A well known western figure I’ve long since wanted to write about was Geronimo. Growing up at Fort Huachuca I heard a lot about Geronimo and always admired him for so enthusiastically fighting back against the bad guys. He fought with a woman warrior I wrote about in the book She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. She didn’t live long standing up to a government that lied. But I guess she’d rather be a dead hero than a live coward. Geronimo waged war for twenty-five years against both U.S. and Spanish armies to protect his tribal lands. Born with the name Goyathlay, he had a violent life from the beginning with the death of his father during a war, followed by the murder of his first wife, three children, and mother during a raid by Spanish soldiers. “St. Jerome!” is what the Spanish settlers yelled when they saw Geronimo preparing to attack, asking for help of the patron saint of translators, for some reason. Some linguists believe that is how “Geronimo,” the derivative of Jerome, became a name synonymous with a wild assault. He and a band of thirty-eight remained the very last to elude U.S. troops, until he finally surrendered in 1886 and was sent to a reservation. Toward the end of his life he embraced his celebrity status and appeared at country fairs to sign autographs and even rode in President Teddy Roosevelt’s inaugural parade. He died of pneumonia in 1909 at seventy-nine. His grave was allegedly robbed by members of Yale’s Skull & Bones Society, and Geronimo’s skull is used today in initiation rituals of the secret club to which both Presidents George W. and George H. W. Bush once belonged.

The following story is a Cherokee Indian tale about fair play and takes place in the Blue Ridge country of what is now western North Carolina. Playing by the rules a big part of “how to play the game,” both on and off the field. I wanted to include this tale today in honor of Cherokee frontier lawman Sam Sixkiller and the book that is set to be released about this incredible men. And now, The Boy Who Went to the Sky. There was once upon a time a boy who was a fine ball player of his village of the Cherokee nation. He could catch well, run swiftly to the goal, and almost never did he lose a game for his side. And one season it was decided that his village should play a ball game with the village of the Cherokees on the other side of the Ridge. So the two teams met not far from Pilot Knob, and the game began. This boy was anxious, just as a boy of today would be, to help win the game for his village, and for a while the game seemed to be going against him. Time and time again the players from the Indian village on the other side of the Ridge ran and made goals. This made the boy discouraged, and it also made him forget his honor. His village must make the goal, he thought, so he did a thing which was forbidden in the rules of ball playing. He picked up the ball in his hand and tried to throw it to the goal. The Indians kicked the ball. It was not considered fair to touch it with their hands. He thought that no one had seen him, and he was successful. The ball went straight to the goal, but it did not stop there. He boys and girls and the braves who sat in a wide circle on the grassy field to watch the game saw a strange thing. Bounding away from the goal, the ball went up into the air. Following the ball went the boy who had forgotten the rules of the game. His feet left the ball field. He seemed to be leaping up towards the sky to try and bring back the ball, but neither he nor the ball stopped. Up, up, higher and farther through the blue air they went until the ball was out of sight, and then the boy could no longer be seen. It was magic which had happened, and the people rubbed their eyes with their wonder, and then they silently went home to their villages. It seemed to them to have been a lesson, for the boy’s wrong play had been seen, not only by the Great Spirit of the Cherokee People, but by some of the ball players. They knew why the boy had been taken away from his friends. The was the ancient days before the Moon had appeared in the sky, but that night a strange thing happened. Sitting late beside their campfires the braves of all the villages of the Cherokee country saw a huge, round ball of silver rise in the sky and then hang there, lighting the forest trees with its wonderful, pale light. And on the surface of this ball of silver could be seen the face of the boy who had not played fair in the ball game. It was the ball which had been taken from the ball field up to the sky, and fastened there. In its light could be seen the boy had been taken from the earth with it. The Moon had some to the heavens, a ball taken from the game field. Sometimes it was seen that the Moon was smaller. It was sometimes eclipsed. Everybody was amazed at an eclipse of the Moon, for the night would suddenly darken and the tribes would gather and fire guns and beat a drum. The eclipse came about because of a great Frog, who tried to swallow the Moon, and the drum frightened him away. But the oddest thing about the Moon was its way of waxing and waning. From night to night it would become so large that the Indians could see the face of the Boy-in-the-Moon, and then it would be nothing but a silver thread in the sky above the pine tree. This happened, the Boy-in-the Moon told them, to remind ball players never to cheat. When the Moon looked small and pale it was because someone had handled a ball unfairly. So it came about in the Cherokee country that they played ball after that only in the full of the moon. Sam Sixkiller: Cherokee Frontier Lawman is currently available through Amazon.com. Register to win a free copy of the book by sending an email to www.chrisenss.com

