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Judge Isaac Parker
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Sixty-Five U.S. Deputy Marshals were killed in the line of duty between 1875 and 1891 while enforcing the law for “hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker of Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Bannack, Montana Sheriff Henry Plummer secretly led a band of outlaws who robbed or killed more than a hundred victims. His hidden life was eventually discovered and in 1864, he and his gang were hanged by Montana vigilantes.
In 1876, the lawless town of Deadwood, South Dakota averaged a murder a day.
During the Wild West days in Billings, Montana, the cowboys an scarlet ladies of every saloon performed impossible dances atop bars, tables, and in some instances upon atop the pianos.
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| Wyatt Earp once operated saloon in Nome, Alaska. In the late 1890’s U.S. Marshal Albert Lowe slapped an intoxicated Earp and took his gun away after Wyatt threatened to demonstrate how guns were handled “down Arizona way.” About 1/3 of all gunmen died of "natural causes," living a normal life span of 70 years or so. Of those who did die violently (shot or executed), the average age of death was 35. The gunfighters-turned-lawmen lived longer lives than their persistently criminal counterparts.
1776 miles of track were laid during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad from Sacramento, California to Omaha, Nebraska. On April 10, 1869, 10 miles of track was laid in one day. This outstanding achievement has not been surpassed to this day in this country.
The Battle of Little Big Horn also known as Custer's Last Stand took place on June 25, 1876. Lieutenant Colonel Custer's forces—including more than 200 of his men were wiped out in less than 20 minutes.
America’s first train robbery is believed to have occurred on October 6, 1855 in Jackson County, Indiana. The two bandits, John and Simeon Reno, took $13,000 from the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad.
Prostitution was tolerated in Deadwood, South Dakota until the last brothel closed down in October of 1980.
There were about 45,000 working cowboys during the heydays of the cattle drives. Of those, some 5,000 were African American.
Three bandits who robbed the Adams Express car in a passenger train near Bannack, Montana were rounded up by vigilantes and promptly hanged, a fate that became all too familiar in the lawless West when citizens, angered over vacillating courts, meted out their own brand of swift justice and self-satisfying justice.
From 1778 until 1871, the U.S. Government ratified 370 treaties with the Native American Tribes. After 1871, acts of Congress, executive orders and executive agreements replaced the rarely enforced treaties.
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California bandit Black Bart robbed alone and wore socks over his boots so he could not be tracked. His real name was Charles E. Boles and was known as a gentleman outlaw who enjoyed writing bits of poetry which he left in empty strongboxes to confuse pursuing possemen.
By the 1600's beaver was extinct in Great Britain and extremely scarce in other parts of Europe, giving rise to a great demand for American beaver skins and thus the many trappers that would roam the vast west.
One practice that is credited to the Old West
is that of taking the scalp of an enemy. However, that actually started in the French and
Indian War when General Edward Braddock offered £5 sterling to his soldiers and their Indian allies for each French soldier's scalp. The Indians actually picked up this nasty habit from the British.
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Black Bart was a poet outlaw.
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Isom Dart, one of the few black gunslingers of the Old West was killed near Brown's Hole by the feared stock detective and bounter hunter Tom Horn.
When the town prostitute and do-gooder,
Virginia Marlotte, died in Pioche, Nevada, she was given the biggest funeral in
the town's history. Her epitaph read:
Here lies the body of Virginia Marlotte.
She was born a virgin and died a harlot.
For eighteen years she preserved her virginity.
That's a damned good record for this vicinity.
With the great Chinese migration to the West Coast following the
Civil War rose intense racist hatred which burst forth in riots against these hapless Orientals. In one such case in Denver, Colorado thugs attacked many of them in Chinatown, beating them ferociously and cutting off their pigtails. In Missoula, Montana, cowboys were known to chase the Chinese through the streets and when they caught them, they would tie them up, cut their pigtails, strip them naked and often, shoot off their toes and fingers.
One of the earliest cattle barons of the great Southwest was the unlikely Jesuit explorer and mapmaker, Father Eusebio Franciso Kino. He came to southern Arizona in 1687 to found missions, but while he was there he introduced European livestock and ways to plant grain to feed them.
In Colfax County, New Mexico, Chunk Colbert invited Clay Allison
to dinner with the plan of killing him. Colbert chatted amiably through the meal and then drew on his guest, his gun barely clearing the tabletop before quick-draw Allison shot him dead. Later, Allison would say of the event, "I didn't want to send him to hell on an empty stomach."
The Mayflower Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, not because it was their destination, but, rather, because they were running out of "victuals and beer." Had these vital supplies not been so low, they would have continued on to their original destination of Virginia.
In 1855,
Los Angeles,
California
was a rough cowtown, which averaged a murder a day. In one instance, the city's
mayor resigned his position so that he could head a lynch mob, which stormed the
jail to remove and then hang an inmate. When the inmate objected to being hanged
by Mexicans, the Americans in the crowd took the rope and did it.
In 1881 Helen Hunt Jackson published A
Century of Dishonor, the first detailed examination of the federal
government’s treatment of Native Americans in the West. Her findings shocked the
nation with proof that empty promises, broken treaties and brutality helped pave
the way for white pioneers.
Twenty-three-year-old David ‘Davy’ Crockett,
who was related to the
famous Crockett of the Alamo, was gunned down by Sheriff Rinehart and
two others in the streets of Cimarron, New Mexico
on September 30, 1876.
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