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The punch bowl is the principal piece in the silver service used on the battleship U.S.S. Wyoming
from 1911 to 1946. One of more than fifty pieces in the service, the 30"xl8"x21" bowl depicts
the growth and progress of Wyoming. Sculptured figures of Sacajawea and a pioneer woman

form the handles of the bowl.

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LARAM/E

WYOMING STATE LIBRARY, ARCHIVES AND
HISTORICAL BOARD

Judicial

District

Robert St. Clair

Cheyenne

Mrs. Wilmot McFadden

Rock Springs

Mrs. Frank Emerson

Evanston

Miss Jennie Williams

Sheridan

Richard I. Frost, Chairman

Cody

Mrs. Virgil L. Thorpe

Newcastle

Mrs. Frank Mockler

Lander

Member at Large

Mrs. Dudley Hayden

Jackson

Ex-Officio

Attorney General James E.

Barrett Cheyenne

WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT

STAFF

Neal E. Miller Director

Walter B. Nordell Administrative Assistant

Mrs. Mary Purcella Secretary

Mrs. Katherine Halverson Chief, Historical Research and

Publications Division

Mrs. Julia Yelvington Chief, Archives and Records Division

Kermit M. Edmonds Chief, Museum Division

ANNALS OF WYOMING

The Annals of Wyoming is published semi-annually in April and October
and is received by all members of the Wyoming State Historical Society.
Copies of current issues may be purchased for $2.00 each. Available copies
of earlier issues are also for sale. A price list may be obtained by writing to
the Editor.

Communications should be addressed to the Editor. The Editor does
not assume responsibility for statements of fact or of opinion made by
contributors.

Annals of Wyoming articles are abstracted in
Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life

Ah mis of Wyoming

Volume 41

April, 1969

Number 1

Neal E. Miller
Editor

Katherine Halverson
Associate Editor

Published bianmially by the

WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT

Official Publication of the Wyoming State Historical Society

WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

OFFICERS 1968-1969

President, Curtiss Root Torrington

First Vice President, Mrs. Hattie Burnstad Worland

Second Vice President, J. Reuel Armstrong Rawlins

Secretary-Treasurer, Miss Maurine Carley Cheyenne

Executive Secretary, Neal E. Miller Cheyenne

Past Presidents

Frank L. Bowron, Casper 1953-1955

William L. Marion, Lander 1955-1956

Dr. DeWitt Dominick, Cody 1956-1957

Dr. T. a. Larson, Laramie 1957-1958

A. H. MacDougall, Rawlins 1958-1959

Mrs. Thelma G. Condit, Buffalo 1959-1960

E. A. Littleton, Gillette 1960-1961

Edness Kimball Wilkins, Casper 1961-1962

Charles Ritter, Cheyenne 1962-1963

Neal E. Miller, Rawlins 1963-1965

Mrs. Charles Hord, Casper 1965-1966

Glenn Sweem, Sheridan 1966-1967

Adrian Reynolds, Green River 1967-1968

The Wyoming State Historical Society was organized in October, 1953.
Membership is open to anyone interested in history. County Historical
Society Chapters have been organized in Albany, Big Horn, Campbell,
Carbon, Converse, Crook, Fremont, Goshen, Johnson, Laramie, Lincoln,
Natrona, Park, Platte, Sheridan, Sweetwater, Teton, Washakie, Unita and
Weston Counties

State Dues:

Life Membership $50.00

Joint Life Membership (Husband and wife) 75.00

Annual Membership 3.50

Joint Annual Membership (Two persons of same family at

same address) 5.00

Send State membership dues to:

Wyoming State Historical Society
Executive Headquarters
State Office Building
Cheyenne, Wyoming 82001

Zable of Contents

PORTRAIT IN OIL. THE BELGO-AMERICAN COMPANY

IN WYOMING 5

By Wilson O. Clough

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES IN THE
RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE
INDIANS OF THE PLAINS, 1851-1879 33

THE LAST EDEN. THE DIARY OF ALICE MOORE AT THE

XX RANCH 63

Edited by Austin L. Moore

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL: A STUDY OF ITS HISTORY FROM
1867 TO 1890. WITH A BRIEF SUMMARY OF EVENTS FROM
1890 TO THE PRESENT (Conclusion) 83

By Peggy Dickey Kircus

OREGON TRAIL AND CALIFORNIA-MORMON TRAILS: FORT
BRIDGER TO WYOMING'S WESTERN BORDER 113

Trek No. 19 of the Historical Trail Treks
Compiled by Maurine Carley

WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 131

President's Message, by Curtiss Root

Minutes of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting, September 7-8, 1868

CONTRIBUTORS 142

BOOK REVIEWS

Murray, Military Posts in the Powder River Country of Wyoming 143

Cook, Tales of the 04 Ranch 144

Karolevitz, This Was Pioneer Motoring 146

Ortenburger, Tetoniana 147

Urbanek, Almost Up Devils Tower 148

Florin, Ghost Town El Dorado _ 149

Frost, The Phil Sheridan Album 150

Oliphant, On the Cattle Ranges of the Oregon Country 150

Place, Introduction to Archaeology 152

ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover

U.S.S. Wyoming Punch Bowl

Following page 32

"The Days That Are No More . . ."

Joseph Lobell and Cy Iba at Hotel Metropole

Oil Well at Lander, 1902

Offices of Belgo-American Company, Cheyenne, 1903

Following page 72

Sun Dance Field, Wind River Reservation

Shelter Used During Sun Dance

Cleone and William Calling Thunder

The Williams' XX Ranch, Dale Creek, 1912

Dale Creek Camp of the Moore Family

Austin and Alice Moore, 1909

Wyoming State Historical Society Officers

Typical Fish Fossil from Fossil Syncline Lake

The map used as the background for the artifact on the
cover is a copy of one published by the Qason Map Co.,
Denver. Although the original bears no date imprint,
the twenty-one-county map of Wyoming was pubUshed
sometime between 1913 and 1922. In 1913 Goshen,
Hot Springs, Lincoln, Niobrara and Platte Counties were
organized. Teton County, organized in 1922, and Sub-
lette County, organized in 1923, do not appear on this
map. Other maps, of varying dates, will be used from
time to time on the covers of the Annals of Wyoming.

Portrait m Oil

Zke ^etgo-AtMerican Company

Jn Wyoming

By
Wilson O. Clough^

In April of 1904 a little book appeared in Paris, France, under
the title (as translated) of Wyoming: An Anecdotal History of
Petroleum. Its author was one Robert Charles Henri Le Roux,
here called Hugues Le Roux, journalist, traveler, and literary man.
Internal evidence indicates that M. Le Roux was in Wyoming in
the spring of 1902, called upon some leading citizens, and visited
the small beginnings of the Salt Creek oil field in the company of
Joseph H. Lobell, representative in Wyoming of the Belgo- Amer-
ican Company of Wyoming Petroleums, and Mr. Cy Iba, resident
of Casper. Much of his book dealt, therefore, with Wyoming
oil history, then in its infancy.

In the same year, possibly in the same month of April, 1904,
there appeared also in Paris a pamphlet-sized booklet likewise
entitled Wyoming, with the lengthy subtitle of A State of the Amer-
ican West; and General Considerations on the Far West. Its author
was Andre Emile Sayous, student of economics, lecturer at the
Ecole des Hautes Etudes, and prolific writer of articles on econom-
ics. M. Sayous visited Cheyenne, Laramie, and Casper in the
spring of 1903, his visit coinciding with that of M. Noel Pardon,
labeled by the Cheyenne Leader "former Governor of the French
Colonies," who was conducted on a tour of certain oil fields by
Professor Wilbur C. Knight of the state University. Sayous, who
probably went along, was less enthusiastic than Le Roux, and a bit
more wary in his opinions.

An aura of indefiniteness as to motivation hovered about these
two small books, both touching on Wyoming's general situation
and prospects, with side glances at oil production, until a third book

1. "Dr. Gene Gressley," says Dr. Clough, "called my attention to the
book by LeRoux. It led me to the other two documents treated below, none
of them previously put into English, and the story which follows. I must
thank Dr. Samuel H. Knight and Dr. T. A. Larson for their reading of this
article in manuscript."

6 ANNALS OF WYOMING

came to light, likewise published in French in 1904, probably in
May, but this time in Brussels. Though its author, Louis Magne,
made passing reference to the other two books, as will appear, his
major concern was indicated by his title (translated) : History of
the Belgo- American Company of Wyoming Petroleums. It appears
that M. Magne had written previous articles in financial journals
concerning his growing doubts about this company; but here, in a
text thoroughly documented up to the time of pubUcation, he more
than hinted at high financial shenanigans in Europe, and even
wondered if there were actually oil in Wyoming, He wished, he
said, that he could know the outcome of this fantastic narrative,
which, in his opinion, promised a rude jolt to someone. His
favored target on the scientific side was one Dr. Boverton Redwood
of London, geologist, on whose authority rested much of the com-
pany's inflated propaganda; but most of all he belabored the com-
pany's European instigators.

Such are the major dramatis personae of a story here limited
more specifically to 1902-1905, but ranging also from 1899 to
1910. It is not the purpose of this article to deal with the larger
story of oU in Wyoming, but merely to outUne this single episode,
because the above documentation is almost unknown, it appears,
within Wyoming history. Indeed, as far as a cursory investigation
reveals, none of these three books was even mentioned in the
hterature of the time in the state's newspapers or journals. The
bibliography therefore, is rather strictly limited in the interests of
completeness within a narrower frame.

It was no news by 1900 that oil was to be found in Wyoming,
though actual production was as yet slight. Cy Iba, an old timer
who had observed traces of oil in the Seminoe region in 1851,
returned from California in 1882 to claim locations there and in the
Salt Creek area. The first real drilling was in 1888, when Philip
Shannon, a man experienced in the Pennsylvania oil fields, helped
found the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Company in Wyoming, which
brought in the first well in 1890, and in 1894 built a small refinery
in the new, raw town of Casper. In 1893, Professor Wilbur C.
Knight published the first Bulletin on the Salt Creek area, "a re-
markably clear and accurate geological report," Dr. Larson calls it,
as, indeed, it proved to be.^ First samples sent east for analysis
surprised the speciahsts, who pronounced it the finest lubricating

2. T. A. Larson, History of Wyoming, p. 301. See also Mokler, History
of Natrona County, pp. 248-252, and H. D. Roberts, Salt Creek, Wyoming.

PORTRAIT IN OIL 7

oil yet seen. For a time, the Union Pacific used this lubricating
oil on its engines without refining it.

It was due to these early operations that Dr. Boverton Redwood
of London was induced to visit Wyoming in 1899. This distin-
guished British geologist, familiar with the great Russian oil fields
and consultant for the British Parliament on matters of petroleum,
had intended to stay three weeks in Wyoming, but extended his visit
to three months, touring the state with Professor Knight, and re-
turning to London with glowing reports of untouched resources of
petroleums in Wyoming, and the fullest confidence in Professor
Knight's reports.

Redwood had long known the great oil fields of the world, and
came skeptically to Wyoming, expecting to be disappointed. But
"I was mistaken. It is proved that this country is the best oil-
bearing district that could be found from the geological point of
view," he wrote. It is "enormously rich," and production is
"absolutely assured."^ The importance of this opinion, which Dr.
Redwood continued to affirm, lies in the fact that on it, and on
Professor Knight's judgment, the European edifice of the Belgo-
American Company was erected.

Let us remind ourselves, then, at this point, that, despite some
flurries of interest in the Uinta, Popo Agie and Lander areas, there
was still in 1901-1902 very little testing or production of oil in
Wyoming, and that a major problem was that of distance from
markets and lack of transportation facilities. Not until a decade
later would any real advances be made. Transportation still meant
heavy teaming or railroads, for good roads and auto-trucking were
still unknown. Again, we must not forget that there is a great gap
between careful scientific evaluation in the field, and the feverish
activities of speculation and promotion in far distant world capitals.
The scientific judgments of Professor Knight and Dr. Redwood
have been remarkably substantiated by time, even to the unfortun-
ate "Dome" field, where today there is renewed activity. On the
other hand, we can share with M. Magne some of the dismay at
what he was witnessing in Europe; for the very date of our three
little books in French, Sie spring of 1904, was, indeed, one of crisis
for the Belgo-American affair.

Though Magne's book was the last of the three to appear, its
documentary importance justifies our begiiming with it.

In June of 1901, so Magne reports, a joint stock-company called

3. Louis Magne, Histoire de la Sociite Belgo-Americaine, etc., p. J 66,
quoting Dr. Redwood. It was this confidence on the part of Redwood that
so disturbed M. Magn6, as will be seen.

8 ANNALS OF WYOMING

"The Anglo Oil Fields Limited" was formed in IvOndon, with seven
subscribers and a nominal capital of 300,000 pounds, shares at one
pound each, its stated aim being "to acquire, exploit and develop,
sell or dispose of by all other means, oil-bearing lands in the State
of Wyoming (United States of America)."* Such lands, said the
prospectus, were "to be chosen especially by the expert of the com-
pany, in a total of 295,000 acres of oil-bearing lands known under
the name of oil-bearing basins of Dutton and Beaver, situated in the
counties of Natrona and Fremont."

From the start, Magne's approach is one of suspicion. His
opening words are: "This history will be serious and comic, true
and fantastic, full of the most irrefutable documents and the numer-
ous surprises of a newspaper serial. ... I do not know the outcome.
I should have liked to wait for it, but the promotors and actors
multiply their divers activities so fast that I risked not being able to
follow them." (p. 5)

Certain surveying engineers employed by the Union Pacific rail-
road, says M. Magne, observed evidences of oil. Not having per-
sonal resources, they offered an option to an English correspond-
ent, who made overtures to Mr. Henry Walter of London. Mr.
Walter, desiring information, engaged Dr. Boverton Redwood to
examine the lands and to search out further advantageous lands.
Dr. Redwood then spent (1899) three months in Wyoming, and
"much struck by the geological conditions of the region, covered
almost all of Wyoming in the company of the official geologist of
the state, Dr. Wilbur C. Knight, whom Dr. Redwood considers a
man as competent as honorable and in whom he has since retained
his utmost confidence." (p. 14)

Thereupon Dr. Redwood strongly recommended the acquisition
of properties, plus "a whole series of other lands which Messers
Redwood and Knight estimated to have considerable value. This
especially favorable opinion of Dr. Redwood is recorded in a report
which he drew up on his return to England and on which rests the
constitution of the Anglo-Wyoming Oil Fields Ltd." (p. 15)

It was this extreme confidence in the judgment of two men only,
one far distant in Wyoming, that disturbed M. Magne; and under-
standably so, especially since in 1901 and 1903 the French govern-
ment had issued specific warnings against oil stocks whose capital
was mostly "paper," and whose products were "hypothetical;"
companies, in short, called "wildcat," which the French rendered

4. Magne, pp. 11-12. M. Magne's authority for the first part of his
History was a "Note" printed in 1903 by the Belgo- American Company in
Brussels, Belgium, entitled (as translated) "Note on the Origin, Creation and
Development of the Belgo-American Company of Wyoming Petroleums."
Since Magne's documents, even the EngUsh ones, are in French, I must hope
that I have rendered them with reasonable accuracy in each case.

PORTRAIT IN OIL 9

as ''chat sauvage, that is, as hard to catch as this cat of the woods."
(p. 7)

This original company, says M. Magne, made no effort to
develop the lands themselves, some 40,000 acres leased on Red-
wood's recommendation, but set up a series of associated com-
panies to do the work, a percentage of returns to go to the mother
company (a procedure followed by other great syndicates). Ob-
viously, says Magne, a company with 20,000 pounds (if paid), and
280,000 on paper, could hardly expect to inaugurate exploitation
in distant Wyoming. Therefore, Mr. Henry Walter, promotor and
seller, went to Brussels, "a city blessed with certain founders of
joint-stock companies," and was there favorably received by Bel-
gians and some "international elements," including one Rudi Land-
auer. The two worked out a new group, called "Syndicate of
Wyoming," and, from April 10, 1902, "The Belgo-American
Company of Wyoming Petroleums."^

Note that this last date coincides with the visit of M. Le Roux to
Wyoming, though a precise connection is impossible to prove. Le
Roux had been in Africa in 1901, and was in Massachusetts in
February of 1902, after a trip via Canada to the oil fields of Indiana
and Pennsylvania (for what purpose?). Why did he turn west
again, then, for his trip to Wyoming? He does not tell us. The
possibility that he might report usefully on American practice, and
further give a first-hand account of oil in Wyoming, must have had
its interest for the Belgian company. The fact that Le Roux did
not pubhsh until 1904 enabled him to add material from 1903, as
clearly appears in his book, including his later almost reverent
interview with Dr. Redwood in London. Le Roux, at the end,
speaks of landing in France "early in the summer of 1902," and
"after two years of absence," which leaves between April and June
for his trip to Wyoming. We shall return to M. Le Roux below.

Complicated correspondence between London and Brussels fol-
lowed the naming of the Belgo-American Company (hereafter so
abbreviated), especially between Landauer and Dr. Redwood,
Magne prints these letters in detail, admitting that Dr. Redwood
may be "even the finest expert in the world," though he finds him-
self disturbed by the British geologist's readiness to encourage the
operations which follow. Landauer in November of 1901, for
example, proposed a series of questions for Dr. Redwood's answers.
Redwood's replies were direct, sometimes merely a "Yes," the
tenor being a complete assurance on the promise of Wyoming's
future.

On December 28, 1901, Henry Walter sent Landauer plans for
procedure. They will sink a well near Lander, and another on 100

5. Magne, p. 17. Magne's book is much too detailed for more than
summary in this article, hence the occasional page references in parentheses.

10 ANNALS OF WYOMING

acres "especially selected" by Dr. Redwood. Walter expects to
visit Wyoming himself, and promises a "gusher" of 10,000 barrels
a day and possibly a profit of 500,000 pounds annually. Dr. Red-
wood accepts his part — though he never revisited the scene, and
must have relied on Professor Knight for information. Publicity
for the new project began in February of 1902. The Belgian com-
pany now set its capital at one million francs, divided into 10,000
shares at 100 francs each, a franc then being about five to a dollar.

The first publicity (as quoted by Magne, pp. 30-34) , in a journal
called Economic Progress (Essor Economique), said in part: "A
group of Belgian financiers have just bought the Wyoming Oil
Fields and will establish three hundred branch offices in the differ-
ent countries of Europe." The territories acquired, it goes on,
"comprise 300 acres in the counties of Natrona and Fremont. . . .
M. Boverton Redwood of London . . . and Messers J. Mills of
Chicago have explored the region and from their studies the result
is that there are 60,000 acres of fine oil-bearing lands."

Information follows (similar to that in Le Roux and Sayous) on
locations, promises, railroads. One sentence will be often repeat-
ed: "The sole difficulty which prevents the development of these
vast oil fields has been the question of transportation." But, says
the announcement, "That obstacle will soon be conquered. A pipe
line is actually being constructed which will carry petroleum to
existing railroads in the proximity and to those which will be con-
structed." Directors (no names given) are "personalities of high
finance and banking." And "we are assured that in America a
gigantic trust is on the way to being formed. . . A company has
contracted to buy every barrel of oil on the spot. Branch groups
will be founded, with offices in Belgium, Germany, France, Spain
and Italy."

The gigantic American company must refer to the later Belgo-
American Drilling Trust company, an American subsidiar}^ formed
to handle details in America. Who contracted to buy the oil has
not been stated.

A constitution was framed, dated April 10, 1902, with twenty-
four subscribers, and detailed statements of location of wells and
distribution of profits. Capital stock had to be increased, if only
because Belgian law required a capital of one million francs for
entry on the Belgian and Paris stock markets. The original sums,
complains Magne, were not used for exploitation but as rewards
to the "pioneers" of the company. The American branch now
appears; its contract called for drilling of at least one, and perhaps
three to five wells. There were also promises of tools, machines,
accessories, leases, options and operations. Yet actual capital was
still too limited to promise much work. In November of 1902,
capital was increased by issuing 390,000 new shares at 100 francs

p ^

PORTRAIT IN OIL (^■^'' 11

each, and the Council was empowered to realize an increase up to
three million francs, with an ultimate goal stated as forty million.
The enterprise was launched — at least, in Europe.

Toward the end of the autumn of 1902 (M. Magne is still relying
on the Belgo-American's published "Note" on its history), the
Company asked for a "Committee of Studies," or of investigation,
to be composed of distinguished personalities who should recom-
mend on the company's projects and reliability. This committee,
composed of distinguished gentlemen, was headed by M. Albert
Bouree, labelled "ambassador of France,"'' and included members
of the French institute, an inspector general of mines, the Spanish
minister to France, M. Noel Pardon, "governor of colonies," and
M. Andre Sayous, 'doctor of law, professor at the Ecole des Hautes
Etudes." Some of them were already shareholders in the Com-
pany, notably Bouree and the Spanish minister. "I do not dispute
their right," says Magne. "I merely establish the fact." (p. 49)
This committee, selected, according to the Company's report, for its
"authority and impartiality," was asked to examine in depth the
Wyoming project, especially the Dome properties, and advise on
further acquisition of lands.

M. Magne, on his account, finds this action amazing. Despite
the distinguished names, he cannot overlook certain facts. No
member of this committee visited America (Pardon and Sayous
came later) ; one man only, M. Linder, went to London and inter-
viewed Dr. Redwood, already an employee of the Belgo-American,
looked at one small map of Wyoming, the authority of which rested
on Dr. Redwood's recommendation, and reported to the Committee
in session on December 15, 1902, all members present. It returned
a unanimous verdict of approval, on the strength of which the
Belgo-American company issued 10,000 new shares toward an
outlay for 1,280 acres of oil-bearing lands in the Dome area, east
of Rock Springs.

Magne had access to M. Linder's report (pp. 64-66). Linder
had said in substance: He had made a geologic and technical
examination of Dr. Redwood's papers and theories. His doubts
were thus "gradually dissipated," particularly by maps of the
United States and Wyoming. Linder then gave some technical
account of the oil fields of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and of the
synclinal folds in Wyoming, "where the indications of the existence
of petroleum in depth are of an incontestable certainty." Thus
"One has the right to conclude from these facts," said M. Linder

6. Possibly Frederic Albert Bouree, 1838-1914, one-time French minister
to Belgium, Denmark, China, and Greece, retired before 1900.

12 ANNALS OF WYOMING

(the italics are Magne's), "that the region in question must be
MORE OR LESS oil-bearing and that petroleum, when drilling
reaches its depth, will be susceptible of gushing above ground; these
conclusions confirm those of Dr. Redwood."

Magne had also the minutes of the Committee (pp. 61-63) . The
question before them was whether it was to the advantage of the
Belgo-American company to acquire another 1,280 acres, "against
the release of one million francs, namely, 10,000 shares entirely
free of the Company, whose nominal capital will thus find itself
brought to two million francs." The Committee, said the minutes,
"having seen the different documents deposited in the dossier, and
especially the history of the business, the reports of Dr. Boverton
Redwood and M. Willem [sic] C. Knight, state geologist of Wyo-
ming," as well as the Company's statutes and the map of Wyoming,
etc., "considers its conclusions as fully justified as possible in such
matter . . . (and) gives out the advice that the consulting Company
. . . has every advantage to realize the projected operation."

The minutes were signed by M. Bouree, president, and M. Noel
Pardon, "administrative delegate." The Belgo-American Company
declared itself highly satisfied with the report, adding, "it would be
difficult to place the operation under more favorable or more dis-
tinguished auspices;" further operations, it said, would "have their
pivot in France." (p. 63) M. Bouree was offered a place on the
Company's Council, and later became its president.

