herself.” WW
Lee County Sheriff James Madison Brown was the one who deputized the “female in breeches.”
OCTOBER 2015
WILD WEST 19
Pioneers and Settlers
GOLD RUSH PIE MAKER MADE LOTS OF DOUGH
Lucy Stoddard found fortune and a new husband in California By Deanna Lee Kerr
L
ucy Ann Stoddard Wakefield had for seven years been stuck in an unhappy marriage to an English-born dentist. A native of New Haven, Conn., Lucy wedded Dr. John Wakefield in 1842 when she was 24. It wasn’t long before Lucy chafed under her husband’s “habit of tantalizing and insulting her feelings with abusive epithets and jealous aspersions,” as relative Leslie Bryson, a ship’s captain, put it after visiting Lucy in California. “Wretched and miser-
20 WILD WEST
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able pride,” he said, “forbade her to complain of her own choice and stir the stink among her friends.” In 1849 New Haven was abuzz with news of the California Gold Rush, and the unhappy couple hoped a change of scenery would do them good. On the long wagon train trip to the Sierra Nevada goldfields, however, Lucy, claimed John in later court testimony, “rode horseback with another man…preferring the company of the stranger.” Their journey ended at Hangtown, Calif., 9 miles southeast of Coloma, where James Marshall had discovered gold the year prior. Eager to earn her
EL DORADO COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM
In 1849 Lucy and her first husband made Hangtown (present-day Placerville) home, and she was soon baking dried-apple pies twice a day.
Pioneers and Settlers
own money, Lucy decided to make pies, as hungry miners were willing to pay a good price. In February 1850 Dr. Wakefield allowed his wife to use money from her father’s estate to buy a log cabin on Main for $250. She worked long days “without anyone to fetch as much as a bucket of water,” she wrote to friends back in New Haven. She typically rose before dawn, finished the first batch of dried-apple pies by daylight and then baked a second batch in the afternoon. Lucy charged $2 for a whole pie or $1 for a quarter pie and a cup of coffee. She sold 20 dozen a week. In the evenings hardworking Lucy hosted whist parties at home. According to John’s later complaint, she “burnt up considerable wood, which he had obtained at considerable expense.” She also went to dances unescorted. Dr. Wakefield was irate, and Lucy declared her intention to leave her husband. On Feb. 18, 1850, El Dorado County became one of the original 27 counties in the new state of California, and in March 1851 the state Legislature passed a divorce act that permitted anyone who had been a resident of the state for six months to file for divorce on such grounds as impotency, adultery, habitual intemperance, desertion and neglect. That spring, in the District Court of Coloma, Lucy filed the first divorce in El Dorado County on grounds of cruelty and jealousy. Her case went before an allmale jury. Six men, including one of Lucy’s brothers and a man named Christopher Clayton Batterman, testified on her behalf; three witnesses appeared in support of her husband. The jury ruled in favor of Lucy, who had built a reputation for hard work and honesty; it didn’t hurt that she was attractive. The court awarded her the couple’s home, the bakery, all her earnings and the rest of her inheritance. That fall Lucy wrote to friends: “I do not intend to work more than two or three months longer, only enough to earn my living. I am tired of work. …A competency is all I look for…and a little to give away when I wish.” Three months later, however, the money was still rolling in, and she was still making pies. Lucy had receipts totaling more than $25,000, wrote Bryson in a letter after his visit that December. “Her costs,” he noted, “would probably have been less than half that sum, leaving Lucy with a profit greater than the gold most of her customers were digging out of the ground.” To further separate herself from Dr. John Wakefield, in 1852 she persuaded California Sen. Benjamin F. Keene to pen an act in the Statutes of
California to change her name. Thus Chapter 201, approved on February 28, provided, “It shall be lawful for the person heretofore bearing the name of Lucy A. Stoddard Wakefield to change the said name to Lucy A. Stoddard.” That April 12 the Legislature also passed an act authorizing married women to do business as sole traders independent of their husbands. Lucy began a series of real estate deals even as she considered remarriage. On April 19, 1852, she sold the log house on Main Street and her cooking stove to W.M. Krahmer and A.M. Halftermeyer for $1,000, a 300 percent return on her original investment. On May 6 she turned right around and bought the Thomas & Young mercantile store from Lee McKinstry for $800. She didn’t stop there. On May 13 she acquired another lot on the east side of Main opposite the lot she had just purchased. In the midst of all this activity, on May 10, she found time to marry 24-yearold Christopher Clayton Batterman, the same who had testified on her behalf in the divorce. An El Dorado County census says Lucy was 30 at the time of their wedding. Either she fibbed, or a clerk made an error. Lucy was born in 1818, making her 34 in 1852—her new husband’s senior by 10 years. Within a week of the marriage Lucy A.S. Batterman filed the first deed under the separate property act. Business and domestic life were good to her. In 1854 Hangtown became Placerville, and it continued to boom. On March 20, 1859, Lucy gave birth to son Christopher Stoddard Batterman. Three years later the family moved to San Francisco and later to Carson City, Nev. Lucy’s husband died at age 52 in 1881; she died at age 78 in 1895. “She was well known on the Comstock,” her obituary in the April 3, 1895, Walker Lake Bulletin states. She was more than that, of course—a woman of many firsts in California. WW
Apple pies were good as gold in Hangtown. Lucy sold 20 dozen pies a week, earning greater profits than most of her customers realized from their ore.
OCTOBER 2015
WILD WEST 21
Western Enterprise The Cow-Boy Band, at the time based in Ouray, Colo., plays at the Elks Grand Lodge Convention in Salt Lake City in 1902.
AND THE COW-BOY BAND PLAYED ON Its brass showed class in Kansas, Colorado and farther afield By Jim Pettengill
A
s cities grew with the settlement of the West, musical entertainment developed from small ensembles and vocal groups to the ultimate in musical entertainment—a full brass band. One of the most famous (albeit outlandish) brass bands of the day played for local dances and presidents, toured the nation and played on for more than a half-century. The story begins with Chalkley McArtor “Chalk” Beeson, born in Ohio in 1848, raised in Iowa and by age 19 living in Colorado Territory, where he served as a hunting guide and participated in the 1871 goodwill Royal Buffalo Hunt for Russian Grand Duke Alexis, led by William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody. By the mid-1870s Beeson had drifted to Dodge City, where, among other things, he was a rancher, lawman, elected representative and co-owner of the Long Branch Saloon. An accomplished musician, Beeson led a five-piece orchestra to entertain at the Long Branch in 1878, and later that year, with the backing of other local businessmen, he organized the Dodge City Silver Cornet Band. When local ranchers stepped in to sponsor the group, it became known as the Stockmen’s Band. Beeson was an adept promoter, and the band took to wearing chaps, hats and six-shooters. Chalk claimed every musician was a working cowboy who sang to cattle. Audiences loved it. By 1882 Beeson had attracted professional musicians from as far away as St. Louis, and the troupe became the Dodge City Cow-Boy Band. To promote Dodge City beef, area ranchers sponsored an appearance at the 1884 National Stockmen’s Association convention in St. Louis, where the 22 WILD WEST
OCTOBER 2015
OPPOSITE TOP: CHARLES SAVAGE PHOTO IN JIM PETTENGILL COLLECTION; OPPOSITE LEFT: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; RIGHT: © EVERETT COLLECTION, HISTORICAL/ ALAMY
Western Enterprise
band received rave reviews. The bandleader used a revolver as a baton, and a reporter asked if it was loaded. “Yes,” the conductor replied, without skipping a beat. “To kill the first man that strikes a false note.” After the convention the band toured Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Beeson incorporated the popular band in 1886. After a well-received performance at Denver’s Tabor Opera House in February 1889, the CowBoy Band boarded a train for Washington, D.C., to appear in President Benjamin Harrison’s inaugural parade. Buffalo Bill and Buck “King of the Cowboys” Taylor led the parade, followed by the Dodge City band members. Offers for tours poured in, but Beeson had a family and business concerns in Dodge. Soon after the inaugural appearance, he sold the band’s charter, music and equipment to cornetist Jack Sinclair, who moved with several band members to Silverton, Colo. Sinclair secured the patronage of transportation magnate Otto Mears and incorporated the group in Colorado in 1890. Featured at the January 1891 inauguration of Governor John Long Routt, the band shined at the July 4 dedication of the Mineral Palace, a massive exhibit hall in Pueblo. Within a year the band had relocated to that city. In 1892 the Pueblo Knights Templar presented Sinclair with a diamond-studded baton and a matching bejeweled, gold-accented Colt revolver that he also used to conduct, occasionally firing off blanks to punctuate the music. The band then went on a world tour, and though the trip was cut short in mid-1893, the group toured domestically to widespread acclaim. With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Sinclair and 15 other Cow-Boy musicians enlisted in Colonel Jay L. Torrey’s 2nd U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, aka Torrey’s Rough Riders, serving as its regimental band. Hostilities ended shortly after their arrival in Florida, and while they never deployed to Cuba, Sinclair later claimed the band had endured the Santiago campaign and inspired Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and his 1st Volunteer Cavalry “Rough Riders” to victory. Sinclair next surfaced in Ouray, Colo., in early 1902, when the local Elks Lodge hired the CowBoy Band to represent western Colorado at the annual Grand Lodge Convention in Salt Lake City. After eight months of rehearsals by Sinclair’s core of professionals and a handful of locals, the 57-man band was the hit of the convention, appearing with
a miniature stagecoach built by an Ouray lodge member for his granddaughter. Sinclair later acquired the stagecoach, which became a band signature until his death. “Every member is or has been a cowpuncher and roundup man,” The Salt Lake Tribune reported. “They develop their talent by singing Tra-La-Loo, Tra-La-La and other classical selections to the critical steers while on night guard.” In truth the Ouray band members were miners, and the resulting friction caused Sinclair and his players to return to Pueblo. Sinclair relocated the band to Idaho Springs, then Creede and Alamosa before returning permanently to Pueblo around 1910. In 1911 newspaperman Frank Tyler of Dodge City rented the original band uniforms and equipment to perform at Kansas’ statehood semicentennial celebration in Hutchinson, which President Howard Taft would attend. Sinclair and daughter Edith, a talented vocalist, performed with the “resurrected” Dodge City band before returning to Pueblo. Chalk Beeson, 63, served proudly as marshal of the parade. Sinclair became a Pueblo policeman but continued to manage the Cow-Boy Band and even penned an opera, The Cowboy’s Dream, which debuted in 1916 with Edith in the leading role. Jack led the band in parades and special events until his death on Dec. 9, 1929. The Pueblo Municipal Band, self-proclaimed successor to Sinclair’s group, continues to perform, and Idaho Springs also boasts a Cow-Boy Band in tribute to the time Sinclair spent there in 1905–06. The 1911 revival of the Dodge City band has also continued uninterrupted. WW
The Dodge City Cow-Boy Band poses in St. Louis in 1885. One of its drummers appears on the opposite page.
Jack Sinclair’s gilded revolver and baton, chaps and other items are in the collection of the Autry National Center [theautry.org] in Los Angeles. Visitors to Dodge City’s Boot Hill Museum (boothill. org] can get a look at Cow-Boy Band photos, instruments and original music. The band’s bass drum sold at auction in 2014.
OCTOBER 2015
WILD WEST 23
Art of the West
THE TAOS LANDSCAPE HAUNTED WALTER UFER
I
n 1922 Walter Ufer rendered a painting that depicts the Taos, N.M., artist at work in a studio, surrounded by Indian artifacts, studying an unfinished landscape with brush and palette in hand. His longsuffering wife Mary sits reading a book in a corner, while the faint ghost of an Indian leans against his easel. Titled Fantasies, it shows Ufer at work amid the subjects he held dear. “It is a painting that compels the viewer to think about the image of the artist, his relationship to his subjects and the creative process,” says
24 WILD WEST
OCTOBER 2015
Sarah E. Boehme, curator of the Stark Museum of Art [starkmuseum.org] in Orange, Texas. “When viewers notice the apparition of the Indian figure, they become intrigued and engage with ideas about what it means.” Born to German immigrants (his father was a gunsmith and engraver), Ufer grew up in Kentucky, apprenticed in lithography in Louisville and returned to Germany to study art. While abroad he met artists Joseph Henry Sharp and Ernest Blumenschein, and after settling in Chicago, he journeyed to Taos in 1914. Sharp was already living there, and
Walter Ufer often chose New Mexico Indians as subjects for his oil paintings, as he did in this 1926 work Taos Indian and Pack Horse or His Kit.
© WALTER UFER (1876–1936), 1926, OIL ON CANVAS, 25.125 x 30.125 INCHES, STARK MUSEUM OF ART, ORANGE, TEXAS, 31.5.4
He blended styles to capture the land and the Indians By Johnny D. Boggs
© WALTER UFER, 1926, OIL ON CANVAS, 42 X 38 INCHES, STARK MUSEUM OF ART, ORANGE, TEXAS, 31.5.9
Art of the West
Blumenschein was spending summers in what had already become a thriving art colony. “Ufer found in Taos a setting that provided subjects for his paintings that were both exotic and yet very American,” Boehme says. “He responded to the extraordinary landscape and beautiful atmospheric light that he would come to portray with intensity....Ufer had an environment in which his temperament could flourish.” There was another reason for moving to Taos. “In a practical sense,” Boehme explains, “Ufer first went to Taos because he had patrons who sent
him there. Carter Harrison Jr., mayor of Chicago, encouraged him to go to New Mexico, and Harrison formed a syndicate to buy Ufer’s paintings.” Ufer loved to paint Indians and other Western figures in daily life. “He was able to develop his recognizable style by combining his classical 19thcentury German training with American realism, and by the use of dynamic shapes and intense light, to leave an important artistic legacy that continues to influence many artists,” says New Mexico artist William Haskell. In 1917 Ufer was accepted into the Taos Society of Artists, and three years later he became the first Taos artist to win a prize at the Carnegie International [cmoa.org/ci-history]. His success, however, proved short-lived. The Taos Society of Artists disbanded in 1927, and the stock market crash of 1929 hurt the art scene. Ufer continued to paint, but with his success diminishing and debts mounting, he began drinking heavily. On July 30, 1936, his appendix ruptured, and three days later Walter Ufer was dead. He was 60 years old. “He remained faithful to representation in art,” Boehme says, “and yet was a modernist in his vision and composition.” WW
Ufer was in his mid-40s when he painted Fantasies, a self-portrait in which he works while an Indian ghost watches and Mrs. Ufer reads.
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
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SMOKE AND BULL BEAR SPLIT, AND THE OGLALAS WERE BORN The deadly feud between Lakota cousins involved a young Red Cloud By John Koster
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Mahto-Tatonka [sic ], in his way, was a hero. No chief could vie with him in warlike renown or in power over his people. He had a fearless spirit and an impetuous and inflexible resolution. His will was law. He was politic and sagacious and with true Indian craft always befriended the whites, knowing that he might thus reap great advantages for himself and his adherents. When he had resolved on any course of conduct, he would pay the warriors the compliment of calling them together to deliberate on it and, when their debates were over, quietly state his own opinion, which no one ever disputed. It fared hard with those who incurred his displeasure. He would strike them or stab them on the spot; and this act, which if attempted by any other chief would have cost him his life, the awe inspired by his name enabled him to repeat again and again with impunity. In a community where from immemorial time no man had acknowledged any
WORLD HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE
Bull Bear, who posed for this 1837 portrait by Alfred Jacob Miller, was an inflexible and arbitrary leader who had a host of enemies, including Smoke.
o many Americans the Sioux are the definitive Indians, and the Oglala Sioux are the definitive Lakota band. Red Cloud is remembered as the only Indian leader who won a war with the United States—Red Cloud’s War (1866–68). He was Oglala. Crazy Horse was generally credited with the destruction of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer’s five companies at the Little Bighorn in June 1876. He was Oglala. This band of storied fighters is not ancient in origin. In the early 19th century the Oglalas and Brulés (Sicangu) split off as the westernmost subtribes of the Lakota people. They followed the buffalo from the prairie to the plains and vectored on Fort Laramie (founded around 1834 as Fort William and renamed Fort John in 1841 before becoming Laramie), the trading center on the North Platte River. The antagonists who gave the Oglalas their name were Smoke (also called Old Smoke), born in 1774, and Bull Bear, born in 1790. Bull Bear—Mato Tatanka in Lakota, which places the adjective tatanka (“bull”) after the noun mato (“bear”)—quickly developed into what whites perceived as an Indian chief. Historian Francis Parkman Jr. wrote candidly of the chief, whose son had befriended him and whose daughter was married to Henri Chatillon (see related story, P. 54), Parkman’s favorite guide.
