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You could win a copy of The Principles of Posse Management.

Pat Garrett and Wyatt Earp, management experts?  Expert management skills were necessary to quickly organize a group of law enforcement officers able to effectively keep the peace and pursue and arrest felons.

The actual work of transforming the frontier into farms and cities was carried on by the stream of settlers, but working with, or sometimes ahead of them were the business people who directed the conquest of the wilderness and law enforcement officials who helped protect their interests.

The business people brought capital and labor together, sent logging crews into the forests; built bridges, canals, and railways; bought, sold, and transported commodities; laid out town sites and planned cities; started industries; developing mines; and nearly always speculating in land.  Often times their efforts were thwarted by criminal elements who kept the goods, services, and funds from their appointed destination.  Posses were formed to make sure fleeing desperados were brought to justice.  In the process civility was brought to the lawless territory as well.

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You could win a copy of The Trials of Annie Oakley.

Long before the screen placed the face of Mary Pickford before the eyes of millions of Americans, this girl, born August 13, 1800 and who was christened Phoebe Anne Oakley Moses and was destined to make the shortened form her name, “Annie Oakley,” known throughout the world, had won the right to the title of the first “America’s Sweetheart.”

The life story of Annie Oakley is a combination Cinderella fairy story and frontier melodrama.

The Cinderella part of it begins with the pioneer home near a small cross-roads settlement to Darke County, Ohio, where in a little log cabin lived Jake Moses and his wife, whom, as a twelve-year-old child he had rescued from a brutal stepfather in Pennsylvania.  He had given her a home with her sister and, after marrying her, when she was fifteen, set out with her to make a new home in the Ohio country.  In this new home Moses and his wife fought a constant battle with privation and poverty.  Then Moses returning from the saw mill, was frozen to death in a blizzard and upon the mother fell the whole task of carrying for her seven children.

At the age of six Annie began helping fill the family larder by trapping quail and a few years later she had made the first start on the rifle career that made her famous.  One of the few possessions that Jake Moses had brought with him from Pennsylvania was a 40 inch cap and ball Kentucky rifle which hung over the fireplace, but which had never been used because Moses was a Quaker with the Quaker prejudice against firearms.  The tomboy Annie, however, did not share that prejudice.  She saw in the weapon an instrument for getting more food for her brothers and sisters, and finally gained her mother’s reluctant consent.

But the beginning of her career as a markswoman was soon interrupted.  She went to the country infirmary to get the chance to attend school and while there a stranger appeared and offered to take one of the girls at the infirmary to work for her “board and keep.”  Annie was the girl selected and in the home of this man began her Cinderella existence.  The man was a brute and his wife a virago.  Annie was held as a virtual slave subjected to all sorts of cruel treatment.  Once when she fell asleep over a basket of mending the woman threw her out into a snowstorm half-naked.  After two years of this existence she finally escaped and returned home.

There she continued her former role of provider for the family with the rifle and thus laid the foundation for the marvelous skill which was to make her world famous.  News of her skill spread throughout Darke County and even to Cincinnati where hotel keepers had been buying the game which she killed.  When Annie was fifteen there came to Cincinnati the “far-famed team of Butler and Company, performing deeds of daring and dexterity with firearms, seldom exhibited before the eyes of an audience.  As a publicity stunt, Frank E. Butler was accustomed to issue a challenge to all comers to a shooting match.  The challenge was taken up by one of Annie’s hotel keeping patrons who prevailed upon her to shoot against the professional.

The girl not only won the match, but also won the heart of Frank Butler and a year or so later they were married.  Frank often wrote Annie poems that shared his plans for their future together.

Some find day I’ll settle down

And stop this roving life.

With a cottage in the country

I will claim my little wife.

Then we will be happy and contented,

No quarrels shall arise

And I’ll never leave my little girl

With the rain drops in her eyes.

Annie eventually began taking part in her husband’s act and for some time they were billed as “Butler and Oakley.”  Then Butler, who was a skillful showman, began giving his wife more and more of the limelight and pushing himself more and more into the background.  Within a short time, Annie was a noted figure in the Wild West theater.

“What fools we mortals be!  Annie once wrote of her beloved husband.  “My admiration for Frank Butler’s poodle led me into signing some sort of alliance papers with him that tied a knot so hard it lasted some fifty years.”

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Enter now to win a copy of Mochi’s War:  The Tragedy of Sand Creek

Colonel John Chivington and representatives of the First and Third Colorado Cavalry rode hard and fast from the sun-touched butte where they’d been waiting at the Indian encampment along Sand Creek. A bugler sounded the charge as the horses’ hooves drummed and the soldiers shouted, reins in their teeth and guns in their fists.  Members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes living in the path of the cavalry hurried from their lodges and frantically scattered in different directions. Mothers scooped young children into their arms and ushered elderly men and women to clusters of trees. Braves grabbed weapons in order to defend themselves from the surprise invasion.

Several of Chivington’s troops raced to the paddock where the Indians’ horses were corralled. Without the herd the Indians would be at a disadvantage, unable to pursue attackers or flee from the chaos. Just before the flood of soldiers arrived on the scene, Colonel Chivington urged his men to “recall the blood of wives and children spilled on the Platte and Arkansas Rivers.”

The full force of the cavalry’s strike yielded immediate devastation. Bullet-ridden children fell where they once played; mothers lay dying with their babies in their arms; elderly women and men collapsed from gunshot wounds in their backs. It was a killing frenzy. Some Indians managed to escape without injury and take refuge in thick brush and behind scattered rock outcroppings.

Black Kettle tried desperately to keep his people from panicking. He clung to the belief that the attack would cease when the soldiers noticed the American flag unfurled. He and Chief White Antelope huddled at the base of the flag post. They only ran for cover when they realized the soldiers were hell-bent on annihilating them.

Fearless Cheyenne women and braves stood their ground, refusing to leave without a fight. The men exchanged shots with the soldiers and the women fought using spears and knives, all of which gave members of the tribe a chance to retreat slowly up the dried streambed. Many Cheyenne and Arapaho were killed as they ran to hide in the banks of the Sand Creek.

Indian horses spooked by gunfire broke away from the soldiers trying to drive them from the encampment. Indian women who managed to capture and calm a horse long enough to climb onto its back were shot. Their lifeless bodies slid from the backs of the horses onto the hard earth. Braves on foot who dared charge the relentless soldiers were stopped in their tracks with a barrage of bullets. According to accounts from those who witnessed the battle, children who ventured out of hiding waving white flags and mothers who pleaded for their infants’ lives were beaten with the butt of the soldiers’ guns and then scalped.

Black Kettle stood watching the bloody event in disbelief. He made a white flag of truce and raised it under the American flag. It had no effect upon the soldiers. Chivington’s persistent orders to continue to pursue the enemy were strictly followed. Black Kettle grabbed his wife, and the two fled toward a creek bed. The bark of the rifles all around him was steady, and there seemed to be no escape for the Cheyenne leader. Black Kettle’s wife was struck by several bullets, and the concussion of the shots knocked her face first onto the ground. Black Kettle tried to get her onto her feet again, but her injuries were too serious. The cavalry was bearing down on him quickly and he was forced to leave his wife’s body behind. He continued running until he reached the sandy creek bed. He hid in the dry wash under a thick overgrowth of brush.

To learn more about the Sand Creek Massacre read

Mochi’s War:  The Tragedy of Sand Creek