Jack Schaefer’s book, Shane, has been classified in many sub-genres, but to me, it will always remain my favorite western romance.

Shane

Romance?  Shane?

This story cannot have a truly happy-ever-after ending for all the principal characters, so it normally wouldn’t make it to my “Top Ten” list for that very reason.  But the story itself is so compelling, so riveting, that there is no choice once you’ve read page one—you are going to finish it.  And it’s not just a story about a very odd love triangle, but also about Shane discovering that he is worthy, and a good person, despite what he’s done in his past.

Shane is the perfect hero—a drifter, a loner, and no one knows why.  He plans to keep it that way.  If only his pesky conscience didn’t get in the way, he might have stopped briefly at the Starrett’s homestead, then moved on.

But from the beginning of the book, we know there is something different about Shane.  The story is told through the eyes of Bob Starrett, the young son of Joe and Marion.  Bob is about ten years old, and his account of the people and action that takes place are colored with the wonderment and naivete of a child who will be well on his way to becoming a young man before the story is over.

The book starts with tension, as Bob is watching the stranger, Shane, ride in.  Shane comes to a fork in the road. One way leads down toward Luke Fletcher’s, the cattle baron who is trying to force the homesteaders out of the valley.  The other branch of the fork leads toward the Starretts, the homesteaders who will ultimately force Fletcher’s hand. Shane chooses that path, toward the Starretts, and the die is cast.

He would have looked frail alongside father’s square, solid bulk.  But even I could read the endurance in the lines of that dark figure and the quiet power in his effortless, unthinking adjustment to every movement of the tired horse.

He was clean-shaven and his face was lean and hard and burned from high forehead to firm, tapering chin.  His eyes seemed hooded in the shadow of the hat’s brim.  He came closer and I could see that this was because the brows were drawn into a frown of fixed and habitual alertness.  Beneath them the eyes were endlessly searching from side to side and forward, checking off every item in view, missing nothing.  As I noticed this, a sudden chill, and I could not have told why, struck through me there in the warm and open sun.

In a nutshell, Shane drifts into the Wyoming valley, and is befriended by the Starretts.  Once there, he is quickly made aware of the brewing trouble between the homesteaders and the powerful local cattle baron, Luke Fletcher, who is set on running them all out of the valley.  Shane is firmly committed to helping Joe Starrett and the homesteaders who want to stay.  Fletcher’s men get into a fistfight with Shane and Joe in the general store, and Fletcher vows his men will kill the next time Joe or Shane come back into town.

Fletcher hires Stark Wilson, a well-known gunhawk, who kills one of the homesteaders that stands up to him.  Joe Starrett feels it is his duty, since he convinced the others to stay, to go kill Fletcher and Wilson.

Shane knocks Joe out, knowing that, though Joe’s heart is in the right place, he’s no match for a hired gun like Wilson.  There’s only one man who is—Shane himself, and that’s going to set him back on the path he’s so desperately trying to escape.

Shane rides into town and Bob follows him, witnessing the entire battle.  Shane faces Wilson down first, and then Fletcher.  Shane turns to leave and Bob warns him of another man, who Shane also kills.  But Shane doesn’t escape unscathed—Wilson has wounded him in the earlier gunplay.

Shane rides out of town, and though Bob wishes so much that Shane could stay, he understands why he can’t.  No.  Bob does not utter one of the most famous lines in cinema history—“Shane! Come back!” There’s good reason for this.  In the book, Bob’s growth is shown because of what he learns from Shane.  To call him back would negate that growth process.

He describes Shane throughout the book, and in many ways, with a child’s intuition, understands innately that Shane is a good man and will do the right thing, which is proven out time and again. So, he also realizes that there is no place for Shane there in the valley, now that the trouble has been handled.

Bob witnesses the conversation between his mother and Shane, as well, where so much is said—and not said.  It’s one of the major turning points in the book, though Bob, in his telling of it, doesn’t realize it—but the reader is painfully aware of it.  If Shane really is a good man, he will have no recourse but to leave.

This happens as the novel is drawing to a close, when Marian, Bob’s mother, asks Shane if he’s going after Wilson just for her.  He has knocked her husband out to keep him from going after the gunman.

Shane hesitated for a long, long moment. “No, Marian.” His gaze seemed to widen and encompass us all, mother and the still figure of father huddled on a chair by the window and somehow the room and the house and the whole place.  Then he was looking only at mother and she was all he could see.

