Journal Notes

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Thick, damp, and cold fog pressed against the windows of the small house at Point Knox, condensed in a muted bronze gleam on the huge bell, slipped clammy fingers inside the cloak of the woman shivering on the small platform. Waves splashed and foamed against the rocks far below the wet planks where Juliet Fish Nichols listened tensely for the creak of rigging or the dull thunder of a steamship’s engine. She hoped she heard something before she saw it because any ship close enough to see was doomed.

Automatically, her throbbing arm lifted, and she rapped the small hammer twice against the side of the three-thousand-pound bell. Fifteen seconds later, she struck the bell again. Then, after counting off another fifteen seconds, she elevated the hammer and banged twice more on the great bell. Again and again, eight times each minute, Juliet lifted her aching arm and rang the bell, warning ships away from Angel Island in fogbound San Francisco Bay.

At least four ships were due in port that first week of July 1906: the Capac, City of Topeka, and Sea Foam, all of which plied the California coast, as well as the transpacific steamer Mongolia loaded with passengers from the Far East. Unfortunately, the crystal-clear atmosphere of July 1 had deteriorated rapidly in the following few days. Visibility was often no more than a few yards. Impenetrable fog concealed every landmark.

Juliet had seen the annual summer phenomenon many times, but this year the job of warning approaching ships away was doubly important. Rebuilding was in full swing following the great 1906 earthquake. The already hectic harbor was a mad scramble of activity with hundreds of ships attempting to navigate the bay’s treacherous currents, escape ship-eating rocks, and find their way through heavy fog. The lighthouses, fog sirens, and bells were critically important.

Juliet stood on the small platform with a hammer in hand because, once again, the Gamewell Fire Alarm Number 3 clockworks, which powered the mechanism that rang the Angel Island bell, had quit working. During a brief lifting of the fog, Juliet had sent a telegram to the lighthouse engineer and then serviced the small, stationary red light on the southwest corner of the station. Because the light was intended for fair nights and not thick fog, it would be virtually useless as a warning.

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A lone Native American woman cautiously led her chestnut mare through the bluffs around Klamath Lake, an inland sea twenty miles north of the line dividing California and Oregon. The rider was Mrs. Frank “Tobey” Riddle. She belonged to the Modoc tribe that settled in the area; they called her Winema. She was known among her family and friends as one who possessed great courage and could not be intimidated by danger. She pressed past the jagged rocks lining the transparent water, praying to the great god Ka-moo-kum-chux to give her abundant courage in the face of the certain danger that she was about to encounter.

Winema was a mediator between the Modoc people, other Indian tribes in the area, and the US Army. With her skills, she was able to negotiate treaties that kept the land of her ancestors in peace. Whenever that peace was threatened, her job was to set things straight. She was on her way now to do just that—riding into hostile Modoc territory to persuade the chief to surrender to the cavalry.

Chief Keintpoos, or Captain Jack (a name given to him by the settlers because of his liking for brass buttons and military medals on his coat), was Winema’s cousin. In 1864, the US government forced his people from their land onto a reservation in Oregon. Conditions on the reservation were intolerable for the Modoc people. They were forced to share the land with Klamath Indians of the region. The Modoc and the Klamath tribes did not get along. The latter particularly hated the Modoc people because they had long been defeated by them in battle. Now suddenly their old enemies were moved into their midst. The Modoc Indians struggled to live in this hostile environment for three years. Modoc leaders appealed to the US government to separate the tribes, but officials refused to correct the problem. In 1869, Captain Jack defied the laws of the white man and led his tribe off the reservation and back into the area where their forefathers had first lived.

The cavalry and frustrated members of the Indian Peace Council wanted to use force to bring Captain Jack and his followers back to the reservation. Winema persuaded them instead to give her a chance to talk with the chief. “No peace can be made as long as soldiers are near,” she told them. “Let me speak with my cousin and see what can be done without war.”

As Winema made her way around the jagged sides of the mountains, she thought of her son. Before she’d left on her journey, she’d held the infant in her arms and kissed his lips. Although she was traveling under a flag of truce, she considered the possibility of being seen as a traitor by her people and being struck down before she could plead her case. She shuddered a moment at the thought, then, with a set face, spurred her horse forward. I will see my little boy again, she promised herself.

When Winema reached the Modoc camp, Captain Jack’s men gathered around her. A dozen pistols were drawn upon her as she dismounted. She eyed the angry tribesmen as they slowly approached her. Then, walking backward until she stood upon a rock above the mob, she clasped her right hand upon her own pistol, and with the other on her heart she shouted aloud, “I am a Modoc myself. I am here to talk peace. Shoot me if you dare, but I will never betray you.” Her bravery in the face of such difficulty won the admiration of her people, and, instantly, a dozen pistols were drawn in her defense.

