Victims of Circumstance

Since I’ve returned home I’ve been working on completing the Sam Sixkiller book.  My focus in the last chapter has been on the men who shot and killed the Indian lawman, their character, or lack thereof.  Some historians hold to the belief that the two men who gunned down Captain Sixkiller were “victims of circumstance.”  There are many who believe no one is born bad – that he becomes that way because of environment or some traumatic experience.  I disagree.  In the research I’ve done I have found that many of the Western bad men came from fine, respectable families.  John Wesley Hardin’s mother was known as a good woman and his father a minister of the Gospel.  John Wesley himself was a schoolteacher for three months in Navarro County, Texas.  The degraded William Clarke Quantrill was also a schoolteacher before his more lurid career.  Joe Hill, notorious member of Curly Bill’s rustlers in Cochise County, Arizona, and the same man who shot Dick Lloyd off his horse for riding it into his poker game, was reputed to be a scion of a fine old aristocratic family.  Given the chance all of these men would lie about their upbringing to get out of having to answer for the crimes they perpatrated.  Nothing seems to have changed since that time period.  I’ve thought a lot about that with regards to the Casey Anthony trial in the news today.  I don’t know if she killed her daughter or not, but I think it’s despicable to blame your bad actions on your upbringing.  It’s something a coward would do and has done.  You shift the blame onto someone who in the majority of cases has done nothing wrong, but now find themselves in the unique position of defending their own life.  I feel for Casey Anthony’s father and brother who are now being accused of sexually molesting her.  False accusations such as that are the most heinous of crimes.  It comes down to a “he said – she said” situation and facts don’t matter much.  Father and son Anthony will never be able to reclaim their reputations.  It’s over for them and no one had to prove anything ever really happened.  There should be a special kind of hell for people who falsely accuse anyone of such an act.  Now that I think about it…there is – actually several I’m told.   No one gets away with that crime.  And as it was noted in the film True Grit, “punishment will come one way or another.”