THE AMERICAN FRONTIER
GUN CONTROL FRONTIER STYLE dodge city and tombstone aimed to shoot down violence trailing the west gold rush doctors bloody modoc war APRIL 2021 HISTORYNET.COM
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40 TRAILING WESTERN HISTORY By Bart Smith These 14 national historic trails West of the Mississippi tell picturesque tales
52
64 A VOICE FOR
LITTLE INDIAN WAR GOES BIG
By Robert Aquinas McNally Modoc resistance to the U.S. Army in California’s Lava Beds erupted in violence
THE YUKIS
By Will Gorenfeld Lieutenant Edward Dillon sought to protect these California Indians from settlers
58 KING OF
THE TULARES
By Daniel R. Seligman Was James Savage a staunch defender or shameless exploiter of the Yokuts and Miwoks? 2
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D E PA R T M E N T S
4 EDITOR’S LETTER 8 LETTERS 10 ROUNDUP 16 INTERVIEW By Candy Moulton Jerry Enzler salutes frontiersman Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West
18 WESTERNERS
10
Buckskin Ben Stalker was top dog in his family’s long-running Wild West show
20 GUNFIGHTERS AND LAWMEN
By Kenneth Newton In his last armed confrontation Wyatt Earp served as a hired ‘claim jumper’
22 PIONEERS AND SETTLERS
By Dennis Goodwin The first woman to climb Pikes Peak reached new heights as the ‘Bloomer Girl’
24 WESTERN ENTERPRISE
By Richard F. Selcer Fort Worth’s White Elephant tops this list of 10 notable Lone Star saloons
26 ART OF THE WEST
By Lazelle Jones Utah sculptor Jerry Anderson renders horses, stagecoaches and the like
34
DAMAGE CONTROL By John Boessenecker Tombstone and Dodge City had their limits with regard to carrying firearms
28 INDIAN LIFE
By Jeff Broome Black Kettle’s wife Medicine Woman Later may have survived the Washita fight
30 STYLE
Showcasing the great American West in art, film fashion and more
76 COLLECTIONS
By Linda Wommack Horses and Southwestern culture ride high at the Hubbard in Ruidoso, N.M.
78 GUNS OF THE WEST
By Kurt House Texas lawman Jeff Milton holstered this handsome Colt Single Action Army
80 GHOST TOWNS
By Jim Pettengill This productive Arizona Territory mining district didn’t prove a Total Wreck
82 REVIEWS
70 NO PRESCRIPTION FOR GOLD FEVER By Phil Goscienski Filthy conditions and daunting diseases kept gold rush camp doctors busy enough
Will Gorenfeld reviews books and movies about the era of the U.S. dragoons. Plus, reviews of recent books about Jim Bridger, the national historic trails, the duo who helped save the Alamo, and the Rio Grande frontier, as well as the recent Tom Hanks movie News of the World
88 GO WEST
For four decades Fort Union protected traders and travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, which marks its bicentennial this year ON THE COVER Poker players in a crowded saloon settle a dispute with their six-guns —to the detriment of both, it appears—in the Andy Thomas painting Let the Cards Fall. Authorities and officials in some Old West towns tried to tame violence with local ordinances prohibiting the carrying of firearms. Results were decidedly mixed. (© Andy Thomas)
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EDITOR’S LETTER
NO GUNPLAY
In 1878 a photographer in Dodge City, Kansas, shot what has become one of the best known Old West town photos. Featured is a hand-painted sign atop a wooden billboard in the middle of Front Street reading, The Carrying of Fire Arms Strictly Prohibited. It’s no joke, despite a larger placard beneath advertising Prickly Ash Bitters. On Christmas Eve 1875 the city fathers passed an ordinance outlawing the carrying of concealed weapons. They soon banned the carrying of any weapon. As it dates from an era when violence was arguably far greater than it is today and the carrying of weapons for self-protection was commonplace, the photograph often surprises anyone viewing it for the first time. There’s no telling how many citizens of Dodge violated the ordinance by carrying concealed weapons, and it is uncertain how often or how well lawmen enforced the ban on guns. But one well-documented attempt at enforcement, on the night of April 9, 1878, ended badly for City Marshal Ed Masterson, brother of sometime lawman and often gambler Bat Masterson. Award-winning California author John Boessenecker details that deadly confrontation in his cover article, “Damage Control” (P. 34). He also points out that at the time of the infamous Arizona Territory gunfight near the O.K. Corral, on Oct. 26, 1881, Tombstone had an ordinance prohibiting the carrying of firearms inside the city limits. Though the ne’er-do-well McLaury and Clanton brothers were connected with crimes ranging from cattle stealing to murder, on that fateful day the Earp brothers (with an assist from Doc Holliday) went after the Cowboys for openly carrying firearms contrary to the law. While Dodge City and Tombstone have a reputation as the wildest of Wild West towns, shooting incidents and subsequent efforts to contain gunplay were common across the frontier. Ever since Edwin S. Porter filmed The Great Train Robbery in 1903, Hollywood Westerns have played up saloon fights, armed robberies and killings, but Boessenecker contends it wasn’t all mythmaking. “It was such violence that prompted authorities in several Western towns to enact local gun control ordinances,” he writes. Thus Dodge and the other cow towns, such as Wichita and Abilene, strove to get a handle on gun handlers. Visits from rowdy cowboys were a mixed blessing—good for business, at least for a while, but detrimental to efforts to attract farmers, families and investors. In 1870 the Legislature in Texas, which turned out outlaws galore during that era, passed a law prohibiting the carrying of guns, knives or other weapons in churches and schoolrooms “or into a ballroom, social party or other social gathering composed of ladies and gentlemen,” as well as “any election precinct on the day or days of any election.” The following year it passed another act “to Regulate the Keeping and Bearing of Deadly Weapons…unless [someone] has reasonable grounds for fearing an unlawful attack on his person, and that such ground of attack shall be immediate and pressing.” In February 1884 gunfighter and sometime lawman Ben Thompson unsuccessfully argued such grounds at trial in Austin when charged with “unlawfully carrying a pistol.” How effective the municipal and state governments were at limiting violence with their gun-control efforts remains subject to debate. Would there have been any killings in Dodge City on that April night in 1878 had Marshal Masterson not tried to disarm a drunken cowboy for openly carrying a six-shooter? Would the gunfight near the O.K. Corral not have happened had the Earps chosen to let the McLaurys and Clantons simply ride out of town with whatever firearms they were carrying? It is a fact that Thompson, who was found guilty and fined $25 for having carried a pistol in February 1884, was gunned down the very next month with friend and fellow Texas gunfighter King Fisher in San Antonio’s Vaudeville Theater. Such events from the wild and woolly days of the Old West are worthy of consideration in any present-day discussion involving restrictions on carrying guns in public.
Signs posted in Dodge City in 1878 warned visitors not to carry guns but encouraged them to try Prickly Ash Bitters, a patent medicine that was about 25 percent alcohol with dubious medicinal benefit for those suffering from a range of ailments.
THE CARRYING
OF FIRE ARMS
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Wild West editor Gregory Lalire’s next historical novel, Man From Montana, comes out in April 2021. His earlier novels include 2019’s Our Frontier Pastime: 1804–1815 and 2014’s Captured: From the Frontier Diary of Infant Danny Duly. His short story “Halfway to Hell” appears in the 2018 anthology The Trading Post and Other Frontier Stories.
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Utah-based Jerry Anderson sculpts award-winning Western works.
MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF
APRIL 2021 / VOL. 33, NO. 6
Visit our WEBSITE FOR ONLINE EXTRAS
GREGORY J. LALIRE EDITOR DAVID LAUTERBORN MANAGING EDITOR GREGORY F. MICHNO SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR JOHNNY D. BOGGS SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR JOHN KOSTER SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR JOHN BOESSENECKER SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR
WildWestMag.com “During the tumultuous ’50s the Yokuts of central California made a courageous attempt to defend themselves against an invasion of their lands—and, for a length of time, succeeded,” writes author Will Gorenfeld. “On a hilltop located just to the east of present-day Porterville, Calif., a siege occurred in 1856—at what is now known as Battle Mountain—during a confrontation that the newspapers of the time referred to as the Tule River War.”
Sculptor Jerry Anderson
When Jerry [jerryandersongallery.com] and wife Fawn moved to southern Utah in 1981, he devoted himself to sculpting. He has since rendered 80 maquettes and nearly the same number of large sculptures at his Silver Reef studio.
Extended Interview With Jerry Enzler
“Jim Bridger is an iconic figure, and his life touches upon six decades of American history,” says Enzler in his 2021 biography Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West. “His story unfolds like a drama, and it was a challenge and an honor to chronicle this important life.”
Love history? Sign up for our free monthly e-newsletter at: historynet.com/newsletters Let’s Connect Like Wild West on Facebook Digital Subscription Wild West is available via Zinio and other digital subscription services
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WILD WEST
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The Tule River War
APRIL 2021
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LETTERS
There was a mistake on P. 73 of Matthew Bernstein’s “Murder in the Black Hills,” in the December 2018 issue. The treasure coach from Deadwood to Cheyenne and Sidney was not owned by Wells, Fargo. It was owned by Jack Gilmer. His shotgun messengers (called the “Elite Eight”) were Boone May, Scott Davis, Jesse Brown, Jimmy Brown (who left for Wells, Fargo in 1877), Gale Hill, James May, Bill May and Billy Sample (who left for Wells, Fargo in 1880). Gilmer’s stagecoach was the Black Hills Stage and Express Co., aka the “Deadwood Stage.” The bimonthly ironclad gold coach was guarded by the before mentioned on Homestake cleanup days. No passengers were allowed on the down trip. The treasure coach went to Cheyenne, until Sept. 26, 1878, when it was robbed, and Galen Elliott Hill was shot through the lung. Then Gilmer changed the gold shipment to be delivered to the railroad in Sidney, Neb. The daily passenger coaches had small salamander safes that might have passenger gold, jewels, notes, and it was robbed very frequently. These coaches used by passengers were different than the two ironclad treasure coaches. The same shotgun messengers guarded the passenger coaches. There were a few relief guards while the regulars were laying off. Each guard was assigned a stage station. May was assigned Robber’s Roost Stage Station, and he was the most feared by the road agents. Of the five trails leading to Deadwood, the treasure first ran to Cheyenne, then Sidney and the last year to Pierre. The Bismarck trail had no treasure coach, only passengers. All trails had passenger robberies, but the only successful robbery of the treasure was Sept. 26, 1878. Patricia A. Campbell Deadwood, S.D. Matt Bernstein responds: Hats off to Patricia A. Campbell, author of Deadwood in My Blood: Boone May, Gale Hill, Shotgun Messengers on the Deadwood Stage and Their Historic Families. I used as my source Ambrose Bierce (pictured above). In an 1890 essay published in California’s Oakland Daily Evening Tribune Bierce noted that rather than allowing their coaches to be plundered “the mine owners had adopted the more practicable plan of importing from California a half-dozen of the most famous ‘shotgun messengers’ of Wells, Fargo & Co.—fearless and trusty fellows with an instinct for killing.” That they had 8
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changed companies as well as territories had escaped me. Bierce also related riding from Deadwood to Rockerville in an ironclad coach “loopholed for rifles” with $30,000 in his possession and Boone May at his side: May sat hunched up beside me, a rubber poncho over his shoulders and a Winchester rifle in its leathern case between his knees. I thought him a trifle off his guard, but said nothing. The road, barely visible, was rocky, the wagon rattled, and alongside ran a roaring stream. Suddenly we heard through it all the clinking of a horse’s shoes directly behind, and simultaneously the short, sharp words of authority: “Throw up your hands!” With an involuntary jerk at the reins I brought my team to its haunches and reached for my revolver. Quite needless: With the quickest movement that I had ever seen in anything but a cat—almost before the words were out of the horseman’s mouth—May had thrown himself backward across the back of the seat, face upward, and the muzzle of his rifle was within a yard of the fellow’s breast! What further occurred among the three of us there in the gloom of the forest has, I fancy, never been accurately related.
SWINGING DOORS It seems to me this question was answered previously in Wild West, but I can’t recall. Were there actually swinging doors at the entrances to Old West saloons? Ken Haines Taylor, Mich. Historian Richard Selcer responds: Yes, they seem to have been a standard feature on saloons across the country. I think the idea was to provide a little privacy from innocent, prying eyes and to allow in a little fresh air. All the drawings and pictures of saloons showing swinging doors are strong evidence they weren’t a creation of Hollywood or dime novels.
SPENCE PHOTO I am a great fan of your wonderful magazine and have even given my father-in-law and brother-in-law subscriptions as Christmas presents. In the October 2020 issue in John Boessenecker’s article “They Shoot Cowboys, Don’t They?” the picture of cowboy Pete Spence looks a great deal like some of the photos of Harvey Logan, aka “Kid Curry,” of the Wild Bunch. I have seen the prison photo of Spence and he looks a great deal different from this picture. What do you think? Keep up the great work. I look forward to your next issue. Paul W. Harper Dallas, Texas John Boessenecker responds: Roy B. Young, author of Pete Spence: Audacious Artist in Crime, researched the photo and found it came from Spence family descendants in the 1940s. It was discovered by one of the famous Southwest historians—possibly C.L. Sonnichsen, though I cannot recall. I have heard the same comment about this photo, though from people who have not seen mug shots on the subject’s entry into prison—one in street clothes with facial hair, the next in stripes with head shaved. Such images often look like different men but are the same man. Send letters by email to wildwest@historynet.com. Include your name and hometown.
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ROUNDUP
10 MUST-SEE CALIFORNIA HISTORIC SITES
Top: Among the restored adobe buildings at Fort Tejon State Historic Park is the officers’ quarters. Above: Alcatraz is called “The Rock” for a reason.
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Presidio of San Francisco: Captain Juan Bautista de Anza chose the site on March 28, 1776, and later that year a party led by José Joaquín Moraga built the garrison to defend Spain’s claim to San Francisco Bay and support Mission San Francisco de Asís. Between 1853 and ’61 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built Fort Point on the south side of the Golden Gate strait to defend the entrance to the bay. The masonry bastion survives as Fort Point National Historic Site, beneath the present-day Golden Gate Bridge.
Alcatraz (“The Rock”): Built between 1847 and ’58, Fort Alcatraz was a U.S. Army coastal fortification on the namesake island, just inside the mouth of San Francisco Bay. The island is better known for having hosted a federal prison (1934–63), whose surviving buildings serve as a museum operated by the National Park Service. Beneath them lie the fort’s remains. Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park: In 1839 John Sutter, a German-born immigrant with Swiss roots, established a fortified settlement he
10 WILD WEST
called New Helevetia (New Switzerland) in what was then the Mexican province of Alta California. Construction of the fort proper began in 1841. In January 1848 foreman James Marshall found gold at Sutter’s nearby mill (present-day Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park), sparking the California Gold Rush. Colton Hall: The Rev. Walter Colton, the first American mayor of Monterey, had this historic building built in 1849 to serve as a public school and town meeting hall. That fall legislators met here to draft California’s first constitution. Operated by the city, the historic hall hosts a museum with exhibits on early Monterey, the former capital of Alta California. An attached granite block building, built in 1854, served as the city jail until 1956. Monterey Custom House: Built in 1827, six years after Mexico gained its independence from Spain, this is the oldest government building in California. Within Monterey State Historic Park, it stands at the entrance of Fisherman’s Wharf. Mexican administrators lifted trade restrictions, opening Monterey and other ports to foreign trade. On July 7, 1846, amid the Mexican War, U.S. Navy Commodore John Sloat captured Monterey and raised the U.S. flag over the custom house. San Pasqual Battlefield State Historic Park: At this site on Dec. 6–7, 1846, the ragtag
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TOP RIGHT: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Fort Tejon State Historic Park: The state has carefully restored this U.S. Army post (1854–64) 75 miles north of Los Angeles. The first Saturday of each month dragoons and other living history reenactors roam the post, and in summer Civil War reenactors skirmish on the grounds.
TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; LEFT: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
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Californio forces of Major Andrés Pico defeated Brig. Gen. Stephen W. Kearny’s trail-worn American troops in what was the bloodiest battle fought in California during the Mexican War. The visitor center houses a museum and bookstore, and on the first Sunday of most months livinghistory interpreters roam the grounds.
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Drum Barracks: Purchased by the state in 1967, this Civil War museum in the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles is housed in the last remaining original barracks building of Camp Drum, an important staging and supply base for the Union Army. The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks operates the museum.
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Fort Humboldt State Historic Park: To keep the peace between the tribes of northwestern California and the flood of Gold Rush– era settlers, the 4th U.S. Infantry established this fort in 1853 on a cliff overlooking the port of Eureka on Humboldt Bay. Often shrouded in mist, it is the dreary locale where homesick Captain Ulysses S. Grant took to drinking.
TOP RIGHT: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
TOP: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; LEFT: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
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Benicia Arsenal and Barracks: Fronting Suisun Bay, the arsenal (1851–1964) and barracks (1852–66) were part of a 252-acre military reserve established in 1847. The arsenal once stabled mounts of the U.S. Army Camel Corps, which disbanded in 1863. Built in 1855, the camel barns house the Benicia Historical Museum. —Will Gorenfeld
MILLION-DOLLAR COLT A Colt Single Action Army revolver once presented as a birthday gift to Theodore Roosevelt fetched a rock solid $1,466,250 at Rock Island Auction Co.’s Premier Firearms Auction last December. The elaborately engraved, silver-plated .38-caliber Colt (above) with a 4¾-inch barrel and carved ivory steer head grips far exceeded its high estimate of $550,000. Rock Island realized more than $22 million overall, setting a record for a firearms auction. Who bought the Colt for Roosevelt is not known. The Colt factory shipped the six-shooter days before his 54th birthday (Oct. 27, 1912) and the election in which the 26th president ran for an unprecedented third term, this time as the candidate of the Progressive Party, aka “Bull Moose Party.” That October 14, while Roosevelt was en route to speak at a campaign event in Milwaukee, deranged saloonkeeper John Schrank shot him in the chest with a .38-caliber Colt doubleaction revolver. “It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose,” Roosevelt assured onlookers, going to the hospital only after having given his speech. On election day he finished ahead of Republican incumbent William Howard Taft but behind Democrat Woodrow Wilson. An engraved, gold-and-platinum-inlaid Marlin Deluxe Model 1893 lever-action rifle once presented to sharpshooter Annie Oakley fetched a respectable $460,000. Other auction standouts included a B Company–marked Colt Model 1847 Walker ($402,500) that saw Mexican War service, a “One of One Thousand” Winchester Model 1873 lever-action rifle ($345,000) and a Winchester Model 1876 leveraction Express rifle ($287,500), the “Boss Game Gun of All Creation,” once owned by Montana Territory pioneer Granville Stuart.
WILD BILL WEPT James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok tested his mettle in a number of tough towns, including Springfield, Mo.; Hays City, Kan.; and Deadwood, Dakota Territory. But 150 years ago the lawman/gambler made his mark in Abilene, Kan. The catalyst of his arrival was the murder of town Marshal Tom “Bear River” Smith on Nov. 2, 1870. After a few stopgap hires, the city appointed Hickok marshal on April 15, 1871. He held the post until December 13, as Abilene was easing out of the cattle trade and decided it no longer needed his services. During those eight months he deterred many a rowdy Texas cowboy. But on October 5 while besting Texas-born gambler Phil Coe in a close-range gunfight, Wild Bill accidentally killed friend and former jailer Mike Williams. (An armed Williams had been running to Hickok’s aid when Wild Bill shot him out of instinct.) Hickok reportedly cried over his mistake, but the shooting of Coe, noted biographer Joseph G. Rosa, “served to further the already growing part-fact, part-mythical reputation of Wild Bill Hickok as the West’s premier gunfighter and a ‘terror to evildoers.’”
WEST WORDS
‘With my husband’s departure my last happy days in garrison were ended. A premonition of disaster that I had never known before weighed me down. I could not shake off the baleful influence of depressing thoughts’ —Elizabeth B. “Libbie” Custer wrote this in her 1885 book “Boots and Saddles” or, Life in Dakota With General Custer about the May 17, 1876, departure of the 7th U.S. Cavalry from Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory, at the outset of the ill-fated Little Bighorn campaign.
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Missouri, which became the 24th state on Aug. 10, 1821, is known as the “Show Me State,” among other nicknames. But to aficionados of the American West it is better known as the “Gateway to the West,” jumping-off point for most westbound 19th-century travelers, starting with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. It was also ground central in the fight to end slavery. In accordance with the 1820 Missouri Compromise the territory was admitted to the Union as a slave state. Evergrowing tensions over slavery led to the bloody Border War (1854–59) with neighboring Kansas, which was admitted as a free state on Jan. 29, 1861, less than three months before the onset of the Civil War. During the war Missouri grew bloodier still, as Union
BOZEMAN TRAIL t
The United States boasts 19 national historic trails (see related article, P. 40). Could the Bozeman Trail across Wyoming and Montana be next? Two nonprofit organizations, the Fort Phil Kearny/Bozeman Trail Association [fortphilkearny.com] and Our Montana [ourmontana.org], are pushing for a congressional feasibility study toward designation of the Bozeman as national historic trail No. 20. In 1863 frontiersmen, failed
prospectors and friends John Bozeman and John Jacobs scouted the 535-mile route as a shortcut from the Oregon Trail on the North Platte River (near present-day Casper, Wyo.) to the goldfields around Virginia City (in what would become Montana). As it cut through the heart of Plains Indian hunting grounds, the Sioux, Cheyenne and other tribes naturally opposed it. The Army built three forts —Forts Reno, Kearny and C.F. Smith—to protect travelers. That led to Red Cloud’s War of 1866–68, which ended with the abandonment of the forts and discontinued use of the trail. The proposed national historic trail passes through five counties in Wyoming and eight in Montana. To keep tabs on the progress of the proposal, visit fortphilkearny.com/ bozeman-nht.
SEE YOU LATER... BALL CLUBS & INDIANS ▲
And now to sports. In basketball news NBA all-star point guard Kyrie Irving, who a few years ago was given the Lakota name “Little Mountain” by the Standing Rock Sioux of the Dakotas, said he plans to burn sage before most Brooklyn Nets game this season as a nod to his Indian heritage. (His mother, Elizabeth, was a half-blood member of the Standing Rock Sioux.) “It’s more or less for us to stay connected and for us to feel great about going to work and feeling safe and provided for from our ancestors,” Irving told ESPN. “I’m not going to bring too much of the spirituality into basketball, but, yeah, it’s part of my native culture.” Switching to baseball, Cleveland’s Major League club will drop the name “Indians” next season, citing the recent outcry against sports franchises using
Lois Christenne “Tina” Welsh Lois Christenne “Tina” Welsh, 103, perhaps the last living friend of Wyatt Earp, died at her Lakeside, Ariz., home on Oct. 4, 2020. Born in Needles, Calif., on May 15, 1917, she was 9 when Wyatt and Josephine Sarah “Sadie” Marcus Earp moved into the Los Angeles apartment of Tina’s grandfather Charles C. Welsh, who had befriended Wyatt in Alaska. “Grandpa and Mr. Earp used to take me for a walk down to the fire station on Washington Boulevard, and we’d stop at Harry’s Drug Store and have a chocolate ice cream soda,” Welsh told Earp biographer Casey Tefertiller in 1994. The Earps, according to Tefertiller, stayed at the Welsh home on and off through the 1920s. Wyatt died in 1929 at age 80.
LEFT: MIKE PENFOLD
MISSOURI TURNS 200 ▲
and Confederate armies clashed, and the countryside was swept by such guerrilla raiders as native sons and future Western outlaws Frank and Jesse James. The State Historical Society of Missouri coordinates the state’s bicentennial celebration [missouri2021.org], featuring Zoom and live events.
FA M O U S L A S T WO RD S
‘I will make no confession, but understand that I am one of the brothers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it’ —On Feb. 10, 1852, John Bucroft said this to vigilantes in Murphy’s Camp, Calif., who’d just strung up his brother, Charley, and were about to hang him. A miners’ court had convicted the brothers of burglary. 12 WILD WEST
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ROUNDUP American Indian names, imagery and mascots. Though the term isn’t a pejorative, most Indians prefer to be known by their tribal affiliation. The Cleveland franchise initially went by the name “Naps,” after standout second baseman Nap Lajoie. In 1915 club owner Charles Somers renamed the team the Indians, in honor of outfielder Louis Sockalexis of the Penobscot tribe of Maine, who played for the defunct Cleveland Spiders. Through the years fans have also referred to the team as the “Tribe.” The franchise removed
its grinning “Chief Wahoo” logo from uniforms in 2019. Other pro clubs with Indian-related names and/or imagery include baseball’s Atlanta Braves, hockey’s Chicago Blackhawks, football’s Kansas City Chiefs and basketball’s Golden State Warriors.
HOME FOR HOLLIDAY ▲
John Henry “Doc” Holliday, the famed 19thcentury dentist, gambler
and gunfighter (not necessarily in that order), turns 170 this summer. Born in Griffin, Ga., on Aug. 14, 1851, Doc still boasts name recognition nationwide and in such faraway places as Italy, says Wild West aficionado and artist Lorenzo Barruscotto. Hailing from Asti, in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy, Barruscotto renders Wild West portraits from original photos,
including two of Holliday (at left). Last year he interviewed Susanna Dover Harris of Valdosta, Ga., owner of a house where Holliday once lived. “He was born north of here but spent his teenage years in Valdosta,” Harris told Barruscotto. She has diligently traced the Holliday history of her home. “The house itself was constructed in 1860 on a farm outside of Valdosta. Doc lived in the house with his family approximately 1864–72. In 1870 he left for dental school and then moved back for a short time upon his graduation. He moved out West due
to his battle with tuberculosis, which he more than likely contracted from his mother. The house was occupied until at least 1891 by the Holliday family. It then changed hands and locations many times until 1980, when it was moved to its current location. There is a very nice exhibit at the Lowndes County Historical Society and Museum [valdostamuseum.com] about Doc’s life and story.” Tuberculosis eventually claimed the life of the Georgian. Doc was just 36 when he died on Nov. 8, 1887, at the Hotel Glenwood in Glenwood Springs, Colo.