Since M. Magne wrote his report in 1904, we may turn here to
his sidelight on M. Pardon, who will appear again, and who, it will
be recalled, visited Cheyenne and Wyoming in the spring of 1903.
What report he gave on his visit we do not Imow. But on February
24, 1904, reports Magne in a footnote (p. 47n), the Belgo-Amer-
ican company published a note in the Paris newspapers to the effect
that certain agents, taking advantage of M. Pardon's visit to Wyo-
ming "on behalf of the Syndicate of Wyoming," were announcing
themselves as qualified to lease territories belonging to the Com-
pany's domain. The Company wished to put the public on guard
against such maneuvers. On the following day, the Paris Temps
ran a brief item: "M. Noel Pardon begs to state that he has no
connection (italics are Magne's) with the Belgo-American Com-
pany of Wyoming Petroleums." This item is, we must admit, a bit
strange, since Bouree is said by Governor Fenimore Chatterton of
Wyoming to have visited him in February of 1904, and Bouree's
son was a visitor in April 1904 (see below).

Magne, however, is now concerned about production in Wyo-
ming. A large return had been promised from the Henderson
property near Lander — but no further news is forthcoming. Dr.
Redwood had promised 7,000 barrels a day and "a certain acqui-
sition of large revenues," dependent, it is true, on a railroad to
Lander, also not forthcoming. Yet by June 1903, the Company
speaks of "augmentations of capital which may rise to a total nom-

PORTRAIT IN OIL 13

inal sum of forty million francs, of which several millions will be
envisaged as being subscribed in specie" (i.e., not on paper only).
And yet they are still speaking of regularizing the Henderson prop-
erty (i.e., paying for it), and other documents urge stockholders to
be patient; for the problem of transportation still hangs fire, though
solution is said to be "relatively easy." Magne suspects, not with-
out reason, that the Company is deeply involved in distances, also
lack of tools, equipment, transportation facilities, and money.
Thus "a brief delay in dividends" is announced.

Mention is made in April, 1903, of a capital of four million
francs, in August of 7,500,000 francs, Henry Walter and Landauer
holding a majority of shares. A "London Wyoming Company
Ltd", headed in Laramie, appears briefly, and the acquisition of the
Dome terrain is announced. A rare report on assets of June 30,
1903 (required by Belgian law), is discovered by Magne in an
obscure Belgian journal, showing, says he, an actual working cap-
ital of some 33,000 francs (less than $7,000), though capital shares
are put at four milUon francs. However, the "Wyoming Syndicate"
is said to be pursuing the work of operations, though with what
funds is not specified.

Magne is becoming a bit irritated. When he reads that Dr.
Redwood predicts that "the oil-bearing fields of Baku, as mag-
nificent as they are, are considerably surpassed in value by those of
Wyoming," Magne explodes: "How could one make himself the
responsible editor of such affirmations?" (p. 93) [Yet we can
now assert more than a half century later that Dr. Redwood was
correct.]

Magne's indignation goes farther: (p. 55)

For two years they have flashed before the eyes of the public and to
attract capitalists that Wyoming is an immensely rich state, that the
Syndicate of Wyoming has acquired one of the richest portions of this
wealth, in order to share it with its happy shareholders, that the great-
est expert in the world has attested to its wealth, that the greatest
names, the greatest authorities, the most assured competencies, have
stamped with approval and guaranteed these marvels. And it all ends
in what? A suit in court to have payment of a sum of 125,000 francs,
which seems truly very petty in regard to the millions and millions
which figure in the shares of the promotors!

The suit mentioned refers to back payments due on the Hender-
son property. Yet in November 1903, the Belgo-American com-
pany announces negotiations for certain Salt Creek beds, and "the
firm resolve to give it an intensive development destined to a
steady growth in profits." (p. 105) This property was obtained
from the Pennsylvania Gas and Oil Company. More surprising is
the announcement in Europe that the Company has "definitely"
acquired petroleum fields in Panama, favorable to shipments to
South American countries, and to seagoing vessels, since the British
have changed some cruisers from coal to petroleum for power.

We come thus about up to the year 1904 as far as Magne is

14 ANNALS OF WYOMING

concerned, and should pause to pick up the threads in Wyoming
itself; for Wyoming news media must be recognizing some of these
events, and M. Le Roux' visit in the spring of 1902 and his book
may throw some light on our topic.

Ill

We have mentioned above that M. Hugues Le Roux appears to
have visited Wyoming in the spring of 1902. It is hard to escape a
fleeting suspicion that he might have been in Wyoming in 1903
(again, or even for the first time) ; yet we can explain the apparent
discrepancies by his admission that he received documents after
his visit, from Wyoming friends, or by the probability that Mr.
Joseph Lobell must have visited Wyoming more than once before
he was assigned to Cheyenne in the spring of 1903. However, we
must look upon M. Le Roux' techniques with a little skepticism
when we discover that his interview with Bryant B. Brooks, for
example, manages Le Roux' questions in such a sequence as to
bring out the replies in almost the exact words and order of points
as those of the speech of Mr. Brooks in December of 1901 before
the Wyoming Industrial Convention in Laramie, as printed in the
Proceedings of April 1902. The same is approximately true of his
interview with Professor Knight and Knight's previous pubUshed
reports on oil in Wyoming. One surmises that M. Le Roux was
not above a joumaUstic trick of inventing an interview from a
printed talk or paper. But this does not detract from the readabil-
ity of his word pictures of these gentlemen.

Le Roux was an experienced joumaUst, born in 1860 in Le
Havre, France, a contributor to French journals, author of plays,
novels, Uterary studies, and travel books, including three before
his trip to Wyoming, on the Sahara desert, Norway, and Abyssinia.
His Wyoming book begins with a vivid description of loading coal
at Port Said on the Suez, and the obvious advantages of oil over
coal. He continues with an interview with the Negus of Abyssinia,
and that monarch's hope for oil for lamps in his backward country.
Le Roux then devotes several chapters to the history of oil in the
United States, the early experiments, and the rise of Standard Oil.
Only on page 95 does he arrive in Cheyenne, where, since hunting
is not in season, he might as well look into oil. Yet he spends a
number of chapters on cattle, sheep, railroads, even the Cheyenne
rodeo and Teddy Roosevelt's visit to Cheyenne in 1903. Thus his
story ranges in Wyoming from 1901 to 1903.

Though Le Roux gives but the barest mention of the Belgo-
American company, his theme is oil. High points are his interview
with Professor Knight, his trip to the Salt Creek field with Lobell
and Cy Iba, and, some time later, his visit to Dr. Redwood in
London. All these are accompanied with reassuring statistics on
oil in Wyoming. It is unfortunate that we cannot give more space

PORTRAIT IN OIL 15

to this book, which, though it contains no extremely novel informa-
tion, is readable. Over thirty small photographs illustrate the work,
mostly pictures familiar to Wyoming publications of the day. One,
here reproduced, has its humor in presenting Mr. Lobell and Cy
Iba as "dining" at the "Metropole Hotel" halfway between Cas-
per and Salt Creek.

The Wyoming Industrial Convention in Laramie on December
12-13, 1901, was widely hailed in the state as of much importance.
Delegates came from every county, and speeches touched on every
phase of Wyoming's economy and future. Professor Wilbur C.
Knight^ spoke on the state's oil resources (but made no mention of
the Dome field at that earlier date ) . The Proceedings were pub-
lished the following April, 1902, from which M. Le Roux appears
to quote.

Le Roux opens his chapter on Professor Knight with the state-
ment that he had "a warm and urgent letter" [from whom?] to that
gentleman, whom he describes as a vigorous, self-made American
type, a man who had covered the state on horseback, and was
widely respected as an authority. "The Belgo-American company
with which he was associated," says Le Roux (p. 155), "finally
gave him the resources he needed to explore the oil-bearing fields
of Wyoming. He prepared an oil map for them." With this map,
still in a draft stage. Dr. Knight gave Le Roux a fine lecture on the
state's oil resources, the locations of fields, and optimistic predic-
tions. It is no doubt this map that appears in the back cover of
Le Roux' book, showing in red the locations of oil fields, also pro-
posed new railroad lines and even a pipe line from Salt Creek to
Arvada on the Burlington to the north. The Professor expressed
his regrets at being unable to leave his University duties for a trip,
but recommended Lobell and Cy Iba as companions. Knight was
unfortunately "suddenly stricken with peritonitis" in July 1903, to
the great loss of the state and geology, Le Roux adds in a footnote.

At the end of the chapter, a footnote, evidently added late in
1903, states that Professor Knight in his last year had given much
time and attention to the "Dome" field, also called the Knight field,
in Sweetwater County, some forty miles east-north-east of Green
River, in the midst of a desert at 7,000 feet elevation, from which

7. Wilbur C. Knight was born in Illinois in 1858, received his A.B. and
Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska (the latter in 1902), and in 1893,
after serving as Superintendent of Mines in Colorado and Wyoming, joined
the staff of the young University of Wyoming as professor of mining engi-
neering, metallurgy and assaying. In 1894 he undertook a state survey, from
the Nebraska line to the Tetons. Bulletins on Wyoming's mineral wealth
appeared from 1894 on. In 1899 he directed an unusual expedition of over
100 geologists and paleontologists over the state, from which three carloads
of dinosaur bones were shipped to various centers. It was said that no other
man had located more oil fields in Wyoming.

16 ANNALS OF WYOMING

he had predicted that "oil will probably gush forth in great floods,
it will be light, and excellent in quality," but that they would un-
doubtedly have to drill to 3,000 feet. "Professor Knight," says
Le Roux, "himself acquired the right of proprietorship, but ceded
it to the Belgo-American company. At the end of 1903 several
wells were in process of being drilled." (p. 170)

Le Roux's next three chapters are devoted to his trip to the Salt
Creek field. He was met at Casper by Mr. Lobell, whom Le Roux
describes as a native of Louisiana, yet a true "Latin" in French
origins, handsome, supple, and well traveled from Chicago to Lon-
don, Brussels and Paris. "As fast as the Laramie professor dis-
covers oil beds, the Chicago attorney draws up contracts with the
owners of the land and the State authorities, in the name of the
Belgo-American company, of which he is the administrator."
(p. 193). Cy Iba is pictured as a man "approaching seventy,"
"still straight and alert," one who "knows the country like his own
handkerchief," "always a frontiersman," a master at practical
jokes, not always gentle. His expression is that of a man "who had
never been afraid of anything." (p. 194) The party rode some
fifty miles north from Casper, through rather bare country, but
appealing from its absence of man. Le Roux describes the sixteen-
horse teams they met transporting oil, the small derricks of the day,
the camp's buildings, the method of operation, and the later visit
to the Casper refinery, under one Dr. Salathe, a Swiss chemist. Mr.
Lobell, en route, produces convincing figures of vast profits in the
offing, at least $50,000,000 from surface wells, with much more in
wells at lower levels (pp. 235-238).

Le Roux then outlines the railroads of the state, repeating Lo-
bell's projects for lines to Lander and Salt Creek and further. Le
Roux asks whether the other lines may not oppose such plans.
Lobell is reassuring. Standard Oil, he says, slightly digressing, is
not a producer but a refiner; and besides, as the eastern fields faU
off, they will be seeking new outlets. A footnote, apparently per-
tinent, announces that "Mr. Fenimore Chatterton, present governor
of Wyoming, has accepted the presidency of the Petroleum Com-
pany of Wyoming, which is the American form of the 'Belgo-
American.' " (p. 265) Chatterton became governor on April 28,
1903.

Finally, Mr. Le Roux makes his London visit to Dr. Boverton
Redwood, "the oracle," "in the first days of January of the present
year" (1903 or 1904?). (p. 294) The great man is most gracious
and most reassuring on Wyoming's prospects. All the most favor-
able conditions are there, he says, and at a most seasonable time,
for Standard Oil is well aware of future fields, hence regards Wyo-
ming as a storehouse. It appears, then, from the above, that the
problem in Wyoming was railroads and Standard Oil, and so it
proved.

In short, M. Le Roux, whether employed or not by the Belgo-

PORTRAIT IN OIL 17

American, must have been accepted with interest by that company's
promoters. M. Andre Sayous, however, is a different matter.
Despite his presence on the Committee of Studies above, his ac-
count of Wyoming is full of caution and skepticism. Sayous was
born in 1873, hence but thirty at the time of his visit. He had
already published studies of European stock markets,'"* which may
account for his more careful documentation. It appears, more-
over, that this tiny book was originally an oral report in 1903
before the Society of Social Economics, no doubt in Paris. There
is no direct mention in it of the Belgo-American company and none
of M. Pardon, whom he accompanied to Cheyenne and Wyoming,

M. Sayous begins by saying that Wyoming is little known, even
in the eastern states of the Union, and that data is difficult to come
by. Besides, "one runs into perpetual bragging. The inhabitants
of the West admire everything that is their own work;" and the
journalists are not much better, (p. 7) M. Sayous then quickly
summarizes a few historical facts and present observations: eleva-
tion, climate, barren landscapes, occasional beautiful valleys, cattle
and sheep, and mines. Oil gets no more than its share of attention.
One brief paragraph reads :

The mining deposits are not totally unknown, thanks to the efforts
of Mr. Wilbur C. Knight, the regretted professor at the University of
V^yoming. But their wealth is still the object of occasional enterprises.
The means of commumcation are notoriously insufficient. The cap-
italists of New York and Boston have small confidence in a state where
the master-extortionists are numerous, and assuredly honest men are
rare. (pp. 16-17)

Sayous' description of social Wyoming is not too flattering. He
mentions the mixed population, some of them escapees from older
states, the equal rights for women, the lag of schools, the lack of
public morality and the indifference to life, particularly in Casper,
where "everywhere are stinking saloons and gambling halls," and
citizens are held up in the evenings and robbed. Indeed, "We have
never seen in all America, including New Mexico and Arizona, a
camp more steaming with crime and vice." (p. 24) M. Magne
quotes this passage with satisfaction, as if it proved the dangers of
investment in Wyoming oil. Cheyenne M. Sayous liked somewhat
better, partly because a simpler society "does not have the ridic-
ulous pretensions of Denver's 'society' ".

The Union Pacific also comes in for a caustic remark or two.
Wyoming, he says (p. 26) "has been since its formation as a State,
and remains, the 'property of the Union Pacific' " The governor
cannot be elected without its consent, and "the present governor is

8. Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris, 1943) Vol. 164, pp. 302-322. A pamph-
let on him issued in 1940 (near the time of his death) listed some 92 articles
by him, "almost all extracted from French and foreign reviews."

18 ANNALS OF WYOMING

a former employee of the railroad . . . half politician, half business
man — a business man profitting by politics to enrich himself and
his friends." (pp. 27-28) The governor in 1903 was Fenimore
Chatterton.

Sayous devotes a chapter to the railroads, which, he thinks,
hamper development or control it to their own advantage. The
solution would be a north-south line from Colorado to Montana.
Mineral wealth includes gold, copper, iron and coal, with some
eastern and European capital interested in petroleum, "and not
without reason." The Petroleum Series put out by the University
is of "great scientific value" (p. 27). The Pennsylvania Company
in Salt Creek finds oil of an excellent quality, "if the lines of com-
munication were better." The Henderson property lacks transpor-
tation; and "Near Rock Springs, on the "Dome', it becomes more
and more uncertain whether or not they will find petroleum in
'paying quantities.' " (p. 42)

The obstacles, says Sayous, are capitalist exploiters, who build
up shares "in an unheard of fashion," especially in Europe. Fields
will be valued in the millions which have not produced, and per-
haps never will; and this continues "to the moment of catastrophe."
The next sentence, as if a hint to the Belgo-American, reads: "A
curious thing: the more they drill wells at the 'Dome,' and the
more the chances of success diminish, the more the 'market' seems
delighted." (p. 43). "The only man," he adds later, "who knew
the geology of the state, the eminent professor Knight, died this past
year. No one can take his place, and yet numerous drillings are
needed to better inform us on the pockets of oil." (p. 43)

Nor is Sayous optimistic about the railroad situation. The Chi-
cago and Northwestern, he says, belongs 56% to Mr. Rockefeller,
and offers no guarantee that it will buUd a line to Lander; "and a
foreign company cannot dream of building a railroad by itself."
(p. 43) In short, "The moment has not yet come for a normal
development of the oil fields of Wyoming." (p. 44) The big com-
panies will protect themselves, and American oil men know their
business.

It is clear, then, that M. Sayous did not offer much comfort to
his European readers; and one suspects that M. Magne did not
quote him further only because his own book came too nearly at
the same time.

Publicity in Wyoming on the Belgo-American Company began
slowly. The Wyoming Industrial Journal for December, 1901,
mentions "London capitalists" who visited Wyoming and were
pleased with what they saw. In January 1902, the same Journal
mentions bulletins by Professors Knight and Slosson in the London
Petroleum Review, and "a very exhaustive article by Professor Wil-

PORTRAIT IN OIL 19

bur C. Knight" in the Engineering and Mining Journal, which gives
"in comprehensive language the history of the first well, the topog-
raphy of the section and general geology, and describes the fields
which are known as Milliard, Carter, Spring Valley and Twin
Creeks." The same issue reports English and Belgian capital as
interested in Wyoming.

By October of 1902, we read that Charles Walter (brother of
Henry Walter of London) of the Belgo-American Drilling Trust
Company has arrived "in Laramie to superintend work in the Wyo-
ming oil fields," and that under the guidance of Knight and Dr.
Boverton Redwood "nothing will be left undone to place the re-
sources of Wyoming ... on the markets of the world." Charles
Walter is quoted as saying that his brother has worked hard for
several years to acquire control of "what we are led to believe . . .
are the most valuable oil sections throughout the state." The De-
cember 1902 issue announces the start of drilling in the Rock
Springs area, and that Professor Knight has been given leave of
absence to "assist the Company in locating its numerous wells."

Information picks up in 1903. By April, the Industrial Journal
is reporting that the Belgo-American Drilling Trust has paid
$450,000 for oil wells, and that Mr. Joseph Lobell has arrived to
make his headquarters in Cheyenne and to take charge of extensive
operations. The above deal, it is said, is "the biggest oil deal ever
consummated in Wyoming," with twelve flowing wells, rigs and
buildings and properties in the Popo Agie area, and options on
lands in Fremont, Natrona, Sweetwater, and Albany counties.
Lobell will leave in a few days with Professor Knight for a tour of
properties. In May Lobell is talking of a railroad to Lander.

The June issue of 1903 (p. 14) carries a portrait of Joseph
LobeU and a picture of the No. 1 Dome well. "It would seem,"
reads the story, "that Wyoming oil fields are to receive the financial
attention they deserve. . . . The state's welcome friend at this time
is the Belgo-American Drilling Trust Company, which is backed by
Belgian and other foreign capitalists, and which has acquired title
to thousands of acres of valuable oil lands." Lobell is described as
director of the company, a Chicago attorney, "devoting consider-
able time to railroad matters and has under consideration the build-
ing of a new Wyoming railroad. In this regard he is being ably
aided by Governor Chatterton."

In the same issue we learn that M. Noel Pardon of France,
"former Governor General of French colonies," will visit Cheyenne
on May 30, representing the French minister of Commerce, and
will visit the Belgo-American oil fields. "If satisfied with what he
sees, his representation will result in the expenditure of several
millions in Wyoming." A Paris journalist accompanies him, who
will later write a book on Wyoming, We take this to refer to M.
Sayous, who, though not strictly a journalist, did accompany Par-
don to Laramie, and did later produce a small booklet. M. Pardon

20 ANNALS OF WYOMING

was tendered a big dinner at the Cheyenne Club, given by Lobell,
attended by fifty leading men of the state.

In July the Industrial Journal says that Knight "recently returned
from a trip through the state with M. Pardon . . . which the French
gentleman enjoyed greatly. M. Pardon expressed himself as well
satisfied with the properties of the Company, and it is likely that his
recommendations will bring much more capital out here."

Thus the Belgo-American is launched in Wyoming with Cham-
ber of Commerce enthusiasm.

Similar stories, of course, appeared in the Wyoming newspapers.
A souvenir issue of the Cheyenne Leader in 1903 carried a special
story on the foreign company, repeating material given above, and
a representative is quoted as saying: "We come to your state not to
seek capital but to build up and develop Wyoming."

"Professor Wilbur C. Knight," says the Leader in April, "is the
great expert of the Company for this state and is under the direction
of Dr. Boverton Redwood of London. . . No purchase of oil lands
is made without first being visited and inspected by Dr. Redwood
and Dr. Knight. . . Professor Knight was in the city all day yester-
da}' consulting with Mr. Lobell in regard to the affairs of the
company."

On April 28, 1903, the Leader reports that M. A. E. Sayous of
Paris is in Laramie, where he will look over company properties,
and write articles and a book on them, and the Laramie Boomerang
repeats the information on May 3, and on May 7 tells of M. Par-
don's trip with Dr. Knight. In July Dr. Knight died.

"New Railroad in Wyoming" says the Leader head on May 2,
1903, for Mr. Lobell announces that the Company is "now ready
to enter into arrangements for the construction of a railroad to
Lander, South Pass, and other oil fields of the company, or the
erection of pipe lines." And on June 2, Pardon and Lobell are
leas'ing for Belgium and France, "where they will secure the neces-
sary funds." By November 8, 1903, a feature story in the Leader
"announces positively" that the company will begin a railroad
before January 1, not only to Lander, but "numerous spurs and
branches," including one to Salt Creek. The same information
appears in the Wyoming Industrial Journal for November 1903
(p. 154), v/here Lobell is said to be going to Europe until Feb-
ruary. Here we also learn that "Professor Knight was in charge of
drilling operations, receiving a salary of $5,000 a year for his
services, but since his death state geologist H. C. Beeler and L, C,
Traig [Craig?] , , . have been employed."

And on November 29, 1903, the Leader informs us that the
Belgo-American Drilling Trust has purchased the entire holdings
of the Pennsylvania Oil Company in Wyoming, including the refin-
ery in Casper, which "practically doubles its holdings," and is "con-
sidered a good thing for the state," The December Industrial

PORTRAIT IN OIL 21

Journal adds that the deal includes wells at Salt Creek and 105,000
acres of territory.

It is clear, then, that the Belgo-American company did not total-
ly neglect its Wyoming operations, despite Magne's doubts. Yet,
as we approach 1904, we encounter signs of trouble ahead, the
worm of hesitation entering the apple of promise still held out at
home and abroad.

The problem still is that of transportation, the delay in produc-
tion, and the lack of concrete funds. In August of 1903, the
Industrial Journal speaks of three wells in the Henderson field as
plugged until a railroad is forthcoming. In the feature story of
November 8, 1903, in the Cheyenne Leader, mentioned above, the
writer admits that the Casper Derrick has referred to the Belgo-
American Drilling Trust in "a slurring manner," to which Mr.
Lobell is impelled to give a vigorous denial. Said Mr. Lobell,
"absolutely without foundation." The trust has no stock for sale,
all is held by the directors, of whom he is one. "Had the Derrick
kept its eyes open it might have observed bona fide operations now
in progress." Besides, there is the confidence of senators Clark
and Mondell, who have turned over "large areas of oil lands on the
understanding that a reasonable price for the land shall be paid if
the trust's drilling and development of operations meet with suc-
cess." Again "Governor Chatterton is fully acquainted with the
plans of the trust," and "is pushing the railroad plans to a successful
conclusion."

The Company, the article continues, is "now drilling five wells at
Salt Wells [Dome] and employs thirty to fifty men there constantly.
. . . Within the next two months operations are to be begun which
will open the eyes of central Wyoming." It seems that refineries
are planned at Orin Junction and Lander. Also "the entire block
at the comers of seventeenth and Ferguson streets" has been leased
for Lobell's office in Cheyenne. The Industrial Journal for No-
vember carries much the same.

Yet 1904-1906 were years of national slump, and also a period
of American attack on big trusts, especially the Standard Oil of
New Jersey, culminating in 1911 in its being broken up into sub-
sidiary companies. Wyoming oil production thus languished.

