THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

Geronimo
On the run but ready to ght
Justice in tombstone
Ghosts of sand creek
DEadly DOUBTFUL CANYON

OCTOBER 2015

Features

28

GERONIMOS
GUNFIGHTER
ATTITUDE
By Louis Kraft

His survival skills had kept him alive, but by

the 1880s the Apache leader was a wanted man
and quick to reach for a gun in a standoff

38

CERTAIN DEATH IN
DOUBTFUL CANYON
By Doug Hocking and Carol A. Markstrom

Blessed with good graze and water, this

ArizonaNew Mexico pass drew travelers of
every stripeand was the scene of much violence

46

Apache followers,
old and young, pose in
camp before Geronimos
March 1886 surrender to
General George Crook.

54

HEART
OF
LIGHTNESS
By John Koster

Kindhearted frontier
guide Henri Chatillon
introduced Francis
Parkman to the West
and the Lakota Sioux,
forever changing the
historians outlook

60

JUSTICE
IN TOMBSTONE

GHOSTS
BUSTED
AT SAND
CREEK

Justice of the Peace

Wells Spicer judged the Earps and Doc Holliday
at the post-gunght hearing and also confronted
Arizona Territory townsite manipulators

Whether one deems

the tragic 1864 clash
a battle or a massacre,
reported ghosts on-site
may be haunting
the wrong spot

ON THE COVER
Howard Terpnings Legend of Geronimo captures the
deant spirit of the Apache leader, who sometimes
faced down but often simply eluded his pursuers in
the U.S. Southwest and Mexico. ( Howard Terpning,
The Greenwich Workshop Inc., Seymour, Conn.)

By Bob Palmquist

By Gregory Michno

TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

Departments

4
22
6 LETTERS
24
ROUNDUP
8
14 INTERVIEW
EDITORS
LETTER

WESTERN ENTERPRISE
By Jim Pettengill

The Cow-Boy Band brought its brassy mix of music

to places like Dodge City, Kan., and Pueblo, Colo.

ART
OF THE
WEST
By Johnny D. Boggs

Walter Ufer ourished

in the artist colony of
Taos, N.M., capturing
the landscape and
everyday Indian life

26
70
INDIAN GHOST
16
WESTERNERS

Yellowstone Vic Smith wields his Winchester

18
GUNFIGHTERS
AND LAWMEN
By Doug Dukes

Austin City Marshal Ben Thompson came to

collect a fugitive but arrested a female deputy

20

LIFE

TOWNS

When Chiefs Smoke

and Bull Bear split
forces, their people
became the Oglalas
(Scatter Ones Own)

One of ve known
black settlements in
Colorado, The Dry
sprang from the dust,
then blew in the wind

By John Koster

By Kellen Cutsforth

72

COLLECTIONS

74

GUNS OF
THE WEST

76

REVIEWS

By Linda Wommack King Ranch welcomes visitors to its

sizable spread and also to its museum in Kingsville, Texas

By Jerry D. Powell When John Colt stood trial

for a murder he did commit, brother Sam put on
a lively gun demonstration on his behalf

Bob Palmquist proles the best books and movies

about Tombstone and Justice Wells Spicer. Plus reviews
of recent books and the 2015 Western Slow West

PIONEERS AND SETTLERS

By Deanna Lee Kerr Lucy Stoddard made plenty of dough

baking pies in Hangtown, Calif., before and after her divorce

80

GO WEST
Blazing trails in the
Sonoran Desert

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Editors Letter

GERONIMO
THE APACHE
GUNFIGHTER?

THE WELL-KNOWN
CHIRICAHUA APACHE
GERONIMO

4 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

With other headwear,

a black hat perhaps,
Geronimo might
have passed for an
Old West gunslinger.

Wild West editor

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

TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

n two famous images of Geronimo he holds a gun. Think

A. Frank Randalls 1884 photo of the legendary Chiricahua
Apache kneeling with Springfield carbine in hand at the San
Carlos reservation in Arizona Territory, and C.S. Flys 1886
photo of Geronimo and three followers posing with rifles at
Caon de los Embudos in Sonora, Mexico. Later, as a prisoner
at Fort Sill in Oklahoma Territory, Geronimo posed for several
William E. Irwin shots in which the leathery warrior wears a buckskin
shirt and grips a six-shooter. Those less familiar images call to mind
an aged Wild West gunfighter, except for that crazy horned headwear
and the fact many gunghters died young. Billy the Kid was shot down
in his early 20s, Wild Bill Hickok and Jesse James were assassinated in
their 30s, and John Wesley Hardin made it past 40 only because he did
so much prison time. Geronimo lived to be 79 and did not die by the gun,
but is it far-fetched to suggest he lived much of his life as a gunghter?
In this second issue of the redesigned Wild West (you noticed, right?) Louis Kraft suggests in his cover
story that Geronimo at times had a gunghter attitude. Like Jesse he stole from his enemies, like Billy he
killed for revenge, like Wild Bill he had a deadly reputation, and like John Wesley he was someone best to
avoid to ensure good health. Geronimo was often a wanted man on the runthat is, the U.S. Army sought
to capture him and sentence him to life on a reservation or worse. Whats more, Geronimo had at least
one genuine showdown. It happened in Mexico, and his opponent on Aug. 28, 1886, was a self-assured
Sonoran with a six-shooter. It wasnt
exactly a High Noon confrontation
the real West had few of those. It was,
however, intense. Kraft writes, Although
[Geronimo] knew nothing of gunslingers
LIVED TO BE 79 on the American frontier and didnt sit
AND DID NOT DIE BY THE GUN,
with his back to a saloon wall, he had
become their brethren.
BUT IS IT FAR-FETCHED TO
Paul A. Hutton, whose The Lords
SUGGEST HE LIVED MUCH OF
of Apacheria is due out next year, calls
HIS LIFE AS A GUNFIGHTER?
Geronimo the best-known American
Indian leader, though certainly no grand
patriot chief like Pontiac, Tecumseh or Sitting Bull. But was he anything like Billy the Kid? The idea
of Geronimo as a gunfighter is an interesting one, Hutton says. Politicos like President Grover
Cleveland thought of Geronimo as an outlaw, not a war leader. General Phil Sheridan wanted to
turn him over to the Arizona Territory courts in 1886 so they could hang him, but General Nelson Miles
saved him by shipping him off to Florida. He certainly was a killer and lived a life of unrelenting
violence. Much of this has been excused as acts of war by historians, but many of the killings really
crossed over the line of even those vicious times (although my book is replete with examples of both
American and Mexican atrocities against the Apaches).
Makes one wonder how Hollywood churned out Billy the Kid vs. Dracula but never got around to
Billy the Kid vs. Geronimo. WW

EDITOR IN CHIEF ROGER L. VANCE

MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER
DIONISIO LUCCHESI PRESIDENT
WILLIAM KONEVAL ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

OCTOBER 2015 / VOL. 28, NO. 3

GREGORY J. LALIRE EDITOR
MARK DREFS ART DIRECTOR
DAVID LAUTERBORN MANAGING EDITOR
LORI FLEMMING PHOTO EDITOR
GREGORY F. MICHNO SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR
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JOHN KOSTER SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR

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Former sheriff Ned

Wynkoop strikes a
jaunty pose in 1861.

VISIT OUR WEBSITE

FOR ONLINE EXTRAS
WildWestMag.com
Extended Interview With Larry Ball
Tom Horns years as an operative for Pinkertons
National Detective Agency (circa 189093) were both
a success and a failure, says the Horn biographer.

More About Artist Walter Ufer

Ufer was able to develop his recognizable style
by combining his classical 19th-century German
training with American realism, New Mexico artist
William Haskell says of Ufer.

When Wynkoop Was Sheriff

Louis Kraft, who proles Geronimo in this issue, has
also written books and articles about the man who most
objected to the Sand Creek attackNed Wynkoop. This
award-winning article covers Wynkoops earlier career.

APACHE
TRIAL

The Apache Kid

escaped on the
way to Yuma
Territorial Prison
and eluded all
pursuers. His fate
remains a mystery.

WARNERS THOUGHTFUL
LETTER POINTS OUT
THE COMPLEXITY OF
OUR LEGAL SYSTEM,
ESPECIALLY IN THE WAY IT
DEALT WITH INDIAN CRIMES IN
THE 19TH CENTURY. WARNER IS
INCORRECT WHEN HE SAYS KID
AND HIS FELLOW SCOUTS WERE
NOT TRIED BY THE MILITARY
6 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

I read with interest

the Legend of the
Apache Kid, by Paul
Andrew Hutton, in the
December 2014 issue.
It is sometimes strange
how research can
come up with different
versions of the same
incident. I am referring to the legal action
after Al Sieber was
shot in the leg and
blamed Apache Kid.
My research indicates
he and his scouts did
not have a military
court-martial, were
not sentenced to death,
did not have their
sentences mitigated,
were not sent to a
military prison at
Alcatraz Island and
were not later released
by the secretary of war.
According to my past
research Apache Kid
and his scouts were
arrested and stood
trial before federal
Judge W.W. Porter
in the June 1888 term
of U.S. District Court
at Globe, Arizona
Territory. Sieber, still
on crutches, testied
against them. They
were convicted and
sentenced to 10 years
in an Ohio state prison
under contract with
the U.S. government.
Jay L. Warner
Mountainair, N.M.

Paul Andrew Hutton

responds: Warners
thoughtful letter points
out the complexity of our
legal system, especially
in the way it dealt
with Indian crimes in
the 19th century. Warner
is incorrect when he says
Kid and his fellow scouts
were not tried by the
militarythey indeed
were and were sentenced
and then reprieved just
as I briey outlined in
my article. The case that
has Warner confused
was the trial of the San
Carlos Apaches who broke
out with Kid and his
scouts. They were indeed
tried in federal court and
sentenced to long terms in
the Ohio prison. Efforts
by humanitarian lawyers
secured their release,
but they were promptly
rearrested and tried in
territorial court and
sentenced to death. That
ruling led to Kid being
retried in territorial court
after his release from
Alcatraz and sentenced
with his fellow scouts to
Yuma Territorial Prison.
They of course escaped on
the way to Yuma. A ne
book on this complex topic
is Clare V. McKanna Jr.s
White Justice in Arizona (2005).

CIMARRON KID
In regard to Two
Robbers Thrown
a Deadly Curve
When Train Stopped

ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON, NO. B2F39

Letters

THE MULLAN ROAD

CARVING A PASSAGE THROUGH THE
FRONTIER NORTHWEST , 185962

EDITED BY PAUL D. MCDERMOTT, ET. AL.

at Baxters Curve, by
Les Kruger [Gunghters and Lawmen, April
2015]: Your readers
might be interested
in Art Soules The Tall
Texan (1995), the rst
and only biography
of Ben Kilpatrick, as
well as Jeffrey Burtons
The Deadliest Outlaws
(2009), a meticulously
researched account of
banditry in the Southwest. One correction:
Kruger mentioned the
arrest of Ben Kilpatrick and Ole Hobeks
11-year-old accomplice, who had
referred to himself as
the Cimarron Kid.
That fable, which
got going in the early
1970s, is the work of
the self-named Harry
Longabaugh Jr., a
fantast and prankster
who claimed to be
not only the son of
the Sundance Kid
but also the very
same Cimarron Kid.
A modern-day Jack
Crabb, he traveled
the West giving library
lectures and newspaper interviews about
his supposed exploits
as a Wild Bunch member. Longabaugh Jr.s
real life is a mystery,
except that he was
known at a Fresno,
Calif., drunk tank.
He died in 1972, but
his pranks live on.
Daniel Buck
Washington, D.C.

Les Kruger responds,

Im usually able to sift
out false items, but that
one is repeated in so
many sources. In her
2009 biography of the
Sundance Kid, Donna
Ernst writes that Longabaugh Jr.s photograph
bears much too strong
a family resemblance to
Sundance for his story to
be totally discredited.
She adds: If he wasnt

Sundances son, maybe

he was an unknown son
of Sundances brother,
Elwood, or a son of
Sundances cousin, Seth
Longabaugh. Whoever he
was, our family believes
he was a Longabaugh.
Send letters to Wild West,
19300 Promenade Dr.,
Leesburg, VA 20176 or
by e-mail to wildwest@
historynet.com.

Mullans famed 624-mile military wagon

road provided a route through the
western wilderness, from Fort Benton
in the future state of Montana, to Fort
Walla Walla in Washington Territory.
>}iUxxU>i]fn
For a FREE catalog of our western books contact:

Mountain Press
P U B L I S H I N G CO M PA N Y

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Chief of Thieves
by award-winning author
Steven W. Kohlhagen

BIG IRON BALLAD

As I read Gunghts of the Arizona Rangers,
by Bill ONeal in an old issue [ June 2013],
I remembered a song from an album by Marty
Robbins. The album, Gunghter Ballads and
Trail Songs, came out in 1959 and is considered
by most music critics the best album ever
produced dealing with the American West.
Included are El Paso, The Hanging Tree,
Cool Water and a ballad about an Arizona
Ranger tracking down and killing an outlaw
named Texas Red. The latter is titled Big Iron
and reminded me of the real-life exploits of
famed Arizona Ranger Sergeant Harry Wheeler,
one of the major characters in Bills article.
David T. Green
Houston, Texas

Historical ction, based on a factual group of 1862

con artists who successfully stole millions of todays
dollars, then became cattle ranchers in Oregon and
Wyoming, and ultimately met their respective fates
at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Ive been looking forward to Steve Kohlhagens
next book and am not disappointed!
Bernard Cornwell
Sequel to Where They Bury You, winner
of Best Western of 2014 National Indie
Excellence Book Awards

~ Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble ~

Roundup

In Tombstone (1993),
Val Kilmers Holliday
quotes the real Doc
when he says, Youre
a daisy if you do!

TOP 7 QUOTES FROM

THE SPICER HEARING
1
2

WWHAs
2015 Awards
At its eighth
annual Roundup,
held this July in
Amarillo, Texas,
the Wild West
History Association
[wildwesthistory.
org] presented its
2015 Six-Shooter
Awards. Best book
went to Larry Ball
(see P. 14) for his
biography Tom
Horn in Life and
Legend, while
Drew Gomber
and Wild West
contributor Paul
Hutton (pictured)

Before they [the Earps and Holliday] told me [of their involvement
in the attempted Benson stage robbery and murder], I made a
sacred promise not to tell it and never would have told it had I
not been put on the stand. Ike Clanton in spurious testimony.

3
4
5
6
7

Yes, we will pay rewards for them, dead or alive. Wells Fargo
ofcial L.F. Rowell wrote this in a June 7, 1881, telegram, regarding those who
had attacked the Benson stage in March 1881.
I considered the Clanton party under arrest, but I doubt whether
they considered themselves under arrest. Sheriff John Harris Behan.
I said to them [the Cowboys], I want you to go up to the
sheriffs ofce and lay off your arms. Frank McLaury rather
demurred. Sheriff Behan.
You sons of bitches, you have been looking for a ght, and now
you can have it! One of the Earp party, most often attributed to Wyatt.
Frank McLaury: Ive got you now! Holliday: Blaze away. Youre a
daisy if you do! This daisy of an exchange appeared in the Tombstone Nugget
the next day and as something similar in the movie Tombstone. Bob Palmquist

8 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

were honored for

their outstanding
contributions to
Wild West history.
Best magazine
article awards
went to Jeff
Broome (Collateral Damage:
Sand Creek and
the Fletcher Family
Indian Captivity
Story, Denver
Westerners Roundup),
Ann Kirschner
and Paul Cool. Ron
Woggon received
the Presidents
Silver Star Award.

TOP: AFARCHIVE/ALAMY

The ght has commenced. Go to ghting or get away.

Wyatt Earp testied having said this to Ike Clanton when charged by Ike at the
outset of the 1881 Tombstone, Arizona Territory, gunght near the O.K. Corral.

Roundup

WEST WORDS
The story of Wyatt Earp,
or any portion of it, if it is to
be written, must be written,
only, by Wyatt Earp

Earp wrote this on May 24, 1927, to Walter Noble

Burns editor Harry Maule at Doubleday, Page & Co.
Regardless, Burns unauthorized Tombstone: An Iliad
of the Southwest, in which he called Wyatt The Lion
of Tombstone, was published that December.

Deadlier Than Tombstone

TOP: WORLD HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE

The deadliest gunfight in Arizona did not play out near Tombstones O.K. Corral in 1881 but in Rattlesnake Canyon in the Galiuro
Mountains on Feb. 10, 1918. It pitted the reclusive Power family against lawmen after Thomas
Jefferson (Jeff) Power defied
the Selective Service Act of 1917
by keeping his two draft-age sons,
Tom and John, at home. Jeff and
three of the four ofcers were killed
in the explosive confrontation. The
story has been told in Wild West

(Gunfighters and Lawmen, by

Thomas Cobb, October 2012)
and elsewhere. Now director
Cameron Trejo presents the documentary Powers War. Historian
Heidi Osselaer and I spent two
years researching the history surrounding the shootout and hiked
to the still-standing Powers Garden and Powers Cabin, says Trejo.
The lm, which is narrated by John Slattery (Mad Men), has screened
in more than 15 theaters. For information on the forthcoming DVD,
visit powerswar.com or facebook.com/PowersWar.

Captain Lewis
Pipe Tomahawk
Cowans Auctions
[cowanauctions.
com] recently sold
a presentation-style
pipe tomahawk
reportedly carried by
Captain Meriwether
Lewis during the
Corps of Discoverys
180406 trek to
and from the Pacic
Ocean. The Lewis
tomahawk is quite
simply an icon of
American history,
says Wes Cowan,
frequent guest on PBS
Antiques Roadshow and
host of PBS History
Detectives. The sale
price and identity
of the buyer remain
condential, although
the new owner
eventually plans to
donate this national
treasure to an institution for safekeeping.
Lewis (17741809)
used the nely crafted
tomahawk, loaded
with war-peace
symbolism, as a tool
of diplomacy with
the Indians he and
Captain William Clark
encountered on their
epic journey. It was
among Lewis possessions at his death
in 1809 at age 35.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 9

Roundup

Colts and
Winchesters
As they did in the Wild West, Colt revolvers
and Winchester ries performed well at Cowans
and Little Johns [littlejohns.cowanauctions.com]
Spring Historic Firearms and Early Militaria Auction
in Cincinnati last May. The top lot was an original Colt
Texas Paterson revolver (see Guns of the West, P. 74), which
hammered down at $205,625. A factory-engraved Colt Single
Action Army revolver (pictured) went for $37,600. Among the
Winchesters sold was a Model 1876 deluxe lever-action rie
for $44,000 and a factory-engraved Model 1866 for $23,500.
A Civil War factory-inscribed Henry rie brought $58,750.

Twains Territorial
The Territorial Enterprise, the Nevada newspaper
Mark Twain wrote for in the early 1860s, is
back in business as a monthly print and online
publication [territorialenterprise.com]. Founded
in Genoa, Nev., in 1858, it is the states oldest
printed newspaper. It was based in Virginia
City when Twain cut his journalistic teeth.
Capitol Publishing Group in Jefferson, Mo.,
is spearheading this latest effort to resurrect
Twains old rag, which will be based in Carson
City, Nev. Besides solid news reporting, the
paper spins tall tales in true Twainian fashion.

Russell-ing up Funds
The Russell, the annual fundraising exhibition
and sale to benet the C.M. Russell Museum
in Great Falls, Montana, raised a record
$7.8 million this spring via three live auctions
and other events. The March 21 Russell live
auction featured 157 lots, including nine works
by Charles M. Russell. The top sellers were
his paintings Scouting Party (1900), which sold
for $950,000, and For Supremacy (1895), which
fetched $1.5 million, the highest price yet paid
for an artwork at the auction. The top seller
at the March 20 First Strike live auction was
Randy Van Beeks painting Chief Joseph and
the Nez Perce Camped on the Big Hole River,
which brought $14,000. For lot details and
sales results visit cmrussell.org/the-russell.
10 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

FAM OUS L AS T WORD S

Boys,
I am killed

Texas Ranger Captain Frank Jones

said these words during a gunght
with Mexican outlaws near San
Elizario, Texas, on June 30, 1893.
Moments before one of his men had
asked Jones if he was hurt, and he
had replied, Yes, shot all to pieces.

Chapter 11: The Gun Maker

The 179-year-old gun maker Colt Defense (which in 2013 acquired Colts
Manufacturing to reunite the military and civilian rearm businesses) led
for bankruptcy in June, though it remains in business with plans to restructure.
Back in 1842 founder Samuel Colt (181462) declared bankruptcy and
closed his Paterson, N.J., plant after six years. But in 1847, buoyed by the
Walker six-shooter, he mounted a comeback in Connecticut. Since Colts
death the company [colt.com] has repeatedly been sold and restructured.