Events of the west Note: Due to the coronavirus shutdown, some events may be canceled or delayed
“Reconstructing Citizenship 1865–1917,” “The Rise of Jim Crow 1877–1900” and “Challenging Jim Crow 1900–1919.” Visit thestoryoftexas.com.
Vaqueros
Black Citizenship ▲
“Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow,” a traveling exhibition of the New-York Historical Society, visits the Bullock Museum
in Austin, Texas, June 19–Nov. 18. The exhibition explores the struggle for full citizenship and racial equality in the half century after the Civil War. Sections include
Photographs celebrating the charros of Mexico, the paniolos of Hawaii, Indian relay races and rodeos, black rodeos and more feature in the exhibition “Vaquero Legacies & Diverse Descendants,” which runs Feb. 13–July 11 at the Booth Museum in Cartersville, Ga. Visit boothmuseum.org.
Santa Fe 200th
The bicentennial of the founding of the Santa Fe Trail falls in 2021, as does the 35th anniversary of the Santa Fe Trail Association (SFTA). For more information visit 2021sfts.com and santafetrail.org.
Ranch Women
“Hard Twist: Western Ranch Women—Photographs by Barbara Van Cleve” continues at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis through April 25. Call 317-636-9378 or visit eiteljorg.org.
WWHA Roundup
The annual Wild West History Association Roundup will convene in Fort Smith, Ark., July 14–17. Watch for more details at wildwesthistory.org, also the place to join the WWHA.
WWA Time
The annual Western Writers of America convention is June 16–19 in Loveland, Colo. WWA is open to any published writer whose subject is the American West. Visit westernwriters.org.
Send upcoming event notices by email to wildwest@historynet.com. Submit at least four months in advance.
14 WILD WEST
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INTERVIEW
TRAILING A TRAILBLAZER JERRY ENZLER DELVED INTO ARCHIVES NATIONWIDE TO WRITE THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF JIM BRIDGER BY CANDY MOULTON
Why is Bridger a significant Western figure? Orphaned when he was 13, Bridger went up the Missouri River at 18 to trap beaver in Blackfeet country with Andrew Henry, Mike Fink and a hundred “enterprising young men.” He became one of the most accomplished explorers and brigade leaders in the Rocky Mountain fur trade. When he was 20 he discovered the Great Salt Lake. At 21 he was the first person known to paddle the treacherous Bad Pass rapids on the Bighorn River, and he rose to leadership when he led a band of trappers to retrieve stolen horses from a Bannock camp while Tom Fitzpatrick and other trappers provided cover fire. When Bridger was 22 he explored the wonders of Yellowstone, and by the time he was 26 he was one of five partners in the Rocky Mountain Fur Co. He became the epitome of the mountaineers whom Washington Irving described as “a totally different class…[of] traders and trappers that scale the vast mountain chains.…There is, perhaps, no class of men on the face of the earth…who lead a life of more continued exertion, peril and excitement.” Bridger was the foremost Rocky Mountain fur brigade leader in the 1830s and ’40s. Trapper David Brown recorded Bridger had an “absolute understanding of the Indian character in all its different phases.…His bravery was unquestionable, his horsemanship equally so, and as to his skill with a rifle, it will scarcely be doubted.” Where does Bridger rank among frontiersmen? He ranks in the top tier of Western frontiersmen, along with Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson and Tom Fitzpatrick. He was significant in three eras of the West, first as explorer and fur trapper, then as guide to mapmakers and scientists, and finally as chief 16 WILD WEST
guide to the Army during the Utah War, on the Overland Trail and during the conflict with Red Cloud and his confederacy of Lakotas, Cheyennes and Arapahos in the 1860s. Bridger probably guided more trapping brigades, wagon trains, scientific explorations, topographical surveys and Army expeditions than anyone in Western history. He was one of eight iconic figures initially envisioned by historian Doane Robinson to be carved into the rocks of the Black Hills in South Dakota. The others were Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea, Jedediah Smith, John Frémont, Red Cloud and Buffalo Bill Cody. The plan was later altered to what today is known as Mount Rushmore. Did Bridger desert the badly wounded Hugh Glass? The identity of the young trapper who volunteered to care for Hugh Glass and then was persuaded to abandon him has not yet been determined. Glass was mauled by a grizzly bear in 1823, and Daniel Potts, Black Harris and James Clyman all reported the incident but did not name the caretakers. Several versions of the Glass incident were subsequently published, including an account conjured up by an aspiring author named Edmund Flagg. Flagg arrived in St. Louis in 1837 in search of stories of the West, and in 1839 he published an article about Hugh Glass in the Louisville Literary Newsletter. Flagg’s article was riddled with errors, including the ludicrous statement that Andrew Henry and the rest of the trappers traveled about 300 miles in one day to reach their fort on the same day they left Glass with the caretakers. Flagg wrote that the young volunteer was named “Bridges.” Records show there were at least seven men named Bridges in and about Missouri at that time. My book documents Bridger’s only known statement of the subject, which he made to ethnologist James Stevenson sometime between 1856 and 1860. Stevenson reported Bridger told him the story of Hugh Glass, and “there was no desertion” by Bridger. How difficult was it to write your book? One of my greatest challenges was to uncover and collect the information about Bridger’s life. But that became my greatest success as well, as I was able to find valuable material in repositories across the country, including the National Archives, the Smithsonian National Anthropological Archives, the Huntington Library, the Newberry Library, the Fort Laramie Archives and the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints Archives. It was a challenge and an honor to chronicle this important life.
MICHAEL MORAIN
The story of westward expansion is embodied in the biography of Jim Bridger, who ventured up the Missouri River in 1822 with William Ashley and Andrew Henry’s fur-trapping brigade of 100 young men and later forged pathways followed by mountain men, emigrants, surveyors, scientists and the military. Just as Bridger left no area unexplored, biographer Jerry Enzler —who retired in 2016 from a 37-year career as founding director of the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium, in Dubuque, Iowa— has left no page unturned in researching and writing Bridger’s life story. Following the iconic frontiersman’s archival trail from his 1804 birth in Virginia to his 1881 death in Missouri, Enzler delivers a comprehensive account in Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West (see review, P. 86).
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GARY GALLAGHER ON GETTYSBURG’S CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS H
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ANTIETAM NEW LOOK AT THE DEADLY CORNFIELD MCCLELLAN AT THE FRONT UNTOLD STORY OF A BATTLEFIELD GRAVE
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DEBA H PEARL HARBOR OWED ONE BAD CALL SHAD LIFE A YOUNG OFFICER FOR ED TRAD WHO H THE MAN ORM UNIF HT RMAC HIS WEH UES FATIG Y ARM U.S. FOR
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WESTERNERS
In 1886 Benjamin M. Stalker, perhaps inspired by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, debuted his own Westernthemed show. Unlike Cody, he kept it going for more than 40 years. Ben was born in 1863 in North Carolina, father Zebedee, a wagon maker, moving the family to Indiana by 1870. Like many entertainers, though, Ben perpetuated a colorful backstory that he’d been born along the Red River in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), was orphaned as a boy, raised by a trapper named “Rocky Mountain Tom” White, cowboyed as a teen and later served in the Texas Rangers. What is certain is that wife Mary (née Elder) and their six children (Alice, born in 1885; Ethel, born in 1886; George, born in 1889; Jennie, born in 1891; Myrtle, born in 1894; and Ella, born in 1896) eventually all joined Buckskin Ben’s Wild West as sharpshooters, rough riders and musicians. Deadeye Myrtle was billed “Queen of the Rifle Shot.” With the kids aboard by 1903, Ben renamed the troupe Buckskin Ben’s Family. It had transformed into Buckskin Ben’s Wild West and Dog and Pony Show by 1908, when he sat for this portrait with one of his performers. The show toured mostly in the Midwest but also went to New York, Florida, Mexico, Canada and Cuba. Ben was a skilled shooter in his own right, while in his popular “Human Impalement Act” he threw knives at Mary and other performers. His “educated” dogs jumped over boxes, waltzed around the ring, rode bareback atop ponies and took high dives into fireman’s nets. After Mary died in 1927, Ben performed just two more years before retiring. He died at age 86 in Cambridge City, Ind., in 1949.
18 WILD WEST
TONY SAPIENZA COLLECTION
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GUNFIGHTERS & LAWMEN During the “potash war” in California’s desolate Searles Valley Earp engaged in his last known armed confrontation.
WYATT EARP’S LAST SHOWDOWN IN 1910 THE FAMED LAWMAN HEADED A GROUP OF ‘CLAIM JUMPERS’ AMID AN ARMED CONFRONTATION IN CALIFORNIA’S REMOTE SEARLES VALLEY BY KENNETH NEWTON
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DESERT GAZETTE
TOP: ERIC MIDDELKOOP/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; LEFT: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE
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Valley namesake John Wemple Searles, yatt Berry Stapp Earp stood a luckless Forty-Niner, had arrived in toe to toe with Stafford WalSouthern California in the early 1860s lace Austin, court-appointed and settled in the vicinity of presentreceiver of the bankrupt Caliday Trona. Though he was looking for fornia Trona Co. The date was Oct. 23, 1910, gold and silver, what he found in the surand Earp, the “Lion of Tombstone,” had been rounding dry lake bed was borax, a valureduced to working as a hired gun for a spuriable mineral with many uses. Searles filed ous survey party in southern California’s desoclaims on the property, and by 1873 his late Searles Valley. Though 62 and gray-haired, San Bernardino Borax Mining Co. was he retained the raw-boned, physically intimiin production. He hauled his product 200 dating presence of his younger days in Arizona miles south to the port of San Pedro in Territory. “What are you doing in this camp?” huge wagons drawn by legendary 20-mule Earp demanded. WYATT EARP teams. When the Southern Pacific RailEarp’s concern was understandable. Accomroad reached the desert town of Mojave panying Austin were four men armed, he recorded in his journal, “with all the weapons they could collect.” in 1876, the wagon trip was shortened to about 80 miles. In Confronting them were, Austin recalled, “the best-equipped gang 1895, however, weak demand prompted Searles to sell his firm of claim jumpers ever assembled in the West. It consisted of three to Francis “Borax King” Smith, of the Pacific Coast Borax Co., complete crews of surveyors, the necessary helpers and laborers, who shuttered the operation the next year. For more than a decade various operators made repeated and about 20 armed guards, or gunmen, under the command of Wyatt Berry Stapp.” The gunmen included Earp’s friend and unsuccessful attempts to economically mine the lake for not sometime deputy Arthur Moore King, a former Los Angeles po- only borax but also potash, soda ash, trona and sodium sulfate. lice detective. At stake were mineral claims of tremendous worth. By 1910 the claims were under the control of California Trona,
DESERT GAZETTE
TOP: ERIC MIDDELKOOP/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; LEFT: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE
GUNFIGHTERS & LAWMEN which had borrowed heavily to finance construction of two experimental plants to facilitate mineral recovery. The company went bust before completing the plants. When the claims went into receivership, federally appointed receiver Austin came to secure the property from competing claimants. Born in 1862 and raised in Hawaii, Austin was an 1886 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. Four years later he met and married his wife, noted author Mary Austin, in Bakersfield. In 1892 they settled in Lone Pine, Calif., at the foot of the Owens Valley. There Wallace taught school and was later elected superintendent of Inyo County schools. In 1905 valley residents banded together to confront Los Angeles officials over the city’s acquisition of water rights in the valley. Civil engineer William Mulholland had used straw buyers and other underhanded means to enable the city to pipe Sierra Nevada runoff to a reservoir in the San Fernando Valley. When Owens Valley locals woke to what was happening, they sought to stop the project. But Mulholland and company had dotted their I’s and crossed their T’s. Construction continued on the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which today provides one-third of the city’s water needs. A year later the estranged Austins left the valley and went their separate ways. Wallace was working as a lawyer in Oakland in 1909 when his firm was appointed receiver of the Searles Valley claims. Earp’s path to Searles Valley was a long and winding one. Following the storied 1881 gunfight near the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, and his subsequent vendetta ride, he returned to Dodge City, Kan., for a while to help out politically embattled saloon owner and friend Luke Short. He subsequently turned up in Colorado, Idaho, California, Arizona, Nevada and Alaska, mostly engaged in the saloon and gambling hall business while seeking his fortune mining for silver and gold. Although he’d done his share of “lawing,” as he called it, Earp didn’t feel particularly called to police work. But for him and his brothers alike it had proved a reliable, albeit risky, way to make a living when their entrepreneurial ventures failed, as they usually did. By 1910 he was dividing his time between Los Angeles and Vidal, a southern California settlement down near the Colorado River, where he held mining claims. The Los Angeles Police Department sometimes hired him and Arthur King, at $10 a day each “off the books,” to track down fugitives. While the department strictly adhered to legal means, Earp, as was his custom, did not. He and King even brought back wanted men from Mexico, extradition laws be damned, not that the department asked any questions. The partners’ reputation for success landed them a job in the fall of 1910 heading up a security team to protect survey crews hired by Los Angeles attorney Henry E. Lee. Acting on behalf of an Eastern mineral concern, Lee sought to move in on the Searles Valley claims held by the bankrupt California Trona. As receiver of the struggling company’s assets, Austin was legally in possession of the claims and, in fact, actively engaged in improving the property and dealing with creditors, as re-
STAFFORD AND MARY AUSTIN
quired by law. Lee must have known that, but the potential of earning millions of dollars from the idle mineral claims loomed large. Given the 20 armed guards he’d hired to protect his survey crews, he clearly expected resistance. When Lee’s surveyors set up camp and went to work, Austin “considered it necessary to make some show of force in protecting our claims.” At sunrise on October 23 he and four armed men visited the camp. After issuing his verbal challenge, Earp sought to wrest away a shotgun carried by one of Austin’s men. Austin in turn drew a pistol and ordered Earp to release the shotgun, which he did. But things were just heating up. “I’ll fix you!” Earp barked. From that point in the standoff accounts vary. According to King, Earp ducked into a nearby tent, emerged with a Winchester rifle and again squared off with Austin. “Back off or I’ll blow you apart,” he said, “or my name is not Wyatt Earp!” He then fired the Winchester into the ground beside Austin—“the nerviest thing I had ever seen,” King noted—forcing the latter to back down and leave. Austin had a different recollection. “Just as things seemed to have quieted down,” he recalled, “one of the excited jumpers accidentally discharged a gun. No one was hurt, but it was a very tense moment for all of us. Having failed to dislodge the enemy, the next day I called for a U.S. marshal, and when he arrived, the claim jumpers were all arrested and sent home, including Wyatt Berry Stapp, none other than the famous marshal Wyatt Stapp Earp.” Two years later Lee put together another survey crew, but a federal court intervened to protect California Trona’s claims. Austin’s actions kept the firm afloat, and the mineral works have remained in operation to this day. In 1914 he was appointed Trona’s first postmaster, and four years later American Trona, the successor to California Trona, hired him as its Los Angeles office manager. As for Earp, the Searles Valley “potash war” represented his last known armed confrontation. He’d spend his waning years hobnobbing with Hollywood types and trying to get a film made of his storied life. APRIL 2021
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IN 1858 FREE-SPIRITED JULIA ARCHIBALD HOLMES BECAME THE FIRST WOMAN TO SUMMIT PIKES PEAK BY DENNIS GOODWIN
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he clambered on her little woman’s feet over rocks, through snows up into the rare, cold atmosphere,” Noble Lovely Prentis said to a rapt audience, “up higher than the bird’s wings beat the air, up to the very crest.” There, Prentis continued, the 20year-old adventurer saw, “what no woman’s eyes ever saw before.” The noted Kansas journalist’s lyrical speech before an 1886 gathering of the Kansas Histori22 WILD WEST
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LEFT: DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY; RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
THE ‘BLOOMER GIRL’
cal Society imagined the unprecedented climb of Julia Archibald Holmes some three decades prior. On Aug. 1, 1858, Julia and husband Henry joined two fellow miners on a trek up foreboding Pikes Peak (spelled Pike’s Peak in those days) in what would become Colorado. Four days later, having endured snow squalls and primitive conditions, Julia’s stood on her “little woman’s feet” beside the others atop the 14,110-foot mountain. All those years later Prentis paid due homage to the pluck of the determined young lady Coloradoans had fondly dubbed their “Bloomer Girl.” The nickname derived from her uniquely “American costume,” as Holmes called it. “I wore a calico dress, reaching a little below the knee, pants of the same, Indian moccasins on my feet, and on my head a hat,” she described in a letter home. Aware the cultural elite of her era would frown on her getup, she added, “However much it lacked in taste, I found it to be beyond value in comfort and convenience, as it gave me the freedom to roam at pleasure in search of flowers and other curiosities.” Bloomers—the combination of a mid-calf skirt and billowing pantaloons—took their name from social activist Amelia Bloomer, who had popularized the fashion seven years before Holmes’ climb. Bloomer had adopted the controversial outfit as a casual alternative to the floor-length skirts and heavy petticoats then in vogue. “This shackle,” she had declared, “should no longer be endured.” From the moment Julia set foot on the snow-covered slopes of Pikes Peak, it is certain she could not have agreed with Amelia more. Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, on Feb. 15, 1838, Julia Anna Archibald moved with her family to Worcester County, Mass., when she was 10. Her parents were soon swept up in the fast-growing abolitionist movement. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act left the decision of entering the Union as either a slave state or free state to the citizens of each territory. To counteract an anticipated surge of immigrants into the disputed territories from slave states, abolitionist societies sponsored mass emigration of their supporters from Northern states. The Archibald family joined an early wave of abolitionists who journeyed to Kansas and helped found the anti-slavery town of
COLORADO SPRINGS PIONEER MUSEUM
Besides climbing a famous mountain in what became Colorado, Julia Archibald Holmes was a newspaper correspondent and suffragette.
LEFT: DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY; RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
COLORADO SPRINGS PIONEER MUSEUM
PIONEERS & SETTLERS
Lawrence. The region soon devolved into violent conflict. In the spring of 1856 some 300 pro-slavery settlers sacked Lawrence. Emerging unscathed, the Archibalds doubled down on their efforts to end slavery, opening their home to abolitionist meetings and as a stop along the Underground Railroad. It was in Lawrence young Julia met fellow abolitionist James Henry Holmes, a captain in John Brown’s company of Free State volunteers. They wed in the fall of 1857 and settled into farm life along the Neosho River. Within months came news of a gold strike near Pikes Peak. Like thousands of others, the newlyweds answered its siren call and joined the “Pikes Peak or Bust!” exodus, though Julia confessed being “animated more by a desire to cross the plains and behold the great mountain chain of North America.” In June 1858 they left Lawrence with a party of gold seekers. Julia, one of only two women in the group, preferred to tromp across the prairie with the men, while her counterpart rode in a wagon. In the evenings she jotted down her experiences in letters home. In one such missive Julia noted some of the men had disapproved of the bloomer costume she’d dubbed her “freedom dress.” Julia couldn’t be bothered to please their tastes. “I could not positively enjoy a moment’s happiness with long skirts to confine me to the wagon.” On arrival in the vicinity of Pikes Peak the party spent long weeks searching for gold. Bemoaning the “disgusting inactivity and monotony of camp life,” Julia finally suggested a remedy to her husband and friends—to climb the lofty peak looming high above their tents. Perhaps understandably, they greeted her suggestion with wrinkled brows and raised eyebrows. “Nearly everyone tried to discourage me from attempting it,” she reflected, “but I believed that I should succeed.” Eventually, her dogged enthusiasm broke down the resistance of her husband and two other daring souls. The lofty peak in the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains had been named in honor of Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, who in 1806 led an expedition to explore the southwestern border of the Louisiana Purchase. That November he and a small party set out to climb the mountain, only to be thwarted by waist-deep snowdrifts. “No human being,” he recorded, “could have ascended to its pinnacle.” Over the coming decades, albeit in better weather, several men did summit. But no
Above: Holmes wears bloomers (her “freedom dress”) in an illustration from the 1949 book A Bloomer Girl on Pike’s Peak. Right: The first woman known to have summited the peak did so stylishly and comfortably.
woman is known to have even attempted it—until the Bloomer Girl came along. Ascending the peak boulder by boulder, Julia and the others made slow, steady progress. To the men’s surprise, despite shouldering a 17-pound pack crammed with bread and clothing, Julia kept pace. Camping beside waterfalls and amid the snow-covered rocks, they took time to appreciate the unique geology, flora and fauna. On reaching the summit that August 5, they etched their names on a large rock, and Julia sat down to write to family and friends. After their Pikes Peak adventure, the Holmeses moved to Taos, New Mexico Territory. There Julia become a correspondent for the New York Tribune, made strides in the women’s suffrage movement and had four children. In 1870 the family relocated to Washington, D.C. Alas, she and James drifted apart and soon divorced. Julia remained an active suffragette until her death at age 48 on Jan. 9, 1887. In 2014 she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. Her later accomplishments notwithstanding, Holmes’ ascendance of Pikes Peak literally and figuratively marked the high point of her life. “I feel,” she enthused while peering down from her lofty perch, “that I would not have missed this glorious sight for anything at all.”
‘I wore a calico dress, reaching a little below the knee, pants of the same, Indian moccasins on my feet, and on my head a hat’
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No. 2 on the list served as both the Jersey Lilly saloon and as a courtroom for Judge Roy Bean, who at least closed the bar when court was in session.
LONE STAR SALOONS
10. Top o’ Hill (Arlington): The only 20th-century joint on the list, Top o’ Hill Terrace, on the old Bankhead Highway between Fort Worth and Dallas, gained fame far beyond Texas’ borders for the quality of its gambling and dining. In the 19th century such offerings would have ranked it as a fancy saloon. 24 WILD WEST
Quietly opened in 1931 by Fred Browning on the site of a former tearoom, it featured a basement casino complete with escape tunnel, a fancy restaurant above and a gated entrance to keep out riffraff and the law. High rollers from as nearby as Arlington Downs racetrack and as far away as Hollywood favored its tables. Until 1933 Top o’ Hill served illegal liquor. After 1933 it served legal liquor while continuing its clandestine gambling operations. Texas Rangers shut the place down in 1947. Nine years later the Baptist Bible Seminary (present-day Arlington Baptist University) bought it for its campus. 9. The Lady Gay (Mobeetie, aka Sweetwater): Henry Fleming opened the Lady Gay in 1875 to serve the buffalo hunters and soldiers of nearby Fort Elliott. Though it lacked the fancy amenities of dining and dancing, it quickly became a center of nightlife and gambling for the broader Panhandle. It also has a claim on Wild West history. There on Jan. 24, 1876, buffalo hunter Bat Masterson and Sergeant Melvin King (real name Anthony Cook) got into a row over a woman that ended with King and the woman dead and Masterson gut shot. The incident launched the latter’s legendary gunfighting career. The Lady Gay dropped out of the headlines after 1879, eventually closing when Mobeetie dried up.
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RICHARD F. SELCER COLLECTION
saloon signboard was a badge of pride in the Old West, a beacon of light identifying a social center for thirsty gents of all stripes. Certain names, such as the White Elephant or the Oriental, were practically franchised; no one claimed a trademark. Most saloons were of the hole-in-the-wall variety, serving a rough clientele and surviving only as long as the frontier settlement around it thrived. The most popular were a product of the cattle drive era, catering to cowboys. Only a handful were of the fancy sort depicted on film. The best ones offered fine food and drink and a variety of gambling. Such classic Western saloons lived on, at least until Prohibition came along and made “saloon” a disreputable word. When liquor became legal again in 1933, upscale drinking establishments took to calling themselves “nightclubs” or “casinos.” With a nod to the saloons of yesteryear, then, following is a subjective list of 10 Texas taprooms, in descending order of fame.
UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
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WHILE MOST CAME AND WENT, THESE 10 TEXAS WATERING HOLES MADE HISTORY BY RICHARD F. SELCER
WESTERN ENTERPRISE
RICHARD F. SELCER COLLECTION
UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
8. The Beehive (Fort Griffin, aka “The Flat”): This rough cowboy bar had its heyday in the 1870s when the Western Trail was active. Also favored by buffalo hunters, gamblers and local soldiers, it was, predictably, the site of frequent violence. Among its celebrated patrons were Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp and Pat Garrett. The Beehive died along with the settlement when Fort Griffin closed in 1881.
reputable establishment closed that June. Two years later the building burned to the ground.