In Europe M. Magne has still something to say about the spring
of 1904. In February of that year the Belgo-American announces
an international company to be formed in Geneva, "with an orig-
inal capital of fifty million francs," aimed first of all at developing
business already under way in Wyoming. "After vague rumors,"
said "a Parisian organ" on February 13 (Magne, p. 117), "an
important group of American capitalists" [not named] "better in-
formed than anyone on the real value of the rich oil-bearing beds

22 ANNALS OF WYOMING

acquired by the Company . . . are ready to speed up the realization
of the value of these properties." On the administrative committee
are names like M. Bouree once again, the Duke of Somerset, sev-
eral counts and three princes. M. Pardon and M. Sayous no longer
appear. Yet M. Pardon, despite his announcement that same
month (above), must have been active, for Governor Chatterton in
his memoirs has the following recollection:

One morning in February 1904 Governor Pardon of France came to
my office, stating he was on the way to Paris to report on the oil land
holdings of his associates at Dallas, eight miles east of Lander in Fre-
mont. He asked me how I would suggest to get oil to market. I drew
a line from Lander to Casper on the Wyoming map . . . and advised a
railroad by the extension of the Chicago and Northwestern railroad
from Casper. ... I advised him to call on the Chicago and Northwest-
ern officials at Chicago. This he did; but the proposals were laughed
at by the officials. He wrote me the result of his interview and asked
if I would undertake the building of the road if the French furnished
the funds. I wrote him fully regarding what the French must do and
what I would do. In March I received a cable from him to begin
planning; that funds for surveying were in the mail. . . . Therefore on
March 31, 1904, I organized the Wyoming State Railway and began
the survey."

But, continues Governor Chatterton, there was opposition and
citizens were disinterested, so that the railroad was not completed
until 1906. Yet in June of 1903, Lobell was quoting Governor
Chatterton as ably aiding him in the railroad project, and in May
of 1903 is announcing that the Belgo-American Company is ready
to enter into negotiations for its construction; and in November
1903, the Governor "is pushing the railroad plans." Actually, it
was the Chicago and Northwestern that finally did build the line to
Casper. Nor does Mr, Mokler's account fully agree. For he says
that the Casper town council on February 27, 1904, granted to the
Belgo-American company forty acres of land within the corporate
limits for a new refinery, and a right of way for the proposed rail-
road, plus water and an exemption from municipal taxes for ten
years; and that Lander did likewise. Again, officers of the Com-
pany were feasted at Casper in the summer of 1904, and met at
Lander by a band and a diimer. Yet they "made no promises."

"For more than a year," says Mr. Mokler, "the people of Casper
and Lander were on the anxious seat; both towns continued to offer
the best they had . . . but alas ... on account of some irregularities
and financial difficulties it was compelled to decide that it would
build neither a refinery nor a railroad."^^ He adds that later some
of the company were arrested for fraud, but does not give names.

9. Fenimore Chatterton. Yesterday's Wyoming (Aurora, Colo.: Powder
River Publishers and Booksellers, 1957), p. 90.

10. A. J. Mokler, op. cit., pp. 248-250.

PORTRAIT IN OIL 23

The Laramie Boomerang, also anticipating the Governor's date
above of March 31, ran a long story on March 1, 1904, on the new
railroad to the effect that: '"Last week the formal announcement
through Governor Chatterton of Wyoming that the oil company
would construct a hne of railroad from Casper to Orin Junction,
Wyoming," stirred all railroads to activity. The added items are of
interest.

"To protect its territory, the Northwestern has announced that it
will immediately construct a line from the present terminus, Casper,
westward to Lander, and northwest into Big Horn, completely
parallel with the Belgo-American lines. The Northwestern has let
contracts for 800,000 cross ties, and at every station along the
western division it is said that the road has gathered bridge timbers,
steel rails and other construction material, ready for the opening of
Spring." Indeed, the item says that the Northwestern threatens
to go on to Ogden, and the Union Pacific will probably purchase
the Belgo-American line north and go on to Yellowstone. A
"building war" is thus threatened.

The Belgo-American, now openly challenged, made one big
gesture of defiance. In the Laramie Boomerang of March 9, 1904,
a new article stated that

A prominent state official interested in the Belgo-American Drilling
Trust [could this be the Governor?], in speaking of possible opposition
on the part of the Standard, revealed the plans of the Company in this
regard and stated that this has been taken into consideration before the
$10,000,000 was appropriated for the construction of the new railroad
to open up the Lander oil fields.

'Should the Standard Oil company inaugurate a fight against us.'
said the official, 'and it became apparent that we would have to engage
in a rate war against the Rockefeller trust, we will not market a gallon
of oil in the United States but ship the entire product to our wells in
Europe, where through the influence of the directors of the company,
who include many distinguished statesmen and members of the nobil-
ity of England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the Nether-
lands, we can favorably compete with any corporation and find a
ready market for our entire product. Not only can we dispose of all
of our oil in this manner, but it is probable that a large proportion of
the product of our wells can be sold on the continent irrespective of
any opposition, as the market there affords better facilities and re-
munerative profit.'

This article added that no contract had yet been let for the new
railroad and "will not be until Mr. J. H. Lobell returns from Paris
within the next two weeks." But Kilpatrick of Denver is almost
assured of the contract. And on March 12, the report is that a
corps of engineers is in Casper to begin surveying, which news is
"gratifying to the citizens, and sets at naught all reports to the con-
trary." The same general story appeared in the Wyoming Indus-
trial Journal for March, 1904, with the item that L. J. Craig had
arrived as oil superintendent for the Company, and that the Com-
pany will rival Standard Oil in a few years, and will expand

24 ANNALS OF WYOMING

$100,000 at the Rock Springs field. The Dome field is said to
have two wells dovm 2,000 feet, "considered a remarkable feat by
oil men."

On March 17, 1904, a further story appears in the Boomerang,
affirming that the plans of the Belgo-American company "are far
more extensive in their entirety than at first announced and the
syndicate of European capitaUsts will buiid no less than five rail-
roads." But the Chicago and Northwestern is quoted as announc-
ing: "We are not worrying . . . The Northwestern can build roads
faster than any other railroad in the country." Nevertheless, "Lo-
cal men declare that the Belgo-American Trust will force the hand
of the Standard Oil company and open up the Wyoming fields in
spite of acknowledged opposition of the Standard." Almost the
same story appears in the Cheyenne Leader.

We are not surprised, then, to read on March 23 that the Chi-
cago and Pacific Railroad is incorporated to build from Casper to
Ogden. "It is believed," says the Boomerang, dated from Chey-
enne, "that the real purpose of the company is to secure a right of
way for speculative purposes to compel the Belgo-American Drill-
ing Trust, which really intends to build from Casper to Lander, to
pay a fancy price for the right of way. There is but one feasible
route at several points."

Two days later the Leader and the Boomerang, in a story headed
Casper, report that the engineers for the Belgo-American have
completed a survey from Orin Junction to Casper, "and will leave
tomorrow to survey the route on to Lander," while a third party is
surveying to Salt Creek. Yet an ominous note is added: "For
some time it has been reported that the company of French, Ger-
man and Belgian capitalists were merely playing with a bubble
which would soon burst, but your correspondent [not named] has
it from a source that cannot be questioned that the company is not
only sincere . . . but that contracts for grading will be let in the
immediate future."

On March 30 Governor Chatterton goes north to meet repre-
sentatives of the Belgo-American, assuring readers that contracts
will be let, "possibly within a couple of weeks," and that money is
available in eastern banks and will be transferred to Wyoming as
fast as needed.

However on March 29, the Cheyenne Leader, now showing some
signs of hostility to Governor Chatterton in the coming state elec-
tion, uses a Denver Post dispatch for an editorial comment. The
Post, it says, is "certainly responsible for the 'dopiest' dream of all;"
namely, that "Into the war between European kings for control of
the resources of an American state, has entered an American rail-
road king, a Coloradoan. . . . Leopold, king of Belgium, is the
prime mover in the Belgo-American Company, and has been buy-
ing up the oil and mineral lands in Wyoming and has planned a

PORTRAIT IN OIL 25

road to run from Lander, Wyoming, to Orin Junction, and ulti-
mately to Cody, These two commercially inclined monarchs have
been fighting each other financially for the control of Wyoming
resources." However, says the Cheyenne editor, the real rivalry
has been with Sweden for the Encampment railroad. "Such pal-
pable freaks of the imagination can do the state no good, and must
be exceedingly distasteful to the Van Horne-Miller people and also
to the Belgo-American syndicate."

Not even M. Magne had dragged in the king of Belgium. Such
seems to be the height of both rumor and confidence, for less and
less information appears in the newspapers from April 1904 on,
the very period of the publication in France and Belgium of our
three books.

On April 14, 1904, the Leader quietly announces that the Chi-
cago and Pacific branch of the Chicago and Northwestern will
build from Casper to Lander and to Ogden via South Pass, the
Boomerang adding "and will be backed by one of the most
powerful railroad organizations in the world."

Now rumors shift to touch state politics, for the Leader on April
30, openly favoring B. B. Brooks for governor, says in an editorial:
"It is understood throughout the State that the Belgo-American
company has agreed to defray Mr. Chatterton's campaign expenses
... of course . . . from utterly disinterested motives." The Chey-
enne Tribune, however, denies this allegation. But the next day,
May 1 , the Leader, persists : "If the road proves all that he claims
it will be, his election would mean the turning over of the state to
the worst octopus of a trust that the West has ever known." The
Belgo-American is said to have offered the presidency of the Drill-
ing Trust to Chatterton; nor is his interest in the railroad entirely
dissociated from the governor's investment in the coming Riverton
Reclamation project.

In this April month of crisis, a group of "eminent visitors"
appears. The Laramie Boomerang for April 23 reports: "Last
Saturday [April 16] a party of European capitalists arrived in
Casper, accompanied by F. J. Lobell of Chicago and George Lobell
of Cheyenne [son and brother of Joseph Lobell] , all of whom have
an interest in the Societe Belgo-Americain(e)." Among them are
gentlemen from Geneva, Paris and Rome, and M. Henry Bouree,
son of M. Albert Bouree, president of the Belgo-American in
Europe. On Monday Governor Chatterton and L. J. Craig are in
Casper talking with Casper business men about a right of way for
the railroad. Then the entire foreign party proceeds to Lander by
buggy, returning via Thermopolis, purpose unknown, as reported
on May 8, pleased with their trip, and "An advance dispatch of
approval was cabled to the directors of the company in Brussels."
This is the incident Mr. Mokler described for us above.

Thus, says the Boomerang, also the Wyoming Industrial Journal

26 ANNALS OF WYOMING

for May, 1904, millions of capital is ready to enter Wyoming, on
the authority of M. Henry Bouree, a French naval officer, as inter-
viewed in New York. Governor Chatterton is reported in New
York in June, still hoping for contracts for the projected railroad.
From this time on newspapers are increasingly silent on the com-
pany's affairs, and the Wyoming Industrial Journal runs almost no
oil news for months to foUow.

We must now return briefly to our critic, M. Louis Magne, who
has yet a few words to add, though only up to May, 1904, in his
information. Further publicity in Europe followed on the huge
international company in Geneva, with fifty million francs sub-
scribed by some thirty stockholders, who may, as needed, carr}' it
to 1 25 million francs. For the first time, Magne mentions Joseph
Lobell, "present proprietor of miner's rights on oil-bearing fields
of the Salt Creek district," and "the friend of M. Hugues Le Roux,
who has devoted such an amusing place to him in his 'book' on
Wyoming," (p. 121 and note)

The expanded company, in its publicity, claims to have made
"heavy sacrifices," and "victoriously overcome the initial setbacks"
( this is in February 1 904 ) . Yet an admission of criticism creeps
in: "We abstained from noticing the attacks directed at the Wyo-
ming businesses by enemies whose wish to harm went so far as not
to fear contradicting both themselves and the truth. . . The outcome
amply justifies our foresight, and it is a case of quoting the Arabian
proverb: 'The dogs bark — but the caravan passes.'" (p. 118)
Magne's comment is brief: "At least I should not have let the
caravan pass without having counted and evaluated the bales of
merchandise."

The power of publicity! exclaims Magne. "Everything has
served: articles of scientific appearance, the most colossal boasts,
reports, interviews, the show of names and locations, the phantas-
magoria of millions, the most audacious plans, the companies, com-
mittees, even the book signed with a known name. . . At every
new step ... a new ornamentation." (p. 123)

At this point Wyoming readers will be happy to learn of an
overlooked hero in the pantheon of state history — Mr. Rudi Land-
auer, as he was portrayed in Figaro for February 24, 1904, as
uncovered by M. Magne. Too long for total quotation here, the
article hails M. Landauer as a man of "gigantic proportions," a
pioneer in Wyoming oil, and director of a company which rivals
Standard Oil.

It is a country which (says the article), until M. Landauer came to
bring it to life, was hardly favored by nature or man. Located on the
far frontier among lands, on a broad plateau of the Rocky Mountains,
deprived of all kinds of means of communication, it seemed hostile to
all attempts at colonization.

It is nevertheless this land so long unknown which M. Landauer has

PORTRAIT IN OIL 27

made the field of one of the most colossal industrial enterprises of
the world.

It was not without effort, however, and patient research that he was
able to arrive at such a result. He had to discover the points where
one was sure to find petroleum, acquire almost one by one all the par-
cels of this vast oil-bearing territory, and, to accomplish this, frustrate
a thousand manoeuvers of his competitors and call on treasures of
diplomacy.

All that is past, this perilous phase has been victoriously traversed;
and this bold pioneer has today only to harvest the fruit of his efforts.
(Magne, quoted p. 126)

But Figaro did not pause here. It was clear, it said, that to
develop such lands, and to build the necessary railroads, work and
money were needed. Here M. Landauer found an "incomparable
partner" in the person of one Colonel Power, an American, of the
Petroleum World (whose chief claim to fame appeared to be, says
Magne, that he once picked up 75,000 pounds, a third of a million
dollars, at Monte Carlo ) .

Thus M. Magne is brought up to the spring of 1904. But he has
a query or two left, and understandably turns to a basic one : "Does
Petroleum Exist in Wyoming?" "The strict truth reduces to very
little evidence ... for I do not take promises and prophecies as
unquestioned." (p. 129)

Nor am I influenced (he continues) any more by the incomparable
science of the very illustrious Dr. Boverton Redwood. I challenged
this expert, as is my right, because behind the more or less scientific
words and phrases he uses, I not only do not discover the reservations
of a true scientist, but instead the obvious exaggerations of a business
man. This quasi-discoverer of oil-bearing fields in Wyoming from
Europe, who began such a campaign as we have witnessed and who
perseveres in it like a Barnum, does not impose on me. All I can
admit is that he is illustrious with the promoters of the Belgo-American
Company and their substitutes; and that is nothing to be envied, (pp.
129-130)

As for M. Le Roux' book — and what a book! Magne ejaculates,
and one which the Belgo-American company must know; and what
a "terrible portrait" of the "oracle," Dr. Redwood, who is "if the
most convinced of experts, certainly the most romantic." (p. 133)
Le Roux, he exclaims, even gives a picture of a lake of oil so heavy
that ducks cannot rise from it! On such evidence does the whole
edifice of the Belgo-American rest!

But not quite. There is Professor Wilbur C. Knight, whom
Magne is forced to treat with more respect. "This other expert,
this time American, has since died. I shall respect his memory."

I must also do him this justice (he continues), that the document he
drew up is infinitely more clear, even though or because his is more
cautious and reserved than Dr. Boverton Redwood's.

When M. Knight puts at the head of his chapters 'Probable geo-
graphic situation of oil-bearing horizons,' or 'Reasons which make us
suppose the presence of oil in the dome in question," or again
'Probable production,' we are sufficiently warned.

28 ANNALS OF WYOMING

And he advises in addition 'the use of machinery capable of drilling
to a depth of at least 3,000 feet' . . . And he warns that 'as for water
intended for consumption or the work of drilling, that has to be
brought from far,' and even 'buy it from the Union Pacific,' and that
the same, or nearly so, will be true for fuel. And he admits that 'the
property in question is located in the middle of a desert'.

It is true that Dr. Boverton Redwood is not embarrassed by so small
a matter, (p. 138)

To support this last statement, Magne quotes from a letter of Dr.
Redwood to Henry Walter, written June 23, 1902, to the effect that
the geologic conditions are most favorable at the Dome area, on
which "drillings pushed to a moderate depth" should bring gushers.
And again on Sept. 11, 1902: "I am sure our friend M. Landauer
need have no apprehensions as concerns the ultra-cautious obser-
vations of Dr. Knight as to the depth of the wells. It is perfectly
possible that, in one part of the Dome formation, one or another of
the oil-bearing stratifications may be situated at a depth of 3,000
feet . . . but I am convinced that Dr. Knight, in mentioning this
depth, intended to indicate the level of the productive beds which
might be reached by drilling." (p. 139)

Now Magne turns to M. Sayous, quoting, as we have shown
above, only partially from him, and that much to raise doubts about
Wyoming. Sayous, he says, does admit reasons for capitalist inter-
est in Wyoming oils, but also shows that transportation is a pro-
hibitive problem, and that western society is hardly trustworthy.

The Dome field occupies Magne next. Here he finds repeated
assurances, deeper drillings, halted in winter and discouraged by
depth, and repeatedly delayed dividends. The field in 1904 hardly
seems promising.

"Where does in all end?" Asks M. Magne, and answers, "On the
Stock Market." His final pages summarize his findings, admitting
that the conclusion is still uncertain, and asking some pertinent
questions, for that day or ours. When does a mining property
justify selling stock? How can one evaluate ahead of production?
How evaluate for putting shares on the market? If promotors are
honest, can they justify building up shares without sufficient money
to guarantee production? Should they take the paper evaluation of
another company as a reUabie criterion of value? Should they rely
wholly on the opinion of one "expert?" What kind of laws should
restrict exaggerated pubhcity? There are, he says, honest Belgian
companies, and one should not always shout "Another Belgian
company!" But let us have better laws, information, more light.

So we leave M. Magne and his lively and persistent httle docu-
ment. As a banker and an European, he was justifiably concerned.
He must later have recognized further factors at work — American
energy and competence, the power of American opposition, once
aroused, and, finally, the actual presence of vast resources in oil in
the state of Wyoming.

PORTRAIT IN OIL 29

The Belgo-American Company did not immediately collapse,
though its days were clearly numbered. In the Wyoming Industrial
Journal for December, 1904, after months of silence on oil, it was
announced that Standard Oil had concluded to attack the Belgo-
American Drilling Trust Company in Wyoming, and "Fur will fly."
On the same page one reads : "A sensational telegram says that the
Chicago and Northwestern has secured the route proposed by the
Belgo-American Company and the road will surely be built next
season."

The Cheyenne Leader of January 4, 1905, confirmed this story,
noting that the Northwestern railway company has been granted by
the United States the right of way across part of the Indian reserva-
tion to Lander, previously granted to the Belgo-American, "but in
view of the speculative character of this project and the uncertainty
that the syndicate will engage in actual railroad building," the grant
was now given to Northwestern, and it "will commence operations
without delay."

Yet in February of 1905, M. Henry Bouree was once again in
Casper, still manager of the Salt Creek wells of the Company and
the refinery, describing the use of gas-line engines and local markets
for the refinery in Casper; also promising a great electric power
house near Lander to supply power to the Clarissa gold mine at
South Pass, to be operated by oils from the local fields. Work on
the railroad west from Casper had commenced, however, and not
by Belgo-American.

In July of 1905 the Industrial Journal quotes an article from the
Evanston, Wyoming, News Register entitled "Hot Air vs Oil
Claims." It protests "lagging methods of so-called Oil companies
operating (?) in Wyoming."

To say that the Standard octopus has a finger in the pie would be
but quoting hearsay, but every indication points to such being the fact.
The writer believes that the Standard people have been looking to our
field as a sort of reserve fund, and at the proper time will enter the
field and bring the precious liquid to the surface. The time is not yet
ripe for their operations, and they are accordingly holding back the
development until such time as they can secure a 'corner' on this part
of the globe.

There is a paucity of oil news from this time on until 1908 or
1909. In January of 1906 a brief flurry of interest surrounded the
item that the Detroit Wyoming Company was looking into the
Lander area, to use the machinery of the Belgo-American com-
pany, but whether independently or not was not known. In Octo-
ber of 1906 the Northwestern railroad reached Lander, with local
rejoicing.

Joseph Lobell remained for some time in Wyoming, though often
absent. The Cheyenne Leader once mentioned his appearance in
London in the full regalia of a colonel in the Wyoming National

30 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Guard; and investigation, it announced, did indeed uncover his
appointment to such a rank by former Governor Chatterton.

In the spring of 1904 Belgo-American shares were being quoted
in Europe at their top, up to 200 and 300 in March and September
in 1903 (on the original 100 francs a share), and the high point of
357 in March, 1904, but soon falUng off. (Magne, pp. 162-163).
Perhaps M. Magne had something to do with the drop.

In 1906 a Dutch company, employing an Italian geologist, be-
came interested in the Salt Creek field, and in 1908 brought in the
first gusher. By 1909, August, the Wyoming Industrial Journal
was stating that attention was once more turning to oil and gas,
"and by a class of men competent to handle the problem success-
fully. The two most accessible and best fields have been tied up in
useless litigation and dispute for the past three years and produc-
tion has been nothing in consequence."

The Belgo-American company and the "Wyoming Syndicate"
had, indeed, been in litigation for some time, and in 1910 went into
the hands of liquidators. Some of its shareholders, hoping to sal-
vage something, formed a Franco-American Oil Company, headed
in Maryland, to which liquidators turned over assets in return for
100,000 preferred shares at $20 a share (100 francs). But the
future of oil lay in American hands. After all, they were on the
scene, and, as Sayous had said, knew their business.

In 1910 a Colorado group organized the Midwest Oil Company,
and built a pipe line from Salt Creek to Casper, and a new refinery
at Casper, with arrangements with Standard Oil of Indiana. The
Franco-American had by this time consolidated with the Dutch
company, and in 1914 was absorbed by the Midwest Refining
company. Mr. Mokler (p. 254) says that Standard Oil of Indiana
had secretly in 1913 bought lands, announced in July of that year.
In 1921, the Midwest Company passed into the control of
Standard Oil.

The real oil boom was accelerated by World War I in 1917,
though the major advances came with the advent of motor power
and the growth of the automobile, especially in the 1920's. By
1923 the Salt Creek field was producing over 40,000,000 barrels a
year, and by 1968 production had reached at least 460,000,000
barrels in aU, justifying Dr. Redwood's comparison with the Rus-
sian fields. Railroads were no longer the determining factor, as
Magne had understandably supposed; for a new day had arrived,
and history would never be quite the same. "I await the final act
of this comedy," Magne had written. The comedy came to its end
in Europe, and other tragi-comedies followed in America; but it
was not all as he had imagined, for what the Europeans had taken
as American boasting only was also in part the harbinger of deeds
to come. Wyoming was neither so remote nor so untameable as
they had supposed; and the Americans, as Sayous had said, knew
their business.

PORTRAIT IN OIL 31

Behind such a story must have been a good deal of financial
wheeling and dealing beyond the skill of an amateur in the field to
comprehend. Here we have but offered a rapid glimpse of the rise
and fall within a few short years of the Belgo-American Company
of Wyoming Petroleums and its American subsidiaries, the Belgo-
American Drilling Trust Company and the Wyoming Syndicate.
Success might have been theirs if — but the ifs were too numerous
and too complex for anyone's easy grasp; for, as in all history, the
threads are woven of a past only half glimpsed, and a future of
present effects turned into causes for further unforeseen conse-
quences. Nor are the actors always clean-cut villains or heroes,
but mostly gropers within a drama whose larger plot no one can as
yet unravel.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In French

LeRoux, Hughes. Le Wyoming: Histoire Anecdotique de Petrole (Paris:
Librarie Felix Juven, 1904), 322 pp. Copy in University of Wyoming
Archives. Typescript translation in English, with Foreword, by Wilson
O. Clough, 1968, filed with Archives as Wyoming: Anecdotal History of
Petroleum.

Magne, Louis. Histoire de la Socle te Belgo-Americaine des Petroles dii
Wyoming (Brussels: Courrier de la Bourse et de la Banque, 1904),
192 pp. Copy in the University of Wyoming Archives. Never trans-
lated into English. Quotations in the article are translations of the
present writer.

Sayous, Andre Emile. Un Etat de h' Quest Americain, he Wyoming; et
Considerations Generates sur le Far West (Paris: Larose, 1904), 47 pp.
Xerox copy in University of Wyoming Archives from Library of Con-
gress copy. Typescript translation in English, with Foreword, by Wil-
son O. Clough, 1968, filed with Archives, as Wyoming: A State of the
American West; and General Considerations on the Far West.