Indian Life
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
law but his own will, Mahto-Tatonka raised himself to power little short of despotic.…He had a host of enemies patiently biding their time.
Among Bull Bear’s enemies was one born Standing Bull, who was given the name Smoke (Shota in Lakota) when he joined the Kit Fox (Tokala) warrior society as a teen. Whereas Bull Bear was squat and powerful, Smoke was a muscular 6 foot 5 with a wondrous headdress. When he walked, his train of long feathers trailed behind him for several feet. He was noted for his generosity and better liked than Bull Bear. Around 1825 he adopted his orphaned nephew Red Cloud (whose father had married a sister of Smoke) and raised him as a son, though he had nine sons and a daughter of his own with his five wives (see “Red Cloud and the Bull Bear Shooting,” in the April 2012 Wild West). The Lakota people to which Smoke and Bull Bear belonged were known as the Hunkpatilas (Lodges at the End of the Circle). In 1834, when Smoke was regarded as chief of the Hunkpatilas living outside the fort, his cousin and rival Bull Bear proposed himself as recognized head chief. The power play split the Hunkpatilas into opposing factions: Bull Bear’s Kiyuksas (translated as Cut Offs, though it literally means “bitten in two”) and Smoke’s Ite-sicas (Bad Faces). The names originated when Bull Bear, angry at having been “cut off” from the Kiyuksas, threw dust into Smoke’s face to insult him, or make his “face bad.” The divided band was referred to collectively as the Oglalas (Scatter One’s Own), which became the most famous warrior clan of the late 1860s and ’70s. After the Hunkpatila “divorce,” a showdown between Bull Bear and Old Smoke was inevitable. Aggravating matters was the prevalence of raw trade whiskey. One day in 1841 Bull Bear’s Kiyuksas and Smoke’s Ite-sicas met while on a trading trip to Fort John. Bull Bear strode up to Smoke’s tepee and challenged him. “Come out, if you are a man, and fight!” he shouted. “You are a coward and an old woman!” Getting no response, Bull Bear sank a knife into Smoke’s favorite horse. Bull Bear then strode away as the cowed warriors of Smoke’s band stood aside. When the two bands met again that November at a trading camp set up near the fort on Chug-
Red Cloud, one of the most prominent of the Lakotas, had been orphaned at a young age and then adopted and raised as a son by his uncle Smoke.
water Creek, American Fur Co. kept the whiskey flowing. A dispute broke out, and Bull Bear and his men took the fight to the rival camp. Smoke’s warriors, including Red Cloud, were waiting. They shot down Bull Bear with muskets and marked his body with arrows. According to Red Cloud’s autobiography, one of the first shots hit Bull Bear in the knee and brought him to the ground, at which point Red Cloud rushed the fallen chief and shot him through the head. The fight around the body was Homeric, leaving six Lakotas dead and 14 wounded. In the aftermath Smoke became head chief of the Oglalas, though the other Lakota bands, notably the Hunkpapas, kept away from Fort John/ Laramie and the corruption by whiskey. Smoke tried to keep peace with the whites up until his death at 89 in 1864. He had given his ceremonial war shirt to Fort Laramie commandant Lt. Col. William O. Collins, who sent it to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. A few days after the chief’s death, Army surgeon Lt. Col. Henry Schell retrieved the body from its burial scaffold and sent Old Smoke himself to the Smithsonian. In 1994 the Smithsonian returned his remains. Smoke is now buried near Porcupine, S.D. WW OCTOBER 2015
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GERONIMO’S
GUNFIGHTER ATTITUDE In the 1880s the Chiricahua Apache leader was a wanted man, on the run and ready to fight the soldiers and scouts who pursued him By Louis Kraft
As depicted in a Guy Manning oil painting, when Geronimo hid out in the mountains on either side of the border, he lived like an outlaw —watchful, well-armed and ready to run or fight.
EL PRADO GALLERIES, SEDONA, ARIZ.
During negotiations at Mexico’s Cañon de los Embudos in 1886 C.S. Fly photographed (from left) Yanozha, Chappo (Geronimo’s son), Fun and Geronimo.
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Assistant Surgeon Leonard Wood, shown here at Fort Huachuca, Arizona Territory, was present at Geronimo’s 1886 surrender.
LEFT: ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON, #1125; TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS
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he whites of Geronimo’s eyes flashed red in the late afternoon of Aug. 28, 1886. At that moment the war leader and mystic of the Chiricahua Apaches’ Bedonkohe band had the urge to kill. His survival skills had kept him alive thus far, but he had reached another crossroads. He and Naiche—head of the Chokonen band and last hereditary chief of the Chiricahuas—had arrived on horseback at a rendezvous point near the pueblo of Fronteras and hid in the brush to scrutinize the Mexicans and Americans. Jesús Aguirre, prefect of the Sonoran municipality of Arizpe, and his officers spoke with 4th U.S. Cavalry Captain Henry Lawton and his officers, including Assistant Surgeon Leonard Wood. Were these men plotting to kill them? On August 15 Geronimo and Naiche had met with Aguirre near Fronteras to discuss ending their war with Mexico. On the 25th they had spoken all day with 6th U.S. Cavalry 1st Lt. Charles B. Gatewood, whom they called Bay-chen-daysen (Long Nose). They knew and trusted Gatewood and had resolved to surrender to the Americans. On August 28 Aguirre’s 180 Mexican troops, per the Apache chiefs’ demand, remained in camp miles to the rear. Geronimo noted that some of the Mexican officers were fingering their guns, but he did not sense a trap. Geronimo and Naiche emerged from the brush with several heavily armed Chiricahuas, as well as the unarmed Gatewood, interpreter George Wratten and 4th Cavalry 2nd Lt. Robert Walsh. Geronimo wore a revolver on his left hip and dragged a rifle in his left hand. When the Mexican officers held their ground, he and the other Apaches grew wary and halted.
When Geronimo and Naiche had met with Aguirre on the 15th, Geronimo had spoken of ending war, claiming his followers were worn out and hungry. It had been a ruse to get needed rest, supplies and wanted mescal, for Geronimo was not about to forget the family members and others who had died or disappeared at the hands of the Mexicans. He and Naiche had agreed to wait while Aguirre obtained surrender terms from Sonoran Governor Luis Torres. With Aguirre and his officers again before him, Geronimo knew that to survive he must trust his instincts. Although he knew nothing of gunslingers on the American frontier and didn’t sit with his back to a saloon wall, he had become their brethren. He would listen to Aguirre, but that was it. If the meeting went badly, he had a score to settle. Aguirre stepped forward with his officers and proffered a handshake. Geronimo started to extend his own hand, hesitated and gripped his revolver, but then did shake. After the handshake, though, the prefect shoved his own revolver holster around to the front. “A most fiendish expression came over [Geronimo’s] face,” recalled Gatewood, “the whites of his eyes at the same time turning red.” Geronimo grabbed his six-shooter and began to pull it from the holster.
WESTERN HISTORY COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA LIBRARIES, ROSE COLLECTION, NO. 1194
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n early 1851 Geronimo and his young family traveled with Mangas Coloradas and the Bedonkohe band of the Chiricahuas south into Chihuahua, Mexico, where they set up a ranchería on the Río de Janos southeast of the presidio and pueblo of Janos. In daylight hours guards protected the families while the other men visited Janos to make peace overtures, trade and drink. On March 5 Colonel José María Carrasco, who had marched east from Fronteras with some 400 men, split his command to attack two Apache camps. One was empty, but the colonel’s men reportedly killed four men and four women at the second. Other Apaches fled to Janos, where locals hid them. Carrasco’s troops entered the town, continued killing Apaches and captured dozens more. The death toll in the Carrasco (or Janos) Massacre was 16 men, five women and an unspecified number of children. The colonel returned to Sonora with six captive men, four women and 52 children, whom the Mexicans sold into slavery. When Geronimo and other warriors learned what happened, they hid until dark before returning to their destroyed ranchería. The slain lay where they had been killed and mutilated. In Mexico Apache scalps paid a bounty. Years later Geronimo told artist Elbridge Burbank, who painted several portraits of the warrior, that he found his mother, Juana, a Bedonkohe; his first wife, Alope, a Nednhi Apache; and their three children “dead, lying in a pool of blood.” He had considered himself a warrior who provided for his family with wild game and the trophies of war. No longer. The deaths turned him into a predator that craved the blood of those who had murdered his family. Over the years Geronimo would lose more wives, children and family members to death or capture (some he later rescued, while others’ fates re-
First Lt. Charles Gatewood was present but not armed when Geronimo faced down Jesús Aguirre in August 1886.
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THE EVERWATCHFUL CHIRICAHUAS KNEW IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE THEY WERE CAUGHT
1888 Geronimo and his band raid into Mexico for horses in this 1888 work by artist Frederic Remington.
An Apache girl poses at San Carlos. Geronimo bolted from the reservation in 1881 and ‘85.
OPPOSITE: © WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/ALAMY; TOP: AUTRY NATIONAL CENTER, LOS ANGELES; RIGHT: © NORTH WIND PICTURE
ARCHIVES/ALAMY
mained a mystery). This was hard to live with, but he did what most would do in his situation—he never forgot. Although he received wounds and came close to dying, Geronimo seemingly lived a charmed life. According to Asa Daklugie, his nephew, Geronimo had no fear of death, as Usen (God), had promised him “he would never be killed but would live to a ripe old age and would die a natural death.”
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n 1883 Geronimo had agreed to surrender to Brig. Gen. George Crook and return to Apache reservation lands in Arizona Territory, but it didn’t take long before he grew to hate the confinement and rules governing their camp along Turkey Creek in the White Mountains. In May 1885 Geronimo initiated, or perhaps manipulated, the last Chiricahua breakout. The Apaches led the desperate life of outlaws on the run. As Naiche later explained to Crook: “It was war. Anybody who saw us would kill us, and we did the same thing. We had to if we wanted to live.” Before long, though, Geronimo and the others realized their days of freedom were numbered. On Jan. 10, 1886, 3rd U.S. Cavalry Captain Emmet Crawford’s Apache scouts attacked Geronimo and Naiche’s camp in a remote area of Sonora called Espinosa del Diablo. The Chiricahuas escaped without casualties, but they lost supplies and stock. Naiche and Geronimo requested a meeting with Crawford, who agreed. But the next morning a Mexican force of 128 Tarahumara Indians—bitter foes of the Apaches, regardless if they were with Geronimo or U.S. scouts—attacked Crawford’s command, and the captain fell mortally wounded with a bullet wound to the forehead. Four days later Geronimo, Naiche, Chihuahua and Nana walked into the American camp and met with 1st U.S. Infantry 1st Lt. Marion Maus, as Crawford was near death. The Chiricahuas agreed to meet Crook “in two moons” to discuss their surrender. In March 1886 Geronimo and followers appeared at Cañon de los Embudos, Sonora, before Crook’s arrival. Years later packer Henry Daly recalled
General George Crook thought he’d convinced Geronimo to surrender.
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The deaths of his family members in the 1851 Carrasco Massacre turned Geronimo against the Mexicans. Back in Mexico in 1886 after leaving the reservation in Arizona Territory, he faced pursuit by both Mexican and American forces. He flatly told Sonoran prefect Jesús Aguirre, “I’ll have nothing to do with you nor with any of your people.”
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the scene: “Geronimo, [Naiche] and Chihuahua, with their respective followings, swept around the base of the foothills on the opposite side of the stream like a whirlwind, dashing by as if in review, and rode on by our camp until lost from view in the timber. They crossed the steam about 300 yards above our camp and made camp on the upper terrace on our side of the creek.” Geronimo shouted orders as the Chiricahuas set up camp. On March 25, the first day of negotiations, Geronimo spoke of why he left the reservation, expressed his desire for peace and insisted newspapers stop reporting that he would be hanged. He admitted his men had “done some bad things” but that he wanted such things “all rubbed out.” Most of the time Crook studied the ground, and this frustrated Geronimo. “What is the matter that you don’t speak to me?” Geronimo asked. “It would be better if you would speak to me and look with a pleasant face.” When Crook did speak, he stoked the fire. “You had promised me in the Sierra Madre that peace should last, but you lied.” The men then bickered over just who told the truth and who lied. When Crook rejected the reasons Geronimo gave for why he, Naiche and Chihuahua left the reservation in 1885, Geronimo answered that troops and scouts had been poised to arrest them, and he had thought he’d “be seized and killed.” That night and into the morning of the 26th alcohol-induced anger teetering on violence, especially from Geronimo, dominated the Chiricahua camp.
JOAN PENNINGTON; ADAPTED FROM A MAP BY LOUIS KRAFT
BELOW THE BORDER WITH GERONIMO
IMAGES: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS
By daylight the drinking and tempers had mellowed. Geronimo permitted Tombstone photographer C.S. Fly to take a series of photos. Captain John Bourke visited the Chiricahua ranchería that morning. “We moved from one ‘jacal’ [hut] to another,” he later recalled, “all being constructed alike of the stalks of the Spanish bayonet and mescal and amole, covered with shreds of blanket, canvas and other textiles…to form an impregnable little citadel.… [The ranchería] was situated upon the apex of an extinct crater, the lava blocks being utilized as breastworks, while the deep seams in the contour of the hill were so many fosses, to be crossed only after rueful slaughter of assailants.” That afternoon Geronimo told Crook he wanted to return to the White Mountains, as he had done in 1883, but Crook said a two-year exile in Florida must come first. After dark Chihenne Apache Kaetenae and the White Mountain Apache Chief Alchesay, who had arrived with Crook, entered the Chiricahua camp and tried to agitate and demoralize the band. According to Bourke, they did this by “dividing their councils, exciting their hopes and enhancing their fears.” An anxious Geronimo kept the warriors and boys armed and ready to fend off treachery. On the morning on the 27th Geronimo again had his back to a wall, albeit a figurative one. He didn’t trust Crook and watched from the back of the gathering, his face ominously blackened with pounded galena. Naiche and Chihuahua in turn surrendered. Geronimo, seeking harmony with his fellow tribesmen, stepped up to Crook. “We are all comrades, all one family, all one band,” he said. “What the others say I say also. I give myself up to you. Do with me what you please. I surrender. Once I moved like the wind. Now I surrender to you, and that is all.” The next day Crook departed for Arizona Territory, leaving Maus the duty of escorting northward the remnants of a once-free people. During the trip Geronimo and four warriors vanished, only to reappear along Cajón Bonito Creek. They had set fire to the surrounding woods and grass. Drunk and unruly but compliant, Geronimo—like so many angst-ridden gunfighters—had again used alcohol to soothe his nerves. The march continued, but on March 29 at San Bernardino Springs, as he, Naiche and others drank mescal deep into the night, Geronimo’s mind whirled with dread of an uncertain future and his unfounded belief Crook intended to imprison or kill him. That night he, Naiche, 18 men and 22 women and children bolted.
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lthough Geronimo didn’t consider frontier pistoleers kindred spirits, his survival skills certainly matched those of such men who survived by their cunning and expertise with firearms. Geronimo watched his back at all times, as he never knew who might be gunning for him—Mexicans, Americans, even fellow Apaches. To avoid contact with their pursuers, he and Naiche split into smaller bands. Even so, Geronimo later admitted, “The U.S. sol-
Geronimo poses with a pistol in later years. Left: Lorenzo Ghiglieri rendered this bronze of Geronimo on the run.
