This Day…

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

1900 – Three fingered Jack Dunlap and some other desperadoes tried to rob the train in Fairbanks, Arizona.  They opened fire on Jeff Milton, the express messenger, and shattered his arm, but Milton got off a shotgun blast that put 11 buckshop into Dunlap’s side.  The attempted robbery failed.

1885- Red Hall and Sheriff Charlie McKinney met with some Mexican officials at Las Islas crossing on the Rio Grande River to try and bring peace to the troubled region.  The Mexicans lured them to a fiesta but they were attecked by rurales and had to flee for their lives.

1887 – Long Haired Jim Courtright was running a protection scam on the gamblers in Fort Worth, Texas.  Luke Short refused to pay and Long Haired Jim was killed in the ensuring gunplay.

On this day in 1843 the Oregon Bill passes the Senate, but Senator Linn’s bill to encourage migration to the Northwest Territories will die in the House.  Also, explorer John C. Fremont raises an American flag above the Rocky Mountains in 1843.

On January 30, 1885 the Secretary of the Interior, Henry M Teller, recommended the opening of Indian lands in the Indian Territory to homesteaders.  Since 1880 homesteaders, known as ‘boomers’ and led by David L Payen and William L Couch, had been crossing into Indian Territory from Kansas and Arkansas and settling on what is known as the ‘Unassigned Lands’ in the center of Indian Territory.

1877 – Charlie Reed and Billy Bland shot up a saloon and two deputies in Fort Griffin, Texas.  Bland was killed in the gunplay but Reed stole a horse and left Texas.  On this day in 1891 – tensions continued to mount at Wounded Knee.  General Nelson A. Miles, commander of the US troops at the massacre at Wounded Knee in December 1890, announced that the Sioux were finally returning to their reservation.  Ghost Dancers had appeared from as far away as Oklahoma, and Indians from Montana had joined the camping Sioux – who made the last successful attack on a wagon train on 6 January – but by the 19th all the Sioux would be back at the Pine Ridge Reservation.  The Ghost Dance movement would survive there throughout the year, and continue to cause some concern.

1874 – Chunk Colson tried to bushwack Clay Allison after a horse race in the Indian Territory.  Clay killed him.  Also on this day, settlers in the Black, Walla Walla, and Yakima River Valleys erected blockhouses at the urging of Oregon Territorial Governor Issac I Stevens to protect themselves from the Yakima and other nations who resented their intrusion.

1908 – Young Mannie Clements and Elmer Webb were hatching some sort of skulduggery in the Coney Island Saloon in El Paso, TX.  Mannie was shot in the head and killed during that conversation by persons unknown.  The shooting may have been in connection with a racket to import Chinamen into the United States.

1876-Clay Allison and his brother John were whooping it up at a dance in Las Animas, CO. when the Allison brothers got out of control.  Deputy Sheriff Charles Faber came in and shotgunned John.  Clay shot Faber through the hearts and rode off two other deputies before surrendering to the county sheriff.  John recovered and Clay was released in self defense.