This Day…

1885-Following a decade of smoldering resentment against Chinese mine laborers, white men at Rock Springs in Wyoming Territory go on a rampage, killing 28 Chinese and wounding 15 others. Several hundred more Chinese are chased from town.

1879 – John Beckwith was killed by the rustler, John Jones, in a dispute over the ownership of a herd of cows.

1896 – Bill Doolin was killed in an ambush near Lawson, Oklahoma by a posse headed by Heck Thomas. A shotgun blast fired by Bill Dunn put 21 Holes in Doolin’s body.

1873-Tiburcio Vasquez and six others were robbing a store in Pinos, California when violence erupted. Three townsmen were killed and a child beaten unconscious.

1869-A drunken cavalryman, John Mulrey, was killed by Wild Bill Hickok in Hays City, Kansas while resisting arrest.

1871-In one of the bloodiest and most violent shootings of the period Mike McCloskie was killed by Hugh Anderson in a Newton, Kansas saloon brawl. When McCloskie went down his eighteen year old friend, Jim Riley, calmly walked over and locked the door. He then opened up on pretty much everyone left standing.

1805-Lewis and Clark cross the Continental Divide.
1812-General Hull surrenders Fort Detroit and 1400 men without fighting. The entire Northwest is now exposed to the alliance between the British and the Tecumseh’s Indians

1873-Happy Jack Morco participated in a quarrel with Ben Thompson that resulted in the shooting death of Sheriff C B Whitney in Ellsworth, Kansas. Whitney was a participant in the Battle of Beecher’s Island against the Sioux in 1868.

1879-The last Indians with a reservation in Colorado, the Utes, come under increasing pressure from greedy whites. A newspaper campaign is launched under the slogan, ‘the Utes must go.’ During this period the Ute Indians are blamed for any regional malady, including a series of forest fires.

1896-Black Jack Will Christian and his gang, the high fives, robbed a bank in Nogales, Arizona. Newsman Frank King spotted them and opened fire with a .41 Colt wounding two of the horses. The oulaws fled town with an empty sack.

1895-Zip Wyatt was caught sleeping in a cornfield near Skeleton Creek, Oklahoma by a posse member who gut shot him and shattered his pelvis before he was disarmed and taken into custody. (Look for the story of Zip Wyatt’s female associates in the book The Bedside Book of Bad Girls coming to book stores everywhere in October).