Enter to win a copy of

Sam Sixkiller: Frontier Cherokee Lawman

The sweeping prairie lay quietly under the heat of a brassy sun as a lone wagon topped a grassy knoll that afforded an arresting view from every direction. Redbird Sixkiller drove the team of two horses pulling the wagon toward the town of Tahlequah, Oklahoma Territory, in the near distance. His four-year-old son, Sam, sat beside him captivated by the sights and listening intently to the stories Redbird told about his ancestors and the origin of the Sixkiller family name. Redbird shared with Sam a tale about one of their fearless relatives. The ancestor was engaged in battle against the Creek Indians and had killed six braves and then himself before another band of hostile Creek Indians that surrounded him could attack. The Cherokee Indian warriors who witnessed the daring act referred to the warrior as Sixkiller.

Given the courageous example Sixkiller had set, Redbird felt he owed it to the legendary Cherokee to face with the same fortitude the trials that lay ahead for the Indian Nation. It was a pathetic group of thousands of Indians who were herded west during the winter of 1838–39. Redbird Sixkiller’s recollection of the grueling journey that came to be known as the Trail of Tears was passed along to his son, his son’s sons, and every generation that followed. The January 18, 1972, edition of the Statesville, North Carolina, newspaper, the Statesville Daily Record, published Redbird’s reminiscences as told by those generations and noted that the inhumanity of the forced move of the Indians preyed on his sense of justice. He saw helpless Cherokee arrested, dragged from their homes, and driven at bayonet point into the stockades. He watched as his people were loaded like cattle into wagons and hauled west. Redbird told Sam how few of the Indians were given time to make arrangements to leave and that one family was driven from its home as members were preparing to bury a child who had died. He recounted how another mother forced from her home fell and died of a heart attack before they could take her to the stockade. Still another mother died of pneumonia contracted after giving her only blanket for the protection of a sick child.

Sam listened intently to his father describe a Cherokee elder’s reaction to the tragic event. The elder’s name was Chief Junaluska. During the Battle of the Horse Shoe, the chief saved the life of a man who would eventually become the president of the United States, and who would support the relocation of Indian tribes. The chief later admitted that if he had known the life he was saving was that of Andrew Jackson, American history would have been written differently.

Like many other Indians who survived the Trail of Tears, Redbird passed on to his son the stories of how government soldiers treated the Cherokee during this time. Only a few men were remembered for being humane. The majority of officers and the members of their units treated the Indians harshly. A soldier with the Georgia volunteers who showed sympathy to the Cherokee described in his memoirs the severity of the treatment the Indians received. “I fought through the War Between the States,” the veteran recounted, “and I have seen men shot to pieces by the thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew.”

To learn more about Sam Sixkiller read:

Sam Sixkiller: Frontier Cherokee Lawman.

Enter now to win a copy of

Sam Sixkiller: Frontier Cherokee Lawman

Lawman Sam Sixkiller led his horse through a belt of sparse timber along the Illinois River in southeast Oklahoma Territory. He was a stocky, dark-skinned, heavy-shouldered man with a neatly trimmed, droopy mustache and small dark eyes that were flatly calculating. His eyes shifted purposefully from the streams of sunlight off a growth of blackberry bushes to the rocky path dancing before him. Apart from the sound of his roan’s hooves slowly moving through the sweet-gum shrubs and short grass, the only noise was a mingling of a trio of agitated voices wafting through the warm air.

Sam urged his horse into a clearing where three half-blood Cherokee-Seminole Indians sat playing dice. In between rolls of the dice, the men drank from an amber-colored bottle that they eagerly shared with each other. Scattered beside the men were four empty liquor bottles. The drunken Indians barely noticed Sam slowly inching his horse into their crude camp.

The men were undisturbed by Sam’s presence and continued with their game. They argued over whose turn it was, nearly coming to blows over which player went next. Sam watched them toss the dice on a thick blanket. At first glance the dusty blanket appeared to be draped over a log. The closer he got to the action the more it became clear that the makeshift table was actually the body of a fourth Indian. A dark red stream of dried blood had trickled out from under the covering and pooled around a stand of bright orange butterfly weed.