Scouts and soldiers seek the wanted Apache in Howard Terpning’s The Second Geronimo Campaign. 36 WILD WEST
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LEFT: © TERPNING FAMILY LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, LLC; TOP: FROM LOUIS KRAFT PERSONAL COLLECTION
General Nelson Miles accepted Geronimo’s final surrender north of the Mexican border in September 1886.
diers…were soon trailing us and skirmishing with us almost every day. Four of five times they surprised our camp.” And it wasn’t just the Americans. Sonoran hacienda owner Patricio Valenzuela formed a 30-man posse after Apaches stole some livestock, and on June 17, 1886, the Mexicans charged an Apache band north of his Agua Fría ranch. Bullets struck Geronimo’s wife, who emptied her revolver before being killed. Geronimo tried to ride off with female captive Trinidad Verdin, but his horse tripped, throwing him and Verdin. She ran toward the Mexicans. Geronimo, who may have been wounded, scrambled into a box canyon while the rest of the Apaches fled. Valenzuela and his men closed in on Geronimo, but he killed three of them and wounded another with his 1873 Springfield rifle, and the Mexicans broke off pursuit. By mid-July Geronimo and Naiche had reunited and were camped near the Río Yaqui. At noon on July 13 two Apache scouts found the camp, and Lawton—with the scouts, 19 infantrymen under Assistant Surgeon Wood and a pack train—captured the camp and the Apaches’ supplies. The everwatchful Chiricahuas again slipped the noose, but they knew it was only a matter of time before they were caught. They were exhausted, bleary-eyed skeletons, desperate for provisions and constantly alert for an attack. On August 24 Gatewood, a handful of Americans and Chiricahua scouts Martine and Kayitah followed the trail of two women to Geronimo’s stronghold. The next day Gatewood arrived to present Geronimo with the “removal to Florida” terms of Crook’s replacement, Brig. Gen. Nelson Miles. Geronimo, who sat so close to Gatewood that his revolver rubbed against the lieutenant’s side, spoke of all the ills heaped upon his people. He insisted on a return to the reservation with no punishment. When Gatewood couldn’t offer terms, Geronimo snarled, “Take us to the reservation or fight.” Naiche spoke for the first time, reassuring Long Nose he would not be harmed. Safe for the moment, Gatewood gambled and told them that the Chiricahuas on the reservation had been shipped to Florida—something that would happen, though it hadn’t yet. Geronimo’s eyes turned cold, steely. If true, then they
TOP: © UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP LIMITED/ALAMY
and their followers had nowhere to turn, for their people were already gone. Hours later Gatewood told Geronimo he must trust Miles, and the next morning Geronimo met with Gatewood. “If you will give your word that we can meet General Miles with safety,” Geronimo said, “we will go to meet him and accept his terms.” Geronimo insisted that the Apaches retain their weapons and travel and camp separately, but that Gatewood remain with them and Lawton’s command protect them from attack. On August 28 Lawton’s command and the Apaches set out for the border, and that afternoon Aguirre’s army appeared. Geronimo packed up and ran north but later agreed to meet with the perfect. After their nervous handshake, Aguirre shifted his holster around front, and Geronimo grabbed for his pistol. But Aguirre put both hands behind his back, and the flame in Geronimo’s eye subsided. Aguirre stated he’d march norte con los Americanos. “No, you are going south, and I am going north,” Geronimo almost hissed. “I’ll have nothing to do with you nor with any of your people.” A lone Mexican soldier tagged along to ensure the Apaches did cross the border. When the parties halted in Arizona Territory’s Guadalupe Canyon on August 31, another crisis arose. Warriors visiting the soldier camp panicked when they overheard 4th U.S. Cavalry 1st Lt. Abiel Smith, commanding in Lawton’s absence, express his desire “to pitch in with the troop and have it out right there.” Wood later admitted that it was arranged if the Indians acted unreasonably at the conference, “each man should kill the Indian next to him.” Geronimo and the others rode from the canyon, but later he, Gatewood and interpreter Wratten rode back to confront Smith and Wood. Geronimo asked what Gatewood would do if the soldiers started shooting, and the lieutenant replied that if he couldn’t stop them, he would run with the Apaches. Things grew heated, and Gatewood, according to Wratten, “threatened to blow the head off the first man” if Smith didn’t back off. No doubt had Gatewood gone for his gun, Geronimo would have joined him. As it was, the Chiricahuas proceeded safely to Skeleton Canyon in New Mexico Territory. Geronimo surrendered to Miles on September 3, Naiche the following day, and Geronimo’s days of living by the gun ended. WW
Geronimo and Crook (in pith helmet at right) meet in 1886. Left: Geronimo poses in captivity.
Louis Kraft, of North Hollywood, Calif., is an award-winning author and frequent contributor to Wild West. For further reading see Kraft’s own Gatewood & Geronimo, Edwin R. Sweeney’s From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, 1874–1886, and John G. Bourke’s On the Border With Crook.
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An Apache warrior fires from ambush —a not infrequent scenario in deadly Doubtful Canyon.
© NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY
CERTAIN DEATH IN DOUBTFUL CANYON For Chiricahua country travelers it was a reliable place to find good graze and water—the question was whether one could make it through alive By Doug Hocking and Carol A. Markstrom
At the foot of Steins Peak are the ruins of a stout stone way station built in 1858 by employees of John Butterfield’s Overland Mail.
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OPPOSITE AND BELOW RIGHT: DOUG HOCKING PHOTOS
oubtful Canyon is without doubt an intriguing place of historical significance, although few visitors pass through it anymore. Actually, two canyons in the Peloncillo Mountains share the name, their respective heads, separated by only a few feet, forming a pass. The western canyon, sometimes called West Doubtful Canyon, carves across Cochise County, Arizona, running narrow and deep 3 or 4 miles south through the heart of the Peloncillos to the San Simon Valley. The other canyon, usually just called Doubtful Canyon, runs west to east about 4 miles to Animas Playa, a dry lake in Hidalgo County, New Mexico. It is a mile and a half wide with a 10-foot-deep arroyo. As one enters the canyon from the east, the peaks hide the pass. Doubtful Canyon (referring to both gorges) was a named feature on the Southern Emigrant Trail, a year-round route to California. Home to the Chiricahua Apaches, it was also the deadliest passage on a difficult road. The Southern Emigrant Trail, which meanders along the 32nd parallel, was also John Butterfield’s Overland Mail route. Today Interstate 10 follows the same general course, bypassing the once perilous canyons of Chiricahua Apache country— Cookes Canyon (100 miles east of the Arizona– New Mexico line), Apache Pass (30 miles west of the state line) and, most hazardous of all, Doubtful Canyon. Skirting Steins Peak, this gap in the Peloncillos was blessed with good graze and water and thus desirable to all travelers. But it was also a dark and bloody ground, a place where violent encounters spawned enduring legends. Had travelers dubbed the canyon Doubtful due to one’s slim chance of survival or due to its obscure location? Perhaps something of both applies. Author Dan Thrapp once remarked that more skirmishes occurred in this area than in the better-known Apache Pass.
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rawn to water, various Apache groups—Mimbreños, Bedonkohes, Chokonens, Coyoteros—favored Doubtful Canyon as a place to make camp. Defensible terrain characterized the canyon to the west, while anyone approaching from the east was visible for miles. Prehistoric farmers preceded the Apaches, leaving scattered pottery as evidence of their sojourns.
Doubtful Canyon lay along an ancient route from central Mexico via Sonora that ran through the pass to Zuni Pueblo and the Rio Grande. In the 16th century Spanish conquistadors under Francisco Vásquez de Coronado passed this way, led by Indian guides following the ancient trails. The Spaniards traveled north along the San Pedro River, turning east at Mule Pass, between the Dragoon and Mule mountains, to follow watercourses across the Sulphur Springs Valley to Puerto del Dado (Pass of the Die, referring to the gambling kind of die—their name for Apache Pass). From there they would have kept the Peloncillos to their west, heading north to the San Francisco River and distant Zuni, the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. Archaeologists have found traces of their passage in Doubtful Canyon. It was boundary commissioner John Russell Bartlett—in defining the boundary described in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican War—who named the mountain range stretching from the Gila River to the Mexican border. Intending to use the descriptive Spanish word piloncillo, which means “sugar cone,” he misspelled it peloncillo, meaning “little baldy.” In the Spanish of the Rio Arriba—that part of New Mexico north of Santa Fe—pelon can also mean “difficult,” or “risky.” Or, to put it another way, “doubtful.” In 1846–47 Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke, riding at the head of the Mormon Battalion, d i rected construction of the first road through the region. Following the ancient New Mexico– Sonora Trail, the battalion missed the direct route and instead marched to the southern end of the Peloncillos through narrow, forbidding Guadalupe Pass past Guadalupe Peak, in the sacred heartland of the Chiricahuas. Later travelers cut through Doubtful Canyon, thus avoiding the long detour. In 1857 the San Antonio–San Diego Mail Line (aka “Jackass Mail”), the earliest overland stagecoach and mail operation, plied the Doubtful route. In 1858 Colonel James B. Leach, spearheading construction of another wagon road, went by way of Doubtful Canyon, as did the Butterfield Overland, which replaced the Jackass Mail that year. Butterfield employees Silas St. John and William Buckley built a stone station near a spring
Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke missed the shorter canyon route when building a road through the region in 1846–47.
Artifacts such as this key to a tin lid speak to the 19th-century travelers that passed through the canyon.
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Another Doubtful find was this 19th-century can, perhaps used to hold the lunch of an Overland Mail employee.
at the foot of Steins Peak. Sheltered within its 60-by-30foot walls, which were 10 feet high and 32 inches thick, were a corral and three covered interior rooms for storage and sleeping. Meals were served while hands swapped out the mule team on a coach that ran day and night. Stock was brought inside the walls at night, and the three stationkeepers were armed with revolvers and rapid-fire Sharps breechloaders. The nearest help was more than 100 miles southwest at Fort Buchanan. Shortly after the station went into operation, Mangas Coloradas (Red Sleeves) arrived with his Apache warriors to demand a large gift of cornmeal. Wisely, John Butterfield had made provision to pay the Apaches a toll to pass through their lands unmolested, and between 1858 and ’61 the line was plagued by relatively few violent incidents. But the peace was tenuous, and trouble was brewing farther west at Apache Pass.
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n February 1861 the Bascom Affair (see related story in the February 2008 Wild West) marks the date, if not the cause, of a change in relations with the Apaches and the first attacks on Overland Mail coaches. By March, Congress was convinced the southern mail route, which ran through Confederate Texas, was no longer secure and ordered the mail coaches to
use the northern route. The Army soon would be called to the Rio Grande to defend against invading Texans. But the Union was losing control of what would become Arizona Territory. By July 1861 only a handful of fighting men remained. In March 1861 Confederate entrepreneur George H. Giddings, still operating the Jackass Mail within Texas, took steps to acquire the abandoned route. He sent brother John J. Giddings to inspect the Overland Mail facilities and determine what would be needed in men, stock, repairs and supplies. In April, John left Mesilla in an Overland Mail coach accompanied by employees of the Jackass Mail and onetime Butterfield men Michael Neiss (or McNeese), Sam Nealy, conductor Anthony Elder and a driver remembered only as Briggs. The rooster tail of dust raised by the stage as it crossed the Animas Playa gave Cochise and his warriors time to prepare. Using masonry from Steins Peak Station to scrabble together fighting positions, the Chiricahua chief and his braves watched the stage approach. As the coach emerged from a wash at the station, a fusillade rang out. Driver Briggs fell dead over the side at the first shots. Elder, the conductor, reached desperately for the reins as the startled mules broke into a gallop. But he, too, was felled, and the coach careened out of control, racing driverless through the Apache ambush. On it sped with three men trapped inside and the pursuing Chiricahuas screaming their war cries. Around Steins Peak the mules edged too close to Doubtful Arroyo, and the stage tumbled over its sheer side into the ditch. Battered but alive, Giddings, Neiss and Nealy huddled in the confined space as bullets pierced the thin wood and canvas of the lightweight celerity wagon.
Captain James Henry Tevis, who led an already eventful life, tried to insert himself into the Cochise-Neiss-Giddings episode, claiming he and two friends were captured by Cochise and taken to Doubtful Canyon for torture. As he told it, after walking barefoot from near Pinos Altos and having his feet burned and slashed by Cochise, he alone escaped with the help of a friendly chief while his friends were suspended upside down and roasted. His friends, he asserts, were the two men found suspended later that month. While Giddings and Neiss’ bodies were unrecognizable, their timely discovery was well reported. Tevis also claimed Neiss was part of a 122-man party the Apaches annihilated in Doubtful Canyon. Despite the scale of the alleged massacre, however, newspapers of the era reported no such incident. —D.H. and C.A.M
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TOP: DOUG HOCKING PHOTO
Tevis Stretches the Truth
DOUG HOCKING PHOTO
Years later Cochise recalled that Nealy put up a fight, slaying three Apaches with his rapid-firing Sharps before succumbing. At that point Giddings and Neiss sought to negotiate with their attackers, throwing up their hands and hailing the Chiricahuas in Spanish. But Cochise was in no mood to parley. The chief had his warriors bind each man’s ankles and drag the captives uphill to a stand of cedars. There they were hoisted aloft until hanging upside down a forearm’s length above the ground. Directly beneath them the Apaches lit small fires, tormenting their captives for agonizing days. “They died like poor, sick women,” Cochise recalled in disgust. (See sidebar, opposite page.) On April 23, 1861, the Tucson newspaper reported that freighters Edward Donnelly and Patrick Donaghue had recently left Tanks Station —east of Steins Peak, near present-day Lordsburg, N.M.—bound for San Simon. Their return journey had taken them through Doubtful Canyon. They were never seen again. Two travelers, remembered only as Paige and O’Brien, also attempted the Doubtful route that April and were seen no more. Even Grant Oury, Arizona delegate to the Provisional Confederate States Congress, though leading a well-armed wagon train, came under attack in the canyon. In July 1861 seven well-armed Union men, some former Butterfield employees, who were quitting the country in advance of the Confederate invasion, departed Mesilla in an Overland Mail coach en route to California. They made it no farther than Cookes Canyon, 100 miles east
of Doubtful Canyon, before Chiricahua warriors attacked them. In a three-day battle they made the Apaches pay for their lives and won Cochise’s respect (see related story in the October 2005 Wild West). Some accounts mistakenly place this clash in Doubtful, but events there were more than bloody enough.
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uring the Civil War the civilian population of Arizona either forted up or fled the territory, and Doubtful Canyon remained quiet—with one exception. On May 4, 1864, Company I, 5th Infantry, California Volunteers, was returning from service on the Rio Grande to Fort Bowie, 30 miles west of Steins Peak. Crossing the divide to the lower, more dangerous west canyon, Private Henry Dosher strolled well ahead of the company with his dog and was lost from view. As the main body came down the final pitch, Apaches suddenly rose up on either side and in front, firing on the 56 infantrymen. Sergeant Charles Tobias fell wounded in that first volley, Private Chandler Abbott dropping beside him, shot through the torso. Meanwhile, 2nd Lt. Henry H. Stevens, respected by his men, fought to get free of his stricken horse. Just as Privates Charles Nelson, Paul Stone and James Webb also fell wounded, the lieutenant regained control of his unit. Returning organized fire, the company advanced on the Apaches on high ground scarce yards away. “Lieutenant Stevens is a brick,” one of his men wrote admiringly in a letter about the engagement.
This depiction of a celerity wagon run by the Overland Mail appears on a mural at City Hall in Benson, Ariz. In 1861 Cochise and warriors ambushed one such coach in Doubtful Canyon.