3. The Buckhorn (San Antonio): In 1881 17year-old hotel bellhop Albert Friedrich opened the original Buckhorn on Dolorosa Street, soon celebrated for its array of wall-mounted horns and antlers, which the young proprietor accepted from cash-strapped customers in trade for drinks. In 1896 he moved the saloon to a corner of Soledad and East Houston streets, where he installed a hand7. T he C ow boy S a loon ( Doa n’s crafted backbar of marble and cherry wood, reCrossing): The last stop south of the mounted the horns and antlers, and added mirrors THE BUCKHORN Red River, before cowboys crossed their and an arsenal of firearms. In 1898 Theodore Rooherds into Indian Territory (present-day sevelt reputedly recruited Rough R iders at the Oklahoma), this saloon also thrived in the days of the Western Buckhorn, and Pancho Villa supposedly fomented revoluTrail. Patrons included buffalo hunters, whiskey drummers tion here. At the outset of Prohibition in 1920 Friedrich closed and European noblemen on hunting trips to the Great Ameri- the saloon. Two years later he opened Albert’s Curio Store, at can West. In 1885 the Fort Worth & Denver railway bypassed 400 W. Houston St., to showcase his popular collections. Friedthe little village, and the saloon soon closed for keeps. rich’s bar and artifacts remain on display in a present-day iteration of the saloon. 6. The Gem (El Paso): Perhaps the best known of a trio of El Paso watering holes (the Acme and Wigwam were the other 2. The Jersey Lilly (Langtry): The immortal Judge Roy two), the Gem opened in 1885 on El Paso Street. Known for Bean, the “Law West of the Pecos,” made the Jersey Lilly his its polished bar, massive mirrors and bawdy paintings, it had headquarters from the 1882 founding of Langtry to his 1903 the familiar layout of a downstairs bar and upstairs club rooms. death. A combination courtroom and saloon built astride the The Gem also operated a variety theater and hosted the occa- Southern Pacific right-of-way, its customers comprised mainly sional dogfight and prizefight. Gunfighter John Wesley Hardin railroad workers and the curious. Though the town took its was a regular at what was the city’s premier fancy saloon. name from SP engineer George Langtry, Bean named his An 1894 fire gutted the building in what polite society called saloon for English stage actress Lillie Langtry, with whom he “an act of God.” was enamored (even if he did misspell “Lillie”). Judge Roy dispensed cold beer and rough justice in equal measure, though 5. The Iron Front (Austin): A capital city landmark, the it was fines more than alcohol sales that kept the doors open. Iron Front stood on the corner of Sixth Street and Congress He did close bar whenever court was in session. An 1897 fire Avenue from the 1870s until demolished in 1910 in the inter- claimed the original saloon, but Bean rebuilt on the same spot. ests of urban renewal. Named for its iron-trimmed facade, That building now serves as a state visitor center. the two-story building housed the bar on the ground floor and gambling rooms above. Amenities included pool tables, a faro 1. The White Elephant (Fort Worth): The White Elesetup and a dining area. John Neff bought the place in 1878, phant ranks No. 1 because it was Texas’ premier fancy saloon, spruced it up and brought it to prominence as a “gentleman’s the perfect combination of bar, restaurant and gambling opresort.” A mixed clientele of cowboys, sporting men, swells eration on two f loors. It opened for business in 1884 on the and politicians came for the fine food, drink and hospitality. 300 block of Main Street, moving to the 600 block in 1896. John Wesley Hardin was a regular, while gunman and some- A man could eat, drink and gamble, get his shoes shined and time lawman Ben Thompson ran the gambling concession buy a full range of tobacco products on-site. The bar served for a time. Remarkably, the occasional riotous behavior and every imaginable variety of liquor and wine, and the restau“festive shooting” never led to any killings, a rarity in the rant served fresh game and seafood. Jake Johnson and Luke frontier saloon business. Short were early partners in the saloon, as were brothers Bill and John Ward. Despite their best efforts to run a classy es4. The Vaudeville (San Antonio): This two-story saloon tablishment, two dramatic shootouts occurred just outside and variety theater fronted the Main Plaza, on the corner the front door. On Feb. 8, 1887, Short himself gunned down of Soledad and Commerce streets. The Vaudeville had a former city marshal Jim Courtright. At least six other Texas reputation for anything goes, including murder. Indeed, Ben towns boasted White Elephant saloons, each independently Thompson shot and killed proprietor Jack Harris at the Vaude- owned and operated. ville on July 11, 1882, and Harris’ supporters executed Thompson and friend King Fisher there on March 11, 1884. With a Richard Selcer thanks Robert Smith of Sarasota, Fla., and Jerry Adreputation of violence hanging over it, San Antonio’s most dis- ams of Fort Worth for their help in compiling this list. Thirsty work! APRIL 2021
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ART OF THE WEST Jerry Anderson (at bottom, hard at work in his Silver Reef studio) has created dozens of maquettes and large sculptures, including Out of the Woods (detail below) which is carved in cottonwood.
CASTING LIGHT ON THE WEST
inutes north of St. George, Utah, off I-15 rests Silver Reef, a ghost of a mining town nestled among red rock formations often canopied by pastel blue skies laced with cotton ball clouds. For more than a quarter century sculptor Jerry Anderson [jerryandersongallery. com] has maintained a studio and gallery there. The synergy between the artist and this ethereal landscape runs as deep as the veins of silver prospectors clawed from the bowels of this red earth in the 1870s and ’80s. Born in Las Vegas, Nev., in 1935, Anderson crisscrossed the West with his well-driller father, an opportunity that sparked his interest in Old West history. He has called southern Utah home for 40 years, while his sculptures have found homes worldwide.
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In the 1970s, while Anderson was running a successful steel business in Southern California, he taught himself sketching and painting. Then one day he responded to an improbable matchbook ad inviting those with talent to submit a sample of their work to legendary American artist Norman Rockwell. The ad turned out to be the real deal, and Anderson was accepted into the Famous Artists School, a four-year correspondence course out of Connecticut founded and taught by Rockwell and several other renowned illustrators. Anderson ultimately received a diploma in commercial art and illustration. His decision to work on bronzes came unexpectedly while mentoring a young man from Idaho doing missionary work in California. The young man, a sculptor, was willing to share his
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PHOTIOS BY LAZELLE JONES (5)
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FROM HIS STUDIO IN SOUTHERN UTAH JERRY ANDERSON HAS LONG RENDERED AWARD-WINNING SCULPTURES BY LAZELLE JONES
PHOTIOS BY LAZELLE JONES (5)
ART OF THE WEST
own knowledge and skill set—mold making, foundry work, selection of materials, techniques. Anderson was hooked, and after he and wife Fawn moved to Utah in 1981, he devoted himself to sculpting. Anderson has created 80 maquettes, or preliminary models, and nearly the same number of large sculptures. One of his most dynamic bronzes (he has also worked in wood and alabaster) is on display at his hometown Silver Reef Museum, housed inside an 1877 Wells Fargo express station on the national and state registers of historic buildings. Just inside the door stands Anderson’s quarter-scale (9 feet long, 3 feet high, 4 feet wide) stagecoach pulled by six horses, which he and brother Ronny created using the complicated and delicate lost-wax method. The sheer size and power of the sculpture causes many first-time visitors to step aside in initial shock. Anderson applies his knowledge of welding,
metallurgy and ironwork to showcase his favorite subject—Western horses. His monumental bronze Old Sorrel, depicting a legendary horse that helped settlers build Cedar City, Utah, is the founders’ monument at Southern Utah University. The talented artist also designs jewelry. Anderson is a member of the Western Art Association [westernartassociation.org], dedicated to the promotion of interest in regional art and artifacts and the preservation of Western heritage. His work has been featured in many prestigious art events, including the Pageant of the Masters, in Laguna Beach, Calif.; Western Artists of America, in Corsicana, Texas; the American/Canadian Classic, in Billings, Mont.; and the Art Expo, in Dallas. When people ask the 85-year-old why he keeps hard at work in his Silver Reef studio, Anderson responds, “I still haven’t done my best piece.”
Examples of Anderson’s Western-themed bronzes include (clockwise from top left) Hickory, Dickory and Doc; Quicksand; and Winner Take All.
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INDIAN LIFE
DID BLACK KETTLE’S WIFE SURVIVE?
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(Medicine Woman Later was with Black Kettle at Sand Creek and had survived multiple gunshot wounds.) Wynkoop further noted the widow’s daughter was married to George Bent—the half-blood son of trader William Bent—and suggested the woman be released to Bent, then living near Fort Lyon in Colorado Territory. Taylor forwarded Wynkoop’s letter to his Interior Department superiors, who forwarded the request to the War Department. Finally, on January 28 Lt. Gen. William T. Sherman authorized the widow’s release, “provided, of course, that Geo. Bent wants her.” The woman was subsequently released into Bent’s custody. If true, the Russell Collection letters challenge the long-accepted belief that Black Kettle and Medicine Woman Later died together at the Washita. Bent himself seemingly believed it, later writing, “Black Kettle and his wife, Medicine Woman Later, both rushed
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MCCRACKEN RESEARCH LIBRARY, BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST
n the Don Russell Collection of the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo., are reams of typed documents Russell acquired in his years of writing about Buffalo Bill Cody and the Indian wars. Among those files, identified as copies provided by Edward S. Luce— 7th U.S. Cavalry veteran and longtime superintendent of Custer Battlefield National Monument (present-day Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument)—are five letters written shortly after Lt. Col. George A. Custer defeated Black Kettle in a dawn attack along the Washita River in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) on Nov. 27, 1868. Custer reported having killed 103 warriors, including Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle, and captured 53 women and children. The latter were held in a stockade at Fort Hays, Kan., until released to their Indian Territory reservation. Every book since written on the battle notes that Black Kettle’s wife Medicine Woman Later died alongside him that cold November morning. The Russell Collection letters suggest a different outcome. On Jan. 11, 1869, just weeks after the battle, Edward W. Wynkoop, the U.S. Indian agent for the Arapahos and Southern Cheyennes, wrote Indian Affairs Commissioner Nathaniel Green Taylor, informing him that among the captives Custer’s men took at the Washita was Black Kettle’s widow. Though Wynkoop doesn’t name the woman, he directly ties her to the 1864 massacre at Sand Creek in Colorado Territory. “Her captors need have no fear of her breaking her ‘parole,’” he wrote, “bearing upon her person the scars of 10 wounds received at the Chivington massacre.”
STEVEN LANG/NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
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MEDICINE WOMAN LATER IS BELIEVED TO HAVE DIED AT THE WASHITA WITH HER CHEYENNE HUSBAND—BUT THERE IS ANOTHER POSSIBILITY BY JEFF BROOME
INDIAN LIFE
MCCRACKEN RESEARCH LIBRARY, BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST
STEVEN LANG/NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Left: Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle helps wife Medicine Woman Later to her horse while Lt. Col. George Custer’s force attacks the village, in Steven Lang’s painting 1868 Battle of the Washita. Right: One of the letters that indicates a wife of Black Kettle survived the attack.
out of the lodge at the first booming of the guns…but both the chief and his wife fell at the riverbank, riddled with bullets.” Tracing Black Kettle’s marriages and offspring is daunting. He apparently had four wives who bore him 17 children. His first and second wives were captured during Cheyenne raids against the Utes in 1849 and ’54, respectively. Reportedly killed at the Washita were Medicine Woman Later, his third wife, and Sioux Woman, his fourth. Black Kettle apparently also had children with several other women, though it’s unknown whether he was married to the mothers. One such daughter, Magpie, who married George Bent in 1866, was reportedly the daughter of Corn Tassel Woman. This seems to directly contradict what Wynkoop wrote in his plea to have Medicine Woman Later released to “her daughter, the wife of George Bent,” as Bent claimed Magpie was Black Kettle’s niece. Could Wynkoop have meant that the “widow” Custer had captured was Corn Tassel Woman? No, because Wynkoop identified the widow in custody as the same woman who’d been severely wounded at Sand Creek. If anyone would be able to identify Medicine Woman Later, it would be Wynkoop, as he’d served as the agent for Black Kettle’s Cheyennes and worked closely with the chief and Medicine Woman Later over the four years prior to Black Kettle’s death. The conundrum only deepens when one learns Bent never mentioned Magpie’s mother by name, stating only that his wife was Black Kettle’s niece. That leaves open the possibility she could be the daughter of Medicine Woman Later. How is that possible? In their book Halfbreed, a biography of George Bent, co-authors David Halaas and Andrew Masich note that Cheyenne culture made no distinction between daughters, stepdaughters and nieces. Could Magpie have been the daughter of Medicine Woman Later and a man she knew before marrying Black Kettle? According to the authors, Bent alternately referred to Magpie as Black Kettle’s stepdaughter. Thus it is entirely possible Bent was married to a daughter of Medicine Woman Later, and it certainly appears that way when reviewing the Russell Collection letters, particularly Wynkoop’s letter. Which raises the question, Why have authors writing about Custer’s 1868 fight failed to mention these important documents? Louis Kraft’s books Ned Wynkoop and the Lonely Road From Sand Creek (2011) and Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway (2020)
make no mention of them. Halaas and Masich are apparently the only ones to acknowledge the documents. But even they dismiss the accuracy of the reports with the simple claim that Bent was not near Fort Lyon at the time but rather at Camp Supply in Indian Territory, and it was there Magpie’s mother joined Bent. But they identify the released captive as Corn Tassel Woman, not Medicine Woman Later. To make that claim, however, they must ignore Wynkoop’s insistence that the widow released to Bent was the same woman wounded at Sand Creek— namely Medicine Woman Later. If one accepts the identification of the woman described by Wynkoop and released into Bent’s custody as Medicine Woman Later, another perplexing question must be addressed. Bent insisted Medicine Woman Later was killed at the Washita. If Magpie were her daughter, why would he not be truthful? The answer again points to Cheyenne tradition, which holds that a husband cannot live in the same lodge with his mother-in-law. Perhaps that’s why Sherman advised releasing Medicine Woman Later to Bent only if he “wants her.” In Halfbreed Halaas and Masich note that after Magpie’s mother rejoined her daughter, Bent took up with a younger woman and had a daughter with her, fostering resentment between Magpie and Bent’s new wife. Given such familial tensions, perhaps it was easier for Bent, reflecting years later, to forget that Medicine Woman Later had forced him out of his happy lodge with Magpie and to instead claim his mother-in-law had died at the Washita with Black Kettle. He needn’t have worried about being contradicted, as by the time he made that claim, Medicine Woman Later most certainly would have been dead—whether she’d survived the Washita fight or not. When Sherman authorized the release of Black Kettle’s widow, he questioned why Wynkoop had abandoned the chief at his moment of greatest need and instead returned east to rail against the military’s winter campaign. Why hadn’t the officer worked to separate those Cheyennes truly seeking peace from the ones intent on war? From that Sherman concluded Black Kettle had allowed his camp to be “a common rendezvous for the parties openly engaged in a bloody war.” Custer seemingly confirmed that conclusion when he followed tracks in the snow of a war party leading from a deadly Kansas raid directly to Black Kettle’s village the night of November 26. But maybe, just maybe, Medicine Woman Later survived the 7th Cavalry’s attack on her husband’s village the next morning. The newly discovered documents certainly support such a possibility and should not be ignored in future writings about the Washita. APRIL 2021
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PHOTO CREDIT
CREDIT PHOTOPHOTO COURTESY THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL ASSOCIATION
Hulett (Wyoming) Rodeo lithograph poster (detail), by Bob Coronato.
STYLE
PHOTO CREDIT
CREDIT PHOTOPHOTO COURTESY THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL ASSOCIATION
We wrangle the wild ’n’ woolly award-winning rodeo posters of Western artist Bob Coronato
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STYLE
ART
Bob Coronato Artist’s note: I have been painting, drawing, and printmaking for 25 years with a focus on documenting aspects of the contemporary cowboy and American Indian life. I moved to Wyoming in the early 1990s and cowboy’d all over the West and for 15 years attended the Crow Indian family reunion. Through my firsthand knowledge, I show Western life that hasn’t entirely disappeared from the culture. The question I hear most often about my long cattle drives or tepee camp scenes is, “Do they still do that?” Well, yes, they do, but not for much longer. I feel proud to have been lucky enough to be a part of this final chapter in the American frontier’s history. For now, “The West” is alive; it’s just hiding in small corners of our country, trying desperately to hang on—not be forgotten. Every painting and drawing is a personal experience, and I try to paint with the same integrity as Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, Frank Tenney Johnson and Joseph Henry Sharp.
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PHOTO CREDIT
Signed 18-by-38-inch rodeo posters by Bob Coronato are available for $20 (plus $12 shipping) from bobcoronato.com. APRIL 2021
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PHOTO CREDIT
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Gun-Free Zone
Dodge City tried to curb violence by banning the carrying of firearms in town, but lawbreakers used them just the same, as depicted in Andy Thomas’ Gunfight at Long Branch Saloon.
OPPOSITE: © ANDY THOMAS; ABOVE: GRANGER
DAMAGE CONTROL
When violence surged in Tombstone, Dodge City and other Western towns, authorities enacted local ordinances to prohibit the carrying of firearms By John Boessenecker 34 WILD WEST
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Lackadaisical Lawman
OPPOSITE: © ANDY THOMAS; ABOVE: GRANGER
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strong wind blustered up Fremont Street as Police Chief Virgil Earp, brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and their friend Doc Holliday strolled with purpose toward a vacant lot behind the O.K. Corral. Moments later the sharp reports of pistol and shotgun fire echoed through the chill autumn air. Bystanders took cover as the Old West’s most infamous gunfight erupted in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. By the time the smoke cleared, Virgil, Morgan and Doc were wounded, while brothers Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton lay dead or dying, riddled with bullets and buckshot. The latter three had been notorious members of the Cowboys, the biggest outlaw gang in the frontier West. The Oct. 26, 1881, shootout had been a long time coming. For the previous three years the Cowboys —Virgil Earp estimated their number at upward of 200—had rampaged through southern Arizona Territory and northern Mexico. The Cowboys had raided, smuggled and robbed with impunity. They had murdered at least 32 men in New Mexico and Arizona territories and south of the border. They had showered Tombstone with stolen money and stolen cattle sold to crooked butchers and had befriended many merchants and even local lawmen. Their fortunes turned, however, the day these defiant Cowboys encountered four hard nosed frontiersmen who had “smelt powder” and weren’t afraid of a fight. But the Earp boys and Holliday hadn’t confronted the Cowboys over smuggling, cattle theft or murder. The trio had committed a far less serious infraction: They were carrying guns in Tombstone. What? you ask. Didn’t every man in Tombstone carry a six-shooter? The answer is no, for contrary to depictions in countless Western films and TV episodes, cattlemen and miners didn’t stalk the streets with six-guns slung from well-filled cartridge belts. With few exceptions, past generations of sensationalist screenwriters and filmmakers would roll over in their graves at the notion of gun-free streets in Tombstone. But that’s the way it was at the time, for civil authorities had prohibited the carrying of firearms within city limits, as had other Western communities plagued by violence. Everyone but duly sworn law officers had to leave their guns at home or check them at local hotels or livery stables. On that fateful day Billy Clanton’s older brother Ike was the first to violate the Tombstone’s gun ordinance. Openly carrying a rifle and revolver, he wandered the streets that
Cochise County Sheriff John Behan, at right below, made a weak attempt to disarm the Cowboys before the Earps and Doc Holliday faced off against them on Oct. 26, 1881.
morning threatening to kill the Earp boys and Holliday. “I found Ike Clanton on Fourth Street between Fremont and Allen with a Winchester rifle in his hand and a six-shooter stuck down in his breeches,” Virgil Earp later explained. “I walked up and grabbed the rifle in my left hand. He let loose and started to draw his six-shooter. I hit him over the head with mine and knocked him to his knees and took his six-shooter from him. I ask[ed] him if he was hunting for me. He said he was, and if he had seen me a second sooner, he would have killed me. I arrested Ike for carrying firearms, I believe was the charge, inside the city limits.” Virgil took Ike before a judge, who fined the Cowboy $25 and court costs. Meanwhile, outside the courtroom Wyatt encountered Tom McLaury, who challenged Earp to a fight. “He had a pistol in plain sight on his right hip in his pants, but made no move to draw it,” Wyatt recalled. But instead of arresting Tom in his capacity as a special policeman, Wyatt issued his own challenge: “Jerk your gun and use it!” “He made no reply,” Wyatt said, “and I hit him on the head with my six-shooter and walked away.” Virgil soon got word the Clanton and McLaury brothers had gathered at the O.K. Corral and were openly carrying firearms contrary to the law. Cochise County Sheriff John Behan made an ineffectual attempt to disarm the Cowboys. But the responsibility of enforcing town ordinances belonged to Chief Earp, not Sheriff Behan. Thus Virgil, backed by Wyatt, Morgan and Doc, made that fateful walk down Fremont Street into history. Tombstone’s gun control law, like those in many frontier communities, was enacted in reaction to the violence then prevalent on the frontier. During the 1880s southern Arizona Territory—home to such notoriously rowdy towns as Tombstone, Tucson, Galeyville, San Simon and Charleston—ranked among the nation’s most dangerous regions. In 1879–80 alone Pima County recorded 25 murders. That equates to an annual rate some 25 times higher than the present-day national homicide rate. In 1881 newly created Cochise County had 28 murders, 55 times higher than today’s national homicide rate. Researchers have turned up similarly high homicide rates across the frontier West. Mid-1850s California, for example, had a statewide murder rate more than 30 times the current national rate. San Francisco, by comparison, was well policed APRIL 2021
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and relatively peaceful. In the Gold Rush decade of the 1850s its murder rate ranged from four to eight times the present-day national rate, while in the latter half of the century its homicide rate dropped to double today’s national rate—a statistic that would nevertheless make modern police chiefs apoplectic. Despite such facts, some historians insist the frontier did not experience high rates of homicide. One oft-cited study concluded that Dodge City was not excessively violent during the 1870s and ’80s, and that the greatest number of killings the “Queen of the Cow Towns” experienced was five in 1878. Yet that claim is highly misleading. In the early days of its founding, from September 1872 through July 1873, Dodge City recorded 18 murders. Given a population of only 1,000, that equates to a homicide rate 360 times higher than the present-day national homicide rate. It’s no wonder that on Christmas Eve 1875 the town fathers passed an ordinance outlawing the carrying of concealed weapons. It soon banned the carrying of any weapon. A period photograph depicts Front Street in 1878 posted with the prominent sign The Carrying of Fire Arms Strictly Prohibited. At least one peace officer would pay a heavy price for enforcing Dodge City’s gun control ordinance. In 1877 25-year-old Ed Masterson, brother of famed gambler-lawman Bat Masterson, was appointed city marshal. Five months later, on the night of April 9, 1878, Marshal Masterson and Deputy Nat Haywood responded to Carryout Firearms
At F.C. Zimmerman’s Dodge City hardware store in 1875 one could buy a gun for out-of-town use. 36 WILD WEST
Like Dodge City, its fellow cow town of Wichita also had a firearms ordinance. In 1872 city officials erected large signs at the four main entrances to town, one on the far side of the bridge over the Arkansas
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FROM TOP: BONHAMS; MCCRACKEN RESEARCH LIBRARY, BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST; HARDIN-SIMMONS UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; ALBUM/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
The carrying of firearms in Dodge City was “strictly prohibited,” indicates this 1878 sign, though the advertisement for Prickly Ash Bitters got bigger type.
KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY (3)
Keep Calm and Carry Not
a disturbance in a dance hall. There they found a half dozen drunk and noisy cowhands. One of them, Jack Wagner, was openly carrying a six-shooter. Though Masterson quickly disarmed him, the marshal’s ensuing actions spoke to the dearth of training in that era of frontier policing. Instead of arresting Wagner and patting down his companions for weapons, a trusting Masterson handed the confiscated firearm to the cowboy’s trail boss, Alf Walker, then stepped back outside with Haywood. As the pair stood chatting on the sidewalk, a drunken Wagner staggered from the dance hall accompanied by Walker. Barely concealed beneath Wagner’s coat was his revolver, which he’d apparently retrieved from Walker. When Masterson stepped forward to seize the six-shooter, a scuffle broke out. As the two struggled for the weapon, curious patrons poured from the dance hall. Haywood moved to assist Masterson, but Walker jerked his own concealed revolver, swung the muzzle up into Haywood’s face and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. At the same moment Masterson lost his grip on Wagner’s six-gun. Shoving the gun into the marshal’s ED MASTERSON side, the drunken cowhand fired. The bullet ripped through Masterson’s abdomen, the muzzle flash setting his waistcoat on fire. Despite his wound, the marshal managed to jerk his own revolver and shoot Wagner in the stomach at point-blank range. The cowboy dropped to the sidewalk, mortally wounded. Walker then turned his pistol on Masterson, but the marshal was faster and squeezed off three quick shots, his bullets striking the trail boss in the chest and right arm. Bleeding heavily, Wagner staggered into a nearby saloon. He’d survive his wounds. Masterson was not as fortunate. Crossing the street to another saloon, he collapsed to the floor and died within the hour. A story circulated that Bat Masterson had taken part in the gunfight and shot down his brother’s killer. That is a myth, for although Bat was Ford County sheriff and in town, he was not on the scene when his brother died trying to enforce the local firearms ordinance.
FROM TOP: BONHAMS; MCCRACKEN RESEARCH LIBRARY, BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST; HARDIN-SIMMONS UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; ALBUM/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
KANSAS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY (3)
River. Each sign read the same: Everything Goes in Wichita. Leave Your Revolvers at Police Headquarters and Get a Check [receipt]. Carrying Concealed Weapons Strictly Prohibited. As early as 1865 a newspaper editor in Leavenworth, Kan., wrote in favor of such local ordinances: “In most of our cities there is a law against carrying firearms. This should be inexorably enforced. There is no necessity nowadays of any man being armed in this or any other community in the North.” He was not alone in his thinking. Three years later Kansas state legislators passed a law prohibiting vagrants, drunks and former Confederate soldiers from carrying “a pistol, bowie knife, dirk or other deadly weapon.” Violators faced three months in jail or a $100 fine—a stiff penalty in an era when laboring men earned $30 a month. John Wesley Hardin, the “King of the Gunfighters,” was not immune to such gun control laws. One might not know that by watching the 1953 Western The Lawless Breed, starring Rock Hudson as Hardin. Throughout the film he openly wears a six-gun and cartridge belt in town and sometimes carries a concealed revolver in a shoulder holster. Though previews heralded the motion picture as the “true story of JOHN WESLEY HARDIN the greatest gunfighter of them all,” it was largely fiction. The screenwriters would have been sorely disappointed to learn that local firearms ordinances often hamstrung the real-life pistolero. For example, Hardin was in Abilene, Kan., in 1871 when he ran afoul of its celebrated city marshal, Wild Bill Hickok. Hickok had recently posted notices around town, warning that “the ordinance against carrying firearms or other weapons in Abilene will be enforced.” Soon after the marshal encountered young Hardin in a local saloon and tenpin bowling alley. The Texas gunfighter described what happened next: I had two six-shooters on, and of course I knew the saloon people would raise a row if I did not pull them off. Several Texans were there rolling tenpins and drinking. I suppose we were pretty noisy. Wild Bill came in and said we were making too much noise and told me to pull off my pistols until I got ready to go out of town. I told him I was ready to go now but did not propose to put up my pistols, go or no go. He went out, and I followed him. I started up the street
WILD BILL HICKOK
when someone behind me shouted out: “Set up. All down but nine.” Wild Bill whirled around and met me. He said, “What are you howling about, and what are you doing with those pistols on?” I said, “I am just taking in the town.” He pulled his pistol and said: “Take those pistols off. I arrest you.” I said all right and pulled them out of the scabbard, but while he was reaching for them, I reversed them and whirled them over on him with the muzzles in his face, springing back at the same time. I told him to put his pistol up, which he did. I cursed him for a long-haired scoundrel that would
ROCK HUDSON IN THE LAWLESS BREED
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His defense attorney reiterated to the jury, “He had a large shoot a boy with his back to him (as I had number of deadly enemies who would kill him at the first been told he intended to do me). He opportunity, and if it were known that he went unarmed, said, “Little Arkansas, you have been they would attack him at any moment.” wrongly informed.” The prosecutor, however, was having none of it. “A I shouted, “This is my fight, criminal like Jesse James,” he declared, “who by his acts and I’ll kill the first man that fires has made so many enemies that men look upon him as a gun!” an outlaw, if arrested for carrying a pistol, he could deBill said: “You are the gamest fend by saying, ‘My life has been such that I am in daily and quickest boy I ever saw. Let us fear of being shot down at any moment, and therefore it compromise this matter, and I will is necessary to protect my person for unlawful attack that be your friend. Let us go in here and BEN THOMPSON I carry a pistol.’…Thus all these dangerous men would be take a drink, as I want to talk to you and licensed to carry guns, and the peaceable men could not.” The give you some advice.” jury promptly found the defendant guilty, and the judge fined him At first I thought he might be trying to get $25. Of course Thompson hadn’t exaggerated the danger his violent ways the drop on me, but he finally convinced me of his had brought down on him. Just one month later he and King Fisher, good intentions, and we went in and took a drink. a friend and fellow Texas gunfighter, visited the Vaudeville Theater in We went into a private room, and I had a long talk San Antonio. While the pair watched a performance, several of Thompson’s with him, and we came out friends.