Sam scrutinized the scene more carefully and spotted a massive knife within reach of the Indian closest to him. Sam casually pushed his jacket over the six-shooter strapped on his side, revealing not only the weapon but also the slightly tarnished badge that showed he was a member of the Cherokee Nation police force. One by one the men turned and looked at the lawman. For a breathless instant Sam watched the knife, expecting one of the Indians to snap it up. Without saying a word the three got to their feet, wavering a bit as they did so.

Sam pulled his gun out of his holster and leveled it at the men as he eased his five-foot eight-inch frame off his horse. He motioned for the men to back away from the body, and they reluctantly complied.

Disgusted, Sam walked over to one of the bottles and kicked it hard. It spun into a nearby rock and broke. What little booze was left inside spilled out and quickly soaked into the dry land.

Sam made his way to the motionless man on the ground and, using the toe of his boot, rolled him over on top of the blanket. The man was dead. There was a deep cut across his throat, and his limbs were stiff.

Possession of liquor on Indian land was a criminal offense. Since being appointed captain of the Indian Police at Union Agency in Muskogee, Creek Nation, in February 1880, Sam had arrested numerous buyers and sellers of liquor. The effect liquor had on many of the men and women in his jurisdiction threatened to destroy the Cherokee way of life.

To learn more about this courageous lawman read

Sam Sixkiller: Frontier Cherokee Lawman

Enter now to win a copy of

Sam Sixkiller: Frontier Cherokee Lawman

Although his exploits on the job were as courageous as those of Bill Hickok or Wyatt Earp, the name of Sam Sixkiller is scarcely recognized today. The criminal class that invaded the Indian Nation in the region now known as Oklahoma from 1870 to 1886 had to contend with an Indian police force known as the Lighthorsemen, of which Sam Sixkiller was a member. His ability to fearlessly handle horse thieves, bootleggers, murderers, and rapists that perpetrated such illegal acts on Indian land earned him the respect of his people and fellow officers.

As High Sheriff in Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, Sixkiller apprehended white lawbreakers selling rotgut whiskey to Indians and squared off against hostile half-breeds like “Badman” Dick Glass. Glass had a reputation that rivaled Jesse James; some said he was even more ruthless. Sheriff Sixkiller wasn’t intimidated by the outlaw and did what was needed to bring him in. Sam Sixkiller not only arrested outlaws and put them in jail but also served as the warden of the very facility that housed the lawbreakers.

From Tahlequah, Sixkiller moved on to Muskogee, in present-day Oklahoma, where he was promoted to captain of the Lighthorsemen and helped to bring peace to the volatile area. When the railroads sliced through the landscape, Captain Sixkiller was named a special agent to the rail lines, thwarting attempted robberies and staving off whiskey peddlers hoping to transport their goods across the territory. Isaac Parker, the famous 12th Judicial Circuit judge who held court at Fort Smith, Arkansas, from 1868 to 1898, was so impressed with Captain Sixkiller’s tenacity and dedication to law and order that he recommended the officer be given a commission as a US deputy marshal. These additional responsibilities further exposed the lawman to some of society’s most dangerous characters.

A legal altercation between Sixkiller and a pair of violent repeat offenders named Richard Vann and Alf Cunningham sparked a vendetta that eventually led to the lawman’s death. Off duty and unarmed, Sixkiller was ambushed and killed by the criminals on Christmas Eve in 1886.

The death of Captain Sixkiller exposed a serious void in federal law as it pertained to those who murdered Native American US deputy marshals: There was nothing on the books that made it a federal offense to kill an Indian officer. Although legislation to correct this deplorable oversight eventually passed, it came too late to affect the cowards that robbed Sixkiller of his life.

Sam Sixkiller died a martyr to the cause of law and order. His story is not only about his life and untimely demise, but also about the everyday life of frontier lawmen and the duties they performed, from the mundane to the perilous.