Other references:

Larson, T. A. History of Wyoming (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1965). See Index under Oil.

Mokler, Alfred James. History of Natrona County (Chicago: R. R. Don-
nelly, 1923), pp. 242-263.

Proceedings of the Wyoming Industrial Convention (Laramie: Chaplin,
etc., April, 1902), 176 pp. In University of Wyoming Library.

Roberts, Harold D., Salt Creek, Wyoming (Denver: Kistler, 1956).

Wyoming Industrial Journal, especially 1900-1905. Bound files, Wyoming
State Archives and Historical Department, Cheyenne.

Newspaper files of the Cheyenne Daily Leader, the Laramie Boomerang,
etc., especially 1901-1905. University of Wyoming Library.

Migh and "Dry in Wyoming

While the angry floods are raging over valleys fair and wide,

We are safe here in Wyoming from the terrors of the tide.

While the river banks are running o'er with water strong and deep,

We irrigate our plots of spuds and crawl away to sleep.

While the peaceful homes of hundreds in the land that gave us

birth,
Are moved from off foundations and swept from off the earth,
We are quietly reposing in our cabins night and day,
'Mid the green and yellow sagebrush of Wyoming, far away.

While the Kansas hen is cackling loud her farewell lullaby.
And a thousand chicks are swallowed up by angry waves to die,
Wyoming's brood of little chicks is high above the tide.
And the happy hen and rooster do the cakewalk side by side.
While potato bugs in Iowa are called to quick reward,
And a million green grasshoppers disperse with one accord.
The ambitious little sage tick has everything his way
'Mid the green and yellow sagebrush of Wyoming, far away.

— Phil Space, in Grand Encampment Herald
Reprinted in Wyoming Industrial Journal, July, 1903

* Fort Fred Steele, east of Rawlins, was one of the protective military
posts established as the Union Pacific Railroad was built across Wyoming in
1868. After it was abandoned as a military post in 1881, Fort Steele con-
tinued in existence for some years as a logging town. This tie drive in the
North Platte River, at the Fort Steele tie plant, probably was photographed
in the early 1900s.

University of Wyoming Western Archives

JOSEPH LOBELL AND CY IB A DINING AT THE HOTEL METROPOLE HALFWAY
BETWEEN CASPER AND SALT CREEK

University of Wyoming Western Archives
OIL WELL AT LANDER, 1902

34 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Although the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 was expected to
usher in fifty years of peace between the United States and the
Indians of the plains, three factors foredoomed the dream to fail-
ure : The Indian policy of the United States with its vacillations and
misunderstandings; public attitude toward the Indians, colored by
desire for their lands, fear of the braves, and a dogmatic faith in
their own destiny to populate and civilize the plains; and lastly,
the Indian's way of life, which he was loath to abandon, as it satis-
fied his social and emotional needs.

Misunderstandings contributed to clashes between reds and
whites; pressure upon their lands by gold seekers, stockmen and
farmers, and the destruction of their game by immigrants made the
Indians apprehensive; forays of hungry braves on settler's stock,
and their reluctance to abandon their game of inter-tribal raiding
for horses, scalps and prestige kept the whites on edge.

Despite the fact that Federal troops waged war against their
Sioux and Cheyenne friends a few years after the Treaty of 1851,
nearly fourteen years elapsed before an appreciable number of
Northern Arapahoes engaged in hostilities. Even then a majority
of the tribe abstained. During the Powder River Wars, 1865 to
1868, more participated, but never the entire tribe. Only once
during the period from 1851 to 1879 is there any hkelihood that
all of the Northern Arapahoes fought against the whites. This was
in the Bates Battle of 1874; and even here positive evidence is
lacking. During Custer's final days, when hundreds of Sioux and
Cheyennes followed Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the Northern
Arapahoes, almost to a man, refrained from hostilities. This fact,
with others of a kindred nature, finally brought recognition by the
Government of the peaceful disposition of the Northern Arapahoes.

On the basis of the evidence examined the Northern Arapahoes
should be classed among the most peaceable of the plains tribes.

A Picture of Troublous Times

East of the Rocky Mountains the Great Plains of North America
run through the United States from north to south, spilling over the
Mexican border at the southern end, and broadening into the prai-
rie provinces of Canada in the north. The portion within the
United States forms a vast area some 1300 miles long and up to
600 miles in width. From an elevation of scarcely 2000 feet at the
eastern fringe, they rise gradually toward the west, blending with
the foothills of the Rockies at altitudes of 4000 to 6000 feet. They
embrace the greater part of the states of North and South Dakota,
Nebraska and Kansas, include portions of Oklahoma, Texas, New
Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, and are home to
7,000,000 people.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 35

Except for the hills, streams and canyons which occasionally
break their surface, the topography is smooth and nearly treeless
over thousands of square miles, and monotonous in its regularity.
At sunrise and sunset shadows stretch endlessly, it seems, across
the prairie, long, dark, ungainly appendages, distorted with every
variation of the ground. BriUiant sunshine and blue skies charac-
terize the region summer and winter, for the air is dry, precipitation
slight and the evaporation rate high. Unbroken winds of high
velocity whip soil and dry snow from the earth to produce dust
storms or ground blizzards. Local cloudbursts occur from time to
time, filling hollows which have been dry for years, or generating
flash floods and wreaking havoc. Rapid changes of temperature
take place : with the approach of a cold front the thermometer may
drop 40, 50 or 60 degrees in a few hours; conversely, the warming
Chinook wind may bring a rise of eight degrees in ten minutes.
Open winters are common, but when the blizzard strikes, low
temperatures, stinging wind and dustlike, blinding snow blot out
the landscape, tie up traffic and destroy game, livestock and some-
times human life. Yet the tremendous openness, the clear, unob-
structed vision and the wide horizons exert a hypnotic appeal upon
the plains dweller.

In the days before the first plow broke the prairie the land was
covered with short, native grasses — as parts of it still are — hardy,
drought resistant, nutritious, excellent feed for buffalo or cattle.
Sagebrush covered unmeasured acres; cactus and soap weed (a
diminutive yucca) appeared in spots and patches; blue islands of
larkspur beautified the rangeland in early summer; wild sunflovv^ers
blossomed later in the season wherever they could find a toehold.
Cottonwoods grew along the water courses, where sufficient mois-
ture could be had; box elders yielded sap to the Indians in lieu of
maple syrup; in canyons and on rocky hillsides grew the ponderosa
pine, which, once rooted, withstood biting winds and drought; the
juniper (or red cedar, as it is called) was similarly found; lodgepole
pines, essential to the Indians for travois and tipi poles made stands
in the Black Hills and other uplands.

Today the land supports vast acreages of wheat, corn, alfalfa
and diverse crops. Dams on the Missouri, Platte and other rivers
produce power for the region and irrigation for favored sections,
but dry farming is far more extensive than irrigated agriculture.
Unbroken rangeland encourages ranching, and sub-marginal farm-
land has been reclaimed for sheep and cattle grazing. Oil wells and
refineries have sprouted in many sections; coal, iron, copper and
other minerals are mined. The larger cities such as Denver and
Omaha contribute manufacturing, slaughtering, packing and ship-
ping, to produce a diversified economy.

Although trappers and traders had long since penetrated the
plains and Rocky Mountains, census records indicate no white
population for the region in 1 850. More than 50,000 Indians were

36 ANNALS OF WYOMING

estimated.^ Immigrants to Oregon and California, unable to leap
the plains, followed the long, tedious trails across them.-

The plains themselves were Indian land; great herds of buffalo
still grazed thereon, though whites had reduced their numbers
appreciably — and the Indians resented this intrusion. Bands of
antelope foraged on the grass, while in the hills both deer and elk
afforded a change of diet to the red men. As yet no highway
crossed the plains, but close to the long tortuous streams, trails were
worn by horse and bullock hoofs, and ruts cut deep by the wheels
of many wagons. Though plans for a railroad to the Pacific re-
ceived serious consideration in Washington, nineteen years would
pass before it became a fact. When the white men killed or drove
off game and their stock devoured the pasture near the trails, the
patience of the Indians wore thin. With a thorough knowledge of
the land, with the mobility needed to live from it, with a life which
taught them how to strike and disappear, the mounted braves held
the whip hand. It was a tribute to their magnanimity that many
immigrants crossed the plains alive.

By 1879 the picture had altered. White men possessed the bulk
of the land; unwanted confinement on comparatively small reser-
vations was the lot of the Indians; the buffalo, for generations the
daily bread of the aborigines, had dwindled almost to the vanishing
point, and within a few years would exist only as a curiosity and
tourist attraction. Cattle and sheep by the hundreds of thousands
had replaced the indigenous bovines of the plains.^ Oregon's fer-
tile lands and California's gold attracted thousands of immigrants
who went 'round Cape Horn, to the Isthmus of Panama, or across
the plains to reach their destination. The discovery of gold in
Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, and the free land of the Home-
stead Act brought other thousands to the plains; and where gold
seekers or ranchers moved in, almost invariably the Indians were
forced to move out. The cross-country stage line and the Pony
Express, each serving an interim purpose, came and went; the first
railroad to the Pacific operated in 1869; three more were well
under way by 1879; the telegraph had preceded the railroad across

1. "Message of the President of the United States to the Two Houses of
Congress," Thirty-second Congress Executive Document No. 2, Washington,
A. Boyd Hamilton, 1851, p. 289. The figure was used by President Fillmore.

2. Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization,
(Revised Edition), New York, Macmillan Co., 1933, v. 1, p. 612. In less
than a month in 1850 more than 18,000 people crossed the Missouri on
their way to California, where the population had already reached 92,000.
By 1860 it rose to 380,000.

3. Edward Everett Dale, The Range Cattle Industry, Norman, University
of Oklahoma Press, 1930, pp. 100-102. Dale shows that by 1885 members
of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (founded twelve years earlier)
owned about 2,000,000 head of cattle in Wyoming Colorado, Nebraska,
Montana and Dakota.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 37

the continent. Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado had attained state-
hood; Montana, North and South Dakota and Wyoming would
follow suit within a few years. ^ Some two million whites made
their homes on the Great Plains by 1879. The independence of the
bison-hunting Indians was gone forever.

The transformation on the plains from 1850 to 1879 did not
occur without pain and turmoil, for these were troublous times. As
the game on which they depended for food, clothing and shelter
dwindled under the impact of the whites, the Indians suffered
hunger and privation. Dissension brewed, trouble arrived and
there were few dull years. The difficulties of three decades will be
briefly described, as well as several important factors behind them.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1851, ushered in dreams of fifty
years of peace; but misunderstanding brought tragedy. The chance
meeting of a lame cow and a hungry Sioux begot the Grattan
Massacre of 1854.^ A boastful young officer, bent needlessly
upon punitive measures, had failed to learn that cannon and tact-
less blunder would not settle the Indian problems. The next year
General Harney avenged his slaughter by chastising the Brule
Sioux.*^ For alleged depredations Colonel Sumner attacked and
defeated the Cheyennes in 1857.^ As the stream of immigrants
expanded, the game supply diminished further, Indian alarm inten-
sified and hungry red men helped themselves to more of the white
men's stock. Settlers' fear of the natives' treachery hkewise in-
creased. In 1861 the Civil War brought rumors of an Indian-
Confederate States alliance, a fear accentuated by the great eastern
Sioux uprising of 1862, when more than 700 whites in Minnesota
died within a week.^ By 1864 sporadic depredations in Colorado
intensified the settlers' fears, who gave credence to the report of an
inter-tribal coalition to drive the whites out of the plains. In
Colorado nearly every ranch along the road from Julesberg to Big

4. Montana and both Dakotas gained this status in 1889, and Wyoming
the following year.

5. George Bird Grinnell, The Fighting Cheyennes, New York, Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1915, p. 105. The cow had strayed from a Mormon immi-
grant train near Fort Laramie in southeastern Wyoming. When it was dis-
covered that a young Sioux had butchered the animal, Grattan, fresh out of
West Point, approached the chief of the Sioux band with guns and threats.
The result was that a matter which could well have been peaceably settled
ended in the destruction of Grattan and his command.

6. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1855, Wash-
ington, Govt. Printing Office, 1856, pp. 398-401. This will hereafter be
cited as Annual Report, with the year noted.

7. J. P. Dunn, Massacres of the Mountains, New York, Archer House,
1858, pp. 211 f.

8. Op. cit. Grinnell, pp. 128-129. On the western plains even friendly
Indians were suspected of treachery. The eastern Sioux were related to, but
not identical with the Sioux of the western plains.

38 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Sandy, a "distance of 370 miles" was shortly deserted,^ Colonel
Chivington's massacre of friendly Arapahoes and Cheyennes at
Sand Creek, Colorado, seemed a natural result, but Indian appre-
hension of white treachery vastly increased. Violence ballooned,
and fearsome retaliation followed. Cheyennes, Arapahoes and
Sioux raided along the Platte; the Overland Stage depot at Jules-
berg, northeast Colorado, twice was hit; terror spread throughout
the Platte valley.^" Since punishment must follow. General Connor
struck the red men in their homeland and began the First Powder
River War in 1865.^^ Indian resistance to the building of the
Bozeman Trail through their hunting grounds presaged the Second
Powder River War, which soon ensued. Peace came in 1868, fol-
lowed by comparative quiet, but minor conflict continued in Wyo-
ming's Sweetwater mining district.

In the mid-seventies the Indian Bureau boasted that results had
"fully justified" its peace policy.^- Had the ears of the Commis-
sioner of Indian Affairs been better attuned to the signals of the
time, he might have realized that hoof beats on the distant plains
marked desertion of the agencies by hundreds of Sioux and Chey-
enne warriors, gone to join Chief Crazy Horse and the medicine
man. Sitting Bull, Sioux leaders out to resist the white man's en-
croachments. Shivers of excitement ran through the settlements.
Then in 1876 came the news which shocked the nation, the wiping
out of Custer and his entire command in the Battle of the Little Big
Horn in Montana.

Three factors of great importance in producing this unfortunate
state of affairs will be reviewed. First was the Indian policy of the
Federal Government. Under the War Department from 1832 to
1849 mismanagement and discouraging results had characterized
the Bureau of Indian Affairs. ^^ Too frequently military force had

9. Op. cit. Annual Report 1864, p. 254. The quotation is from the
letter of George Otis, general superintendent of the Overland Mail Line, to
William P. Dole, Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

10. Op. cit., Grinnell, pp. 181-182.

11. Ibid., pp. 204-205. This was the Powder River region of northern
Wyoming and southern Montana, where game was far more plentiful than
elsewhere; thus the tribes of Northern Cheyennes and Arapahoes, and the
bands of Sioux with which they shared the Platte Agency spent much time
there.

12. Op. cit., Annual Report 1875, p. 531. The report indicated that
trains of the Union Pacific Railroad had been running undisturbed, as Indian
difficulties had waned. Moreover, although hundreds of miners and pil-
grims (in violation of the Treaty of 1868) had swarmed over Sioux country,
including the Black Hills in their search for gold, no fighting had resulted.
"And with any kind of firm treatment" bearing "a resemblance to justice,
there will be no serious contention with this powerful tribe hereafter."

13. Tenth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, 1878,
Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1879, p. 10. Time and again in Indian
Bureau reports Indian antagonism to the military is pointed out. On various
occasions they requested civilian rather than military agents.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 39

antagonized the Indians rather than pacifying them; so in 1849,
convinced that civihans could better cope with the situation, Con-
gress transferred Indian Affairs to the recently-created Department
of the Interior, The belief and hope was that an era of great prom-
ise would be ushered in.^^ With kindness substituted for coercion,
with benevolent and missionary societies to assist, the Indians might
be guided along the pathway to civilization. The Indian Bureau
in its new setting achieved its first major accomplishment with the
signing of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, a seeming triumph
and vindication of the policy behind its own transfer. At this time
it propounded a course based upon the negotiation of treaties with,
and the payment of annuities to the Plains Indian tribes. During
negotiations interpreters would explain the treaty provisions so
misunderstanding could not creep in; the Indians must be con-
vinced that the government intended to be entirely fair. The pur-
pose was threefold: to acquire a right of way through the Indian
lands, to gain the good will of the aborigines, and to render them
sufficiently dependent upon the issue of annuities as to insure their
subservience to the will of the government.

With the passage of a dozen years and several Indian campaigns
the solution to the problem of the buffalo-hunting natives seemed
no closer. By this time the accepted practice was the use of force
to "induce their consent" to negotiate, then to make treaties with
them.^'^ Following President Grant's inauguration in 1869, a fresh
attempt to win them over by peaceful means gained support.
Nonetheless, the Secretary of the Interior stressed the fact that force
might be necessary ;i^ and the Board of Indian Commissioners
advocated supporting the agents with miUtary force when needed,
thus sparing them the ignominy of "being the toys or tools of law-
less savages. "^^ Believing that the Indians' resistance to civilizing
influences could not be broken down as long as they had buffalo to

14. Op. cit., "Messages from the President of the United States to the
Two Houses of Congress", p. 3.

15. Op. cit. Annual Report 1864, p. 10.

16. Report of the Secretary of the Interior, Washington, Govt. Printing
Office, 1873, p. iii. He indicated that the purpose of the "so-called" peace
policy was to get the Indians on reservations as rapidly as possible. Resist-
ance on their part would be countered by the use of "all needed severity" to
place them there.

17. Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, 1874,
Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1875, p. 62. When he tried to count
their lodges in 1874, Agent Saville was arrested by Sioux Indians new to the
Red Cloud Agency, groups which had not signed the Treaty of 1868. Seven
hundred "regular" agency Indians came to his rescue — Sioux, Cheyennes
and Arapahoes. Shortly thereafter five companies of troops were stationed
at Fort Robinson (near Chadron, Nebraska) to protect the agency. Inter-
estingly, when 26 troops were sent to suppress another insurrection of non-
treaty Sioux, the "regular" Indians had to rescue not only the agent, but the
troops as well. {Op. cit. Annual Report, 1875, p. 87.)

40 ANNALS OF WYOMING

hunt, the Interior Department opposed congressional measures to
prevent the "useless slaughter" of these animals in United States'
territory.^^ Only when they had vanished from the plains could the
red men be confined to reservations, learn to cultivate their indi-
vidual land allotments, and live like white men.^'^

A month after the Custer debacle of 1876 military supervision
returned temporarily to the five agencies which served the various
bands of western Sioux. Proponents of a policy of force demanded
that Indian Affairs revert to the War Department. Backed by this
highly vocal group who beheved the Indians should be soundly
drubbed, a bill to effect the transfer was passed by the House of
Representatives, but the Senate held it up, pending investigation.^"
With scarcely an exception the Indians were "unqualifiedly" op-
posed to it.-^

Throughout these years Indian policy was consistent in only one
respect. This has been succinctly stated by John Collier, Commis-
sioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945. "Generally speaking,"
he said, "the mere obliteration of Indianhood was the historical
policy.-^

Public attitude toward the Indians constituted a second impor-
tant factor contributing to the difficulties between the red men and
the white during these years of trouble, the predilections of western
settlers being especially significant. It is not strange that they lost
little love upon those whose rights frequently nullified their efforts
to obtain the resources and lands which they coveted, especially
when they felt that the Indians neither would nor could put them
to proper use. In addition, fear of the warriors of the plains existed
as an ever-present reality to work upon their emotions. In the
press of the region periods occurred when weekly, and sometimes

18. Congressional Record, First Session, 1874, Washington, Govt. Print-
ing Office, 1875, p. 62. Representative James A. Garfield, who became
President of the U. S. in 1881, also spoke strongly against any control meas-
ure. The Report of the Secretary of the Interior, Op. cit., p. vi, shows that
the Secretary, also, favored the destruction of the buffalo to hasten the
Indians' dependence "upon the products of the soil and their own labors".

19. Evidences of the extreme importance placed upon the gospel of indi-
vidual allotments — completely foreign to the culture of the Plains Indians —
may be found in Senate Document No. 319, Indian Affairs, Laws and
Treaties, v. 2, Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1904. It is stressed in the
Sioux Treaty of 1868, pp. 998-1003, the Northern Arapaho and Cheyenne
Treaty of 1868, pp. 1012-1015, the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Treaty
of 1867, pp. 984-985, and in various other treaties.

20. Op. cit. Tenth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commission-
ers, 1878, p. 9. The transfer was not approved by the Senate.

21. Ibid, p. 10.

22. Letter from former Indian Commissioner John Collier Sr., Jan. 6,
1962.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 41

daily reports of Indian depredations appeared.^^ The fact that
most of these were biased and others false did not lessen their
effect.

In various histories of the region under study, as well as in con-
temporary reports and documents, the feelings of the white settlers
are reflected. Following the Treaty of 1851, Coutant claims in the
History of Wyoming, the reduction of the garrison at Fort Laramie
resulted in Indian insolence.^'* The red-complexioned lords of the
soil, he asserts, were pleased by nothing except the robbing of
trains and the killing and scalping of white men.--"^ Bancroft con-
trasts the censuring of Colonel Chivington for his massacre of
Cheyennes and Arapahoes at Sand Creek, Colorado, with the reso-
lution of thanks to him which was passed by the Territorial Legis-
lature of Colorado!-^ His own feeling of approval is apparent.
Even Hebard, who wrote at a later date, seems to have caught
something of the same spirit, although she generally shows far
greater sympathy for the Indians than do either of the older his-
torians. In her background of the Sand Creek affair (1864), she
justifies Governor Evans' assumption that none of the Indians in-
tended to be friendly, on the grounds that they failed to respond to
his call for them to come in and confer with him.-" She says fur-
thermore that when Black Kettle's Cheyenne's finally reported for a
conference, the governor was fully aware of their insincerity.-^
There is reason to believe that both of these statements fall short of
fact, which will be shown in a later chapter. Captain H. G. Nick-
erson, a settler and Indian fighter of the Sweetwater and Wind
River regions of Wyoming, referred to the Indians of that area as
inhuman fiends.^^ Since he specified only that the Indians in ques-
tion were hostile, he probably meant the Sioux, Cheyennes and
Arapahoes, as the only other Indians present in the 1 870s were the
Shoshones, who were not considered hostile.

With the founding of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the publication
of the Cheyenne Daily Leader in 1867, similar reflections of the

23. Mildred Nelson, Index to the Cheyenne Leader, 1867-1890. Micro-
film) A study of the index indicates that this was especially true from 1867
to 1877.

24. C. G. Coutant, The History of Wyoming, Laramie, Chaplin, Spafford
and Mathison, 1899, p. 318.

25. Ibid., p. 319.

26. Hubert H. Bancroft, The Works of Hubert H. Bancroft, v. 25,
History of Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming, 1540-1888, San Francisco, the
History Co., 1888 (1890), p. 466. Bancroft wastes little sympathy on most
of the Indians of the region, and none at all on the Arapahoes.

27. Grace Raymond Hebard and E. A. Brininstool, The Bozeman Trail,
Cleveland, the Arthur H. Clark Co., 1922, v. 1, p. 127.

28. Loc. cit.

29. H. G. Nickerson, "Early History of Fremont County," State of Wyo-
ming Historical Dept. Quarterly Bulletin, v. 2, July 15, 1924, p. 3.