See You Later,

Michael Blake

Michael Blake, 69, who adapted his own

1988 novel into the Oscar-winning screenplay
of the 1990 lm Dances With Wolves, died
on May 2 after a long illness. The lm, which
also won a best picture Academy Award,
stars Kevin Costner as a Civil War veteran
who heads to the frontier, where he encounters Lakotas and a white woman adopted
by the Sioux. Blake also wrote a sequel,
The Holy Road (2001). The author named
his son Quanah and daughters Monahsetah
and Lozen after historical American Indians.

A Classic Tribute of Heroic Stature

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2014 BGE 01-17898-001-BIR

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Roundup

EVENTS OF THE WEST

Autry Acquisitions
Recent additions to the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, including 49 paintings and
sculptures (including Raven Transformation Mask, by Tlingit artist Preston Singletary, above)
from the collection of Loretta and Victor Kaufman, will be featured in an exhibition
that runs Aug. 8, 2015July 9, 2017. Call 323-667-2000 or visit theautry.org.

Nevadas Virginia City

Three Historic Trails

Every Man Has a Right to Go to Hell in

His Own Way, running through Oct. 31 at
the Historic Fourth Ward School Museum in
Virginia City, Nev., explores the darker side
of life in this 19th-century mining boomtown.
Call 775-847-0975 or visit fourthwardschool.org.

The All Trails Lead to Santa Fe conference,

which centers on the Camino Real, Santa Fe
and Old Spanish trails, meets at the Santa Fe
Convention Center Sept. 1720. Call 505920-4970 or visit 3trailsconferencesantafe.org.

Civil War in New Mexico

Great American Adventures is hosting two new

historic horseback ridesGreat Train Robbery
(Aug. 1621) and Billy the Kids Regulator
(Oct. 4-9). Visit great-american-adventures.com.

Photos and a U.S. ag from the March 1862

Battle of Glorieta Pass are part of the exhibition
Fading Memories: Echoes of the Civil War,
which continues at the New Mexico History
Museum in Santa Fe through Feb. 26, 2016.
Call 505-476-5200 or visit nmhistorymuseum.org.

Civil War and the West

Empire and Liberty, which looks at the Civil
War from a Western perspective, runs through
Jan. 3, 2016, at the Autry National Center in Los
Angeles. Call 323-667-2000 or visit theautry.org

Indigenous Beauty
Browse some 120 works in
the exhibit Indigenous
Beauty: Masterworks of
American Indian Art From
the Diker Collection, which
runs through Sept. 13 at
the Amon Carter Museum
in Fort Worth before traveling to the Michael
C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in
Atlanta (Oct. 8, 2015Jan. 3, 2016). Call
817-738-1933 or visit cartermuseum.org.
12 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

Send upcoming event

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

Ride to Adventure

Remington
& Russell

Compare two iconic

artists in Remington
& Russell, Retold,
which runs through
Jan. 10, 2016,
at the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort
Worth, Texas. On
display will be 38
works, including
The Dry Camp, by
Frederic Remington
(18611909), and
The Bucker (at left),
by Charlie Russell
(18641926). Call
817-332-6554 or
visit sidrichardson
museum.org.

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Interview

LARRY BALL ON THE LIFE

AND DEATH OF TOM HORN
Seeking the elusive truth about the storied frontier gure By Johnny D. Boggs

Given his career as an Apache wars packer/scout and later

as a hired gun in Wyominga stint that led to his 1903
execution in CheyenneTom Horn has long attracted
Western historians, including Doyce Nunis, Dean Krakel,
Mark Dugan, Jay Monaghan and Chip Carlson. The latest
is Larry D. Ball, professor emeritus of history at Arkansas
State University, whose biography Tom Horn in Life and
Legend (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014; reviewed in the
December 2014 Wild West) earned 2015 Spur Award nalist
honors from Western Writers of America [westernwriters.org].
How hard is it to discern myth from
fact regarding Horn?
It is very difcult, in part because writers have relied
so heavily on his autobiographyLife of Tom Horn,
Government Scout and Interpreter (1904)which covers
his life up to the time he arrived in Wyoming.
While this book ends abruptly in 1892, he became
such a notorious figure in Wyoming that many
legends arose about his years as a stock detective
and hired assassin.

Denver newspapers praised his achievements in

hunting train robbers, but during one assignment
he was arrested in Reno, Nev., for the robbery of
a casino. Yet the agency stood by him and employed the lawyers necessary to get him off. Even
after leaving the agency, Horn maintained contact
with other operatives.

Did Horn kill Willie Nickell?

Much of Life of Tom Horn is ction and should be

used with great care. He portrays himself as a scout
from the beginning and has himself hobnobbing
with the generals. Since he was such a minor gure
in the early 1880s, factual material about his participation in the Apache wars is very difcult to locate.
At the same time Horn was literate, and one of his
lesser-known talents was that of a romancer and
storyteller. While his book is a rousing and entertaining tale, he is boastful and self-serving. While
he was actually present in many engagements with
the Apaches, only toward the end of the pursuit
of Geronimo, in 188586, did he become a civilian
chief of scouts.

Horn was convicted of the murder of 14-year-old

Willie Nickell, son of Kels, who was mysteriously
assassinated in July 1901. To this day much controversy exists as to whether Horn was guilty. One of
the problems has been motive. Horn partisans
declare that he had no motive, but that the guilty
party was Jim Miller or one of his teenage sons.
Nonetheless, the prosecution had a powerful case
resting on a confession Horn made (unwittingly)
to Deputy U.S. Marshal Joseph Lefors. The presiding judge admitted the confession as evidence;
today it would be considered entrapment and
thrown out. My impression is Horn was probably
guilty of the murder of Willie Nickell. While I did
not nd a smoking gun, there is enough circumstantial evidence (beyond Horns own confession)
to tilt the probability of his guilt in his direction.

He was later a Pinkerton detective?

How should we remember Horn?

Horns years as an operative for Pinkertons National Detective Agency (circa 189093) in the Denver branch ofce were both a success and a failure.

Although he possessed some talents, he was not

a likable person.He willfully went about the
business of killing men for money. WW

His autobiography isnt useful?

14 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

BOOKS BY BALL:
The United States
Marshals of New
Mexico & Arizona
Territories, 1846
1912 (1978),
Desert Lawmen:
The High Sheriffs
of New Mexico
and Arizona,
18461912
(1992), Elfego
Baca in Life and
Legend (1992)
and Ambush at
Bloody Run: The
Wham Paymaster
Robbery of 1889
a Story of
Politics, Religion,
Race and Banditry in Arizona
Territory (2000).

Read the full interview

at WildWestMag.com.



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Westerners

VICTOR WITH A GUN

Victor Grant Yellowstone

Vic Smith (18501925),
known for his prowess as
a crack shot frontiersman,
is not dressed to kill in this
1886 portrait taken when
he was about 36but he
is dressed for a shooting
exhibition in Livingston,
Mont. Tony Sapienza,
owner of the photo, notes
that the Winchester Model
1873 Smith holds has
a silver-scrolled buttstock
and was a gift from
French-born Dakota Territory rancher the Marquis
de Mors. Among Smiths
other associates, Sapienza says, were John
Liver Eating Johnson,
Luther Sage Yellowstone
Kelly, John X. Beidler
and Theodore Roosevelt.
Yellowstone Vic is not
a well-known Westerner
today, adds Sapienza,
but he was a government
scout, Indian ghter, professional hunter, trapper,
guide and exhibition
shooter. To really be
captivated by him, get
a copy of his memoir,
The Champion Buffalo
Hunter, edited by Jeanette
Prodgers. (Photo: Tony
Sapienza Collection)

16 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

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Gunfighters and Lawmen

In December 1880
Ben Thompson, by
then a well-known
gunghter, became
Austin city marshal.

A PEACE OFFICER
WITH MORE HIP
THAN HOLSTER
Austin City Marshal Ben Thompson saw t to
arrest the sprightly deputy By Doug Dukes

18 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

COURTESY OF AUSTIN, TEXAS, POLICE DEPARTMENT

n a July 6, 1877, article headlined LADY

SHOT the Austin Daily Democratic Statesman reported that a man carelessly
handling a pistol had accidentally shot
Emelie Sckerls, but it was only a flesh
wound. By 1879 the 23-year-old Prussianborn divorce owned a grocery store
in the Texas capital, and the newspaper reported
considerable excitement one day in October
1880 when Emelie emptied her five-shooter at
a man inside her store but missed all five times.
By July 1881, according to the San Antonio Daily
Express, Emelie had not only divorced Charles
Sckerls but also married and divorced an old
German from Bastrop County named Schooman. On learning Emelie had too many lovers,
Schooman had decided to let his new bride shift
for herself. So it seems Emelie was a hellcat and
a hussy, and later that summer she was wrapped
up in an incident with celebrated Texas lawmen
James Madison Brown and Ben Thompson that
would further scandalize the good folks of Austin.
In 1881 Lee County Sheriff Brown, a former
Texas Ranger who had officiated at the hanging
of William Wild Bill Longley, was informed that
George Keith, a suspect from an 1874 murder, had
been apprehended in Louisiana. Learning that Sheriff Brown and a deputy were transporting the fugitive back through Austin, City Marshal Thompson
met them at the train depot on July 12, 1881. The
crime rate in Austin had dropped since the noted
gunghter took over as marshal the prior December. That spring Mason County War veteran John
Ringo had pointed his six-shooter at a few men
in Guy Town (Austins red-light district) and was
later arrested in his hotel room. Thompson, according to the Statesman, had cheerfully kicked open
the door and, to the innite disgust of Mr. Ringo,
scooped him in. After a night in jail and paying
his ne, Ringo had reportedly settled with the city
and left a wiser if not sadder man.
At the Austin train station, Marshal Thompson
paid little mind to Sheriff Brown or prisoner Keith.
His undivided attention was soon on what the
Statesman termed Browns sprightly looking deputy. Thompson disarmed and arrested the deputy,
identied by the newspaper as Mrs. Amelia Schooman, formally of this city and well known here as
Mrs. Sckerls. The Daily Express story, headlined
A FEMALE IN BREECHES CREATES A SENSATION, reported Emelie was decked out in mens clothing

Gunfighters and Lawmen

TOP: COURTESY OF AUSTIN, TEXAS POLICE DEPARTMENT; RIGHT: COURTESY OF CHUCK PARSONS

Austins Municipal
Building was a mob
scene following the
arrest of a deputy
named Emelie.

with a six-shooter swinging from her hips. The

deputy, the Express continued, wore a nobby suit
of dark brine, her hair was cut short, and she was
wearing a daisy straw hat. In her hip pocket was
a pair of nippers, a 10-cent print scarf covered the
bosom of her woolen shirt. She has small blue
eyes, a small mouth, retrouss nose and a naivet
manner which made her quite attractive.
In Austin cross-dressing was against the law
a misdemeanor. Article 746 of the city ordinances
stated, Whoever shall in this city appear in any
public place in a state of nudity, or in a dress not
belonging to his or her sex, would be subject to a
ne of between $5 and $100. Thompson had never
known or seen a female deputy or lady police ofcer, so he assumed the woman was a civilian who
had no right to be toting a Colt .45 in Austin.
At City Hall, Thompson agreed to release Emelie on her own recognizance if she would don the
proper feminine attire before her appearance the
next day before the Mayors Court. According to
the Daily Express, The streets were crowded when
the news got abroad, and the stairway to the city
hall was thronged with people of all colors to
behold a woman in male attire acting as a deputy
sheriff, and the police had to be stationed at the
foot of the stairs to keep back the crowd.
The unmarried Sheriff Brown was not amused by
the citys reaction to his deputy. Adulterous gossip

ran rampant. One jab in the July 13 Daily Express

charged the sheriff had forgotten the dignity of
his ofce as to go about with a woman masquerading in mens clothing and should be degraded
from his place, and those who honored him election should drive him out of the community.
Emelie appeared before Austin Mayor L.M.
Crocker, and Brown explained he had deputized
her to help identify his man and work up the
case. The sheriff then queried the court: Under
the peculiar language of our law it is said women
have the right to vote, and why have they not the
right to wear mens apparel and act as a deputy
sheriff? Inasmuch as the masculine gender includes
the feminine in our code, possibly this case, if it
is properly managed, will be of more than usual
interest. The court ned Emelie $25, and Sheriff
Brown, his deputy and their prisoner continued
on their way to Giddings in Lee County.
In September 1881 Sheriff Brown was back in
Austin and ran into Marshal Thompson at the fairgrounds. Rumor was rife of six-shooter trouble,
but nothing happened. A VERY SERIOUS DIFFICULTY
A VERTED, the San Antonio Daily Express noted in
a headline. In 1884 gunmen would ambush Ben
Thompson at a San Antonio theater, and in 1892
a policeman would shoot down Brown at a Chicago racetrack. As for Emelie Sckerls, history has
allowed her to shift for herself. WW

Lee County Sheriff

James Madison
Brown was the one
who deputized the
female in breeches.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 19

Pioneers and Settlers

GOLD RUSH PIE MAKER

MADE LOTS OF DOUGH

Lucy Stoddard found fortune and a new husband in California By Deanna Lee Kerr

ucy Ann Stoddard Wakefield

had for seven years been stuck
in an unhappy marriage to an
English-born dentist. A native
of New Haven, Conn., Lucy
wedded Dr. John Wakefield in
1842 when she was 24. It wasnt
long before Lucy chafed under her husbands
habit of tantalizing and insulting her feelings
with abusive epithets and jealous aspersions, as
relative Leslie Bryson, a ships captain, put it after
visiting Lucy in California. Wretched and miser-

20 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

able pride, he said, forbade her to complain of her

own choice and stir the stink among her friends.
In 1849 New Haven was abuzz with news of the
California Gold Rush, and the unhappy couple
hoped a change of scenery would do them good.
On the long wagon train trip to the Sierra Nevada
goldelds, however, Lucy, claimed John in later
court testimony, rode horseback with another
manpreferring the company of the stranger.
Their journey ended at Hangtown, Calif., 9 miles
southeast of Coloma, where James Marshall had
discovered gold the year prior. Eager to earn her

EL DORADO COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM

In 1849 Lucy and

her rst husband
made Hangtown
(present-day
Placerville) home,
and she was soon
baking dried-apple
pies twice a day.

Pioneers and Settlers

own money, Lucy decided to make pies, as hungry

miners were willing to pay a good price. In February 1850 Dr. Wakeeld allowed his wife to use
money from her fathers estate to buy a log cabin
on Main for $250. She worked long days without anyone to fetch as much as a bucket of water,
she wrote to friends back in New Haven. She typically rose before dawn, nished the rst batch of
dried-apple pies by daylight and then baked a
second batch in the afternoon. Lucy charged $2
for a whole pie or $1 for a quarter pie and a cup
of coffee. She sold 20 dozen a week.
In the evenings hardworking Lucy hosted whist
parties at home. According to Johns later complaint,
she burnt up considerable wood, which he had
obtained at considerable expense. She also went
to dances unescorted. Dr. Wakeeld was irate, and
Lucy declared her intention to leave her husband.
On Feb. 18, 1850, El Dorado County became
one of the original 27 counties in the new state of
California, and in March 1851 the state Legislature
passed a divorce act that permitted anyone who had
been a resident of the state for six months to file
for divorce on such grounds as impotency, adultery,
habitual intemperance, desertion and neglect. That
spring, in the District Court of Coloma, Lucy led
the rst divorce in El Dorado County on grounds
of cruelty and jealousy. Her case went before an allmale jury. Six men, including one of Lucys brothers
and a man named Christopher Clayton Batterman,
testied on her behalf; three witnesses appeared in
support of her husband. The jury ruled in favor of
Lucy, who had built a reputation for hard work and
honesty; it didnt hurt that she was attractive. The
court awarded her the couples home, the bakery,
all her earnings and the rest of her inheritance.
That fall Lucy wrote to friends: I do not intend
to work more than two or three months longer,
only enough to earn my living. I am tired of work.
A competency is all I look forand a little to
give away when I wish. Three months later, however, the money was still rolling in, and she was
still making pies. Lucy had receipts totaling more
than $25,000, wrote Bryson in a letter after his visit
that December. Her costs, he noted, would probably have been less than half that sum, leaving
Lucy with a profit greater than the gold most of
her customers were digging out of the ground.
To further separate herself from Dr. John Wakeeld, in 1852 she persuaded California Sen. Benjamin F. Keene to pen an act in the Statutes of

California to change her name. Thus Chapter 201,

approved on February 28, provided, It shall be
lawful for the person heretofore bearing the name
of Lucy A. Stoddard Wakeeld to change the said
name to Lucy A. Stoddard. That April 12 the Legislature also passed an act authorizing married women
to do business as sole traders independent of their
husbands. Lucy began a series of real estate deals
even as she considered remarriage.
On April 19, 1852, she sold the log house on Main
Street and her cooking stove to W.M. Krahmer and
A.M. Halftermeyer for $1,000, a 300 percent return
on her original investment. On May 6 she turned
right around and bought the Thomas & Young
mercantile store from Lee McKinstry for $800.
She didnt stop there. On May 13 she acquired
another lot on the east side of Main opposite the lot
she had just purchased. In the midst of all this activity, on May 10, she found time to marry 24-yearold Christopher Clayton Batterman, the same who
had testified on her behalf in the divorce. An El
Dorado County census says Lucy was 30 at the
time of their wedding. Either she bbed, or a clerk
made an error. Lucy was born in 1818, making her
34 in 1852her new husbands senior by 10 years.
Within a week of the marriage Lucy A.S. Batterman led the rst deed under the separate property act. Business and domestic life were good
to her. In 1854 Hangtown became Placerville, and
it continued to boom. On March 20, 1859, Lucy
gave birth to son Christopher Stoddard Batterman.
Three years later the family moved to San Francisco and later to Carson City, Nev. Lucys husband
died at age 52 in 1881; she died at age 78 in 1895.
She was well known on the Comstock, her obituary in the April 3, 1895, Walker Lake Bulletin states.
She was more than that, of coursea woman of
many rsts in California. WW

Apple pies were good

as gold in Hangtown.
Lucy sold 20 dozen
pies a week, earning
greater prots than
most of her customers
realized from their ore.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 21

Western Enterprise
The Cow-Boy Band,
at the time based in
Ouray, Colo., plays
at the Elks Grand
Lodge Convention in
Salt Lake City in 1902.

