This Day…

1881-Helen Hunt Jackson publishes A Century of Dishonor, an account of the atrocities committed against Indian tribes in the West and an indictment of the nation’s reservation policy.  Jackson sends copies of the book to ever member of Congress and to most federal officials.

1903-Seven masked men tie up a sheepherder, kill his horses, and slaughter some 500 sheep 40 miles north of Lusk, Wyoming.

1795-The French settlers at Gallipolis, Ohio, receive deed to the land despite the counterclaims of the Scioto Company.

1871-Surrounded by a posse in an outhouse in Wichita, Kansas suspected horse thief J.E. Ledford came out with guns blazing and sadly wounded Marshal Jack Bridges.  Bridges survived buy Ledford was killed.

1805-Meriwether Lewis acts as the midwife at the birth of a child to Sacajawea, a Shoshone squaw who will act as a guide for the expedition.

1881 – Luke Short killed Charlie Storms at the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona.

1897-Respected lawman Les Dow was reading a letter in front of the post office in Carlsbad, NM when Dave Kemp stepped up and shot him in the face.  He died the next morning.

1802 – Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, proposes that an allotment be made from the sales of public lands for the construction of roads from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ohio River.

1886 – The California orange groves send the first trainload of fruit to Eastern markets – the beginning of Western ‘agri-business.’

1888 – The famous Western painter and illustrator, Frederic Remington, first gains public recognition with publication of his drawings in a book by Theodore Roosevelt, Ranch Life and Hunting Trails.