To learn more about this courageous lawman read

Sam Sixkiller: Frontier Cherokee Lawman

Enter to win a copy of

The Principles of Posse Management:

Lessons from the Old West for Today’s Leaders.

Newspaper readers from Hartford, Connecticut, to Portland, Oregon, were shocked to read about the bold and daring robbery of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad on October 6, 1866. It was the first robbery of its kind. Banks and stage lines had been robbed before, but no one had perpetrated such a crime on a railroad. According to the October 20, 1866, edition of the Altoona Tribune, three masked bandits entered the car stopped at a station near Seymour, Indiana, with the idea of taking money from the Adams Express safe. They entered the car from the front platform, leveled their revolvers at the head of the guard on duty, and demanded he hand over the keys to the safe. He did so with no argument. While one of the bandits stood guard, the others opened and removed the contents of one of the three safes which included more than $20,000 in cash. When the job was done, the desperadoes moved one of the safes to the door of the car, opened it, and tossed the box out.

The heavy safe hit the ground hard, rolled, and came to a stop. One of the masked men pulled on the bell cord, and, as the engineer replied with the signal to apply the brakes, the robbers jumped out of the train and made their escape. The engineer saw the bandits leap off the train and speculated they were headed in the direction of Seymour. The train slowed to a stop and one of the agents for the Adams Express Company who was on the train hopped off and ran back to the station with the news of the robbery. He commandeered a handcar and recruited a few men to help him collect any evidence left behind by the thieves. On the agent’s way back to the train, he found the safe tossed from the car. The $15,000 inside had not been touched.

The Adams Express Company offered a $5,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the robbers. A witness aboard the train the evening it was robbed told authorities he recognized the desperadoes who stole the money as the Reno brothers, John and Simeon, and one of their friends, Frank Sparks.

To learn more about the great posses of the frontier read

The Principles of Posse Management:

Lessons from Old West for Today’s Leaders.

• 2017 Foreword INDIES Winner
• True Crime (Adult Nonfiction)

Enter now to win a copy of

The Principles of Posse Management:

Lessons from the Old West for Today’s Leaders.

“Chris Enss’s engaging new book, The Principles of Posse Management, takes you back in time to the Old West, where with incredible detail and fun anecdotes, she reveals many universal leadership tools that were surprisingly effective in keeping order at such a lawless time.  Subsequently, many of these same tools are needed today within our own corporate climate.  Read this fascinating books and reconnect with these powerful principles from the past.”

Sean Covey, executive vice president, Global Solutions and Partnerships, Franklin Covey.

“Posses were created very strategically to catch the outlaws that sure had a ‘never give up’ way of life.  I was fascinated by the stories of bravery that built our Western lifestyle.”

Lisa Bollin, CEO and director of design, Cowgirl Tuff Company

To learn about the great posse of the Old West and how their principles can be applied in business today read

The Principles of Posse Management:  Lessons from the Old West for Today’s Leaders.

Enter to win a copy of

The Principles of Posse Management:

Lessons from the Old West for Today’s Leaders.

Sheriff Harry Morse removed a Model 1866 Winchester, carbine rifle from the leather holster on his saddle and cocked it to make sure he had a bullet in the chamber. He surveyed the sprawling canyon deep in the depth of the Panoche Mountain, more than fifty miles outside of Gilroy, California. In the distance below were three, small, adobe houses, and Morse had every reason to suspect members of outlaw Juan Soto’s gang were inside one of the buildings.

High above the sheriff and his eight member posse was a seemingly inexhaustible mat of black, rainless clouds moving steadily across the world. Morse watched the sun disappear behind the billows and exchanged a determined look with Captain Theodore Winchell on horseback next to him. Winchell, an undersheriff from Alameda County, had been riding with Sheriff Morse for several months in search of the fugitive. San Jose sheriff Nick Harris and six other deputies made up the rest of the posse. All the lawmen had years of experience tracking lawbreakers through the northern California terrain. Each was an exceptional shot and could hold his own in hand to hand combat.