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Frances eyed the horizon before them then disappeared into the wagon. She picked up two sabers lying next to a trunk, unsheathed them, and thrust them out either side of the back of the wagon. From a distance she hoped it would look like they were armed with more travelers who were ready to do battle with the Apaches. Unless they come very close, she thought, the dim light will favor our deception.

She returned to her husband’s side, cradling a pistol in her lap. The strap on Orsemus’ gun in his holster had been undone, and he was ready to fire his weapon as well. The riders in front of them had pulled their bayonets from their sheaths, the blades gleaming in the low-hanging sun. Frances believed the small band looked as warlike as possible. Members of the Eighth Cavalry had passed this same way a few days before and had been assaulted with bullets from some of Apache leader Geronimo’s warriors. Frances and the others were relying on an appearance of strength they in nowise possessed. They knew the Natives would not attack unless they were confident of victory.

The train proceeded into the canyon. The mountain walls on either side were jagged and high. They were a treacherous color against which an Indian could hide himself and almost seem to be a part of them. Frances later wrote that their “hearts quivered with excitement and fear at the probability of an attack.”

The going was slow, and, as time progressed without any hint of an ambush, the party started to relax. Then, suddenly, they heard the fearful cry of an Indian. His cry was answered by another.

Frances stared down at her baby lying at her feet. The child was bundled up in many blankets and sleeping soundly. Orsemus urged on the mule team pulling the wagon through the imposing gorge. Everyone with the party believed death was moments away. “At last, and it seemed ages,” Frances later recalled, “we were out of the canyon and on open ground.” The Boyds eventually met up with a large party of freighters and made their way to the northern part of the state, frazzled but unharmed. Thus was the life of a military wife on the wild frontier.

Women like Frances Boyd chose to endure the hardships of army living in order to make life for their husbands less burdensome and to help settle an untamed land. “I cast my lot with a soldier,” Frances wrote in her memoirs, “where he was, was home to me.”

Frances Anne was born into a well-to-do family in New York City on February 14, 1848. Her father owned a bakery; her mother was a housewife who died when Frances was quite young. Historians record that she was a bright girl with an agile mind. She met Orsemus Boyd when she was a high school senior and he was a cadet at West Point. They were married a year later, on October 9, 1867. Orsemus had a desire to go west, and Frances had a desire to be with Orsemus.

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The distant cadence of drums from the nearly deserted town of San Antonio de Bexar sent a shiver of fear through Juana Navarro Alsbury. She clutched her baby son closer and strained to hear. Mexican president and General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, enemy of her uncle and her husband, had come when least expected, bringing thousands of men and artillery as well as a thirst for vengeance. The baby wailed at the nearby roar of exploding powder from the cannon mounted at one corner of the Alamo.

That shot signaled defiance by the Texians (Texans from the United States) and Tejanos (Texans of Mexican descent) holed up in the old mission. Juana soothed the baby and waited, holding her breath for Santa Anna’s response.

It was said he had 1,500 to 6,000 troops, cavalry, and cannon at his command. Inside the crumbling fortress were several dozen women and children protected by fewer than 200 defenders. Juana’s new husband, Dr. Horatio A. Alsbury, had galloped off to find volunteers to join the fight, leaving Juana and the baby behind.

Dr. Alsbury had warned that Santa Anna would come down with a heavy hand on the Tejanos and Texians who had settled in the area. Her husband’s activities were known to the Mexican dictator, as were those of her father, who opposed Santa Anna’s overthrow of the constitution of 1824. Her father’s brother, Jose Antonio, had put his name on the Texas Declaration of Independence. If the Alamo fell under the general’s onslaught, the respected name of her Spanish forebears would not protect her little family.

Juana recognized the futility of attempting to hold off the overwhelming force of hardened troops surrounding the old mission-turned-fortress. Those inside the Alamo’s walls were also ill-prepared to fight Santa Anna, in part because too many people had discounted the Mexican dictator’s determination. He had already killed all prisoners taken in a battle the year before and been granted by the Mexican government permission to treat as pirates all Tejanos as well as Texians found armed for battle, meaning they would be executed immediately.

The Tejanos and Texians had dismissed reports that the Mexican dictator was nearby. After all, they argued, two blue northers had recently swept through the area, their freezing winds covering the barren landscape to the south with snow. What commander would move his troops, many of them barefoot, in such conditions?

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The head of the National Film Registry recently asked Howard Kazanjian and I to write an essay about the Roy Rogers’ film Under Western Stars.  It’s one of Rogers’ best films and has been masterfully restored.  Enjoy.