“No, Marian.  Could I separate you in my mind and afterwards be a man?”

Shane was Jack Schaefer’s debut novel, published in 1949.  It was honored in 1985 by the Western Writers of America as the best Western novel ever written—beating out other works such as Owen Wister’s The Virginian, Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage, and Louis L’Amour’s Hondo.

In 1963, Schaefer wrote Monte Walsh, a book that chronicles the passing of the Old West and the lifestyle of the American cowboy.

Though Schaefer never deliberately wrote for young adults, many of his works have become increasingly popular among younger readers.  Universal themes such as the transformation and changes of growing up, the life lessons learned, and rites of passage from childhood to becoming a young adult in his writing have been responsible for the upswing in popularity with this age group.

Though I consider Shane a romance novel, it’s a very different and memorable love triangle because of the unshakable honor of the three characters. I love the subtlety that Schaefer is such a master of, and the way he has Bob describing the action, seeing everything, but with the eyes of a child. If you haven’t read Shane, I highly recommend it—at less than 200 pages, it’s a quick, easy read, and unforgettable.

A gun is a tool, Marian; no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything.  A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it.  Remember that.  (Shane to Marian)

A man is what he is, Bob, and there’s no breaking the mold.  I’ve tried that and I’ve lost.  But I reckon it was in the cards from the moment I saw a freckled kid on a rail up the road there and a real man behind him, the kind that could back him for the chance another kid never had. (Shane to Bob)

With its powerful narrative voice, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, reads like fiction, but tragically, the book’s content is all painfully true. This heartbreaking 1970 classic, subtitled An Indian History of the American West, conveys, according to the Washington Post, “not how the West was won, but how it was lost.” 

My copy sits beside me now, dog-eared to death, pages browned with time and coffee spills. Dates and names highlighted include such beautiful and poetic calendar terms as Time of the Big Leaves, Yellow Leaves Moon, and Moon When the Chokecherries Are Ripe. 

Such beauty aside, this is not a book for the faint-hearted. There are chapters I can’t bear to re-read, and many of today’s words have been hard to write. But since we at Wildflower Junction, whether authors, readers, guests and commenters, love the American West, this book is not to be missed. The title comes from the last “Indian War” in December 1890 –the Moon When the Deer Shed –against the vastly outmatched Minneconjou (Sioux) chief Big Foot at Pine Ridge, South Dakota.  (This “battle” deserves its own blog post sometime.) 

The TV and movie Westerns of my childhood often presented Indians as bloodcurdling enemies out to massacre innocent settlers. The occasional good “brave” was a mono-syllabic caricature, often a doofus.  No American history class I’d ever taken explained the truth about “Manifest Destiny.”  Maybe because we couldn’t handle the truth?  As a youth himself, Dee Brown bore a reaction similar to mine.  He did something about it.  A born researcher, he wrote this well-documented book of America’s westward expansion through the eyes and words of the great chiefs, vividly explaining four hundred years of injustice, broken treaties, and betrayal. 

I hope things are different in classrooms now. No teacher or professor ever told me the complete truth about, say, Christopher “Kit” Carson (1809-1868). I knew him as a national hero –his expeditions through the Rockies made him such. His first two wives were Indian. Yet in 1864, he relentlessly hunted down a group of Navajo. Not content with destroying their hogans (homes) and livestock, he chopped down their carefully tended grove of peach trees. 

No one ever told me about the horrors of Sand Creek, Colorado, where friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children were mutilated by the Cavalry. Or of  Fort Robinson in Nebraska gifting a camp of Cheyenne, Lakota and Oglala with blankets infected with smallpox. 

Or of Palo Duro Canyon, The Place of Chinaberry Trees. Only a few white men knew of this well-hidden north Texas canyon in the late summer of 1874. Without fear and stocked with food to last until spring, Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne sought sanctuary from the whites. Almost two thousand horses shared rich grass with the buffalo.  On September 26, the Bluecoats descended upon them, the warriors holding off long enough for their women and children to escape. But by days’ end, General Ranald “Three Fingers” Mackenzie rounded up the tribes’ treasured horses and had more than a thousand ponies shot to death. (In a subsequent book, I learned that the horse-loving Cavalry greatly resisted these orders, and that the slaughter of the terrified beasts took more than eight hours to complete.) 