Tombstone Tales
A Western set in Arizona Territory without gun-toting men would be like Boot Hill with no tombstones.
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TOP: JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION; BELOW: SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER; BOTTOM: NEW YORK HERALD
Other Texas towns also enacted gun control laws. In February 1884 the notorious gunfighter and sometime lawman Ben Thompson found himself on trial in Austin for “unlawfully carrying a pistol.” He argued that he was permitted to wear a six-shooter in town, as state law allowed any citizen to carry a gun if he “has reasonable ground for fearing an unlawful attack upon his person, and the danger is so imminent and threatening.” Several witnesses testified on his behalf, confirming he had numerous foes and “his life was in constant danger.”
enemies riddled them with bullets, killing both men instantly. As early as 1870 San Francisco had a city ordinance prohibiting the carrying of firearms. Police officers strictly enforced the law. In 1877 they even arrested two duck hunters spotted strolling with their shotguns through largely untamed Golden Gate Park. But the best-known arrest for violation of the ordinance came in 1896. Boxing promoters had asked Wyatt Earp to referee a match between top heavyweights Bob Fitzsimmons and Tom Sharkey. Ten thousand excited spectators crowded into Mechanics’ Pavilion for one of the great sporting spectacles of the era. One hundred police officers were on hand to maintain order. As Earp stepped into the ring, the experienced eye of Captain George Wittman spotted a telltale bulge in Wyatt’s coat pocket. Approaching the former lawman, Wittman asked, “Have you got your gun?” “Yep,” Wyatt responded. “You’d better let me have it.” “All right,” said Earp, handing over a double-action Colt Model 1892 New Army and Navy revolver.
TOP: HARDIN-SIMMONS UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; BOTTOM: EVERETT COLLECTION INC./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Some dispute Hardin’s version of the encounter. Regardless, the gunfighter did not learn his lesson about violating gun control laws, nor of tangling with tough lawmen. After serving a long prison term for murder, he moved to El Paso in 1895. The rowdy border city had its own gun control ordinance, and Hardin was arrested three times for “unlawfully carrying a pistol.” He then made the fatal mistake of quarreling with John Selman Jr., an El Paso constable and former outlaw. On Aug. 19, 1895, Selman shot and killed Hardin in the Acme Saloon. When questions arose over whether Selman had shot him in the back of the head, one El Paso wag remarked: “If he was shot in the eye, I’d say it was excellent marksmanship. If he was shot in the back of the head, then I’d say it was excellent judgment.”
In a controversial decision, Earp declared Sharkey the winner via disqualification. Two days later Wyatt answered in court for having carried a concealed weapon, and he paid a $50 fine. Earp had come full circle, from enforcing a gun control ordinance in Tombstone to violating an identical law in San Francisco. California author John Boessenecker is the award-winning author of 10 history books and a Wild West contributing editor. His 2020 book Ride the Devil’s Herd: Wyatt Earp’s Epic Battle Against the West’s Biggest Outlaw Gang is recommended for further reading, along with The Cattle Towns, by Robert R. Dykstra, and the article “A Tale of Three Western Cities,” by Roger Jay, published in the August 2008 Wild West and online at Historynet.com.
Disrespected Ref
TOP: JOHN BOESSENECKER COLLECTION; BELOW: SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER; BOTTOM: NEW YORK HERALD
TOP: HARDIN-SIMMONS UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; BOTTOM: EVERETT COLLECTION INC./ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Below: Referee Wyatt Earp hands over his Colt before the 1896 Bob Fitzsimmons-Tom Sharkey boxing match. Left: This demeaning depiction of Earp appeared in papers after the bout when a hearing was held to determine whether the fight had been fixed.
GUN LAW & ORDER Myths about the Wild West abound, particularly with regard to firearms. In classic films and TV series virtually every man out West carries a six-shooter. Even storekeepers, bakers and laborers swagger through the Hollywood frontier toting guns. But if they did that in Abilene, Dodge City, Tombstone or countless other frontier towns at one time or another, they would have landed in jail. As late as 1911 the mayor of Houston recruited a young lawman named Frank Hamer (above)—who later gained fame as a Texas Ranger captain and the man who tracked down and killed outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The mayor assigned Hamer specifically to protect citizens from an army of “pistol toters” then violating Houston’s ordinance against carrying weapons within city limits and prompting a spike in that Gulf Coast city’s homicide rate. It was such violence that prompted authorities in several Western towns to enact local gun control ordinances. Firearm ownership was prevalent on the frontier, where wild animals, outlaws and intractable Indian tribes were threats. In places lacking recognized law enforcement each man was responsible for his own self-defense. At the same time Westerners recognized that towns of a certain size inevitably attracted saloons, gambling houses, dance halls and the like filled with hard drinking, heavily armed men—a recipe for disaster. A commonsense solution was to ban the carrying of guns in such towns and cities. Enacted out of transient necessity, such laws were considered compatible with Americans’ broader right to keep and bear arms, as enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Constitution. The popular belief the Old West was violent is no myth. At the same time the popular belief there was no gun control on the frontier is indeed a myth. —J.B. APRIL 2021
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TRAILING WESTERN HISTORY
This intrepid photographer took it upon himself to trek and capture all 19 national historic trails Photos and Text by Bart Smith
T
he idea to walk and photographically document America’s national historic trails incubated in my brain for about a year before I told my wife. I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be, as I had just spent the prior decade walking and photographically documenting America’s 11 national scenic trails, which span nearly 19,000 miles. The 19 national historic trails traverse some 33,000 miles of American landscape. However, I explained to Bridgie, if I only walked the main routes and didn’t re-walk sections of trails that share the same path, I could cut that mileage down to 20,000 or so. Plus, if I were to start section hiking in 2011, I might be able to finish on 40 WILD WEST
Oct. 2, 2018, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the National Trails System Act. Most important, as I had utilized a baby jogger to push my camping and camera gear along rural road sections on a few of the national scenic trails, I figured I could employ that method on most sections of the national historic trails, saving time and serious aches and pains from the weight of a 65-pound backpack and spare gallon of water. I actually wasn’t surprised when Bridgie said, “Go for it!” because, well, crazy attracts crazy. The national historic trails are not designed or in any way promoted as thru-hikes. Essentially they pay homage to early travelers and highlight locations of historic significance. A
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Have Baby Jogger—Will Travel
His trusty three-wheeler packed with camera and camping gear, Bart Smith heads up to Rocky Ridge and South Pass, Wyo., along the Oregon Trail.
historic trail may follow interstate highways and rural roads, trace two-track dirt roads and faint trails or even require bushwhacking. I had no idea if my plan would work, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Finally, on the morning of Oct. 2, 2018, I strolled beneath the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, completing an eastbound traverse of the Lewis and Clark Trail, my final route of America’s 19 national historic trails. Walking a historic trail is sometimes akin to living in a parallel universe. Cars whiz by full of comfortable, curious folks gawking at some poor guy pushing his baby jogger in the wind and rain. Meanwhile, I’m mulling a place to camp while parsing the journals of early travelers who wrote about
dealing with the wind and rain and trying to find a place to camp. To say I had it easy compared to those pioneers would be an understatement. I could have a burger for lunch, pizza and beer for dinner. That said, I had many shared experiences with those early travelers. I began my thru-hike of the Oregon Trail in the river town of Independence, Mo., on June 14, 2012, and saw only one blip on the southern horizon (Blue Mound, Kan.) for week after week, wondering if I was making any progress, until finally on August 1 I could barely make out in the shimmering distance of western Nebraska the bumps that are Courthouse and Chimney rocks. The scale of the land is unchanged APRIL 2021
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from 170 years ago, and I too felt a profound sense of elation when I crossed through Mitchell Pass between South and Scotts bluffs. I also felt a deep kindred spirit with the roughly 400,000 pioneers who passed by here seeking a new life over the horizon all those decades ago. Following are a few notes about the 14 national historic trails that lie west of the Mississippi River and, in two cases, extend from it, along with some of my favorite images captured on those onetime wilderness pathways across the plains, mountains, valleys and deserts of the American West.
Ala Kahakai
This 175-mile trail traverses the western and southern shores of the Big Island of Hawaii and features prehistoric and historic sites relevant to Hawaii’s Polynesian culture. It served primarily as a land route connecting ancient fishing villages. The national historic trail is not contiguous, but hikers can access many long segments.
Big Island Beauty
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PHOTO CREDIT
Clockwise from top: Kealakekua Bay, where Captain James Cook landed and was killed in 1779; Holei Sea Arch, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park; stonework along the Ala Kahakai Trail, a few miles south of Pu’uhonua o Honaunau (City of Refuge) National Historic Park; Hawaiians placed surf-tumbled rocks such as these along the Ala Kahakai near Kipahoehoe Bay in order to safely traverse razor-sharp lava.
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El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro
This trail retraces the 404-mile segment of New Spain’s Royal Road that lies in the United States—from El Paso, Texas, to Santa Fe, N.M. It is a continuation of the nearly 1,200-mile Mexican segment from Mexico City to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, a trail recognized by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site. Dating from 1598, the full 1,590-mile road is among the oldest European trade routes in North America. North from El Paso the trail heads up the Rio Grande Valley, roughly tracing I-25.
On the Royal Road to Santa Fe
Clockwise from top: Petroglyphs in La Cieneguilla Recreation Area, just south of Santa Fe; a skyful of birds over Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, N.M.; the cross-studded summit of El Cerro de Tomé, near the village of Tome, N.M.; El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro at Yost Draw in the Jornada del Muerto, N.M.; El Rancho de las Golondrinas, a re-created living Spanish village near Santa Fe.
El Camino Real de los Tejas
Meandering more than 2,500 miles across Texas, this braided trail network carried early Spanish colonial explorers, missionaries, soldiers and settlers right up to the contested border with French Louisiana. The route later extended to the French post at Natchitoches, in present-day north-central Louisiana, serving as a conduit for trade, migration, settlement and livestock drives. Along the Texas Road
PHOTO CREDIT
Clockwise from above left: The centuries-old facade of Mission San José, part of San Antonio Missions National Historic Park; the Lobanillo Swales, on private property along the trail; Mission Espada Aqueduct, San Antonio; the Alamo; the trading post at a replica of the 1732 Fort Jean Baptiste, Natchitoches, La.
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California
In 1848, as Mexican rule was drawing to an end in California, word spread quickly of the discovery of gold along the American River. The trail traces the roughly 3,000-mile overland route many westbound Forty-Niners took to reach the goldfields. For much of the way they traced the same path as the Oregon and Mormon trails, later taking various cutoffs and spurs, thus accounting for today’s braided national historic trail of 5,665 miles.
California Dreaming
Clockwise from top: The ghost town of Halleck, Nev.; a wagon wheel marks the grave site of emigrant George Cottonwood, in the Sierra Nevada; traces of the California Trail near Carson Pass, Calif., a challenging location for emigrants; Longdistance hiker/author Nimblewill Nomad heads west on frontage road beside I-80, east of Battle Mountain, Nev.
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Santa Fe
Pioneered in 1821 and celebrating its bicentennial, this wagon trail served as an important international trade route between Missouri and Mexican-controlled Santa Fe and at times as a military road. In the wake of the Mexican War the trail remained a busy commercial highway until the railroad arrived in Santa Fe in 1880.
West to Santa Fe
Clockwise from top: Dusk highlights wagon ruts along the Santa Fe Trail through Kiowa National Grassland north of Clayton, N.M.; remains of the Kaw Mission commissary, south of Council Grove, Kan.; along the trail west of Six Mile Crossing stage station, Kan.; mule deer stand at attention near Rabbit Ear Mountain, Okla.; Round Mound rises southwest of Greenville, N.M.
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Oregon
In 1841 the first wagon train left Independence, Mo., bound for the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Between then and 1868 more than 80,000 emigrants left various Missouri River jumping-off points on the 2,170-mile westward journey in search of a better future. Travelers on the California, Mormon and Bozeman trails covered much the same ground on the eastern section before diverging for their separate destinations.
The Willamette or Bust
PHOTO CREDIT
Clockwise from top: A passing squall seems to set down atop Jail Rock, as viewed from Courthouse Rock, Neb.; the sun sets on Mitchell Pass, in Scotts Bluff National Monument, Neb.; a stone marker placed by Oregon Trail traveler and advocate Ezra Meeker (1830–1928) designates South Pass, Wyo. the natural crossing of the Rockies for emigrants on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails.
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Nez Perce (Nee-Me-Poo)
In 1877 tensions over land rights between settlers and Nez Perce Indians in northeast Oregon prompted the armed flight east by some 750 tribal members and their pursuit by the U.S. Army. For most Nez Perces, including Chief Joseph, their circuitous route ended near the Bear Paw Mountains in north-central Montana, although a handful continued north in hope of resettling in Canada. The present-day 1,170-mile trail stretches from Wallowa Lake in Oregon to the Bear Paw Battlefield south of Chinook, Mont.
Flight for Freedom
Clockwise from top: A simple memorial at Bear Paw Battlefield, Mont., marks the spot where Chief Joseph (1840–1904), head of the Wallowa band of Nez Perces, pitched his tent; Tolo Lake, Idaho, where five non-treaty Nez Perce bands, including the Wallowa, gathered in June 1877 for a council meeting; a hawk soars over a Studebaker wagon at Horse Prairie, on private property in southwest Montana that is accessible with permission.
Mormon Pioneer
This 1,300-mile trail memorializes the 1846–47 exodus of Mormons led by Brigham Young from Nauvoo, Ill., to the shores of the Great Salt Lake in what would become Utah. It passes through five states —Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah—and is the only national historic trail that commemorates a religious movement. Between 1846 and ’68 some 70,000 Latter-day Saints followed in Brother Brigham’s steps.
Latter-day Lineage
PHOTO CREDIT
Clockwise from top: Young people on a Mormon pioneer trek reenactment steer a handcart down a section of the original trail in Wyoming; an afternoon storm along the trail in western Wyoming; pioneer trek reenactors follow the trail trace beside Muddy Creek, Wyo.
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Juan Bautista de Anza
In 1775–76 a 240-person Spanish colonial expedition comprising a military guard, Franciscan friars and families of settlers guided by Juan Bautista de Anza traveled afoot and by horseback from Sonora, Mexico, to the site of present-day San Francisco. Paying homage to that expedition, the national historic trail begins in Nogales, Ariz., and spans some 1,200 miles. Spanish Colonial Country
Clockwise from top: The cemetery in the mission courtyard of Tumacácori National Historical Park, in Arizona’s Santa Cruz River valley; a surviving section of the Juan Bautista de Anza Trail north of Las Lagunas de Anza Wetlands and Nogales, Ariz.; La Purísima Mission State Historic Park, near Lompoc, Calif.
Pony Express
Unlike those plying the emigrant trails, riders on this 1,966-mile mail delivery route traveled fast. The trail began at the company offices in St. Joseph, Mo., and linked relay stations through what are now Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada en route to Sacramento, Calif. From there steamers usually carried the mail down the Sacramento River to San Francisco. Despite its fame, the Pony Express lasted only 18 months (April 1860 to October 1861).
It’s in the Mail
Clockwise from right: A fogbow, or white rainbow, spans a signpost along the Pony Express Trail in Nevada.; the ruins of the Cold Springs Pony Express Station, Nev.; Nevada scrubland holds one of the few standing telegraph poles from the line that replaced the mail route; Pony Express re-rider in the wilds west of Farson, Wyo.
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Crying Shame
Clockwise from left: While waiting to cross the Ohio River during their forced exodus, the Cherokees camped near Mantle Rock, in far western Kentucky; a monument near Tahlequah, Okla., marks the grave of Chief John Ross; the reconstructed printing office of the Cherokee Phoenix, New Echota State Historic Site, Calhoun, Ga.; a sculpture of Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, in Tahlequah.
Trail of Tears
Preserving a somber history, this trail traces the path of the 16,000 Cherokee Indians who in 1836–39 were forcibly removed from their Southeastern ancestral homelands to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). The national historic trail, which stretches 2,200 miles across nine states, comprises a network of land and water routes over which federal troops sent not only Cherokees but also Choctaws, Muscogees (Creeks), Chickasaws and Seminoles to unwanted lands west of the Mississippi River.
Old Spanish
In 1829–30 the Santa Fe region needed horses and mules, while the Los Angeles region needed woven woolens, thus the Old Spanish Trail arose as a trade route between the two regions. Use of the rugged 2,700-mile braided trail network declined after 1848 when the United States claimed the Southwest from Mexico, and the Army plotted and planned proper wagon routes.
This Way to L.A.
Clockwise from top: Sculptures depict mounted travelers crossing Buckhorn Flat south of the Cedar Mountains, in Utah’s San Rafael Swell; trailside scenery near Forks of the Road, west of Yermo in California’s Mojave Desert; the San Gabriel Mission, in Los Angeles, represents the western terminus of the Old Spanish Trail.
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Lewis and Clark
The designated national historic trail runs 4,900 miles from Pittsburgh—from which Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and their Corps of Discovery set out by keelboat in August 1803—to the mouth of the Columbia River near present-day Astoria, Ore., which the party reached in November 1805. Its three-year expedition to the Pacific Ocean and back was primarily intended to explore and map the Missouri and other Western rivers. The 2003–06 bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition proved the largest and most publicized event in the saga of the National Trails System.
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Corps of Discovery Country
Clockwise from left: Crown Point Vista House overlooks the Columbia River, Ore.; the Missouri River winds away from the slopes of Snake Point Mountain, in Missouri Breaks National Monument, Mont.; the sun sets over the Pacific at Cape Disappointment State Park, Wash.; the interior of an earth lodge at Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, in Stanton, N.D.; the author’s canoe plies the Upper Missouri; eroded hoodoos flank the river at Missouri Breaks.
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Iditarod
The main trunk of this iconic Alaskan trail follows the original surveyed 938-mile mail route from Seward to Nome, while the complete network of paths (many almost exclusively used in winter) covers 2,350 miles. In the early 20th century, during the last big gold rush in Alaska, prospectors carried out ore from Iditarod (now a ghost town) by dogsled. Today competitors in the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, from Anchorage to Nome, retrace the route.
The Far Country
Clockwise from top: Mitch Seavey and his dog team leave the village of Elim, Alaska, and head toward White Mountain during his victorious 2017 Iditarod race; a cement vault is all that remains from a bank in Iditarod, now a ghost town; crowds cheer racer Seavey and his sled dogs at Nome, Alaska; axles and wagon wheels stand ready in the ghost town of Flat, Alaska; Tootsie’s Bathhouse, one of the few buildings still standing in the ghost town of Iditarod.
Bart Smith, of Lakewood, Wash., is the first person to have walked all 30 national historic and national scenic trails. He is the sole photographer of 10 books showcasing America’s trails. For further reading (and viewing) see America’s National Historic Trails: Walking the Trails of History, by Karen Berger, photography by Bart Smith. To learn more visit BartSmithPhotography.com. APRIL 2021
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LITTLE INDIAN WAR GOES BIG
Surrendering Modocs emerge from the Lava Beds in a colorization of the June 7, 1873, cover of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.