King of the Cowboys Roy Rogers made his starring motion picture debut in Republic Studio’s engaging western musical Under Western Stars.  Released in 1938, the charming, affable Rogers portrayed the most colorful Congressman ever to walk up the steps of the nation’s capital.  Rogers’ character, a fearless, two-gun cowboy and ranger from the western town of Sageville, is elected to office to try to win legislation favorable to dust bowl residents.

Rogers represents a group of ranchers whose land has dried up when a water company controlling the only dam decides to keep the coveted liquid from the hard working cattlemen. Spurred on by his secretary and publicity manager, Frog Millhouse, played by Smiley Burnette, Rogers campaigns for office.  The portly Burnette provides much of the film’s comic relief and goes to extremes to get his friend elected.  His tactics include pasting stickers on the backs of unsuspecting citizens he engages in conversation and helping to organize a square dance to highlight Rogers’ skill and dedication to solving the constituent’s crisis.  Using his knowledge of land and livestock and his talent for singing and yodeling, Rogers wins a seat in Congress.

The sweep of this picture, which moves rapidly from physical action on the western plains to diplomatic action in Washington and back again, is distinctively thrilling. The surging climax in the dust-stricken cattle country makes for one of the most refreshing films of its kind.  The politicians Rogers appeals to about the drought are not convinced the situation is as serious as they are led to believe and decide to inspect the scene for themselves.  The investigation committee is eventually trapped in a real dust storm.  The shots of the storm and the devastation left in its wake are spectacular.

Roy Rogers came to Hollywood from Duck Run, Ohio. He made a name for himself as a member of the successful singing group the Sons of the Pioneers.  Reigning box office cowboy Gene Autry’s difficulties with Herbert Yates, head of Republic Studios, paved the way for Rogers to ride into the leading role in Under Western Stars.  Yates felt he alone was responsible for creating Autry’s success in films and wanted a portion of the revenue he made from the image he helped create.  Yates demanded a percentage of any commercial, product endorsement, merchandising, and personal appearance Autry made.  Autry did not believe Yates was entitled to the money he earned outside of the movies made for Republic Studios.  He refused to include Yates in the profits and threatened to leave the studio if Yates did not reconsider.  Autry was also demanding a raise in pay.

Yates decided it was time to begin grooming another talent to take Autry’s place should the need arise. Rogers was a contract player with the studio making $75 a week.  Billed as Leonard Slye he appeared in a handful of films with Gene Autry singing along with the Sons of the Pioneers.  Rogers even had a part as a bad guy in one of Autry’s films.  When Autry caught up with Rogers in the picture, instead of taking him to jail he demanded the wily character yodel his way out of his troubles.

Yates had been looking for a musical actor to go boot-to-boot with Autry and Rogers was to be the heir apparent. His sweet, pure voice and wholesome image made him a natural for the hero in Under the Western Stars.  Whether regaling the audience with a song about fighting the law entitled Send Our Mail to the County Jail or delivering a stump speech via a tune called Listen to Rhythm of the Range, Rogers makes the most of his leading role.

The Maple City Four, the well-known quartet who made the number Git Along Little Dogies popular, added their talents with Rogers harmonizing on the film’s most important song entitled Dust.  Written by Johnny Marvin, a recording artist from Oklahoma, Dust was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.  It was the first song from a B-western to be Oscar nominated.

According to the February 24, 1938, edition of the Hollywood Reporter, Dust was purchased by Republic Studios from the composers, Gene Autry and Johnny Marvin, for use in Under Western Stars.  A subsequent news item in Hollywood Reporter on April 13, 1938, just prior to the film’s release, noted that Autry was suing the studio for $25,000 for unauthorized use and dramatization of the lyrics with Dust.  According to contemporary sources, the suit over Dust was settled out of court and Johnny Marvin is listed as sole writer of the song.

Audiences made Under Western Stars a box office success and critics called its star “the new Playboy of the Western World.”

Director Joseph Kane, Republic’s top director of westerns delivered a film with a slight new slanting to make it different from all other B-westerns before it.   In addition to the political intrigue in Under Western Stars there is a fair amount of gunfights, fast horses, and unforgettable stunts.  What makes Kane’s film unique is that the fight is not over horse thieves, but the rights of man.  Critics at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper sited Kane’s “sensitive directing eye with giving the horse opera a social consciousness.”