From the Nez Perce of the Pacific Northwest, I learned their poignant history in a personal way because my husband’s relatives hail from this area. Of the many massacres and betrayals in the book, I elected today to share a bit about the Nez Perce’s heartrending struggle. 

As with Squanto who helped the Pilgrims in 1620 and the Taino who treated Christopher Columbus like a god in 1492, the Nez Perce tribe met the white man in peace. In 1805, the tribe saved the Lewis and Clark expedition from starvation and dysentery, fed and welcomed them, and tended their horses for months while the Corps of Discovery explored the Pacific shore. The Nez Perce themselves would gain recognition for their Appaloosa horses.  For seven decades of friendship, the Nez Perce proudly declared they had never shed white blood. 

Their home turf was Oregon’s Wallowa Valley, the Valley of Winding Waters. By the 1870’s, simply put, settlers and gold-seekers wanted the valley. Negotiations failed, treaties cast aside despite the Great Father, Ulysses S. Grant,  having promised the Wallowa to the Nez Perce “forever.”  In May 1877, the young Nez Perce peace chief Heinmot Tooyalaket (1840-1904) chose to lead the tribe to refuge in Canada, the “Grandmother’s Land” (referring to Queen Victoria), following in the footsteps of Sitting Bull. The whites called this young chief, Joseph. By all accounts, he was a highly respected peace chief among Indians and whites alike. 

  The fleeing Nez Perce consisted of 800: 450 “noncombatants” and 250 warriors, and 2,000 horses. Outsmarting the U.S. Cavalry for 1,700 miles through the Bitterroot Mountains and Yellowstone country, the Nez Perce journey has been called the most brilliant retreat in American military history. Newspaper accounts of the day had Americans cheering them on. 

However, the Nez Perce were severely weakened by the capture of many of their horses. In October, the weary Joseph and his band stopped to rest only 30 miles from their destination. By that time, U.S. reinforcements and sharpshooters had arrived. After five days in bitter snow, Joseph surrendered. 

Then he delivered the most quoted of all the great chiefs’ speeches, of which I include a few lines. 

“…I am tired of fighting… it is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. ..I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I will find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where he sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” 

Lieutenant Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who translated Joseph’s heart-rending speech, resigned his commission not long after and became a powerful attorney who fought for the rights of the dispossessed. 

When Joseph died September 21, 1904, exiled at the Colville Reservation in Washington State, his physician claimed “a broken heart” was the cause of death.  (photo below courtesy http://www.juntosociety.com)

His name, Heinmot Tooyalaket, translates as Thunder Rolling in the Mountains. 

Listen for him. Read this book. Try to keep your eyes dry and your heart from cracking while you do.

Winchester (U.S.) Model 1866 Lever Action Rifle (repeater/ breech-loading/ black powder/ cartridge ammunition)

Last time we discussed the Winchester 1873 Repeating Rifle. Today, I want to introduce the precursor to that rifle – the Winchester 1866 Repeating Rifle, aka The Yellow Boy.

The Yellow Boy got its name because of the shiny brass frame. The design improvements over the original Henry repeating rifle ensured the Yellow Boy’s success. In 1866, Nelson King, an engineer with Winchester Repeating Arms, patented a spring load gate for ease of loading cartridges into the side of a spring-fed, closed-end tube attached under the barrel. The tube held fifteen bullets. Add the one in the chamber and you could pull the trigger sixteen times before reloading.

The 1866 Yellowboy lever-action rifle was a marked improvement over the Henry rifle. It was the first true cowboy lever-action rifle, and the first rifle widely carried in a cowboy-style saddle scabbard.

Both the “Henry and Winchester Model 1866 “Yellow Boy” rifles found a ready market on the western frontier. The Indians referred to these arms as “many shots,” and “spirit gun,” which showed a measure of awe and respect for the products of the New Haven-based company. Many warriors were able to obtain these arms for themselves, and more than twenty of them were used against George A. Custer’s 7th Cavalry and their single-shot Springfield carbines at the Little Bighorn in June, 1876. Winchester repeaters also found favor with miners, homesteaders, ranchers, lawmen, and highwaymen.” http://www.nramuseum.com/the-museum/the-galleries/the-american-west/case-42-the-guns-that-won-the-west-colt-winchester/winchester-model-1866-lever-action-rifle.aspx

Winchester produced the Yellow Boy as a musket, a carbine (shorter barrel, often around 19”) and a rifle with a barrel up to 24 ¼”.