PHOTO CREDIT
Forced From Their Stronghold
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OPPOSITE: NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; ABOVE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
What appeared just another police action against off-reservation Indians quickly flared into the dramatic and costly 1872–73 Modoc War By Robert Aquinas McNally
OPPOSITE: NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; ABOVE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
PHOTO CREDIT
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o sooner had the troopers of ness. It vexed the Ulysses S. Grant administration Company B, 1st U.S. Cavalry, for most of the next year, claimed the life of the dismounted in the off-reseronly general killed in the Indian wars and bevation Modoc village on the came the only such conflict in which a newswest bank of southern Oregon’s Lost River paper reporter interviewed opposing Indian at Natural Bridge than 2nd Lieutenant Fraleaders amid the hostilities. zier Boutelle drew his revolver and fixed his Such consequence was fitting. After all, the stare on a tribesman settlers had nicknamed war had been brewing for decades. When it Scarface Charley. The young Modoc, rifle at did break, a long-dammed hell flooded out. the ready, glared back from but a few yards away. At the same instant each made the move Until 1846 the Modocs had had little conSCARFACE CHARLEY both knew was coming. Boutelle snapped up his tact with Anglo-Americans, save for the occarevolver, Charley raised his rifle, both fired. Before sional fur trapper. That year a group of Oregonians the smoke cleared in the early morning light of Nov. 29, led by Lindsay and Jesse Applegate mapped a wagon road 1872, the Modoc War had broken out. from Fort Hall in what is now Idaho to the Willamette Valley. As Boutelle and Charley—both still standing and unhurt— Following ancient Indian trade routes across northern Nevada, realized death had passed them by, a firefight exploded. northeastern California and south-central Oregon, the AppleThree or four Modocs went down in the first volley, one dead. gate Trail gave emigrants another way into Oregon besides But the troopers, who stood in the open as the warriors dove the Columbia River’s perilous rapids. for cover, took the worst of it. Eight dropped, one dying At first the Modocs were little troubled by the transiting on the spot, another soon thereafter. Somehow Boutelle wagons and let them pass. But as the emigrant tide swelled, managed to rally his depleted unit, ordered a charge and it left in its wake overgrazed meadows, decimated game and pushed the Modoc men out into the brush beyond the village. fouled water. Within a year an epidemic, most likely of measles, The lieutenant then had his troopers evict the Modoc elders, swept through the Modoc villages. Of a population numberwomen and children, destroy all abandoned weapons and ing around 2,000 the disease claimed 150 lives. By 1849 the set the vacant winter houses ablaze. aggrieved Modocs were harrying incoming settlers. Fire and fury fell simultaneously on a smaller Modoc village The newly admitted state of California noticed. On Jan. 6, on the east bank of the Lost River. A vigilante posse from 1851, Peter Burnett, the first civilian governor, gave a state Linkville (present-day Klamath Falls) that had followed the of the state address focused primarily on California’s “Indian troopers south got the firefight for which they were gunning. problem.” A former Missouri slaveholder, Burnett believed In the exchange one vigilante shotgunned a 6-year-old child, that racial conflict between Anglo-Americans and Indians then turned his weapon on a mother and infant. While the was inevitable. “A war of extermination will continue to woman survived the blast, buckshot tore her baby in half. be waged,” he declared, “until the Indian race becomes exMost of the retreating Modocs gathered at the mouth of the tinct.” Backing such a strategy without debate, the state LegLost River on Tule Lake, piled into canoes and began the long islature soon floated the first of $1.5 million in bonds (some paddle to the south shore, over the state line in California. $47 million in present-day dollars) to fund local militias tasked Led by Kientpoos—known to settlers as Captain Jack—they with killing Indians. were bound for the Stronghold, a plateau amid the Lava Two such militias, one led by Ben Wright, a Quaker turned Beds on the southwest corner of the lake where for millennia Indian fighter, invaded Modoc country that summer and threatened Modocs had taken refuge. killed upward of 30 to as many as 90 tribe members. The next Even as the evacuees paddled south, Hooker Jim led eight fall the Modocs attacked a 16-wagon train along Tule Lake, other mounted Modocs from the eastern village down the inflicting significant casualties on the party. Wright responded lakeshore, bent on revenge for the shooting of the woman in kind, spearheading a larger militia that capped its camand children, an unforgivable violation of tribal rules of paign by slaughtering some 40 Modocs under a false flag of engagement. By the time they connected with those holed up truce. And so it went. In 1854 an Oregon militia killed two in the Stronghold, the warriors had shot down a dozen or so dozen more Modocs. In 1856 a California militia claimed to settlers, all men and adolescent boys. have killed more than 185 Modocs, but in reality slew only one Despite its dramatic and bloody outbreak, however, the —a woman. Modocs were getting scarce. Modoc War initially appeared just one more police action Indeed, by 1864 the Modoc nation had declined to approxagainst off-reservation Indians on the frontier. Soon, though, imately 350 members. That year it joined the equally beleathe conflict occupied center stage in the American conscious- guered Klamaths and Yahooskin band of Northern Paiutes in APRIL 2021
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Modoc War Grounds Crater Lake
KLAMATH Fort Klamath
INDIAN
RESERVATION
Upper Klamath Lake
tain howitzers. On the other side Point of No Return When Modocs killed the Modocs fielded but 50-odd rifleGeneral Canby and the men tasked with defending more Natural Bridge Modoc Villages Rev. Eleazar Thomas, Lower than 100 villagers, including elders, public opinion turned OREGON Klamath against the Modoc Lake CALIFORNIA women, children and at least one Tule defenders, ending all Stronghold Lake Hospital Rock newborn. They were less an army hope of compromise. Clear Gillem’s Camp than a band of ragtag refugees. Lake Van Bremer Ranch Ordering a dawn assault on the Stronghold on Jan. 17, LAVA BEDS Scorpion Point Sand Butte 1873, Wheaton was so confident of victory with his 6-to-1 Dry (Sorass) Big Sand Butte Lake advantage that he’d passed on reconnoitering the fog-shrouded battleground. That hubris proved his undoing. By day’s end nine soldiers and militiamen lay dead, 28 wounded, three 0 10 20 miles mortally and others too seriously to return to action. The Modocs suffered not so much as a powder burn. Exploiting the signing the Council Grove Treaty, ceding more than 6 million Lava Beds’ tortuous terrain and the high ground of the Stronghold, the underdogs had flipped the strategic script. acres and agreeing to move onto the Klamath Indian News of the debacle so embarrassed the Army Reservation in south-central Oregon. that Canby relieved Wheaton and took personal Reservation life, though, proved harsh and hufield command. At the same time prominent miliating. The U.S. Senate took five years to ratify Oregonians lobbied U.S. Interior Secretary the treaty, meanwhile withholding funds for food Columbus Delano to appoint a peace comand shelter. Reduced to eating their horses, most mission and perhaps negotiate a less costly of the Modocs abandoned the reservation for end to the conflict. Delano won over Presitraditional village sites along the Lost River. dent Grant and General of the Army William That set the stage for the cavalry raid of Nov. 29, T. Sherman to the plan, declared a truce in the 1872. When that asLava Beds and selected the commissioners. sault went sideways, it HOOKER JIM Like Wheaton’s assault plan, the peace comleft the Modocs and the mission looked better on paper than in practice. United States at war. The problem was its personUnlike the fast-moving cav- nel. Delano named as chair Alfred alry conflicts of the Plains, the Meacham, who had served as U.S. Modoc War was fought as a siege, superintendent of Indian Affairs in a setting the post–Civil War Army Oregon when the Modocs were reconsidered to its advantage, at least duced to eating their horses on the on paper. Appointed by Brig. Gen. reservation. They blamed Meacham Edward Canby, commander of the for that misfortune. Then there was Department of the Columbia, Lt. commissioner Jesse Applegate, the Col. Frank Wheaton assembled a trailblazer, who for years had been 300-strong force of federal soldiers fomenting war on the sly. His goal CAPTAIN JACK BRIG. GEN. and militiamen from Oregon and was to drive the Modocs off their EDWARD CANBY California supported by two moun- land and turn it into a ranching em54 WILD WEST
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TOP AND BOTTOM: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); CENTER: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JOAN PENNINGTON MAP; HARPER’S WEEKLY; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; THE AUTRY MUSEUM; NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Lost River
PHOTO CREDIT
Linkville (present-day Klamath Falls)
CURLEY HEADED DOCTOR
TOP AND BOTTOM: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2); CENTER: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
PHOTO CREDIT
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JOAN PENNINGTON MAP; HARPER’S WEEKLY; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; THE AUTRY MUSEUM; NATIONAL ARCHIVES
pire for himself and cattle baron Jesse The Modoc 11 Frank Leslie’s ran Carr. The Modocs knew what Appleportraits of the key gate was up to and justly suspected Modoc participants his motives. based on photos by Carleton Watkins. As the peace commission was assembling, the press arrived to cover the paused war. In an expensive gambit the New York Herald, the leading East Coast newspaper, had dispatched reporter Edward Fox. In addition to Fox’s salary, the paper paid for his lengthy reports to be telegraphed word by pricey word to New York. Publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr. considered it a strategic investment. Only months earlier the Herald had scored a journalistic coup when it subsidized Henry Morton Stanley’s headline-grabbing search for missing African explorer Dr. David Livingstone in East Africa. (Stanley’s greeting, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” resonates today.) Bennett challenged Fox to pull off something as big and flashy, and hopefully profitable, from the Modoc conflict. Fox delivered. The reporter insinuated himself into a party of local settlers heading into the Stronghold to arrange a meeting with the peace commission. The Modocs lacked experience with newspapers, yet they recognized in Fox an unusual opportunity to get out their story to a wider audience. In the resulting published account of his overnight adventure among the Modocs, Fox laid blame for the war mostly on Oregon settlers like Applegate who coveted the tribe’s land. Yet the story won nationwide notice less for its advocacy than for Fox’s plucky reporting. Meanwhile, the peace commission was making little headway. Already skeptical of Meacham and Applegate (the latter of whom resigned in disgust), the Modocs came to distrust Canby. Taking advantage of the truce, the general reinforced his original 300 men to some 1,000, added four Coehorn mortars to the artillery and moved his camps to the very doorstep of the Stronghold—on the west from the Van Bremer Ranch to the camp of field commander
Colonel Alvan Gillem, and on the east from Scorpion Point to Hospital Rock. The final straw came when a cavalry patrol made off with most of the Modocs’ remaining horses, and Canby refused to return the animals. With that the Modocs knew they were cornered. The tribe split over what to do. Captain Jack, Scarface Charley and several others argued for surrender, trusting the U.S. government would treat them well. Curley Headed Doctor, a shaman who’d been leading an early version of the Ghost Dance to rouse the Modocs spiritually, saw the conflict as an apocalypse that would wipe out the settlers and resurrect the old days. He advocated an all-out fight. His son-in-law, Hooker Jim, agreed, less from prophetic fervor than out of fear a surrender would land him and his eight accomplices atop the gallows for having slain settlers. Regardless, the pair convinced most Lifesaving Labyrinth
Under the watchful eyes of armed warriors Modoc women and a child seek shelter, if not warmth, amid the Lava Beds caves. Just five women and children died during the fighting.
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TOP AND BOTTOM: HUNTINGTON LIBRARY (2); CENTER: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
stood, shouted an order, drew a pistol and pointed it at Canby. Dumbfounded, the general froze, even when the handgun misfired. Canby remained seated as Captain Jack re-cocked the revolver, squeezed the trigger and sent a slug into the general’s brain. A second shot to the head and a knife to the neck finished Canby. Meanwhile, Boston Charley put two rounds into the chest and head of the Rev. Eleazar Thomas, a Methodist minister who had replaced Applegate on the peace commission, and Schonchin John put four bullets into Meacham. Later rescued by troopers that responded all too slowly to the sound of gunshots, Meacham survived, albeit permanently scarred TOBY RIDDLE and partially disabled. Under widely understood tribal rules of engagement in northeastern Modocs to join them in an act of existential des- California, killing the other side’s leader would prompt that side to peration—specifically, to set up a meeting with retreat, and the Modocs expected their surprise strike to have just that the peace commission, then attack with con- effect. They had badly miscalculated. As news of the killings hit newscealed weapons. Captain Jack had little choice papers from West Coast to East, the Modoc War escalated into a cosmic conflict. No longer was it a matter of rounding up a few Indians but to bow to the majority, though he chose who had gone off reservation. As headlines screamed T he Canby as their target. Red Judas and declared Canby and Thomas martyrs, public Toby Riddle, a Modoc woman serving opinion pitted the eternal forces of good (the U.S. Army) as a translator for the Army, learned of against the eternal forces of evil (the Modocs). Any chance the assassination plot and informed for compromise vanished, and the Modocs were put on Canby. The general dismissed her the fast track to destruction. as a hysterical alarmist before headTo ensure that outcome, Sherman chose as Canby’s ing off with the rest of the peace comreplacement the ironically named Colonel Jefferson C. mission to the meeting site about a Davis, a senior Union officer whose ruthlessness during mile from the Stronghold. There the the 1864 March to the Sea he had admired. However, BOSTON CHARLEY Modoc delegation waited around a sageDavis first needed to travel from Indiana to the Lava Beds, brush fire. The date was April 11, 1873— a journey sure to eat up most of two weeks. Loath to stay the Good Friday. hand of vengeance that long, Sherman telegraphed Colonel On arrival Canby handed out cigars and enGillem, the interim commander, to hit the Modocs with “an attack tered into conversation with Captain Jack. He so strong and persistent that their fate may be commensurate with their advised the Modocs to surrender and trust him crime. You will be fully justified in their utter extermination.” to find them a safe reservation somewhere warm, Gillem served up that assault on April 15. Attacking the Stronghold an offer he’d made repeatedly in vain. He also from both west and east, the soldiers cut the Modocs off from their water insisted the soldiers would remain until the par- supply at Tule Lake and harassed them with Coehorn mortar fire. After ties reached a settlement. Suddenly, Captain Jack nightfall on the second day most of the Modocs—men, women, children and elders, with their dogs and horses—slipped out of the Stronghold along an unguarded narrow pathway, successfully threading the needle between Warm Springs scouts on one side and Army artillerymen on the other. A few Modoc sharpshooters remained behind to reinforce the deception. The others headed for ice caves in the southern Lava Beds that offered both cover and water. The Army had lost seven killed and 13 wounded in the action, the Modocs three warriors and a handful of women. For 10 days the stealthy Modocs remained so well concealed in their new haunts that they were able to ambush a 67-man patrol as the unsuspecting troopers took a lunch break. The Battle of Sand Butte, named for the high ground from which the far smaller force of Modocs fired down on the lounging soldiers, was the Army’s costliest engagement of the war. Nearly two-thirds of the patrol was wounded or killed, the death toll including every officer. Yet even as the Modocs enjoyed their At Rest Amid the Lava Beds greatest martial triumph, they were dragThe Army hired Eadweard ging bottom. They had been living in the Muybridge to photograph open for more than five months, were the war and its aftermath.
Playing Soldier
clothed in torn rags and worn shoes, and had but a small cache of dried beef remaining. So on May 10, when another attempted ambush at Sorass Lake went awry, the resistance fractured. One group headed west and north toward Lower Klamath Lake. The other, under Captain Jack, made for the canyons east of Clear Lake. Over the next three weeks the Modocs were run to ground, group by small group, and forced to surrender. On June 1 Captain Jack handed his Springfield rifle to a Warm Springs scout, shook hands and announced he was done. With that the shooting phase of the Modoc War came to an end. Colonel Davis, as befitted his reputation, made plans to hang most of the surviving Modoc men on the spot, starting with the Indian who killed Canby, Captain Jack. The gallows had just been completed when Davis received orders from Washington to stand down. Sherman and the Grant administration had opted for a final solution with a greater gloss of legality than summary execution. Thus it was in early July a military commission at Oregon’s Fort Klamath tried Captain Jack, Schonchin John, Boston Charley and three other Modocs for war crimes in the killing of Canby and Thomas, the only American Indians ever so charged. While a military commission may sound like due process, the transcript shows the proceeding to have been little more than a show trial. After only four days of proceedings the Modocs were convicted and condemned to hang. The execution, a public spectacle before a crowd of some 2,000, including the imprisoned Modocs and nearly all the Indians from the Klamath Indian Reservation, was carried out on October 3. At the last moment President Grant commuted the sentences for the two youngest of the condemned to life imprisonment on Alcatraz. As for the four who died on the rope, the indignity continued beyond public hanging. Soldiers carried the bodies to a tent, where a waiting Army surgeon decapitated them. The headless corpses were then returned to their coffins and dropped into unmarked graves. The surgeon later shipped the prepared skulls to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C., in a barrel labeled Specimens of Natural History.
LEFT: ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES; RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
TOP AND BOTTOM: HUNTINGTON LIBRARY (2); CENTER: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Three riflemen appear to take cover behind a lava outcrop while scouting for a possible Modoc attack in what is actually a staged after-action photograph by Muybridge.
The surviving 153 Modocs, who had been held in dismal conditions at Fort Klamath since before the trial, were ultimately exiled to the Quapaw Indian Agency in northeastern Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Although they soon earned a reputation for making the best of their circumstances, desperate conditions there were worsened by corrupt Indian agents
Warm Springs Indian Scouts
Led by their own Donald McKay (standing at center), they tracked the fleeing Modocs and accepted Captain Jack’s surrender.
who pilfered funds meant for food and medical care. Tuberculosis, pneumonia and malnutrition took a slow, steady toll. By the end of the 1880s the Oklahoma Modocs numbered only 88. Their fate mirrored what was happening to California’s Indians as a whole. In 1846, when the United States took over from Mexico, the indigenous population numbered 150,000, the largest number of Indians in any American state or territory. By 1873 a genocidal campaign of war and attrition had whittled that number down to 30,000. Although military action concluded with the Modoc War, the demographic decline continued, the state’s Indian population dropping to little more than 15,000 by 1900. Fortunately, the moral arc of the universe is long, and it bends toward justice. Today California once again boasts the largest Indian population of any U.S. state or territory—723,225 as of the 2010 census. The Modocs, living mostly in Oregon and California, number 1,640. A people slated for destruction has made its resilient way back. Author Robert Aquinas McNally’s most recent nonfiction book is The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America’s Gilded Age (2017), which won a 2018 California Book Awards gold medal from the Commonwealth Club of California. Learn more about the author at ramcnally.com. Also suggested for further reading: Remembering the Modoc War: Redemptive Violence and the Making of American Innocence, by Boyd Cothran, and Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846–1873, by Brendan C. Lindsay. APRIL 2021
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KING OF THE TULARES James Savage, who lived among the Yokuts and Miwoks in California’s San Joaquin Valley, has been both praised and vilified By Daniel R. Seligman
Peaceful Valley
Miwoks enjoy the quiet life in Albert Bierstadt’s oil painting Mariposa Indian Encampment, Yosemite Valley, California.
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of Sutter’s Fort through Septemames Savage lived and ber, after which he drifted south worked with the tribes to the San Joaquin Valley and that occupied the San established a trading post on the Joaquin Valley and the South Fork Merced River. western foothills of the The Yokuts and Miwoks were Sierra Nevada at the traditionally hunter-gatherers time of the California Gold Rush. JAMES SAVAGE who lived in small bands of a few He was by far the most prominent hundred or so. By the time of the —and enigmatic—figure of the gold rush, however, their culture 1850–51 Mariposa War, which pitted the interests of miners against those of had been dramatically altered and their numbers the Indians. Contemporaries both praised Savage reduced by first the Spanish explorers and accomas a staunch defender of the Yokuts and Miwoks panying Franciscan missionaries and then their (collectively known as the Tulares for the preva- Mexican successors. European diseases and trade lence of tule rushes in the marshy lowlands) and goods, along with forced conversions, had all vilified him as an opportunist who used his knowl- played a role in the Tulares’ cultural demise, and edge of their languages and culture to exploit the tribes were ill prepared to resist the massive influx of miners in the wake of the discovery of them. The truth lies somewhere in between. gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848. Having lost his own family, Savage enthuJames Savage was born in 1823 (though some sources date his birth a few years earlier) siastically embraced the lifestyle of the local to Peter and Doritha (née Shaunce) Savage, tribes. Quick with languages and willing to live in Jacksonville, Ill. He was one of six children. on the edge of civilization, he in short order When James was 16 the family moved to Prince- married five Indian women—seven by some ton, Ill. Despite limited formal education he had accounts—securing his safety and becoming a a natural aptitude for languages and was quick chief of sorts. The Spanish-speaking Indians to pick up the German and Dutch commonly referred to him as El Rey Güero (“Blond King”) and, at his insistence, El Rey Tulareños (“King spoken in the region. In the early 1840s James married upstate New of the Tulares”). It is perhaps unsurprising the Yorker Eliza Hall, and the couple moved to Peru, disaffected and demoralized Indians would Ill. In May 1846 James, brother Morgan and Eliza rally to the standard of an energetic and charjoined a wagon train leaving from Independence, ismatic leader, even a white man. Shortly beMo., under the leadership of former Missouri fore the gold rush and the arrival of the FortyGovernor Lilburn Boggs. Among their travel Niners the self-anointed king put the Indians to companions was the ill-fated Donner Party, which work placer mining for gold along the Tuolumeventually split off and took the Hastings Cutoff ne River in return for trade goods. He became to their grave misfortune. Morgan later split off a wealthy man. for Oregon Territory, while James and Eliza remained with Boggs. As they crossed the Sierra Savage’s contemporaries offer varying Nevada, Eliza, pregnant and suffering from ex- perspectives on his character. Horace Bell, posure, died in childbirth, and her baby daughter a California pioneer with an eclectic résumé as died soon thereafter. Savage finally arrived at prospector, filibuster, soldier, ranger, lawyer, Sutter’s Fort with the Boggs party in late October. journalist and author, does not appear to have Savage promptly joined Lt. Col. John C. Fré- known Savage personally but certainly knew mont’s California Battalion, which that summer of him. In his Reminiscences of a Ranger (1881) had spearheaded the Bear Flag Revolt in the Bell paints a largely positive portrait of Savage early days of the Mexican War. Over the coming and his treatment of the Indians, at least by the months he learned about California’s Central standards of the day: Valley from mission Indians serving alongside him. When the battalion disbanded in April 1847, Having first installed himself as chief of a village, Savage worked at a variety of jobs in the vicinity soon he became master of a tribe. Being sober, APRIL 2021
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In May 1850 a party of Ahwahneechees (known to contemporary whites as Yosemites, for their home valley) attacked Savage’s trading post on the Merced. The proprietor and his charges pursued them as far as Yosemite Valley but thought it pruES WILLIAM JAM dent to advance no farther. Soldier, surgeon and author Lafayette Houghton Bunnell HOWARD As a further precaution Savknew Savage well, having fought under him in the Mariage moved his main operaposa War. In his Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian tion east, near Agua Fria on Mariposa War of 1851 Which Led to That Event (1880) Bunnell Creek, and established a secondary describes the actions of the Mariposa Battalion, post on the Fresno River. the first military expedition to explore the Yosemite In September 1850 Savage left for Valley. He was impressed by Savage’s business acuSan Francisco in the company of two men, referring to him as a “hardy pioneer of comof his wives and José Juarez, chief of merce” and noting approvingly, “He exchanged the Chowchilla tribe, as one of Savhis goods at enormous profits for the gold obtained age’s wives had warned him of a plan from his Indian miners.” LAYFAYETTE HOUGHTON to drive whites from the region. The William James Howard, like Savage, had lived BUNNELL purpose of the visit seems to have been with the local tribes and profited from them. A threefold: to secure safe storage for a rancher, businessman, licensed trader for the Tuollarge amount of gold Savage was carryumne Rancheria reservation, California Ranger and later member of the state Legislature, Howard was acquainted with ing, to arrange for the delivery of trade goods Savage, having also fought in the Mariposa War. However, he is mark- and, perhaps most important, to impress on José edly hostile. In The Last of the California Rangers (1928) his biographer, Juarez the vast power and resources of the white man and the futility of resistance. They indulged Jill L. Cossley-Batt, states: in more drinking than was prudent and gambled away some of the money earmarked for buying According to Captain Howard, the relations of James Savage with the red supplies for the Indians. At some point the pair men have always remained a mystery to the miners and settlers of California. quarreled, and Savage struck Juarez a blow that In his efforts to gain both notoriety and revenge he tried to play two games; knocked him to the ground. Contemporaries his scheming brain, assisted by a thorough knowledge of the language and offer differing interpretations of the incident. customs of the Indians, gave him great prestige Bunnell suggests Savage had in fact reacted and power. When the white men were trying to to Juarez’s drunken admission of his war plans: arrive at a compromise with their red brethren,
It is hardly surprising that contemporaries of a public figure might have different opinions— then or now—although Howard’s accusations of duplicity seem unduly harsh and inconsistent with Savage’s service to the government during the Mariposa War. It seems likely Savage genuinely cared about the Indians but was certainly not above making a profit from them. Was he protecting them or taking advantage of them? Probably both.
HORACE BELL
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Becoming disgusted with José’s frequent intoxication, Savage expressed in emphatic terms his disapprobation of such a course. José at once became greatly excited and, forgetting his usual reserve, retorted in abusive epithets and disclosed his secret of the intended war against the whites. Savage also lost his self-control and with a blow felled the drunken Indian to the ground. José arose apparently sober and from that time maintained a silent and dignified demeanor.
According to Cossley-Batt, Howard attributed Savage’s reaction to Juarez’s scolding for having gambled away the supply money, coupled with the humiliation of being chastised by an Indian: To think that a red man dared call him down in a public place made Savage so angry that he gave the
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he circulated untruths that made them appear hostile. On the other hand, he imparted information to the Indians that created in them a very hostile feeling against the miners and traders. His wealth and exceptional personality enabled him to deceive his associates and to influence in any desirable manner those who worked under him.
FROM TOP: FINDAGRAVE; BANCROFT LIBRARY, U.C. BERKELEY; HUNTINGTON LIBRARY
intelligent and energetic, he did a great deal to ameliorate the condition of his people and to teach them the ruder arts of civilization. He encouraged them to raise crops and garner them, and having become so popular with one tribe, others sought his protection and rule, and when the American flag was flung to the breeze in California, Jim Savage was the absolute and despotic ruler over thousands of Indians, extending all the way from the Cosumnes [River] to the Tejon Pass.
chief a blow, which caused him to fall to the ground. Juarez received the blow in silence, and even on the return journey he made no reference to it; nevertheless, deep in his heart he was determined that Major James Savage should pay.
FROM TOP: ALVIS E. HENDLEY; WAYMARKING; HISTORYNET ARCHIVE
FROM TOP: FINDAGRAVE; BANCROFT LIBRARY, U.C. BERKELEY; HUNTINGTON LIBRARY
It’s entirely plausible both versions have some truth in them. Juarez might very well have been drunk enough to lose his reserve and reveal his plans. And Savage was likely reflecting a paternalism common at the time among whites who were generally sympathetic to the Indians. Savage’s party headed home after having celebrated California’s admission to the Union on October 29. Stopping at Quartzburg, they heard the disturbing news Indians had begun to demand tribute and attack whites. Returning to his Fresno post, Savage addressed a gathering of the local tribes. Seeking to convince them it would be unwise to unite and attempt war, he turned to Juarez, expecting the chief had been sufficiently cowed by his visit to San Francisco to see the folly of armed conflict. He miscalculated badly. Juarez, still smarting from the blow struck by Savage, suggested to the receptive audience that whites were divided among themselves and would be thus unwilling or unable to provide effective resistance. Savage returned to his Mariposa post to recruit miners for the seemingly inevitable trouble to come. In the end, though, it was Juarez who made the more serious miscalculation. Used to the politics of competing tribes, Juarez had interpreted the differences he’d observed among whites in the goldfields and those in the city—lifestyle, behavior, modes of dress, etc.— in tribal terms with little understanding of the coherence or power of a state or a nation. Governor Peter H. Burnett sent Indian Agent Colonel Adam M. Johnston to investigate reports of unrest in the area. On December 17 Johnston and Savage noticed the Indians had disappeared from the Mariposa post. Fearing the worst, Savage assembled 16 men and tracked them some 30 miles to a hilltop. When the Indians fled to an adjacent height, Savage called over to them from the first rise. The formerly friendly chief admitted to having committed a massacre at Savage’s Fresno post, declared all whites were enemies and resisted any at-
Savage Country
He built this 1849 post near present-day El Portal. Right: This obelisk at the Buck Ridge Recreation Area marks his grave.
tempts at reconciliation. On Savage’s return to Mariposa, Johnston took a company of 35 men to the Fresno post and determined the Tulare chief had indeed spoken the truth. Indians had raided the post, killed three clerks, pilfered or destroyed Savage’s goods and driven off his livestock. On Jan. 7, 1851, an expedition of 74 men under Sheriff James Burney of Mariposa, chosen major, left in search of the rebellious Indians with Savage as their guide. On January 11 they located a camp of 400 or so warriors and, after a 3½-hour inconclusive fight, burned the village and retreated under enemy sniper fire. The Indians clearly understood Savage’s con-
Miwok Meeting
The tribe holds a council on the banks of the Merced River in Yosemite Valley.
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Yesteryear in Yosemite
Bierstadt depicts tribal leaders in his circa 1872 work Indians in Council, California. The artist sought to portray people whose way of life was “rapidly passing away.”
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At that point the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs sent a trio of commissioners—George W. Barbour, Redick McKee and O.M. Wozencraft— to California to meet with the governor and visit the area of the conflict under military escort. They also met with tribal representatives, convincing some to relocate to reservation sites. Others refused. To deal with the latter, Governor McDougal authorized formation of the 200-strong Mariposa Battalion, a state militia under the authority of the federal commissioners. Mustered on February 12, the men elected Savage major after the busy Sheriff Burney declined. In March the battalion moved against the recalcitrant tribes. Divided into three companies, they swept the area, skirmishing, burning villages, destroying food supplies and gathering up surrendering Indians. In the process they explored the Yosemite Valley, as described in detail by Bunnell. Most of the Indians having been rounded up, the Mariposa Battalion mustered out on July 1. Attention then shifted to working out the peace. Find Gold, Lose the Tulares Between March 19, 1851, and Jan. 7, 1852, the As placer miners moved in, Indians were commissioners met with more than 500 Indian sent to reservations. Governor McDougal leaders, signing 18 treaties that set up reservaJOHN McDOUGAL authorized formation of the Mariposa Battalion to deal with recalcitrant tribes. tions spanning 8½ million acres. While the commissioners seem to have acted in good faith, they siderable value to the expedition and targeted were shockingly naive regarding the realities of establishing such settlements—e.g., uncertainties in defining tribes and identifying individhim explicitly though unsuccessfully. On his return to Mariposa, Burney requested uals authorized to sign for them; logistical difficulties in relocating authorization from incoming Governor John Mc- Indians from their traditional haunts; the attitude of miners and setDougal for arms, provisions and financial assis- tlers, not to mention the California Legislature, toward ceding valuable tance. While that request was pending, Sav- land to the Indians; the inflated figures provided by merchants who age guided 74 men under Captain John Boling expected to supply the reservations; and, perhaps most critical, the against a village of 500 warriors under Chiefs brutality of congressional politics in Washington. Congress never ratiJuarez and José Rey of the Chowchillas. The fied the treaties. Instead, they were marked classified and not even whites were able to drive out the Indians and made public until Jan. 18, 1905, leaving the Indians idling on the reservations in legal limbo. burn the village. Among those killed was Rey.