All the Tombstone luminaries were dwarfed by the presence of the Earp family. Less than two years after their arrival to the town referred to as “too tough to die,” Virgil Earp was ambushed by the cowboys and was left crippled for life. The same cowardly group that shot Virgil then shot Morgan. At 10:50 p.m. on March 18, 1882, Morgan was playing pool at Bob Hatch’s Billiard Parlor. Wyatt watched as his bother chalked his cue. Suddenly, from a crowd of men standing behind a back door, two rifle shots blasted into the room. The first barely missed Wyatt, but it crushed Morgan’s spine. He died before midnight. Three men were seen running from the pool hall – an unidentified Indian, a lawman named Frank Stillwell, and Pete Spence. Wyatt wanted blood. If they were my brother’s I would have wanted the same. On the morning of March 22, a portion of the Earp posse including Wyatt, his brother Warren, Doc Holliday, Sherman McMaster and Turkey Creek Johnson rode into Spence’s woodcutting camp in the South Pass in the Dragoon Mountains, looking for Spence. Unknown to the Earp posse, Pete Spence was in jail, but at the wood camp, the Earp posse found Florentino “Indian Charlie” Cruz. The Arizona Weekly Star had previously identified “Florentino Saiz as “the 1878 murderer of two U.S. Marshals”, and Earp strongly suspected he was one of those involved in the shooting death of his brother Morgan. According to witnesses in the wood camp, as the Earp posse arrived, Cruz ran and the Earp posse chased him, firing several shots, then a final shot. Earp told his biographer Stuart Lake that he got Cruz to confess to being the lookout, and that he identified Stilwell, Hank Swilling, Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo as Morgan’s killers. After the confession, Wyatt Earp shot Cruz, telling Lake that he had given Cruz a pistol, and told him to draw. The coroner’s inquest identified him as Florentino Cruz. Dr. George Goodfellow testified that he found that Cruz had a minor wound to his arm, a wound in his thigh, a serious wound in his groin and pelvis, and a shot in the side of his head. The coroner thought either of the last two shots would have been fatal. Rumor has it that before Cruz got what was coming to him he insisted that he had done what he had to do and should be allowed to have some peace now. I was recently informed that the cowards who took my brother’s life were asking for the same thing. If Cruz wanted peace he shouldn’t have been involved in a murder. If the cowards who took my brother wanted peace they shouldn’t have falsely accused him of a crime and they shouldn’t post obscene things about a dead man on their blog. They should prepare themselves for the fate that awaits all cowards – unrest, to be haunted. A coward will die many times before their actual demise. No one knew that better than the cowboys Earp tracked to their death.

For more information:
Laurie Kenney
203/458-4555
laurie.kenney@globepequot.com

SAM SIXKILLER: Cherokee Frontier Lawman

A riveting biography of a little-known Native-American who shaped history—and a story complete with shootouts, romance, intrigue, and a little politics.

Sam Sixkiller was one of the most accomplished lawmen in 1880s Oklahoma Territory, and, in many ways, he was a typical law-enforcement official: minding the peace and gunslinging in the still-wild West. What set Sam Sixkiller apart was his Cherokee heritage. Sixkiller’s sworn duty was to uphold the law but he also took it upon himself to protect the traditional way of life of the Cherokee. Sixkiller’s temper, actions, and convictions earned him more than a few enemies, and in 1886 he was assassinated in an ambush. TwoDot, an imprint of Globe Pequot Press, is proud to announce the June 12, 2012, release of Sam Sixkiller: Cherokee Frontier Lawman, by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss, a new biography that takes a sweeping, cinematic look at the short, tragic life of of Sam Sixkiller and his days policing the streets of the Wild West.

Howard Kazanjian is an award-winning producer and entertainment executive who has been producing feature films and television programs for more than twenty-five years. While vice president of production for Lucasfilm Ltd., he produced two of the highest grossing films of all time: Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. He also managed production of another top-ten box-office hit, The Empire Strikes Back. Some of his other notable credits include The Rookies, Demolition Man, and the two-hour pilot and first season of J.A.G.

Chris Enss is an award-winning screen writer who has written for television, short subject films, live performances, and for the movies, and is the co-author (with JoAnn Chartier) of Love Untamed: True Romances Stories of the Old West, Gilded Girls: Women Entertainers of the Old West, and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon: Women Patriots and Soldiers of the Old West and The Cowboy and the Senorita and Happy Trails (with Howard Kazanjian). Her most recent books include Buffalo Gals: Women of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and How the West was Worn.

Sam Sixkiller: Cherokee Frontier Lawman
by Howard Kazanjian & Chris Enss
ISBN 978-0-7627-6075-6 • TwoDot • $14.95 • Paperback • 176 pages • 6 x 9 • June 12, 2012

I’m been working on a couple of western books this morning and humming a Stephen Foster tune. Many people don’t know who Foster was and I thought I’d make him the subject of the journal entry today. He was no great composer, but Stephen Foster had a way with sentimental words and catchy melodies that had kept his songs popular for more than a century. There is something pleasantly wholesome and irresistibly old-fashioned about songs like “Jennie with the Light Brown Hair” and “Oh! Suzanna.” Two have been adopted by states, “My Old Kentucky Home” and Florida’s “Old Folks at Home.” (Swanee River) What is ironic is that the composer of such unabashed sentimentality – born on the fiftieth birthday of the nation – ended up so miserably. Forster, who grew up singing but had very little musical training near Pittsburgh, was successful almost from his first published songs in 1848. He earned more than $1,000 a year in royalties and married in 1850. But he always spent more than he made and the marriage was unhappy. He wrote fewer songs each year until he left his wife and daughter in 1860 and moved to New York City. There, desperate for cash, he churned out 105 songs – more than half of his entire work – in the last three and a half years of his life. Most were soon forgotten, and his previously lucrative publishing arrangement deteriorated to the point that Foster was selling songs outright for a quick $25. The composer, who drank heavily and suffered symptoms of tuberculosis, grew bitter and lonely as he lived in a series of rooming houses. On January 10, 1864, bedridden with fever, Foster got up to wash himself. Apparently as he stood over the washbasin he fell, shattering the porcelain bowl, which cut his neck deeply. He was found by a chambermaid delivering towels later that day. George Cooper, one of his few friends, was summoned to hear Foster whisper, “I’m done for,” and plead for a drink. Foster was taken to the city-run Bellevue Hospital, where he died, alone and unrecognized, three days later. The hospital, which had registered the 37-year-old composer as Stephen Fosters, put his body in a morgue for unknown corpses until Cooper retrieved it. Unlike nearly all that he wrote in his final years. Foster’s last song, which he penned just a few days before he died, joined his earlier classics: Beautiful dream, wake unto me. Starlight and dew-drops are waiting for thee. Sounds of the rude world heard in the day. Lull’d by the moonlight have all pass’d away.