Journal Notes

There’s nothing more satisfying for me than watching a great western. More often than not criminals in a good western do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men. The men they wronged. The outlaws in a great many westerns I watch know they won’t get away. They know they ultimately can’t get away. I once knew a man who committed no crime, but was sentenced to prison because he was persuaded to take a plea. He’d been severely beaten and raped at a penitentiary transfer station. So they put him in a hospital to make him better so that they could make him worse. He was destined to be beaten and raped again. During the eight years he was gone, he collapsed a number of times as a result of Parkinson’s disease, and the doctors put him in the hospital again. He became friends with the nurses and the doctors, and after a while they helped him to get well enough to go back and take more punishment. I saw him after the brutal attacks and he was a broken man. The spirit of the man was gone. The person sitting next to me during the visit with the man said, “This country’s law and their stinking judges! Isn’t anyone going to do something about them?” Staring into the hollow face of the beaten man I once knew as my brother I said, “I don’t want the people who made the law, and I don’t want the people who passed the sentence. The only ones I want to see get theirs are those that falsely accused and caused this pain.” I am convinced that will never really happen. A good western soothes my soul in the midst of the conflict raging in my mind. Last night I enjoyed watching Arizona. Released in 1940, Arizona is more memorable for the thousands of feet of stock footage it provided for other films. For this tale of the development of Arizona, Columbia reconstructed Tucson as the mud-adobe town it had been while the movie’s director, Wesley Ruggles, created set-pieces in the style of De Mille. In one of the movie’s best scenes, the town’s inhabitants watch the Union troops setting light to everything in their wake, as they withdraw. Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur starred in the picture.

American’s oldest diversion deteriorated into a vice. In the turn of a card or the roll of a dice for all or nothing, there was a kind of daring that touched the American spirit. “The lust for work is matched…by the lust to gamble.” The affluent risked thousands of comforts; the poor risked bread money on gaming tables in slum taverns. The gambling fever produced two opposing species. First were the predatory card sharps and confidence men who understood human weakness and how to exploit it; second were the masses, eternally gullible to the lure of something for nothing. Throughout the nation these adversaries met-in lotteries, over tables, at racetracks, in casinos, cockpits-and the result was nearly always the same. The suckers lost. In 1890, San Francisco had an estimated 2500 illegal gambling houses, which produced, as they did elsewhere, crime and degeneracy. And while these are hardly the by-products one would expect of a leisure activity, it should be remembered that vice can become a pastime for people who had little alternative resource. Starting with the Gold Rush era, the West from the Rio Grande to Canadian border knew no way to spend free hours except gambling. Judge or laborer, clergyman or clerk, all elbowed their way into the gambling tents.

Old West partners to reckon with…Cherokee Lawman Sam Sixkiller and a six-shooter. Besides being a US deputy marshal, Sixkiller was a detective for the Missouri Pacific Railroad and in 1880 became the first captain of the US Indian Police (USIP), which was headquartered at Muskogee, Creek Nation. The USIP served under the Indian agent for the Five Civilized Tribes. Sam Sixkiller came out of this milieu of politics, crime, and upheaval and brought a sense of justice and fairness to the people who lived in the Cherokee Nation and the Indian Territory. Sixkiller became widely known and praised for his law enforcement skills, commitment, and understanding of duty to the job. The Oklahoma Historical Society plans to present its Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History (published in 2012) to Globe Pequot Press and Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss, publisher and authors of Sam Sixkiller: Cherokee Frontier Lawman during our Annual Awards Luncheon on April 19, 2013. For more information about the book Sam Sixkiller: Cherokee Frontier Lawman visit www.chrisenss.com.

Another great Old West partnership -Nat Love and roping. Nat Love (1854-1921) was born to slave parents on the Robert Love plantation in Davidson County, Tennessee. He was freed at the end of the Civil War, just after he turned eleven. At fifteen, he found a task he enjoyed, taming colts for a dime a head. Fortune smiled with a $100 raffle win, giving him enough bucks to split the winnings with his mother and head west. Outside Dodge City, after a wild audition on the back of a foul-tempered bronco called Good Eye, Love found work with the Duval cattle outfit from Texas. For three years, he was based in the Texas panhandle near the Palo Dura River. In 1872, he was in Arizona’s Gila River country working for Pete Gallinger as the resident authority on reading brands. In 1876, Love’s outfit received an order for 2,000 longhorns to be delivered to Deadwood in Dakota Territory. In Deadwood on the 4th of July, Love won a mustang roping contest and a shooting match. In addition to the prize money, the excited residents bestowed upon him the title of Deadwood Dick. In a time when men were known by their buckskin nicknames – Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill, Texas Jack – Love saw his dubbing as a badge of honor. Back in the Southwest, his party was attacked by warriors. Wounded in the leg, he passed out, only to awake in the camp of Yellow Dog. According to Love, he was told he was “too brave to die” and plans were made to adopt him. His ears were pierced with a bone from a deer’s leg. He was designated to marry Buffalo Papoose, daughter of the chief. A month later, with the wedding fast approaching, Love stole a pony and skipped out of camp. Twelve hours and one hundred miles later, he was back at the ranch. Meanwhile, in wild and woolly New York, author Edward Lytton Wheeler was finishing up a story for dime novel publisher Beadle and Adams. Wheeler had never been west of Pennsylvania, but on October 15, 1877, Deadwood Dick, the Prince of the Road; or the Black Rider of the Black Hills was published. Over the next eight years, Wheeler penned thirty-three Deadwood Dick novels, as well as a play, Deadwood Dick, A Road Agent, A Drama of the Gold Mines. The stories were so popular that faux Deadwood Dicks began crawling out of the woodwork. For more information about Beadle and Adams Dime Novels read The Raftsman’s Daughter by yours truly.