42 ANNALS OF WYOMING

public mind appeared in the press. Not the least of the targets was
the (Indian) peace policy of the United States Government, and
the Quaker influence within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Thus
the spirit of conciliation which graced the Fort Laramie Treaty of
1868 (ending the Powder River War) drew biting criticism. The
editor of the Leader predicted that there could be no peace "until
the roving destroyers are whipped into subjection . . . and humbly
beg for life and mercy on any terms which shall be dictated by the
invincible whites. . . ."•'^^' At a later date he coined a gem of satire
in ascribing the murder of a Sweetwater settler to "Quaker apple-
sauce."'^^

The rights of Indians had their champions, but only a brave per-
son would speak in their defense. At the investigation of the Sand
Creek massacre one such individual testified that to "speak friendly
of an Indian" was "nearly as much as a man's life is worth. "^-

The hostiUty toward Indians which typified the press was dupli-
cated by the governor and legislature of Wyoming Territory. In his
message to the Legislative Assembly in November, 1875, Governor
Thayer dwelt upon the injustice of expelling miners from the Black
Hills (in Dakota Territory), whereas the Sioux, Cheyennes and
Arapahoes continually violated the boundaries set for them by the
Treaty of 1868. The Black Hills with their precious metals, he
said, were of no use to the wild Indians who prevented their devel-
opment.^-^ Since 1868 the "Indian marauders" had stolen more
than $600,000 worth of stock and slain seventy-three citizens
engaged in lawful pursuits. Yet he knew of no case in which an
Indian had lost his stock nor life at the hands of the whites, with
one exception, the killing of four (Arapahoes) by a sheriffs party
which pursued them for stealing horses.^^ If the governor spoke
the truth he must have been unaware of a number of such incidents,
including the flagrant shooting of the Arapaho chief. Black Bear,
and ten other men, women and children in his unarmed party of
fourteen who, on their part, were engaged in lawful pursuits.^°

In concluding his message. Governor Thayer recommended that
the Legislative Assembly embody its views in a memorial to Con-

30. The Cheyenne Leader, April 3, 1868. (Microfilm)

31. Ibid., Sept. 18, 1872.

32. Condition of the Indian Tribes. Report of the Joint Special Com-
mittee under the Joint Resolution of Mar. 3, 1865, Washington, Govt. Print-
ing Office, 1865, p. 34.

33. Journal of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Wyoming
1875, Cheyenne, Daily Leader Office, 1876, pp. 35-37.

34. Loc. cit.

35. Executive Document of the House of Representatives of the Third
Session of the Forty-first Congress, 1870-1871, Wash., Govt. Printing Office,
1871, p. 643. This occurred near the present town of Lander, Wyoming.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 43

gress. The Assembly concurred; the memorial was drafted. The
excerpts below will leave no doubt of their convictions:

"Memorial and Joint Resolution of the Legislative Assembly of the
Territory of Wyoming, Feb. 23, 1876:

While all the power of the Government has been threatened, and in
a sense used, to prevent white men from trespassing on their lands, so
uselessly held by them to the exclusion of those who would mine for
precious metals (which it is well known exist there) these lawless pets
have been allowed to leave their reservations (so called) whenever
they would, to prey upon and devastate the property, lives, and peace-
ful occupations of these frontier settlers, with the virtual consent of
their guardians, the agents of the Government. While the blood-seek-
ing brave (God save the word!) and his filthy squaw have fed at the
public expense in those hatchholes of fraud known as agencies, the
widow and children of the white man slain by the treacherous Indian
have been obliged to depend on their own energies or the bounty of
neighbors for the necessaries of life.

In behalf of a long-suffering people ... we would ask that the
Indians shall be removed from us entirely, or else made amenable to
the common law of the land. . . .

We ask that our delegate . . . may be listened to and heeded with at
least as much respect as some Indian-loving fanatic of the East. . . ."^^

A final factor contributing its full share to the misunderstandings
and violence of this period was the Indian way of life. Unique
and distinctive in many respects, it was neither understood nor
appreciated by the whites. ^^ Like the buffalo which they hunted,
the plains Indians separated into comparatively small bands in the
winter, but with the coming of spring they gathered into larger
groups. The resultant reunion was a time of visiting and happiness;
sodality or age-group lodge meetings were held. As the lodges cut
across band lines, this was the natural time for them to meet. The
Sun Dance, which ordinarily was set up at this time, cut across
both lodge and band lines.

The Sun Dance, which went by different names in different
tribes, likewise varied considerably in ritual, but it was a significant
religious ceremonial among all groups which practiced it. That of
the western Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahoes bore many points of
similarity. Since this paper largely concerns the Northern Arapa-
hoes, a few points regarding their Offerings Lodge, as their Sun
Dance is called, will be given. It was pledged — or "set up" as they

36. Miscellaneous Documents of the House of Representatives, Forty-
fourth Congress, First Session, 1875, Wash., Govt. Printing Office, 1876,
pp. 2-3. The Indians were regarded as the Federal Government's "lawless
pets", who were not held accountable for their actions.

37. Fey and McNickle, in reviewing U. S. Government Indian policy
from 1787 to 1959, state that none of it was seen through Indian eyes until
1928. (Harold E. Fey and D'Arcy McNickle, Indians and Other Americans,
New York, Harper and Bros., 1959, p. 68.)

44 ANNALS OF WYOMING

say — by ceremonial vow; each participant entered it likewise by
vow."'^ It included three and one-half days with neither food nor
water, usually beneath the hot sun of late spring or summer. The
hope of attaining individual power and prestige through the Sun
Dance was evident, but equally so was the want of healing, physical
or mental, for self, family or friends. Man's dependence for exist-
ence on food and water were accented throughout the ceremony,
while certain features stressed the idea of fertility in relation to the
sun, earth, moon and sex, without which there would be neither
food for man nor the possibility of perpetuating life on earth.

The lodges had definite responsibilities in the hunt and on the
march. This was frequently a matter of survival. When many
animals from a herd of buffalo were slaughtered and butchered, it
was the function of one of the sodalities — one composed of men
of mature age — to see that every family received its fair share of
the meat. Sometimes the impetuous youths of a younger lodge,
hungering for a chance to gain prestige in a raid or battle, had to be
held in check for the safety of all concerned. Men of advanced
age, always few in number, men who had been step by step through
all the sodalities, directed not only the lodge ceremonies, including
the Sun Dance, but many other tribal activities as well; hence
society was hierarchical. The older men and women were gener-
ally held in high respect.

Despite a feeling of strong tribal kinship, the various bands with
their own chiefs or leaders often acted independently.^^ They
fought with bands from hostile tribes, joined friends or allies against
their foes, raided for horses, and ranged far afield to visit friends
and relatives. They were generally free to make their own deci-
sions. Bands of Northern Arapahoes, a typical plains group, from
time to time were reported from dozens of points between the
Republican River in Kansas and the Mussellshell in Montana, a
distance of 800 miles as the crow flies, much farther as they had to
travel, that is mounted on horses and sometimes dragging travois

38. In 1938 a 'teen-age Arapaho girl became quite ill. Hoping for her
recovery, her father and her brother vowed to enter the Sun Dance. She
died, but her death could not release them from their pledge. The Arapa-
hoes explain it by saying, "You see, you have already made the vow — ." It
cannot be broken. (James C. Murphy, Personal Notes Taken on the Wind
River Reservation, Wyoming, 1933-1939.)

39. In 1864 the Northern Arapaho chief, Friday, took his band of less
than 200 to Ft. Collins, Colorado, determined to remain at peace with the
whites. Black Bear's band of several hundred joined them for a time, then
left for other parts. In the meanwhile Medicine Man's band — about half of
the entire tribe — remained hundreds of miles to the north, in the Powder
River country, where buffalo were plentiful. This will receive further
treatment later.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 45

loaded with their lodges and household goods.^" Pursuing their
migrant life and living off the chase, a few thousand Indians split
into tribes and sub-divided into bands thus occupied untold acres of
land; and upon this the whites cast covetous eyes.

For the Indians of the plains warfare had a different connotation
than for the whites. True it is that Indians slaughtered every man
in Custer's command in 1876, and that under desperate conditions
they had been known to "charge on a whole company singly, de-
termined to kill someone before being killed themselves". ^^ In
such cases the Indians were battling white men under exceptional
circumstances; they did not typify strictly Indian warfare. To the
warrior of the plains taking a scalp was more important and an act
of greater bravery than the killing of many enemies; successful
stealth and cunning brought greater prestige than risking one's life
to strike a blow. The bravest act of all, ranking far above killing an
enemy, was that of counting coup, that is touching or striking an
enemy with a long, peeled wand of wood which had a feather tied
to the small end.^^ This was the great prize.

The care with which the plains Indians protected themselves
while delivering a blow may well be imagined from a report of an
all-day battle between Shoshones and Northern Cheyennes (tra-
ditional enemies) in the Big Horn region of Wyoming in 1877.
The former lost one man, two women and two children in what is
described as one of the "fiercest" engagements which ever occurred
in the vicinity !^^ Cheyenne losses were unknown, but probably
comparable.

Fighting between hereditary enemies sometimes brought con-
sternation to white settlers in the plains and Rocky Mountain West.
In the early 1860s, for instance, Arapahoes, camped in what is now
downtown Denver (Colorado) in considerable numbers, went over
the mountains to raid the Utes. When they returned with the news
that the latter were chasing them, near pandemonium broke out in
the settlement.^^ As late as 1874 the Indian agent at Denver com-
plained of repeated acts of murder on their "plains enemies" by
Utes who came east of the mountains on buffalo hunts.^^ He sug-

40. Grinnell, op. cit., p. 181, records 80 lodges of Northern Arapahoes
on the Republican in 1864-65, to visit their southern kinsmen. Peter Koch
reported members of the same tribe on the Mussellshell to trade in 1869-70.
See Elers Koch (ed.), "The Diary of Peter Koch," The Frontier, v. 9, Jan.
1929, p. 156.

41. Op. cit., Condition of the Indian Tribes, p. 92. From a letter of
Major Anthony after the Sand Creek massacre, when Southern Cheyenne
and Arapaho men, women and children were shot down without mercy.

42. Stanley Vestal, Sitting Bull, Norman, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1957
(new edition), pp. 9-io.

43. Op. cit., Annual Report \%11, pp. 605-606.

44. Op. cit., Grinnell, p. 119.

45. Op. cit., Annual Report 1874, p. 272.

46 ANNALS OF WYOMING

gested that a competent and trustworthy party accompany them to
see that they hunt buffalo rather than Sioux, Arapahoes, Cheyennes
and Kiowas.^*'

On the Indian scale of prestige the stealing of horses from a
legitimate enemy was outranked by counting coup alone. Not only
was it considered an "honorable pursuit", but often profitable as
well."*^ Horses were indispensable for the hunt, warpath, travel,
and as gifts at weddings and other societal gatherings, and of course
for trading purposes. In 1804 Lewis and Clark had found the
Mandans of North Dakota bartering horses to the Assiniboines for
axes, arms, ammunition and other goods of European manufacture
which the latter tribe obtained in Canada. In turn the Mandans
traded these south to Crows, Cheyennes, Arapahoes and others for
horses and leather tents. "^^ Indeed, it was through the combination
of trading and stealing that horses had gradually moved northward
through the tribes from Mexico to Canada.

Since horses were the most valuable booty of warfare, it logically
follows that the plains tribes were unwilling to forego the pleasure
of retaining traditional enemies for horse-raiding purposes. Nat-
urally enough, Indian agents often felt that their own wards were
picked upon by others, but a study of the records indicates that
rarely indeed did one tribe prove less guilty than another. In 1860
the Pawnee agent cited eight unwarranted raids by Brule Sioux,
Arapahoes and Cheyennes in which his charges suffered a loss of
thirteen lives, thirty horses, and sixty lodges bumed.^^ Doubts of
Pawnee innocence in this endless cycle arise when a later report

(1862) indicates that a "recent" raid by "Brula" Sioux was staged
to recover horses which the same Pawnees had stolen from them a
few weeks earUer.^^ Some enlightenment is found in the statement
of A. G. Colley that the pastime is "a part of their lives, being
taught it from infancy".^^ With the aid of the military he had held
in check the Southern Cheyennes and Arapahoes of his agency, but
when Utes ran off eighty Cheyenne horses within a mile of the post,
a counter raid was shortly under way!^^ During the same year

(1863) four soldiers were wounded and one lost his life while pur-
suing Ute Indians who refused to surrender horses "legitimately"

46. Ibid., p. 273.

47. Ibid., 1875, p. 753. The agent to the Sioux, Northern Arapahoes and
Northern Cheyennes thus called it in 1875, adding that it was as difficult to
convince the Indians that horsestealing was wrong as to persuade a horse-
jockey that it is wrong to sell a neighbor an unsound horse.

48. Reuben Gold Thwaites (ed.). Original Journals of the Lewis and
Clark Expedition, 1804-1806, New York, Dodd, Mead and Co., 1904, v. 6,
p. 90.

49. Op. cit., Annual Report 1860, p. 317.

50. Ibid., 1862, p. 97.

51. Ibid., 1863, p. 252.

52. Loc. cit.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 47

Stolen from their Sioux enemies. -"'-^ Governor Evans of Colorado
Territory endeavored to end the long-existent hostilities between
the Utes on one hand and the Cheyennes and Arapahoes on the
other, but the latter tribes protested his efforts as "unwarrantable
interference".^^ The governor persisted until he had convinced
himself that there would be no further trouble; but the raids con-
tinued for a dozen years or more, as the Indians prolonged the en-
joyment of their sport.

From the beginning Indian poUcy had been based upon the
premise that the red man must adapt himself to the white man's
superior way of life. The whites were concerned lest the Indians
should not learn to live Uke them; but the Indians were sometimes
concerned lest they should. At the conclusion of the Fort Laramie
Treaty of 1851, a group of men and women from several of the
signatory tribes were brought to Washington, D. C, and other
eastern cities, ostensibly to impress them with the power of the
U. S. and the vastly higher culture of its citizens. Though assuredly
impressed, they longed to return to their broad plains and the free-
doms of their own society. Before they left the East one committed
suicide; others, it was said, were so depressed that they might follow
suit should they remain longer in its crowded cities.^^ Despite this
sad beginning, the Indian Bureau for more than twenty years stuck
to the theory that to see is to be convinced, and continued to bring
parties of plains Indians to the East. Retaining their optimism and
enthusiasm, advocates of the poUcy were overjoyed when five dele-
gations numbering from five to fifty made the trip in 1872, and the
Board of Indian Commissioners lauded the beneficial results in
"all cases."^*' Little doubt was felt that the "ease, comfort and
luxury" of the cities would create in the Indians a desire for better
things than could be found in their wild, roving life",^^ Yet nearly
all the delegates grew so homesick for the plains that they wanted
the trip to end as soon as possible!^^

Other indications of the Indians' preference for their own way of
life appear in various reports of the period, of which several ex-
amples are given below. In 1856 agent Twiss of the North Platte
Agency found no desire among the Sioux, Arapahoes, nor Chey-

53. Ibid., p. 241.

54. Ibid., p. 33. Evans was ex-officio Superintendent of Indian Affairs
for the area.

55. Op. cit., "Message from the President of the United States to the
Two Houses of Congress," p. 335. Thomas Fitzpatrick, who escorted the
Indians on the trip, reported that it would not surprise him at all if others
committed suicide.

56. Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, Wash-
ington, Govt. Printing Office, 1872, p. 5.

57. Ibid., p. 128.

58. Ibid., p. 124.

48 ANNALS OF WYOMING

ennes to adopt the white man's Ufe, not even to planting corn.^^
Seven years later, when Governor Evans of Colorado Territory at-
tempted a treaty with the same three tribes, his emissary informed
them that he wished them to settle on a reservation and live like
white men; but they retorted that they were not yet reduced so
low.*^" When the Arapaho, Friday, discovered through unusual
circumstances that the milk of human kindness existed even among
whites, he did not lose his longing for the plains nor the ways of his
people. Lost from his tribe in 1831 at the age of nine, he was
found by white traders, sent to St. Louis, Missouri, and taught to
speak fluent English, to read and write. Though duly impressed
by the consideration which he received, he returned in a few years
to his people. ^^ As a young man he assumed the chieftainship of a
small band of Northern Arapahoes, and with them he remained.

An interesting speculation regarding Friday's return to his tribe
appears in Broken Hand, by Hafen and Ghent, the story of Thomas
Fitzpatrick, who discovered and provided for the young boy. The
lad, it is said, had fallen in love with a white girl, only to be re-
jected because of his race.*^^ Though previously ready to remain
with the whites and become as one of them, the bitter disillusion-
ment drove him back to his people.*^^ In the light of further infor-
mation, this theory seems to be the wishful thinking of one so sure
of the incomparable excellence of his own culture that he cannot
recognize the vahdity of another choice. Friday himself in 1864
explained his decision in quite a different maimer. On friendly
terms with the Overland Stage Line agents at Latham, Colorado,
he told them much of his early life, including the years at St. Louis.
It was, he said, his love for the plains and his tribe which had made
him return to his Arapaho life.*^^ Whatever the romantic bent of
his stripling years may have been, the adult Friday followed Arap-
aho custom in matrimony as in his daily living. Though other
forms of polygamy were known to his people, the marrying of
sisters (sororal polygyny) was a preferred pattern. Friday married
four sisters.^^

59. Op. cit.. Annual Report 1856, p. 647.

60. Leroy R. Hafen and Francis M. Young, Fort Laramie and the Pag-
eant of the West 1834-1890, Glendale, the Arthur H. Clark Co. 1938, p. 314.

61. Leroy R. and Ann W. Hafen, Rufiis B. Sage. His Letters and Papers
1836-1847, Glendale, the Arthur H. Clark Co., 1956, v. 2, pp. 302-303.

62. Leroy R. Hafen and W. J. Ghent, Broken Hand, Denver, the Old
West Publishing Co., 1931, p. 271.

63. Loc. cit., Hafen and Ghent here quote the Manuscript Journal of
Talbot, a member of John C. Fremont's second western expedition.

64. Frank A. Root and William Elsey Connelly, The Overland Stage to
California, Topeka, Root and Connelly, 1901, p. 347.

65. Op. cit.. Murphy, Personal Notes. Lowie says that the sororal form
of polygyny was the most common among the plains Indians because sisters
were less apt to quarrel than unrelated co-wives. (Robert H. Lowie, Indians
of the Plains, New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1954, p. 80.)

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 49

With the Indian policy of the Federal Government based more
upon good intentions than knowledge and appreciation of Indian
ways, with the settlers of the West coveting a nearly empty land
and its unexploited resources, with the roving life of the Indians
conflicting with the interests of the settlers, trouble was inevitable.
The red men were numbered only in the tens of thousands; the
plains could supply the homes and wants of millions. A dominant
race found the buffalo and the Indians in the way; they must there-
fore change the pattern of their lives or perish. The former were
slaughtered to the point of near-extinction; the latter were deprived
of the lands of their ancestors, and shunted onto reservations.

The Northern Arapaho Indians

Three plains groups, the Blackfeet, Cheyennes and Arapahoes,
though living far from the homeland of the bulk of their linguistic
relatives, spoke Algonkian dialects. A conjecture widely credited
but lacking positive evidence holds that the Arapahoes — like their
Cheyenne friends and associates — deserted sedentary, agricultural
villages, perhaps in Minnesota, to seek a fuller, richer life upon the
plains when the acquisition of horses made the change to buffalo
hunting highly attractive. Actually, nothing is known of their place
of origin, early history or migrations.*"^ Certain features of the
Arapaho language indicate a separation of more than a thousand
years from the woodland Algonquins of the Great Lakes area and
the East.^''

Although Canadian reports of the Gros Ventres branch of Arap-
ahoes antedate the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific by
more than fifty years, these American explorers first made known
the existence of the Arapahoes proper, whom they found in the
vicinity of the Black Hills (South Dakota) in 1804."^ Because
they lived upon the buffalo they were known as "Gens de vach" or
"cow people."^^ Alexander Henry, who met them in the same
locality in 1806, referred to them as the buffalo Indians.'"

Buffalo Indians they were indeed, for, by dropping heated stones
into buffalo rawhide fitted into holes in the ground, they boiled

66. A. L. Kroeber, "The Arapaho, Part 1", Bulletin of the American
Museum of Natural History, 1902, v. XVIII, p. 4.

67. A. L. Kroeber, "The Arapaho Dialects", Univ. of California Publica-
tions in American Archaeology and Ethnology . 1917, v. 12, p. 73.

68. Op. cit., Thwaites (ed.) Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition, 1804-1806, p. 190. The Atsina, or Gros Ventres of the prairie,
now in Montana, are an Arapaho group speaking an Arapaho dialect. They
still intervisit with the Northern Arapahoes.

69. Loc. cit.

70. Eliot Coues (ed.), New Light on the Early History of the Greater
Northwest, New York, F. P. Harper, 1897, v. 1, p. 384.

50 ANNALS OF WYOMING

their buffalo meat; dried, shredded buffalo flesh mixed with buffalo
fat became pemmican, which they packed into parfleches for stor-
age and travel; from bones of the bovines they fashioned awls,
needles and other tools; buffalo sinews contributed bowstrings and
thread; buffalo hides stretched around thin, pole frames formed
their tipis or lodges; buffalo robes served as bedding; and when
wood was not handy, buffalo chips — or dried dung — kept their
home fires burning.'^ To round out the list — though far from
exhausting it — the use of pulverized dung in lieu of diapers should
be included. ■'■-

As their material culture was based upon the bison, the hier-
archical structure of their society was adapted to a life upon the
plains. The older men retained comparatively tight, but not
tyrannical control. Since the prudence of the young men fre-
quently fell short of their drive for prestige, some such restraint was
essential, to hold them in check. A sodality system which provided
for the social needs of the Arapahoes from adolescence to old age
made possible the effective exercise of the necessary controls.
These age-group lodges were so organized that as their years and
experience increased, the members advanced, sometimes as an en-
tire group, to the privileges and responsibilities of a higher fellow-
ship. As illness, accident and the daily hazards of their migratory
life gradually decreased their numbers, they progressed from stage
to stage with an ever-lessening membership. Reverence for age and
its authority was inculcated, and the rash actions of the immature
and the impatient frequently were curbed. Deference to the elders
became institutional; deep respect and affection were rendered to
old men and women. Their needs and their desires received con-
siderable attention.

From the foregoing information it may be surmised that sodal-
ities, in Arapaho society as in that of other plains tribes, held a
central position. Though actually nine in number, only seven were
specified as lodges, for the first two, respectively for 'teen-age boys
and men in their twenties, lacked regalia and degrees, thus could
not attain this distinction. Since seven was one of the three sacred
numbers in Arapaho ceremonial practice, the enumeration of this
many lodges had ritual significance.^^

Several sodalities deserve particular notice. First of these are

71. Ibid., p. 370. Henry tells of 300 buffalo dung fires smoking in every
direction at an Indian camp on the plains. White settlers learned to use
buffalo chips for similar purposes.

72. Sister M. Inez Hilger, "Arapaho Childlije and Its Cultural Back-
ground," Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 148, Washington, Govt.
Printing Office, 1952, pp. 28-29.

73. The other two numbers are four and sixteen. Any alert observer of
the Arapaho Sun Dance ceremonies and structure of the Sun Dance Lodge
will notice numerous examples of ceremonial usage of these numbers.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 51

the Firemoths or Crazy Men, who reversed their ways and language
during the rituaUstic processes and became clownish. ^^ They
would attend a ceremonial feast, for instance, only when requested
not to come. Second is the Dog Lodge, composed of older men
with their wives. Its members held special wartime responsibilities,
especially those who were recipients of the higher degrees. They
could not leave their battle stations unless ordered to do so by a
comrade. The shaggy dog — holder of the highest degree of the
lodge — had to retain his position until driven away by a compan-
ion. ^•'^ The third of these, at the top of the social pyramid and
representing the oldest group of men, was the Water-dripping
Sweat Lodge, in which no more than the sacred number seven could
hold membership. Finally, the women participated in a sodahty of
their own, the Buffalo Lodge, which apparently lacked age re-
quirements.

Initiates of the various sodalities were sponsored by ceremonial
grandfathers (grandmothers for the women), whom they treated
with great deference, and from whom they received their instruc-
tion. This relationship, enduring throughout life, prohibited the
grandson and his wife from engaging in any activities, even social
games, which would bring them into conflict with the sponsor. In
their turn, the grandfathers who directed the initiates received in-
structions from the old men of the Water-dripping Sweat Lodge,
owners of the seven sacred tribal bags or bundles, each representing
certain powers. In all cases the instructors received many gifts, as
well as repetitive expressions of thanks from those whom they
directed.