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Savage returned to his trading activities, doing a brisk business with both miners and Indians, including those who’d taken up residence at the Kings River Agencies. In early July 1852 several of the latter objected to the operation of a river ferry by Campbell, Poole & Co. as a violation of their treaty rights and threatened the lives of the boatmen, who fled and spread the alarm. Soon a company of armed men under Major Walter Harvey, a soon-to-be-elected Tulare County judge, returned and fired on the Indians, killing several. Harvey, according to Bunnell, was among those who’d opposed ceding the reservation lands to the Indians and had been instrumental in harassing them. Placing blame on Harvey, Savage denounced the harassment and subsequent attack to any who would listen. Harvey, in turn, accused Savage of collusion with Mariposa County officials in his dealings with the Indians. The Indian Affairs commissioners authorized Savage to convene an August council at Four Creeks in Tulare County to address the problems caused by Harvey’s attack and prevent further violence. On August 16 Savage and Harvey confronted one another, by some accounts en route to the council grounds. While the details of their altercation are disputed, it appears harsh words led to fists and then to firearms, with Harvey fatally shooting Savage. Tried for murder before Tulare County Justice Joel H. Brooks, Harvey was acquitted. As he owed his appointment to Judge Harvey, Brooks may have been less than impartial. Was Savage’s fatal exchange with Harvey motivated by concern for the Indians’ welfare, a desire to safeguard his profits or simply anger and pride? Probably all three. In hindsight it is easy to dismiss Savage as just another self-interested white trader, eager to profit off Indians and quick to participate in the military and political activities that ultimately confined them to reservations. Integrated into their community through commerce and marriage,
however, Savage probably saw himself as their protector. Viewing removal as all but inevitable, he’d sought to achieve a reasonable settlement for them, however futile those efforts ultimately proved. At least some of the Indians were of a similar mind. Bell noted their sorrowful reaction to Savage’s death: Great was the wailing of grief among the Tulares at the untimely taking off of their king. For months they continued to mourn, and in all truth their loss was irreparable. Jim Savage was not only their king, he was a father ever guardful of their rights, and had he been spared, their annihilation, which was so swift that it can scarcely be realized, might have been averted. Jim Savage was a wonderful man, and his death was a loss to the country as well as to the Indians.
Even allowing for the Victorian sentimentality of Bell’s prose, it seems Savage was at least as much a benefactor to the tribes as an exploiter. Forty Indians armed with bows attended his funeral. Such loyalty would be unlikely absent genuine regard for his leadership, and it would have been equally difficult for Savage to have immersed himself in their culture minus sincere affection and sympathy for their way of life. Though his motives were clearly mixed, Savage probably saw no contradiction in them. In his treatment of the Yokuts and Miwoks, he was neither a hero nor a villain and very much a man of his time. Daniel Seligman is a retired engineer from Massachusetts with a lifelong interest in the American West. For further reading he recommends Reminiscences of a Ranger, or Early Times in Southern California, by Horace Bell; Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851 Which Led to That Event, by Dr. Lafayette Houghton Bunnell; and The Last of the California Rangers, by Jill L. Cossley-Batt. A Timeless Valley View
In 1851 the Mariposa Battalion became the first military expedition to explore Yosemite.
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A VOICE FOR THE YUKIS
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HELD-POAGE RESEARCH LIBRARY
Edward Dillon, a 6th U.S. Cavalry second lieutenant and humanist, did his best to champion these put-upon California Indians By Will Gorenfeld
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n January 24, 1848, nine days before the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo marked the end of the Mexican War, foreman James Marshall discovered gold at John Sutter’s sawmill on the South Fork of the American River in California. Over the next year, with the influx of gold seekers from around the globe, the territory Mexico had ceded to the United States underwent a sweeping transformation from relative obscurity to world prominence. The shock of change was greatest for the estimated 135,000 American Indians living in California. Almost overnight the non-native population surged to double that of the Indians. Lawlessness was pervasive.
No Reservations ...Yet
Men from various tribes pose with white officials on land that would become part of the Nome Cult Farm (aka Round Valley Indian Reservation).
Though California was admitted to the Union in 1850, it didn’t prove any more governable, as people continued to flood there to “see the elephant” and seek their fortunes in the goldfields. Disaffected local tribes pushed back, and that year U.S. troops killed upward of 135 Pomos amid a punitive expedition in Lake and Mendocino counties (see “Wherever the Sword Might Fall,” by Will Gorenfeld, in the December 2019 Wild West). Such massacres and other sporadic murders weren’t the only threats facing California Indians. Starvation, disease and overwork on the reservations claimed thousands more. By the end of the gold rush in 1855, according to demographer Sherbourne Cook, only 50,000 Indians remained. APRIL 2021
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Deserting the Army
The lure of untold riches in the goldfields proved too tempting for some of the soldiers stationed in Monterey and elsewhere in booming California.
The flood of emigration that soon set in changed the state of affairs to such an extent that every person believed his precious carcass to be in momentary danger of becoming a target for some adventurer’s firearms; self-defense being the first law of nature, we soon became an armed community.…Arming a man’s person with a Colt’s revolver and a fine finished bowie knife is now considered a part of our toilets; this part of dress has become so fashionable that a Californian gentleman is not considered properly dressed to see his friends without these ornaments.
The near destruction of the Yuki tribe stands as a metaphor for the pan-California tragedy arising from the collision of resident Indians and Anglo-American newcomers. Once statehood had been achieved, militias and settlers systematically removed or even hunted down Indians to make way for prospectors in the Sierra Nevada foothills and high country, ranchers and farmers in the Coast Range valleys, and woodcutters just beginning to tap the remarkable timber resources of the Golden State. In the centuries before the arrival of Europeans on the Pacific littoral, upward of 6,000 Yukis inhabited a small, verdant patch of what would become northwestern California. Period ethnologist Stephen Powers described the region as “one of the most beautiful and picturesque landscapes in California.” As settlers arrived in ever increasing numbers, clamoring for land, they maligned the Yukis as a warlike tribe, thus hoodwinking the Legislature into providing military protection while turning a blind eye to indiscriminate killings. To remove California Indians from the path of the newcomers, Congress in 1853 appropriated funds for five military reservations, including one for the Yukis, named Nome Cult Farm, in the secluded Round Valley of Mendocino County. Unfortunately, the valley soon drew the interest of settlers. Those presuming to invade Yuki land in the Round Valley and neighboring Eden Valley to the south repeatedly called on the Army to protect them from the “warlike” Yukis. Slaughter in the Round Valley When soldiers arrived, however, The Eel River Rangers, state-sanctioned they discovered an entirely differmilitia thugs led by Walter S. Jarboe, ent situation: The Yukis needed open fire on a Yuki village. Jarboe claimed to have killed 283 Yukis. protection from the newcomers. 66 WILD WEST
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Hoping to bring at least a semblance of law and order to California, the U.S. government dispatched additional troops from back East for the protection of both settlers and Indians. Following is the story of one Army officer sent to that untamed region who cried out against the unfolding genocide he witnessed.
TOP: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY; LEFT: FOUNDSF
Many of the gold seekers ruthlessly exploited area resources to extract wealth, and the general thinking was Indians only impeded their material and cultural aspirations. The historical record is flush with judges, politicians, miners, settlers and Indian agents who found nothing amiss in exploiting, displacing and, at times, even murdering recalcitrant Indians. Prospectors and settlers rarely distinguished one tribe from another, believing all Indians were “in the way.” In the view of many such newcomers, the forcible removal or killing of Indians was akin to the felling of trees or removal of wild animals to clear land for buildings, agriculture and farming. In a phenomenon as old as civilization, officialdom not only tolerated such attitudes but also encouraged such predation by the “victors.” James Carson, who arrived in Monterey in 1847 with the 3rd U.S. Artillery before deserting to look for gold, recalled the danger occasioned by the almost unlimited riches available to the unruly California population:
ABOVE: BANCROFT LIBRARY, U.C. BERKELEY; BELOW: NATIONAL ARCHIVES
TOP: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY; LEFT: FOUNDSF
Unfortunately, the Army often found itself powerless to protect the Indians Naively believing the Yukis would be safe and well cared for on the federal reservation, and in some cases flat refused to take action on their behalf. “The reservation…became a shooting gallery for white settlers,” histo- Dillon counseled them to move there. He had rian Benjamin Madley notes. “Without the authority to arrest white men no way of knowing that food supplied at Nome beyond the reservation, U.S. Army soldiers had little ability to pursue and Cult Farm would ultimately prove insufficient, punish whites that attacked the Yukis. Settlers would commit a crime on and that eight to 10 Yukis would starve to death each day. Nor could Dillon have imagined vengethe reservation and slip over the line of safety.” That said, a few Regular Army officers did take their responsibility ful settlers would openly defy federal authority, invade the reservation and harm its intoward the California Indians seriously and tried their best to habitants. Worse yet, Indian agents protect them despite civilian and military pressures to assume and Army headquarters would saba position of inaction. “The settlers voted; the Indians otage the lieutenant’s efforts to didn’t,” the late California historian George Stammerprotect his wards. johan explained. “Therefore, the settlers got protection, In February 1859 Dillon arand the Indians didn’t.” rested a settler who had savBy all accounts 2nd Lt. Edward Dillon of the 6th agely clubbed a defenseless U.S. Infantry was an exemplary officer. A rarity in reservation Indian. The lieuuniform in that time and place, he was also a hutenant then refused the demanist with the spine to stand up to those calling for mand of an armed mob to Indians’ extermination. He and his small detachment free the suspect. Two nights spent a year stationed at Camp Wright on the Nome later the prisoner escaped, Cult Farm (formally established as the Round Valley seemingly ending the inciIndian Reservation in 1870). Dillon’s troops were inident. No good deed goes untially tasked with protecting the reservation from tresSERRANUS CLINTON punished, however, and Thompassers and safeguarding settlers and their property. HASTINGS as J. Henley, a local rancher and As became clear, however, it was the settlers—and more California superintendent of Indian often their livestock—who trespassed on the reservation. Their Affairs, lodged a complaint with the War thriving herds of cattle and sheep soon outcompeted and displaced the deer and elk that had previously grazed the same clearings and provided Department, stating that Army officers, Dillon meat for local Indians. The result was predictable—hungry tribesmen killed in particular, lacked proper authority to arrest and ate the wayward stock, and the newcomers retaliated violently. The civilians. Agreeing with Henley, Army brass in killing of a settler’s cow was enough to earn a starving Yuki the death sen- San Francisco issued orders prohibiting offitence, though the settlers seemed intent on altogether eliminating the tribe cers from confronting or arresting citizens. Grave from the Round Valley. “The Indians and not the whites require protection,” events followed, as angry settlers continued to wrote Major Edward Johnson, Dillon’s commanding officer. Echoing his trespass on the reservation and subject its wards superior, Dillon described the conduct of the Yukis as largely inoffensive to various and sundry atrocities. Among the worst offenders were the employand confirmed they “stand infinitely more in need of protection than whites.” ees of Serranus Clinton Hastings, the first chief justice of the California Supreme Court, who had claimed valuable ranchland in the Eden Valley. Directing affairs from his Napa estate, Hastings sought to expand his holdings to the north by first ridding the territory of Yukis. Certain the Army would not assist him in this endeavor, Hastings directed H.L. Hall, his 6-foot-9, 280-pound ranch foreman, to kill any Indians he encountered. That spring Dillon met with Hall, telling him that if the settlers refrained from attacking the Indians, he’d “try to bring them in, or at least drive them off some distance, but if they intended to take the matter Sutler’s Store at Round Valley
Yukis pose on the reservation in 1876. In the late 1850s tribal members found food (let alone protection) hard to come by in the Round Valley, much to the vexation of 2nd Lt. Edward Dixon.
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to expect no sympathy should the Yukis kill every head of stock in the valley. By 1860 the demoralized lieutenant wrote to a brother officer, “I am so sick of it all that I would do anything conscientiously to get away from this place.” A few months later he got his wish, as the Army transferred him from Camp Wright to command duties at Fort Bragg on the Mendocino coast. On May 15, 1860, Dillon wrote his mother he was “not sorry to get away from Round Valley and be moved into comfortable quarters.” He then elaborated on the reasons:
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TOP: CHICO STATE UNIVERSITY; RIGHT: WAYMARKING
Though removed from the reservation, Lieutenant Dillon remained concerned about the plight of the Yukis. He laid much of the blame on Henley, claiming that as Indian Affairs superintendent he had diverted large sums intended for the Yukis and was indirectly responsible for the harm that befell them. (As accusations mounted, Henley’s superiors in Washington had finally relieved him.) Dillon’s disgust extended into the political realm. In spring 1860, with the Union facing the possibility of dissolution over the question of slavery, the VirginiaNot the Last of the Yukis born lieutenant wrote home that he was supporting the anti-slavery By 1860 the Mendocino County tribe had been almost annihilated, though they would rebound. Republicans and then candidate William Seward for president. Having This tribesman proudly poses in a headdress in witnessed so much corruption from Democratic politicians—in particular 1900. In the 2010 federal census 569 people the crooked Henley—he couldn’t bring himself to vote for them. In the claimed Yuki ancestry, 255 of them full-blooded. forthcoming election, Dillon wrote, he looked forward to “the general into their own hands, I would have nothing to dislodgment of the office-holding thriving and corrupt Democracy do with it.” [Democrats]. It may be said truly that Republicans are no better…but Forsaking any such peaceful intervention, Hall it will take them years to become as expert and audacious thieves, and solicited help from a band of state-sanctioned during the period of their apprenticeship the purse of the government militia thugs known as the Eel River may recover. Want and misery have been the consequence, and Rangers. Appointed captain was one the Indians, in some cases, have been compelled by hunger Walter S. Jarboe, who vilified the to kill stock. For this they have been slaughtered without Yukis as “without doubt the most regard to sex or age.” degraded, filthy, miserable, thiev A few months after writing home, Dillon unexpectedly ing lot of anything living that found himself back in the Round Valley. That July 1 Indian comes under the head of and Agent Henry L. Ford had managed to kill himself while rank as human beings.” fumbling with a firearm in a pommel holster. Seeking Before the shooting stopped, an immediate replacement, James Y. McDuffie, Henley’s Jarboe claimed to have slaughsuccessor as state superintendent of Indian Affairs, temJOHN ROSS tered 283 Yukis. Rounding up porarily appointed the outspoken Lieutenant Dillon to the BROWNE nearly 300 survivors, the rangers vacant post. Dillon promptly fired all but four of the resermarched them to the reservation, vation’s employees. He then took advantage of his position where they were exposed to disease and to report to the commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., starvation. That fall the San Francisco Herald and to Army headquarters the mismanagement occurring on the Yuki praised the advantages of ranching on Yuki land. reservation. His appeal prompted both an Army investigation and a “To persons seeking good stock ranches,” the sharp rebuke from Brig. Gen. Newman S. Clarke, commander of the milicorrespondent wrote, “so soon as the Indian tary Department of California and a personal friend of the disgraced difficulties are disposed of, you cannot fail to Henley, who directed the whistleblowing Dillon to keep out of state find satisfactory locations in this region.” politics—which, unfortunately, he did. When a furious Dillon learned of Jarboe’s Regardless, the seeds planted by Lieutenant Dillon briefly took root. genocidal spree, he told Hastings’ foreman Hall Writing a decade after the events in Mendocino, reformer J. Ross Browne—
TOP: PHOEBE A. HEARST MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY, U.C. BERKELEY; LEFT: CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY
The disgusting atrocities daily perpetuated by…beastly settlers have so sickened and exasperated me that I gladly turned away from the scene of horror. My controversies, too, with these people had occupied much time and annoyed me no little. In consequence of my open denunciation of them, their animosity towards me made it prudent and necessary to go constantly armed, and I have on various occasions barely avoided scenes of bloodshed.
the Irish-born Treasury Department agent, surveyor of customs houses and mints, and investigator of Indian and Land Office affairs—amplified certain of the lieutenant’s underlying concerns. “The federal government, as is usual in cases where the lives of valuable voters are at stake, was forced to interfere,” Browne wrote tongue in cheek. “Troops were sent out to aid the settlers in slaughtering the Indians.” He sarcastically added that reservation Yukis “liked that place so well that they left it very soon and went back to their old places of resort, preferring a chance of life to the certainty of starvation.” Neither did he mince words with regard to the Eel River Rangers. “They ranged the hills of [Mendocino County], killing every Indian that was too weak to escape; and, what is worse, they did it under a state commission, which in all charity I must believe was issued upon false representations.” In 1860, due in large measure to Dillon’s reports, the California Legislature held hearings concerning the violence in the Round Valley. Its report echoed the lieutenant’s take on the conflict: Mendocino Indian Reservation
Shall the Indians be exterminated, or shall they be protected? If the latter, that protection must come from the federal government, in the form of adequate appropriations of money and land; and secondly, from this state, by strictly enforcing penal statutes for any infringement upon the rights of Indians. In relation to the recent difficulty between the whites and Indians in Mendocino County, your committee desire to say that no war, or a necessity for a war, has existed or at the present time does exist. We are unwilling to attempt to dignify by the term “war” a slaughter of beings who at least possess human form and who make no resistance and make no attacks either on the person or residence of the citizen.
TOP: CHICO STATE UNIVERSITY; RIGHT: WAYMARKING
TOP: PHOEBE A. HEARST MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY, U.C. BERKELEY; LEFT: CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY
The Bureau of Indian Affairs opened this coastal reservation in 1856 for Yukis and Pomos. In 1866 the reservation was discontinued, its wards having been moved to the Round Valley.
Mendocino Indian Reservation, on the coast near Fort Bragg, and returned to live on their traditional lands. In 1864, as the Civil War wound down, the handful of Indians that remained at Mendocino were transferred to Nome Cult Farm. Eighty years later an anthropologist estimated only 10 full-blooded Yukis were still living. In 1878, with the fortune he made on land violently torn from the Yukis, Chief Justice Hastings funded creation of the namesake Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. As for Lieutenant Dillon, he seems to have had a political change of heart, as at the 1861 outset of the Civil War he dropped from the Union rolls, joined the Confederate Army and was appointed colonel of the 47th Mississippi Volunteers. By 1993 just 50 people claiming Yuki ancestry remained on the Round Valley Indian Reservation, another 30 living elsewhere. “Yukis still live in Round Valley and beyond,” historian Madley notes, “their survival a testament to their forebearers’ tenacious resistance and intelligent survival strategies against great odds. Twenty-first-century Yukis are the descendants of those who survived genocide.” California-based author Will Gorenfeld is a longtime contributor to Wild West and author of the 2016 book Kearny’s Dragoons out West: The Birth of the U.S. Cavalry. For further reading he suggests The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization, by Sherburne F. Cook; California’s Native American Tribes, No. 25: Yuki Tribe, by Mary Null Boulé; and California’s Yuki Indians: Defining Genocide in Native American History, by Benjamin Madley. Bragging Rights
A demoralized Dillon was relieved in 1860 when the Army transferred him to Fort Bragg.
The committee recommended the Legislature pass “a law for the better protection of the Indians of California.” Dillon’s objections to the abhorrent actions of the Eel River Rangers bore some fruit when aired at a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C. On learning just how abysmally state officers had behaved, lawmakers resolved to check California’s efforts to subjugate its Indians. Unfortunately, they fell short of comprehensively reforming the state’s neglectful and criminal treatment of Indians, thus resulting in further decades of outrageous abuse. From 1850 to ’60 the Indian population in Mendocino County plummeted by some 70 or 80 percent, and the Yuki tribe was virtually annihilated. Over the next several years scores of Pomos and Yukis deserted the APRIL 2021
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NO PRESCRIPTION FOR GOLD FEVER
P
were scattered across what came to be known hysicians who joined the flood of as Gold Country. Forty-Niners in the early days of Many of those initially lured by gold soon rethe California Gold Rush were alized the practice of medicine was less physino less venturesome than those cally demanding, far safer and paid better. who sought their fortunes in the Take, for example, South Carolina–born surstreams and mines. But being venturesome geon Hugh Toland (1806–80), who traveled didn’t guarantee success. Most prospectors by wagon train to the California goldfields in failed to get rich—quick or slow—and conditions DR. HUGH TOLAND 1852. When his mining claim failed to pay off, in the gold camps and the relatively primitive he established a surgical practice in San Francisco state of medicine generally foiled doctors’ efforts and also turned a tidy profit packaging up medicines to save lives. Some forsook their oaths. The only and shipping them to the mines by Wells Fargo messenthree physicians in San Francisco at the outset of the rush ultimately abandoned their patients and went off to the ger. In 1864 he founded the Toland Medical College, which goldfields. Within months, however, more than 1,500 doctors survives today as the University of California, San Francisco.
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LEFT: UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, U.C. SAN FRANCISCO; ABOVE: BANCROFT LIBRARY, U.C. BERKELEY
Doctors amid the squalor of California Gold Rush camps were busy enough battling unsanitary conditions and daunting diseases By Phil Goscienski
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Careful What You Wish For
LEFT: UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, U.C. SAN FRANCISCO; ABOVE: BANCROFT LIBRARY, U.C. BERKELEY
Prospectors like these in filthy camps along Gold Country rivers were more likely to find disease than nuggets.
Most of the doctors who ventured West were poorly trained and could provide little more in the way of treatment of diseases than medieval era predecessors. These were the days before the germ theory and antisepsis. Anesthetics had been discovered only three years earlier and had not yet crossed the Mississippi. The only vaccine in existence, against smallpox, was not universally available. Complicating matters in California’s goldfields was a milieu vastly different from the civilization they’d left behind. Gold seekers, seeking riches rather than immediate comfort, lived in primitive conditions, without even the most basic sanitation. Almost all of them were male, single, short-tempered, hormone-fueled and ignorant of food selection and preparation. Thus the greatest migration in the history of the United
States brought with it a cauldron of diseases a present-day physician would find challenging. For more than three centuries the North American territory claimed by Spain and then Mexico extended from the southern banks of the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 the Mexican War came to an end, and Americans became the new territorial administrators. The underappreciated prize of that conflict, the Mexican Cession, comprised nearly a third of what is now the continental United States. Among those already living in the territory was John Sutter. Born in Baden (present-day Germany) of Swiss ancestry, he’d left his home, his wife and five children in 1834 under a finanAPRIL 2021
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cial cloud. Sutter reasoned quite accurately that those whom he had fleeced were unlikely to track him down in the remote Mexican territory of Alta California, then populated by some 150,000 Indians and only a few hundred nonnatives. The fugitive arrived in the seaside settlement of Yerba Buena (present-day San Francisco) in 1839. In 1840 Sutter became a citizen of Mexico in order to secure a grant to establish a settlement in present-day Sacramento. Needing lumber for the project, he directed the construction of a water-powered sawmill on the South Fork American River. On Jan. 24, 1848, as work on the mill progressed, foreman James Marshall noticed in the tailrace flakes of gold that, though smaller than a thumbnail, would transform the destiny of a nation. Nine days later the war with Mexico came to an end, and Sutter soon became an American citizen. Sutter and Marshall were unable to keep the discovery a secret very long. By March the San Francisco newspapers had announced the find, and the tumult began. San Francisco soon disgorged most of its male population. Those who arrived by sea over the following months streamed toward the American River and its promise of wealth, as did the crews of the ships that brought them. The harbor soon became a forest of masts sprouting from a floor of abandoned hulls, many of which supplied the lumber for new buildings. Though the nation’s telegraph system was incomplete by the start of the gold rush, the news spread worldwide with remarkable speed. 72 WILD WEST
The Eastern presses were soon churning out heavily romanticized tales about the gold rush. The reality on the ground was far less glamorous. Cholera and typhoid fever spread quickly through contaminated water supplies and tainted food. Overcrowding and close contact gave rise to such louse-borne diseases as typhus. Many new arrivals from Panama carried malaria, and the mosquitoes that thrived in the ponds and gold camp basins of northern California did their part to spread the parasite. Overcrowding and malnutrition also facilitated the transmission of tuberculosis, the leading cause of death among 19th-century European and American adults. Among the prevalent nutritional disorders was scurvy, caused by a severe deficiency of vitamin C. Many of those who spent months at sea rounding Cape Horn arrived in the last stages of the disease. Still others developed scurvy in California. How was this possible in a region renowned for its agricultural products and whose Indians never suffered from the disease? Again, it was the ignorance of dietary requirements that struck down formerly healthy young city dwellers. One can ward off scurvy with a modest intake of various citrus fruits and vegetables, but the typical miner’s diet consisted of beans, salt pork, bread and boiled beef. They were also unaware heat destroys vitamin C. A handful of Cholera Complication
The disease was nicknamed the “Blue Death,” as victims’ skin would turn blue from extreme dehydration.
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TOP: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE; BOTTOM: TRANSCENDENTAL GRAPHICS (GETTY IMAGES)
California’s Forty-Niners risked an array of ailments, from scurvy and syphilis to cholera and tuberculosis.
TOP: L.C. McCLURE PHOTO; BOTTOM: WELLCOME COLLECTION
Have Pan, Lack Panacea
South American shipping regularly plied the California coast, and most of the early gold seekers came from that continent. Tens of thousands of Hispanics, Chinese, Britons, French, Australians, Filipinos, Basques and Turks followed. When news of the strike arrived back East, those who envisioned easy riches followed three main routes to the Far West: overland via the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, the sea passage around Cape Horn (the longest and most arduous trip) and the beckoning shortcut through the jungled Isthmus of Panama. In addition to the usual hardships of longdistance travel in the 19th century, rampant diseases cut short the ambitions of thousands of dreamers. Scurvy was common aboard ships by the end of the monthslong Cape Horn voyage. The short 40-mile trek through the Panamanian jungles came with a heavy price, as malaria and yellow fever claimed hundreds of victims. When those fortunate enough to survive their journeys reached their destination, all these diseases converged. Gold rush physicians soon had all they could handle, especially since typical 19th-century plant-based medicines, such as Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp Root (advertised as a kidney, liver and bladder cure), were rarely effective and often dangerous.