Among my favorite Old West partnerships is that of Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. The two met on Thanksgiving Day in 1875 in Oakley, Ohio and promptly squared off at a shooting competition. Annie was fifteen years old and stood just under five feet tall. Frank was twenty-three years old and was more than six feet tall. Annie won the shooting contest. Known to each other as Missie and Jimmy, the two married on June 22, 1876. Frank was impressed with Annie’s shooting skills and in 1882 began choreographing the trick shot and horseback riding routines she performed in the traveling circuses in which they were a part. The two had an impressive career together, appearing in venues all over the United States and Europe. They were married for more than fifty years when Annie died of pneumonia. Heartbroken, Frank stopped eating and died seventeen days after his wife. In 1935, the first western about Annie Oakley’s life starring Barbara Stanwyck opened in theatres across America. Annie Oakley, was an efficient, if historically inaccurate, biopic. Stanwyck plays the tomboy sharpshooter who romances fellow sharp shooter Preston Foster who portrays Frank Butler. The ninety minute film was directed by George Stevens. Stevens went on to make one of the definitive films in the genre – Shane. For more information about Annie Oakley and Frank Butler read Love Untamed: Romances of the Old West.

Miracle cures for hair loss were sold by snake-oil salesmen in the Old West and they are sold on the World Wide Web today. A “cure for baldness” has long been a profitable claim for nostrums. The Old West snake-oil salesman might sell his product as a cure for baldness when his audience was made up mostly of men, and a cure for “women’s complaints” when his audience was mostly women. In the next town, he might sell it as a cure for rheumatism. The common thread in all of his claims is they are unverified by any scientifically acceptable evidence. We might believe that we are more sophisticated and knowledgeable than the citizens of a small town in the Old West who gathered around the wagon of the snake-oil salesman to hear his pitch. While it is true that we are probably more knowledgeable because there is more information to know about, it is also true that the purveyors of nostrums incorporate today’s advanced knowledge into their claims. The Nineteenth Century snake-oil salesman might base his claims on “secret knowledge” passed along to him by an ancient medicine man. The purveyor of nostrums today is more likely to use words taken out of context from the sciences of genetics and biochemistry to link his claims to scientific research. Buyers beware!

In the early 19th century most Americans healed themselves, as their ancestors had for centuries. Professional medical assistance was either too far away, too expensive, or both. Even wealthy urban families usually attempted some sort of home health care before the doctor was called. This care was usually administered with the aid of books, pamphlets, and proprietary medicines purchased at the general store. Proprietary medicine advertisements were the mainstay of newspapers in the Old West. Newspapers carried notices for medicated vapor baths, artificial teeth, genuine Galvanic Rings, the Anodyne Necklace and other amulets. Some patent medicine companies spent more than $100,000 a year advertising their products. Patent medicines were the hottest-selling items on store shelves. If the labels on the medicines were to be believed, they could handle just about any and every complaint. One concoction grandly promised to cure 30 different disorders, including “nervous debility caused by the indiscretions of youth.” Mostly they relied on heavy lacing alcohol to work their proclaimed wonders. It didn’t really cure what was ailing you but you didn’t mind so much.

I keep telling myself that things have got to get better. Business calls will eventually be returned, books sales will improve, and McDonald’s cherry pies will never be put on hiatus to make room for some feeble attempt of a holiday pie with a filling no one can identify. But here it is. Another Monday and no improvements. This is the perfect time for another Old West advertisement. American fashions were influenced by European designers, but at the beginning of the century seventy-five percent of all clothing in the country were homemade. Observers said they could detect the potato-sack-like cut of a homemade garment a mile away, especially next to a tailor-made piece or, later in the century, a store bought or factory-made garment. Indeed, until the 1840s, when clothing became more readily available in stores, most Americans wore clothing sewn by themselves or their own mothers, sisters or daughters. The Boss of the Road Clothing House, located in the mining town of Grass Valley, California, opened its door in 1863 and featured the latest styles for the entire family. Among the most popular items sold to women there were calico dresses and a head covering called the “flat”. The flat was a woman’s low-crowned straw hat with a very wide brim. Many men purchased the roundabout; a short, close-fitting jacket, also known as a monkey-jacket.

In 1800, four-fifths of all Americans worked on farms. During the second half of the century, many abandoned farm life to work in the city, in shops and in manufactories. Some of these people found a better way of life. Others became disillusioned. Out of work pioneers poured over the advertisements in local papers searching for a job. Many unskilled people sought work as electrochemical-platers. Objects like tableware and food containers were coated with a thin layer of metal to prevent corrosion and obtain a hard surface or attractive finish. Sounds exciting!

The invention of roller skates is attributed to an unknonw Dutchman of the early 18th century, who conceived the idea of adopting ice skating for dry ground by affixing wooden spools to a supporting plate. The first skates with metal wheels were fashioned in 1763 by the Belgian mechanic and musical instrument maker Joseph Merlin. The first modern, so called rocking skates, enabling a person to move easily through alternative shifting of his weight, were patented in 1863 by the American inventor James Leonard Plimpton. Roller skates sales soared in 1865 after people witnessed the invention at work in traveling circuses. By the 1880s, nearly every city and large town had a roller skating rink. The sport was enjoyed by both men and women. I’ve been having fun with the selection of Old West ads, but want to call journal reader’s attention to the next chapter in the book The Plea. Chapter one is now available on this site. Soon the story will be transformed into a documentary.