AND THE COW-BOY

BAND PLAYED ON
Its brass showed class in Kansas, Colorado and farther aeld By Jim Pettengill

s cities grew with the settlement of the West, musical entertainment developed from small ensembles and vocal groups
to the ultimate in musical entertainmenta full brass band.
One of the most famous (albeit outlandish) brass bands of the
day played for local dances and presidents, toured the nation
and played on for more than a half-century.
The story begins with Chalkley McArtor Chalk Beeson,
born in Ohio in 1848, raised in Iowa and by age 19 living in Colorado Territory, where
he served as a hunting guide and participated in the 1871 goodwill Royal Buffalo Hunt
for Russian Grand Duke Alexis, led by William Frederick Buffalo Bill Cody. By the
mid-1870s Beeson had drifted to Dodge City, where, among other things, he was
a rancher, lawman, elected representative and co-owner of the Long Branch Saloon.
An accomplished musician, Beeson led a ve-piece orchestra to entertain at the
Long Branch in 1878, and later that year, with the backing of other local businessmen, he organized the Dodge City Silver Cornet Band. When local ranchers
stepped in to sponsor the group, it became known as the Stockmens Band. Beeson
was an adept promoter, and the band took to wearing chaps, hats and six-shooters.
Chalk claimed every musician was a working cowboy who sang to cattle. Audiences loved it. By 1882 Beeson had attracted professional musicians from as
far away as St. Louis, and the troupe became the Dodge City Cow-Boy Band.
To promote Dodge City beef, area ranchers sponsored an appearance at
the 1884 National Stockmens Association convention in St. Louis, where the
22 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

OPPOSITE TOP: CHARLES SAVAGE PHOTO IN JIM PETTENGILL COLLECTION; OPPOSITE LEFT: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS; RIGHT: EVERETT COLLECTION, HISTORICAL/ ALAMY

Western Enterprise

band received rave reviews. The bandleader used

a revolver as a baton, and a reporter asked if it
was loaded. Yes, the conductor replied, without
skipping a beat. To kill the rst man that strikes
a false note. After the convention the band toured
Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Beeson incorporated the popular band in 1886.
After a well-received performance at Denvers
Tabor Opera House in February 1889, the CowBoy Band boarded a train for Washington, D.C.,
to appear in President Benjamin Harrisons inaugural parade. Buffalo Bill and Buck King of
the Cowboys Taylor led the parade, followed by
the Dodge City band members. Offers for tours
poured in, but Beeson had a family and business
concerns in Dodge. Soon after the inaugural appearance, he sold the bands charter, music and
equipment to cornetist Jack Sinclair, who moved
with several band members to Silverton, Colo.
Sinclair secured the patronage of transportation
magnate Otto Mears and incorporated the group
in Colorado in 1890. Featured at the January 1891
inauguration of Governor John Long Routt, the
band shined at the July 4 dedication of the Mineral
Palace, a massive exhibit hall in Pueblo. Within a
year the band had relocated to that city.
In 1892 the Pueblo Knights Templar presented
Sinclair with a diamond-studded baton and a
matching bejeweled, gold-accented Colt revolver
that he also used to conduct, occasionally firing
off blanks to punctuate the music. The band then
went on a world tour, and though the trip was cut
short in mid-1893, the group toured domestically
to widespread acclaim.
With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War
in 1898, Sinclair and 15 other Cow-Boy musicians
enlisted in Colonel Jay L. Torreys 2nd U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, aka Torreys Rough Riders, serving
as its regimental band. Hostilities ended shortly
after their arrival in Florida, and while they never
deployed to Cuba, Sinclair later claimed the band
had endured the Santiago campaign and inspired
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and his 1st Volunteer
Cavalry Rough Riders to victory.
Sinclair next surfaced in Ouray, Colo., in early
1902, when the local Elks Lodge hired the CowBoy Band to represent western Colorado at the
annual Grand Lodge Convention in Salt Lake City.
After eight months of rehearsals by Sinclairs core
of professionals and a handful of locals, the 57-man
band was the hit of the convention, appearing with

a miniature stagecoach built by an Ouray lodge

member for his granddaughter. Sinclair later acquired the stagecoach, which became a band signature until his death. Every member is or has been
a cowpuncher and roundup man, The Salt Lake
Tribune reported. They develop their talent by
singing Tra-La-Loo, Tra-La-La and other classical
selections to the critical steers while on night guard.
In truth the Ouray band members were miners,
and the resulting friction caused Sinclair and his
players to return to Pueblo.
Sinclair relocated the band to Idaho Springs,
then Creede and Alamosa before returning permanently to Pueblo around 1910. In 1911 newspaperman Frank Tyler of Dodge City rented the
original band uniforms and equipment to perform
at Kansas statehood semicentennial celebration in
Hutchinson, which President Howard Taft would
attend. Sinclair and daughter Edith, a talented
vocalist, performed with the resurrected Dodge
City band before returning to Pueblo. Chalk Beeson, 63, served proudly as marshal of the parade.
Sinclair became a Pueblo policeman but continued to manage the Cow-Boy Band and even penned
an opera, The Cowboys Dream, which debuted in
1916 with Edith in the leading role. Jack led the
band in parades and special events until his death
on Dec. 9, 1929. The Pueblo Municipal Band,
self-proclaimed successor to Sinclairs group, continues to perform, and Idaho Springs also boasts a
Cow-Boy Band in tribute to the time Sinclair spent
there in 190506. The 1911 revival of the Dodge
City band has also continued uninterrupted. WW

The Dodge City

Cow-Boy Band
poses in St. Louis
in 1885. One
of its drummers
appears on the
opposite page.

Jack Sinclairs gilded

revolver and baton,
chaps and other items
are in the collection
of the Autry National
Center [theautry.org]
in Los Angeles. Visitors
to Dodge Citys Boot
Hill Museum (boothill.
org] can get a look at
Cow-Boy Band photos,
instruments and original music. The bands
bass drum sold at
auction in 2014.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 23

Art of the West

THE TAOS
LANDSCAPE HAUNTED
WALTER UFER

n 1922 Walter Ufer rendered a painting

that depicts the Taos, N.M., artist at work
in a studio, surrounded by Indian artifacts, studying an unnished landscape
with brush and palette in hand. His longsuffering wife Mary sits reading a book
in a corner, while the faint ghost of an
Indian leans against his easel. Titled Fantasies, it
shows Ufer at work amid the subjects he held dear.
It is a painting that compels the viewer to
think about the image of the artist, his relationship to his subjects and the creative process, says

24 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

Sarah E. Boehme, curator of the Stark Museum

of Art [starkmuseum.org] in Orange, Texas. When
viewers notice the apparition of the Indian figure, they become intrigued and engage with ideas
about what it means.
Born to German immigrants (his father was a
gunsmith and engraver), Ufer grew up in Kentucky,
apprenticed in lithography in Louisville and returned to Germany to study art. While abroad he
met artists Joseph Henry Sharp and Ernest Blumenschein, and after settling in Chicago, he journeyed
to Taos in 1914. Sharp was already living there, and

Walter Ufer often

chose New Mexico
Indians as subjects
for his oil paintings,
as he did in this 1926
work Taos Indian and
Pack Horse or His Kit.

WALTER UFER (18761936), 1926, OIL ON CANVAS,

25.125 x 30.125 INCHES, STARK MUSEUM OF ART, ORANGE, TEXAS, 31.5.4

He blended styles to capture the land and the Indians By Johnny D. Boggs

 WALTER UFER, 1926, OIL ON CANVAS, 42 X 38 INCHES,

STARK MUSEUM OF ART, ORANGE, TEXAS, 31.5.9

Art of the West

Blumenschein was spending summers in what had

already become a thriving art colony.
Ufer found in Taos a setting that provided subjects for his paintings that were both exotic and
yet very American, Boehme says. He responded
to the extraordinary landscape and beautiful atmospheric light that he would come to portray with
intensity....Ufer had an environment in which his
temperament could ourish.
There was another reason for moving to Taos.
In a practical sense, Boehme explains, Ufer
rst went to Taos because he had patrons who sent

him there. Carter Harrison Jr., mayor of Chicago,

encouraged him to go to New Mexico, and Harrison formed a syndicate to buy Ufers paintings.
Ufer loved to paint Indians and other Western
figures in daily life. He was able to develop his
recognizable style by combining his classical 19thcentury German training with American realism,
and by the use of dynamic shapes and intense
light, to leave an important artistic legacy that
continues to influence many artists, says New
Mexico artist William Haskell.
In 1917 Ufer was accepted into the Taos Society
of Artists, and three years later he became the rst
Taos artist to win a prize at the Carnegie International [cmoa.org/ci-history]. His success, however,
proved short-lived. The Taos Society of Artists
disbanded in 1927, and the stock market crash
of 1929 hurt the art scene. Ufer continued to
paint, but with his success diminishing and debts
mounting, he began drinking heavily.
On July 30, 1936, his appendix ruptured, and
three days later Walter Ufer was dead. He was 60
years old. He remained faithful to representation
in art, Boehme says, and yet was a modernist
in his vision and composition. WW

Ufer was in his

mid-40s when he
painted Fantasies,
a self-portrait in
which he works
while an Indian
ghost watches and
Mrs. Ufer reads.

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

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 25

Indian Life

SMOKE AND
BULL BEAR SPLIT,
AND THE OGLALAS
WERE BORN
The deadly feud between Lakota cousins involved
a young Red Cloud By John Koster

26 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

Mahto-Tatonka [sic ], in his way, was a hero. No

chief could vie with him in warlike renown or in
power over his people. He had a fearless spirit
and an impetuous and inexible resolution. His
will was law. He was politic and sagacious and
with true Indian craft always befriended the
whites, knowing that he might thus reap great
advantages for himself and his adherents. When
he had resolved on any course of conduct, he
would pay the warriors the compliment of calling them together to deliberate on it and, when
their debates were over, quietly state his own
opinion, which no one ever disputed. It fared
hard with those who incurred his displeasure. He
would strike them or stab them on the spot; and
this act, which if attempted by any other chief
would have cost him his life, the awe inspired by
his name enabled him to repeat again and again
with impunity. In a community where from immemorial time no man had acknowledged any

WORLD HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE

Bull Bear, who posed

for this 1837 portrait
by Alfred Jacob Miller,
was an inexible and
arbitrary leader who
had a host of enemies,
including Smoke.

o many Americans the Sioux

are the denitive Indians, and
the Oglala Sioux are the denitive Lakota band. Red Cloud is
remembered as the only Indian
leader who won a war with the
United StatesRed Clouds War
(186668). He was Oglala. Crazy Horse was generally credited with the destruction of Lieutenant
Colonel George A. Custers ve companies at the
Little Bighorn in June 1876. He was Oglala.
This band of storied fighters is not ancient in
origin. In the early 19th century the Oglalas and
Bruls (Sicangu) split off as the westernmost subtribes of the Lakota people. They followed the
buffalo from the prairie to the plains and vectored
on Fort Laramie (founded around 1834 as Fort
William and renamed Fort John in 1841 before
becoming Laramie), the trading center on the North
Platte River. The antagonists who gave the Oglalas
their name were Smoke (also called Old Smoke),
born in 1774, and Bull Bear, born in 1790.
Bull BearMato Tatanka in Lakota, which places
the adjective tatanka (bull) after the noun mato
(bear)quickly developed into what whites perceived as an Indian chief. Historian Francis Parkman Jr. wrote candidly of the chief, whose son
had befriended him and whose daughter was
married to Henri Chatillon (see related story,
P. 54), Parkmans favorite guide.

Indian Life

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

law but his own will, Mahto-Tatonka raised himself to power little short of despotic.He had
a host of enemies patiently biding their time.

Among Bull Bears enemies was one born

Standing Bull, who was given the name Smoke
(Shota in Lakota) when he joined the Kit Fox
(Tokala) warrior society as a teen. Whereas
Bull Bear was squat and powerful, Smoke was
a muscular 6 foot 5 with a wondrous headdress.
When he walked, his train of long feathers
trailed behind him for several feet. He was
noted for his generosity and better liked than
Bull Bear. Around 1825 he adopted his orphaned nephew Red Cloud (whose father
had married a sister of Smoke) and raised
him as a son, though he had nine sons and
a daughter of his own with his five wives
(see Red Cloud and the Bull Bear Shooting,
in the April 2012 Wild West).
The Lakota people to which Smoke and
Bull Bear belonged were known as the Hunkpatilas (Lodges at the End of the Circle). In
1834, when Smoke was regarded as chief
of the Hunkpatilas living outside the fort,
his cousin and rival Bull Bear proposed
himself as recognized head chief. The power play
split the Hunkpatilas into opposing factions: Bull
Bears Kiyuksas (translated as Cut Offs, though
it literally means bitten in two) and Smokes
Ite-sicas (Bad Faces). The names originated when
Bull Bear, angry at having been cut off from the
Kiyuksas, threw dust into Smokes face to insult
him, or make his face bad. The divided band
was referred to collectively as the Oglalas (Scatter
Ones Own), which became the most famous
warrior clan of the late 1860s and 70s.
After the Hunkpatila divorce, a showdown
between Bull Bear and Old Smoke was inevitable. Aggravating matters was the prevalence of
raw trade whiskey. One day in 1841 Bull Bears
Kiyuksas and Smokes Ite-sicas met while on a
trading trip to Fort John. Bull Bear strode up to
Smokes tepee and challenged him. Come out,
if you are a man, and ght! he shouted. You are
a coward and an old woman! Getting no response, Bull Bear sank a knife into Smokes favorite horse. Bull Bear then strode away as the cowed
warriors of Smokes band stood aside.
When the two bands met again that November
at a trading camp set up near the fort on Chug-

Red Cloud, one of

the most prominent
of the Lakotas, had
been orphaned at
a young age and
then adopted and
raised as a son by
his uncle Smoke.

water Creek, American Fur Co. kept the whiskey

flowing. A dispute broke out, and Bull Bear and
his men took the ght to the rival camp. Smokes
warriors, including Red Cloud, were waiting. They
shot down Bull Bear with muskets and marked his
body with arrows. According to Red Clouds autobiography, one of the first shots hit Bull Bear in
the knee and brought him to the ground, at which
point Red Cloud rushed the fallen chief and shot
him through the head. The ght around the body
was Homeric, leaving six Lakotas dead and 14
wounded. In the aftermath Smoke became head
chief of the Oglalas, though the other Lakota bands,
notably the Hunkpapas, kept away from Fort John/
Laramie and the corruption by whiskey.
Smoke tried to keep peace with the whites up
until his death at 89 in 1864. He had given his
ceremonial war shirt to Fort Laramie commandant Lt. Col. William O. Collins, who sent it to
the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. A few days
after the chiefs death, Army surgeon Lt. Col. Henry Schell retrieved the body from its burial scaffold
and sent Old Smoke himself to the Smithsonian.
In 1994 the Smithsonian returned his remains.
Smoke is now buried near Porcupine, S.D. WW
OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 27

GERONIMOS

GUNFIGHTER ATTITUDE
In the 1880s the Chiricahua Apache leader
was a wanted man, on the run and ready to ght
the soldiers and scouts who pursued him By Louis Kraft

As depicted in a Guy
Manning oil painting,
when Geronimo hid
out in the mountains on
either side of the border,
he lived like an outlaw
watchful, well-armed
and ready to run or ght.

EL PRADO GALLERIES, SEDONA, ARIZ.

During negotiations
at Mexicos Caon de
los Embudos in 1886
C.S. Fly photographed
(from left) Yanozha,
Chappo (Geronimos
son), Fun and Geronimo.

30 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

Assistant Surgeon
Leonard Wood, shown
here at Fort Huachuca,
Arizona Territory, was
present at Geronimos
1886 surrender.

LEFT: ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON, #1125; TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

he whites of Geronimos eyes flashed red in the late

afternoon of Aug. 28, 1886. At that moment the war
leader and mystic of the Chiricahua Apaches Bedonkohe
band had the urge to kill. His survival skills had kept him
alive thus far, but he had reached another crossroads.
He and Naichehead of the Chokonen band and last
hereditary chief of the Chiricahuashad arrived on horseback at a rendezvous point near the pueblo of Fronteras and hid in the brush
to scrutinize the Mexicans and Americans. Jess Aguirre, prefect of the Sonoran
municipality of Arizpe, and his ofcers spoke with 4th U.S. Cavalry Captain
Henry Lawton and his ofcers, including Assistant Surgeon Leonard Wood.
Were these men plotting to kill them? On August 15 Geronimo and Naiche had
met with Aguirre near Fronteras to discuss ending their war with Mexico.
On the 25th they had spoken all day with 6th U.S. Cavalry 1st Lt. Charles
B. Gatewood, whom they called Bay-chen-daysen (Long Nose). They knew
and trusted Gatewood and had resolved to surrender to the Americans.
On August 28 Aguirres 180 Mexican troops, per the Apache chiefs
demand, remained in camp miles to the rear. Geronimo noted that some
of the Mexican ofcers were ngering their guns, but he did not sense a trap.
Geronimo and Naiche emerged from the brush with several heavily armed
Chiricahuas, as well as the unarmed Gatewood, interpreter George Wratten
and 4th Cavalry 2nd Lt. Robert Walsh. Geronimo wore a revolver on his
left hip and dragged a rie in his left hand. When the Mexican ofcers held
their ground, he and the other Apaches grew wary and halted.

When Geronimo and Naiche had met with Aguirre on the 15th, Geronimo
had spoken of ending war, claiming his followers were worn out and hungry.
It had been a ruse to get needed rest, supplies and wanted mescal, for Geronimo was not about to forget the family members and others who had died or
disappeared at the hands of the Mexicans. He and Naiche had agreed to wait
while Aguirre obtained surrender terms from Sonoran Governor Luis Torres.
With Aguirre and his ofcers again before him, Geronimo knew that to
survive he must trust his instincts. Although he knew nothing of gunslingers
on the American frontier and didnt sit with his back to a saloon wall, he
had become their brethren. He would listen to Aguirre, but that was it. If the
meeting went badly, he had a score to settle.
Aguirre stepped forward with his officers and proffered a handshake.
Geronimo started to extend his own hand, hesitated and gripped his revolver,
but then did shake. After the handshake, though, the prefect shoved his
own revolver holster around to the front. A most
fiendish expression came over [Geronimos] face,
recalled Gatewood, the whites of his eyes at the
same time turning red.
Geronimo grabbed his six-shooter and began to
pull it from the holster.

WESTERN HISTORY COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA LIBRARIES, ROSE COLLECTION, NO. 1194

n early 1851 Geronimo and his young family traveled with Mangas Coloradas and the
Bedonkohe band of the Chiricahuas south
into Chihuahua, Mexico, where they set up
a ranchera on the Ro de Janos southeast
of the presidio and pueblo of Janos. In daylight hours guards protected the families
while the other men visited Janos to make peace
overtures, trade and drink. On March 5 Colonel Jos
Mara Carrasco, who had marched east from Fronteras with some 400 men, split his command to attack
two Apache camps. One was empty, but the colonels
men reportedly killed four men and four women
at the second. Other Apaches fled to Janos, where
locals hid them. Carrascos troops entered the town,
continued killing Apaches and captured dozens more. The death toll in the
Carrasco (or Janos) Massacre was 16 men, ve women and an unspecied
number of children. The colonel returned to Sonora with six captive men,
four women and 52 children, whom the Mexicans sold into slavery. When
Geronimo and other warriors learned what happened, they hid until dark
before returning to their destroyed ranchera. The slain lay where they had
been killed and mutilated. In Mexico Apache scalps paid a bounty.
Years later Geronimo told artist Elbridge Burbank, who painted several
portraits of the warrior, that he found his mother, Juana, a Bedonkohe; his
rst wife, Alope, a Nednhi Apache; and their three children dead, lying in
a pool of blood. He had considered himself a warrior who provided for his
family with wild game and the trophies of war. No longer. The deaths turned
him into a predator that craved the blood of those who had murdered his family.
Over the years Geronimo would lose more wives, children and family
members to death or capture (some he later rescued, while others fates re-

First Lt. Charles

Gatewood was
present but not
armed when
Geronimo faced
down Jess Aguirre
in August 1886.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 31

THE EVERWATCHFUL
CHIRICAHUAS
KNEW IT
WAS ONLY
A MATTER
OF TIME
BEFORE THEY
WERE CAUGHT

1888
Geronimo and
his band raid into
Mexico for horses
in this 1888 work
by artist Frederic
Remington.

An Apache girl
poses at San
Carlos. Geronimo
bolted from the
reservation in
1881 and 85.

OPPOSITE: WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/ALAMY; TOP: AUTRY NATIONAL CENTER, LOS ANGELES; RIGHT: NORTH WIND PICTURE

ARCHIVES/ALAMY

mained a mystery). This was hard to live with, but he did what most would
do in his situationhe never forgot. Although he received wounds and came
close to dying, Geronimo seemingly lived a charmed life. According to
Asa Daklugie, his nephew, Geronimo had no fear of death, as Usen (God),
had promised him he would never be killed but would live to a ripe old age
and would die a natural death.

n 1883 Geronimo had agreed to surrender to Brig. Gen. George

Crook and return to Apache reservation lands in Arizona Territory, but it didnt take long before he grew to hate the confinement and rules governing their camp along Turkey Creek in the
White Mountains. In May 1885 Geronimo initiated, or perhaps
manipulated, the last Chiricahua breakout. The Apaches led
the desperate life of outlaws on the run. As Naiche later explained to Crook: It was war. Anybody who saw us would kill us, and we
did the same thing. We had to if we wanted to live. Before long, though,
Geronimo and the others realized their days of freedom were numbered.
On Jan. 10, 1886, 3rd U.S. Cavalry Captain Emmet Crawfords Apache
scouts attacked Geronimo and Naiches camp in a remote area of Sonora
called Espinosa del Diablo. The Chiricahuas escaped without casualties,
but they lost supplies and stock. Naiche and Geronimo requested a
meeting with Crawford, who agreed. But the next morning a Mexican
force of 128 Tarahumara Indiansbitter foes of the Apaches, regardless if they were with Geronimo or U.S. scoutsattacked Crawfords
command, and the captain fell mortally wounded with a bullet wound to
the forehead. Four days later Geronimo, Naiche, Chihuahua and Nana
walked into the American camp and met with 1st U.S. Infantry 1st Lt.
Marion Maus, as Crawford was near death. The Chiricahuas agreed
to meet Crook in two moons to discuss their surrender.
In March 1886 Geronimo and followers appeared at Caon de los Embudos, Sonora, before Crooks arrival. Years later packer Henry Daly recalled

General George Crook

thought hed convinced
Geronimo to surrender.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 33

The deaths of his family members in the

1851 Carrasco Massacre turned Geronimo
against the Mexicans. Back in Mexico in
1886 after leaving the reservation in Arizona
Territory, he faced pursuit by both Mexican
and American forces. He atly told Sonoran
prefect Jess Aguirre, Ill have nothing to
do with you nor with any of your people.

