Journal Notes

“Smallpox, tuberculosis, childbirth, diphtheria, gunshots, “Spanish flu,” broken bones, and more. These are just some of the maladies that settlers and others living in the western US faced during the late 1800s and early 1900s. This slim history provides well-researched vignettes of ten women who became doctors and served their communities in that period. Often, their own families didn’t support their ambitions and they had to work teaching or sewing or laundering to afford medical school.

Facing prejudice, blizzards, prairie fires, and personal hardship, they persevered to attain education and recognition. But in the West, towns with no other doctors were willing to take a risk on these tough resilient women, many of whom lived in their nineties. Several of the women also advocated for the right to vote and for temperance, although one notably argued for the sterilization of the “criminally insane,” convinced that such tendencies were hereditary.

This reader was particularly impressed with the physician who reconstructed a man’s face through thirty cosmetic surgeries over six months, in 1887! And the patient lived another two decades. Illustrated with period photographs, this well-researched book also includes medical advice of the era: treatments for flu, the care of infants, and eye health. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in history, health care, and women’s history.”

Happy to report that

An Open Secret: The Story of Deadwood’s Most Notorious Bordellos has won the silver medal in the Independent Publisher Book Award.

Thanks to Deadwood History, Inc. for co-authoring this title.

We’ll be celebrating the win in Deadwood in September.

This week, I’ll be talking Tilghman at the Oklahoma Territorial Museum in Guthrie, the Same Page Book Store and the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore.

Visit the events section of this website for dates and times.

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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 book 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

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

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

Five riders moved swiftly across the open country through Granite Pass in southwest New Mexico.  An electrical storm lit up the sky around them, and a deluge of hail broke free from the clouds, pelting the men in their saddles and their horses.  Sounding like a troop of demons advancing, the wind howled and screamed as it pushed over the massive walls of rock the riders passed.

Former peace officer Jefferson Davis Milton rode in front of the others.  He was a tall man with sloping shoulders, his granite like visage partly hidden by a dark mustache that curled around to meet his thick sideburns.  George W. Scarborough, a blue-eyed, gruff looking, one-time law man from El Paso, Texas, took a position on Jeff’s left.  Eugene Thacker, a youthful son of a railroad detective, rode on Jeff’s right side.  Directly behind the three were Bill Martin and Thomas Bennett, Diamond A ranch cowboys turned bounty hunters.  The men pulled their slickers around their necks and urged their mounts on through the tempest.  Claps of thunder ushered in another downpour of hail.

The determined riders, members of a posse pursuing a gang of train robbing outlaws, were soaked to the bone once they reached Fort Apache, a military post near Coolidge Lake.  No one said a word as they made camp outside the garrison’s gates.  Discussing the obstacles on the way to achieving that goal wasn’t necessary.  Their focus was on capturing Bronco Bill Walters and his boys.

William E. Walters, also known as Bronco Bill Walters, was from Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  What he did before being hired at the Diamond A ranch in 1899 is anyone’s guess.  It’s what he did after getting a job as a cowhand that warranted attention.  The Diamond A was a five hundred square mile spread nestled in the boot heel of New Mexico.  The magnificent acres of grass there made it the perfect spot for raising cattle.  The ranch was always in need of workers.  Cowpunchers that dropped by looking for employment were generally hired on the spot.  It was considered a rude violation of the proprieties of a cow camp to inquire into a man’s connections or character.  Just wanting to work was enough.  Bronco Bill Walters wanted to work, and that’s all that mattered and all the foreman at the Diamond A would have cared about if Bronco Bill hadn’t had desired more than the job had to offer.

During long, dull evenings around the campfire, Bronco Bill contemplated a life that was exciting and profitable.  He thought about robbing a stage or a train.  He imagined how he would tackle such a daring feat and rehearsed a getaway.  After a while, it wasn’t enough only to imagine such actions.  Bronco Bill left the Diamond A ranch in the fall of 1890 in search of excitement and money.

To learn more about the posse after Bronco Bill read

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

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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 Hills, 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 of 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 seven 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 had been too afraid to venture very far to catch outlaws, worried they would be outnumbered. Thus, the criminals were able to go about their businesses, relatively unconcerned about being apprehended. Sheriff Morse, along with Nick Harris and Theodore Winchell, changed all that.