Actors Carol Hughes, Guy Usher, Tex Cooper, Kenneth Harlan, Curley Dresden, Bill Wolfe, Jack Ingram, Jack Kirk, Fred Burns, and Tom Chatterton round out the exciting cast of players and no happy ending would be possible at all if not for Roy’s magnificent Palomino horse Trigger. Brothers and veteran western writers Dorrell and Stuart McGowan penned the screenplay for Under Western Stars along with actress and screenwriter Betty Burbridge.

The film was shot in the Alabama Hills of Lone Pine, California. The scenic location has been used for the backdrop in hundreds of motion pictures and television programs.  The high desert surroundings are integral to the story line of Under Western Stars and could be billed as a supporting role in the film.

Roy Rogers’ first starring vehicle solidified his place as a rising star in B westerns. Film writer and critic Louella Parsons likened Rogers to “Gary Cooper in personal appeal.”  According to her report with the International News Service on November 29, 1938, she called Rogers an “upstanding young American who made the picture Under Western Stars a delight.”

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Susan Shelby Magoffin gazed around the small, white-plastered room in Santa Fe and wondered if she might die there. No one seemed sure where the Mexican army was, or how soon a battle might commence.  But there was no doubt about the danger to herself and her husband now that her brother-in-law had been taken by the Mexicans as a spy.  As she had since the start of her honeymoon journey, Susan recorded the day’s events in her journal:

December 1846, Tuesday 1^st:  News comes in very ugly today.  An Englishman from Chihuahua direct, says that the three traders, Dr. Conely, Mr. McMannus, and brother James, who went on ahead to the Chihuahua have been taken prisoners, the two former lodged in the calaboza [jail] while Brother James is on trial for his life.

The messenger who brought the ominous news had gone, but the impact of the latest information from Chihuahua still reverberated like an alarm bell. The fate of everyone associated with James Magoffin was hanging in the balance.  What if her own dear husband, Samuel, left her behind to ride to her brother’s aide?  They had been married less than a year, and despite their strange honeymoon, she could not bear to be parted from the man she called “mi alma,” my soul.

She would insist on going, too, she thought. After traveling thousands of miles across wild and dangerous terrain and through the lands of unfriendly Native Americans on her prairie honeymoon, she had proved her courage to herself and her husband.  She had survived the hazardous two thousand mile journey despite raging storms, wild beasts, hostile tribes, outlaws, and the awful waterless desert they had traversed a few week before.

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Sarah Winnemucca brooded over the abandoned houses along the dusty track. She and her small party had departed the John Day Valley in the eastern Oregon Territory three days before. They were on the way to Silver City, Idaho, where Sarah would drop off her passengers before heading for Elko, Nevada. There she intended to take a train to Washington, DC, and attempt to tell President Rutherford B. Hayes that her people were starving, the Indian agents were crooked, and none of the promises to the Paiute had been kept. On June 8, three days after the war was reported in the Enterprise, Sarah was unknowingly headed straight for the heart of the battle. “We saw houses standing all along the road without anybody living in them,” Sarah later wrote in her book Life Among the Piutes [sic].

On June 12, they met Paiute Joe on the road and learned the dreadful news. “He said the Bannock Indians were just killing everything that came in their way, and he told us to get to a place called Stone House. That was the first I heard that the Bannocks were on the warpath.” She also learned that there was no one the Bannocks would love to kill more than Chief Winnemucca’s daughter.

When the Bannock War broke out, Sarah was thirty-four years old, daughter of the highly respected Paiute chief Winnemucca and granddaughter of old Chief Truckee, who first met Captain John Fremont and his explorers and guided them over the Sierra Mountains. Truckee had for years considered white people the long-lost brothers of Indians and always counseled peace despite increasing violence by whites against his people and the outright theft of Paiute lands in the Nevada Territory.

Now it appeared the Paiutes were caught in a vise between their northern neighbors in Idaho and Oregon, the Bannock Indians, and the increasing number of settlers pushing them out of their tribal lands in Nevada. Also known as the Snake Indians, the Bannocks were superb horsemen, tall and lean. They dressed in fringed buckskin decorated with quills, scalps, and red, yellow, and black paint and wore a single eagle feather or a headdress made of trimmed horse tail or porcupine skin. Their enemies considered them the most savage and bloodthirsty of all the Indians west of the Mississippi, but they had been relatively peaceful until driven to rebellion.

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You’re cordially invited to attend the Cowboy Lunch Series at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles on May 18, 2016 for a special tribute to actor/director John Wayne.

The Cowboy Lunch Series brings together western filmmakers and stars with Autry Museum members and other fans of the genre. Order lunch at Autry’s Crossroads Café and join actors, producers, stunt coordinators, makeup artists, writers, and other surprise guests. Hollywood producer, Rob Word hosts “A Word on Westerns” a group discussion based on the particular theme or film of the month.