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Independent scholar and Wild West contributor Doug Hocking has lived among the Jicarilla Apaches and served as a U.S. Army officer. He specializes in American history, ethnology and historical archaeology. Carol Markstrom is a professor in the Department of Learning Sciences and Human Development and teaches Native American studies at West Virginia University. She researches and writes about Apache history and culture and is the author of Empowerment of North American Indian Girls (2008). Suggested for further reading: Forgotten Fights, by Gregory F. and Susan J. Michno; From Cochise to Geronimo, by Edwin R. Sweeney; and I Fought With Geronimo, by Jason Betzinez.
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A Curious Interruption In I Fought With Geronimo, his first-person account of the 1882 San Carlos breakout, Jason Betzinez referred to a striking episode he termed “a curious interruption.” On April 23 the fleeing Apaches paused near Steins Peak, within earshot of the unfolding clash at Horseshoe Canyon, to celebrate a teen girl’s passage into womanhood, as it was necessary to recognize her transition within four days. Reportedly over two nights the camp engaged in song and dance, expressing thanks to Usen (God). Apache oral tradition tells of a powerful being named White Painted Woman, who instructed the people to conduct this ritual as a celebration of all life-giving properties. Procedural propriety was not simply for the benefit of the one girl but to ensure the welfare of the entire group—in this case, deliverance from pursuit. Though warriors faced an overwhelming enemy force, the people were compelled to celebrate this crucial feast. —D.H. and C.A.M
Though the harrowing fight had lasted but a few minutes, some of the men insisted in letters home it had lasted for hours. As the infantrymen advanced, the Apaches vanished, fading into their desert surroundings. The proud infantrymen claimed to have killed as many as 50 Indians, though it’s more likely the Apaches slipped away unscathed. Though Private Dosher’s body was never found, his faithful dog returned to the command covered in human blood. (Fortunately for the canine, the Apaches ate horse not dog.) On May 20, 1885, the Arizona Daily Citizen reported from Tucson that 25 bleached skeletons in torn blue military uniforms had turned up in Doubtful Canyon—the remains, no doubt, of a lost military command. Perhaps Dosher had been found. On March 4, 1871, Apache raiders killed Charles Keerle, his wife and a half-dozen others in Chihuahua, Mexico. Two weeks later Captain Gerald Russell, at the head of 11 men of Company K, 3rd Cavalry, fought Cochise in the Peloncillo Mountains north of Steins Peak, killing three Apaches before returning to Fort Bowie for reinforcements. Continuing the pursuit, he found
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an abandoned Chiricahua ranchería in which were discovered a gentleman’s glove, a book and a tress of auburn woman’s hair carefully wrapped in paper. Russell believed these to be the last traces of Keerle and his wife. From the 1860s through the 1880s the site of the old mail station remained a favored camp for Apaches. It lay along their route to Mexico. Winding through the Peloncillos, the Chiricahuas threaded Doubtful and then entered Skeleton Canyon, which joined onward trails to Guadalupe Canyon in a concealed route to the Sierra Madre. In April 1882 Geronimo, Naiche, Chatto and Juh returned to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation to spring relatives they had left behind and compel Chief Loco’s Warm Springs band to jump the reservation and flee with them to Mexico. The renegade warriors, who covered their trail by slaying everyone with whom they came in contact, were hotly pursued by Lt. Col. George “Sandy” Forsyth, at the head of Companies C, F, G, H and M of the 4th Cavalry (nearly 500 soldiers). The Chiricahuas wound in and out of the Peloncillos. Seldom in the annals of the
TOP AND OPPOSITE BELOW RIGHT: DOUG HOCKING PHOTOS
The Sunrise Ceremony, held to celebrate an Apache girl’s passage into womanhood, also ensures the band’s general welfare.
THE RENEGADE WARRIORS COVERED THEIR TRAIL BY SLAYING EVERYONE WITH WHOM THEY CAME IN CONTACT Apache wars had such a large body of soldiers made contact with an Indian band. During the chase an Apache girl entered into womanhood, and the band paused to perform the Sunrise Ceremony (see sidebar, opposite page). Over the hill from Doubtful, within earshot of the women and children, the Battle of Horseshoe Canyon raged. High above the cavalry the Apaches dodged from cover to cover, firing down on Forsyth’s troopers, pinned in position below. Loco set fire to the grass to screen the movements of his warriors. During lulls in the firing, the ceremonial drumbeats and chanting drifted eerily down the canyon. For long hours warriors fought off Forsyth and company while the women and children danced. And then something inexplicable occurred. With four scouts killed and only a few soldiers wounded, one mortally, Colonel Forsyth broke contact and pulled his men back to Fort Bowie. The military community, and especially veteran scout Al Sieber, was outraged. Sieber wrote to the newspapers: Colonel Forsyth had attacked the band with six companies of the 4th Cavalry and in a place where he could have held them as long as he might wish. If he could not handle the band to any purpose, why did he not send for more troops, as plenty of them were near, and he could have had as many as he wanted inside of 12
hours? If the hostiles had withdrawn, they could have gone nowhere but into a valley, and in that case what better could he wish? Captain [Tullius] Tupper’s 6th Cavalry, with only 39 soldiers and 45 scouts for actual fighting, fought the same band in a very strong place, killed—if eye evidence is worth anything— 17 bucks and seven squaws and captured 74 head of their stock. If 84 men can do this, why is it that 500 men can’t do anything?
In 1885 Apaches slipped away in small groups from Fort Bayard, New Mexico Territory, killing civilians and stealing their arms and cattle as they fled. The mountains swallowed up these small bands, making pursuit difficult for soldiers and even for Sieber’s own Apache scouts. That same year Doubtful Canyon was the site of a skirmish between two-dozen cattleman and an equal number of Apaches. When the firing stopped, the cattlemen closed in and found an Apache infant, who came to be raised by a white woman in Safford, Arizona Territory. The child became known as the “Doubtful Kid.” Only when Geronimo surrendered in 1886 (see related story, P. 28) did Doubtful Canyon finally fall silent. WW
In April 1882, near Doubtful Canyon, Lt. Col. George Forsyth clashed with Geronimo and other Apaches who had jumped the San Carlos reservation.
Doubtful Canyon Today The remains of Steins Peak Station, on the Overland Mail route, lie in the dusty backcountry far from any road. Guarded by a locked gate on the Arizona–New Mexico border, it takes some effort to visit the site. A headstone on Giddings’ desolate grave (see photo), erected by his daughter in the 1920s, stands mute sentinel over what was once an active pass. The ruins themselves evoke the feelings of loneliness, isolation and fear that surely plagued the stationkeepers in their time. In the narrows of Doubtful Canyon the walls loom menacingly close. This was the terrain most feared by vulnerable travelers with no route of escape, knowing that Apaches watched from the rocky cliffs above. Despite the risks, the canyon promised swift passage through the otherwise steep, craggy mountains and greatly facilitated travel for centuries. —D.H. and C.A.M
GHOSTS BUSTED AT
SAND CREEK Visitors have reported strange sights and sounds at the traditional site of the 1864 tragedy—only it’s the wrong site By Gregory Michno
People hear and see “ghosts” in the wrong spot and often scramble the historical facts regarding Sand Creek. Eugene Ridgely’s elk-hide depiction is dramatic, but archaeological evidence reveals the fight was not in the village.
© AKADEMIE/ALAMY
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he Sand Creek battle/ massacre, which played out in southeast Colorado Territory on Nov. 29, 1864, remains one of the most hotly argued events in the history of the American West. Was it a massacre because at least 150 Cheyennes and Arapahos were killed, or a battle because there were also 76 soldier casualties? Were the Indians peaceful? Were they under Army protection? Did they fly an American flag in the village? Was there a saber charge through the village? Did the chiefs die stoically in front of their tepees? These points of contention still raise tempers 151 years after the bloody event. A range of conscious and subconscious factors impact our understanding of what happened at Sand Creek. We learn in school that primary sources can reveal the “facts” behind the history. But is a primary source much better than a secondary source or even oral tradition? The primary source most likely derives from an eyewitness or participant who sometime after an event relates a story, gives testimony or writes a letter, journal or memoir. He is subject to a number of subconscious factors, including prejudice, implanted memories, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, self-affirmation, motivated reasoning, social, cultural and political mores, and a brain that simply wants him to feel good. The witness may even be an outright liar. Given such obstacles, factual accuracy is a chimera, no more real than faces we imagine in the clouds. The secondary source is a facsimile, most likely related by a historian subject to similar faults and foibles, separated from events by time, subject to ZeitgeistCaption and personal Here. biases, and pondering theThis same drifting clouds is a caption. but discerning different faces. Oral history Caption Here. is more of the same,This further is a separated caption. by time and even harder to verify. Caption Here. a caption. In a world of nutsThis andisbolts reality such Caption history, so it factors can lead to inaccurate should be no surprise that the processes influencing our brains have an impact on what some might call the supernatural
world. I would argue there are two realms, the natural and supernatural, and that the former is real and the latter pure fantasy, populated by the likes of fairies, elves, goblins, angels, devils, ghosts, gods and Mother Goose. But because our brains often have a tough time distinguishing between the realms, elements that belong in the natural world have a way of slipping into the realm of the supernatural. A good number of us who remain flesh and bone believe we can find answers to our historical questions in the supernatural world. Do the spirits of those killed at Sand Creek exist, and can they communicate their anguish to the living? Do the spirits even know where they are, where their village once stood and where they were killed? I broach such questions because it appears the supposed ghosts of Sand Creek may be wailing in the wrong place.
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all tales develop after almost every tragedy. A year after the Sand Creek clash, one such story begins, buffalo hunter Kipling Brightmaster (or Brightwater) claimed to have seen a band of Cheyennes camped on the site of the fight. He sent a scout to talk to them, but no one was there when the scout arrived. Soldiers from Fort Lyon
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investigated but also found nothing. They wrote off Brightmaster as either delusional or drunk. The next year Brightmaster was back in the area and this time claimed to have seen Indians, their horses, tepees and fires. As he approached, however, the entire assemblage vanished into a mist. Brightmaster only heard the anguished wails of a woman in mourning. In 1902 a photographer attempted to capture the campsite on film, to no avail. In 1911 a local woman was passing the site when she heard a child crying, but a search turned up nothing. Other stories rolled in over the next century. In the 1990s visitors to the area claimed to have experienced intense pain and anguish. Even members of archaeological teams have described feeling overwhelming grief and sadness. More recent visitors have reported similar feelings. Don Vasicek, who made a 2004 documentary film about Sand Creek, said in an interview with Ghost Story magazine he was overcome with emotion on his first visit to the field. “At that moment,” Vasicek said, “I saw Colonel John M. Chivington [the U.S. commander] on a darkcolored horse, with his saber drawn, thrashing down this butte into Sand Creek, leading a charge right into the heart of the Cheyenne and Arapaho village. I saw his flaming eyes, orbs of hatred and terror. It was at that point I felt coldness penetrate my body. I shivered.…I closed my eyes. I didn’t
TOP: © NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY; LEFT AND OPPOSITE: ARROWHEADS © CHUCK AND SHERI BOWEN
This illustration of the Sand Creek clash incorrectly depicts a mounted charge through the Indian village.
want to look anymore. I could hear gunshots, the thud of rifle butts colliding with human heads, sabers slashing through the air, people screaming, and I could smell globs [of] gunpowder.” Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a chief of the Cheyenne Council of 44 and former U.S. senator from Colorado, once visited Sand Creek to put up a commemorative sign. “It was about 6 in the morning,” he recalled, “just as the sun was coming up. And it was very, very quiet, and I swear I heard babies crying. And it was such a strong emotional experience for me, I left there. But I’ve talked to several of my cousins who have also gone there really early in the morning, and they say the same thing.” Laird Cometsevah, a fellow chief of the Council of 44, visited the site for years to perform sacred rituals. At times he “heard the voices of children, of mothers, crying for help,” which convinced him “that’s where Black Kettle’s people got killed.” An absence of physical evidence did not deter him. He was certain it was the spot. Decades earlier Cometsevah had accompanied the Cheyenne keeper of the Sacred Arrow to Sand Creek, and the keeper had consecrated the ground, making it “Cheyenne earth.” “Spiritually and religiously [we] claimed that spot for the Cheyennes,” Cometsevah said. “The arrow keeper wasn’t wrong,” he insisted. “I wasn’t wrong. That’s exactly where the massacre happened.”
The village had to have once stood at Dawson South Bend on Sand Creek, as the Cheyenne performed a sacred ceremony there. Why there? Because that’s where the village was. The circular logic is appalling. Many Cheyennes could not accept the fact that the traditional village site contained no related artifacts, and that archaeological surveys showed the village to have been from 1 to 1.5 miles farther upstream. “They’re calling our ancestors liars,” Cometsevah said. The certainty is Cometsevah’s ancestors weren’t liars any more than were the soldiers’ ancestors—which doesn’t say much, because being truthful does not necessarily equate to being accurate. The reality is their collective deficient subconscious wreaked havoc on historical truth. We have enough trouble nailing down facts; to accede to spirits and visions as a basis for reconstructing a historical site is like returning to the Dark Ages—then again, given our propensity to believe in the supernatural, perhaps we never left it. One might think that if a person had the ability to envision the past, he would see what really occurred and not merely repeat how novelists, filmmakers or poor historians might have depicted it. For one thing there was no saber charge at Sand Creek. According to the ordnance report of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry, sabers were not even issued to the regiment. More pertinent,
This arrowhead and the one opposite were found near the actual village site, as was the spoon shown on P. 51.
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however, is that the ghost-seers missed the location entirely. Vasicek, Campbell, Cometsevah and hundreds of others visited the wrong place. Black Kettle’s village was not on the spot where they stood imagining the horrors of warfare and hearing wailing women and crying babies. Had the ghosts of the departed wanted to reach out to those who claimed to have heard them, they’d had to have used cell phones.
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TOP LEFT: GREGORY MICHNO; LEFT: THE DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY, WESTERN HISTORY COLLECTION, Z-877
Private Morse Coffin recalled that he and the other soldiers had walked through the deserted village.
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ll these visitors with overactive imaginations were in the wrong spot. Their visions also don’t jibe with primary evidence. For instance, soldiers were among the first to die, and the cavalry never charged through the village—the dismounted troopers walked through it. Major Jacob Downing instructed Major Scott Anthony not to mount a cavalry charge, as it would place the horses at too great risk of injury. “We proceeded through the village on a walk,” said Private Morse Coffin. “I think the town at this time was entirely deserted by the Indians, as not one was to be seen thereabouts.” The mixed-blood Robert Bent, scouting for the whites, recalled, “They [the Indians] had time to get away if they had wanted to.” No chiefs died stoically in front of their lodges. There was no slaughter in the village—that came later. At present-day Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site [nps.gov/sand] the stone monument atop a bluff overlooking the creek, near the visitor center, does not mark the site of Black Kettle’s village. In 2002 Southwest Entertainment, which owns a number of casinos, bought the alleged site of the massacre and then deeded it to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, which then placed it under the management of the National Park Service. Trouble was, those who metal detected the area never found any artiMajor Scott facts to verify the legitimacy of the site. The Anthony followed NPS and a team of professional archaeologists orders and, for the inspected the area and determined the village sake of the horses, site actually lay more than a mile farther north. did not mount a Chuck Bowen thought that was where it cavalry charge. might be. He grew up on a ranch a few miles north of the historic site, had scoured the area and over the years discovered numerous village- and battle-related artifacts on his parents’ land. He and wife Sheri intensified their efforts to find the true battle site after the Colorado Historical Society [history colorado.org] began inspecting the area in 1993. By 1997 they were seriously at work with metal detectors, history books and maps, assembling a remarkable collection of about 3,000 relics—all found on Bowen property starting about 2 miles northwest of the traditional site. The NPS entered the picture after passage of a 1998 historic study bill sponsored by Campbell. With the help of period maps and Bowen’s suggestions, the agency pinpointed a concentration of artifacts a mile or
more north of Dawson South Bend. It had found Black Kettle’s village. The artifact patterns indicated the village was not drawn up in a tight circle as usually depicted but strung out along the course of the creek for about a mile. The place where so many people had claimed to have seen visions and heard cries was not where the village sat or where the fighting took place, a field that actually stretched upstream 2 to 5 miles or more.