34 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

the scene: Geronimo, [Naiche] and Chihuahua, with their respective followings, swept around the base of the foothills on the opposite side of the stream
like a whirlwind, dashing by as if in review, and rode on by our camp until
lost from view in the timber. They crossed the steam about 300 yards above
our camp and made camp on the upper terrace on our side of the creek.
Geronimo shouted orders as the Chiricahuas set up camp.
On March 25, the rst day of negotiations, Geronimo spoke of why he left
the reservation, expressed his desire for peace and insisted newspapers stop
reporting that he would be hanged. He admitted his men had done some
bad things but that he wanted such things all rubbed out. Most of the time
Crook studied the ground, and this frustrated Geronimo. What is the matter
that you dont speak to me? Geronimo asked. It would be better if you would
speak to me and look with a pleasant face.
When Crook did speak, he stoked the re. You had promised me in the
Sierra Madre that peace should last, but you lied. The men then bickered
over just who told the truth and who lied. When Crook rejected the reasons
Geronimo gave for why he, Naiche and Chihuahua left the reservation in 1885,
Geronimo answered that troops and scouts had been poised to arrest them,
and he had thought hed be seized and killed.
That night and into the morning of the 26th alcohol-induced anger teetering on violence, especially from Geronimo, dominated the Chiricahua camp.

JOAN PENNINGTON; ADAPTED FROM A MAP BY LOUIS KRAFT

BELOW THE
BORDER WITH
GERONIMO

IMAGES: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

By daylight the drinking and tempers had mellowed. Geronimo permitted

Tombstone photographer C.S. Fly to take a series of photos. Captain John
Bourke visited the Chiricahua ranchera that morning. We moved from
one jacal [hut] to another, he later recalled, all being constructed alike of
the stalks of the Spanish bayonet and mescal and amole, covered with shreds
of blanket, canvas and other textilesto form an impregnable little citadel.
[The ranchera] was situated upon the apex of an extinct crater, the lava blocks
being utilized as breastworks, while the deep seams in the contour of the hill
were so many fosses, to be crossed only after rueful slaughter of assailants.
That afternoon Geronimo told Crook he wanted to return to the White
Mountains, as he had done in 1883, but Crook said a two-year
exile in Florida must come rst. After dark Chihenne Apache
Kaetenae and the White Mountain Apache Chief Alchesay,
who had arrived with Crook, entered the Chiricahua camp
and tried to agitate and demoralize the band. According
to Bourke, they did this by dividing their councils, exciting their hopes and enhancing their fears. An anxious
Geronimo kept the warriors and boys armed and ready to
fend off treachery.
On the morning on the 27th Geronimo again had his
back to a wall, albeit a gurative one. He didnt trust Crook
and watched from the back of the gathering, his face ominously
blackened with pounded galena. Naiche and Chihuahua in turn
surrendered. Geronimo, seeking harmony with his fellow tribesmen, stepped up to Crook. We are all comrades, all one family, all one
band, he said. What the others say I say also. I give myself up to you.
Do with me what you please. I surrender. Once I moved like the wind.
Now I surrender to you, and that is all.
The next day Crook departed for Arizona Territory, leaving Maus the
duty of escorting northward the remnants of a once-free people. During
the trip Geronimo and four warriors vanished, only to reappear along
Cajn Bonito Creek. They had set re to the surrounding woods and
grass. Drunk and unruly but compliant, Geronimolike so many
angst-ridden gunfightershad again used alcohol to soothe
his nerves. The march continued, but on March 29 at San
Bernardino Springs, as he, Naiche and others drank mescal
deep into the night, Geronimos mind whirled with
dread of an uncertain future and his unfounded
belief Crook intended to imprison or kill
him. That night he, Naiche,
18 men and 22 women
and children bolted.

lthough Geronimo didnt consider frontier pistoleers

kindred spirits, his survival skills certainly matched
those of such men who survived by their cunning and
expertise with rearms. Geronimo watched his back
at all times, as he never knew who might be gunning
for himMexicans, Americans, even fellow Apaches.
To avoid contact with their pursuers, he and Naiche
split into smaller bands. Even so, Geronimo later admitted, The U.S. sol-

Geronimo poses with

a pistol in later years.
Left: Lorenzo Ghiglieri
rendered this bronze of
Geronimo on the run.

Scouts and soldiers

seek the wanted
Apache in Howard
Terpnings The Second
Geronimo Campaign.
36 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

LEFT: TERPNING FAMILY LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, LLC; TOP: FROM LOUIS KRAFT PERSONAL COLLECTION

General Nelson Miles

accepted Geronimos
nal surrender north
of the Mexican border
in September 1886.

dierswere soon trailing us and skirmishing with us almost every day. Four
of five times they surprised our camp. And it wasnt just the Americans.
Sonoran hacienda owner Patricio Valenzuela formed a 30-man posse after
Apaches stole some livestock, and on June 17, 1886, the Mexicans charged an
Apache band north of his Agua Fra ranch. Bullets struck Geronimos wife,
who emptied her revolver before being killed. Geronimo tried to ride off with
female captive Trinidad Verdin, but his horse tripped, throwing him and Verdin. She ran toward the Mexicans. Geronimo, who may have been wounded,
scrambled into a box canyon while the rest of the Apaches ed. Valenzuela
and his men closed in on Geronimo, but he killed three of them and wounded
another with his 1873 Springeld rie, and the Mexicans broke off pursuit.
By mid-July Geronimo and Naiche had reunited and were camped near
the Ro Yaqui. At noon on July 13 two Apache scouts found the camp, and
Lawtonwith the scouts, 19 infantrymen under Assistant Surgeon Wood
and a pack traincaptured the camp and the Apaches supplies. The everwatchful Chiricahuas again slipped the noose, but they knew it was only
a matter of time before they were caught. They were exhausted, bleary-eyed
skeletons, desperate for provisions and constantly alert for an attack.
On August 24 Gatewood, a handful of Americans and Chiricahua scouts
Martine and Kayitah followed the trail of two women to Geronimos stronghold. The next day Gatewood arrived to present Geronimo with the removal
to Florida terms of Crooks replacement, Brig. Gen. Nelson Miles. Geronimo, who sat so close to Gatewood that his revolver rubbed against the
lieutenants side, spoke of all the ills heaped upon his people. He insisted
on a return to the reservation with no punishment. When Gatewood couldnt
offer terms, Geronimo snarled, Take us to the reservation or ght. Naiche
spoke for the rst time, reassuring Long Nose he would not be harmed. Safe
for the moment, Gatewood gambled and told them that the Chiricahuas on
the reservation had been shipped to Floridasomething that would happen,
though it hadnt yet. Geronimos eyes turned cold, steely. If true, then they

TOP: UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP LIMITED/ALAMY

and their followers had nowhere to turn, for their people were already gone.
Hours later Gatewood told Geronimo he must trust Miles, and the next
morning Geronimo met with Gatewood. If you will give your word that
we can meet General Miles with safety, Geronimo said, we will go to meet
him and accept his terms. Geronimo insisted that the Apaches retain their
weapons and travel and camp separately, but that Gatewood remain with them
and Lawtons command protect them from attack.
On August 28 Lawtons command and the Apaches set out for the border,
and that afternoon Aguirres army appeared. Geronimo packed up and ran
north but later agreed to meet with the perfect. After their nervous handshake, Aguirre shifted his holster around front, and Geronimo grabbed
for his pistol. But Aguirre put both hands behind his back, and the ame in
Geronimos eye subsided. Aguirre stated hed march norte con los Americanos.
No, you are going south, and I am going north, Geronimo almost hissed.
Ill have nothing to do with you nor with any of your people.
A lone Mexican soldier tagged along to ensure the Apaches did cross the
border. When the parties halted in Arizona Territorys Guadalupe Canyon
on August 31, another crisis arose. Warriors visiting the soldier camp panicked when they overheard 4th U.S. Cavalry 1st Lt. Abiel Smith, commanding in Lawtons absence, express his desire to pitch in with the troop and
have it out right there. Wood later admitted that it was arranged if the Indians acted unreasonably at the conference, each man should kill the Indian
next to him. Geronimo and the others rode from the canyon, but later he,
Gatewood and interpreter Wratten rode back to confront Smith and Wood.
Geronimo asked what Gatewood would do if the soldiers started shooting,
and the lieutenant replied that if he couldnt stop them, he would run with
the Apaches. Things grew heated, and Gatewood, according to Wratten,
threatened to blow the head off the first man if Smith didnt back off.
No doubt had Gatewood gone for his gun, Geronimo would have joined him.
As it was, the Chiricahuas proceeded safely to Skeleton Canyon in New
Mexico Territory. Geronimo surrendered to Miles on September 3, Naiche
the following day, and Geronimos days of living by the gun ended. WW

Geronimo and
Crook (in pith
helmet at right)
meet in 1886.
Left: Geronimo
poses in captivity.

Louis Kraft, of North

Hollywood, Calif., is an
award-winning author
and frequent contributor
to Wild West. For further
reading see Krafts own
Gatewood & Geronimo,
Edwin R. Sweeneys From
Cochise to Geronimo:
The Chiricahua Apaches,
18741886, and John
G. Bourkes On the
Border With Crook.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 37

An Apache warrior
res from ambush
a not infrequent
scenario in deadly
Doubtful Canyon.

NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY

CERTAIN DEATH
IN DOUBTFUL
CANYON
For Chiricahua country travelers it was a reliable place to nd good graze
and waterthe question was whether one could make it through alive
By Doug Hocking and Carol A. Markstrom

At the foot of Steins

Peak are the ruins
of a stout stone
way station built in
1858 by employees
of John Butterelds
Overland Mail.

OPPOSITE AND BELOW RIGHT: DOUG HOCKING PHOTOS

oubtful Canyon is without

doubt an intriguing place
of historical significance,
although few visitors pass
through it anymore. Actually,
two canyons in the Peloncillo
Mountains share the name,
their respective heads, separated by only a few
feet, forming a pass. The western canyon, sometimes called West Doubtful Canyon, carves across
Cochise County, Arizona, running narrow and
deep 3 or 4 miles south through the heart of the
Peloncillos to the San Simon Valley. The other
canyon, usually just called Doubtful Canyon, runs
west to east about 4 miles to Animas Playa, a dry
lake in Hidalgo County, New Mexico. It is a mile
and a half wide with a 10-foot-deep arroyo. As one
enters the canyon from the east, the peaks hide the
pass. Doubtful Canyon (referring to both gorges)
was a named feature on the Southern Emigrant
Trail, a year-round route to California. Home to
the Chiricahua Apaches, it was also the deadliest
passage on a difcult road.
The Southern Emigrant Trail, which meanders
along the 32nd parallel, was also John Butterelds
Overland Mail route. Today Interstate 10 follows
the same general course, bypassing the once perilous canyons of Chiricahua Apache country
Cookes Canyon (100 miles east of the Arizona
New Mexico line), Apache Pass (30 miles west of
the state line) and, most hazardous of all, Doubtful
Canyon. Skirting Steins Peak, this gap in the Peloncillos was blessed with good graze and water and
thus desirable to all travelers. But it was also a
dark and bloody ground, a place where violent encounters spawned enduring legends. Had travelers
dubbed the canyon Doubtful due to ones slim
chance of survival or due to its obscure location? Perhaps something of both applies. Author Dan Thrapp
once remarked that more skirmishes occurred in
this area than in the better-known Apache Pass.

rawn to water, various Apache

groupsMimbreos, Bedonkohes,
Chokonens, Coyoterosfavored
Doubtful Canyon as a place to
make camp. Defensible terrain characterized the canyon to the west, while anyone
approaching from the east was visible for miles.
Prehistoric farmers preceded the Apaches, leaving
scattered pottery as evidence of their sojourns.

Doubtful Canyon lay along an ancient route from

central Mexico via Sonora that ran through the
pass to Zuni Pueblo and the Rio Grande.
In the 16th century Spanish conquistadors under Francisco Vsquez de Coronado passed this
way, led by Indian guides following the ancient
trails. The Spaniards traveled north along the
San Pedro River, turning east at Mule Pass, between the Dragoon and Mule mountains, to follow
watercourses across the Sulphur Springs Valley to
Puerto del Dado (Pass of the Die, referring to the
gambling kind of dietheir name for Apache Pass).
From there they would have kept the Peloncillos
to their west, heading north to the San Francisco
River and distant Zuni, the fabled Seven Cities
of Gold. Archaeologists have found traces of their
passage in Doubtful Canyon.
It was boundary commissioner John Russell
Bartlettin dening the boundary described in the
1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended
the Mexican Warwho named the mountain range
stretching from the Gila River to the Mexican border. Intending to use the descriptive Spanish word
piloncillo, which means sugar cone, he misspelled
it peloncillo, meaning little baldy. In the Spanish
of the Rio Arribathat part of New Mexico north
of Santa Fepelon can also mean difcult, or risky.
Or, to put it another way, doubtful.
In 184647 Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke,
riding at the head of the Mormon Battalion,
d i rected construction of the first road through
the region. Following the ancient New Mexico
Sonora Trail, the battalion missed the direct route
and instead marched to the southern end of the
Peloncillos through narrow, forbidding Guadalupe Pass past Guadalupe Peak, in the
sacred heartland of the Chiricahuas.
Later travelers cut through Doubtful Canyon, thus avoiding the
long detour. In 1857 the San
AntonioSan Diego Mail Line
(aka Jackass Mail), the earliest overland stagecoach and
mail operation, plied the Doubtful route. In 1858 Colonel James
B. Leach, spearheading construction of another
wagon road, went by way of Doubtful Canyon,
as did the Butterfield Overland, which replaced
the Jackass Mail that year.
Buttereld employees Silas St. John and William Buckley built a stone station near a spring

Lt. Col. Philip St.

George Cooke missed
the shorter canyon
route when building
a road through the
region in 184647.

Artifacts such as this

key to a tin lid speak
to the 19th-century
travelers that passed
through the canyon.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 41

Another Doubtful nd
was this 19th-century
can, perhaps used
to hold the lunch
of an Overland
Mail employee.

at the foot of Steins Peak. Sheltered within its 60-by-30foot walls, which were 10
feet high and 32 inches
thick, were a corral
and three covered
interior rooms for
storage and sleeping.
Meals were served
while hands swapped
out the mule team on
a coach that ran day and
night. Stock was brought inside the walls at night, and the
three stationkeepers were armed with
revolvers and rapid-fire Sharps breechloaders.
The nearest help was more than 100 miles southwest at Fort Buchanan.
Shortly after the station went into operation,
Mangas Coloradas (Red Sleeves) arrived with his
Apache warriors to demand a large gift of cornmeal. Wisely, John Butterfield had made provision to pay the Apaches a toll to pass through
their lands unmolested, and between 1858 and
61 the line was plagued by relatively few violent
incidents. But the peace was tenuous, and trouble
was brewing farther west at Apache Pass.

n February 1861 the Bascom Affair (see related story in the February 2008 Wild West)
marks the date, if not the cause, of a change
in relations with the Apaches and the rst
attacks on Overland Mail coaches. By
March, Congress was convinced the southern mail
route, which ran through Confederate Texas, was
no longer secure and ordered the mail coaches to

use the northern route. The Army soon would be

called to the Rio Grande to defend against invading Texans. But the Union was losing control of
what would become Arizona Territory. By July 1861
only a handful of ghting men remained.
In March 1861 Confederate entrepreneur George
H. Giddings, still operating the Jackass Mail within
Texas, took steps to acquire the abandoned route.
He sent brother John J. Giddings to inspect the
Overland Mail facilities and determine what would
be needed in men, stock, repairs and supplies. In
April, John left Mesilla in an Overland Mail coach
accompanied by employees of the Jackass Mail and
onetime Butterfield men Michael Neiss (or McNeese), Sam Nealy, conductor Anthony Elder and
a driver remembered only as Briggs.
The rooster tail of dust raised by the stage as
it crossed the Animas Playa gave Cochise and his
warriors time to prepare. Using masonry from
Steins Peak Station to scrabble together fighting
positions, the Chiricahua chief and his braves
watched the stage approach. As the coach emerged
from a wash at the station, a fusillade rang out.
Driver Briggs fell dead over the side at the first
shots. Elder, the conductor, reached desperately
for the reins as the startled mules broke into a gallop. But he, too, was felled, and the coach careened
out of control, racing driverless through the Apache
ambush. On it sped with three men trapped inside
and the pursuing Chiricahuas screaming their war
cries. Around Steins Peak the mules edged too
close to Doubtful Arroyo, and the stage tumbled
over its sheer side into the ditch. Battered but alive,
Giddings, Neiss and Nealy huddled in the conned
space as bullets pierced the thin wood and canvas
of the lightweight celerity wagon.

Captain James Henry Tevis, who led an already eventful life, tried to insert himself into the Cochise-Neiss-Giddings episode, claiming he and two friends were
captured by Cochise and taken to Doubtful Canyon for torture. As he told it, after
walking barefoot from near Pinos Altos and having his feet burned and slashed
by Cochise, he alone escaped with the help of a friendly chief while his friends
were suspended upside down and roasted. His friends, he asserts, were the two
men found suspended later that month. While Giddings and Neiss bodies were
unrecognizable, their timely discovery was well reported. Tevis also claimed Neiss was part of
a 122-man party the Apaches annihilated in Doubtful Canyon. Despite the scale of the alleged
massacre, however, newspapers of the era reported no such incident. D.H. and C.A.M

42 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

TOP: DOUG HOCKING PHOTO

Tevis Stretches the Truth

DOUG HOCKING PHOTO

Years later Cochise recalled that Nealy put up

a ght, slaying three Apaches with his rapid-ring
Sharps before succumbing. At that point Giddings
and Neiss sought to negotiate with their attackers,
throwing up their hands and hailing the Chiricahuas in Spanish. But Cochise was in no mood
to parley. The chief had his warriors bind each
mans ankles and drag the captives uphill to a
stand of cedars. There they were hoisted aloft until
hanging upside down a forearms length above
the ground. Directly beneath them the Apaches lit
small res, tormenting their captives for agonizing
days. They died like poor, sick women, Cochise
recalled in disgust. (See sidebar, opposite page.)
On April 23, 1861, the Tucson newspaper
reported that freighters Edward Donnelly and
Patrick Donaghue had recently left Tanks Station
east of Steins Peak, near present-day Lordsburg,
N.M.bound for San Simon. Their return journey had taken them through Doubtful Canyon.
They were never seen again. Two travelers, remembered only as Paige and OBrien, also attempted
the Doubtful route that April and were seen no
more. Even Grant Oury, Arizona delegate to the
Provisional Confederate States Congress, though
leading a well-armed wagon train, came under
attack in the canyon.
In July 1861 seven well-armed Union men,
some former Butterfield employees, who were
quitting the country in advance of the Confederate invasion, departed Mesilla in an Overland
Mail coach en route to California. They made it
no farther than Cookes Canyon, 100 miles east

of Doubtful Canyon, before Chiricahua warriors

attacked them. In a three-day battle they made
the Apaches pay for their lives and won Cochises
respect (see related story in the October 2005
Wild West). Some accounts mistakenly place this
clash in Doubtful, but events there were more
than bloody enough.

uring the Civil War the civilian population of Arizona either forted up
or ed the territory, and Doubtful
Canyon remained quietwith one
exception. On May 4, 1864, Company I, 5th Infantry, California Volunteers, was
returning from service on the Rio Grande to Fort
Bowie, 30 miles west of Steins Peak. Crossing the
divide to the lower, more dangerous west canyon,
Private Henry Dosher strolled well ahead of the
company with his dog and was lost from view. As
the main body came down the nal pitch, Apaches
suddenly rose up on either side and in front, ring
on the 56 infantrymen. Sergeant Charles Tobias
fell wounded in that rst volley, Private Chandler
Abbott dropping beside him, shot through the
torso. Meanwhile, 2nd Lt. Henry H. Stevens,
respected by his men, fought to get free of his
stricken horse. Just as Privates Charles Nelson,
Paul Stone and James Webb also fell wounded,
the lieutenant regained control of his unit. Returning organized re, the company advanced on the
Apaches on high ground scarce yards away. Lieutenant Stevens is a brick, one of his men wrote
admiringly in a letter about the engagement.

This depiction of a
celerity wagon run
by the Overland
Mail appears on a
mural at City Hall
in Benson, Ariz. In
1861 Cochise and
warriors ambushed
one such coach in
Doubtful Canyon.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 43

Independent scholar
and Wild West contributor Doug Hocking has
lived among the Jicarilla
Apaches and served as
a U.S. Army ofcer. He
specializes in American
history, ethnology and
historical archaeology.
Carol Markstrom is a
professor in the Department of Learning Sciences
and Human Development
and teaches Native American studies at West Virginia University. She
researches and writes
about Apache history and
culture and is the author
of Empowerment of North
American Indian Girls
(2008). Suggested for
further reading: Forgotten
Fights, by Gregory F. and
Susan J. Michno; From
Cochise to Geronimo, by
Edwin R. Sweeney; and
I Fought With Geronimo,
by Jason Betzinez.