The theme for the May Cowboy Lunch Series is a Salute to Wayne. John Wayne’s son actor Patrick Wayne will be in attendance to discuss his father’s work. New York Times Bestselling author Chris Enss will also be on hand to talk about her book Entertaining Women: Actresses, Singers, and Dancers of the Old West. She’ll share stories about women entertainers on the wild frontier and how they inspired some of the actresses who starred opposite John Wayne.

The event is free to the public. Cost of lunch is not included.

For more information visit http://theautry.org or call 323.667.2000.

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A slim shadow darted toward the old church at the ruined fortress of Goliad. The smell of smoke stained the night air as the figure picked a careful path through the rubble inside the fortress walls. Moonlight starkly displayed the damage caused by the retreating forces of Colonel James Fannin’s command. Hundreds of Fannin’s men now lay on the hard ground, prisoners of General Jose de Urrea, one of Supreme Commandant General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s best commanders.

Pausing in a dark corner, Francita Alavez gazed toward the southwest gate and the dull gleam of a cannon positioned to fire on anyone who might attempt a rescue of the Americans. She shivered in the warm night as the knowledge of their fate bowed her shoulders. She knew what the captives did not. They believed they would be returned to the United States as prisoners of war. Francita had seen the order sent by Santa Anna to execute all of them.

As she had at Copano Bay almost the moment she arrived in Texas, Francita vowed to save as many as she could. On the eve of Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, she slipped into the church and began the task.

“She had heard many tales of the bad, bold, immoral Texans, but like all good souls loath to think ill of others, scarcely believed they could be as bad as painted,” recounted the Pioneer Press in 1920. The article went on to outline what was then known about the woman who came to be called the “Angel of Goliad.” Little more is known today about the young woman who worked against a dictator’s orders at the risk of her own life.

According to a written recollection of schoolteacher Elena Zamora O’Shea, who learned about Francita years later through a family connection, Francita—or Panchita, as she was sometimes called—had been orphaned when young. A well-to-do family near San Luis Potosoi in Mexico raised the girl. O’Shea said that Francita was a sort of “better-class servant, of good blood and from a fine family.”

O’Shea went on to describe Francita as a “pretty, attractive, loving girl chafing at her position in this family and longing to be free and to have a fling at life.” Succumbing to the charms of the dashing Captain Telesforo Alavez, whom she knew to be married, Francita, “throwing all restraint aside went off with him to Texas in the campaign.”

Francita’s first encounter with the cruelties of war came at Copano. Mexican troops had just captured about seventy-five to eighty men after they had disembarked at the port. The Americans had come with William P. Miller from Nashville, Tennessee, to aid in the fight for liberty in Texas, then a part of Mexico. They were captured without arms and taken back to Copano.

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Among the exhibits on display at P. T. Barnum’s American Theatre in New York City during the summer of 1864 was an actress and patriot of the Union Army named Pauline Cushman. Billed as the “Spy of Cumberland,” the celebrated thespian was dressed in the complete uniform of an infantry man including sabre, a crimson, silk sash and a forage cap. Her hair under the cap was disheveled, shoulder-length and curly. She sported a mustache, thin, but unmistakable above her upper lip and below the lip was a dark tuft of hair. The makeup and over all look was so convincing that unless otherwise notified ticket buyers had no idea the man was really a woman.

Pauline Cushman appeared on stage in the lecture room at P. T. Barnum’s American Theatre from June 6, 1864 to July 9, 1864. She offered a patriotic presentation to more than twenty thousand people in a single month. According to the advertisement issued by P. T. Barnam about Pauline’s engagement “she was the modern American model of the renowned ‘Joan of Arc.’ ”

“Miss Pauline Cushman, the Union scout and spy, who under orders from General Rosecrans, passed through enemy lines and accomplished such wonders for the Army of the Cumberland while she was engaged in the secret service of the United States,” the July 6, 1864 edition of the Charleston Mercury read. “Every father and mother who have a son in the Union Army; every child who has learned to love its country and call on heaven to bless its present struggle and preserve its nationality, will rejoice at this opportunity of listening to “thoughts that breath and words that burn,” as they fall from the lips of this high-souled, gallant girl, who, in her determination to serve her country, risked her inestimable precious life, and was rescued from a Rebel prison, where by order of the notorious General Bragg, she lay wounded and languishing with sickness, UNDER SENTENCE OF DEATH!”

“Those who would avoid the crowd should bear in mind that the most pleasant time to hear this heroic lady recount, in her fervid language, her adventure, is at ELEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, on which the lecture room is thrown open without any extra charge. The public’s obedient servant, P. T. Barnum.”

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Old West

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