TOP: JOAN PENNINGTON MAP, BASED ON A MAP BY GREGORY MICHNO; SPOON © CHUCK AND SHERI BOWEN
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o, what happens when modern spirit seekers hunt for the ghosts of the dead at the right place? A curious Chuck Bowen allowed a team of ghost hunters to try its luck, and the author tagged along. We assembled on a dirt road on the Bowen property on a late afternoon in March 2004. The late start would have us thrashing around the bed of Sand Creek in the twilight and darkness, making the experience “spookier” for all. The group came equipped with all the musthaves for any reputable ghost hunter: infrared thermometers, EMF (electromagnetic field) detectors, audio recorders, night vision devices, atmospheric meters and extra batteries, for every good ghost hunter knows that prankster spirits love to drain batteries. We drove to the south side of the cottonwood-lined bend of the creek. The hunters slowly walked toward the trees, adjusting meters and sweeping detectors left and right. I asked if ghosts preferred to play in the infrared or electromagnetic field but got no answer—skeptics are not appreciated. On the club’s website one rule states that anyone seeking a ghost investigation has to be a disciple—it being easier to validate spirits to those who already believe in them. We’d barely begun our walk when one of the women, apparently the “seer”—who carried no instruments but could pick up supernatural vibes —suddenly stopped and raised her arms out to her sides like a telephone pole. “What’s she doing?” I asked, but I was told to shhh while she received her messages. After she lowered her arms, I waited a respectable moment and asked, “What did you see or hear?” There were women, she answered, many were crying over their dead children, and one in particular was telling her about how awful it was for a mother to see her baby murdered. I asked if these women were communicating to her in Cheyenne, or if they had learned English
for their supernatural conversation. That question got me a dirty look. Approaching the creek bank, we crossed right over a spot where Bowen had found a significant cache of relics, including human bones. The hunters tramped right by without so much as a beep on their instruments or an inclination from the human antenna regarding what should have been one of the “hottest” spots on the field. They were headed for the trees, for amid vegetation and foliage are found the strongest readings of significant “presences.” For primitive peoples throughout history the forest has been a dark place where spirits conveniently congregated. The sun had fully set, and inside the grove the hunters really had fun. They crept through the trees and brush, slowly swinging their instruments left and right, up and down, and occasionally taking flash photographs. Speaking in whispers, they discussed their readings and seemed encouraged. I sidled up to one to check out his meter. He smiled and showed me all the “activity” he was getting. The dial barely twitched; I’d assumed it would swing like a pendulum. They’d finished sweeping the grove when Bowen mentioned another spot he wanted them to inspect. Night had fallen, and we piled into our cars to follow Chuck’s truck taillights about a mile farther upstream. The ghost hunters were sweeping the new site when one halted and said his battery was dead. A common occurrence, he said,
GHOST BUSTING AT SAND CREEK
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explaining, “The spirits don’t like the interference, and when their presence is strong, they take it out on us by killing our batteries.” I had to ask, “How come our car batteries are working fine?” He turned and walked off. My bad. Another half-hour and they called it a night, and miraculously all the cars started right up. Chuck led us across a few more miles of prairie as jackrabbits scattered—the only “activity.”
Colorado resident Gregory Michno is a Wild West special contributor. He wrote a version of this story for Skeptic magazine (Vol. 19, No. 1, 2014). Michno is the author of Battle at Sand Creek: The Military Perspective (2004), among many other nonfiction books. 52 WILD WEST
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n appreciation for allowing them to do their thing on private property, the ghost club sent Chuck Bowen several “proofs” the land was indeed haunted. “They took lots of pictures,” Chuck said. “It was well after dark, and they used a flash on the camera. Some of the pictures had white and sometimes red dots.” Bowen is a photographer and well versed in the completely mundane explanations for such marks: reflections, lens flare from too much or uneven glass, an improperly opened aperture, dust, moisture and, in that location, drifting cottonwood seeds. But the ghost hunters had their own explanation for the phe-
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nomena. “They said it was orbs,” Chuck said, “and the red they said was angry evil spirits.” In the end, he told me, “Taking the groups out was a fun experience, but for me I was underwhelmed.” Me too. I later emailed the ghost club to ask about their findings. “We got some great stuff,” the spokesperson said, “EVPs [electronic voice phenomena] of screams and crying, cannons firing, soldiers yelling.” Wow. Those were some recordings. I never heard or saw any such things, but I guess my poor senses couldn’t pick up all that phenomenal activity. All I heard or saw were people whispering beneath the cottonwoods and tramping through the brush. Meanwhile, the areas that returned the most “hits” were the very ones devoid of artifacts, while the ground laden with battle relics prompted neither a beep nor a buzz from their instruments. What it shows is that believing is seeing, and when given the choice, believers in the supernatural will hone in on the spot that looks spookiest. This likely stems from learned experience and an innate remnant from our evolutionary past that
GREGORY MICHNO
Neither this 1950 monument nor the historic site mark the location of the village or the fight.
‘PATRIOTIC CITIZENS OF COLORADO... PURSUE, KILL AND DESTROY ALL HOSTILE INDIANS THAT INFEST THE PLAINS’
—Territorial Governor John Evans
operates more off the brain’s amygdalae, deep in the limbic system, causing us to perceive patterns where there may not be any. Hearing a noise on the African savannah, believing it originated from a lion in hiding and running away served us better than not recognizing a potential danger and falling prey to the lion. Humans are wired to conjure patterns, but we need to realize that our imaginings have natural explanations. Ghost hunters believe in spirits, things that go bump in the night, and thus are primed to see them, but they often focus on places they feel should be haunted. In that regard they are little
different from past visitors to the NPS site—when told that was where people died, inevitably that was where they imagined seeing or hearing charging soldiers, booming cannons or crying babies. To most humans a sunny prairie with wildflowers, cottonwoods and creek would be a place for a pleasant afternoon picnic. Take them there at twilight and tell them it is a place of murderous evil, and they will likely see and hear that which their minds have been primed to experience. We see what we are. And that becomes apparent when people visit Sand Creek. WW
Appointed territorial governor in 1862, John Evans issued the above appeal for the killing of hostiles in 1864.
VISITING SAND CREEK
TOP: ROBERT STINSON; RIGHT: GREGORY MICHNO
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This field, at least a mile upstream from the traditional site, was the location of the actual village.
he Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, which is in Kiowa County near Eads, Colo., does not encourage ghost hunting. It does suggest learning history from an interpretive ranger, honoring the dead by paying one’s respects at the repatriation burial area and looking for rare birds, insects and fauna.
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HEART OF LIGHTNESS Buffalo hunter and guide Henri Chatillon’s enlightened relationship with the Lakotas had a lasting influence on frontier historian Francis Parkman By John Koster
They were Henri Chatillon’s treasured keepsakes, reminders of both an enduring love and a vital friendship that left its mark on literature. In 1967 an electrician discovered the leather-wrapped bundle beneath the attic floorboards of the ChatillonDeMenil Mansion in St. Louis. The spindle of the bundle was a high-quality Hawken rifle from the 1840s. Wrapped around it was an oil painting of a handsome, dark-bearded, sad-eyed Frenchman and a beautiful American Indian woman in two profiles—one looking up to Heaven in search of mercy, the other down to Earth, offering consolation. The girl was Bear Robe, daughter and sister of notable Oglala Lakota chiefs. The Hawken rifle had belonged to Francis Parkman, author of the frontier classic The Oregon Trail (1849). The mournful Frenchman in the painting was Chatillon himself. Their shared tale is the story of the American West.
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CHATILLON-DEMENIL MANSION
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orn on Sept. 16, 1823, Francis Parkman Jr., the eldest son of prominent Unitarian minister Francis Parkman, was raised in Boston and on his maternal grandfather’s estate at nearby Medford. The younger Parkman entered Harvard at 16, and at 20 he took a grand tour of Europe. In Rome he declined offers to convert to Catholicism, though he came to respect the Catholic Church. Returning to Harvard, he studied the law and wore down his eyesight to the point it gave him trouble the rest of his life. In 1845 cousin Quincy Adams Shaw, who had studied medicine at Harvard, proposed the postgraduates journey west the following spring to hunt buffalo and see the Indians before they “vanished.” Parkman jumped at the chance. While they were prepping for Harvard, Henri (or Henry) Chatillon was learning the ropes as a hunter for the American Fur Co. A grandson of French naval officer Clément Delor de Treget, Chatillon was born on Dec. 3, 1813, in Carondelet, a Missouri River town his grandfather had founded in 1767.
In 1967 this painting of Henri Chatillon and his Oglala wife, Bear Robe, turned up in the attic of his St. Louis home.
On coming one afternoon to the [American Fur Co.] office, we found there a tall and exceedingly well-dressed man with a face so open and frank that it attracted our notice at once.…From the age of 15 years [he] had been constantly in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, employed by the most part by the company to supply their forts with buffalo.…He had arrived in St. Louis the day before from the mountains, where he had remained for four years; and he now only asked to go and spend a day with his mother before setting out on another expedition. His age was about 30. He was 6 feet high and very powerfully and gracefully molded. The prairies had been his school; he could neither read nor write.…His manly face was a mirror of uprightness, simplicity and kindness of heart.
Perhaps out of kindness of heart Chatillon agreed to be their guide, for neither Parkman nor Shaw knew a thing about the Plains tribes. Their first hire had been a fur company employee named Deslauriers—“a Canadian, with all the characteristics of the true Jean-Baptiste. Neither fatigue, exposure nor hard labor could ever impair his cheerfulness and gaiety or his obsequious politeness to his bourgeois [boss].” Deslauriers was a capable follower—a muleteer and fry cook who drove a cart with tents, food, and gifts for the Indians. But fur company employees had recommended Chatillon as chief guide.
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n old Delaware chief took their measure early and tacitly endorsed Henri Chatillon as the de facto leader. “Who’s your chief?” the Delaware inquired of Chatillon. The Frenchman pointed past muleteer Deslauriers to Shaw and Parkman. “No good!” the wise old chief declared. “Too young!” 56 WILD WEST
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The woman lay in one of [the lodges], reduced to a mere skeleton. For some time she had been unable to move or speak. Indeed, nothing had kept her alive but the hope of seeing Henry, to whom
HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS
Found in the attic with the painting of Chatillon and Bear Robe was a Hawken rifle like this one.
Parkman wrote of his and Shaw’s meeting with Chatillon in The Oregon Trail:
Parkman thought himself something of a hunter, but Chatillon—who had killed at least 30 formidable grizzly bears—quietly disabused him. Needing meat one day, the guide borrowed Parkman’s new Hawken rifle, brought along his own timeworn muzzleloader and slipped up on buffalo grazing upwind about 150 yards away. He fired twice. “You have missed them,” Parkman blurted. A moment later one buffalo dropped as a second staggered in its death throes. Chatillon had hit both through the lungs at 150 yards over open sights. “You see I miss him,” Chatillon said dryly. Parkman was an inveterate snob, but he found Chatillon to be a better horseman and rifleman, adept in Indian languages and rich in common sense. The guide knew everyone important, white or Indian, and they all respected him. “The palpable superiority of Henry Chatillon’s experience and skill made him the resort of the whole camp upon every question of difficulty,” Parkman wrote. He soon witnessed a gentler aspect of his rugged guide’s character. With the hunting party members lodged amicably among the Lakotas, one of Chatillon’s lackluster in-laws, an Oglala “dandy” known as The Horse—who “carried a dragoon sword in his hand, solely for display”—arrived with devastating news: Henri’s Lakota wife, Bear Robe, had taken deathly ill. “She and her children were in the village of The Whirlwind, at the distance of a few days’ journey,” Parkman recalled. “Henry was anxious to see the woman before she died and provide for the safety and support of his children, of whom he was extremely fond. To have refused him this would have been gross inhumanity.” Parkman and Shaw consented to the detour. En route, however, Parkman’s shaky health collapsed with what sounds like a digestive disorder complicated by hysterical blindness or day glare, and he missed the sad ending to the first marriage of Henri Chatillon. But Shaw described Bear Robe’s death to Parkman, as recorded in The Oregon Trail:
she strongly and faithfully attached. No sooner did he enter the lodge than she revived and conversed with him for the greater part of the night. Early in the morning she was lifted into a [travois], and the whole party set out toward our camp.…Henry was riding with Shaw a few rods in advance of the Indians, when Mahto-Tatonka [sic ], a younger brother of the woman, hastily called after them.… They reached her just in time to hear the death rattle in her throat. In a moment she lay dead in the basket of the vehicle. A complete stillness succeeded; then the Indians raised in concert their cries of lamentation over the corpse.…A fine horse was picketed not far off, destined to be killed that morning for the service of her spirit, for the woman was lame [incapacitated by her illness] and could not travel on foot over the dismal prairies to the villages of the dead. Food, too, was provided, and household implements for her use upon this last journey. Henry left her to the care of her relatives and came immediately with Shaw to the camp. It was some time before he entirely recovered from his dejection.
“Mahto-Tatonka, in his rude way, was a hero.” His principal heir, Mato Tatanka the younger, was one of the brothers who had offered Chatillon condolences. “He had oftener struck the enemy and stolen more horses and more squaws than any young man in the village,” Parkman wrote. To the classically trained scholar he and the other young Lakota warriors were figures of Olympian stature. “Only on the prairie and in the Vatican have I seen such faultless models of the human figure,” he gushed. “With his free and noble attitude, with the bow in his hand and the quiver at his back, he might seem, but for his face, the Pythian Apollo himself.” And Parkman experienced other revelations. One day he looked on as the Lakotas tended to a lost runaway black slave, with no thought of turning him in. The Lakotas routinely invited the white hunters to eat with them. Chatillon and Shaw sometimes left the enfeebled Parkman in the care of the
Guide and hunter Henri Chatillon leads the way in The Parkman Outfit, by N.C. Wyeth.
WORLD HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE
Henri’s infant daughter had also died. He entrusted their older daughter to the family of a fellow fur trader. A few days later two of Bear Robe’s brothers showed up to express their condolences to Henri, whom they accepted as an actual brother. Parkman was an acute observer. He knew that many white men consorted with Indian women but took no responsibility for any half-blood offspring. The idea that a man whom Parkman respected actually acknowledged and cared about his mixed-blood children was a cultural watershed. Parkman had once used the term “squalid savages”—later borrowed by his intense admirer Theodore Roosevelt—to describe the American Indians. But Parkman, inspired by Henri Chatillon, soon dug deeper.
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ear Robe’s father, Bull Bear (Mato Tatanka), had died at the hands of rival warriors some five years earlier (see Indian Life, P. 26). “He was the father of Henry Chatillon’s squaw, a circumstance which proved of some advantage to us,” Parkman noted. OCTOBER 2015
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New Englander Francis Parkman Jr. may have been a snob, but he came to recognize the “palpable superiority of Henri Chatillon’s experience and skill.”
Parkman’s cousin and fellow Harvard grad Quincy Adams Shaw had proposed they journey west in 1845. 58 WILD WEST
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heritage was assigned a lower rung on the evolutionary ladder. The Lakotas in Parkman’s writing, however, incontestably human and often physically and mentally impressive, come off not only far better than other Indians but also better than the Mormons, Missourians or hapless Mexicans that Parkman slams in The Oregon Trail.
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oon after returning Francis Parkman and Quincy Adams Shaw to civilization, Henri Chatillon himself settled in and made provisions for the future. Parkman recalled their parting in The Oregon Trail:
No one who met him in the streets of St. Louis would have taken him for a hunter fresh from the Rocky Mountains. He was very neatly and simply dressed in a suit of dark cloth.…We took leave of him with much regret.…Shaw had given him a horse at We s t p o r t . My r i f l e , which he had always been fond of using, as it was an excellent piece, is now in his hands.”