44 WILD WEST

A Curious Interruption
In I Fought With Geronimo, his rst-person account of the 1882 San Carlos breakout, Jason
Betzinez referred to a striking episode he termed a curious interruption. On April 23 the eeing Apaches paused near Steins Peak, within earshot of the unfolding clash at Horseshoe Canyon,
to celebrate a teen girls passage into womanhood, as it was necessary to recognize her transition within four days. Reportedly over two nights the camp engaged in song and dance, expressing thanks to Usen (God). Apache oral tradition tells of a powerful being named White Painted
Woman, who instructed the people to conduct this ritual as a celebration of all life-giving properties. Procedural propriety was not simply for the benet of the one girl but to ensure the welfare of
the entire groupin this case, deliverance from pursuit. Though warriors faced an overwhelming
enemy force, the people were compelled to celebrate this crucial feast. D.H. and C.A.M

Though the harrowing fight had lasted but a

few minutes, some of the men insisted in letters
home it had lasted for hours. As the infantrymen
advanced, the Apaches vanished, fading into their
desert surroundings. The proud infantrymen
claimed to have killed as many as 50 Indians,
though its more likely the Apaches slipped away
unscathed. Though Private Doshers body was
never found, his faithful dog returned to the command covered in human blood. (Fortunately for
the canine, the Apaches ate horse not dog.) On
May 20, 1885, the Arizona Daily Citizen reported
from Tucson that 25 bleached skeletons in torn
blue military uniforms had turned up in Doubtful
Canyonthe remains, no doubt, of a lost military
command. Perhaps Dosher had been found.
On March 4, 1871, Apache raiders killed Charles
Keerle, his wife and a half-dozen others in Chihuahua, Mexico. Two weeks later Captain Gerald
Russell, at the head of 11 men of Company K,
3rd Cavalry, fought Cochise in the Peloncillo
Mountains north of Steins Peak, killing three
Apaches before returning to Fort Bowie for reinforcements. Continuing the pursuit, he found

OCTOBER 2015

an abandoned Chiricahua ranchera in which were

discovered a gentlemans glove, a book and a
tress of auburn womans hair carefully wrapped
in paper. Russell believed these to be the last
traces of Keerle and his wife.
From the 1860s through the 1880s the site of
the old mail station remained a favored camp
for Apaches. It lay along their route to Mexico.
Winding through the Peloncillos, the Chiricahuas
threaded Doubtful and then entered Skeleton
Canyon, which joined onward trails to Guadalupe
Canyon in a concealed route to the Sierra Madre.
In April 1882 Geronimo, Naiche, Chatto and
Juh returned to the San Carlos Apache Indian
Reservation to spring relatives they had left
behind and compel Chief Locos Warm Springs
band to jump the reservation and ee with them
to Mexico. The renegade warriors, who covered
their trail by slaying everyone with whom they
came in contact, were hotly pursued by Lt. Col.
George Sandy Forsyth, at the head of Companies C, F, G, H and M of the 4th Cavalry (nearly
500 soldiers). The Chiricahuas wound in and out
of the Peloncillos. Seldom in the annals of the

TOP AND OPPOSITE BELOW RIGHT: DOUG HOCKING PHOTOS

The Sunrise Ceremony,

held to celebrate an
Apache girls passage
into womanhood, also
ensures the bands
general welfare.

THE RENEGADE WARRIORS

COVERED THEIR TRAIL BY SLAYING
EVERYONE WITH WHOM THEY
CAME IN CONTACT
Apache wars had such a large body of soldiers
made contact with an Indian band.
During the chase an Apache girl entered into
womanhood, and the band paused to perform the
Sunrise Ceremony (see sidebar, opposite page).
Over the hill from Doubtful, within earshot of the
women and children, the Battle of Horseshoe Canyon raged. High above the cavalry the Apaches
dodged from cover to cover, ring down on Forsyths troopers, pinned in position below. Loco
set fire to the grass to screen the movements of
his warriors. During lulls in the firing, the ceremonial drumbeats and chanting drifted eerily
down the canyon. For long hours warriors fought
off Forsyth and company while the women and
children danced. And then something inexplicable occurred. With four scouts killed and only
a few soldiers wounded, one mortally, Colonel
Forsyth broke contact and pulled his men back
to Fort Bowie. The military community, and especially veteran scout Al Sieber, was outraged.
Sieber wrote to the newspapers:
Colonel Forsyth had attacked the band with six
companies of the 4th Cavalry and in a place
where he could have held them as long as he
might wish. If he could not handle the band
to any purpose, why did he not send for more
troops, as plenty of them were near, and he could
have had as many as he wanted inside of 12

hours? If the hostiles had withdrawn, they could have gone

nowhere but into a valley, and
in that case what better could
he wish? Captain [Tullius] Tuppers 6th Cavalry, with only 39
soldiers and 45 scouts for actual
ghting, fought the same band in
a very strong place, killedif eye
evidence is worth anything
17 bucks and seven squaws and
captured 74 head of their stock.
If 84 men can do this, why is it
that 500 men cant do anything?

In 1885 Apaches slipped away in small groups

from Fort Bayard, New Mexico Territory, killing
civilians and stealing their arms and cattle as
they fled. The mountains swallowed up these
small bands, making pursuit difcult for soldiers
and even for Siebers own Apache scouts. That
same year Doubtful Canyon was the site of a
skirmish between two-dozen cattleman and an
equal number of Apaches. When the ring stopped,
the cattlemen closed in and found an Apache
infant, who came to be raised by a white woman
in Safford, Arizona Territory. The child became
known as the Doubtful Kid. Only when Geronimo surrendered in 1886 (see related story, P. 28)
did Doubtful Canyon nally fall silent. WW

In April 1882, near

Doubtful Canyon, Lt.
Col. George Forsyth
clashed with Geronimo
and other Apaches
who had jumped the
San Carlos reservation.

Doubtful Canyon Today

The remains of Steins Peak Station, on the Overland Mail route, lie in
the dusty backcountry far from any road. Guarded by a locked gate
on the ArizonaNew Mexico border, it takes some effort to visit the site.
A headstone on Giddings desolate grave (see photo), erected by his
daughter in the 1920s, stands mute sentinel over what was once an active
pass. The ruins themselves evoke the feelings of loneliness, isolation and
fear that surely plagued the stationkeepers in their time. In the narrows
of Doubtful Canyon the walls loom menacingly close. This was the terrain
most feared by vulnerable travelers with no route of escape, knowing that
Apaches watched from the rocky cliffs above. Despite the risks, the canyon
promised swift passage through the otherwise steep, craggy mountains
and greatly facilitated travel for centuries. D.H. and C.A.M

GHOSTS BUSTED AT

SAND CREEK
Visitors have reported strange sights and sounds at the traditional site
of the 1864 tragedyonly its the wrong site By Gregory Michno

People hear and see ghosts in the

wrong spot and often scramble the
historical facts regarding Sand Creek.
Eugene Ridgelys elk-hide depiction is
dramatic, but archaeological evidence
reveals the ght was not in the village.

 AKADEMIE/ALAMY

he Sand Creek battle/

massacre, which played
out in southeast Colorado Territory on Nov. 29,
1864, remains one of the
most hotly argued events
in the history of the American West. Was it
a massacre because at least 150 Cheyennes
and Arapahos were killed, or a battle because there were also 76 soldier casualties?
Were the Indians peaceful? Were they
under Army protection? Did they fly an
American ag in the village? Was there a
saber charge through the village? Did the
chiefs die stoically in front of their tepees?
These points of contention still raise tempers 151 years after the bloody event.
A range of conscious and subconscious
factors impact our understanding of what
happened at Sand Creek. We learn in school
that primary sources can reveal the facts
behind the history. But is a primary source
much better than a secondary source or
even oral tradition? The primary source
most likely derives from an eyewitness
or participant who sometime after an
event relates a story, gives testimony or
writes a letter, journal or memoir. He is
subject to a number of subconscious factors, including prejudice, implanted memories, cognitive dissonance, conrmation
bias, self-afrmation, motivated reasoning,
social, cultural and political mores, and a
brain that simply wants him to feel good.
The witness may even be an outright liar.
Given such obstacles, factual accuracy is
a chimera, no more real than faces we
imagine in the clouds. The secondary
source is a facsimile, most likely related
by a historian subject to similar faults and
foibles, separated from events by time,
subject to ZeitgeistCaption
and personal
Here. biases,
and pondering theThis
same
drifting
clouds
is a caption.
but discerning different
faces.
Oral
history
Caption Here.
is more of the same,This
further
is a separated
caption. by
time and even harder
to verify.
Caption
Here.
a caption.
In a world of nutsThis
andisbolts
reality such
Caption history, so it
factors can lead to inaccurate
should be no surprise that the processes
inuencing our brains have an impact on
what some might call the supernatural

world. I would argue there are two realms, the

natural and supernatural, and that the former
is real and the latter pure fantasy, populated by
the likes of fairies, elves, goblins, angels, devils,
ghosts, gods and Mother Goose. But because
our brains often have a tough time distinguishing between the realms, elements that belong in
the natural world have a way of slipping into the
realm of the supernatural.
A good number of us who
remain esh and bone believe
we can nd answers to our historical questions in the supernatural
world. Do the spirits of those killed at
Sand Creek exist, and can they communicate
their anguish to the living? Do the spirits even
know where they are, where their village once
stood and where they were killed? I broach such
questions because it appears the supposed ghosts
of Sand Creek may be wailing in the wrong place.

all tales develop after almost

every tragedy. A year after the
Sand Creek clash, one such story
begins, buffalo hunter Kipling
Brightmaster (or Brightwater)
claimed to have seen a band of
Cheyennes camped on the site of the fight. He
sent a scout to talk to them, but no one was there
when the scout arrived. Soldiers from Fort Lyon

48 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

investigated but also found nothing. They wrote

off Brightmaster as either delusional or drunk.
The next year Brightmaster was back in the area
and this time claimed to have seen Indians, their
horses, tepees and res. As he approached, however, the entire assemblage vanished into a mist.
Brightmaster only heard the anguished wails of
a woman in mourning.
In 1902 a photographer attempted to capture
the campsite on film, to no avail. In 1911 a local
woman was passing the site when she heard a child
crying, but a search turned up nothing. Other
stories rolled in over the next century. In the 1990s
visitors to the area claimed to have experienced
intense pain and anguish. Even members of archaeological teams have described feeling overwhelming
grief and sadness.
More recent visitors have reported similar feelings. Don Vasicek, who made a 2004 documentary film about Sand Creek, said in an interview
with Ghost Story magazine he was overcome with
emotion on his first visit to the field. At that
moment, Vasicek said, I saw Colonel John
M. Chivington [the U.S. commander] on a darkcolored horse, with his saber drawn, thrashing
down this butte into Sand Creek, leading a charge
right into the heart of the Cheyenne and Arapaho
village. I saw his aming eyes, orbs of hatred and
terror. It was at that point I felt coldness penetrate
my body. I shivered.I closed my eyes. I didnt

TOP: NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY; LEFT AND OPPOSITE: ARROWHEADS CHUCK AND SHERI BOWEN

This illustration of
the Sand Creek
clash incorrectly
depicts a mounted
charge through
the Indian village.

want to look anymore. I could hear gunshots, the

thud of rifle butts colliding with human heads,
sabers slashing through the air, people screaming,
and I could smell globs [of] gunpowder.
Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a chief of the Cheyenne Council of 44 and former U.S. senator from
Colorado, once visited Sand Creek to put up a
commemorative sign. It was about 6 in the morning, he recalled, just as the sun was coming up.
And it was very, very quiet, and I swear I heard
babies crying. And it was such a strong emotional
experience for me, I left there. But Ive talked
to several of my cousins who have also gone there
really early in the morning, and they say the
same thing.
Laird Cometsevah, a fellow chief of the Council of 44, visited the site for years to perform
sacred rituals. At times he heard the voices of
children, of mothers, crying for help, which convinced him thats where Black Kettles people
got killed. An absence of physical evidence did
not deter him. He was certain it was the spot.
Decades earlier Cometsevah had accompanied
the Cheyenne keeper of the Sacred Arrow to
Sand Creek, and the keeper had consecrated the
ground, making it Cheyenne earth.
Spiritually and religiously [we] claimed that spot
for the Cheyennes, Cometsevah said. The arrow
keeper wasnt wrong, he insisted. I wasnt wrong.
Thats exactly where the massacre happened.

The village had to have once stood at Dawson

South Bend on Sand Creek, as the Cheyenne
performed a sacred ceremony there. Why there?
Because thats where the village was. The circular logic is appalling. Many Cheyennes could not
accept the fact that the traditional village
site contained no related artifacts, and
that archaeological surveys showed the
village to have been from 1 to 1.5 miles
farther upstream. Theyre calling our
ancestors liars, Cometsevah said.
The certainty is Cometsevahs ancestors
werent liars any more than were the soldiers
ancestorswhich doesnt say much, because
being truthful does not necessarily equate to
being accurate. The reality is their collective
decient subconscious wreaked havoc on historical truth. We have enough trouble nailing down
facts; to accede to spirits and visions as a basis for
reconstructing a historical site is like returning to
the Dark Agesthen again, given our propensity
to believe in the supernatural, perhaps we never
left it. One might think that if a person had the
ability to envision the past, he would see what
really occurred and not merely repeat how novelists, filmmakers or poor historians might have
depicted it. For one thing there was no saber
charge at Sand Creek. According to the ordnance
report of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry, sabers were
not even issued to the regiment. More pertinent,

This arrowhead and

the one opposite were
found near the actual
village site, as was the
spoon shown on P. 51.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 49

however, is that the ghost-seers missed the location entirely. Vasicek, Campbell,
Cometsevah and hundreds of others visited the wrong place. Black Kettles
village was not on the spot where they stood imagining the horrors of
warfare and hearing wailing women and crying babies. Had the ghosts
of the departed wanted to reach out to those who claimed to have heard
them, theyd had to have used cell phones.

50 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

TOP LEFT: GREGORY MICHNO; LEFT: THE DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY, WESTERN HISTORY COLLECTION, Z-877

Private Morse Cofn

recalled that he and
the other soldiers
had walked through
the deserted village.

ll these visitors with overactive imaginations were in the

wrong spot. Their visions also dont jibe with primary
evidence. For instance, soldiers were among the rst
to die, and the cavalry never charged through the
villagethe dismounted troopers walked through
it. Major Jacob Downing instructed Major Scott
Anthony not to mount a cavalry charge, as it would
place the horses at too great risk of injury. We proceeded through the village on a walk, said
Private Morse Coffin. I think the town
at this time was entirely deserted by the
Indians, as not one was to be seen
thereabouts. The mixed-blood Robert
Bent, scouting for the whites, recalled,
They [the Indians] had time to get away if
they had wanted to. No chiefs died stoically
in front of their lodges. There was no slaughter
in the villagethat came later.
At present-day Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
[nps.gov/sand] the stone monument atop a bluff overlooking the
creek, near the visitor center, does not mark the site of Black
Kettles village. In 2002 Southwest Entertainment, which owns
a number of casinos, bought the alleged site of the massacre and
then deeded it to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, which then placed it under the management of the
National Park Service. Trouble was, those who
metal detected the area never found any artiMajor Scott
facts to verify the legitimacy of the site. The
Anthony followed
NPS and a team of professional archaeologists
orders and, for the
inspected the area and determined the village
sake of the horses,
site actually lay more than a mile farther north.
did not mount a
Chuck Bowen thought that was where it
cavalry charge.
might be. He grew up on a ranch a few miles
north of the historic site, had scoured the area
and over the years discovered numerous village- and battle-related
artifacts on his parents land. He and wife Sheri intensied their efforts
to nd the true battle site after the Colorado Historical Society [history
colorado.org] began inspecting the area in 1993. By 1997 they were
seriously at work with metal detectors, history books and maps, assembling a remarkable collection of about 3,000 relicsall found on Bowen
property starting about 2 miles northwest of the traditional site.
The NPS entered the picture after passage of a 1998 historic study bill
sponsored by Campbell. With the help of period maps and Bowens suggestions, the agency pinpointed a concentration of artifacts a mile or

more north of Dawson South Bend. It had found

Black Kettles village. The artifact patterns indicated the village was not drawn up in a tight circle
as usually depicted but strung out along the course
of the creek for about a mile. The place where so
many people had claimed to have seen visions
and heard cries was not where the village sat or
where the ghting took place, a eld that actually
stretched upstream 2 to 5 miles or more.

TOP: JOAN PENNINGTON MAP, BASED ON A MAP BY GREGORY MICHNO; SPOON CHUCK AND SHERI BOWEN

o, what happens when modern spirit

seekers hunt for the ghosts of the
dead at the right place? A curious
Chuck Bowen allowed a team of ghost
hunters to try its luck, and the author
tagged along. We assembled on a dirt
road on the Bowen property on a late afternoon
in March 2004. The late start would have us
thrashing around the bed of Sand Creek in the
twilight and darkness, making the experience
spookier for all.
The group came equipped with all the musthaves for any reputable ghost hunter: infrared
thermometers, EMF (electromagnetic eld) detectors, audio recorders, night vision devices, atmospheric meters and extra batteries, for every good
ghost hunter knows that prankster spirits love to
drain batteries. We drove to the south side of the
cottonwood-lined bend of the creek. The hunters
slowly walked toward the trees, adjusting meters
and sweeping detectors left and right. I asked if
ghosts preferred to play in the infrared or electromagnetic eld but got no answerskeptics are not
appreciated. On the clubs website one rule states
that anyone seeking a ghost investigation has to
be a discipleit being easier to validate spirits to
those who already believe in them.
Wed barely begun our walk when one of the
women, apparently the seerwho carried no
instruments but could pick up supernatural vibes
suddenly stopped and raised her arms out to her
sides like a telephone pole. Whats she doing?
I asked, but I was told to shhh while she received
her messages. After she lowered her arms, I waited
a respectable moment and asked, What did you
see or hear? There were women, she answered,
many were crying over their dead children, and
one in particular was telling her about how awful
it was for a mother to see her baby murdered.
I asked if these women were communicating to
her in Cheyenne, or if they had learned English

for their supernatural conversation. That question

got me a dirty look.
Approaching the creek bank, we crossed right
over a spot where Bowen had found a signicant
cache of relics, including human bones. The hunters tramped right by without so much as a beep on
their instruments or an inclination from the human
antenna regarding what should have been one of
the hottest spots on the eld. They were headed
for the trees, for amid vegetation and foliage are
found the strongest readings of signicant presences. For primitive peoples throughout history
the forest has been a dark place where spirits
conveniently congregated. The sun had
fully set, and inside the grove the hunters
really had fun. They crept through the
trees and brush, slowly swinging their instruments left and right, up and down, and occasionally taking ash photographs. Speaking
in whispers, they discussed their readings and
seemed encouraged. I sidled up to one to check
out his meter. He smiled and showed me all the
activity he was getting. The dial barely twitched;
Id assumed it would swing like a pendulum.
Theyd nished sweeping the grove when Bowen mentioned another spot he wanted them to
inspect. Night had fallen, and we piled into our
cars to follow Chucks truck taillights about a mile
farther upstream. The ghost hunters were sweeping the new site when one halted and said his
battery was dead. A common occurrence, he said,

GHOST
BUSTING
AT
SAND
CREEK

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 51

explaining, The spirits dont like the interference,

and when their presence is strong, they take it out on
us by killing our batteries. I had to ask, How come
our car batteries are working ne? He turned and
walked off. My bad. Another half-hour and they
called it a night, and miraculously all the cars started
right up. Chuck led us across a few more miles of
prairie as jackrabbits scatteredthe only activity.

Colorado resident
Gregory Michno is
a Wild West special
contributor. He wrote
a version of this story
for Skeptic magazine
(Vol. 19, No. 1, 2014).
Michno is the author
of Battle at Sand Creek:
The Military Perspective
(2004), among many
other nonction books.
52 WILD WEST

n appreciation for allowing them to do

their thing on private property, the ghost
club sent Chuck Bowen several proofs
the land was indeed haunted. They
took lots of pictures, Chuck said. It was
well after dark, and they used a flash
on the camera. Some of the pictures had
white and sometimes red dots. Bowen is a photographer and well versed in the completely mundane
explanations for such marks: reections, lens are
from too much or uneven glass, an improperly
opened aperture, dust, moisture and, in that location, drifting cottonwood seeds. But the ghost
hunters had their own explanation for the phe-

OCTOBER 2015

nomena. They said it was orbs, Chuck said, and

the red they said was angry evil spirits. In the end,
he told me, Taking the groups out was a fun experience, but for me I was underwhelmed.
Me too. I later emailed the ghost club to ask
about their findings. We got some great stuff,
the spokesperson said, EVPs [electronic voice
phenomena] of screams and crying, cannons ring, soldiers yelling. Wow. Those were some recordings. I never heard or saw any such things,
but I guess my poor senses couldnt pick up all
that phenomenal activity. All I heard or saw were
people whispering beneath the cottonwoods and
tramping through the brush. Meanwhile, the areas
that returned the most hits were the very ones
devoid of artifacts, while the ground laden with
battle relics prompted neither a beep nor a buzz
from their instruments.
What it shows is that believing is seeing, and
when given the choice, believers in the supernatural will hone in on the spot that looks spookiest.
This likely stems from learned experience and an
innate remnant from our evolutionary past that

GREGORY MICHNO

Neither this 1950

monument nor the
historic site mark
the location of the
village or the ght.