Some 150,000 Yellow Boys were produced from 1867 to 1892-93. The carbine version of the 1866 Yellowboy was a hit worldwide. Chief Sitting Bull had one; the forces of Benito Juarez used the rifles in Mexico; the Turkish Army used the new Winchester Yellowboy against the Russians; and settlers in the U.S. bought thousands for frontier use. Based on its popularity and performance, the “Yellow Boy” earned the title of “the gun that won the west.”

The Yellow Boy’s popularity with Native Americans as well as the general shooting public continued its production well after the introduction of the more powerful Model 1873 Winchester began.

The Yellow Boy is still popular in Hollywood. The Yellow Boy appeared in many of the Spaghetti Westerns, and, more recently, TomChaney (Josh Brolin) carried one in the new release of True Grit.

Winchester chambered it for the .44 Henry Flat round, or a flat nosed bullet. Though it didn’t have a lot of power for a rifle, the Henry Flat had already been proven in combat.  The Flat was a rimfire cartridge, which means the hammer strikes the rim of the cartridge, not the center. It wasn’t until near the end of production–when the 1876 Centennial Rifle was being produced–that Winchester developed a .44 center-fire cartridge for the 1866 rifle.

Here’s a tidbit that might come in useful in your plot – No dust covers were used on the 1866.  This did permit dust and other debris to enter the action, which meant misfiring or not firing at all–which can put the shooter in a real tight spot.

Next time — the gun that started it all: The Henry Repeating Rifle.

Several different weapons, both rifles and handguns, have been dubbed “the gun that won the west.” Like the Colt 1873 Peacemaker, a .45 caliber six-shot revolver; the Winchester Model 1866 “Yellowboy” lever-action repeating rifle, so named for its shiny brass frame; or today’s focus, the Winchester Model 1873 lever-action repeating rifle.

Some believe the Winchester Model 1873 is widely known as ‘the gun that won the west’ purely because there were so many made. With a production run of more than 720,000 in 50+ years, anyone who wanted one could buy one. And that meant a lot of these rifles went west with those brave enough to pack up and head off into parts unknown.

The steel-framed Model 1873 was made as a musket = a 30” round barrel (smooth bore, not rifled). According to Winchester, there were only around 500 of these produced.

…as a carbine = a 20” barrel, loaded with 14 cartridges; often had a saddle ring attached for easy accessibility and to keep it on the horse.

…and as a rifle = 24” octagonal barrel, with the insides “rifled” or grooved in a way that spun the bullet as it exited the barrel, giving it greater distance and much improved accuracy; loaded with self-contained black powder cartridges that were pushed into the receiver on the right side of the rifle and stored in a magazine that paralleled the barrel.

THANKS TO WWW.RAREWINCHESTERS.COM FOR THE PICS!

Though the 1873 couldn’t handle the more powerful cartridges used by the single-shot rifles of the time, I’m thinking 14 shots before reloading versus one made it worth the trade-off.

Originally chambered for the .44-40 cartridge (a .44 caliber bullet, propelled by 40 grains of black powder), the Model 1873 was later produced in .38-40 and .32-20, all of which were popular handgun cartridges of the day. This was important–if your handgun and your rifle used different size ammunition, you had to carry two sizes and you ran the risk of not having enough of what you needed; but if your belt guns and your saddle gun all used the same cartridge, you just dug into the saddle bag and started stuffing in bullets. That could help get your hero out of a really tight spot.

However, if you’re going to have your hero–or heroine or villain–carry two weapons that share ammunition, remember that the original Model 1873 was not made to use the.45 caliber Colt cartridge used in the very popular Colt “Peacemaker.”

But that doesn’t mean a Colt and a Winchester never shared ammunition. The popularity of the Winchester in .44-40 caliber had Colt manufacturing a version of the Single Action Army “Peacemaker” revolver that could use the Winchester’s ammunition. This insured the success of the Winchester rifle.

