This Day…

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).

1821 – Missouri inches closer to becoming the twenty-fourth state, the twelfth that permits slavery. The capital is at Jefferson City, and the 1820 census shows 66,856 people including 10,222 slaves.

1831 – Joseph Smith chooses Independence, Missouri, as the Holy City of Zion for the Mormon Church.

1884-Killin’ Jim Miller snuck up on his brother-in-law, John Coop, while he was asleep on his porch in Plum Creek, Texas and murdered him with a shot through the head. Miller was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but got off on a technicality. Killin’ Jim went on to commit several more murders before he was finally hanged in 1909.

1902-One hundred and fifty armed men stop fifteen herds of sheep that cross a ‘deadline’ in New Fork country in the Green River Valley, Wyoming. The cattlemen shoot a herdsman, kill 2000 sheep, and scatter others.

1877-Carson Graham was on his way to buy supplies for the Higgins Ranch when he was ambushed and killed by the Horrells outside of Lampasas, Texas. Texas Rangers arrested all of the Horrell Brothers and all of their ranch hands for this murder finnaly ending the bitter feud.

1869-Vigilantes ordered a couple of ruffians, Sam Strawhim and Joe Weiss out of Hays City, Kansas. The two toughs later acosted a vigilante leader, A.B. Webster, in the post office and bullied him and threatened him and when Weiss finally pulled a gun on him Webster fired back. Weiss was killed and Strawhim fled town.

1865-In a romantic duel over the affections of Susanna Moore Wild Bill Hickok shot Dave Tutt through the heart at 75 yards in the town square in Springfield, MO. Tutt fired first and missed.

1901-Fourteen-year-old Willie Nickell was ambused and killed at the front gate of his dad’s ranch. Tom Horn was arrested for that killing, convicted of that crime, and finally hanged for it. But he may have been innocent. Certainly he was guilty of similar crimes though.

1884-Tom Nixon took a pot shot a Mysterious Dave Mather inside the Opera House Bar in Dodge City, Kansas. The shot missed and Tom was arrested and released on $800 bail.