PATRIOTIC CITIZENS OF COLORADO...

PURSUE, KILL AND DESTROY ALL HOSTILE
INDIANS THAT INFEST THE PLAINS

Territorial Governor John Evans

operates more off the brains

amygdalae, deep in the limbic system, causing us to perceive patterns where there may not be any.
Hearing a noise on the African
savannah, believing it originated
from a lion in hiding and running away served us better than
not recognizing a potential danger and falling prey to the lion.
Humans are wired to conjure
patterns, but we need to realize
that our imaginings have natural explanations.
Ghost hunters believe in spirits, things that
go bump in the night, and thus are primed to
see them, but they often focus on places they feel
should be haunted. In that regard they are little

different from past visitors to

the NPS sitewhen told that
was where people died, inevitably that was where they
imagined seeing or hearing
charging soldiers, booming
cannons or crying babies. To
most humans a sunny prairie with wildowers, cottonwoods and creek would be a
place for a pleasant afternoon
picnic. Take them there at twilight and tell them it is a place
of murderous evil, and they will likely see and hear
that which their minds have been primed to experience. We see what we are. And that becomes
apparent when people visit Sand Creek. WW

Appointed territorial
governor in 1862,
John Evans issued
the above appeal
for the killing of
hostiles in 1864.

VISITING
SAND
CREEK

TOP: ROBERT STINSON; RIGHT: GREGORY MICHNO

This eld, at least a

mile upstream from
the traditional site,
was the location of
the actual village.

he Sand
Creek
Massacre
National Historic Site,
which is in Kiowa
County near Eads,
Colo., does not
encourage ghost
hunting. It does
suggest learning
history from an
interpretive ranger,
honoring the dead by
paying ones respects
at the repatriation
burial area and
looking for rare birds,
insects and fauna.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 53

HEART OF
LIGHTNESS
Buffalo hunter and guide Henri Chatillons
enlightened relationship with the Lakotas
had a lasting inuence on frontier historian
Francis Parkman By John Koster

They were Henri Chatillons treasured keepsakes, reminders of both an enduring

love and a vital friendship that left its mark on literature. In 1967 an electrician
discovered the leather-wrapped bundle beneath the attic oorboards of the ChatillonDeMenil Mansion in St. Louis. The spindle of the bundle was a high-quality
Hawken rie from the 1840s. Wrapped around it was an oil painting of a handsome, dark-bearded, sad-eyed Frenchman and a beautiful American Indian woman
in two prolesone looking up to Heaven in search of mercy, the other down to Earth,
offering consolation. The girl was Bear Robe, daughter and sister of notable Oglala
Lakota chiefs. The Hawken rie had belonged to Francis Parkman, author of the
frontier classic The Oregon Trail (1849). The mournful Frenchman in the painting
was Chatillon himself. Their shared tale is the story of the American West.

54 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

CHATILLON-DEMENIL MANSION

orn on Sept. 16, 1823, Francis Parkman Jr., the eldest son
of prominent Unitarian minister Francis Parkman, was
raised in Boston and on his maternal grandfathers estate
at nearby Medford. The younger Parkman entered
Harvard at 16, and at 20 he took a grand tour of Europe.
In Rome he declined offers to convert to Catholicism,
though he came to respect the Catholic Church. Returning to Harvard, he studied the law and wore down his eyesight to the point
it gave him trouble the rest of his life. In 1845 cousin Quincy Adams Shaw,
who had studied medicine at Harvard, proposed the postgraduates journey
west the following spring to hunt buffalo and see the Indians before they
vanished. Parkman jumped at the chance.
While they were prepping for Harvard, Henri (or Henry) Chatillon was
learning the ropes as a hunter for the American Fur Co. A grandson of French
naval ofcer Clment Delor de Treget, Chatillon was born on Dec. 3, 1813,
in Carondelet, a Missouri River town his grandfather had founded in 1767.

In 1967 this painting of

Henri Chatillon and his
Oglala wife, Bear Robe,
turned up in the attic
of his St. Louis home.

On coming one afternoon to the [American Fur

Co.] ofce, we found there a tall and exceedingly
well-dressed man with a face so open and frank
that it attracted our notice at once.From the age
of 15 years [he] had been constantly in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, employed by
the most part by the company to supply their forts
with buffalo.He had arrived in St. Louis the day
before from the mountains, where he had remained
for four years; and he now only asked to go and
spend a day with his mother before setting out on
another expedition. His age was about 30. He was
6 feet high and very powerfully and gracefully
molded. The prairies had been his school; he could
neither read nor write.His manly face was a mirror of uprightness, simplicity and kindness of heart.

Perhaps out of kindness of heart Chatillon agreed

to be their guide, for neither Parkman nor Shaw
knew a thing about the Plains tribes. Their first
hire had been a fur company employee named Deslauriersa Canadian, with all the characteristics
of the true Jean-Baptiste. Neither fatigue, exposure
nor hard labor could ever impair his cheerfulness
and gaiety or his obsequious politeness to his bourgeois [boss]. Deslauriers was a capable followera
muleteer and fry cook who drove a cart with tents,
food, and gifts for the Indians. But fur company employees had recommended Chatillon as chief guide.

n old Delaware chief took their

measure early and tacitly endorsed Henri Chatillon as the
de facto leader. Whos your
chief? the Delaware inquired
of Chatillon. The Frenchman
pointed past muleteer Deslauriers to Shaw and
Parkman. No good! the wise old chief declared.
Too young!
56 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

The woman lay in one of [the lodges], reduced to

a mere skeleton. For some time she had been unable to move or speak. Indeed, nothing had kept
her alive but the hope of seeing Henry, to whom

HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

Found in the attic

with the painting of
Chatillon and Bear
Robe was a Hawken
rie like this one.

Parkman wrote of his and Shaws meeting with

Chatillon in The Oregon Trail:

Parkman thought himself something of a hunter,

but Chatillonwho had killed at least 30 formidable grizzly bearsquietly disabused him. Needing
meat one day, the guide borrowed Parkmans new
Hawken rifle, brought along his own timeworn
muzzleloader and slipped up on buffalo grazing
upwind about 150 yards away. He red twice.
You have missed them, Parkman blurted.
A moment later one buffalo dropped as a second
staggered in its death throes. Chatillon had hit
both through the lungs at 150 yards over open
sights. You see I miss him, Chatillon said dryly.
Parkman was an inveterate snob, but he found
Chatillon to be a better horseman and rieman,
adept in Indian languages and rich in common
sense. The guide knew everyone important, white
or Indian, and they all respected him. The palpable superiority of Henry Chatillons experience
and skill made him the resort of the whole camp
upon every question of difculty, Parkman wrote.
He soon witnessed a gentler aspect of his rugged
guides character. With the hunting party members
lodged amicably among the Lakotas, one of Chatillons lackluster in-laws, an Oglala dandy known
as The Horsewho carried a dragoon sword in
his hand, solely for displayarrived with devastating news: Henris Lakota wife, Bear Robe, had
taken deathly ill.
She and her children were in the village of
The Whirlwind, at the distance of a few days
journey, Parkman recalled. Henry was anxious
to see the woman before she died and provide
for the safety and support of his children, of whom
he was extremely fond. To have refused him this
would have been gross inhumanity.
Parkman and Shaw consented to the detour.
En route, however, Parkmans shaky health collapsed with what sounds like a digestive disorder
complicated by hysterical blindness or day glare,
and he missed the sad ending to the rst marriage
of Henri Chatillon. But Shaw described Bear Robes
death to Parkman, as recorded in The Oregon Trail:

she strongly and faithfully attached. No sooner did

he enter the lodge than she revived and conversed
with him for the greater part of the night. Early in
the morning she was lifted into a [travois], and
the whole party set out toward our camp.Henry
was riding with Shaw a few rods in advance of
the Indians, when Mahto-Tatonka [sic ], a younger
brother of the woman, hastily called after them.
They reached her just in time to hear the death
rattle in her throat. In a moment she lay dead in the
basket of the vehicle. A complete stillness succeeded; then the Indians raised in concert their cries
of lamentation over the corpse.A ne horse was
picketed not far off, destined to be killed that morning for the service of her spirit, for the woman was
lame [incapacitated by her illness] and could not
travel on foot over the dismal prairies to the villages
of the dead. Food, too, was provided, and household implements for her use upon this last journey.
Henry left her to the care of her relatives and came
immediately with Shaw to the camp. It was some
time before he entirely recovered from his dejection.

Mahto-Tatonka, in his rude way, was a hero. His

principal heir, Mato Tatanka the younger, was one
of the brothers who had offered Chatillon condolences. He had oftener struck the enemy and stolen
more horses and more squaws than any young man
in the village, Parkman wrote. To the classically
trained scholar he and the other young Lakota
warriors were gures of Olympian stature. Only
on the prairie and in the Vatican have I seen such
faultless models of the human gure, he gushed.
With his free and noble attitude, with the bow in
his hand and the quiver at his back, he might seem,
but for his face, the Pythian Apollo himself.
And Parkman experienced other revelations.
One day he looked on as the Lakotas tended to a
lost runaway black slave, with no thought of turning
him in. The Lakotas routinely invited the white
hunters to eat with them. Chatillon and Shaw sometimes left the enfeebled Parkman in the care of the

Guide and hunter

Henri Chatillon
leads the way in
The Parkman Outt,
by N.C. Wyeth.

WORLD HISTORY GROUP ARCHIVE

Henris infant daughter had also died. He entrusted their older daughter to the family of a fellow fur trader. A few days later two of Bear Robes
brothers showed up to express their condolences
to Henri, whom they accepted as an actual brother.
Parkman was an acute observer. He knew that
many white men consorted with Indian women
but took no responsibility for any half-blood offspring. The idea that a man whom Parkman respected actually acknowledged and cared about
his mixed-blood children was a cultural watershed. Parkman had once used the term squalid
savageslater borrowed by his intense admirer
Theodore Rooseveltto describe the American
Indians. But Parkman, inspired by Henri Chatillon,
soon dug deeper.

ear Robes father, Bull Bear (Mato

Tatanka), had died at the hands
of rival warriors some five years
earlier (see Indian Life, P. 26). He
was the father of Henry Chatillons squaw, a circumstance which
proved of some advantage to us, Parkman noted.
OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 57

New Englander Francis

Parkman Jr. may have
been a snob, but he
came to recognize the
palpable superiority
of Henri Chatillons
experience and skill.

Parkmans cousin and

fellow Harvard grad
Quincy Adams Shaw
had proposed they
journey west in 1845.
58 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

heritage was assigned a lower rung on the evolutionary ladder. The Lakotas in Parkmans writing,
however, incontestably human and often physically and mentally impressive, come off not only
far better than other Indians but also better than
the Mormons, Missourians or hapless Mexicans
that Parkman slams in The Oregon Trail.

oon after returning Francis Parkman

and Quincy Adams Shaw to civilization, Henri Chatillon himself settled
in and made provisions for the future. Parkman recalled their parting
in The Oregon Trail:

No one who met him in the streets of St. Louis

would have taken him for a hunter fresh
from the Rocky Mountains. He was
very neatly and simply dressed
in a suit of dark cloth.We
took leave of him with
much regret.Shaw had
given him a horse at
We s t p o r t . My r i f l e ,
which he had always
been fond of using,
as it was an excellent piece, is now in
his hands.

The rifle did not

remain in his hands
long. Within a year of
the hunting partys return to St. Louis, Parkman submitted The Oregon
Trail to The Knickerbocker literary magazine in 21 installments
(184749), and the subsequent book
became a bestseller, bringing its author and
his former guide fame. Meanwhile, Chatillon
had commissioned the painting of himself and
Bear Robe, with spiritual overtones, from an
unknown St. Louis artist. In October 1848 he
married first cousin Odile Delor Lux, a widow
as he himself was a widower. Odile had earlier
purchased 21 acres in St. Louis, and the couple
built a sturdy four-room brick farmhouse. At
some point Parkmans gifted Hawken rie made
its way to the attic. The Chatillons lived in comfort in the booming city, selling off some of their
extra acres when they needed cash. In 1856 they

TOP LEFT: CHATILLON-DEMENIL MANSION; LEFT: AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY

Chatillon had hunted

buffalo for the American
Fur Co., and company
employees endorsed
him as a chief guide.

Indians while they went hunting. Aside perhaps

from overfeeding him, they did him no harm. For
the rest of his lifethough he criticized other tribes
Parkman bristled in print when others disparaged
the Sioux as either stupid or cruel.
In his eyes the young Lakota women were
beauties, their bashful if giggling irtations generally chaste. As such flirtations were marriagedirected, and Parkmans poor health made him
appear shabby husband material, no romantic relationships seem to have developed. The author
regarded older Lakota men as fairly profound.
The intellect of an Indian can embrace the idea
of an all-wise, all-powerful Spirit, the Supreme
Ruler of the Universe, he wrote. To him all
nature is instinct with mystic inuence. In essence
Parkman perceived them as transplanted
German Romantics or New England
Transcendentalists of the era.
The authors impressions
in The Oregon Trail percolated
down to Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, whose popular epic poem The Song
of Hiawatha (1855) was
perhaps the single greatest antidote to the type
of genocide proposed
by William Tecumseh
Sherman, who wrote
after the 1866 Fetterm a n M a s s a c r e , We
must proceed with vindictive earnestness against
the Sioux, even to their exterminationmen, women
and children. Public indignation kept this from happening in
1866, as it did 10 years later after the
Battle of the Little Bighorn. Longfellow, a
believing Christian and early abolitionist, actually knew little about the Sioux he had not learned
from Parkman. And Parkman had learned from
Chatillon, until he himself came to appreciate
the Lakotas, befriend several and accept them
as rough people of turbulent nature but Homeric
mold. Parkman even took time to learn some
of the Lakota language.
Chatillons inuence on Parkman came at an
opportune time. After the publication of Charles
Darwins The Origin of Species in 1858, a decade
after The Oregon Trail, anyone not of Anglo-Saxon

sold the remaining acres to doctor and land

speculator Nicholas DeMenil, who transformed
the modest brick farmhouse into a Greek Revival mansion.
Perhaps Chatillon relegated the painting of Bear
Robe to the attic because his second wife would
not have approvedor perhaps because the spirit
of Bear Robe would not have approved. While
multiple wives were common among her people,
Lakotas hold any form of cousin marriage in horror.
Regardless, Chatillons feelings for Bear Robe
appear never to have conicted with his affection
for Odile. After the couple sold the house, Chatillon
had considered leading a hunting expedition to
Fort Laramie, but he changed his mind, turned
the party over to Jim Bridger and returned with
Odile to Carondelet, his birthplace.
Years earlier Henri had lost his infant daughter,
perhaps because the dying Bear Robe could not
nurse due to what sounds like tuberculosis. He
had left older daughter Emilie in the care of fur
trader Joseph Bissonette and family. Henri reclaimed Emilie when she was 17. On New Years

Eve 1858 he saw her baptized in Carondelet at

Saints Mary and Joseph Catholic Church, and
at the same church three days later he gave her
away in marriage to Louis Benjamin Lessert. Ben,
who earned Chatillons approval as a reliable sonin-law, had rst met Emilie during a stop at Bissonettes trading post in what would become Wyoming. Their reportedly happy 46-year marriage
produced three children. Henris marriage to Odile
remained respectable but childless.
Chatillon died in 1873 in St. Louis. Exact dates
differ, and his grave marker has since gone missing.
But his real memorial is in the pages of Parkmans
The Oregon Trail. He was a proof of what unaided
nature will sometimes do, wrote the author.
I have never in the city or the wilderness met a
better man than my noble and true-hearted friend
Henry Chatillon. Longfellows literary output,
in particular The Song of Hiawatha, also gave
words to the message Parkman had absorbed
from Chatillon and his mournful love for Bear
Robe and concern for their daughter, Emilie:
Every human heart is human. WW

John Koster is a special

contributor to Wild West
and the author of Custer
Survivor. For further
reading he recommends
The Oregon Trail, by
Francis Parkman.

NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY

Thanks largely to
Chatillons inuence,
Parkman gained
an unprecedented
level of respect for
the Lakota people.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 59

This circa 1883 cabinet

card view of Tombstone
showing the Cochise
County Courthouse, on
the far edge of town at
rightis attributed to
photographer C.S. Fly.
HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

JUSTICE IN

TOMBSTONE

Judge Wells Spicer famously presided over the Earp-Holliday hearing

and wielded his gavel against townsite hoodlums before mysteriously
vanishing into the Arizona Territory desert By Bob Palmquist

Spicer reported on the

May 1869 ceremony
in Utah Territory that
marked completion of
the rst transcontinental
railroad, dubbing it a
very weak humbug.
62 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

wish to live here, do like usgo to work at whatever they can to earn a living. Following his own
advice, he became editor of The Cedar County
Advertiser, which proclaimed to be Independent in
All Things and Impartial in None. Spicer followed
this pattern for most of his lifepracticing law,
writing for newspapers and, ultimately, becoming
involved in mining matters.
On July 6, 1856, Spicer married 16-year-old
local girl Abbie J. Gilbert, who a year later gave
birth to son Earnest. The year of his marriage Spicer
was elected Cedar County judge, his first judicial post. He had evolved from adherence to the
Democratic Party, through anti-immigrant KnowNothingism to allegiance to the new Republican
Party, which that fall would eld Pathnder (and
future Arizona Territory governor) John C. Frmont
as its rst presidential candidate. The election of
Judge Spicer was marred by one violent episode.
Spicer, a man of strong opinions who never shrank
from expressing them, called his opponent a liar
in public, whereupon a voter struck him on the
head with a walking stick.
Spicer by 1866 had bolted to Colorado Territory
to prospect for gold. He left Abbie and Earnest in
Iowa, maintaining a long-distance relationship for

GRAPHIICAARTIS/CORBIS; OPPOSITE: PHOTO ENHANCED BY GREG PROCH

n 1882, testifying as an expert witness in

the Tombstone, Arizona Territory, mining case of Field v. Gray, Wells W. Spicer
identied his occupations as lawyer and
mining broker, anything with money
in it. He might have added journalist to
the list. From 1879 to 1883 Spicer made
Tombstone his home and intermittently followed
all three professions. Best known for his decision
as justice of the peace in the case of Territory of
Arizona v. Morgan Earp et al. Defendants following
the Oct. 26, 1881, gunght near the O.K. Corral,
he participated in matters of even greater legal
import, commenting on many of them with pungent prose and wry humor. And like many other
residents of frontier boomtowns, he moved on
when the boom went bust.
Born in 1831 in Tioga County, N.Y., Spicer at
age 9 moved with his family to Iowa and by 19 was
working as a clerk, probably for William H. Tuthill,
a lawyer, businessman and newspaper publisher in
Tipton, Iowa. By 1854 Spicer, 23, had begun a law
practice of his own but found reason to complain.
Lawing is not well patronized in this county, so
that lawyers cannot depend on their professions
alone for support, he said. They must, if they

Justice Spicer rst

sat on the bench in
Iowa, but by 1866
he had ventured west
to practice law and
write for newspapers,
among other pursuits.

decadesnot unusual for men in the mining West.

In the spring of 1869 he rode the Union Pacific
rails to a terminus a few miles east of Promontory
Point, Utah Territory, where the Union Pacic would
meet the eastbound Central Pacific, joining the
nation in transcontinental travel. Spicer was on hand
on May 10, 1869, when railroad magnate Leland
Stanford drove the Golden Spike to commemorate the event. Spicer, however, dubbed the ceremony a very weak humbug and laced his account
for newspapers with less than reverential descriptions: The last rail was put down amid confusion.
Hats off. Somebody was said to pray. Somebody
was said to make a short speech. Nobody heard it.
Somebody called for cheers. A few gave them. The
rest were too dry. All then adjourned to the deadfalls to irrigate; and as soon as the trains left, everybody was glad to get away and glad it was over.
For the next decade Spicer practiced law, wrote
for newspapers in Utah Territory mining camps and
also educated himself in mineralogy. From 1875 to
1877 he became embroiled as a lawyer in the most
controversial case ever tried in Utah, United States v.