“Most Texas Rangers and every old West cowboy worth his salt carried 1873 rifles. Chappo, the son of Apache war chief Geronimo, packed an 1873. And Buffalo Bill carried an 1873 lever-action rifle along with a pair of .44-40 Colts in 1876 when he worked as an Army scout.” http://www.uberti.com/firearms/1873_rifle_and_carbine.php

If you’d like to see a reproduction in action, check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RUsZ5U9xYw  

Pay close attention to the difference in the amount of smoke produced between the first cartridges, which use modern smokeless powder, and the second set, which are loaded with a black powder substitute that is more like the black powder used in the 1800s. The smoke was always a factor with the weapons of the period. Every shot left a cloud that gave away the position of the shooter.

Finally, I have to share this really excellent list, the FIREAMS GLOSSARY from the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum in Cody, WY.  http://www.bbhc.org/firearms/research/

In 1847, Colonel Samuel Walker, Army commander and a Texas Ranger in John C. Hays’ company, approached Sam Colt to make a new, stronger, more powerful revolver. Colt took the order–but had no factory. He turned to Eli Whitney, Jr., son of the famous inventor of the cotton gin, who had a factory in Connecticut where the order was completed and shipped by mid-1847.

Named the “Walker” for the Colonel, this single action, six shot, black powder revolver was 15 ½” long and weighed–are you ready–4 pounds, 8 ounces! Unloaded! Add the lead balls, wadding, etc. and you’re close to 5 pounds. That’s as much as one of those big bottles of wine. Try gripping that and holding it steady at arms length.

Can you even imagine shooting that thing, let alone hauling a couple of them around all the time? Though Hollywood shows the Colt Walker as a belt gun, the Texas Rangers and the mounted troops under Walker’s command during the Mexican-American War, and on the Texas frontier, carried the Colt Walker in saddle holsters.

Just to give you a visual, in the pic on the right, Josey Wales holds a Colt Walker in his left hand and a Colt 1860 Army in his right.

In the picture on the left, character Augustus McCrae of Lonesome Dove, is holstering his Colt Walker. See how long it is compared to Robert Duvall’s torso?

[Both of these pictures are from The Internet Movie Firearms Database, www.imfdb.org. It's a great site!]

With an effective range of 100 yards, the 1867 Walker could be loaded with as much powder as some muskets, making it the most powerful revolver of its day. In fact, it was more powerful than most modern pistols. The black powder Walker Colt is regarded by some experts as the most powerful commercially manufactured repeating handgun from 1847 until the introduction of the .357 Magnum in 1935.

“It proved to be a revolver of such size, weight, and heft that Colt was reputed to have said, “It would take a Texan to shoot it.” Walker wrote in 1847 that the gun was “as effective as a common rifle at 100 yards and superior to a musket even at 200.” Far more powerful than the earlier Patersons, this gun quickly became legendary. For those who could afford it, the Walker Colt was a symbol of strength, authority and great financial means.

“Total production of the original Walker was about 1,100, a thousand of which were ordered by the U.S. Ordnance Department. The Walker was the first revolver ever purchased by the Army, and soldiers’ inexperience with a revolver resulted in a lot of “burst cylinders,” meaning all six chambers fired at the same time.”  [http://americanhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/collection/object.asp?ID=820]

The Colt Walker was quickly followed by the Colt Dragoon series of revolvers, which only improved on a very good thing.

Oliver Winchester bought the remains of the Volcanic Repeating Arms Company, started the New Haven Arms Company, reorganized it as the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1866, and manufactured some of the most famous firearms ever created. Today we’re going to look at one of their most revered rifles: The 1876 Winchester Centennial Repeating Rifle.

Introduced at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 and named to commemorate our nation’s one hundredth anniversary of independence, Winchester’s lever-action rifle was the largest and among the most powerful repeaters on the frontier. 

The Centennial was one of the first lever-action weapons to use larger caliber, center-fire ammunition. In the same way that “rim-fire” meant the hammer struck the rim of the projectile, center-fire means the hammer strikes the center of the bullet when the trigger is pulled. In this case, larger means .45-75 to .50-90 caliber bullets.

The Centennial Repeater was 48½” long with a 28” barrel, and weighed in at 9 to 9½ pounds! And loading it with shells adds at least another pound. A gallon of milk weighs only 8.6 pounds–try holding that out in front of you and keeping it steady enough to hit what you’re aiming at!

The bullets go into the magazine through a spring-loaded feeder on the right side of the rifle. Fully loaded, the 1876 Repeater held 12 total cartridges–11 in the magazine and one in the chamber. All you had to do was stuff the bullets into the feeder, rack the lever and pull the trigger.