Juan Soto, the man Sheriff Morse and is 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 whenever the possibility of loot beckoned. For more than four years, the six-foot-two, 220-pound, half-Indian, half-Mexican man had terrorized the area from the Livermore Valley to San Luis Obispo. Soto and his gang of desperados robbed stages, stage stops, lone emigrants, and prospectors. Their victims were often beaten and killed.

To learn more about Juan Soto and the posse chasing after him read

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

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

Deputy Marshal Bill Tilghman nudged his galloping horse in the side with his spurs to encourage the animal to run faster. The lawman was after a fugitive who had gotten a bit of a head start and whose ride was swift and agile. The horse’s ability to keep up with the outlaw’s mount had a great deal to do with the rider in the saddle. Tilghman was a solid, broad-shouldered man in his early forties and the desperado he was pursuing was a petite, seventeen-year-old woman. Jennie Metcalf, known in the Oklahoma Territory as Little Breeches, led her horse across the prairie around the town of Pawnee with ease. The ride was so fluid she managed to remove her Colt six-shooter from the waistband of the oversized trousers she was wearing, turn around in her seat, and fire a volley of shots at Tilghman.

The marshal grimaced as he spurred his horse on and lifted his Winchester out of the saddle holster. It was August 18, 1895, and the sun was a ball of fire. The wind at his face was like the breath of a furnace. He was hot and tired and in no mood to take part in a gun battle with a teenager. Tilghman hadn’t anticipated the young woman would make a run for it when he set out to arrest her and her cohort, Annie McDoulet alias Cattle Annie, for stealing horses.

The pair’s misdeeds extended far beyond horse thievery. For several months, the women had been working with the Doolin Gang. In 1895, William “Bill” Doolin organized the group comprised of some of the most ruthless criminals in the region. They robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains. Marshal Tilghman and two other deputy marshals, Heck Thomas, and Chris Madsen had been on their trail for years, but the gang was always one step ahead of them. It was clear someone was helping them to navigate around law enforcement’s efforts to apprehend the felons. After the Doolin Gang robbed the United States Army payroll near Woodward, Oklahoma, in March 1894, the three officers discussed what they knew about each crime and what dubious characters seemed to always be in the general vicinity.

Little Breeches and Cattle Annie were the prime suspects. The three men believed the women had been scouting for the gang, acting as their lookout, and keeping them in supplies. Tilghman was convinced the key to the Doolin Gang’s demise was to capture the misguided youth who were aiding and abetting them.

Acting on a tip Tilghman received in the summer of 1895, he and Deputy Steve Burke traveled to a farm outside of Pawnee where Cattle Annie and Little Breeches were rumored to be staying. The lawmen were less than three hundred yards from a crude cabin on the property when Little Breeches raced out of the structure, vaulted onto a nearby horse, and headed into the prairie. Tilghman gave chase after instructing his deputy to grab Cattle Annie who was watching the action from a busted window next to the front door.

Little Breeches’ gun roared spitefully, but her aim was wild. It was difficult to hit a moving target on a horse at full gallop – a fact for which Tilghman was sincerely grateful. The marshal fired his shotgun over the young woman’s head in hopes her ride would spook and lose its footing. The animal reared and Little Breeches almost dropped her pistol. She swayed in her saddle like a drunken man, regained her composure, then spurred the horse back into a gallop. The distance between the marshal and the desperado widened.

To learn more about the posse after Cattle Annie and Little Breeches read

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

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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 4:30 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.”

To learn about who killed Dora Hand and the posse that tracked the murderer read

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

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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 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.  Citizens and detectives alike began a vigorous search, but the brothers proved impossible to locate.

Unbeknownst to the Reno boys and the gang of outlaws with whom they associated, the Pinkerton Detective Agency had been hired to protect all Adams and Express Company shipments.  Armed with the descriptions provided by the witness, Allan Pinkerton, head of the investigation firm, set out to find the culprits.  Pinkerton traced the Renos to Seymour, a lawless community where rustlers, bandits, and cutthroats from all over the area gathered.

To learn more about the posse after the Reno gang read

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