John D. Lee, the defendant accused of leading an

attack on an emigrant wagon train in the infamous
Mountain Meadows Massacre some 20 years earlier.
Spicer served as Lees lead counsel (see sidebar
below). The fallout from the result (Lees conviction and execution) likely motivated Spicer to seek
greener pastures. Providing the impetus was the
1877 discovery of rich silver ore in southeastern Arizona Territory by prospector Ed Schieffelin, whom
Spicer would come to know well. Schieffelin had
ignored friendly warnings that all he would nd in
the barren Arizona hills was his tombstone, and
he named the rst of his claims and the town that
sprouted up around them just thatTombstone.

picer arrived in Tombstone as the

camp was emerging from its first
stage of development, the frenetic
staking by prospectors (most not
as fortunate as Schieffelin) of every
inch of available silver ground in
the Tombstone hills and atop a mesa
known locally as Goose Flats. Several settlements

Wells Spicer achieved fameor notorietyas counsel of record for John Doyle Lee, the Mormon
leader charged with masterminding and leading the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre in
Utah Territory on Sept. 11, 1857. Lee stood two trials, the rst in 1875 resulting in a hung jury,
the second the following year resulting in Lees conviction. By the time Lee faced
a ring squad on March 23, 1877, Spicer had garnered the ire of both Mormons
and Gentiles in Utah Territory. Having lost much of his practice, he was ready
to move on. He later dubbed himself the Unkilled of Mountain Meadows.
In the massacre of a wagon train of Arkansas emigrants, 120 men, women
and children were killed. Blame initially fell on Paiute Indians, but suspicions turned
toward Mormon settlers led by local Indian agent John D. Lee. Charges and countercharges ew, but the Civil War carnage soon overshadowed the massacre. In 1875
Spicer wrote, Mr. Lee has been harassed over this affair for years past, waiting the
time to come when a fair and impartial investigation could be had. By then Lee had
been arrested and charged with the almost 20-year-old crime and had engaged
Spicer as his lead counsel. Many saw Lee as the designated fall guy for the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (perhaps even Brigham Young himself) for ordering the
massacre of Gentiles passing through Utah Territory and then blaming it on the Paiutes.
As the rst trial began in July 1875 in Beaver, Utah Territory, Spicer suggested
three alternative theories to absolve Lee of guilt: (1) Indians had in fact committed
the crime; (2) Mormon leadership, motivated by religious fanaticism, had ordered
and carried out the killings; or (3) irresponsible and depraved migrants had provoked the Indians
to attack. When the rst jury could not agree, Spicer went prospecting, while Lee remained in jail.
Spicer returned as Lees counsel during the second trial, but the Mormon jury found Lee guilty of
murder on Sept. 20, 1876. He was shot on-site at Mountain Meadows the following year. Defending John D. Lee was like thrusting a hand into a meat grinder, writes Spicer biographer Lynn Bailey.
In leaving Utah Territory for Arizona Territory, Wells Spicer must have felt a sense of relief. B.P.
64 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

CORBIS

In Defense of John Lee

SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM AND ARCHIVES, 2519P, PRESCOTT, ARIZ.

ED SCHIEFFELIN,
WHOM SPICER
WOULD COME
TO KNOW WELL,
HAD IGNORED
FRIENDLY
WARNINGS
THAT ALL HE
WOULD FIND
IN THE BARREN
ARIZONA
HILLS WAS HIS
TOMBSTONE

had sprouted around the diggings. In June 1879

Spicer reported to Tucsons Arizona Daily Star:
The town of Tombstone is undergoing much
trouble now as to where it shall nally build itself,
the consequence of which is that instead of one,
concentrated, prosperous town, there are three
distinct sites or town locations, all having a hope
of being the great town of Tombstone. In that
early dispatch Spicer pinpointed an issue that
would factor greatly in his Arizona Territory law
careerthe tangled issue of the Tombstone townsite. Ironicallyseeing as he decried the existence of the three competing townsitesSpicer,
for motives still disputed, would seek to establish
a fourth, which he dubbed New Boston.
The 48-year-old lawyer, balding and described
as rumpled looking, plunged into the fast-paced
life of the burgeoning silver camp. James, Virgil
and Wyatt Earp, with their wives and James stepchildren, arrived on Dec. 1, 1879. They would play
a key role in Spicers life, but in 1879 the lawyer

was more concerned with Tombstones economic

development, writing on December 31 about the
arrival of a synod of New York capitalists aiming
at nancing signicant prospects. He also took note
of the likelihood of considerable litigation about
mines, an area he knew well.
Spicer wrote of the boom in February 1880:
[Tombstone has] a population of 1,500 people, with
two dance houses, a dozen gambling places, over
20 saloons and more than 500 gamblers. Still, there
is hope, for I know of two Bibles in town, and I
have one of them (borrowed). By then Tombstone
had been incorporated as a village and had elected
a council and its second mayor, Alder Randall.
In a more ominous dispatch, Spicer wrote the
next month of a stampede for town lots. During
the commotion, shotguns and hip artillery were
sported about, but nobody killed, and all the
vacant lots in town were jumped. The ruckus
stemmed from the shenanigans of the Tombstone
Townsite Co., a group of speculators dominated by
OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 65

In big- and small-screen depictions of Old West

shootouts the lawman typically squares off
against the badman in the street, outdraws
his antagonist and shoots him down. Townsfolk
then mill around the pair and
afrm, He drew rst, marshal.
No further inquiry is made, and
there are no legal consequences
for the embattled lawman. On
Oct. 26, 1881, in Tombstone,
Arizona Territory, Chief of
Police Virgil Earp, his brothers
Wyatt and Morgan, and their
friend and impromptu deputy
John Henry Doc Holliday
shot down Tom and Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton in the
Wests most famous gunght.
A month-long preliminary hearing before Justice Wells Spicer
decided the legal issues.
Spicer had received a criminal
complaint, signed by Ike Clanton, charging the
Earps and Holliday with murder. As justice of
the peace he could not hold a trial on the matter.
Rather, his task was to hear the evidence and
make a preliminary determination as to whether
the case should go to a Cochise County grand
jury and, ultimately, to trial before the U.S. District
Court. It is the duty of an examining and committing magistrate, Spicer wrote, to issue a
warrant of arrest in the rst place whenever
from the depositions given [as by complaining
witness Ike Clanton] there is reasonable ground
to believe that the defendant has committed a
public offense. After hearing evidence, however,
the statute changes the rule, and he is then
required to commit the defendant only when
there is sufcient cause to believe him guilty.
Spicer spent all of November hearing
evidence for and against the Earps and
Holliday. Defense attorney Tom Fitch initially
sought to restrict Spicer to procedural oversight
with no power to rule on objections, but Spicer
overruled him. Throughout the hearing he ruled
on objections far more often in favor of the
prosecution than of the defense, and he initially
revoked bail for Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday,
as the evidence seemed to point to their guilt.
Ultimately, however, his review of all the evidence led him to conclude that no Arizona
Territory trial jury would nd the defendants
guilty of any offense. On November 30 he
ordered the release of Earp and Holliday. B.P.
66 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

Virgil Earp (above)

and his brothers
were not on trial,
but Justice Spicer
heard evidence to
determine if they
would face one.

rough frontier veteran Mike Gray and smoothtalking manipulator James Clark. Clark, Gray &
Co. laid claim to virtually the entire townsite never
mind that much of it was already occupied by businesses and mining claims. As attorney for the true
occupants, Spicer would go toe to toe with Clark
and Gray, whom he blasted as hoodlums.
Further complicating the tangled real estate
dealings was the fact that before promoters had
laid out the townsite on Goose Flats, mine locators had filed a number of claims on portions of
the same groundone of these, the aptly named
Gilded Age, in 1878. The question arose: Between
townsite applicants and mine locators, who held
rights to the surface above the mining claims?
Gray had one answer. When Ed Field, who had
purchased the Gilded Age, set surveyor Solon
M. Allis to surveying his claim, Gray appeared,
gun drawn, growling, You cant survey here except at the point of a gun. Allis backed off, and the
impasse wound up in Pima County District Court.
Clark and Gray contended the Gilded Age
was not a valid mining claim in that it lacked
legitimate silver formations. Spicer stepped in as
expert witness for the plaintiff. In the trial before
Territorial Chief Justice C.G.W. French in Tucson,
the lawyer-mineralogist gave detailed testimony
supporting the location of a valid silver claim by
Fields predecessors. The result cemented Spicers
reputation as a mining law expert, and he thereafter advertised his services as both a lawyer and
mining broker.

hat same year Spicer took on

Clark and Gray, the U.S. General Land Ofce received telegrams and petitions on behalf
of Tombstone lot holders and
mine owners who feared issuance by the federal government of a townsite patent to Clark, Gray & Co.
The whole thing, Spicer wrote the government
on June 25, is a fraud run by a lot of hoodlums.
On Aug. 12, 1880, he begged the General Land
Office commissioner to delay patent until after
next town election when we will be rid of our
present hoodlum ofcials, in whose ranks he now
correctly numbered Mayor Randall, who had
already illegally conveyed almost the entire townsite by deed to Clark, Gray & Co. The Interior
Department, while acknowledging Spicers protests, took the laissez-faire position the matter

ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON, COLORIZED BY SLINGSHOT STUDIO, NORTH HAMPTON, N.H.

Spicer Hearing

ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TUCSON

could not be resolved by the department but

rather must be tried in Arizonas territorial courts.
In November 1880 the patent issued by the government for the townsite arrived in Tombstone,
and Mayor Randall again deeded the entire site to
James Clark. An action led in U.S. District Court
by a consortium of Tombstone citizens led by Epitaph editor John P. Clum resulted in a preliminary
injunction issued by Chief Justice Frenchwho had
presided over Field v. Gray forbidding the townsite company to convey any lots. The action also
catapulted Clum into the mayors chair in January
1881. Randall was out, but Spicer would have
another shot at him as justice of the peace.
Arizona Territory justices of the peace had limited jurisdiction in both civil and criminal matters
and served for a period of two years. Spicer also
held an appointment as U.S. court commissioner,
enabling him to pass on certain limited federal
matters as well as those to be decided under terri-

torial law. Spicers most famous case was the EarpHolliday, or Spicer, hearing (see sidebar, opposite
page). But in June 1881 he found himself sitting
in judgment over Alder Randall, charged with
malfeasance for his townsite antics. Justice Spicer
discovered that legislators had neglected to criminalize mayoral malfeasance. Technically, Randall
had violated no law. After blasting the mayor once
again for having attempted a high-handed outrage on Tombstone, Spicer turned him loose.
Spicer left ofce the following year and in 1883
left Tombstone altogether, still chasing mineral
wealth in the desert. He disappeared in the spring
of 1887, some speculating hed committed suicide,
others that hed gotten lost and died of exposure.
Spicer biographer Lynn Bailey cites rumors back
in Cedar County, Iowa, that perhaps hed joined his
son Earnest in Ures, Mexico, and died there. The
fate of the pioneer lawyer, jurist, journalist and
mineralogist remains an unsolved mystery. WW

Spicer may have

had an ofce on
the second oor
of Tombstones
famed Crystal
Palace saloon,
which opened
in July 1882.

Tucson attorney and

historian Robert F. Palmquist has extensively
researched and written
about the Earps and
Tombstone. For further
reading he suggests:
A Tale of the Unkilled:
The Life, Times and
Writings of Wells W.
Spicer, by Lynn R. Bailey;
The O.K. Corral Inquest,
by Alford E. Turner;
and Wyatt Earp: The
Life Behind the Legend,
by Casey Tefertiller.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 67

TOMBSTONE TOUR
A day in Tombstone can be fun and informativethough
Wells Spicer left few reminders of his judicial tenure

O.K. CORRAL
Any tour should include the O.K. Corral
(520-457-3456, ok-corral.com), where
visitors can take in daily reenactments
of the Oct. 26, 1881, showdown, which
actually touched off in a vacant lot behind
the corral and spilled out onto Fremont
Street. Spicer presided over the post-ght
hearing in the Mining Exchange Building
at Fremont and 4th Street (the towns rst
courthouse had burned down that June).
One of the gunght witnesses, Cochise
County Probate Judge John Henry Lucas,
had watched part of the action from that
buildings balcony. The Mining Exchange
was demolished in the 1930s.
Clockwise from top:
Tombstones Boot
Hill, a Doc Holliday
performer and the
gunght reenactment.

68 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

SCHIEFFELIN HALL
Still standing at the corner of
Fremont and 4th is the two-story
adobe Schieffelin Hall [tomb
stonerepertoryco.com], which
opened in June 1881. The rst
oor housed a respectable theater,
while Spicer and other members
of Tombstones Masonic Lodge
met there (in fact, Masons still do).

TOP AND FAR LEFT: NIK WHEELER/ALAMY; LEFT AND TOP RIGHT: DAVID LAUTERBORN; RIGHT: IAN G. DAGNALL/ALAMY

GOOD ENOUGH MINE

Spicer also acted as a mining broker, and indeed
silver mines are the reason for Tombstones existence.
Visitors can tour the Good Enough Mine (520-255-5553,
goodenoughmine.com), at 501 Toughnut St., the one
discovered by Tombstone founder Ed Schieffelin.

TOMBSTONE EPITAPH
Spicer had also been a journalist, and the Tombstone Epitaph
(520-457-2211, tombstoneepitaph.com) still publishes out
of a building at 11 S. Fifth St., where it operates a small
museum focused on journalism in the late 19th century.

TOMBSTONE COURTHOUSE
STATE HISTORIC PARK
The Tombstone Courthouse State
Historic Park (520-457-3311,
azstateparks.com/parks/toco)
preserves the 1882 courthouse,
although Spicer likely never practiced or adjudicated anything
there. His law ofce succumbed
to Tombstones res, though an
1880 line drawing of it survives.

Take a tour through

the Good Enough
Mine (top) or mine
the museum at the
Tombstone Epitaph.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 69

Ghost Towns

THE DRY, COLORADO

The Dry looks vacant

and, well, dry today,
but it was once home
to dozens of optimistic
black homesteaders.

70 WILD WEST

n the late 19th century homesteaders

filtered onto this patch of Colorados
southeastern plains, 8 miles south of
the small Otero County town of Manzanola, though settlement didnt begin
in earnest until around 1915. The population comprised mainly black homesteaders who had moved from other settlements
(such as Nicodemus, Kansas) that had suffered
economic decline due to poor farming conditions
and having been bypassed by the railroad. These
migrants saw promise in land they could own.
In the early 1900s George Washington Swink,
a Colorado state senator, landowner and farmer,
suggested Josephine and Lanora Rucker, two black
sisters who worked for him, return east to persuade
other potential emigrants to homestead the land
that would become known as The Dry. The sisters
went to Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, encour-

OCTOBER 2015

aging families and friends to venture to Colorado.

Among the first to take up the Rucker sisters on
their offer were the Craigs, who moved west from
Nicodemus and would remain in The Dry longer
than any of the other settlers.
The Dry took its name from the arid climate
and dearth of available water sources. The earliest
settlers, the story goes, wanted to name the settlement Sunnyside once theyd established it as a
township. The Dry was one of only five known
black settlements in Colorado. The other four
stood near the present-day towns of Greeley, Akron, Cortez and Craig. Deareld, between Greeley and Fort Morgan, is the only one where any
intact structures remain.
Archaeological research on portions of The Dry
[thedryarchaeology.wordpress.com] suggests the
homesteaders rst lived in claim shanties, but the
families eventually erected houses and also built

TOP AND OPPOSITE STRUCTURE: JUSTIN MILLER

It was one of ve known black settlements in the state By Kellen Cutsforth

Ghost Towns

TOP AND MIDDLE RIGHT: ALICE CRAIG MCDONALD; BADGE: M. DORES CRUZ

Lulu Craig poses with

young family members
(left) and with owers
outside her house (below).
Craigs were among the
rst to settle The Dry
one of its few remaining
structures is below left
and Lulu outstayed most.

the Prairie Valley School for their children. At its

height in the late 1910s and early 1920s about 100
members of more than 40 families had homesteaded the land, and it had become primarily
an agricultural community. Early settlers relied
on dry farming techniques to grow crops, but by
about 1921 they had collectively constructed a
series of irrigation canals leading from the nearby
Apishapa River. Some optimistic homesteaders
began growing wheat.
In 1923 severe ooding along the river knocked
out the irrigation system, destroying some 57,000
acres of farmland in the surrounding valley. In
the 1930s the Dust Bowl and Great Depression
forced most of the remaining homesteaders to
abandon the settlement. The Prairie Valley School
shut its doors in 1933. Lulu Craig was among
the last residents living in The Dry. She died at
age 104 in 1972.

By the late 1990s vandals and the elements had destroyed the remaining buildings at The Dry. In 2010 archaeologists
launched a study of the site, funded by the
University of Denver and the Colorado State
Historical Fund. Before the project ended in
2012 they surveyed and mapped 10 homesteads, excavated one site and turned up a
number of artifacts that opened a window
on the daily lives of the homesteaders.
Today the biggest city within a 50-mile radius
of The Dry is Pueblo (pop. 108,000). To reach
The Dry from Pueblo, take Highway 50 east for
44 miles, then turn south on County Road 11 just
shy of Manzanola. After about 6 miles turn right
on County Road DD; The Dry lies a mile farther
along, immediately north of the intersection with
County Road 10. The archaeological dig site is on
cattle grazing land owned by the Craig family. WW

Researchers began a
survey of The Dry site
in 2010, and among
the modern-day relics
they found was this
Roy Rogers badge.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 71

Collections

ON A KING RANCH TOUR

DONT MISS THE MUSEUM

The grand main house reects the century-old legacy of Henrietta King By Linda Wommack

72 WILD WEST

he name ts the state of Texas

like a crownKing Ranch.
Thats the opening sentence of
Pat Decker Nippers October
2014 Wild West article King
Ranch: A Texas Dynasty. No
argument there. Richard King
(182485) bought the Rincn de Santa Gertrudis
land grant in 1853 and the adjacent Santa Gertrudis de la Garza grant the next year. Together
they form the nucleus of todays much larger ranch,
which at 825,000 acres covers more territory than
Rhode Island. Kings motto was Buy land and
never sell, and the ranch ultimately comprised
four separate properties, or divisionsSanta Gertrudis, Laureles, Norias and Encinoon terrain
that varies from fertile black farmland to lowlying coastal marshes dotted with oak mottes
to mesquite pastures on the fringes of Texas
brush country. Richards wife, Henrietta,
shared his vision and after Richards death ran
the ranch with son-in-law Robert Justus Kleberg.
By the time 92-year-old Henrietta died in 1925,

OCTOBER 2015

Here and at left: Boots, belts,

cuff links, money clips and other
treasures at the Saddle Shop
all carry the King Ranch brand.

the ranch had grown to more than a million acres.

Subsequent generations of the ranching family
bred the highly successful Santa Gertrudis cattle
(3/8 Brahman and 5/8 Shorthorn), ofcially recognized in 1940 as a distinctive beef breed. King
Ranch has also developed the composite Santa

ALL IMAGES: COURTESY KING RANCH ARCHIVES, KING RANCH INC., KINGSVILLE, TEXAS

Collections

Cruz breed, offering consumers a

more tender cut of beef.
Cattle arent the only four-legged
animals with an important place in
ranch history. Richard King and his
successors also bred excellent working
and thoroughbred horses. In 1915
Bob Kleberg Jr., Richards grandson, bought the stallion Old Sorrel,
who became the cornerstone of the
King Ranch quarter horse breeding
program. In 1941 one of Old Sorrels
grandsons, Wimpy, was the rst stallion registered with the American
Quarter Horse Association. King
Ranch went on to produce Mr. San
Peppy and Peppy San Badger, two
of the all-time moneymaking sires
in the National Cutting Horse Association. The ranch also raised notable thoroughbreds, including the
1946 Triple Crown winner Assault
(the only Texas horse to take that
honor), and Middleground, the 1950
winner of the Kentucky Derby and
Belmont Stakes.
In the 1930s King Ranch negotiated a few long-term oil and gas leases. It later
bolstered its energy and agricultural operations
and, starting in the 1990s, its tourism business.
In 1961 the U.S. Department of the Interior designated the property a National Historic Landmark.
Today the ranch is well worth a visit, as is the King
Ranch Museum, among the jewels on this impressive Lone Star crown. In downtown Kingsville,
Texas, it serves as a splendid repository of ranch
history and lore. The museum is housed in the
original ice factory and power plant, built shortly
after the founding of Kingsville in 1904. The plant
generated electricity for town and the ranch itself
and produced blocks of ice for the railroad cars
that carried fresh fruit, vegetables and King Ranch
beef to markets in the Rio Grande Valley. King
Ranch purchased the vacant two-story building in
1969 and, after extensive renovations, opened the
museum in the new Henrietta Memorial Center.
What would a ranch beor a ranch museum
for that matterwithout saddles? And there are
dozens on display from all over the world. Branding irons have their place, too, as King Ranchs
Running W has been in use since 1869. Youll also

nd carriages and wagons used on the ranch over

the decades, along with a Buick Eight hunting car
custom-built in 1949 for ranch heir and seventerm U.S. Congressman Richard M. Kleberg Sr.
Photographs by Toni Frissell depict ranch life
in the 1940s, while various murals capture cattle
operations and the cowboy way.
Covering the scope of King Ranch history is a
special exhibit, The Main House: 100-Year Legacy
of Henrietta King, which runs through Jan. 17,
2016. The ranch house newlyweds Richard and Henrietta built in the 1850s
burned down in 1912, but the King
family spent some $350,000 on a
new home that took three years
to build. Exhibit photos show
how rooms looked in 1915 and
how they look today.
Daily ranch tours are available, as are wildlife tours that
focus on the largest known population of ferruginous pygmy owls
in the United States and 362 other
bird species. The King Ranch Saddle Shop
[krsaddleshop.com] offers ne leather and other
goods inspired by the spirit and traditions of King
Ranch. The Running W brand marks a variety of
items, including Carinoso copper cuffs, turquoise
medallion necklaces, rings, key rings, pendants,
bolo ties, belts, shavers, iPhone cases and asks.
The King Ranch Museum (405 N. 6th St.) and
King Ranch Saddle Shop (201 E. Kleberg Ave.) are
in Kingsville. For more visit king-ranch.com. WW

Above: The view

from the balcony
at King Ranch
Museum. Below:
The Saddle Shop
also sells ladies
Western jewelry
made of turquoise.