TOP: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE; BOTTOM: TRANSCENDENTAL GRAPHICS (GETTY IMAGES)
TOP: L.C. McCLURE PHOTO; BOTTOM: WELLCOME COLLECTION
berries or a piece of wild fruit only a few times a week would have spared them the serious, sometimes fatal illness. California Indians included vegetables and fruits in their daily diet. They also got vitamin C from meat, eaten raw, and from the stomach contents of the herbivorous animals they hunted. They also ate vitamin C rich animal parts city folks eschewed, such as lungs and intestines. The near absence of fruits and vegetables at the goldfields also led to severe deficiencies of B vitamins, prompting diet-related dementia. Present-day physicians sometimes encounter this type of dementia in chronic alcoholics, a disorder known as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. Due mostly to a lack of vitamin B1, or thiamine, it is severe and irreversible. To address the high incidence of mental disorders stemming from malnutrition, stress and other factors, in 1851 physicians established one of California’s first mental institutions in Stockton, not far from the goldfields. Dental problems were rampant among the gold seekers. Gum disease and tooth loss are prominent symptoms of scurvy. Simple cavities could lead to abscesses with potentially fatal complications. Dentists were scarce, and as they could offer little or no anesthesia and used slow, foot-powered drills, miners largely avoided them. Tooth loss exacerbated nutritional deficiencies, weakening immune function and making one more susceptible to infection. To satisfy their sexual appetites, many young gold seekers turned to prostitutes, aka “soiled doves,” whose presence was largely tolerated until wives and children began arriving in the camps in 1851. The consequences of prostitution before the availability of practical methods of contraception and the recognition of the germ theory made abortion and sexually transmitted diseases inevitable and rampant. Death was not uncommon after an abortion. Gonorrhea—for millennia the most common sexually transmitted disease—was seldom fatal, but it remained a leading cause of blindness in newborns. Syphilis, which may have originated in the Americas, was widespread in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and often resulted in severe disfigurement. For unknown reasons it decreased in severity by the time it returned to the Americas. Regardless, before the discovery of penicillin its late complications—including destruction of the heart, bones and brain and the devastating effects on babies whose mother had the infection during pregnancy—were common. Gunfights, of course, could also be hazardous to a man’s health. “Last Night’s Killings” was an actual recurring section in boomtown Bodie’s Daily Free Press. The classic Hollywood face-to-face gunfight was almost nonexistent. Most “fights” involved an ambush after dark. Disputed claims in the goldfields or gaming rooms occasioned such assassinations, and murder often went unpunished. Lacking the benefit of X-rays, doctors usually left bullets in place, though they might carry bits of bacteria-laden clothing. If a bullet entering the abdomen didn’t cause a fatal hemorrhage, any bowel penetration would result in a slow, agonizing death from infection. “Biting the bullet” in order to tolerate a surgeon’s probing is also Hollywood fantasy. In place of an anesthetic a patient received alcohol or morphine, or both, which provided some pain relief as well as enough muscle relaxation to allow the physician to clean and repair a wound or amputate an extremity.
Motion Sickness
Gold seekers came by land and sea, and many times these bold adventurers arrived in San Francisco already suffering some ailment.
How did a gold rush physician’s typical day begin? In a word, early. His schedule might go something like the following: The doctor’s first call comes shortly after midnight from a brothel, where a soiled dove has slashed the arm of a client who refused to pay
Not So Pure Cure
The maker of this elixir claimed it could “remedy” even problems with vital organs.
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for services rendered. The victim is fortunate; no major blood vessel has been cut, but there is still significant bleeding. The physician applies a mass of cobwebs to the wound. The sticky fibers trap clot-forming platelets and are rich in vitamin K, which also promotes clotting. Greek and Roman physicians had used this method millennia earlier. Instead of closing the wound with stitches, the physician leaves it open and covers it with a clean dressing. He knows that a wound contaminated with whatever the dove may have used the knife for previously will likely become infected, perhaps with the germ that causes spasm-inducing tetanus, commonly known as lockjaw. Before the doctor has even finished breakfast, he receives another call. An uncooperative pack mule has kicked its owner, breaking his thighbone. Fractures were common in the gold rush era, the result of drunken falls, fights and tunnel collapses, among other causes. Although bone setting traces its roots back to ancient Egypt, splinting remained the only treatment in the early 1850s. Not until the 1853–56 Crimean War would surgeons regularly apply crude plaster casts to set bones, and a century would pass before orthopedic specialists routinely used screws and other metal devices to restore bone architecture and function. Thus some miners returned home with no treasure but with a lifelong disability. After splinting his patient’s leg, the doctor heads for his tent office. In the frenzied months since the discovery of gold at Sutter’s now-abandoned sawmill, camp residents had erected few wooden structures and certainly nothing that would qualify as a doctor’s office. The first patient to enter the tent that morning had only days before disembarked from a ship from Panama. Judging from his gaunt, pale appearance and complaints of recurrent fevers that began near the end of the journey, the doctor suspects malaria. Having had formal medical training, he confirms his diagnosis by probing the patient’s upper left abdomen to discover a swollen spleen. Of the medications available in the mid–19th century, quinine was among the few that actually worked. Some 300 years earlier Jesuit missionaries in Peru had discovered its curative effects. Indians there drank a tea made from the bark of 74 WILD WEST
the cinchona tree in order to alleviate the chills brought on by cold Andean nights. Seeking to alleviate the recurring chills of malaria, the missionaries realized the tea often cured the disease. Prescribed a multiday regimen of quinine treatments, the gold camp doctor’s patient would slowly recover. His next patient would not be so fortunate. Carried to the doctor’s tent in a makeshift litter, the man had been passing watery stools for two days, a hallmark symptom of cholera. Known to Hippocrates, the 5th century bc Greek physician, cholera remained one of the most common and deadly of the gastrointestinal diseases. It was also the scourge of early American settlers and explorers. The extremely primitive living conditions of the gold camps, which lacked sewage systems and whose poorly sited latrines led to fecal contamination of water supplies, gave easy access to the agent of cholera. In the absence of antibiotics or sufficient restorative fluids, the miner would expire only hours later. Early that afternoon a young man arrives at the doctor’s tent, glancing around self-consciously and appearing somewhat embarrassed. A day earlier he’d noted a small, painless ulcer on his penis. Under the doctor’s pointed questioning, he finally admits that some two weeks before, after a few drinks, he’d lost his virginity and some gold dust to a prostitute. The physician recognizes the ulcer as an early sign of syphilis. To prevent the infection from progressing to its later, destructive stages, the doctor suggests two treatment methods—hot steam baths and mercury injections. If the young man were to take a steam bath as hot as could be tolerated, his body temperature might rise high enough to kill the heat-sensitive bacterium. Physicians had discovered that moderately effective treatment some 200 years earlier. Mercury-containing medicines were somewhat less effective and far more dangerous. One of Dr. Toland’s favorite remedies, which he kept in a barrel labeled Anti-Syph, contained mercury and lobelia, a flowering plant known as Indian tobacco. The long duration of the treatment regimen led to the popular phrase, “One night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury.” Early 19th-century medical practitioners used many potions and powders of dubious value that modern physicians would consider bizarre. One of these, scorpion oil, which contains the arachnids’ venom, was promoted for the treatment of syphilis. With roots in Spain, possibly dating from the Moorish conquest, scorpion oil remains in use in the Middle East as a treatment for a variety of ailments—including reactions to scorpion stings. No less strange is boiled toad, a folk remedy early practitioners used to treat congestive heart failure. It may have originated as a witches’ brew, but modern science has revealed why it may have worked for those whose hearts had been weakened by once-prevalent rheumatic fever. Researchers have discovered a substance in the salivary glands of toads that is chemically similar to digitalis, a drug still used in the treatment of congestive heart failure. Western physicians and other healers have tried countless
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TOP: OREGON TRAIL CENTER; RIGHT: BANCROFT LIBRARY, U.C. BERKELEY
Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp Root formula couldn’t cure much of anything and was potentially dangerous.
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
Another ‘Cure’ From the Swamp
TOP: OREGON TRAIL CENTER; RIGHT: BANCROFT LIBRARY, U.C. BERKELEY
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
nostrums over the millennia, so it stands to reason there were some successes, though doubtless many more errors. The physicians of ancient Greece somehow reasoned that an excess of blood was the cause of many diseases, thus bloodletting became standard therapy for nearly all types of illness for the next 2,000 years. Sometimes it worked. Physicians would open a vein and allow blood to flow until the patient fainted, an indication the treatment had lasted long enough. Of course, not every patient woke up. This treatment remained prevalent in the mid–19th century and would persist until the dawn of the 20th. Late that afternoon the madam of a local brothel summons the physician. He finds her short of breath with poor color and legs swollen with fluid, classic symptoms of congestive heart failure, in which a damaged heart is not able to pump effectively so that blood literally backs up within the system. He recommends bloodletting to lessen the strain on her heart and provide temporary relief. If that doesn’t work, perhaps cupping will. Also dating from ancient Greece, cupping remains in use in many parts of the world, notably in Asia. When one applies the open end of a heated cup, usually made of glass, to the skin, a partial vacuum forms as it cools. As the vacuum draws skin into the cup, the theory goes, harmful spirits are simultaneously drawn from the patient’s body. There is no physiological reason cupping should work. Patients are likely to get better in spite of, not because of, this method, which leaves swollen, bruised areas wherever the cups have been applied. As the madam oversees one of the camp’s leading economic engines, and her doves are a steady source of revenue, the physician ultimately applies both bloodletting and cupping to alleviate her symptoms. To the relief of the madam he doesn’t recommend a purge—administration of a powerful laxative that might expel whatever might be contributing to her illness. That therapy, too, has little scientific merit and can lead to severe dehydration. Limited to the available rudimentary treatments, some dating back millennia, gold camp doctors were but a generation away from a transformative era in the science of medicine. Anesthesia came of age during the Civil War; bacteria, not evil humors, were revealed to be the true causes of cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid and other scourges; the principles of antisepsis made surgery and childbirth safer; hospitals became places where lives were saved, not ended; medical training was no longer haphazard but based on principles emerging from the scientific citadels of Europe. That said, physicians who attended to the needs of the California gold seekers and the Golden State’s soiled doves are to be admired, even those whose training fell short of the academic standards of the times. As in every age many patients died from infectious diseases, especially cholera and smallpox. Historians estimate one
End of Trail
Disease took a toll on those making the long overland trek to the West Coast.
out of every five gold seekers that came to seek their fortune died within six months of their arrival. More would die later from scurvy, perhaps as many as 10,000 in those early years. Homicide, often fueled by disputes over claims, took more than 4,200 souls in the first five years of the gold rush. Still, doctors did the best they could, when not chasing after riches themselves. Such dedicated medical professionals deserve honorable mention in the colorful history of the California Gold Rush. Philip J. Goscienski, M.D., is a retired pediatric infectious diseases specialist who has written more than 700 newspaper and magazine articles, several medical journal articles, two medical textbook chapters and four books. For further reading he suggests Bleed, Blister and Purge: A History of Medicine on the American Frontier, by Volney Steele; Diary of a Physician in California, by James L. Tyson; and The Age of Gold, by H.W. Brands.
Big City Blues
As rough as conditions were in the gold camps, life in San Francisco was both unsanitary and downright dangerous.
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COLLECTIONS Carousel horses at the Hubbard are a hands-on exhibit. Also on hand at the museum are Indian pottery, jewelry and basketry (at bottom).
MORE THAN HORSEPLAY AT THE HUBBARD
T
he Hubbard Museum of the American West, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution since 2001, has received a boost from the New Mexico Legislature, which in 2020 allocated $250,000 for renovations to what has become one of the most respected museums in the Southwest. Founded in 1992 as the Museum of the Horse, the Hubbard sits just a half mile east of the Ruidoso Downs racetrack and since 2005 has been owned by the city of Ruidoso Downs, in Lincoln County. Its stated mission: “To collect, preserve and interpret the political, social, business, cultural and environmental history of the American West from the period 76 WILD WEST
of human habitation to the present day, with special emphasis on the local and regional arts, history and culture.” Though its collection centers on items related to the horse, it covers far more ground, with fine displays of firearms, artifacts and art. Permanent exhibits emphasize the respective role Indians, Hispanics and Anglos played in shaping regional culture. Rotating exhibits, some on loan from other museums and galleries, often focus on such notable local artists as father-son painters Peter and Michael Hurd. The Hubbard owes its existence to a massive 1991 donation by avid equestrian and collector Anne C. Stradling, who died
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HUBBARD MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN WEST
HORSE LOVERS ENJOY THE NEW MEXICO MUSEUM, BUT SO DO THOSE ENAMORED WITH ARTS, ARTIFACTS AND SOUTHWESTERN HISTORY BY LINDA WOMMACK
HUBBARD MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN WEST
COLLECTIONS
at age 78 on Feb. 26, 1992, three months before the museum’s opening. From her family collection came scores of saddles and spurs, buggies and wagons, Indian and Western art and artifacts— more than 10,000 items in all. “Hell, I was damned near born on a horse,” Stradling once told a reporter. “They barely got mother off the saddle in time to make it to the maternity ward.” In 1995 museum founders Randall Dee “R.D.” and Joan Dale Hubbard commissioned noted New Mexican sculptor Dave McGary to create the eight-piece, 255-foot-long equine bronze Free Spirits at Noisy Water. Representing seven breeds, the small herd of galloping horses compels visitors to visit the purpose-built sculpture garden. The museum itself has seen continual improvements to design and layout. The foyer welcomes visitors with vibrant colors and displays that relate the history of the Southwest, while a new mining exhibit showcases a range of artifacts and incorporates interactive aspects. That interactive theme is in play throughout the museum, particularly in the children’s area, with engaging dioramas and exhibits, including model horses kids can clamber atop. The staff provides tours for New Mexican students and sends out “traveling trunks” of artifacts to schools on request. Regular guest speakers, singers
and musicians regale young and old alike with tales of the Southwest. The first floor features one of the nation’s finest collections of horse-drawn vehicles, including buggies, family carriages, a chuck wagon and even a hearse. Don’t miss the collection of Hohokam pottery, distinguished by the inclusion of mica schist as a tempering agent, the flakes of which lend the pottery a unique shine in certain light. Another highlight is the array of Navajo, Zuni, Santo Domingo and Hopi jewelry. The Hubbard Museum of the American West is at 26301 Highway 70 West in Ruidoso Downs. At press time the museum was closed due to the coronavirus, pending guidance from the state. Its normal hours of operation are 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Thursday–Monday. For more information visit hubbardmuseum.org or call 575-378-4142.
Things to see at the Hubbard include (clockwise from top) the incredible equine bronze installation Free Spirits at Noisy Water; Hopi kachina dolls; and such period buggies and wagons as this Conestoga.
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GUNS OF THE WEST
1916 That was the year longtime lawman Jeff Milton received as a gift this .44-40–caliber Colt Single Action Army.
A PEACEKEEPER AND HIS PEACEMAKER PISTOL-PACKING JEFF MILTON SERVED AS A TEXAS RANGER, POLICE CHIEF, BORDER PATROLMAN AND MORE IN HIS HALF CENTURY AS A LAWMAN BY KURT HOUSE
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J
Florida who traced his lineage to the nameeff Milton may be the most unsake English poet. Toward the end of Reconderrated lawman in the Old West, struction 16-year-old Jeff moved east to Texas, despite Texas historian J. Evetts where he worked as a cowboy, overseer, saloonHaley’s 1948 homage Jeff Milton: keeper, rancher, railroad employee, prospector, A Good Man With a Gun. “He was in more gunexpress agent and roughneck before finding fights than Wyatt Earp and most of the other his calling as a lawman. Wild West gunfighters and lawmen,” firearms In July 1880 he joined the Texas Rangers, expert R.L Wilson said of the distinguished where his weapons of choice were a Colt Single shootist. “His name is regarded with reverAction Army revolver and a Winchester Model ence by the cognoscenti, and his legendary JEFF MILTON 1873 rifle. He served three years before resignfeats are the material of which great Western ing as a corporal and becoming a saloonkeeper films are made.” During a law enforcement career that spanned more than and deputy sheriff in Murphyville (present-day Alpine). In 1884 five decades Milton served as a chief of police, Texas Ranger, he drifted into New Mexico Territory, where he homesteaded deputy sheriff, customs inspector, border patrolman, immigra- in the San Mateo Mountains of Socorro County. While serving tion officer and range detective and survived a host of hair- there as a deputy sheriff, he was wounded in the leg amid a raising exploits that included facing down noted killer John shootout with Mexican bandits. In 1887 he became a customs Wesley Hardin. I am the proud owner of a Colt Peacemaker inspector, tasked with riding the line from Nogales to the Colorado River in search of smugglers. By 1890 he was working as and other items once owned by Milton. Perhaps one reason Milton received relatively little fanfare a fireman on the Southern Pacific Railroad, and four years later is that, unlike many other Old West lawmen, he never let the he was appointed chief of police of El Paso, Texas. During his stint as police chief Milton tangled with the notoridust settle long and thus was not inextricably linked to any one locale. Born in the Florida Panhandle, near Marianna, ous gunfighter John Wesley Hardin and had one of his most on Nov. 7, 1861, Jefferson Davis Milton was the youngest of harrowing experiences. Jeff had agreed to help his brother-in10 children born to John Milton, a Confederate governor of law, Texas Ranger Frank McMahon, and Deputy U.S. Marshal APRIL 2021
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George Scarborough track down fugitive Martin Mrose (aka M’Rose, McRose and Morose), the husband of Hardin paramour and reputed prostitute Helen Beulah Mrose. On the night of June 29, 1895, Milton and McMahon hid in the underbrush on the U.S. side of the Mexican Central Railway bridge in El Paso. When Scarborough emerged from the darkness with Martin Mrose in tow, Milton hollered for the desperado to surrender. Mrose instead pulled his pistol and fired at Scarborough. Milton then fatally wounded Mrose in the chest with his Colt .45. Soon after, according to El Paso County Sheriff Frank Simmons, lawmen met in his office to discuss who would serve Hardin with an outstanding warrant. Understandably, no one raised a hand. Finally, Milton volunteered for the dangerous assignment. Somehow, he was able to arrest Hardin and deliver him to jail without incident, though the pair developed a mutual dislike. Hardin went as far as to publish a notice in the local paper that he’d paid Milton and Scarborough to kill Mrose. An offended Milton confronted Hardin, forcing him to recant the newspaper allegation, thus becoming the only man known to have backed down the gunfighter and survived. Hardin, though, didn’t survive much longer. That August 19 El Paso Constable John Selman gunned him down in the Acme Saloon. A year later the gunman’s autobiography, The Life of John Wesley Hardin…As Written by Himself, financed by widow Mrose, was published to morbid public curiosity. In July 1898 Milton and Scarborough again teamed up, in a successful search for outlaw Bronco Bill Walters near Solomonville, Arizona Territory. Milton soon hired on as an express agent for Wells, Fargo and Co., and on Feb. 15, 1900, he was permanently crippled during an attempted train robbery. That evening Jeff had been guarding the express car of a train pulling into Fairbank, Arizona Territory, when five members of Burt Alvord’s gang attacked. In the first volley Milton dropped to the floor of his car with a shattered arm, yet he managed to retrieve a shotgun and blast two of his attackers, mortally wounding “ThreeFingered Jack” Dunlap. Following that incident Milton tried his hand at mining, then turned to speculation in oil leases in Texas and California. By 1916 he’d met and befriended pioneer John Campbell Greenway, whom Milton later described as “the greatest man Arizona has produced, bar none.” A copper magnate,
Greenway had founded five towns in the territory and was associated with the Phelps-Dodge Co., owner of the Copper Queen Mine in Bisbee. That same year Greenway presented Milton with a handsome Colt Single Action Army, the backstrap inscribed To JEFF MILTON, From Your Friend John C. Greenway, 1916—N.M. In 1997 I obtained Greenway’s personal horsehair bridle, reins and quirt from an Ash Fork, Ariz., resident who was born in 1910 and subsequently learned of the copper magnate’s friendship with Milton. Having seen and admired Milton’s Colt in several firearms books, I finally acquired it in 2019, along with his El Paso police chief badge. The six-shooter is in the desirable .44-40 caliber (like the Winchester rifle), with the short 4¾-inch gunfighter-length barrel, and according to a Colt Archives letter it was shipped to the Phelps Dodge Mercantile Co., in Douglas. On Nov. 3, 1917, near Tombstone, Jeff logged one of his last gunfights after he and friend Guy Welch chased down an escaping bank robber in Milton’s stripped-down Ford touring car with gun scabbards mounted on the sides. In 1919 Jeff married schoolteacher Mildred Taitt, and the couple moved to Fairbank. In 1924, 62-year-old Milton became the first officer appointed to the U.S. Immigration Service Border Patrol. The Economy Act of 1932 finally forced him to retire at age 70. Unlike many of the Old West lawmen, Milton died of natural causes on May 7, 1947, at the venerable age of 85. Wife Mildred scattered his ashes over the desert he had roamed for decades.
The author acquired Milton’s El Paso police chief badge along with the prized Colt in 2019.
Milton then fatally wounded Mrose in the chest with his Colt .45
Arizona Copper magnate John Campbell Greenway presented the handsome Colt to his friend Milton.
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The walls of the mill are about all that’s left of Total Wreck, which at its 1883 peak was home to some 300 people.
TOTAL WRECK, ARIZONA n January 1879 Arizona Territory cowboy John T. “Jerry” Dillon discovered a silver-lead deposit in the rugged Empire Mountains about 30 miles southeast of Tucson. Dillon worked on the adjacent Empire Ranch, owned by brothers Walter and Ned Vail and their English partners Herbert Hislop and John Harvey, which grew to become one of the territory’s largest spreads at around 100,000 acres. As the ranch partners and Dillon prepared to file a joint claim, Harvey asked Dillon what they should name the strike. “The whole damned hill is a total wreck,” came the answer, “with big quartz boulders of ore scattered all over the hillside.” “The Total Wreck,” Harvey blurted. “That’s a good name.” In April 1880 the Southern Pacific Railroad laid tracks to nearby Pantano, solving any transportation worries, and within a year the partners had formed the Total Wreck Mining & Milling Co., with the brothers’ Uncle Nathan Vail as a primary investor. The Empire Mining District soon sprang up around the Total Wreck and such lesser mines as the Montana/Black Diamond, Gopher/Go Pher, Copper Chief and Prince. In 1881 Nathan financed construction of a good wagon road between the mine and Pantano, 7 miles to the north, and development began in earnest. For extra income the Vails operated the route as a toll road. At first the ore was none too promising, 80 WILD WEST
the first 30 feet of development rich in red iron oxide and described as “a good paint mine.” But the claim soon proved rich in horn silver and lead, with associated molybdenum and zinc. The Vails’ Empire Mining & Development Co. built a 70-ton mill, connected to the mine by a 600-foot aerial tram. The workings eventually comprised some 5,000 feet of shafts and tunnels extending 500 feet underground. Nathan and William Vail eventually bought out the other partners. To develop the mine while keeping it in the family, Nathan referred nephew Ned to the superintendent of the Contention mine in Tombstone to learn assaying. Water, critical to the success of the mill, was in short supply. A mile away lay a spring, but it was controlled by a Pennsylvania mining company. Nathan sent Ned east to negotiate a lease but in the interim found an alternate solution. After buying a tract of land bordering Cienega Creek, just 2 miles from the mine, the Vails installed a 6-inch pipeline and had creek water pumped to two 50,000-gallon redwood storage tanks on a hill above the diggings. The town of Total Wreck grew up around the mine, a post office opening its doors on Aug. 12, 1881. Unlike many mining camps, Total Wreck was generally an orderly town. “The town of Total Wreck has no appearance of a wreck,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 1882. “It is a thrifty, neat-looking village, the streets
TOP: JIM PETTENGILL (3); OPPOSITE RIGHT: ARIZONA PIONEERS’ HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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NEITHER THE ORIGINAL CLAIM NOR THE TOWN LIVED DOWN TO ITS NAME, BUT THE ORE RAN OUT JUST THE SAME BY JIM PETTENGILL
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laid out at right angles. The main street is named Dillon Street in honor of the discoverer of the mine and the first to discover minerals in this district.…It has a resident magistrate and a deputy sheriff…[and] in the event of trouble with Indians or roughs, 90 well-armed men could be mustered within 60 minutes.” Boosterism aside, Total Wreck did record at least one shooting, on Nov. 24, 1882. Merchant Edgar B. Salsig had just sold his share in the Salsig & Ballou store and was preparing to leave town for keeps when a man accosted him over a mining claim, drew a gun and shot Selig in the chest. Fortunately, wedged in the left breast pocket of the merchant’s coat was a packet of letters—love letters, some claimed—in which the bullet lodged. Selig later married sweetheart Frances Winter and became manager of the White Lumber Co. in San Francisco. To fuel the mill Nathan Vail hired woodcutters to cull thousands of cords of wood from the west side of the Whetstone Mountains, 10 miles southeast of the mine. In June 1883 Apaches attacked the woodcutters’ camp, stole their mules and killed six hired Mexicans, among the first internees in the Total Wreck Cemetery. By 1883 the town had grown to about 300 people, with 50 houses, three hotels, three stores, four saloons, a lumberyard, butcher shop, assay office, bank, brewery, blacksmith, carpenter, school, shoemaker, dressmaker’s shop and upward of eight Chinese laundries. Miners from surrounding towns came to try their luck in the new camp. Tombstone entrepreneur Nellie Cashman operated a restaurant in Total Wreck for a time. In its peak years the mine recorded spectacular specimens of ore. The Nov. 27, 1884, Arizona Weekly
Star reported on one such find: The Total Wreck Mine has contributed the largest and most valuable specimen of horn silver ore for the New Orleans Exposition yet received here [in Tucson]. It will be shipped with [ore buyer] Mr. [Charles] Wores’ cabinet, who thinks it is the best specimen in size and quality in the territory. It weighs 30 pounds and is about 75 percent silver, or about $3,000 to the ton.