Harry Morse had been sheriff of Alameda County for more than nine years. From 1864, when he took the job, to April 1871, when he peered down on the possible hiding place of Juan Soto’s men, Morse had traversed the hills and plains of eastern and northern Alameda County in search of horse thieves, highwaymen, and cutthroats. Until Morse took the job at twenty-eight years of age, most lawmen were afraid to venture too far to catch outlaws. Worried they would be outnumbered the criminals went about their business unconcerned they would ever be apprehended. Sheriff Morse, along with Nick Harris and Theodore Winchell, changed all that.

The officers and their deputies familiarized themselves with the haunts of the outlaws and the topography of the country where the bad guys were known to roam. They learned the locations of ranches, springs, and mountain trails as well as acquainted themselves with the inhabitants and their occupations. They knew where to hide and wait along trails for lawbreakers to pass, and, armed with that knowledge, they knew what to do to avoid an ambush.

Juan Soto, the man Sheriff Morse and his posse were tracking, was a thief and a murderer. He had a reputation as a brutal man who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. Soto mainly operated in the central part of California but, like the other bandits before him, went wherever the possibility of loot beckoned him. For more than four years, the 6’2, two-hundred twenty pound, half-Indian, half-Mexican man had terrorized the area from the Livermore Valley to San Luis Obispo. Soto and his gang of desperadoes robbed stages, stage stops, lone emigrants, and prospectors. Their victims were often beaten or killed. Soto’s dark features and general express of animal ferocity earned him the name “the human wildcat.” He had black, slightly crossed eyes, a mane of black hair, and a bushy beard and mustache. The April 10, 1871, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle described his appearance as the “physical manifestation of as cruel a spirit as ever animated a human being.”

The activities of Soto, and those like him, are best illustrated in the following figures posted in the July 12, 1925, edition of the Los Angeles Times. “From 1849 to 1854, five years,” the newspaper article noted, “…4,200 persons were murdered in California. In 1855, 588 met death by violence and forty-seven were reported executed by mobs.”

To learn more about the great posses of the frontier read

The Principles of Posse Management:

Lessons from Old West for Today’s Leaders.

Enter to win a copy of

The Principles of Posse Management:

Lessons from the Old West for Today’s Leaders.

A light, frigid rain tapped the dirty windows of a small store located along the banks of the San Joaquin River near the town of Millerton, California. A half dozen ferryboat operators were inside soaking up the warmth emanating from a fireplace. Four of them were huddled around a table playing cards; the other two were enjoying a drink at a makeshift bar, while an unkempt clerk arranged a row of canned goods across a warped shelf.

The clerk was entertaining the preoccupied men in the room with a song when the shop door swung open. He was the last to notice the figures standing in the entranceway. He looked up from his work after being conscious of his own loud voice in the sudden silence. He slowly turned to see what everyone else was staring at.

The outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez entered the store with his pistol drawn. Three other desperadoes, all brandishing weapons, followed closely behind. Vasquez, a handsome man of medium height with large, dark eyes, surveyed the terrified faces of the patrons as he smoothed down his black mustache and goatee. “Put up your hands,” he ordered the men. The clerk quickly complied, and the others reluctantly did the same.

Two more of Vasquez’s men burst into the store through the back entrance and leveled their guns on the strangers before them.

“You don’t need a gun here,” the clerk tried to reason with the bandits. Vasquez grinned as he walked over to the man.

“Yes, I do,” he said as he placed his gun against the clerk’s temple. “It helps quiet my nerves.”

Vasquez demanded the men drop to the floor, facedown. After they had complied, their hands and feet were tied behind them. One of the men cursed the desperadoes as he struggled to free himself. “You damned bastard,” he shouted at Vasquez. “If I had my six-shooter I’d show you whether I’d lie down or not.”