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

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 73

Guns of the West

SAM COLT
TESTIFIED
ON BEHALF OF
HIS BROTHER
John Colt had killed a man,
but had he used a Colt revolver?

olonel Samuel Colt displayed

amboyant showmanship when
exhibiting to military commanders the lethal capabilities of his
innovative rearms. But during
a New York City murder trial, in
a sideshow performance honed
on his early years as a nitrous-oxide huckster, he
proved to the contrary that one of his revolvers
could not have been the murder weapon. It was on
Jan. 25, 1842, that Colt the inventor entered the
crowded courtroom carrying two cased revolvers
manufactured at his 6-year-old Patent Arms Manufacturing Co. in Paterson, N.J. His older brother,
John C. Colt, author of a popular book on doubleentry bookkeeping, was on trial for the murder of
Samuel Adams, his printer.
On Sept. 17, 1841, during an argument in his
Manhattan office over a debt, Colt had killed
Adams. He then tried to ship off the printers body
in a packing crate, but police intercepted it aboard
a freighter still in port. Colt had confessed to the
murder but claimed self-defense, saying Adams
had pinned him against a wall and was choking
him when he struck the printer with an ax hammer
within his frantic grasp. But was the death caused
by repeated blows to the head, as John claimed, or
a shot from one of his brothers deadly inventions?
Forensic evidence appeared to corroborate Colts
account. But a kink in the possible cause of death
occurred when one of the autopsys attending
physicians testified that although the whole of

74 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

By Jerry D. Powell

[Adams] forehead was beaten inthere was also a

fracture on the left side of the head, a little behind
and above the ear, in which there was a round,
clean hole, so that you might put your finger
through it. That was enough for prosecuting
attorney James Whiting to seize on the theory
that the ax blows to Adams head had been intended to mask a pistol wound. If so, Colt was
guilty not of a killing committed in selfdefense but of the more serious crime
of premeditated murder. The question
arose: Did John Colt have a gun?
Witness Asa Wheeler, who sublet Colt
his Manhattan ofce space, testied that
a few days prior to Adams death Colt
had indeed shown him a handgun. In his testimony Wheeler
described the gun as having four or six barrels
about 4 inches in length,
adding that it had his
brothers name on it.
He elaborated: My
impression was
that there was a
circle of barrels;
but I cannot be positive under oath whether there were one or several barrels. I am sure that the barrels revolved
either those or the cylinder on pulling the trigger.
He noted Colt had also explained to me a very
ingenious apparatus for loading.

Sam used Paterson

ve-shooters for his
show. The Patterson
above recently sold at
auction for $265,625
(see more on P. 10).

TOP: CHRONICLE/ALAMY; ABOVE: COWANS AUCTIONS, CINCINNATI, OHIO

Samuel Colt brought

his guns to court in a
show of support for
older brother John.

Guns of the West

GREG PROCH ILLUSTRATION

On cross-examination Wheeler admitted knowing more about bookkeeping and goose quills
than rearms, a self critique that proved particularly appropriate in his recollection of both the
number of barrels and what happened when
the trigger was pulled. Its possible Wheeler was
confused by the eras popular pepperbox pistols,
which comprised four or more barrels turned by
hand. But he was wrong about what happened
when the trigger was pulled. A trigger pullas on
all guns of the eraonly red it. It was the cocking
(pulling back) of the hammer that rotated the cylinder. In fact, that mechanical action was the patented foundation on which Colt firearms would
become famous. As for the ingenious apparatus
for loading, by 1842 a small number of revolvers
turned out by Patent Arms Manufacturing had
been modied by the addition of loading levers.
As none of the prosecution witnesses had heard
a black-powder blast during the fatal struggle,
another pressing question came up regarding
whether or not Adams had died from a pistol
shot: Could such a gun kill if fired with only
a percussion cap, which made a quieter noise?
It was the sixth day of the trial when Samuel Colt
was summoned to resolve this question, and a
sense of eager anticipation swept through the court-

room. Years earlier while raising money for

his inventions, Colt had called himself Dr. Coult
and hawked nitrous oxide to audiences amazed
at its giddy effect. This time a courtroom was the
venue for one of his semi-theatrical performances,
but it was in defense of his brother, and Sam Colt
had come prepared.
Taking the stand, Colt introduced himself as
the inventor of Colts patent firearms, adding
dryly, am acquainted with their power and construction. By 1842 his manufacturing plant had
rolled out four revolver models in several variations, all of which were known as Paterson Colts.
Ensuring the judge, jury and spectators had unobstructed views, he removed from a velvet-lined
mahogany case the first of the two Patersons he
had brought with him and indulged in a detailed
explanation of its parts and functions. Stressing
the patented central feature of revolving the ve-

chambered cylinder by simply cocking the hammer, he

held center stage as he methodicallyand not without
a dash of dramarammed
balls down each of the guns
five chambers and applied
percussion caps of twice
the usual strength to each
chambers nipple.
Colt then slipped a glove
over his left hand, and with
his right hand cocked and
red ve times. In the hushed
courtroom the exploding percussion caps were surprisingly loud, but with his gloved
hand poised at the guns
muzzle Colt caught each of
the balls as they left the muzzle. A murmur swept through
the courtroom. Some were
amazed, others skeptical of
Colts gloved hand. He volunteered to repeat the demonstration with a bare
hand, but the court declined.
Demonstrations with both guns continued as
Colt armed them with percussion caps and
sent balls ying at a pine board and books
at various distances, only to see them bounce
harmlessly off. When nished, as reported
in the New-York Tribune, the inventor addressed the court: It is not possible that a ball red
as these have been should penetrate the skull even
if held close to it, and I should be perfectly willing
to have it tried upon my skull!
Samuel Colts performance was all for naught,
as a coroner later testified that one of the nails
John Colt had driven into the packing crate had
caused the hole in Adams skull. In the end Colt
was convicted of willful murder and sentenced
to hang on Nov. 14, 1842. On the morning of his
execution, however, he plunged a knife into his
heart. Who had gotten him the knife is uncertain.
The courtroom show marked Samuel Colts last
demonstration of Paterson revolvers. Colts Patent
Arms Manufacturing Co. had gone into bankruptcy even before his brothers trial. By the end
of 1842 it had completely shut down. It would
be another ve years before Colt relaunched the
rearms business that became his empire. WW

John Colt stood trial

for the murder of
his printer, Samuel
Adams. But the
guns Sam red
in the courtroom
caused no harm.

ON-SCREEN
In the miniseries
Lonesome Dove,
Roscoe Brown
(played by Barry
Corbin) carries a
Colt Paterson. In
The Assassination
of Jesse James by the
Coward Bob Ford,
Ford (Casey Afeck)
carries a Paterson
but shoots Jesse with
a Smith & Wesson
New Model No. 3.

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 75

Reviews

MUST SEE, MUST READ

Look into these worthwhile books and videos about
Tombstone and Justice Wells Spicer By Bob Palmquist

The O.K. Corral

Inquest (1981, by
Alford E. Turner):
In this volume,
enhanced by
Earp researcher
Al Turners detailed
notes, youll nd the
WPA transcription of
both the inquest
conducted by Cochise
County coroner Dr.
Henry Matthews and
Judge Spicers
preliminary hearing in the wake
of the Oct. 26, 1881,
gunght. The original
copy of Matthews
inquest showed up in
the Cochise County
Clerk of Courts
ofce in recent years;
one hopes the
original Spicer
transcript, too,
will eventually
surface.

BOOKS

A Tale of the
Unkilled:
The Life, Times and Writings
of Wells W. Spicer
(1999, by Lynn R. Bailey): The third entry
of Western historian Lynn Baileys multivolume Mining Camp Chronicles, this
book is more a compilation of Spicers
writings than a biography. That said, it
provides the fullest available prole of
Tombstones famed justice of the peace.
76 WILD WEST

OCTOBER 2015

Wyatt Earp: The Life

Behind the Legend
(1997, by Casey
Tefertiller): Tefertillers well-regarded
biography includes
good coverage of
the Spicer Hearing
and its participants.
Murder in Tombstone:
The Forgotten Trial
of Wyatt Earp (2004,
by Steven Lubet):

A professor at Northwestern University

School of Law, Lubet
examines the Spicer
hearing with an eye
to understanding
the roles and tactics
of the judge and
respective attorneys.
Tombstone From
a Womans Point
of View: The Correspondence of Clara
Spalding Brown,
July 7, 1880, to
November 14, 1882
(1998): Clara Brown
wrote dispatches from
Tombstone to her
hometown newspaper
The San Diego Union.
While not a trained
journalist, she wrote
what were arguably
the best dispatches
on period events in
Tombstone, including
those surrounding
the Earps and their
showdown with the
Cowboys, as well as
daily life in a booming
silver camp.
Tombstone, A.T.:
A History of Early
Mining, Milling and
Mayhem (1999, by
William B. Shillingberg): Shillingberg
provides excellent
background on

the town beyond

Judge Spicers bench.
Now out of print, it
deserves a new edition.
Too Tough to Die:
The Rise, Fall and
Resurrection of
A Silver Camp,
1878 to 1990 (2004,
by Lynn R. Bailey):
Along with Shillingbergs book, this volume provides the best
available background
on early Tombstone
and the mining and
land transactions that
kept Spicer busy.
A Tenderfoot in
Tombstone, The
Private Journal of
George Whitwell
Parsons: The Turbulent Years, 188082
(1996, edited by
Lynn R. Bailey): Most
Tombstone histories
include references to
Parsons unparalleled
diary. Bailey also published later Parsons
diary entries in The
Devil Has Foreclosed.

VIDEO
The Wild West
Collection (2007, on
Blu-ray and DVD,
BBC): The three-part
series proles Custers

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

CUSTER BATTLEFIELD MUSEUM, Garryowen, MT

To order call (406) 638-1876. The

print is available for $79.99 delivered.
Partial proceeds from the sale of this
print will go towards maintaining the
Peace Memorial and the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
on the battlefield.

On September 11, 1857, a wagon

train of 120 men, women, and
children from Arkansas were
massacred under a white flag
by Utah Mormons in one of the
most horrifying crimes in
American history. Through the
actual testimony of a young girl
who survived, interviews with
descendants and forensic
investigations, this compelling
film breaks through decades of
cover-up to expose a story kept
out of the history books.

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Reviews

Last Stand, Billy the

Kid and the Gunght
at the O.K. Corral.
The last segment
includes the most
extensive portrayal
on lm of Wells
Spicerby a British
actor employing a
Southern accent.
The gunght is
depicted from several
angles, each corresponding to Spicer
hearing testimony
from key eyewitnesses
(including Ike Clanton and Wyatt Earp).
The BBC employed
Bob Palmquist and
Jeff Morey as consultants, with Morey
also providing solid
commentary.
Showdown at
O.K. Corral
(2013, originally a
1972 episode of the
TV series Appointment
With Destiny, on DVD
in 8 Movie Western
Pack V.5): Narrated
by Lorne Greene,
this program draws on
the work of consultant
John D. Gilchriese,
then the eld historian for the University
of Arizona. While
students of the gunght
will nd lots to quibble
with, it is the only
reenactment of that
affray actually lmed
on-site in Tombstone.
The Life and Legend
of Wyatt Earp (1955
1961 TV series, on
DVD, SFM Entertainment): This series
78 WILD WEST

not appear. But in an

interesting historical
sidenote Eddie Foy Jr.
plays his famous actor
father, capering about
as the oor show at
Tombstones Bella
Union Theater. In
his ghostwritten autobiography, Clowning
Through Life, Foy
Sr. says he played
Tombstones Bird
Cage in 1881.

Hour of the Gun

(1967, on Blu-ray and DVD, MGM): In this
rendition of the Earp story by director John
Sturges, who had earlier lmed Gunght at the
O.K. Corral, he starts with the gunght and relates the ensuing blood feud, including Wyatt
Earps Vendetta Ride. It stars James Garner
as Earp, the anti-Maverick, coldly hunting down
his brothers assailants, and Jason Robards as
an overage Doc Holliday. Seasoned character
actor William Schallert portrays Judge Spicer,
who in the hearing after the shootout has to keep
Robards Holliday in line. (The real Doc sat silently
through the proceedings and did not testify.)

marked Hugh
OBrians star turn as
Earp. Spicer ( James
Seay) appears in more
than a dozen episodes,
usually as the only
available jurist in
Tombstone and sometimes sporting twin
six-shooters to ward
off objections to his
rulings. During Episode 36 of Season 6,
broadcast on June 20,

OCTOBER 2015

1961, Earp related

the story of the gunght to Judge Spicer
in ashbacks.
Frontier Marshal
(1939, on DVD,
20th Century Fox):
In this paean to Stuart
Lake, Randolph Scott
portrays Wyatt Earp,
and Cesar Romero is
Doc Holliday, while
Judge Spicer does

Tombstone (1993,
on Blu-ray and DVD,
Hollywood Pictures):
The production was
troubled, but the lm
starring Kurt Russell as
Wyatt and Val Kilmer
as Doc revived many
moviegoers interest in
the Earp story. Spicer
merits mention, but
we never see him
on or off the bench.
Wyatt Earp (1994,
on Blu-ray, DVD
and CinemaNow.com,
Warner Home Video):
With Kevin Costner
as Wyatt and a riveting Dennis Quaid as
Doc, this lm follows
the Life and Legend
TV series in making
Spicer the all-purpose
Tombstone jurist.
He lectures Curly
Bill, for example,
after Bills 1880 killing of Tombstone
Marshal Fred White,
and conducts the
hearing after the
1881 shootout, a
proceeding to which
Costners Earp only
reluctantly submits.

BOOK
REVIEWS
Pioneer Girl:
The Annotated
Biography, by Laura
Ingalls Wilder, edited
by Pamela Smith Hill,
South Dakota State
Historical Society Press,
Pierre, 2014, $39.95
Mention Laura Ingalls
Wilder or Little House
on the Prairie to anyone
over age 30, and a
certain theme song
starts to swell in their
memory. Indeed,
the popular TV series
(197482)which,
beyond a few faithful early episodes,
deviated wildly from
Wilders ction and
even recycled plots
from director/star
Michael Landons
Bonanza dayscame to
overshadow Wilders
beloved series of
childrens books,
originally published
between 1932 and 43.
Readers were aghast.
But how many of
Wilders fans are aware
that before penning
childrens books, Wilder
had written a factual
account of her late
19th-century childhood? The would-be
author was 63 years
old when she completed the Pioneer Girl
manuscript in 1930.
Publishers in the
midst of the Depression were unwilling
to take a chance on
an autobiography by
an unknown, though.

Reviews

So, with editorial

guidance from daughter Rose Wilder Lane,
a successful writer
in her own right,
Wilder repackaged
the manuscript as juvenile ction in serial
form. The rst title,
Little House in the
Big Woods, debuted in
1932, with the signature Little House on the
Prairie following three
years later. The series
comprises nine books.
In 2007 the South
Dakota State Historical Society Press
published the biography Laura Ingalls
Wilder: A Writers Life,
by Pamela Smith Hill
and then got permission from the Little
House Heritage Trust,
the administrator
of Wilders estate,
to nally publish
her autobiography.
Pioneer Girl relates
the Ingalls familys
true-life homesteading sojourn across the
Midwest, from Kansas through Missouri,
Wisconsin, Minnesota
and Iowa, back to
Minnesota and, nally,
on to Dakota Territory
between 1869 and 88.
As such it provides a
detailed portrait of the

era and region and

an intimate look at the
trials and triumphs of
a fairly representative
family. Enhancing the
story are detailed maps
and 125 images of the
people and places in
Wilders life. But the
true gift of this volume
lies in the extensive
annotations provided
by biographer Hill,
who eshes out the
personal and historical
foundation of Wilders
narrative. Neither
an insipid TV show
nor a toned-down
childrens story, Pioneer
Girl is a cornerstone
volume of American
pioneer literature.
Dave Lauterborn
Historic Colorado
Mansions & Castles,
by Linda Wommack, The
History Press, Charleston,
S.C., 2014, $21.99
Mr. Large seems a
tting name for the
wealthy silver-mining
investor who had
a home built in the
1880s in Denvers
Capital Hill Area.
Isaac Larges mansion
was grand enough
(built in Queen Anne
style of rough-cut pink
and gray stone), but,

according to author
Linda Wommack,
it was also relatively
modest (three stories,
four replaces). The
Large family moved
into the homeone of
the rst Denver abodes
to include electricity,
hot and cold running
water and a handcrank phonein 1890.
Ruined by the silver
crash of 1893, Isaac
sold it to J.J. Brown,
whose wife Maggie
later became a
celebrated Titanic
survivor and the
subject of the 1960
play The Unsinkable
Molly Brown. The
mansion came to
be known as the
Molly Brown House.
It and eight other
impressive homes,
all built between
1878 and 1908, are
featured in Wommacks Colorado
house tour. Theyre
all large (the Large/
Brown house being
the smallest) and all
open to the public.
Editor

MOVIE
REVIEW
Slow West, 2015,
on Blu-ray, DVD and
CinemaNow.com, A24
It saw limited theatrical release yet was one
of the most thoroughly
enjoyable Westerns
in years. Written and
directed by Scotsman
John Maclean, Slow
West stars Australian

Kodi Smit-McPhee
and German Michael
Fassbender and was
shot in New Zealand
by Irish cinematographer Robbie Ryan.
Americans may have
lost interest in the
genre, but not so
the rest of the world
if recent trends have
taught us anything:
The Salvation (Danish
director Kristian
Levring), Blackthorn
(Spanish director
Mateo Gil), The
Assassination of
Jesse James by the
Coward Robert Ford
(New Zealander
director Andrew
Dominik), The
Proposition (Australian director John
Hillcoat). Slow
West takes us
on an 84-minute
ride down a trail
equal parts Coen
brothers and
Budd Boetticher,
in places rejecting
Hollywood convention even as it pays
homage to B-Westerns
of the 1950s and 60s.
The scenery, though,
calls to mind Middle
Earth in Peter Jacksons Lord of the
Rings more than
Colorado Territory.
In X-Men: First Class
Fassbender portrayed
superhero Magneto
as a lone, cowboylike drifter, and he
brings that same quiet,
cold-blooded volition
to his role of Silas, this
time playing an actual

cowboy. Jay Cavendish (impressive teen

actor Smit-McPhee)
is a lovesick Scottish
traveler who enlists
Silas help to reunite
him with Rose Ross
(Caren Pistorius).
Two problems for
young Cavendish: He
cant admit when hes
been friend-zoned
by Rose, and hes
oblivious that every
bounty hunter in the
territory, including
Silas, wants Rose and
her dad for a reward.

The lm may
strike some as offbeat
and meandering, but
no line or frame is
wasted. In one great
shot Silas and Cavendish, after being caught
in a ash ood, ride in
their underwear, their
clothes drying on a line
between their horses.
Like many Westerns,
the lm ends with a
gunght, but this one
is so tense, sad, funny
and surprising that
it rates as one of the
best showdowns ever.
Shame if it goes unseen.
Louis Lalire

OCTOBER 2015

WILD WEST 79

Comet Hyakutake blazes

a dusty trail across the
night sky over the Sonoran
Desert in Arizona, seemingly
just beyond the grasp of a
saguaro cactus. A century
earlier Geronimo (inset,
in the Sonoran in 1886)
needed no heavenly bodies
to guide him through this
unforgiving terrain, which
sprawls across more than
100,000 square miles of
the Southwestern United
States and northern Mexico.
Familiar with its peaks and
gullies, oases and life-giving
springs, the Apache leader
blazed a path for followers.
Today much of the desert
is federally protected. For
a stellar desert overview
visit Tucsons ArizonaSonora Desert Museum
[desertmuseum.org]. WW

SONORAN DESERT

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KENT WOOD, KENTWOODFINEARTPHOTO.PHOTOSHELTER.COM; INSET: HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

Go West

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EXPERIENCE A BREATHTAKING TOUR OF

Americas National Treasures

n inspired tribute to the astonishing

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of Americas National Parks, this volume
is a lavish celebration of the 100th anniversary
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