At what time in the past divisions among the Arapaho groups
first appeared is a matter of conjecture, but the dialectical differ-
ences between the Arapahoes proper and the Gros Ventres indicate
a separation of considerable duration. '^'^ Of more recent origin
was the splitting of the main body into northern and southern
divisions. Of the various theories offered to explain this geo-
graphic cleavage, some are obviously false, as written references to
both groups antedate the events cited as the causes of parting. One
apocryphal tale which has been given considerable credence attrib-
utes the separation to ill feeling generated through the slaying of a

74. William C. Thunder, letter of Dec. 23, 1938. Much of the informa-
tion on lodges comes from this source. The remainder is taken from A. L.
Kroeber, who gives a much more complete account in "The Arapaho. Part
11", Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 1904, v. XVTII.

75. The Dog Dancers and the members of the other sodalities also held
special Sun Dance responsibilities.

76. A reunion of the Gros Ventres and Northern Arapahoes occuiTed
from 1818-1823, apparently the last of more than a few months duration.
Smallpox decimated their numbers at this time. {See Hugh L. Scott, "The
Early History and Names of the Arapaho," American Antliropologist (n.s.)
1907, V. 9, p. 553.)

52 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Northern Arapaho chief by a member of a Southern Arapaho band
in the 1850s. When in 1897 he told to Hugh Scott a simpler and
more credible explanation, the Southern Arapaho, Left Hand, de-
nied all implications of uncongeniality as a contributing factor."'
There had been no quarrel, he said, nor any unpleasantness be-
tween the bands, but the Northern Arapahoes merely preferred to
remain in the north, while the Southern Arapahoes came to prefer
the south, where horses were more plentiful.^^ How long a time
elapsed from the first seeking of different pastures until the separa-
tion became complete cannot be surely said, but the division seems
to have developed in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century,
certainly not later than 1816, according to Scott.'-'

Although the southern group now shares a reservation in Okla-
homa with the Southern Cheyennes, their historic friends, and the
northerners live on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming with
the Shoshones, they still feel themselves to comprise one people,
and they speak the same language. Intervisitation is common.
Occasionally a Southern Arapaho moves permanently to Wyoming,
or a Northern Arapaho to Oklahoma.

They mutually regard the Flat Pipe, long in the keeping of
the Northern Arapahoes, as their most sacred tribal possession.
Though hidden by its wrappings from public view, the pipe holds a
prominent place in the Northern Arapaho Sun Dance ceremonies.
Hung on its quadruped of poles, sacrifices or offerings are made to
it by those who have vowed to do so. It is approached with as
great reverence as is the cross or altar by a member of any Christian
sect, and the offering is carefully laid over it. "Dressing the pipe",
the Arapahoes call it.*^*^'

Two names frequently used to distinguish the Northern Arapa-
hoes from the Oklahoma group are translated as People of the
Sagebrush, and Red Bark People, the latter referring to their prac-
tice of mixing red osier dogwood bark with tobacco. ^^ By them-

77. Ibid., p. 558.

78. Ibid., p. 560. Left Hand's explanation is perfectly logical. Histor-
ically horses moved from south to north, from Mexico through the U. S. to
Canada, both through trading and raiding.

79. Loc. cit. This version of the geographical cleavage differs little from
that of other careful investigators, with the exception of W. P. Clark, who
obviously misinterpreted information received from Little Raven, another
Southern Arapaho. He concluded that the division occurred in 1867, when
the Northern Arapahoes refused to join in a war on the whites. (See W. P.
Clark, Indian Sign Language, Philadelphia, L. R. Hammersly and Co., 1885,
p. 40.)

80. Op. cit. Murphy, Personal Notes. John S. Carter has wntten a
monograph on the pipe, "The Northern Arapaho Flat Pipe and the Cere-
mony of Covering the Pipe", Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 119,
Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1938, pp. 69-102.

81. Loc. cit. The Arapahoes say that the translation usually given, "Red
Willow People," is a misinterpretation.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 53

selves and their southern relatives they are sometimes called the
"mother tribe. "^-

For generations the Arapahoes and Cheyennes intermarried,
camped and hunted together, and jointly raided and fought with
their common enemies. Alexander Henry found them sharing a
campground as early as 1 806.^"^ How far in the past their amicable
relationship began is problematical. Eventually they extended their
alliance to include the Western Sioux; and the three groups, par-
ticularly those in the north, pressed raids — whether retaliatory or
aggressive — against the Crows, Utes, Pawnees and Shoshones. The
forays afforded excellent opportunities for the younger braves to
slake their thirst for prestige.

Names of various Northern Arapaho men and women of a later
day commemorated the exploits of their ancestors in inter-tribal
warfare. Thus Red Plume and In-Among-Them (brothers) re-
ceived their names from a grandfather who had once counted coup
on a Crow warrior who wore a red feather; and at another time he
had dismounted to fight the Crows on foot — in among them.^^
Likewise the name of Woman-runs-out was bestowed upon her by a
grandfather who, also in a battle with the Crows, had pitied a
woman who ran out of a tipi with a baby on her back.^^

After the Treaty of 1851 the Northern Arapahoes and Northern
Cheyennes shared a common agency with various bands of the
Western Sioux. Despite efforts of the Indian Office to persuade
the two former tribes to join their relatives in Indian Territory (now
included in Oklahoma ) , they stayed in the north until United States
soldiers rounded up hostile Indians following the Sitting Bull cam-
paign, 1876 to 1877. A move to the south was forced upon the
Cheyennes, but part of them refused to remain there and broke
away to the north, where many met their death from soldiers'
bullets. The Arapahoes joined the Shoshones in Wyoming, and
there they may be found today.

Throughout the period of turmoil surveyed earlier, (1851-1879)
the closest associates of the Northern Arapahoes were depicted as
the fighting Cheyennes and the warlike Sioux, the latter composing
the largest, most powerful plains tribe (estimated at 53,000 people),
and the one most feared by the whites.^® This fellowship, combined
with their reputation of being more reserved, treacherous and fierce
than their neighbors, would incline one to expect the Arapahoes to
be usually in the thick of the fighting, in the focal point of trouble.^"
Yet this does not seem to be the case.

82. Frederick Webb Hodge (ed.), Handbook of American Indians North
of Mexico, New York, Pageant Book Co. Inc., 1959, p. 72. (Bureau of
American Ethnology, 1907.)

83. Op. cit. Coues, v. 1, p. 384.

84. Op. cit. Murphy, Personal Notes.

85. Loc. cit.

54 ANNALS OF WYOMING

The Northern Arapahoes regarded themselves as peaceful peo-
ple. In 1875 Black Coal, then their most important chief, ex-
pressed this tribal feeling before an investigating commission at
Red Cloud Agency (Nebraska), where the Northern Cheyennes,
several bands of Sioux, and his own tribe were served. "The Arap-
ahoes," he testified, "are called the peace tribe. I never begin war.
When I make peace I always keep it. That is the way with all the
Arapahoes. . . ."^^ Whether or not Black Coal's statement is
wholly valid, it represents far more than a tribal platitude.

In the Fighting Cheyennes Grinnell breaks with popular judg-
ment to present (briefly) a pacific facet of Arapaho character.
Though stubborn fighters in supporting their friends and alhes,
he found them milder and more easygoing than the Cheyennes.^®
James Mooney, probably the first noteworthy anthropologist to
gain the confidence of the Arapahoes, beUeved them to be religious,
contemplative and friendly, neither truculent nor pugnacious, but
more tractable and less mercenary than the general run of prairie
Indians.'^*^ Despite these and other evidences which will be pre-
sented, the few historians who acknowledge any peaceful inclina-
tion among the Arapahoes cite only Friday in this respect, and his
efforts to influence his people are generally regarded as abortive.
There can be no contention as to his bent for peace; his importance
must be recognized, but there are indications that he did not stand
alone. The case of Friday will be given first.

Though sorely tried by the tactics of the dominant race deter-
mined to occupy his and other Indian lands, he remained a staunch
opponent of force in dealing with them. There is no evidence that
he ever took up arms against the whites. When fear of a general
Indian insurrection rose toward a crescendo in 1863 and rumors
magnified the apprehension, Friday, camped with his band at the
Cache la Poudre in Colorado, insisted that he would keep the
peace, and refused the offer of a Sioux warpipe.^^ Even the terrors
of the Sand Creek massacre of Southern Cheyennes and Arapahoes
in 1864 failed to shake him from this resolve, and he took no part
in the raids along the Platte which followed, although one band of
Northern Arapahoes joined the Sioux and Cheyennes in these.

86. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1874, p. 4. This is an Indian Office
estimate.

87. Op. cit. Kroeber, "The Arapaho, Part 1", p. 4.

88. Report of the Special Commission to Investigate the Affairs of the
Red Cloud Agency, July, 1875, together with the Testimony and Accom-
panying Documents, Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1875, p. 377. Most
historians of this period would challenge Black Coal's claim.

89. Op. cit. Grinnell, p. 3.

90. James Mooney, "The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak
of 1890", Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1892-93,
Part 2, Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1896, p. 957.

91. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1863, p. 254.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 55

Nor did he participate in the Powder River fighting, 1865 to 1867,
though General Connor's punitive expedition ( 1 865 ) brought the
latter into conflict with Black Bear's band, when his soldiers
attacked them on the Tongue River, a tributary of the Yel-
lowstone.^2 It was not until 1868, when peace had come, that
Friday's band finally was evicted by Federal Government author-
ities from their encampment on the far-away Cache la Poudre. He
then joined his brethren in the Powder River region.

After Friday, the influence of Chief Medicine Man in steering
the Northern Arapahoes along the path of peace should be consid-
ered. This chief, known to whites as Roman Nose, has received
little attention from historians. Among his own people, however,
he exercised great authority from the mid-1 850s until his death
during the winter of 1871-1872. During this period he frequently
acted as spokesman for his tribe, and on at least one occasion for
certain bands of Sioux and Cheyennes as well. Like Friday, he
abstained from the Platte River hostilities of 1864-1865, keeping
his band, more than half the entire tribe, in the Powder River
country, hundreds of miles from the raids in question. Also as
with Friday, he refrained from taking up arms against the whites
following the thoroughly unjustified Sand Creek massacre of
Cheyennes and Southern Arapahoes in 1864. Indeed, Indian
Office reports indicated that the outrage "effectually prevented any
more advances towards peace by such of those bands which were
well-disposed" excepting the Arapaho chief "Roman Nose", who
had sent word that he was anxious to live with his people in the
locality of the "Little Chug" river (the Chugwater, about thirty-five
miles north of Cheyenne, Wyoming ).^^ In response to Governor
Evans' offer of the previous summer to protect all friendly Indians,
he had brought his large band all the way from Powder River,
where buffalo hunting was still good, only to be rebuffed on the
flimsy ground that the Little Chug was too close to the great routes
of travel.^^ Although Medicine Man's part in the Powder River
Wars remains enigmatic, after the peace of 1868 he avoided col-
lision with the whites, on one occasion even moving his people to
the Milk River Agency in Montana (which served the Gros Ventres
relatives and Crow enemies of the Arapahoes) rather than risk an
open rupture which seemed imminent in Wyoming.^^

92. Black Bear's band was probably the one which had aided the Sioux
and Cheyennes in their raids along the Platte River. The indications will be
shown later.

93. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1865, p. 25.

94. Ibid., p. 177. Ft. Collins, Colorado, one of the main stations to
which Governor Evans of Colorado Territory had requested friendly Indians
to report, was just as close to the main routes of travel.

95. The move followed the murder of Black Bear and a number of other
Arapahoes by an armed band of whites, near the present town of Lander,
Wyoming, in 1871.

56 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Finally, after Friday and Medicine Man, Black Coal too, de-
serves mention in this regard, though he has more frequently been
classed as a raider than as a man of peace. When he succeeded
Medicine Man, following the latter's demise, the Arapahoes re-
turned to the Wind River region of Wyoming to raid their old
enemies, the Shoshones, whom they blamed for collusion with the
whites in the death of Black Bear. Their forays were terminated
by a clash with United States troops, the Bates Battle of 1 874, after
which Black Coal fought no more. Having made peace, he stuck
to it, even in 1875, when droves of Sioux and Cheyennes deserted
their agencies to follow the war trail with Crazy Horse and Sitting
Bull, thus making a mockery of the Indian Commissioner's boast
that the process of feeding the Sioux had "so far taken the fight out
of them . . ." that they would not "risk the loss of their coffee,
sugar and beef" in a campaign against the soldiers.'"^

Since Friday as a boy in St. Louis had known white men under
suspicious circumstances, it might be argued that both Medicine
Man and Black Coal had come under his influence and reflected
his own attitude. It might be said, in short, that without him the
ameliorating factor in Arapaho-white relations might never have
developed. But when the available evidence is considered it ap-
pears that the amicable inclination of his people may have preceded
Friday's influence, and that it did not vanish with his death. More-
over, the trait was shared by Northern and Southern Arapahoes,
and was not entirely restricted to their relations with the whites.
Grinnell has pointed out that the Arapahoes had, in past time,
fought the Comanches, Kiowas and Apaches, not through any real
antagonism to them, but rather because they were the enemies of
their own best friends, the Cheyennes. The Apaches must have
been cognizant of this fact, for in 1 840 they approached the Arapa-
hoes with the request that they act as intermediaries in arranging a
peace conference between the five warring tribes, the Cheyennes
and Arapahos on one hand, the Apaches, Comanches and Kiowas
on the other.^'' The Arapahoes obliged; full agreement was
reached, presents exchanged, and hostilities between them per-
manently ceased.

Moving to a later day — nearly ten years after Friday's death in
1881 — it should be noted that a remarkable Arapaho left his home
in Wyoming to carry to his southern brethren and others in Indian
Territory, the Ghost Dance religion, which had originated with
Jack Wilson, the Indian Messiah of Mason Valley, Nevada. Since
it was definitely a religion of peace as he taught it, this Arapaho
missionary who influenced many tribes, might well have been called
the Apostle of Peace. Paradoxically, he shared with the great

96. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1875, p. 5.

97. Op. cit. Grinnell, pp. 63-66.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 57

Sioux warrior of the 1870s the name of Sitting Bull.'^^ Fittingly,
perhaps, after the decline of the Ghost Dance religion. Sitting Bull
— Hanacha Thiak in Arapaho — became a Mennonite convert, thus
affiliating himself with one of the historic peace sects. ^'^

Finally, as noted above, it was not the Northern division of the
Arapahoes alone which strove from time to time to maintain peace-
ful relations with the United States Government. In 1870 and
subsequent years, notations of the desirable attitude of the Southern
Arapahoes appeared in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of
Indian Affairs. Declarations of peaceful intent made at this time
were thereafter honored by the Southern Arapahoes.

Similar commentaries on the conciliatory spirit of the Northern
Arapahoes appeared in 1872.^'^'^ Others followed in 1873; and by
1875 it seemed only the course of wisdom to plan to separate them
from the more recalcitrant Cheyennes.^"^ Subsequently, when
Sioux and Cheyenne warriors left their agencies to join the forces of
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, it became obvious to their agent at
Red Cloud that the Arapahoes, ". . . almost without exception,
remained loyal to the government."^^^

Following the Custer debacle, the Interior Department — long
under pressure from settlers to open up the northern Indian lands —
undertook active measures to transfer the Northern Arapahoes,
Northern Cheyennes and some of the Sioux to Indian Territory,
notwithstanding their opposition to the change. The Cheyennes
were compelled to go; but the purported warlike inclination of the
Sioux, and its fearful potential toward settlers in the adjacent states
and the "civilized Indians" of the area resulted in such a flurry of
protest that the plan to shift them was stymied. ^^^ Congress passed
an act expressly forbidding the President to move "any portion" of
the Sioux nation to Indian Territory. ^*^^ Conversely, final recog-
nition of the Northern Arapaho efforts to keep the peace led the
United States Government to grant their plea to remain in the
north, rather than coercing them into the dreaded transfer. ^°^
Shortly thereafter the Indian Bureau completed arrangements to
move them to their present location on the Wind River Reservation
in Wyoming, where the Shoshones already resided.

98. James Mooney (op. cit.) gives the full story in The Fourteenth An-
nual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology 1892-1893, Part 2.

99. Op. cit. Murphy, Personal Notes.

100. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1872, p. 651.

101. Ibid., 1875, po. 546-552.

102. Ibid., 1877, p. 415.

103. The Congressional Record, Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1877,
Forty-fourth Congress, Second session, v. 5, p. 1617.

104. Ibid., p. 1736.

105. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1877, p. 459. The Northern Arapahoes
feared they would die "in that miasmatic country".

58 ANNALS OF WYOMING

The Treaty of 1851 as the Hopeful Promise of a New Era

In 1849, with California's gold rush sparking a tremendous
population boom, and the settlement of Oregon under way, Presi-
dent Fillmore proposed a plan to bind together the widely separated
eastern and western frontiers of the United States with a permanent
highway to cut across the vast and nearly empty expanse of plains
and mountains which lay between.^"^ A railroad, he said, would
best satisfy the wants and needs of the people, though he did not
envisage its immediate construction.^"^ Some means must be de-
vised to extinguish Indian title to the needed strips of land, for
difficulties already had arisen between the thousands of westbound
immigrants and the "wild" tribes of the plains, through whose
habitat the projected right of way would have to pass.^°^

Since the wrath of the Indians had been aroused by the immi-
grants' destruction of their game and forage, the President recom-
mended a gift of $50,000 to assuage their feelings. In exchange
for the right of the Government to maintain roads and military
posts in certain parts of their territory, annuities valued at $50,000
should be distributed among them for a period of fifty years. Thus
their good will would be purchased, and fear of the loss of treaty
rations would surely elicit their best conduct toward the whites.
Should molestation of travelers and their stock not cease, the pos-
itive identification of the guilty parties must be assured. By laying
the country off into geographical or rather "national domains" the
Government could readily identify the predators, or at least the
tribe to which they belonged. ^"^

Condemning the unsuccessful practice of coercion formerly pur-
sued by the War Department, Fillmore stressed the necessity of
kindness in dealing with the aborigines. If the Government would
undertake to feed and clothe them, they might be somewhat gently
led into the pathways and arts of civilization.^^" Once the dwin-
dling herds of buffalo were gone from the plains, the Indians must
adapt or starve, and without aid they would be unable to establish
themselves, "even as graziers". ^^^ The contemplated period of fifty

106. "Message from the President of the United States to the Two
Houses of Congress", Thirty-first Congress Executive Document No. 5,
Washington, printed for the House of Representatives, 1849, p. 13.

107. Ibid.,, p. 14.

108. Loc. cit.

109. Op. cit. "Message from the President of the United States to the
Two Houses of Congress", 1851, p. 290.

HO. The Congressional Globe (Appendix), Washington, John C. Rives,
1852, p. 10.

111. Op. cit. "Message from the President of the United States to the
Two Houses of Congress", 1851, p. 290.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 59

years (of annuity issues) probably would be sufficient to determine
the feasibility of civilizing the native nomads.

Congress responded with an appropriation of $100,000 for a
great conference to be held at the confluence of Horse Creek and
the North Platte River, in extreme western Nebraska, a few miles
southeast of Fort Laramie, Wyoming. ^^^ The amicable assembling
of the Indians — Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Assiniboines, Gros
Ventres, Arikaras and Crows — ten thousand of them, was due
largely to the dedicated work of Thomas Fitzpatrick, agent to the
Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahoes."^ The Crows made an overland
trek of some eight hundred miles to take part in the conference.

Though their habitat and territorial claims did not concern the
immediate purposes of the council, the Shoshones came in to
observe and learn. They had been invited so that they might wit-
ness the United States Government's fairness in dealing with the
redmen, and its solicitude for their welfare. The impression thus
created might prove salutary in case negotiations should be under-
taken with them in the future.

Except for one short interval of anxiety with the arrival of the
Shoshones — traditional enemies of the Sioux, Cheyennes and
Arapahoes — the tribes camped peaceably together during the eight-
een days of the conference. ^^^ On ground which had formerly wit-
nessed enmity, bloodshed and scalping among them, the peace pipe
passed freely from hand to hand and mouth to mouth. The con-
duct of the Indians earned the "admiration and surprise" of all
present. ^^^ Struck with the evidence of sincerity, trust and hope
shown by the Indians, D. D. Mitchell, one of the chief negotiators,
expressed the belief that nothing short of "bad management or
some untoward misfortune" could ever break this spirit.^^^

Father De Smet, whose years of missionary experience with In-
dians gave him a temporal as well as a spiritual interest in them,
was heartened by the obvious sincerity and benevolence displayed
by the delegates of the United States Government throughout the
meeting.^^^ They neglected nothing which would forward the
primary objectives of the conference: the cession by the Indians

112. The agreement which emerged from this conference is known as the
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.

113. The figure of ten thousand is the estimate of Father De Smet, an
interested observer at the meeting. See Hiram M. Chittenden and Alfred T.
Richardson (ed.), Life, Letters and Travels of Pierre-Jean De Smet, S. J.,
1801-1873, New York, F. P. Harper, 1905 (c 1904), v. 2, p. 674.

114. Op. cit. Hafen and Young, Fort Laramie and the Pageant of the
West, pp. 180-181. A French interpreter managed to pull a Sioux from his
horse in time to prevent an act of vengeance against a Shoshone who had
(formerly) killed his father.

115. Op. cit. "Message from the President of the United States to the
Two Houses of Congress", 1851, p. 288.

116. Ibid. p. 290.

60 ANNALS OF WYOMING

of a practical right of way across the plains, for which they would
receive equitable compensation; the cessation of depredations and
hostility toward the immigrants; just remuneration for past injuries
incurred by the red men at the hands of the whites; and the estab-
lishment of permanent peace between the tribes of the plains. To
minimize the possibility of misunderstanding the terms of the
treaty, these were read article by article, and painstakingly ex-
plained to the interpreters before their translation into the various
Indian languages.

Though far from pleased at the prospect of further myriads of
immigrants passing into and through their lands, the tribesmen
signified reasonable satisfaction with the treaty provisions and
looked hopefully forward to better days. The response of Cut
Nose, Northern Arapaho, has been selected as typifying feelings
commonly expressed at the conference. He said in part:

'"I will go home satisfied. I will sleep sound and not have to watch
my horses in the night, or be afraid for my squaws and children. We
have to live on these streams and in the hills, and I would be glad if
the whites would pick out a place for themselves and not come into
our grounds; but if they must pass through our country they should
give us game for what they drive off. . . ."HS

A new day, it seemed, had dawned in Indian-white relations, a
day presaging an era of tranquility and consideration. Peaceable
citizens could cross the plains unmolested, and the Indians would
have little to fear from the machinations of mischievous whites, for
they would receive the justice which was their due.^^^

Having implanted in the Indian mind the idea that peaceful
negotiations with the Federal Government could be fruitful, the
treaty planners did not intend that it should wither and die. Fur-
ther steps were needed to impress the prairie dwellers with the
power and numbers of the whites, and the great advantages of their
way of life. Therefore, with Father De Smet accompanying him as
far as St. Louis, Thomas Fitzpatrick escorted a delegation of im-
portant members of the plains tribes to Washington, D. C. Of
these, three were Arapahoes, Tempest representing the southern
bands, and Eagle Head and Friday from the northern groups.

Pleased with the opportunity to introduce the Indians to the
rewards of agricultural labor, Father De Smet led the group to St.
Mary's Roman Catholic Mission to the Pottawattomis in Kansas,

117. Op. cit. Chittenden and Richardson, Father De Smet, v. 2, pp.
675-676.

118. Op. cit. Hafen and Young, p. 190. Reprinted by permission of the
publishers, The Arthur H. Clark Company, from Fort Laramie and the
Pageant of the West, 1834-1890 by LeRoy R. Hafen and Francis Marion
Young.

119. Op. cit. Chittenden and Richardson, Father De Smet, v. 2, p. 684.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 61

where the bison hunters were deeply impressed by the great quan-
tities of tasty vegetables and fruits. Eagle Head was moved to ask
that "Blackgowns" be sent to his own people, so they, too, might
cultivate the land, and no longer feel the pangs of unsated hun-
gg]. 120 gut ijttjg (jj(j jjg realize that thirty years must pass before
the blackgowns would come to the Northern Arapahoes.