The bandits laughed at the outburst and proceeded to rob the store and its occupants of $2,300. The November 10, 1873, holdup was one of more than one hundred such raids perpetrated by the thirty-eight-year-old Mexican and his band of cutthroat thieves and murderers in their violent careers. The desperadoes escaped the scene of the crime, eluding authorities for several months before they were caught.

Prior to the Gold Rush, California’s population was composed primarily of the original Spanish and Mexican settlers and indigenous Native Americans. News of the riches found in the foothills of the territory loosed a flood of white settlers into the area. In the pioneers’ quest to tame the Wild West and transform the fertile California frontier into a “civilized” state, native Californians were forced into a new way of life. Families like Tiburcio Vasquez’s harbored a great deal of animosity toward the white miners and businessmen who demanded the original residents conform to their laws and way of living. Vasquez resented such treatment and from an early age began rebelling against what he called the “gringo’s” influence.

To learn more about the great posses of the frontier read

The Principles of Posse Management:

Lessons from Old West for Today’s Leaders.

Enter to win a copy of

The Principles of Posse Management:

Lessons from the Old West for Today’s Leaders.

Dora Hand was in a deep sleep. Her bare legs were draped across the thick blankets covering her delicate form, and a mass of long, auburn hair stretched over the pillow under her head and dangled off the top of a flimsy mattress. Her breathing was slow and effortless. A framed, graphite-charcoal portrait of an elderly couple hung above the bed on faded, satin-ribbon wallpaper and kept company with her slumber.

The air outside the window was still and cold. The distant sound of voices, backslapping laughter, profanity, and a piano’s tinny, repetitious melody wafted down Dodge City’s main thoroughfare and snuck into the small room where Dora was sleeping.

Dodge was an all-night town. Walkers and loungers kept the streets and saloons busy. Residents learned to sleep through the giggling, growling, and gunplay of the cowboy consumers and their paramours for hire. Dora was accustomed to the nightly frivolity and clatter. Her dreams were seldom disturbed by the commotion.

All at once the hard thud of a pair of bullets charging through the door and wall of the tiny room cut through the routine noises of the cattle town with uneven, gusty violence. The first bullet was halted by the dense plaster partition leading into the bed chambers. The second struck Dora on the right side under her arm. There was no time for her to object to the injury, no moment for her to cry out or recoil in pain. The slug killed her instantly.

In the near distance, a horse squealed, and its galloping hooves echoed off the dusty street and faded away.

A pool of blood poured out of Dora’s fatal wound, turning the white sheets she rested on to crimson. A clock sitting on a nightstand next to the lifeless body ticked on steadily and mercilessly. It was 4:15 in the morning on October 4, 1878, and for the moment nothing but the persistent moonlight filtering into the scene through a closed window marked the thirty-four-year-old woman’s passing.

Twenty-four hours prior to Dora’s being gunned down in her sleep, she had been on stage at the Alhambra Saloon and Gambling House. She was a stunning woman whose wholesome voice and exquisite features had charmed audiences from Abilene to Austin. She regaled love-starved wranglers and rough riders at stage and railroad stops with her heartfelt rendition of the popular ballads “Blessed Be the Ties That Bind” and “Because I Love You So.”

Adoring fans referred to her as the “nightingale of the frontier,” and admirers continually competed for her attention. More times than not, pistols were used to settle arguments about who would be escorting Dora back to her place at the end of the evening. Local newspapers claimed her talent and beauty “caused more gunfights than any other woman in all the West.”

Dora arrived in Dodge City in June of 1878. Several of the city’s residents who knew the songstress was on her way were eagerly anticipating her arrival. Among them was the mayor of Dodge City, James Kelley. Mayor Kelley had made Dora’s acquaintance at Camp Supply. He was smitten with her, and the pair became romantically involved shortly after she stepped off the stage in Dodge.

To learn more about the great posses of the frontier read

The Principles of Posse Management:

Lessons from Old West for Today’s Leaders.

Very pleased to see The Young Duke

featured in one of the layouts in the most recent Boot Barn catalogue. 

Most everyone loves John Wayne and The Young Duke does make a nice

Father’s Day gift.