Unfortunately, by then the rich ore had run out. In 1887 the Vails shut down the mine, and most people moved on. A few years later Pima County sold the mine for delinquent taxes, but Walter Vail was able to buy it back. Lessees sporadically worked the Total Wreck and other district mines, but the exodus continued, and the post office closed on Nov. 1, 1890. In 1907 C.T. Roberts leased the mine from the Vails and found new ore bodies, and the mine produced intermittently under several other lessees until around 1920. Between 1917 and ’19 Ned Vail returned to mine heat-resistant molybdenum—useful for making military armor—and the district was worked for zinc in the 1940s to make batteries for the war effort. By 1950 the mine and town were deserted. Estimates of life-of-mine production vary but range as high $1,178,000 (roughly $34 million in present-day dollars). Today Total Wreck is virtually unknown, except to mineral collectors, who prize its fine yelloworange crystals of wulfenite (a lead-molybdate mineral), black mottramite (a copper-zinc-lead vanadate) and bright blue chrysocolla (a coppersilica hydroxide). But for the walls of the mill, little evidence of the mine or town remain. Access is by a rough, high-clearance 4WD track.
Clockwise from top left: Timber and mine tailings stand out amid the scrub; gravel and stone also litter the site; In 1885, about the time this photo was taken, Total Wreck appeared anything but.
in 1887 the vails shut down the mine, and most people moved on
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REVIEWS
MUST SEE, MUST READ WILL GORENFELD REVIEWS BOOKS THAT FEATURE DRAGOONS AND FILMS THAT MIGHT HAVE BUT DIDN’T
Five Years a Dragoon (’49 to ’54) and Other Adventures on the Great Plains (1906, by Percival Green Lowe): A firsthand account by recruit (later Sergeant) Percival Lowe, who enlisted in the 1st Dragoons in 1849 and served with the regiment on the Plains through 1854. He recounts his many adventures out West, though he omits his 1851 court-martial at Fort Kearny. On leaving the Army in 1859, Lowe joined the Pikes Peak Gold Rush. Suffice to say, he witnessed and recorded an impressive array of diverse adventures.
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Founded in 1833, the U.S. (later 1st) Regiment of Dragoons maintained peace, explored the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains and escorted traders on the Santa Fe Trail. The 2nd Regiment of Dragoons was founded in 1836 to fight the Seminoles in Florida. Dragoons fought during the 1846– 48 Mexican War and served across the frontier West until the Civil War.
Regiment. Serving first as a Regular and then as a Volunteer, he was wounded in action and was awarded the Medal of Honor. Based on the recollections of men with whom he served, Rodenbough relates the regiment’s operations from the Everglades to the Great Plains, back East during the Civil War and in the postwar West.
Army Regulars on the Western Frontier, 1848–1861 (2001, by Durwood Ball): Ball covers the complex role Regular soldiers faced on the frontier between the end of the Mexican War and outset of the Civil War. In that intense period the understrength Army was charged with keeping the peace as countless pioneers and gold seekers crossed, disturbed and settled on lands inhabited for centuries by Indians.
Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848–1865 (1967, by Robert M. Utley): This deftly written book relates the Army’s clashes with Indians on the Plains and in Oregon Territory between the Mexican War and the end of the Civil War. The soldiers, writes Utley, had the burdensome task of trying “to perfect a scheme for managing the Indians that balanced the requirements of national expansion against those of humanity to an alien minority destined for subjugation.”
An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe (2016, by Benjamin Madley): When Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue,” the future state of California had a thriving and robust Indian population. At the time of the 1848 gold strike at Sutter’s Mill some 135,000 Indians called the region home. By the end of the California Gold Rush in 1855 the resident population of Indians had declined to 50,000. Roving bands of Indian killers played a role in ultimately reducing Indian numbers by more than 80 percent. From Everglade to Cañon with the Second Dragoons: An Authentic Account of Service in Florida, Mexico, Virginia and the Indian Country, 1836–1875 (1875, by Theophilus F. Rodenbough, reprinted in 2000 with a forward by Edward G. Longacre): On the eve of the Civil War Rodenbough secured appointment as a second lieutenant in the 2nd Dragoons/2nd U.S. Cavalry
MOVIES Santa Fe Trail (1940, on DVD and Blu-ray, Warner Bros.): Michael Curtiz directed this classic Western starring Errol Flynn (as Jeb Stuart), Olivia de Havilland (as Kit Carson Holliday), Raymond Massey (as John Brown) and Ronald Reagan (as George Armstrong Custer). No, it isn’t about the celebrated trail the dragoons once patrolled. Instead, it deals with Kansas Territory abolitionist John Brown and his fight against slavery prior to the Civil War. The film plays mighty loose with the facts. Although the dragoons had little to do with capturing John Brown, Aaron Dwight Stevens, a former 1st Dragoons bugler, became Brown’s trusted lieutenant.
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Kit Carson (1940, on DVD, United Artists): Kit Carson (played by Jon Hall) and saddle pals Ape (Ward Bond) and Lopez (Harold Huber) make their way to Fort Bridger, where Captain John Frémont (Dana Andrews) hires Carson to guide pretty Dolores Murphy (Lynn Bari) to her father’s hacienda in California. Hollywood’s Carson rescues Brig. Gen. Stephen Kearny’s trapped force in California, whereas the real Carson guided Kearney’s expeditionary force of 1st Dragoons from New Mexico to California in 1846 and fought alongside them against Californios at San Pasqual. Southwest Passage (1954, on DVD, United Artists): With $20,000 in stolen gold, fugitive Clint McDonald ( John Ireland) joins the camel-led surveying party of Lieutenant Edward “Ned” Beale (Rod Cameron), finding redemption after leading the caravan to water and helping fend off attacking Apache braves. In real life, dragoons participated in many of Beale’s camel expeditions, though the dragoons are nowhere in sight in this Hollywood film. Hawmps! (1976, on DVD, Mulberry Square Releasing):
There’s nary a mention of dragoons in this slapstick Western about the Army’s mid-19th-century attempts to introduce camels into service out West. Howard Clemmons ( James Hampton) tells his grandchildren how, as a cavalry lieutenant in 1854, he led the camel project in the Southwest. (The Army had ordered “Arabians,” expecting horses, but instead got camels.) Clemmons teaches his men how to ride the ungainly beasts and then arranges a 300-mile race between his camels and horses. Known for their stamina, the camels prevail. But amid the victory celebration word comes from Washington that Congress has approved construction of the transcontinental railroad, thus rendering the camel project unnecessary. Distant Drums (1951, on DVD and Blu-ray, Warner Bros.) and Seminole (1953, Universal Pictures) are both set during the 1835–42 Second Seminole War, considered by some the longest and costliest of the American Indian wars. In Distant Drums, directed by Raoul Walsh, Gary Cooper plays a 2nd Dragoons captain who destroys a fort held by Spanish
gunrunners before retreating into the Everglades. Seminole, directed by Budd Boetticher, stars Rock Hudson, Barbara Hale, Anthony Quinn and Richard Calrson. Much of the film was shot in Florida’s Everglades National Park, while the weapons and equipage depicted date largely from the SpanishAmerican War.
BOOK REVIEWS The Second Battle of the Alamo: How Two Women Saved Texas’ Most Famous Landmark, by Judy Alter, TwoDot, Helena, Mont., and Guilford, Conn., 2020, $22.95 Adina Emilia De Zavala and Clara Driscoll, two strongwilled Texans, are credited with having saved the San Antonio site of the 1836 Battle of the Alamo. A pioneering preservationist, De Zavala (1861–1955) was determined that Texans and other Americans not only remember the Alamo but also see it in good standing. Ranch heiress and philanthropist Driscoll (1881–1945) was equally committed to its preservation. The two saw eye to eye at first ( Judy Alter’s first chapter is called “An Unlikely Alliance”), but then had a personal fight— the second Battle of
the Alamo. “A different outcome to the second battle might not have changed the history of Texas much,” the author writes, “but it would have robbed Texas and the United States of an icon, a symbol of the rich history of Texas.” De Zavala—the granddaughter of Lorenzo De Zavala, who had signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and been elected first vice president of the Republic of Texas— organized a group of history-minded Texas women dubbed the De Zavala Daughters. In 1893 they became a chapter of the larger Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT). Her immediate goal was to save the Alamo’s long barrack, a central site of the fighting, from development. In the early 20th century she sought out Driscoll to help raise funding —private at first and then from the state Legislature. Unlike De Zavala, however, Driscoll wanted to tear down the barrack
to make room for a remembrance garden centered on the chapel. Who had custody of the Alamo site became the principal bone of contention, and it pitted the De Zavala contingent against Driscoll’s supporters in the DRT. The DRT ultimately won custody, and Driscoll offered to pay for the demolition of the long barrack. In desperate defiance De Zavala “stormed the gates” to barricade herself in the old building. “Reporters,” writes Alter, “played up her belief that the actual battle took place in the long barrack, not the chapel, and she won the nation’s sympathy for her determination to preserve the truth.” Thanks to De Zavala’s dogged efforts, the restored long barrack today houses a museum. Yet to much of the public Driscoll remains the “Savior of the Alamo.” She did use some of her own money, but the state reimbursed her, and while she was mainly interested in the chapel itself, it was her down payment that saved the long barrack. It is ironic, the author notes, that the stateowned chapel—the building that remains the public symbol of the 1836 battle—was not what Clara saved; rather it was the long
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War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880, by Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2020, $50 In this regional history, Vol. 1 the University of Oklahoma Press’ New Directions in Tejano History series, Miguel GonzálezQuiroga, a history professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Mexico, describes the interconnections that developed between southern Texas and northeastern Mexico 84 WILD WEST
between the 1830s and ’80s. He examines not only the military history of the intermittent border conflicts that bloodied the Rio Grande, but also the trade and financial connections that drew the territories and their inhabitants into a mutual collaboration. How many people outside of Texas know, for example, that the Mexican commander of the 33rd Texas Cavalry Regiment, Santos Benavides, was later elected a mayor of Laredo and a member of the Texas Legislature? How many know of José Evaristo Madero Elizondo’s activities during the American Civil War, before grandson Francisco I. Madero became a prominent figure of the Mexican Revolution? Balancing the intercourse against the hostilities, the author concludes Tex-Mex relations over that half century were more often friendly than not, a reality further consummated by the marriage in San Antonio of Roberta Ord, daughter of Maj. Gen. Edward Ord, with General Jerónimo Treviño, her father’s Mexican cobelligerent against the Lipan Apache. The ancient Romans called their borders limes, which means “roads.” That is exactly what Quiroga sets out
to prove in his book— that even during the American West’s most violent half century the Rio Grande was as much a pathway to peace and cooperation as a silent witness to war, as much a crossroads to unite as a divider of adjoining people and nations. Readers should find his arguments compelling. —Thomas Zacharis
The Stolen Pinkerton Reports of the Colonel Albert J. Fountain Murder Investigation, edited by David G. Thomas, Doc45 Publishing, Las Cruces, N.M., 2020, $19.95 This is Vol. 6 in the Mesilla Valley History Series, editor David Thomas having written the first five volumes. The murder of Albert Jennings Fountain on Feb. 1, 1896, caused even more shock and outrage than might be expected in New Mexico Territory, as killed alongside the prominent attorney was his 8-year-old son, Henry. The double murder was never solved, despite an
investigation by Doña Ana County Sheriff Pat Garrett, the man who’d killed Billy the Kid, and Pinkerton National Detective Agency operatives John Conklin Fraser and William C. Sayers. Garrett believed the men responsible were Oliver Lee, Jim Gililland and Bill McNew; the first two stood trial for murdering Henry in spring 1899 but were found not guilty, and no one was ever tried for the murder of the elder Fountain. A day-to-day description of the trial appears in Vol. 5 of the series, Killing Pat Garrett: The Wild West’s Most Famous Lawman— Murder or Self Defense? In Vol. 6 Thomas surmises the taciturn Garrett was not fully cooperative with the Pinkerton operators because he had no interest in helping Fraser solve the crime. “Garrett wanted and intended to do it himself,” the author writes. Because there are no surviving trial transcripts or witness testimonies, the Pinkerton reports commissioned by New Mexico Territory Governor William T. Thornton and published here are the only extant reports of the murder investigation. Thornton stopped the Pinkerton investigation when he discovered their reports had been stolen from his desk.
“The person who took them had a personal interest in the case,” Thomas writes, “and a personal interest in seeing that the reports were unavailable for use in any trial.” The fascinating reports in this book are based on copies of the originals housed at the archives and special collections of New Mexico State University. Fraser and Sayers were two competent Pinkerton men who took statements from witnesses and suspects and then tried to verify the information they got—”a process,” writes Thomas, “that remains at the heart of criminal investigation today.” In an April 14, 1896, letter to Governor Thornton, Fraser wrote, “All previous investigations so far have amounted to nothing,” but he expressed optimism other operatives should continue the investigation, adding he would do so himself if he wasn’t leaving for England on an important matter. He certainly had his suspects, writing, “I feel satisfied that this entire matter will come home to Oliver Lee, and that Bill McNew, Jack Tucker, Bill Carr and others are implicated in this matter.” In the end, though, all of them escaped punishment. The Pinkerton men went on to other
JACKET DESIGN BY KATHY HEMING
barrack, the building she wanted to destroy. Still, in no small part to urban sprawl, De Zavala would not recognize the Alamo site in 2020. “Today,” writes Alter, “the plaza stands almost as the compromise the two women never reached in life, fulfilling parts of each of their visions.” Alter’s last chapter is called “The TwentyFirst Century and a Third Battle of the Alamo.” It might take another book to cover that “battle.” —Editor
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LALIRE_M
Coming in April from Gregory Lalire, the editor of
MAGAZINE
MAN FROM MONTANA by Gregory J. Lalire
JACKET DESIGN BY KATHY HEMING
This historical novel follows adventurer Woodie Hart to the violent goldfields of what would become Montana Territory. Woodie discovers the boomtowns of Virginia City, Bannack and Hell Gate and faces the twin terrors of road agents looking to get rich quick and vigilantes intent on dishing out cruel justice.
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PRICE: $25.95 / 370 PAGES HARDCOVER (5.5 X 8.5) / ISBN13: 9781432871178 TIFFANY.SCHOFIELD@CENGAGE.COM FACEBOOK & TWITTER: @FIVESTARCENGAGE
1/28/21 11:48 AM
REVIEWS things, while Garrett was shot and killed from ambush, in the same general area as the Fountain murders, on Feb. 29, 1908. No one was convicted of his murder, either. —Editor
America’s National Historic Trails: Walking the Trails of History, by Karen Berger, photography by Bart Smith, Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2020, $55 Western history fans, armchair travelers, hikers, bicyclists, paddlers and, especially, landscape photography aficionados have a treat in store with this attractive 318-page offering. Of the 19 national historic trails that cover more than 33,000 miles through 42 states, 14 of them are in the Western United States or extend westward across the Mississippi River. The book is divided into five parts—Spanish Southwest (four trails), East Coast (four trails), Westward Expansion (seven trails), American Diversity (four trails) 86 WILD WEST
and “Other Voices” (a dozen other trails that “fill in the gaps in our history”). The photos will first catch the eye and are worth more than one look. Photographer Bart Smith (whose work is featured in this issue, starting on P. 34) has walked on all these national historic trails, the 11 national scenic trails and many of the other 1,300 or so designated recreational trails that together make up the National Trails System). Author Karen Berger is a fellow relentless hiker and also wrote the awardwinning America’s Hiking Trails. She notes that the national historic trails “connect people and cultures by recognizing some of the individuals, groups and cultures that changed the course of our history. And they connect us across time.” The Westward Expansion section opens with the granddaddy of American pathways, the Lewis and Clark Trail, and includes those most familiar to Wild West readers and associated with Manifest Destiny—namely the Santa Fe Trail (which marks its 200th anniversary in 2021), Oregon Trail, Mormon Pioneer Trail, California Trail and Pony Express Trail. Rounding out the section is the Iditarod
Trail, way up north in Alaskan gold rush country. Three of the four trails in the Spanish Southwest section predate Lewis and Clark. The American Diversity section includes the Trail of Tears, along which marched Cherokees on their forced exodus to the West, and the Nez Perce (Nee-Me-Poo) Trail, tracing the tribe’s 1,170-mile flight for freedom. The picturesque book not only provides good information about each historic trail’s route and significance but also various sites to visit for those who enjoy “living the history.” —Editor
Jim Bridger: Trailblazer of the American West, by Jerry Enzler, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2021, $29.95 Jim Bridger ranks among the most recognized individuals in the annals of frontier history. As one of the 100 young men recruited in 1822 by General William H. Ashley and Major Andrew Henry to
travel into the West and establish the American fur trade, Bridger found himself working with such daring and ambitious men as William Sublette, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Louis Vasquez and Jedediah Smith. As iconic a frontiersman as any of the above, Bridger had more than his share of adventures and close calls. For instance, he was the victim of a Blackfeet Indian attack that left him with an arrowhead in his back for two years before pioneer doctor Marcus Whitman operated and removed it during a fur trade rendezvous. Bridger forged alliances with the Shoshones through his marriages and with other tribes through smart trading. Jerry Enzler, who served as director of the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium for 37 years (see the interview with Enzler on P. 16), mined the archives to uncover Bridger’s story. Enzler relates this tale of adventure and westward expansion with clarity. Bridger’s multifaceted life was not easy to unravel, as the larger-than-life mountain man left no firsthand accounts for a biographer to draw upon. Historians had deemed him an imbecile, but that’s clearly not so. Though he could not read or
write, he was frontier smart. With Sublette and Smith he partnered in the Rocky Mountain Fur Co., one of the power companies of the rendezvous era. With Vasquez he built and operated two trading posts—both known as Fort Bridger. Enzler’s research provides details of Bridger’s business dealings, his family life, and his importance to the fur trade and the development of the American West. The often-told story about the mauling of Hugh Glass by a grizzly bear, and how he was cared for by fellow trappers before being abandoned to die, usually identifies a young Bridger as one who was involved. A man identified as Bridges was there, and that led many writers and filmmakers to assume it was Bridger. But Enzler’s research turned up evidence that throws doubt on whether Bridger was with Glass at the time, without questioning that a man named Bridges was. Enzler lays out Bridger’s life chronologically and with the right amount of detail to take full measure of the legendary figure. This biography should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the fur trade and early era of overland travel. —Candy Moulton
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ON-SCREEN REVIEW News of the World, 118 minutes, Universal Pictures, PG-13, 2020 Director Paul Greengrass downshifts from his frenzied action film trademark (e.g., the Bourne series, among others) into News of the World, a more deliberate but nonetheless absorbing road trip across Reconstruction-era Texas based on Paulette Jiles’ 2016 novel of the same name. The driver in this predictable but well-made tale is Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), a well-read Confederate Civil War veteran who rides from town to town to orate the news from far and wide. On the trail he happens across Johanna Leonberger (Helena Zengel), a lost white girl who’s been raised by the Kiowas as Cicada. She is carrying Indian agent papers that indicate she has an aunt and uncle living on the other side of the state. Unable to get help from either the Army or a friend, Kidd decides to restore her to her family himself. Ignorant of the English language or where she’s being taken, Johanna is at first volatile and suspicious, but the traveling companions slowly find ways to communicate with each other and form a trust. And who wouldn’t trust Hanks? He’s in his comfort zone here: Captain Kidd is fatherly, calm and still imbued with idealism and purpose even after the war years stole so much from him. Of course, he and Johanna will need to trust one another in order to navigate a road lined with bandits and cutthroats, many of whom returned from war penniless and embittered by the Army occupation. And where the outlaw country ends, the hazardous Texas wilderness begins, bringing both flash floods and blinding dust storms. Out here news travels hard. WW-210400-001 Mystic Stamps.indd —Louis Lalire
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Send just $2.95 for shipping and guaranteed delivery.
FREE Geronimo
N
Half Dollar History Coin
ow own an exclusive US half dollar enhanced by Mystic to commemorate legendary Indian warrior Geronimo. Worth $9.99 – it’s yours FREE – send just $2.95 for shipping and guaranteed delivery. A historic image of Geronimo has been bonded to a US half dollar. Taken in 1887, the portrait pictures the Apache leader during what was known as “Geronimo’s War.” This coin is available only from Mystic. Send for your FREE Geronimo history coin today. You’ll also receive special collector’s information and other interesting coins on approval. Limit of one coin. Your satisfaction is guaranteed.
FREE Geronimo Coin
✔Yes! Send me the free Geronimo ❏ coin. Enclosed is $2.95 for shipping and guaranteed delivery. My satisfaction is guaranteed. Limit of one coin. Quick order at MysticAd.com/IU149 Name __________________________________
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2/5/21 12:01 PM
GO WEST
FORT UNION, N.M., SANTA FE TRAIL
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GEORGE H.H. HUEY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; INSET: HERITAGE AUCTIONS
he iconic Santa Fe Trail of story, song and Hollywood lore marks its American bicentennial in 2021. Debt-ridden Missouri Territory homesteader William Becknell was facing jail time in September 1821 when he set out westbound on the trail with a string of packhorses loaded down with trade goods. The profits he reaped on reaching Mexicanheld Santa Fe prompted him to return the next spring with wagonloads of commodities. He made a profitable third trip and in 1825 helped surveyors map the route, earning him the moniker “Father of the Santa Fe Trail.” At the 1846 outset of the Mexican War, the Army used the trail to invade New Mexico and ultimately claim the territory as its own. A flood of settlers followed. To protect them Congress authorized construction of garrisons along the trail, including Fort Union (1851–91), the ruins of which include these chimneys from the officers’ quarters. It is certain their parties looked nothing like the shenanigans depicted on the 1947 film poster below.
88 WILD WEST
APRIL 2021
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2/5/21 12:04 PM
Jackpot! Hoard of 1883-O Morgan Silver Dollars Found & Secured Mintage accounts for only 1.33% of all Morgan Silver Dollars Struck!
In 1859, Nevada’s Comstock Lode was discovered, and soon its rich silver ore made its way across the nation, including to the fabled New Orleans Mint, the only U.S. Mint branch to have served under the U.S. government, the State of Louisiana and the Confederacy. In 1883, some of that silver was struck into Morgan Silver Dollars, each featuring the mint’s iconic “O” mint mark. Now you have the chance to add these historic, 90% pure U.S. silver coins to your collection!
Scarce 1883-O Date
The Morgan Silver Dollar was struck from 1878 to 1904, and again in 1921. In the 100 years since, most of these beautiful U.S. Silver Dollars have been worn out or melted down for their silver. It’s estimated that as little as 15% of all Morgans struck exist today in any condition. Even fewer come from this particular mintage. Here’s the breakdown: in 1883, just 4.33% of the total Morgan series was struck. Less than a third of those coins came from New Orleans. In the end, the 1883-O Morgan Silver Dollar accounts for just 1.33% of the entire series—and that’s before the mass meltings that have left so few coins for collectors to secure. And we can expect that even fewer of the survivors are of collector grade...
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Historic Morgan Silver Dollars Minted in New Orleans 1883 date 138 years old 26.73 grams of 90% fine silver Hefty 38.1 mm diameter Certified collector Mint State-63
The Morgan Silver Dollar is the most popular and iconic vintage U.S. coin. They were the Silver Dollars of the Wild West, going on countless untold adventures in dusty saddlebags across the nation. Finding a hoard of Morgans doesn’t happen often—and when it does, it’s a big deal. So when we came across a recent hoard of 710 Morgan Silver Dollars—all struck at the historic New Orleans Mint in 1883—it was like hitting the jackpot!
Morgans from the New Orleans Mint
13
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(MS63) condition by NGC/PCGS
Sealed in protective holder 1883-O accounts for just 1.33% of all Morgans Struck
Actual size is 38.1 mm
Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS)! Grading service varies. The condition of these coins are as though they were struck yesterday, despite circulating in commerce more than 135 years ago! And yet they have survived with a quality level of eye appeal that won’t cost you an arm and a leg.
Don’t Miss This Opportunity—Order Now!
Look elsewhere and you’ll find 1883-O Morgans in the same MS63 graded condition selling for as much as $159. But you won’t pay that here. For this special offer, we’re offering these collector-grade, 1883-O Morgan Silver Dollars for just $99 per coin. That’s 138 years of American history for just 72 cents per year! The 1883-O Morgan Silver 1.33% of the entire series Dollar accounts for just 1.33% All Morgan of all Morgans Silver Dollars struck. Relatively few of these coins still exist in any condition, with even fewer Morgans certified by NGC or PCGS as MS63 condition. Don’t miss out. Call 1-888-324-9125 and use the special offer code below to secure yours today while our limited supply lasts!
1883-O Morgan
1883-O Morgan Silver Dollar NGC/PCGS MS63 — $99 ea. +s/h
Certified Collector Quality
Coins are graded on a 70-point scale, with a 70 representing perfection. Through hard work and diligence, the collector who first assembled this hoard managed to find 1883-O Morgans graded as quality Mint State-63 (MS63) condition by the world’s two leading third-party grading services, Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC) or
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1-888-324-9125 Offer Code MHG215-01 Please mention this code when you call
GovMint.com • 14101 Southcross Dr. W., Suite 175, Dept. MHG215-01, Burnsville, MN 55337 GovMint.com® is a retail distributor of coin and currency issues and is not affiliated with the U.S. government. The collectible coin market is unregulated, highly speculative and involves risk. GovMint.com reserves the right to decline to consummate any sale, within its discretion, including due to pricing errors. Prices, facts, figures and populations deemed accurate as of the date of publication but may change significantly over time. All purchases are expressly conditioned upon your acceptance of GovMint.com’s Terms and Conditions (www.govmint.com/terms-conditions or call 1-800-721-0320); to decline, return your purchase pursuant to GovMint.com’s Return Policy. © 2021 GovMint.com. All rights reserved.
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1/19/21 5:10 PM
Be Connected. Learn about the sovereign First Nations who share geography with North Dakota and have deep connections to these plains. You’re invited to come and get to know the history, culture and modern life of the approximately 30,000 Native American people of our state. Visit us online to start planning your trip.
LegendaryND.com
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2/2/21 10:51 AM