From Kansas City to St. Louis the party traveled by riverboat on
the muddy Missouri. Highly excited by the strange experience,
many of the delegates expressed their wonder at the steamboat,
and the numerous villages along the river's bank.^-^

In Washington, D. C., still under the guidance of Fitzpatrick,
the round of tours and receptions made it unlikely that the Indians
would ever forget the seat of the nation's Government. The most
notable occasion may have been their visit to President Fillmore in
the White House, in early January, 1852. Here they were pre-
sented with flags and silver medals. ^^2 j^^q (j^ys later, the Hun-
garian revolutionist, Louis Kossuth, also honored them with a re-
ception; and here too, each member of the delegation received a
special medal. ^^^

With each step so carefully planned and executed, the thought
that the Fort Laramie Treaty should fail to solve, or at least to
greatly alleviate the problems between the Indians of the plains and
the white intruders upon their lands seemed preposterous. Con-
ceived in good will and sincerity, designed and negotiated with
optimistic solicitude, received by the red men with faith and hope,
it appeared unlikely that any untoward sequence of events should
arise to prevent the attainment of its intentions. The hopeful
promise of a new era seemed, indeed, to be at hand.

[To be continued]

120. Ibid., p. 690.

121. Op. cit. Hagen and Ghent, Broken Hand, p. 247.

122. Ibid., pp. 249-250.

123. Loc. cit.

62 ANNALS OF WYOMING

TRAINS ON HARTVILLE SPUR

Regular trains are now running on the Hartville spur from Badg-
er, on the Cheyenne & Northern, to Porter, on the North Platte
River, which place is distant about four miles from the town of
Hartville. The road has been finished from Badger to Porter and is
said to be a fine piece of track. From Porter on to the Sunrise
mines, above Hartville, the grading is now almost finished. As
soon as the bridge across the Platte at Porter is finished the steel
gangs will rush work and the line should be completed to the mines
in a few weeks. A daily mail service has been established between
Badger and Hartville. Stages connect with the spur trains at Porter
daily.

— Wyoming Industrial Journal
February, 1900

A MODERN ESTABLISHMENT

Where a fine meal can be had for 25 cents, is at the Silver Moon
Restaurant on Seventeenth Street, Cheyenne, Wyo. The price,
which, of course, is very low, does not indicate that the meal is
cheap. On the contrary, everything the market affords is served.
The food is well cooked and as much pains taken in its preparation
as though it brought 75 cents or $1.00. The Silver Moon is an
innovation in the way of restaurants, being conducted in that man-
ner which always pleases the patrons.

In addition to its regular meals, Sunday dinners and short orders,
the Silver Moon prepares special spreads. An enviable reputation
is also being built up for its ices, ice cream, sherbet, etc., which are
furnished in almost any quantity for dancing parties, banquets and
private parties.

Don't overlook the Silver Moon when in need of a good meal.

— Wyoming Industrial Journal
February, 1900
Advertisement

Zhe Cast Sden

THE

DIARY OF ALICE MOORE

AT THE

XX RANCH

Edited by Austin L. Moore

INTRODUCTION

The Last Eden is a teen-aged girl's account of her life on a Wyo-
ming ranch in the summer of 1912. She describes her experiences
and reactions simply and freely, totally unaware that more than
fifty years later her record would be published. The reader, re-
gardless of his years, will feel a nostalgia for spacious meadows,
rocky, tree-clad mountains, unpolluted air, cold rushing water,
violent storms, wild animals and plants, and a harmonious famUy
life led close to nature.

The XX Ranch (Double X Ranch) occupies a tract of some
20,000 acres in the Laramie Mountains of southeastern Wyoming.
The altitude at the ranch buildings is 7,500 feet. The present
occupants of this domain are Chester Williams and his wife, Edith,
a herd of Black Angus cattle, and numerous deer, antelope, coy-
otes, porcupines, badgers, woodchucks, prairie dogs, chipmunks,
rabbits, eagles, hawks, lesser birds, and trout.

My family spent five summers in this paradise when I was a boy
—1906, 1907, 1909, 1912, and 1915. We were the beneficiaries
of the Wilhams family's goodwill. We paid nothing for being
hauled to and from the station, nothing for the privilege of camping,
and only nominal sums for the provisions we bought from them.
Their hospitality exceeded aU reasonable bounds and will be for-
ever remembered with gratitude by the Moore family.

WiUiam Richard Williams, the founder of the XX Ranch, was
bom into a farming family in Nova Scotia on October 3, 1 840. He
was the second child and the eldest son in a family of thirteen chil-
dren. "Dick," as he was called, left home in the spring of 1867
and traveled west by boat and train to St. Joseph, Missouri. There
he joined a wagon train and drove an ox-drawn freight wagon to
Denver. His compensation for this arduous and dangerous trip
was twenty dollars. He arrived in Denver ahead of the Union
Pacific Railroad which at that time reached only to Julesburg. The
future metropolis was a small settlement composed of log cabins
and a few false front stores.

Dick Williams first found employment on a ranch near Denver.

64 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Before long, he went to work in a sawmill near Virginia Dale,
Then he formed a partnership with W. H. and J. T, Holliday, and
in 1 868 the three men built a sawmill and log buildings for workers
on the site of the present XX Ranch buildings. In this operation
the HoUidays functioned as sawyers, and Williams did the logging.
The lumber was sold to the Union Pacific Railroad and to the
government for the construction of Fort D, A, Russell (now F. E,
Warren Air Force Base ) , In 1 87 1 , with the Dale Creek area about
"milled out," Dick Williams and W, H, HoUiday built another
sawmill on Box Elder Creek. They sold some of their lumber to
the residents of the rising town of Greeley, Colorado,

In 1872 Dick journeyed to his native Nova Scotia to marry
Margaret Keyes whom he had known since childhood. The wed-
ding took place in the Presbyterian church. He returned to Wyo-
ming with his beautiful, seventeen-year-old bride, one of his broth-
ers, and two of his sisters. The rail fare by chair car from Nova
Scotia to Sherman was one hundred dollars per person, and Dick
paid the expenses for the entire group. The journey lasted ten
days. The party stayed at the Nash Hotel in Sherman for a few
days, Dick and "Maggie" then took up temporary residence in a
log building near the sawmill on the Box Elder,

The partnership of Holliday and Williams was amicably ter-
minated in 1873 with Holliday keeping the sawmill and Dick the
cattle and wagons. In the same year Dick filed papers in Colorado
Territory for a 160-acre homestead on the site of the Dale Creek
sawmill, A survey made at a later date showed that the land was
in Wyoming and belonged to the Union Pacific Railroad. This
invalidated the contract, and Dick had to buy the land from the
railroad. He paid two dollars and fifty cents an acre at a time
when some of the land in the area was being offered at five cents
an acre.

Dick and Maggie moved from the Box Elder to Dale Creek in
1873. They occupied the old sawmill cookhouse until 1880, then
moved into the sturdy frame house which still stands on the ranch.
Their children numbered seven: Hattie, bom in 1874; Rachel,
1875; Arthur, 1880; Chester, 1881; Harry, 1884; SteUa, 1888; and
Earl, 1 890. All of the children were born at the ranch with only
a midwife in attendance.

Using the ranch as a base, Dick acquired more oxen and wagons
and went into the freight business. He hauled freight for the rail-
road and the government and built one of the largest and most
wide-ranging outfits in the territory. His buUwhackers drove team.s
composed of eighteen lead, swing, and wheel oxen with each team
pulling three wagons. A team and wagons together measured
forty yards in length. The load per steer was 1,000 pounds, and
the charge for hauling was one cent per mile. At the peak of the
freight business in 1878 and 1879, Dick owned some 400 working
cattle and often had caravans of fourteen teams on the road at one

THE LAST EDEN 65

time. Booming prosperity was short-lived. The severe winters of
1879-80 and 1880-81 killed most of his working cattle, and in
1881 he sold the business.

Turning to full-time ranching, Dick Williams fenced his land,
piped spring water into his house, and built corrals, bams, a black-
smith shop, and a bunkhouse for his hired men. He stocked the
ranch with Galloway and Aberdeen Angus beef cattle and also
raised saddle horses and Standardbred trotting horses. His proud,
chestnut sorrel stallion, Wyoming, gained fame as a studhorse and
sired many a spirited colt. To supplement his income he sold hay
and potatoes and, using a tread horse-powered threshing machine,
threshed grain for neighboring ranchers. Over the years he ac-
quired 12,000 acres of spectacularly beautiful land in Albany
county and a farm near Fort CoUins, Colorado. The rocky, tim-
bered mountains of the Dale Creek property were interspersed with
mountain pastures and fertile valleys. The creek provided water
for irrigation of the native hay in the meadows.

Dick and Maggie helped relatives and friends in Nova Scotia to
migrate to Wyoming and assisted them and other new settlers by
lending tools, giving feed for livestock, and aiding in building
houses and barns. The ranch became a social center on occasion.
On the Fourth of July from 200 to 500 friends, some driving all the
way from Cheyenne and Laramie, assembled for cow pony racing,
harness racing, and dancing which sometimes lasted from early
evening until dawn.

Dick Williams died in 1906. Then, his daughter, Rachel, with
the help of the family, successfully managed the business. In 1928
the XX was incorporated as The Williams Land and Livestock
Company. The original stockholders were Maggie, the wife of the
founder, Stella (Williams) Gunnison, and Rachel, Chester, and
Earl Williams. One of the first acts of the company was to sell the
farm at Fort Collins for $33,000 and invest the proceeds in more
land in the Dale Creek area.

Rachel Williams died in 1934, and after a two-year interval
Chester Williams became president and manager of the company.
In 1951 his son-in-law, Forrest S. Blunk, an attorney at law, and
his wife, Edith Margaret, became involved in the management.
They now own the cattle and recently have constructed new build-
ings and windmills. Most of the shares of the company are owned
by Chester Williams and his wife, Edith, with the Blunks holding a
minority interest. The XX is probably the oldest ranch in Wyo-
ming to have remained in the same family from its inception.

The foregoing information has been drawn largely from Laura
Briggs' "WiUiam Richard WilHams," 1939, and Edith Blunk's "The
XX Ranch," 1959. Both manuscripts are in the Wyoming State
Archives and Historical Department, Cheyenne, Mrs. Blunk re-
viewed the manuscript and provided additional details in the spring
of 1967.

66 ANNALS OF WYOMING

The Moore family of this narrative included Frank and Coral
Moore and their children, Alice, aged fifteen; Austin, eleven; and
Roger, two. Frank Moore in 1912 was in his eighth and last year
as pastor of the First Congregational Church, Cheyenne. His early
experiences in Wyoming are related in Souls and Saddlebags, the
Diaries and Correspondence of Frank L. Moore, 1888-1896, edited
by Austin Moore.

In editing Alice Moore's diary, prime consideration has been
given to readability and tempo. Consequently, some repetitious
passages have been omitted and some sentences and paragraphs
have been rearranged and re-grouped. To complete the record, a
few details drawn from Alice Moore Sawyer's recent letters, Frank
Moore's diary, and the editor's memories have been incorporated.
Punctuation has been standardized, and the correct spelling has
been given to the very few misspelled words. The quotation from
Wordsworth on the first page of the diary was inserted by the
editor.

Austin Leigh Moore
East Lansing, Michigan
February, 1969

THE DIARY

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!

William Wordsworth

Cheyenne, Wyoming
Tuesday, June 25, 1912

We are anticipating and longing for our vacation on Williams'
Ranch. Every day we recall our past experiences there. We have
such beautiful memories.

Cheyenne, Wyoming
Friday, July 12, 1912

I packed, and Austin and I went to the church to get books to
take with us to camp. Mama packed too, and most everything is
ready. We have a big box for a bed for Roger. The groceries
came and we packed them in the grub boxes.

Cheyenne, Wyoming
Monday, July 15, 1912

The long-looked-for, longed-for, hoped-for day has come at last.
Such a day — cold, cloudy, and disagreeable, but at 10:30 the sun
came out, and big, white clouds floated in the blue sky.

I worked in the garden finishing it entirely, fixed up my room,
packed, and wrote my diary. Then I got dressed in my blue wash
dress and white hat.

At 11 : 45 we started for the train. Mama and Papa each carried

THE LAST EDEN 67

a basket and a satchel. I wheeled Roger in his sulky, and Austin
carried fish poles, his gun, and his lasso rope. As usual, we looked
funny.

The train started at 12:20, and soon we were buzzing through
the outskirts of Cheyenne. Roger was terribly excited and kept
saying, "Go on ne engine" and "Go on ne cars." To calm him we
went to the diner right away. We had an omelet which we divided,
beets, meat, and bread. Austin had ice cream, and Mama and
Papa and I had pieplant pie. Oh, that pie! It was so sickish. To
take away the taste. Mama and Papa ordered ice cream which was
just as sweet. Ugh! Austin and I had cocoa with our dessert.

Back in the coach I got out my mail sack of candy and ate it
while enjoying the scenery between Otto and Buford. Sherman at
last! We got off the train safely, but our tents, grub boxes, and
tool chest nearly didn't. Papa had to stop the train to get them off.

Chester Williams, who lives near Sherman, and a man called
Blackie (his name was Percy Cota) were waiting for us at the
station. They loaded our baggage on the lumber wagon which
Blackie drove. We rode in a buggy with Chester Williams. On the
six mile trip to the XX Ranch we saw Cap Rock, Bald Mountain,
and the snowy peaks of the Colorado Rockies. The roads are bad
in some places, and it was a slow trip. Near the ranch we saw our
beloved Eagle's Nest Rock, Pine Ridge, and the mountain we
named for me. The ranch house came into view and opposite it the
point of rocks where we camped in 1906 and 1907. The sagebrush
smelled so good.

At the ranch we were welcomed by Miss Rachel Williams and
Miss Jennie Keyes. Then Austin and I took Roger to see the
blacksmith shop, the horse and cow barns, the woodpile, and the
junk heap in the gulch. We looked at some black cattle in the
corral, and then with old Ragtime, the collie dog, went to see the
pigs. Roger liked them best of all.

Blackie finally arrived with our baggage. Mama and I left our
hats at the ranch to keep them nice. Then we all got on the lumber
wagon and rode a mile and a half to our camp ground. We drove
along Dale Creek through a rocky little canyon, then down to the
foot of the Lower Meadow. Redwing blackbirds sang in the wil-
lows by Dale Creek, and nighthawks swooped through the air
catching insects. The men dumped our baggage at the foot of
Home Mountain where we camped in 1909 and drove home. We
are camping again. How happy we are!

We decided to pitch camp on high ground under some pine trees.
At our backs is Home Mountain, and looking west, we see Coyote
Hill, Sunset Cliff, Pine Ridge, and Dale Creek winding like a snake
through the meadow. North of us is Bear Mountain and, to the
south, Indian Mountain, and a wild canyon which runs all the way
to Colorado.

Austin and I helped Papa pitch the big khaki tent, the tepee tent

68 ANNALS OF WYOMING

where he and Austin wiil sleep, and the tent for Mama, Roger, and
me. For supper we had sandwiches, potato chips, hard-boiled
eggs, cherries, and coffee made in our new coffeepot. After supper
Mama and Papa unrolled the tarpauhns and made the beds. The
mosquitoes are quite bad, but the deerflies are worse.

Those beds! We slept on the ground covered only by a tar-
paulin and a few blankets, and I was sore in about fifteen minutes.
The ground felt like mountains with pins and rocks on them. We
managed to get to sleep, but when Mama and I woke up, we were
nearly frozen.

The XX Ranch, Wyoming
Tuesday, July 16, 1912

Yes, Mama and I were really cold when we got up. We dressed
quickly and were soon quite warm. Breakfast, consisting of our
usual Shredded Wheat, was served on a box. While we ate, the
redwing blackbirds in the willows by the creek outdid themselves
whistling and singing.

After breakfast Austin and I walked to the ranch for milk. On
the way we saw a rabbit and many kinds of wild flowers. While we
were gone, Papa put up the dining room tent, trenched the tents,
and started building a dining room table from rough boards. Later
we pitched the commissary tent and moved the grub boxes into it.
After that we all cut spruce boughs and made deep mattresses for
our beds.

In the afternoon I read Girls New and Old. Pretty good. Then
Papa, Austin, and I went fishing downstream. I got lots of mos-
quito and deerfly bites and no fish. Papa and Austin each caught
two speckled trout. They cleaned them and Mama fried them in
commeal and salt for supper.

There is a beautiful golden new moon tonight, and the stars are
bright. Getting ready for bed, I found three woodticks on me.
Mama held a lighted match to their tails which made them draw
their beaks out of my skin.

The XX Ranch
Wednesday, July 17, 1912

Austin and I got milk at the ranch. When we got back, we
swung in the hammock which Papa has hitched between two pine
trees. We pitched horseshoes awhile. Then Austin and Papa went
fishing and caught six. Later we walked a quarter of a mile to
Aspen Spring where we get our drinking water. It was overgrown
with grass, so Papa dug it out. When the dirt settles, we will be
able to dip cold water from it with a pail. Near the spring we cut
poles for Austin's army "dog" tent.

Toward evening we walked around the base of Home Mountain
hoping to see animals, but saw none. It was cold, and heavy fog
settled on the tops of the mountams. Insects didn't bother us

THE LAST EDEN 69

because of the cold. When we returned to camp, we built a fire of
pitch pine logs in the middle of our half circle of tents, warmed
ourselves, and sang "Juanita," "Annie Laurie," "Old Black Joe,"
"Tenting Tonight," and other favorite songs. To bed at nine in
the "booing" cold, but our pine bough beds were fragrant and
warm.

The XX Ranch
Thursday, July 18, 1912

Papa's birthday — cold, raw, damp. Dew was so heavy on the
flowers and grass that walking just a short way wet our shoes
dreadfully. Fog hanging heavy on the mountaintops gradually
settled over the entire meadow. At 4 p.m. we could see only the
nearest bushes by the creek.

Austin and I played Authors most of the morning. We built a
big fire and had dinner around it, including a birthday cake for
Papa. After that, I took Austin's microscope and looked at grass,
flowers, sagebrush, and dewdrops. That little microscope revealed
beauties unknown and unseen to the naked eye. I got Papa's field
glasses and watched birds and chipmunks. Those chips! They are
so tame. If I sit still long enough, they will come for the food I
put down for them. I call a fat, quite tame chipmunk, "Grandpa."
He chases other chipmunks away when they come for food.

After supper we sat on campstools by the fire, and Mama read
aloud The Last Days of Pompeii by Bulwer Lytton. We are just
getting into it, but it is quite interesting even now.

The XX Ranch
Friday, July 19, 1912

When I woke up, the fog was gone and the sun was shining beau-
tifully. I asked Roger to say "Old Mother Hubbard" and "The
House that Jack Built." I asked him several times, and each time
he said, "No." Finally, to make me stop bothering him, he said
"I tired."

Papa and I went fishing upstream toward the ranch. He caught
a fifteen-inch rainbow trout. I caught nothing, but succeeded in
getting my feet soaked through. Austin, Papa, and I pitched horse-
shoes when we got back. After that, Austin practiced lassoing and
I embroidered.

Papa showed me where a prairie dog lives, and I stayed near his
hole to watch him. When first he saw me, he stood stock still right
where he was. I didn't move, and he began to eat again. I moved
closer. He was yellowish brown, tall and slim, with a long taU,
small forefeet, little brown eyes, small ears, and a twitching nose.
As soon as I got close enough for him to think there was danger, he
gave a little piercing cry and darted into his hole. The hole was
set in the middle of a mound of dirt and slanted into the ground.

70 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Another prairie dog looked at me over a stone and, making the
same piercing cry, ran for the hole and dived in.

Returning to camp, I saw a baby rabbit, four or five chipmunks,
and some wrens. In the willows the blackbirds constantly sang
their one beautiful song.

Before supper I got in the hammock and read Girls New and Old
by L. T, Meade. I read it again after supper. Just fascinating.
To bed early.

The XX Ranch
Saturday, July 20, 1912

Beautiful day. If it weren't for the wind, it would be suffocating.

Papa went for the milk. Since I could do nothing to help, I
finished Girls New and Old. Austin finished The Riflemen of the
Ohio and has started The Border Watch, both by Altsheler.

After dinner I looked through the microscope and saw many
strange and interesting things. I looked at a mosquito and at the
wings and eye of a deerfly. I got some flowers, grasses, and cactus
spikes and looked at them too. The chipmunks came to see me,
and I took six pictures of them within six feet and hope that at least
one or two are good.

We read The Last Days of Pompeii by the campfire until dark.
Then we walked away from the fire with Papa, and he showed us
some constellations. It was very clear, and we saw many shooting
stars.

The XX Ranch
Sunday, July 21, 1912

Cold in the morning, but so hot in the afternoon that Roger took
his nap under a tree. At 4:00 when we woke up, we all climbed
Home Mountain taking supper with us. It was a hard climb over
big granite boulders and fallen spruce and pine trees. The air was
fragrant and delicious, and the wind sighed through the pine trees.
At the summit we saw the distant range and intervening mountains
and valleys.

It being Sunday, Papa read us the story of Joseph from the Bible
and we sang "Rock of Ages" and "Lord of All Being." When we
were saying the blessing before eating, Roger kept saying as loudly
as he could, "Bess a Lord, Bess a Lord." For supper we had Van
Camp's pork and beans warmed over the fire, triscuits, pickles,
cookies, and oranges. On the way down the mountain we saw a
beautiful thunderhead over Sunset Cliff. When we neared camp all
of us gathered wood. We tried to select pitch pine logs and knots
because they bum best.

I read Joe's Luck by Horatio Alger and finished it. Now I am
reading Jean's Opportunity, but don't like it very well so far. By
the way. Papa and Austin saw deer tracks this morning at our
spring.

THE LAST EDEN 71

The XX Ranch
Monday, July 22, 1912

It was nice when we got up, but it soon clouded over. Before
dinner it rained some and in the p.m. there were several showers.
Mama didn't feel well so Austin and I took turns taking care of
Roger. He gets into mischief an awful lot.

Between showers Papa and Austin pitched the dog tent and
hoisted a little American flag on it. Austin put his gun, bullets,
slingshot, and canteen in it. I helped Papa hang our big American
flag between two trees, and now we are about settled.

After supper it was so damp that we retreated to the khaki tent
and read The Last Days of Pompeii by the light of our lamp and the
campfire.

The XX Ranch
Tuesday, July 23, 1912

To the ranch this morning with Papa, Austin, and Roger. Mama
did the washing while we were gone. After dinner Papa read ''The
Last Lays of Pompeii. We are getting pretty excited about it.

At 3 p.m. Papa, Austin and I started downstream through the
big canyon. Papa took his fish pole and caught eight. I took my
camera, and Austin took his Stevens 22 rifle. He shot at a rabbit,
but only grazed him.

We intended a short trip, but ended by going all the way to the
place where Dale Creek and Hay Creek unite. At the deepest part
of the canyon granite walls towered straight up on either side of us.
We had to cross the creek twice. There were lots of flowers, rasp-
berry bushes, and strawberry vines. We saw a beautiful kingfisher
and a pine tree about seventy-five feet high. The deerflies and
mosquitoes were awful. At the juncture of Dale and Hay creeks
were many deer tracks.

To escape the insects, we returned over the mountains. It was
very clear, and we had a grand view of the range from Long's Peak
north. On the last lap we came down the old Indian trail on Indian
Mountain. Camp at last, and Mama had supper ready. We
weren't too tired to read The Last Days of Pompeii until 9:15.
In the night I heard coyotes yelping.

The XX Ranch
Wednesday, July 24, 1912

Papa went to Aspen Spring for water and on the way shot a
rabbit. Austin and Papa tiien went for the milk. They climbed up
on some flat rocks, and there it was that Austin saw a rabbit and
shot him dead! I took a couple of pictures of Austin with the
rabbit in front of his cherished dog tent. He was so pleased and I
was, too, because he has wanted to get one so badly.

72 ANNALS OF WYOMING

I embroidered some on my slipper bag and nearly finished it.
Then I wrote letters and my diary. Chester Williams called and
brought the mail. He is our first visitor in the nine days we have
been here.