Confederate soldiers who faced a Repeater in battle referred to it as that “rifle you load on Sunday and fire all week.”

This sturdy, reliable rifle was favored by good guys and bad guys alike. There were many of them at the Battle of Little Big Horn (most in the hands of the Native Americans), and they were common among those who traveled and settled out west. The Model 1876 was carried by ranchers and cowboys, Texas Rangers and the Canadian North West Mounted Police. President Theodore Roosevelt (right) owned and used one; even notorious outlaws such as Johnny Ringo (left) and Tom Horn relied on this rifle during the late 1800s.

Hollywood loved the 1876 Centennial Repeater, too. Tom Selleck carried one as Rafe Covington in Crossfire Trail (TNT, 2001) and as Monte Walsh in Monte Walsh (2002). Virginia Madsen used the 1876 Centennial when she saved the day–and her man– also in Crossfire Trail. It made an appearance Steve McQueen’s hands when he played Tom Horn in the 1980 movie of the same name. And characters Johnny Ringo and Sherm McMasters used it in Tombstone (1993).

Just for comparison, the pic at the right, from the final gunbattle in TNT’s Crossfire Trail, shows an 1876 Centennial in the back, an 1866 “Yellow Boy” or “Golden Boy” (because of the polished brass receiver) in the middle and a Winchester 1873 in the front.

The 1876 Centennial Rifle was the king of its day. Manufacturing was discontinued in 1898 after Winchester produced nearly 64,000 of this amazing lever-action rifle.

Today  marks the 163^rd anniversary of the discovery that marked the beginning of the California Gold Rush.  Most of you know that the gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, but how much do you know about Sutter himself?  Well, depending on which version of history you want to believe, the man was either enterprising, adventurous, supportive of the American settlement of California and a good and generous host to travelers, or the man was a cheat, liar, slaver, alcoholic and smuggler.  A controversial figure to be sure!

John Augustus Sutter was born in Baden, Germany  in 1803 to Swiss parents.  He married at 24, but the time he turned 31 he’d encountered a series of business failures that resulted in a mountain of debt.  Sutter, unable to face his creditors, decided to see if he would fare better in America.  He left his wife and five children in his brother’s care and traveled to New York, just a few steps ahead of the bill collectors.  From there he headed west to Missouri where he set up as a trader and innkeeper on the Santa Fe Trail. 

But Sutter had bigger dreams.  He wanted to establish his own agricultural empire ‘somewhere out west.’  In the spring of 1838, again escaping creditors, he joined a group of trappers headed for the west coast.  The party arrived at Fort Vancouver, near present day Portland, OR, in October of that same year.  Sutter looked for a ship that would take him to the San Francisco Bay area, but when one was not immediately available, he set sail instead on a ship bound for the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).  From there he sailed to the Russian colony in Sitka, Alaska.  Sutter managed to engage in profitable trade during these detours, and by the time he arrived in California in July of 1838 he could pass for a man of means.

Ingratiating himself with Governor Alvarado, Sutter easily gained permission to establish a new settlement east of Yerba Buena (later to be renamed San Francisco).  The settlement was located near the spot where the American River meets the Sacramento River, an area formerly occupied only by Indians.  He started with tents and brush huts, but soon had set up a more substantial adobe building.

Setting his sights on a land grant, Sutter became a naturalized Mexican citizen in August of 1840.  The following June Governor Alvarado handed him the title to eleven leagues of land – approximately 48,800 acres.  Sutter named the grant New Helvetia, which means New Switzerland  (this would later become Sacramento).  

In 1844, Sutter completed Fort Sutter and established it as a frontier trading post.  This was an impressive structure, constructed of adobe and with walls 18 feet high and 3 feet thick.  Because of its placement along the overland trails, one of the most strategic locations in Northern California, it became a gathering place  and resting spot for settlers, traders and trappers in the region.  With his dreamed-of agricultural empire established, Sutter branched out into many additional enterprises.  He hired trappers to provide skins and furs for trade, built a distillery, established a blacksmith shop, and transported both freight and passengers between Fort Sutter and the San Francisco Bay.