The rifle did not remain in his hands long. Within a year of the hunting party’s return to St. Louis, Parkman submitted The Oregon Trail to The Knickerbocker literary magazine in 21 installments (1847–49), and the subsequent book became a bestseller, bringing its author and his former guide fame. Meanwhile, Chatillon had commissioned the painting of himself and Bear Robe, with spiritual overtones, from an unknown St. Louis artist. In October 1848 he married first cousin Odile Delor Lux, a widow as he himself was a widower. Odile had earlier purchased 21 acres in St. Louis, and the couple built a sturdy four-room brick farmhouse. At some point Parkman’s gifted Hawken rifle made its way to the attic. The Chatillons lived in comfort in the booming city, selling off some of their extra acres when they needed cash. In 1856 they
TOP LEFT: CHATILLON-DEMENIL MANSION; LEFT: AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY
Chatillon had hunted buffalo for the American Fur Co., and company employees endorsed him as a chief guide.
Indians while they went hunting. Aside perhaps from overfeeding him, they did him no harm. For the rest of his life—though he criticized other tribes— Parkman bristled in print when others disparaged the Sioux as either stupid or cruel. In his eyes the young Lakota women were “beauties,” their bashful if giggling flirtations generally chaste. As such flirtations were marriagedirected, and Parkman’s poor health made him appear shabby husband material, no romantic relationships seem to have developed. The author regarded older Lakota men as fairly profound. “The intellect of an Indian can embrace the idea of an all-wise, all-powerful Spirit, the Supreme Ruler of the Universe,” he wrote. “To him all nature is instinct with mystic influence.” In essence Parkman perceived them as transplanted German Romantics or New England Transcendentalists of the era. The author’s impressions in The Oregon Trail percolated down to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose popular epic poem “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855) was perhaps the single greatest antidote to the type of genocide proposed by William Tecumseh Sherman, who wrote after the 1866 Fetterm a n M a s s a c r e , “ We must proceed with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination—men, women and children.” Public indignation kept this from happening in 1866, as it did 10 years later after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Longfellow, a believing Christian and early abolitionist, actually knew little about the Sioux he had not learned from Parkman. And Parkman had learned from Chatillon, until he himself came to appreciate the Lakotas, befriend several and accept them as rough people of turbulent nature but Homeric mold. Parkman even took time to learn some of the Lakota language. Chatillon’s influence on Parkman came at an opportune time. After the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1858, a decade after The Oregon Trail, anyone not of Anglo-Saxon
sold the remaining acres to doctor and land speculator Nicholas DeMenil, who transformed the modest brick farmhouse into a Greek Revival mansion. Perhaps Chatillon relegated the painting of Bear Robe to the attic because his second wife would not have approved—or perhaps because the spirit of Bear Robe would not have approved. While multiple wives were common among her people, Lakotas hold any form of cousin marriage in horror. Regardless, Chatillon’s feelings for Bear Robe appear never to have conflicted with his affection for Odile. After the couple sold the house, Chatillon had considered leading a hunting expedition to Fort Laramie, but he changed his mind, turned the party over to Jim Bridger and returned with Odile to Carondelet, his birthplace. Years earlier Henri had lost his infant daughter, perhaps because the dying Bear Robe could not nurse due to what sounds like tuberculosis. He had left older daughter Emilie in the care of fur trader Joseph Bissonette and family. Henri reclaimed Emilie when she was 17. On New Year’s
Eve 1858 he saw her baptized in Carondelet at Saints Mary and Joseph Catholic Church, and at the same church three days later he gave her away in marriage to Louis Benjamin Lessert. Ben, who earned Chatillon’s approval as a reliable sonin-law, had first met Emilie during a stop at Bissonette’s trading post in what would become Wyoming. Their reportedly happy 46-year marriage produced three children. Henri’s marriage to Odile remained respectable but childless. Chatillon died in 1873 in St. Louis. Exact dates differ, and his grave marker has since gone missing. But his real memorial is in the pages of Parkman’s The Oregon Trail. “He was a proof of what unaided nature will sometimes do,” wrote the author. “I have never in the city or the wilderness met a better man than my noble and true-hearted friend Henry Chatillon.” Longfellow’s literary output, in particular “The Song of Hiawatha,” also gave words to the message Parkman had absorbed from Chatillon and his mournful love for Bear Robe and concern for their daughter, Emilie: “Every human heart is human.” WW
John Koster is a special contributor to Wild West and the author of Custer Survivor. For further reading he recommends The Oregon Trail, by Francis Parkman.
© NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY
Thanks largely to Chatillon’s influence, Parkman gained an unprecedented level of respect for the Lakota people.
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This circa 1883 cabinet card view of Tombstone —showing the Cochise County Courthouse, on the far edge of town at right—is attributed to photographer C.S. Fly. HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS
JUSTICE IN
TOMBSTONE
Judge Wells Spicer famously presided over the Earp-Holliday hearing and wielded his gavel against townsite ‘hoodlums’ before mysteriously vanishing into the Arizona Territory desert By Bob Palmquist
Spicer reported on the May 1869 ceremony in Utah Territory that marked completion of the first transcontinental railroad, dubbing it a “very weak humbug.” 62 WILD WEST
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wish to live here, do like us—go to work at whatever they can to earn a living.” Following his own advice, he became editor of The Cedar County Advertiser, which proclaimed to be “Independent in All Things and Impartial in None.” Spicer followed this pattern for most of his life—practicing law, writing for newspapers and, ultimately, becoming involved in mining matters. On July 6, 1856, Spicer married 16-year-old local girl Abbie J. Gilbert, who a year later gave birth to son Earnest. The year of his marriage Spicer was elected Cedar County judge, his first judicial post. He had evolved from adherence to the Democratic Party, through anti-immigrant KnowNothingism to allegiance to the new Republican Party, which that fall would field “Pathfinder” (and future Arizona Territory governor) John C. Frémont as its first presidential candidate. The election of Judge Spicer was marred by one violent episode. Spicer, a man of strong opinions who never shrank from expressing them, called his opponent a liar in public, whereupon a voter struck him on the head with a walking stick. Spicer by 1866 had bolted to Colorado Territory to prospect for gold. He left Abbie and Earnest in Iowa, maintaining a long-distance relationship for
© GRAPHIICAARTIS/CORBIS; OPPOSITE: PHOTO ENHANCED BY GREG PROCH
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n 1882, testifying as an expert witness in the Tombstone, Arizona Territory, mining case of Field v. Gray, Wells W. Spicer identified his occupations as lawyer and mining broker, “anything with money in it.” He might have added journalist to the list. From 1879 to 1883 Spicer made Tombstone his home and intermittently followed all three professions. Best known for his decision as justice of the peace in the case of Territory of Arizona v. Morgan Earp et al. Defendants following the Oct. 26, 1881, gunfight near the O.K. Corral, he participated in matters of even greater legal import, commenting on many of them with pungent prose and wry humor. And like many other residents of frontier boomtowns, he moved on when the boom went bust. Born in 1831 in Tioga County, N.Y., Spicer at age 9 moved with his family to Iowa and by 19 was working as a clerk, probably for William H. Tuthill, a lawyer, businessman and newspaper publisher in Tipton, Iowa. By 1854 Spicer, 23, had begun a law practice of his own but found reason to complain. “Lawing is not well patronized in this county, so that lawyers cannot depend on their professions alone for support,” he said. “They must, if they
Justice Spicer first sat on the bench in Iowa, but by 1866 he had ventured west to practice law and write for newspapers, among other pursuits.
decades—not unusual for men in the mining West. In the spring of 1869 he rode the Union Pacific rails to a terminus a few miles east of Promontory Point, Utah Territory, where the Union Pacific would meet the eastbound Central Pacific, joining the nation in transcontinental travel. Spicer was on hand on May 10, 1869, when railroad magnate Leland Stanford drove the “Golden Spike” to commemorate the event. Spicer, however, dubbed the ceremony a “very weak humbug” and laced his account for newspapers with less than reverential descriptions: “The last rail was put down amid confusion. Hats off. Somebody was said to pray. Somebody was said to make a short speech. Nobody heard it. Somebody called for cheers. A few gave them. The rest were too dry. All then adjourned to the ‘deadfalls’ to irrigate; and as soon as the trains left, everybody was glad to get away and glad it was over.” For the next decade Spicer practiced law, wrote for newspapers in Utah Territory mining camps and also educated himself in mineralogy. From 1875 to 1877 he became embroiled as a lawyer in the most controversial case ever tried in Utah, United States v.
John D. Lee, the defendant accused of leading an attack on an emigrant wagon train in the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre some 20 years earlier. Spicer served as Lee’s lead counsel (see sidebar below). The fallout from the result (Lee’s conviction and execution) likely motivated Spicer to seek greener pastures. Providing the impetus was the 1877 discovery of rich silver ore in southeastern Arizona Territory by prospector Ed Schieffelin, whom Spicer would come to know well. Schieffelin had ignored friendly warnings that all he would find in the barren Arizona hills was his tombstone, and he named the first of his claims and the town that sprouted up around them just that—Tombstone.
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picer arrived in Tombstone as the camp was emerging from its first stage of development, the frenetic staking by prospectors (most not as fortunate as Schieffelin) of every inch of available silver ground in the Tombstone hills and atop a mesa known locally as Goose Flats. Several settlements
Wells Spicer achieved fame—or notoriety—as counsel of record for John Doyle Lee, the Mormon leader charged with masterminding and leading the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah Territory on Sept. 11, 1857. Lee stood two trials, the first in 1875 resulting in a hung jury, the second the following year resulting in Lee’s conviction. By the time Lee faced a firing squad on March 23, 1877, Spicer had garnered the ire of both Mormons and Gentiles in Utah Territory. Having lost much of his practice, he was ready to move on. He later dubbed himself the “Unkilled of Mountain Meadows.” In the massacre of a wagon train of Arkansas emigrants, 120 men, women and children were killed. Blame initially fell on Paiute Indians, but suspicions turned toward Mormon settlers led by local Indian agent John D. Lee. Charges and countercharges flew, but the Civil War carnage soon overshadowed the massacre. In 1875 Spicer wrote, “Mr. Lee has been harassed over this affair for years past, waiting the time to come when a fair and impartial investigation could be had.” By then Lee had been arrested and charged with the almost 20-year-old crime and had engaged Spicer as his lead counsel. Many saw Lee as the designated fall guy for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (perhaps even Brigham Young himself) for ordering the massacre of Gentiles passing through Utah Territory and then blaming it on the Paiutes. As the first trial began in July 1875 in Beaver, Utah Territory, Spicer suggested three alternative theories to absolve Lee of guilt: (1) Indians had in fact committed the crime; (2) Mormon leadership, motivated by “religious fanaticism,” had ordered and carried out the killings; or (3) irresponsible and “depraved” migrants had provoked the Indians to attack. When the first jury could not agree, Spicer went prospecting, while Lee remained in jail. Spicer returned as Lee’s counsel during the second trial, but the Mormon jury found Lee guilty of murder on Sept. 20, 1876. He was shot on-site at Mountain Meadows the following year. “Defending John D. Lee was like thrusting a hand into a meat grinder,” writes Spicer biographer Lynn Bailey. In leaving Utah Territory for Arizona Territory, Wells Spicer must have felt a sense of relief. —B.P. 64 WILD WEST
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© CORBIS
In Defense of John Lee
SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES, 2519P, PRESCOTT, ARIZ.
ED SCHIEFFELIN, WHOM SPICER WOULD COME TO KNOW WELL, HAD IGNORED FRIENDLY WARNINGS THAT ALL HE WOULD FIND IN THE BARREN ARIZONA HILLS WAS HIS TOMBSTONE
had sprouted around the diggings. In June 1879 Spicer reported to Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star: “The town of Tombstone is undergoing much trouble now as to where it shall finally build itself, the consequence of which is that instead of one, concentrated, prosperous town, there are three distinct sites or town locations, all having a hope of being the great town of Tombstone.” In that early dispatch Spicer pinpointed an issue that would factor greatly in his Arizona Territory law career—the tangled issue of the Tombstone townsite. Ironically—seeing as he decried the existence of the three competing townsites—Spicer, for motives still disputed, would seek to establish a fourth, which he dubbed New Boston. The 48-year-old lawyer, balding and described as “rumpled looking,” plunged into the fast-paced life of the burgeoning silver camp. James, Virgil and Wyatt Earp, with their wives and James’ stepchildren, arrived on Dec. 1, 1879. They would play a key role in Spicer’s life, but in 1879 the lawyer
was more concerned with Tombstone’s economic development, writing on December 31 about the arrival of a “synod of New York capitalists” aiming at financing significant prospects. He also took note of the likelihood of “considerable litigation about mines,” an area he knew well. Spicer wrote of the boom in February 1880: “[Tombstone has] a population of 1,500 people, with two dance houses, a dozen gambling places, over 20 saloons and more than 500 gamblers. Still, there is hope, for I know of two Bibles in town, and I have one of them (borrowed).” By then Tombstone had been incorporated as a village and had elected a council and its second mayor, Alder Randall. In a more ominous dispatch, Spicer wrote the next month of a “stampede for town lots.” During the commotion, “shotguns and hip artillery were sported about, but nobody killed, and all the vacant lots in town were jumped.” The ruckus stemmed from the shenanigans of the Tombstone Townsite Co., a group of speculators dominated by OCTOBER 2015
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In big- and small-screen depictions of Old West shootouts the lawman typically squares off against the badman in the street, outdraws his antagonist and shoots him down. Townsfolk then mill around the pair and affirm, “He drew first, marshal.” No further inquiry is made, and there are no legal consequences for the embattled lawman. On Oct. 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Chief of Police Virgil Earp, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and their friend and impromptu deputy John Henry “Doc” Holliday shot down Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton in the West’s most famous gunfight. A month-long preliminary hearing before Justice Wells Spicer decided the legal issues. Spicer had received a criminal complaint, signed by Ike Clanton, charging the Earps and Holliday with murder. As justice of the peace he could not hold a trial on the matter. Rather, his task was to hear the evidence and make a preliminary determination as to whether the case should go to a Cochise County grand jury and, ultimately, to trial before the U.S. District Court. “It is the duty of an examining and committing magistrate,” Spicer wrote, “to issue a warrant of arrest in the first place whenever from the depositions given [as by complaining witness Ike Clanton] there is reasonable ground to believe that the defendant has committed a public offense. After hearing evidence, however, the statute changes the rule, and he is then required to commit the defendant only when there is ‘sufficient cause to believe’ him guilty.” Spicer spent all of November hearing evidence for and against the Earps and Holliday. Defense attorney Tom Fitch initially sought to restrict Spicer to procedural oversight with no power to rule on objections, but Spicer overruled him. Throughout the hearing he ruled on objections far more often in favor of the prosecution than of the defense, and he initially revoked bail for Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, as the evidence seemed to point to their guilt. Ultimately, however, his review of all the evidence led him to conclude that no Arizona Territory trial jury would “find the defendants guilty of any offense.” On November 30 he ordered the release of Earp and Holliday. —B.P. 66 WILD WEST
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Virgil Earp (above) and his brothers were not on trial, but Justice Spicer heard evidence to determine if they would face one.
rough frontier veteran Mike Gray and smoothtalking manipulator James Clark. Clark, Gray & Co. laid claim to virtually the entire townsite— never mind that much of it was already occupied by businesses and mining claims. As attorney for the true occupants, Spicer would go toe to toe with Clark and Gray, whom he blasted as “hoodlums.” Further complicating the tangled real estate dealings was the fact that before promoters had laid out the townsite on Goose Flats, mine locators had filed a number of claims on portions of the same ground—one of these, the aptly named Gilded Age, in 1878. The question arose: Between townsite applicants and mine locators, who held rights to the surface above the mining claims? Gray had one answer. When Ed Field, who had purchased the Gilded Age, set surveyor Solon M. Allis to surveying his claim, Gray appeared, gun drawn, growling, “You can’t survey here except at the point of a gun.” Allis backed off, and the impasse wound up in Pima County District Court. Clark and Gray contended the Gilded Age was not a valid mining claim in that it lacked legitimate silver formations. Spicer stepped in as expert witness for the plaintiff. In the trial before Territorial Chief Justice C.G.W. French in Tucson, the lawyer-mineralogist gave detailed testimony supporting the location of a valid silver claim by Field’s predecessors. The result cemented Spicer’s reputation as a mining law expert, and he thereafter advertised his services as both a lawyer and mining broker.
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hat same year Spicer took on Clark and Gray, the U.S. General Land Office received telegrams and petitions on behalf of Tombstone lot holders and mine owners who feared issuance by the federal government of a townsite patent to Clark, Gray & Co. “The whole thing,” Spicer wrote the government on June 25, “is a fraud run by a lot of hoodlums.” On Aug. 12, 1880, he begged the General Land Office commissioner to “delay patent until after next town election when we will be rid of our present hoodlum officials,” in whose ranks he now correctly numbered Mayor Randall, who had already illegally conveyed almost the entire townsite by deed to Clark, Gray & Co. The Interior Department, while acknowledging Spicer’s protests, took the laissez-faire position the matter
ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON, COLORIZED BY SLINGSHOT STUDIO, NORTH HAMPTON, N.H.
Spicer Hearing
ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON
could not be resolved by the department but rather must be tried in Arizona’s territorial courts. In November 1880 the patent issued by the government for the townsite arrived in Tombstone, and Mayor Randall again deeded the entire site to James Clark. An action filed in U.S. District Court by a consortium of Tombstone citizens led by Epitaph editor John P. Clum resulted in a preliminary injunction issued by Chief Justice French—who had presided over Field v. Gray —forbidding the townsite company to convey any lots. The action also catapulted Clum into the mayor’s chair in January 1881. Randall was out, but Spicer would have another shot at him as justice of the peace. Arizona Territory justices of the peace had limited jurisdiction in both civil and criminal matters and served for a period of two years. Spicer also held an appointment as U.S. court commissioner, enabling him to pass on certain limited federal matters as well as those to be decided under terri-
torial law. Spicer’s most famous case was the EarpHolliday, or Spicer, hearing (see sidebar, opposite page). But in June 1881 he found himself sitting in judgment over Alder Randall, charged with malfeasance for his townsite antics. Justice Spicer discovered that legislators had neglected to criminalize mayoral malfeasance. Technically, Randall had violated no law. After blasting the mayor once again for having attempted “a high-handed outrage” on Tombstone, Spicer turned him loose. Spicer left office the following year and in 1883 left Tombstone altogether, still chasing mineral wealth in the desert. He disappeared in the spring of 1887, some speculating he’d committed suicide, others that he’d gotten lost and died of exposure. Spicer biographer Lynn Bailey cites rumors back in Cedar County, Iowa, that perhaps he’d joined his son Earnest in Ures, Mexico, and died there. The fate of the pioneer lawyer, jurist, journalist and mineralogist remains an unsolved mystery. WW
Spicer may have had an office on the second floor of Tombstone’s famed Crystal Palace saloon, which opened in July 1882.
Tucson attorney and historian Robert F. Palmquist has extensively researched and written about the Earps and Tombstone. For further reading he suggests: A Tale of the “Unkilled”: The Life, Times and Writings of Wells W. Spicer, by Lynn R. Bailey; The O.K. Corral Inquest, by Alford E. Turner; and Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend, by Casey Tefertiller.
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TOMBSTONE TOUR A day in Tombstone can be fun and informative—though Wells Spicer left few reminders of his judicial tenure
O.K. CORRAL Any tour should include the O.K. Corral (520-457-3456, ok-corral.com), where visitors can take in daily reenactments of the Oct. 26, 1881, showdown, which actually touched off in a vacant lot behind the corral and spilled out onto Fremont Street. Spicer presided over the post-fight hearing in the Mining Exchange Building at Fremont and 4th Street (the town’s first courthouse had burned down that June). One of the gunfight witnesses, Cochise County Probate Judge John Henry Lucas, had watched part of the action from that building’s balcony. The Mining Exchange was demolished in the 1930s. Clockwise from top: Tombstone’s Boot Hill, a “Doc Holliday” performer and the gunfight reenactment.
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SCHIEFFELIN HALL Still standing at the corner of Fremont and 4th is the two-story adobe Schieffelin Hall [tomb stonerepertoryco.com], which opened in June 1881. The first floor housed a respectable theater, while Spicer and other members of Tombstone’s Masonic Lodge met there (in fact, Masons still do).
TOP AND FAR LEFT: © NIK WHEELER/ALAMY; LEFT AND TOP RIGHT: DAVID LAUTERBORN; RIGHT: © IAN G. DAGNALL/ALAMY
GOOD ENOUGH MINE Spicer also acted as a mining broker, and indeed silver mines are the reason for Tombstone’s existence. Visitors can tour the Good Enough Mine (520-255-5553, goodenoughmine.com), at 501 Toughnut St., the one discovered by Tombstone founder Ed Schieffelin.
TOMBSTONE EPITAPH Spicer had also been a journalist, and the Tombstone Epitaph (520-457-2211, tombstoneepitaph.com) still publishes out of a building at 11 S. Fifth St., where it operates a small museum focused on journalism in the late 19th century.
TOMBSTONE COURTHOUSE STATE HISTORIC PARK The Tombstone Courthouse State Historic Park (520-457-3311, azstateparks.com/parks/toco) preserves the 1882 courthouse, although Spicer likely never practiced or adjudicated anything there. His law office succumbed to Tombstone’s fires, though an 1880 line drawing of it survives.
Take a tour through the Good Enough Mine (top) or mine the museum at the Tombstone Epitaph.
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Ghost Towns
THE DRY, COLORADO
The Dry looks vacant and, well, dry today, but it was once home to dozens of optimistic black homesteaders.
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n the late 19th century homesteaders filtered onto this patch of Colorado’s southeastern plains, 8 miles south of the small Otero County town of Manzanola, though settlement didn’t begin in earnest until around 1915. The population comprised mainly black homesteaders who had moved from other settlements (such as Nicodemus, Kansas) that had suffered economic decline due to poor farming conditions and having been bypassed by the railroad. These migrants saw promise in land they could own. In the early 1900s George Washington Swink, a Colorado state senator, landowner and farmer, suggested Josephine and Lanora Rucker, two black sisters who worked for him, return east to persuade other potential emigrants to homestead the land that would become known as The Dry. The sisters went to Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, encour-
OCTOBER 2015
aging families and friends to venture to Colorado. Among the first to take up the Rucker sisters on their offer were the Craigs, who moved west from Nicodemus and would remain in The Dry longer than any of the other settlers. The Dry took its name from the arid climate and dearth of available water sources. The earliest settlers, the story goes, wanted to name the settlement Sunnyside once they’d established it as a township. The Dry was one of only five known black settlements in Colorado. The other four stood near the present-day towns of Greeley, Akron, Cortez and Craig. Dearfield, between Greeley and Fort Morgan, is the only one where any intact structures remain. Archaeological research on portions of The Dry [thedryarchaeology.wordpress.com] suggests the homesteaders first lived in claim shanties, but the families eventually erected houses and also built
TOP AND OPPOSITE STRUCTURE: JUSTIN MILLER
It was one of five known black settlements in the state By Kellen Cutsforth
Ghost Towns
TOP AND MIDDLE RIGHT: ALICE CRAIG MCDONALD; BADGE: M. DORES CRUZ
Lulu Craig poses with young family members (left) and with flowers outside her house (below). Craigs were among the first to settle The Dry— one of its few remaining structures is below left— and Lulu outstayed most.
the Prairie Valley School for their children. At its height in the late 1910s and early 1920s about 100 members of more than 40 families had homesteaded the land, and it had become primarily an agricultural community. Early settlers relied on dry farming techniques to grow crops, but by about 1921 they had collectively constructed a series of irrigation canals leading from the nearby Apishapa River. Some optimistic homesteaders began growing wheat. In 1923 severe flooding along the river knocked out the irrigation system, destroying some 57,000 acres of farmland in the surrounding valley. In the 1930s the Dust Bowl and Great Depression forced most of the remaining homesteaders to abandon the settlement. The Prairie Valley School shut its doors in 1933. Lulu Craig was among the last residents living in The Dry. She died at age 104 in 1972.
By the late 1990s vandals and the elements had destroyed the remaining buildings at The Dry. In 2010 archaeologists launched a study of the site, funded by the University of Denver and the Colorado State Historical Fund. Before the project ended in 2012 they surveyed and mapped 10 homesteads, excavated one site and turned up a number of artifacts that opened a window on the daily lives of the homesteaders. Today the biggest city within a 50-mile radius of The Dry is Pueblo (pop. 108,000). To reach The Dry from Pueblo, take Highway 50 east for 44 miles, then turn south on County Road 11 just shy of Manzanola. After about 6 miles turn right on County Road DD; The Dry lies a mile farther along, immediately north of the intersection with County Road 10. The archaeological dig site is on cattle grazing land owned by the Craig family. WW
Researchers began a survey of The Dry site in 2010, and among the modern-day relics they found was this Roy Rogers badge.
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WILD WEST 71
Collections
ON A KING RANCH TOUR
DON’T MISS THE MUSEUM The grand main house reflects the century-old legacy of Henrietta King By Linda Wommack
“
72 WILD WEST
T
he name fits the state of Texas like a crown—King Ranch.” That’s the opening sentence of Pat Decker Nipper’s October 2014 Wild West article “King Ranch: A Texas Dynasty.” No argument there. Richard King (1824–85) bought the Rincón de Santa Gertrudis land grant in 1853 and the adjacent Santa Gertrudis de la Garza grant the next year. Together they form the nucleus of today’s much larger ranch, which at 825,000 acres covers more territory than Rhode Island. King’s motto was “Buy land and never sell,” and the ranch ultimately comprised four separate properties, or divisions—Santa Gertrudis, Laureles, Norias and Encino—on terrain that varies from fertile black farmland to lowlying coastal marshes dotted with oak mottes to mesquite pastures on the fringes of Texas brush country. Richard’s wife, Henrietta, shared his vision and after Richard’s death ran the ranch with son-in-law Robert Justus Kleberg. By the time 92-year-old Henrietta died in 1925,
OCTOBER 2015
Here and at left: Boots, belts, cuff links, money clips and other treasures at the Saddle Shop all carry the King Ranch brand.
the ranch had grown to more than a million acres. Subsequent generations of the ranching family bred the highly successful Santa Gertrudis cattle (3/8 Brahman and 5/8 Shorthorn), officially recognized in 1940 as a distinctive beef breed. King Ranch has also developed the composite Santa
ALL IMAGES: COURTESY KING RANCH ARCHIVES, KING RANCH INC., KINGSVILLE, TEXAS
Collections
Cruz breed, offering consumers a more tender cut of beef. Cattle aren’t the only four-legged animals with an important place in ranch history. Richard King and his successors also bred excellent working and thoroughbred horses. In 1915 Bob Kleberg Jr., Richard’s grandson, bought the stallion Old Sorrel, who became the cornerstone of the King Ranch quarter horse breeding program. In 1941 one of Old Sorrel’s grandsons, Wimpy, was the first stallion registered with the American Quarter Horse Association. King Ranch went on to produce Mr. San Peppy and Peppy San Badger, two of the all-time moneymaking sires in the National Cutting Horse Association. The ranch also raised notable thoroughbreds, including the 1946 Triple Crown winner Assault (the only Texas horse to take that honor), and Middleground, the 1950 winner of the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes. In the 1930s King Ranch negotiated a few long-term oil and gas leases. It later bolstered its energy and agricultural operations and, starting in the 1990s, its tourism business. In 1961 the U.S. Department of the Interior designated the property a National Historic Landmark. Today the ranch is well worth a visit, as is the King Ranch Museum, among the jewels on this impressive Lone Star crown. In downtown Kingsville, Texas, it serves as a splendid repository of ranch history and lore. The museum is housed in the original ice factory and power plant, built shortly after the founding of Kingsville in 1904. The plant generated electricity for town and the ranch itself and produced blocks of ice for the railroad cars that carried fresh fruit, vegetables and King Ranch beef to markets in the Rio Grande Valley. King Ranch purchased the vacant two-story building in 1969 and, after extensive renovations, opened the museum in the new Henrietta Memorial Center. What would a ranch be—or a ranch museum for that matter—without saddles? And there are dozens on display from all over the world. Branding irons have their place, too, as King Ranch’s Running W has been in use since 1869. You’ll also
find carriages and wagons used on the ranch over the decades, along with a Buick Eight hunting car custom-built in 1949 for ranch heir and seventerm U.S. Congressman Richard M. Kleberg Sr. Photographs by Toni Frissell depict ranch life in the 1940s, while various murals capture cattle operations and the cowboy way. Covering the scope of King Ranch history is a special exhibit, “The Main House: 100-Year Legacy of Henrietta King,” which runs through Jan. 17, 2016. The ranch house newlyweds Richard and Henrietta built in the 1850s burned down in 1912, but the King family spent some $350,000 on a new home that took three years to build. Exhibit photos show how rooms looked in 1915 and how they look today. Daily ranch tours are available, as are wildlife tours that focus on the largest known population of ferruginous pygmy owls in the United States and 362 other bird species. The King Ranch Saddle Shop [krsaddleshop.com] offers fine leather and other goods “inspired by the spirit and traditions of King Ranch.” The Running W brand marks a variety of items, including Carinoso copper cuffs, turquoise medallion necklaces, rings, key rings, pendants, bolo ties, belts, shavers, iPhone cases and flasks. The King Ranch Museum (405 N. 6th St.) and King Ranch Saddle Shop (201 E. Kleberg Ave.) are in Kingsville. For more visit king-ranch.com. WW
Above: The view from the balcony at King Ranch Museum. Below: The Saddle Shop also sells ladies’ Western jewelry made of turquoise.
Linda Wommack writes books about her native Colorado. Her latest title is Historic Colorado Mansions & Castles.
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Guns of the West
SAM COLT TESTIFIED ON BEHALF OF HIS BROTHER John Colt had killed a man, but had he used a Colt revolver?
C
olonel Samuel Colt displayed flamboyant showmanship when exhibiting to military commanders the lethal capabilities of his innovative firearms. But during a New York City murder trial, in a sideshow performance honed on his early years as a nitrous-oxide huckster, he proved to the contrary that one of his revolvers could not have been the murder weapon. It was on Jan. 25, 1842, that Colt the inventor entered the crowded courtroom carrying two cased revolvers manufactured at his 6-year-old Patent Arms Manufacturing Co. in Paterson, N.J. His older brother, John C. Colt, author of a popular book on doubleentry bookkeeping, was on trial for the murder of Samuel Adams, his printer. On Sept. 17, 1841, during an argument in his Manhattan office over a debt, Colt had killed Adams. He then tried to ship off the printer’s body in a packing crate, but police intercepted it aboard a freighter still in port. Colt had confessed to the murder but claimed self-defense, saying Adams had pinned him against a wall and was choking him when he struck the printer with an ax hammer within his frantic grasp. But was the death caused by repeated blows to the head, as John claimed, or a shot from one of his brother’s deadly inventions? Forensic evidence appeared to corroborate Colt’s account. But a kink in the possible cause of death occurred when one of the autopsy’s attending physicians testified that although the “whole of
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OCTOBER 2015
By Jerry D. Powell
[Adams’] forehead was beaten in…there was also a fracture on the left side of the head, a little behind and above the ear, in which there was a round, clean hole, so that you might put your finger through it.” That was enough for prosecuting attorney James Whiting to seize on the theory that the ax blows to Adams’ head had been intended to mask a pistol wound. If so, Colt was guilty not of a killing committed in selfdefense but of the more serious crime of premeditated murder. The question arose: Did John Colt have a gun? Witness Asa Wheeler, who sublet Colt his Manhattan office space, testified that a few days prior to Adams’ death Colt had indeed shown him a handgun. In his testimony Wheeler described the gun as having “four or six barrels… about 4 inches in length,” adding that it “had his brother’s name on it.” He elaborated: “My impression was that there was a circle of barrels; but I cannot be positive under oath whether there were one or several barrels. I am sure that the barrels revolved— either those or the cylinder on pulling the trigger.” He noted Colt had “also explained to me a very ingenious apparatus for loading.”