In 1846, during the California revolt against Mexico, Sutter saw the writing on the wall and decided to side with the Americans.  In the years that followed, Sutter continued to prosper.  Though his reputation among the white settlers continued to be favorable, it was not so with the Indian population.  Much of the labor that fed Sutter’s empire was provided by the Indians who, according to some reports, were treated almost as slaves.

As a side note, though Sutter liked to speak of himself as a good family man, alluding to a home in Switzerland where his family was ensconced (untrue – they were charity cases living with his brother), he never did send for them.  In 1848 his oldest son, on his own initiative joined his father in California and in 1850 it was the son, not the father, who sent for the rest of the family.

In 1847, a chain of events began that would eventually bring about the downfall of Sutter’s empire but would ensure his place in history.  It started innocuously enough – Sutter decided he wanted to establish a sawmill.  For this purpose, he entered into an agreement with James W. Marshall.  They decided to build this mill on the American River at a spot called Collumah by the Indians.  On January 24, 1848, while inspecting the builder’s progress, Marshall spotted a bit of glitter in the mill’s tailrace.  Marshall took his discovery to Sutter.  Sutter confirmed the discovery was indeed gold by checking the entries in an encyclopedia.  He tried to swear his workers to secrecy, but it didn’t take long for the word to get out.  The gold rush was on!

To get an idea of how rapidly the fever spread, in the spring of 1849, the non-Indian population of California was in the neighborhood of 14,000.  By the end of 1849 it stood at almost 100,000, and by 1852, to over a quarter million.

But Sutter himself never profited from the discovery.  In fact, just the opposite.  His workers abandoned him, his lands were overrun by fortune hunters, his crops and cattle were stolen.  By 1852 Sutter was bankrupt and  New Helvetia was in ruins.  Sutter spent the rest of his life petitioning the government, both federal and state, for compensation for his losses but it was not to be.     He died, disappointed, during a trip to Washington D.C. in 1880

In the state of Colorado
In the year of seventy-four
They crossed the San Juan Mountains
Growing hungry to the core.
Their guide was Alferd Packer
And they trusted him too long:
For his character was weak
And his appetite was strong.

This is the first stanza to The Ballad Of Alfred Packer, by Phil Ochs.

I include it here because I was checking the This Day In History Calendar and I came across a rather grisly story of the old west.  In the late 1860s and early 70s, Alfred Packer was a Rocky Mountain prospector who supplemented his income by serving as a guide.  In the winter of 1873-74, Packer started out with a party of 21 men from Bingham Canyon, Utah headed for the gold fields in the Breckenridge, Colorado area.  Several months later Packer showed up, alone, at the Los Pinos Indian Agency.

 To read about what happened in the interim, check out this link: Alfred Packer – Maneater

And to see the rest of the lyrics to the ballad, check this link:  The Ballad of Alfred Packer

Earlier this year, I wrote about the possible pardon of notorious outlaw, Billy the Kid. It ain’t gonna happen.  Billy the Kid is still an outlaw.

In his last day in office, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson announced on New Year’s Eve he would not grant a posthumous pardon to the infamous Old West bad guy, after drawing international attention by entertaining a petition on Billy the Kid’s behalf.  

The pardon request had centered on whether Billy the Kid, who was shot to death in 1881 after escaping jail where he awaited hanging in the killing of Lincoln County Sheriff William Brady in 1878, had been promised a pardon from New Mexico’s territorial governor, Lew Wallace, in return for testimony in killings he had witnessed. 

But the descendants of Wallace and Sheriff Pat Garrett, who fatally shot the fugitive, were outraged over the proposal.  Pauline Garrett Tillinghast expressed her concern that a pardon would tarnish her grandfather’s legacy. Though the pardon might have been narrowly tailored, she said, “It’s ridiculous to pardon a murderer.  Hollywood has turned him into some sort of a folk hero.”  Pat Garrett‘s grandson J.P. Garrett and Wallace‘s great-grandson William Wallace also publicly opposed the possibility of pardon.  

According to legend, Billy the Kid killed 21 people, one for each year of his life. The New Mexico Tourism Department puts the total closer to nine. The Kid was a ranch hand and gunslinger in the bloody Lincoln County War, a feud between factions vying to dominate the dry goods business and cattle trading in southern New Mexico. Billy the Kid killed two deputies while escaping jail. 