Sam used Paterson five-shooters for his show. The Patterson above recently sold at auction for $265,625 (see more on P. 10).
TOP: © CHRONICLE/ALAMY; ABOVE: COWAN’S AUCTIONS, CINCINNATI, OHIO
Samuel Colt brought his guns to court in a show of support for older brother John.
Guns of the West
GREG PROCH ILLUSTRATION
On cross-examination Wheeler admitted knowing more about “bookkeeping and goose quills than firearms,” a self critique that proved particularly appropriate in his recollection of both the number of “barrels” and what happened when the trigger was pulled. It’s possible Wheeler was confused by the era’s popular pepperbox pistols, which comprised four or more barrels turned by hand. But he was wrong about what happened when the trigger was pulled. A trigger pull—as on all guns of the era—only fired it. It was the cocking (pulling back) of the hammer that rotated the cylinder. In fact, that mechanical action was the patented foundation on which Colt firearms would become famous. As for the “ingenious apparatus for loading,” by 1842 a small number of revolvers turned out by Patent Arms Manufacturing had been modified by the addition of loading levers. As none of the prosecution witnesses had heard a black-powder blast during the fatal struggle, another pressing question came up regarding whether or not Adams had died from a pistol shot: Could such a gun kill if fired with only a percussion cap, which made a quieter noise? It was the sixth day of the trial when Samuel Colt was summoned to resolve this question, and a sense of eager anticipation swept through the court-
room. Years earlier while raising money for his inventions, Colt had called himself “Dr. Coult” and hawked nitrous oxide to audiences amazed at its giddy effect. This time a courtroom was the venue for one of his semi-theatrical performances, but it was in defense of his brother, and Sam Colt had come prepared. Taking the stand, Colt introduced himself as “the inventor of Colt’s patent firearms,” adding dryly, “am acquainted with their power and construction.” By 1842 his manufacturing plant had rolled out four revolver models in several variations, all of which were known as Paterson Colts. Ensuring the judge, jury and spectators had unobstructed views, he removed from a velvet-lined mahogany case the first of the two Patersons he had brought with him and indulged in a detailed explanation of its parts and functions. Stressing the patented central feature of revolving the five-
chambered cylinder by simply cocking the hammer, he held center stage as he methodically—and not without a dash of drama—rammed balls down each of the gun’s five chambers and applied percussion caps “of twice the usual strength” to each chamber’s nipple. Colt then slipped a glove over his left hand, and with his right hand cocked and fired five times. In the hushed courtroom the exploding percussion caps were surprisingly loud, but with his gloved hand poised at the gun’s muzzle Colt caught each of the balls as they left the muzzle. A murmur swept through the courtroom. Some were amazed, others skeptical of Colt’s gloved hand. He volunteered to repeat the demonstration with a bare hand, but the court declined. Demonstrations with both guns continued as Colt armed them with percussion caps and sent balls flying at a pine board and books at various distances, only to see them bounce harmlessly off. When finished, as reported in the New-York Tribune, the inventor addressed the court: “It is not possible that a ball fired as these have been should penetrate the skull even if held close to it, and I should be perfectly willing to have it tried upon my skull!” Samuel Colt’s performance was all for naught, as a coroner later testified that one of the nails John Colt had driven into the packing crate had caused the hole in Adams’ skull. In the end Colt was convicted of “willful murder” and sentenced to hang on Nov. 14, 1842. On the morning of his execution, however, he plunged a knife into his heart. Who had gotten him the knife is uncertain. The courtroom show marked Samuel Colt’s last demonstration of Paterson revolvers. Colt’s Patent Arms Manufacturing Co. had gone into bankruptcy even before his brother’s trial. By the end of 1842 it had completely shut down. It would be another five years before Colt relaunched the firearms business that became his empire. WW
John Colt stood trial for the murder of his printer, Samuel Adams. But the guns Sam fired in the courtroom caused no harm.
ON-SCREEN In the miniseries Lonesome Dove, Roscoe Brown (played by Barry Corbin) carries a Colt Paterson. In The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Bob Ford, Ford (Casey Affleck) carries a Paterson but shoots Jesse with a Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3.
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Reviews
MUST SEE, MUST READ Look into these worthwhile books and videos about Tombstone and Justice Wells Spicer By Bob Palmquist
The O.K. Corral Inquest (1981, by Alford E. Turner): In this volume, enhanced by Earp researcher Al Turner’s detailed notes, you’ll find the WPA transcription of both the inquest conducted by Cochise County coroner Dr. Henry Matthews and Judge Spicer’s preliminary hearing in the wake of the Oct. 26, 1881, gunfight. The original copy of Matthews’ inquest showed up in the Cochise County Clerk of Court’s office in recent years; one hopes the original Spicer transcript, too, will eventually surface.
BOOKS
A Tale of the “Unkilled”: The Life, Times and Writings of Wells W. Spicer (1999, by Lynn R. Bailey): The third entry of Western historian Lynn Bailey’s multivolume “Mining Camp Chronicles,” this book is more a compilation of Spicer’s writings than a biography. That said, it provides the fullest available profile of Tombstone’s famed justice of the peace. 76 WILD WEST
OCTOBER 2015
Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend (1997, by Casey Tefertiller): Tefertiller’s well-regarded biography includes good coverage of the Spicer Hearing and its participants. Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp (2004, by Steven Lubet):
A professor at Northwestern University School of Law, Lubet examines the Spicer hearing with an eye to understanding the roles and tactics of the judge and respective attorneys. Tombstone From a Woman’s Point of View: The Correspondence of Clara Spalding Brown, July 7, 1880, to November 14, 1882 (1998): Clara Brown wrote dispatches from Tombstone to her hometown newspaper The San Diego Union. While not a trained journalist, she wrote what were arguably the best dispatches on period events in Tombstone, including those surrounding the Earps and their showdown with the Cowboys, as well as daily life in a booming silver camp. Tombstone, A.T.: A History of Early Mining, Milling and Mayhem (1999, by William B. Shillingberg): Shillingberg provides excellent background on
the town beyond Judge Spicer’s bench. Now out of print, it deserves a new edition. “Too Tough to Die”: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of A Silver Camp, 1878 to 1990 (2004, by Lynn R. Bailey): Along with Shillingberg’s book, this volume provides the best available background on early Tombstone and the mining and land transactions that kept Spicer busy. A Tenderfoot in Tombstone, The Private Journal of George Whitwell Parsons: The Turbulent Years, 1880–82 (1996, edited by Lynn R. Bailey): Most Tombstone histories include references to Parsons’ unparalleled diary. Bailey also published later Parsons diary entries in The Devil Has Foreclosed.
VIDEO The Wild West Collection (2007, on Blu-ray and DVD, BBC): The three-part series profiles Custer’s
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Reviews
Last Stand, Billy the Kid and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The last segment includes the most extensive portrayal on film of Wells Spicer—by a British actor employing a “Southern” accent. The gunfight is depicted from several angles, each corresponding to Spicer hearing testimony from key eyewitnesses (including Ike Clanton and Wyatt Earp). The BBC employed Bob Palmquist and Jeff Morey as consultants, with Morey also providing solid commentary. “Showdown at O.K. Corral” (2013, originally a 1972 episode of the TV series Appointment With Destiny, on DVD in 8 Movie Western Pack V.5): Narrated by Lorne Greene, this program draws on the work of consultant John D. Gilchriese, then the field historian for the University of Arizona. While students of the gunfight will find lots to quibble with, it is the only reenactment of that affray actually filmed on-site in Tombstone. The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955– 1961 TV series, on DVD, SFM Entertainment): This series 78 WILD WEST
not appear. But in an interesting historical sidenote Eddie Foy Jr. plays his famous actor father, capering about as the floor show at Tombstone’s Bella Union Theater. In his ghostwritten autobiography, Clowning Through Life, Foy Sr. says he played Tombstone’s Bird Cage in 1881.
Hour of the Gun (1967, on Blu-ray and DVD, MGM): In this rendition of the Earp story by director John Sturges, who had earlier filmed Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, he starts with the gunfight and relates the ensuing blood feud, including Wyatt Earp’s “Vendetta Ride.” It stars James Garner as Earp, the anti-Maverick, coldly hunting down his brothers’ assailants, and Jason Robards as an overage Doc Holliday. Seasoned character actor William Schallert portrays Judge Spicer, who in the hearing after the shootout has to keep Robards’ Holliday in line. (The real Doc sat silently through the proceedings and did not testify.)
marked Hugh O’Brian’s star turn as Earp. Spicer ( James Seay) appears in more than a dozen episodes, usually as the only available jurist in Tombstone and sometimes sporting twin six-shooters to ward off objections to his rulings. During Episode 36 of Season 6, broadcast on June 20,
OCTOBER 2015
1961, Earp related the story of the gunfight to Judge Spicer in flashbacks. Frontier Marshal (1939, on DVD, 20th Century Fox): In this paean to Stuart Lake, Randolph Scott portrays Wyatt Earp, and Cesar Romero is Doc Holliday, while Judge Spicer does
Tombstone (1993, on Blu-ray and DVD, Hollywood Pictures): The production was troubled, but the film starring Kurt Russell as Wyatt and Val Kilmer as Doc revived many moviegoers’ interest in the Earp story. Spicer merits mention, but we never see him on or off the bench. Wyatt Earp (1994, on Blu-ray, DVD and CinemaNow.com, Warner Home Video): With Kevin Costner as Wyatt and a riveting Dennis Quaid as Doc, this film follows the Life and Legend TV series in making Spicer the all-purpose Tombstone jurist. He lectures Curly Bill, for example, after Bill’s 1880 killing of Tombstone Marshal Fred White, and conducts the hearing after the 1881 shootout, a proceeding to which Costner’s Earp only reluctantly submits.
BOOK REVIEWS Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Biography, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Pamela Smith Hill, South Dakota State Historical Society Press, Pierre, 2014, $39.95 Mention Laura Ingalls Wilder or Little House on the Prairie to anyone over age 30, and a certain theme song starts to swell in their memory. Indeed, the popular TV series (1974–82)—which, beyond a few faithful early episodes, deviated wildly from Wilder’s fiction and even recycled plots from director/star Michael Landon’s Bonanza days—came to overshadow Wilder’s beloved series of children’s books, originally published between 1932 and ’43. Readers were aghast. But how many of Wilder’s fans are aware that before penning children’s books, Wilder had written a factual account of her late 19th-century childhood? The would-be author was 63 years old when she completed the Pioneer Girl manuscript in 1930. Publishers in the midst of the Depression were unwilling to take a chance on an autobiography by an unknown, though.
Reviews
So, with editorial guidance from daughter Rose Wilder Lane, a successful writer in her own right, Wilder repackaged the manuscript as juvenile fiction in serial form. The first title, Little House in the Big Woods, debuted in 1932, with the signature Little House on the Prairie following three years later. The series comprises nine books. In 2007 the South Dakota State Historical Society Press published the biography Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life, by Pamela Smith Hill and then got permission from the Little House Heritage Trust, the administrator of Wilder’s estate, to finally publish her autobiography. Pioneer Girl relates the Ingalls family’s true-life homesteading sojourn across the Midwest, from Kansas through Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, back to Minnesota and, finally, on to Dakota Territory between 1869 and ’88. As such it provides a detailed portrait of the
era and region and an intimate look at the trials and triumphs of a fairly representative family. Enhancing the story are detailed maps and 125 images of the people and places in Wilder’s life. But the true gift of this volume lies in the extensive annotations provided by biographer Hill, who fleshes out the personal and historical foundation of Wilder’s narrative. Neither an insipid TV show nor a toned-down children’s story, Pioneer Girl is a cornerstone volume of American pioneer literature. —Dave Lauterborn Historic Colorado Mansions & Castles, by Linda Wommack, The History Press, Charleston, S.C., 2014, $21.99 Mr. Large seems a fitting name for the wealthy silver-mining investor who had a home built in the 1880s in Denver’s Capital Hill Area. Isaac Large’s mansion was grand enough (built in Queen Anne style of rough-cut pink and gray stone), but,
according to author Linda Wommack, it was also relatively “modest” (three stories, four fireplaces). The Large family moved into the home—one of the first Denver abodes to include electricity, hot and cold running water and a handcrank phone—in 1890. Ruined by the silver crash of 1893, Isaac sold it to J.J. Brown, whose wife Maggie later became a celebrated Titanic survivor and the subject of the 1960 play The Unsinkable Molly Brown. The mansion came to be known as the Molly Brown House. It and eight other impressive homes, all built between 1878 and 1908, are featured in Wommack’s Colorado house tour. They’re all large (the Large/ Brown house being the smallest) and all open to the public. —Editor
MOVIE REVIEW Slow West, 2015, on Blu-ray, DVD and CinemaNow.com, A24 It saw limited theatrical release yet was one of the most thoroughly enjoyable Westerns in years. Written and directed by Scotsman John Maclean, Slow West stars Australian
Kodi Smit-McPhee and German Michael Fassbender and was shot in New Zealand by Irish cinematographer Robbie Ryan. Americans may have lost interest in the genre, but not so the rest of the world if recent trends have taught us anything: The Salvation (Danish director Kristian Levring), Blackthorn (Spanish director Mateo Gil), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (New Zealander director Andrew Dominik), The Proposition (Australian director John Hillcoat). Slow West takes us on an 84-minute ride down a trail equal parts Coen brothers and Budd Boetticher, in places rejecting Hollywood convention even as it pays homage to B-Westerns of the 1950s and ’60s. The scenery, though, calls to mind Middle Earth in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings more than Colorado Territory. In X-Men: First Class Fassbender portrayed superhero Magneto as a lone, cowboylike drifter, and he brings that same quiet, cold-blooded volition to his role of Silas, this time playing an actual
cowboy. Jay Cavendish (impressive teen actor Smit-McPhee) is a lovesick Scottish traveler who enlists Silas’ help to reunite him with Rose Ross (Caren Pistorius). Two problems for young Cavendish: He can’t admit when he’s been “friend-zoned” by Rose, and he’s oblivious that every bounty hunter in the territory, including Silas, wants Rose and her dad for a reward.
The film may strike some as offbeat and meandering, but no line or frame is wasted. In one great shot Silas and Cavendish, after being caught in a flash flood, ride in their underwear, their clothes drying on a line between their horses. Like many Westerns, the film ends with a gunfight, but this one is so tense, sad, funny and surprising that it rates as one of the best showdowns ever. Shame if it goes unseen. —Louis Lalire
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Comet Hyakutake blazes a dusty trail across the night sky over the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, seemingly just beyond the grasp of a saguaro cactus. A century earlier Geronimo (inset, in the Sonoran in 1886) needed no heavenly bodies to guide him through this unforgiving terrain, which sprawls across more than 100,000 square miles of the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Familiar with its peaks and gullies, oases and life-giving springs, the Apache leader blazed a path for followers. Today much of the desert is federally protected. For a stellar desert overview visit Tucson’s ArizonaSonora Desert Museum [desertmuseum.org]. WW
SONORAN DESERT
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KENT WOOD, KENTWOODFINEARTPHOTO.PHOTOSHELTER.COM; INSET: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS
Go West
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