The person filing the request for pardon argued that Lew Wallace promised to pardon the Kid, also known as William Bonney or Henry McCarty. She said the Kid kept his end of the bargain, but the territorial governor did not. But, J.P. Garrett of Albuquerque said there’s no proof Gov. Wallace offered a pardon — and may have tricked the Kid into testifying. 

“The big picture is that Wallace obviously had no intent to pardon Billy — even telling a reporter that fact in an interview on April 28, 1881,” he wrote. “So there was no ‘pardon promise’ that Wallace broke. But I do think there was a pardon ‘trick,’ in that Wallace led Billy on to get his testimony.” 

Garrett also said that when the Kid was awaiting trial in Brady’s killing, “he wrote four letters for aid, but never used the word ‘pardon.”‘ 

William Wallace of Westport, Conn., said his ancestor never promised a pardon and that pardoning the Kid “would declare Lew Wallace to have been a dishonorable liar.” 

According to historians, The Kid in fact wrote Wallace in 1879, volunteering to testify if Wallace would annul pending charges against him, including a murder indictment in Brady‘s death. 

A tantalizing part of the question is a clandestine meeting Wallace had with the Kid in Lincoln in March 1879. The Kid’s letters leave no doubt he wanted Wallace to at least grant him immunity from prosecution.  Wallace, in arranging the meeting, responded: “I have authority to exempt you from prosecution if you will testify to what you say you know.” 

But when the Las Vegas, N.M., Gazette asked Wallace shortly before he left office about prospects he would spare the Kid’s life, Wallace replied: “I can’t see how a fellow like him should expect any clemency from me.” 

The historical record on the pardon is ambiguous, and there are no written documents “pertaining in any way” to a pardon in the papers of the territorial governor, who served in office from 1878 to 1881. 

Of interest, Governor Richardson’s office set up a web-site so citizens could weight in on the subject of the pardon. His office received 809 e-mails and letters, with 430 favoring a pardon and 379 opposed. Comments came from all over the world.  I’d say the issue was fairly split down the middle probably along moral and political line, I suspect.

Governor Richardson said that he decided against a pardon “because of a lack of conclusiveness and the historical ambiguity as to why Gov. Wallace reneged on his promise.”  Richardson states said the Kid is part of New Mexico history and he’s been interested in the case for years.  . 

I’m not writing this post from a political point of view, strictly from an historical one.  The interesting part is some 133 years after killing numerous people, including lawmen, and being shot to death, the life and legend of Billy the Kid still can’t be put to rest.

So tell me who is your favorite controversial historical figure?

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With the popularity of the “Baby Dragoon”, Colt made a name in the pocket revolver market. Their next step was the slightly larger pocket Navy. The “New Model Pocket Pistol of Navy Caliber,” or “Pocket Navy” is, in essence, a Baby Dragoon modified with a .36 caliber barrel and rebated cylinder on the .31-size frame. NOTE: a rebated cylinder is one that has been “cut in” so the cylinder matches to the size of the barrel.

Colt took the frame of the Baby Dragoon, added a .36 caliber, 5-shot cylinder, with the 3”-5½” fluted barrel of the Navy Revolver. About 25% smaller than the standard Navy Revolver, the Pocket Navy was designed to be carried in a pocket if needed as well as a holster. The weapon was very popular. Between 1862 and 1873, Colt produced more than 19,000 Pocket Navy Revolvers. [That's an 1862 model on the left.]

Remember, though, these were still percussion revolvers–they used the old method of pouring in the powder, adding a lead ball or a conical bullet, ramming in a wad, and attaching a percussion cap. Then the shooter would put on a percussion cap, a small copper or brass open-ended cylinder enclosing fuliminate of mercury onto the “nipple” (on the rear of the cylinder), which held it in place.

When struck by the hammer, the cap would detonate, flashing sparks through a small hole on the back of the nipple into the revolver chamber, igniting the main powder charge and firing the bullet. Not a fast process, by any means. It wasn’t until 1860, when Benjamin Tyler Henry unveiled his lever-action repeating rifle that used a newly-perfected .44 caliber rimfire metal cartridge, that the rapid reload or the Hollywood gunfighter became reality. But that’s another blog.

 After discussing these little guns the last couple of blogs, I thought you ‘d enjoy seeing them side by side–so to speak. So, here’s the Baby Derringer, the 1849 Baby Dragoon, the Wells Fargo Model of the Dragoon, and the 1861 Pocket Navy.