A beautiful sunset! Papa taught us to tip our heads to the side
to bring out the colors more vividly. We read The Last Days of
Pompeii by firelight and lamplight.

The XX Ranch
Thursday, July 25, 1912

A month ago we were longing for, talking about, wishing for
camp. Now it is actually here, and I can't realize it.

We see few people, but have many friends here. I know a three-
foot-long water snake, chipmunks, prairie dogs, and rabbits. My
bird friends are redwing blackbirds, rock wrens, a hummingbird,
magpies, hawks, kingfishers, and robins. Last night I went to the
commissary tent to get The Last Days of Pompeii. I heard a noise
in the grub box. I opened the box expecting to see a field mouse.
Instead a mountain rat many times the size of a mouse jumped out.

Austin and Papa, returning with the milk, saw a badger very near
our camp. We all went to look at him through the field glasses.
He has stripes on his sides and a pointed face. After lunch Austin
went badger hunting. He lay under a pine tree near where Papa
found the hummingbird's nest the last time we camped here. He
waited about two hours, and when the badger finally came out of
his hole, he fired two shots and missed.

We had camp soup tonight in the kettle which we hang over the
fire from the tripod. Papa made it from two quarts of water, a cup
of cornmeal, and some salt. Yum! Yum! More of The Last Days
of Pompeii by firelight.

The XX Ranch
Friday, July 26, 1912

I took Roger to the ranch this morning. At the horse barn he
saw a horse eating hay and said: "Horse eat Shredded Wheat."
A little later, he asked to see the lady. The lady, Miss Keyes, gave
him some cookies, and that is probably the reason that he wanted
to see her. (Jennie Keyes was the only sister of Margaret Wilhams,
the wife of W. R. Wilhams who founded the ranch.)

After a dinner of pancakes and bacon, I embroidered and wrote
my diary. Austin went back to his hideout by the badger hole. He
waited patiently, but the badger didn't come out and has probably
moved to a safer place.

It rained quite hard after supper. Papa read The Last Days of
Pompeii to us in the khaki tent and nearly finished it. Mama did
my hair up in my new hairpin curlers.

. * J*v*

*%»»*

«#

**'***^»%*»

James C. Murphy
SUN DANCE FIELD, WIND RIVER RESERVATION, 1939

o ;, ::itfm»Mi^C'^'^-XtW^

James C. Miirfliy
SHELTER USED DURING SUN DANCE, WIND RIVER RESERVATION. 1939

4 Issj'i.

James C. Mm ph\

CLEONE AND WILLIAM CALLING THUNDER, NORTHERN ARAPAHOES,
WIND RIVER RESERVATION, 1939

Austin L. Moore

THE WILLIAMS' XX RANCH, DALE CREEK, 1912

Austin L. Moore

THE DALE CREEK CAMP OF THE MOORE FAMILY,
LOOKING TOWARD SUNSET CLIFF, 1915

Austin L. Moore
AUSTIN AND ALICE MOORE, DALE CREEK CAMP, 1909

Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department

WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OFFICERS, 1968-1969
Left to right, Mrs. Hattie Burnstad, Worland, 1st Vice President; J. Reuel Armstrong, Rawlins,
2nd Vice President; Miss Maurine Carley, Cheyenne, Secretary-Treasurer; Curtiss Root, Tor-

rington, President.

i \

2 3 4 t

Stimson Photo Collection

Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department

TYPICAL FISH FOSSIL FROM FOSSIL SYNCLINE LAKE

THE LAST EDEN 73

The XX Ranch
Saturday, July 27, 1912

Cloudy but warm. I took Roger to meet Papa and Austin who
were returning from the ranch. The goldenrod is blossoming and
I gathered a great bunch of it. When we got back to camp, I
arranged the bouquet and embroidered my butterfly centerpiece.

In the afternoon heavy, lowering clouds gathered in the east and
moved toward us. Thunder rolled, and soon heavy drops started to
fall. We just made it to the khaki tent. Soon it was raining vio-
lently. Sheets of water fell, and only dim outlines of the mountains
were visible.

An hour after the storm the sun came out. Austin, Roger, and I
walked to the creek and found that it had risen quite high. To
please Roger, we yelled to hear our echoes.

Mama and Papa made doughnuts tonight, and we had some for
supper. We finished all except the last chapter of The Last Days
of Pompeii. At 8 o'clock we heard a coyote barking.

The XX Ranch
Sunday, July 28, 1912

Beautiful day, no clouds, quite warm.

Papa and I went for the milk by a new route. We started at
8 a.m. and got back at 10:15. We took the wagon trail east which
bends across the mountains north. In one place larkspur makes a
beautiful purple carpet. When we climbed high, we had a fine view
of the rugged, forested mountains.

We came to a district schoolhouse used by the children of the
ranchers. It is made of logs chinked with mortar and has four
windows. The door isn't locked, so we walked in. There are six
or eight rude benches each long enough to seat three pupils. In a
corner is the teacher's desk and on the back wall hangs a map of
the United States. A little stove stands near the back of the room.
Outside is a big wood pile and a spring.

Leaving the schoolhouse, we followed the path back of Pine
Ridge until we struck a trail which led us to our first camp site
opposite the ranch. It was good to be back on familiar ground.
An old box, several poles, and a bread can are still there.

At the ranch we got mUk, butter, and bread. Returning over our
usual route through the canyon and meadow, we saw deer tracks
made in the road since the storm. When we got back, I took care
of Roger and wrote my diary while Mama rested. I have started
The Virginian by Owen Wister, and Austin is reading Pete Cow-
puncher.

Toward night Papa, Austin, and I hiked up Indian Mountain on
the old Indian trail. The footing was uncertain because of the
steepness and the loose gravel which has washed down. We got
nearly to the top. Coming home we went back of Indian Mountain

74 ANNALS OF WYOMING

and down over Home Mountain. As we descended, the sunset was
a gorgeous gold, copper, and pink.

We finished The Last Days of Pompeii. It was a thrilling story.
Glaucus and lone finally escaped, thank goodness. But poor,
blind Nydia! She was so good and didn't deserve to die.

The XX Ranch
Monday, July 29, 1912

Coming home from our walk on Indian Mountain yesterday, we
decided that we must climb Pine Ridge, so this morning we packed
up and started. After an exhausting ascent we reached the top.
Such a grand view of the range! We saw Bear Mountain, Cap
Rock, Long's Peak and, nearer at hand. Twin Mountain and Table
Mountain.

Dinner was awfully good, especially for hungry people. We had
cold beans, pickles, onions, bread and butter, vanilla wafers, and
pineapple. When Papa was eating a combination of a vanilla
wafer and an onion. Mama said to him, "How does it taste?" Papa
replied, "It tastes just like — a skunk."

After dinner Roger took his nap under a canopy. While he
slept, Papa started Uarda, a story about ancient Egypt written by
G. M. Ebers. Then I read some of Alice in Wonderland to Austin.

Our route home took us to the ranch. The mail was there and
in it our beloved St. Nicholas Magazine. I looked and found that
I am on the role of honor for my picture of Austin shooting his rifle
at Boulder last summer. The competition was called, "Through
Fields and Lanes."

The weather looked threatening so we left for camp. Austin
and I hurried on ahead to get started reading St. Nicholas.

The XX Ranch
Tuesday, July 30, 1912

When the sun rose it was clear, but a little later the sky clouded
over. The a.m. passed uneventfully. Not so the p.m.

After dinner very heavy clouds gathered in the west. Some
were deep blue, and in one place they were black as night. Expect-
ing heavy rain, we tightened the tent pegs. In a very few minutes
the storm arrived. Austin and I were in the commissary tent,
Mama was in the khaki tent, and Papa and Roger were in the
sleeping tent.

I was reading "The Young Shield Bearer" from St. Nicholas to
Austin when the deluge started. Soon we couldn't hear ourselves
talk. The wind began to blow, and blow it did. We moved the
books and Roger's sulky. Water flowed in and, except for the
trenches which Papa dug, the tent would have been flooded. Some
water came in anyway. Austin and I stood on boxes to keep our
feet dry. I held on to the tent pole with all my might to keep the
tent from blowing down.

THE LAST EDEN 75

The sleeping tent with Papa and Roger in it aknost blew down.
The fly came off, and Papa had to hold the tent pole as tight as he
could.

The wind and rain accompanied by hail, thunder, and lightning
lasted about twenty minutes. When the storm abated, we went out
and were astonished at the changes which had taken place. Down
Pine Ridge came a veritable river, rushing, dashing, tumbling to
the creek with a thundering noise. Near us running through the
hay in the meadow was another river. But Dale Creek! It had
risen three or four feet and was about to overflow its banks.

The rain stopped. After awhile a man sent by Rachel Williams
came in a wagon to take us to the ranch for the night. Papa said
he thought we could get along all right, so we didn't accept. Austin
and I climbed a Httle hill north and saw a stream rushing down
from Aspen Spring. The water was very muddy.

Soon the storm moved east, and the sun came out. Then it
clouded over again and looked threatening. Our beds were damp
and Roger's bed was wet, so we decided to go to the ranch after all.

After supper we started. As usual we were a funny-looking
outfit. At the ranch Rachel Williams and Miss Keyes told us about
the storm there. We stayed up until 9:00. Papa and Austin slept
in the front room upstairs and Mama, Roger, and I in the back
room.

The XX Ranch
Wednesday, July 31, 1912

Up at six. We didn't intend to stay at the ranch for breakfast,
but they wanted us to so we did. They served us meat, potatoes,
biscuits, jelly, cookies, and coffee. Going back to camp, we carried
water as well as milk because our spring is filled with mud.

Everything was all right at camp. We began to dry our bed-
ding. It was difficult because every now and then it sprinkled a
little.

At noon heavy clouds gathered in the northwest, and then it
started to rain again. It poured as hard as yesterday. Fortunately,
there was no strong wind. Great was our astonishment when look-
ing out we saw a flood. Streams wider than yesterday's were pour-
ing down the gulches. Dale Creek, forty feet wide in some places,
was sweeping helter-skelter over the meadow.

Our beds were damp, but not wet, so we decided not to go to the
ranch. After supper Mama melted some brown sugar for us. It
was awfully good. Then we read Uarda. Not very interesting yet.
By nightfall die flood had receded within the banks of the creek.

The XX Ranch
Thursday, August 1, 1912

We got up at 5 : 30 a.m. in a fog that hung heavily over the moun-
tains. By about 10 the mist lifted and the sun shone brightly.

76 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Austin, Papa, and I went to the ranch to see the effects of the
flood. The bridges aren't washed out, but the water has swept over
them. Much of the hay in the meadow is flattened, and there is lots
of debris on it. Rachel Williams was churning butter when we
arrived. We waited for her to finish so we could take some back
with us.

About 4 p.m. Papa and I went downstream to the big canyon in
search of flowers for me to press. We got Mariposa lilies, blue-
bells, Indian paintbrush, baby's breath, flax, horsemint, white
daisies, larkspur, cranesbill, black-eyed Susans, and goldenrod.
While we were pressing the flowers, Austin shot a good-sized
prairie dog. We cleaned him and tacked his hide to a board to dry.

Beautiful sunset tonight. The clouds over Sunset Cliff were a
wide band of pure gold. After supper Papa told us the story of
how he shot a deer when he and Mama were living in the Big
Horn Basin.

The XX Ranch
Friday, August 2, 1912

Austin and I went to the ranch by the long Pine Ridge route.
We found that the torrent has deposited a bed of fine gravel in
Aspen Spring and carried large rocks down the slope. Near the
spring are lots of nearly ripe strawberries. We continued on around
Bear Mountain and came to the little schoolhouse. There I took
pictures.

Following the trail, we came to Bone Valley where there are
many skeletons of cattle and horses. Mama hates the place and
doesn't want us to go near it. We went close anyway and saw lots
of big ribs, skulls, and teeth. The bones have been picked clean
by coyotes and hawks and are very white.

We came next to the place where Austin fell into a bed of cactus
the first time we camped here. I'll never forget how he howled
when Papa pulled out the spikes. Nearby at Gooseberry Spring
we picked half a pail of gooseberries and currants. We got the
milk at the ranch and returned to camp by our usual route. On the
way 1 picked more flowers to press. The mosquitoes and deerflies
bothered us some, but aren't half as bad as they were.

After dinner I made a butterfly net for Austin. He is going to
catch butterflies and bugs for his cabinet collection.

Austin and I looked over the gooseberries, and Mama made a
pie and baked it in the Dutch oven. I read The Virginian and
Austin started The Horseman of the Plains by Altsheller. I had a
headache and went to bed early.

The XX Ranch
Saturday, August 3, 1912

Another beautiful day. Austin and I went for the milk. We
took the butterfly net and caught eight or nine butterflies and saw

THE LAST EDEN 77

lots of Others. Austin caught seven bees, a dragonfly, beetles, and
other bugs. He is keeping the bugs in his dog tent and will put
them in his cabinet when we go home.

After dinner I stayed in camp writing my diary and copying one-
third of my Boulder diary. Everyone else went to the spring to
pick strawberries. They returned after awhile with great tales.
Papa found three Indian arrowheads and Austin some pieces of
flint, all apparently uncovered by the cloudburst. Austin caught
quite a number of butterflies, including a red one. Mama picked a
quarter of a lard pail of strawberries.

We sang and talked around the campfire at night while the fog
settled low on the mountains and sheet lightning played on the
horizon.

The XX Ranch
Sunday, August 4, 1912

The fog was gone when we woke up, and there was not a cloud
in the sky all day long.

Miss Keyes, Rachel Williams, and Ragtime paid us a visit in the
afternoon. I have been wearing my old, thick, blue dress with
plaid trimmings all summer, but I changed into my thin dress when
I saw them coming. We visited and then walked to the big canyon
and back gathering flowers. We had a fine supper, one of the best
things being graham bread baked in the Dutch oven. Our guests
left right after supper.

We had our Sunday around the campfire. There were so many
bright stars. They looked so near and seemed more numerous than
ever before. Papa is teaching us to recognize the Little Bear, the
Big Bear, Venus, Jupiter, Vega, Arcturus, Hercules, Cassiopeia,
Dragon, Lyre, and Herdsman.

The XX Ranch

Monday, August 5, 1912

The time of our talked of, looked for, longed for vacation is
growing short. Is it possible that school will begin in a month?

Perfectly beautiful day, not a cloud, and warm. I got up at 5 : 30
and helped Papa get things on for breakfast. Austin and I went for
the milk. His ambition now is to be a rancher. Mama did the
washing while we were gone. After a fine dinner I wrote my diary,
embroidered, and continued copying my Boulder diary.

Papa and Austin went fishing and caught six in about half an
hour. We had them for supper. Uarda by firelight, and we are
beginning to find it interesting.

Cold when we went to bed. My bed has not been terribly com-
fortable, but I fix myself in the valleys and mountains of the spruce
boughs and can sleep all right.

78 ANNALS OF WYOMING

The XX Ranch
Tuesday, August 6, 1912

Still cold when we got up. After a good breakfast of bacon and
toast, Austin and I went to the ranch for milk and bread. I picked
flax to press, and Austin found some bird feathers for his cabinet.
We hunted for arrowheads, but found none. When we got back to
camp, we shot at a target and Papa got the best score.

After dinner I embroidered and copied all but thirty pages of my
Boulder diary. Papa and Austin hiked up Indian Mountain and
down the big canyon. They saw two hawks and the tracks of a
large elk and a coyote. They hunted for arrowheads coming back.

Papa says that all of the country around here was once a hunting
ground for Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux Indians. On various
searches he has found five arrowheads and Austin one. I found a
flint stone peculiar in its shape which was probably an Indian
skinning knife. I gave it to Austin, and it made him happy all right.

Before supper Papa fished near camp and caught six. While
fishing, he saw something swimming with a broad back and wide
tail. It was a beaver. There is a beaver dam about 100 yards from
our camp and near it some quaking aspens that the beavers have
gnawed down. The dam is made of many sticks and has created a
deep, blue pool above it. Beavers are very shy. Papa says, and this
is the first wild beaver he has ever seen.

The XX Ranch
Wednesday, August 7, 1912

Kind of cloudy and cold, but not disagreeable. Mama didn't
feel weU so she stayed in bed until 7:30. I dressed Roger, got
water from the creek, did the dishes, and hung our damp clothes
out to dry. Mama sat by the campfire all morning, and I sewed.
Austin and Papa pitched horseshoes and played chess.

After dinner I watched the chipmunks. Weensy, the smallest
one, has queer stripes and a tail as long as himself which he flour-
ishes proudly. He squeaks the loudest of any of the chipmunks.
Grandpa is fattest and biggest and thinks he is the boss of the
mountain. He chases other chipmunks without gaining a thing but
satisfaction. He is like lots of human beings, I guess.

The woodticks are about gone. I have had six, the most of any
of us this year. Mama has had two, and Austin, Roger, and Papa
none. Mama and Papa decided to put our bed up on the cots
because the mice have been bothering Mama. So after Roger
woke up, they did it.

After supper Papa built a crackhng fire in front of the commis-
sary tent and read Uarda. We roasted potatoes in the coals. They
were baked to a turn, and we each had two with butter and salt. I
nearly froze going to bed, but slept just fine.

Sometimes when I think that we must go home, it almost over-
whelms me. I think about 999 times a day, "I just can't go."

THE LAST EDEN 79

The XX Ranch
Thursday, August 8, 1912

Foggy and damp when we got up, but the fog soon lifted. Austm
and I ran races on the rocks to get warm. Then all of us, except
Mama, went to the ranch.

There we were struck by a thunderbolt from a clear sky. Papa
got a letter saying that he has to be in Cheyenne by Saturday. This
cuts four whole days from our vacation. Austin got the news from
Papa and when he told me, I couldn't believe it. But he was so
much in earnest that I had to. We have so many things planned.
Now all is ruined, just like a torn cobweb. There is one good thing.
We are all well, rested, and in good condition.

We ate dinner just as soon as we got back. Austin took down
his dog tent and Mama and Papa packed, not to go to camp, but to
leave it! As each tent comes down it makes things look bare and
leaves me with an awful feeling. Oh, how it looks! It seems even
now that our camp just can't be broken. I wish it was a bad dream,
but it is all too true.

Papa and Austin fished before supper and caught ten. We ate
on our table without a tablecloth. Our little pet rabbit came
around while we were eating, and I got a couple of pictures of htm.
We saw "Grandpa" and "Weensy" for the last time.

After supper Austin and I burned the pine boughs we have used
for our mattresses. The smoke blew way down the vaUey. We put
on logs and sat by the campfire. Venus and the Milky Way came
out, and the mountains were inky black against dark sky.

Finally we gathered up our duds and started for the ranch. We
had an awful lot to carry and, it being dark, we had a kind of a
hard time of it. At last we got there. During the night a heavy
frost fell.

Cheyenne, Wyommg
Friday, August 9, 1912

Roger went to bed at 9:00 last night and got up at 5:00 this
morning. So we all got up at 5:00. The later he goes to bed, the
earlier he gets up. We were all pretty tired, but managed to get
down to breakfast. Rachel Williams baked biscuits and we had
them and our last fish.

After breakfast I put up my hair around my head and got dressed
in my blue dress, slippers, and white hat. Earl Williams came with
the wagon, and Austin and I rode with him to the dear old camp to
pick up the heavy baggage. Austin and I walked back, taking last
looks at Pine Ridge, Coyote Hill, Alice's Mountain, Austin's Moun-
tain, Sunset Cliff, and Eagle's Rock. The flowers and hay in the
meadow smelled so sweet. At the ranch we said farewell to the
big and Uttle pigs, old Ragtime, and to Aunt Jennie and Rachel

80 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Williams, in fact, to the ranch. Aunt Jennie gave us a lot of cook-
ies when we left.

Going to Sherman, Papa rode with Chester and the baggage, and
the rest of us rode with Earl in the buggy. The road was very bad,
and the horses had a hard pull. We got to the station an hour and
ten minutes before train time.

While we waited, several freight trains chugged up the long
slope and rumbled past, so Roger had a fine time. Papa put two
pins on the rail and after a freight train ran over them we had a
pair of scissors. Papa had, of course, crossed the pins. I took
Roger to the telegraph office where a man was clickety clacking a
message on the telegraph keys. Before the train came, we had
dinner on a table behind the station.

The train came, and we all piled into a car that had red plush
seats. Mama bought Austin and me a package of Cracker Jack.
It was awfully good. At Granite Canyon I was looking through
the field glasses when Mama said, "Look through them to the end
of the car." I did, and there stood May. [Clouser] Of course we
sat together and had a fine time.

We got to Cheyenne at 3:00 p.m. and walked straight home.
Roger recognized our house and walked right in. Austin and I
were astonished at the garden and lawn. The grass is so green,
and the corn and cosmos are very high. Rooster Boy looks the
same, but the other chickens have grown almost past recognition.
I went in and played the piano almost the first thing. It seemed
good to play again, but I have almost forgotten how.

I liked getting back to my own room, but when I got in bed I
longed for my camp bed, the quiet of the night, the ripple of the
creek, and the sound of the wind in the pines.

EPILOGUE

In August of 1961 the editor and his wife, Bea, drove from East
Lansing to Wyoming and toured the state, collecting material for a
book. The highlight of the trip was a visit to the XX Ranch. We
drove in from Laramie via Tie Siding.

Chester and Edith Williams were expecting us and took the day
off to drive us around the vast estate in their Chevrolet. I found
the ranch as romantically beautiful as it has been these many years
in my dreams. Even more, because deer and antelope, as well as
cattle, now add charm to the rocky, wooded slopes and the moun-
tain pastures. The wild herds keep their distance, but are not
excessively shy as they were in my youth when there was open
season all-year-round and every man carried a gun.

We had delicious Aberdeen Angus beef sandwiches and coffee in
a patch of sagebrush on heights which command a superb view of
the Rockies. Nearby were gnarled pines bent by the northern wind
and stark, dead trees with silvery trunks and branches. We talked

THE LAST EDEN 81

of the old days and of members of the Williams family and my
family now deceased. Chet, still vigorous at eighty, discussed
stock raising, the superiority of Black Angus over other breeds of
beef cattle, and the importance of matching herd size to available
pasturage. We were struck by his love and concern for every wild
creature, every tree, and every flower and blade of grass on the
land. The ranch must make some money, but to Chet and Edith
preservation of the land and its beauty is far more important.

Bea and I spent the night in Laramie and returned the next day
for a final outing. We hiked down the little canyon and through
the meadow to the old camp site at Home Mountain. I built a fire
in the pine grove, and we had a luncheon of broiled bacon, buns,
and potato chips. Resting on a bed of pine needles, I listened again
to the rippling water of Dale Creek and to the wind in the pines and
aspens. We walked in air fragrant with flowers to the mouth of the
big canyon. Then, as the sun began to sink over Sunset Cliff, we
reluctantly retraced our steps to the ranch, said farewell to our
kind friends, and departed.

And the Lord God planted a
garden eastward in Eden.

Genesis.

82 ANNALS OF WYOMING

THE DRAFT HORSE IN THE LEAD

-" 3

The draft horse is now the leading market horse in America.
Forty per cent, of the horses sold at Chicago are draft horses, nearly
double that of any other class of horses, yet the fast horse men told
us the draft horse would soon play out. Already he leads the horse
markets of the world. The business of the cities depends upon the
draft horse. The merchants and manufacturers vie with each other
for the finest draft horse teams, and there is no better advertisement
for any business than an attractive team of large handsome draft
horses. The farmers who will raise and mature such horses are
sure of big prices, for the demand is far greater than the supply.
Dealers have orders to buy such horses whenever they find extra
good ones that are sound, with size and vigorous action, to walk
briskly away with the big loads.

-Wyoming Industrial Journal
February, 1900

As has been announced in the Industrial Journal a number of
times the Sherman Hill cut-off, to avoid the heavy grades, sharp
curves and high bridge across Dale Creek, is to be built. As we go
to press contractors are in Omaha awaiting the announcement of
the name of the successful bidder for the job. It is stated that as
soon as the Union Pacific awards the contract the work wiU be
sub-let to a number of contractors who are now in Omaha for this
purpose, and that work on the cut-off will be commenced as soon
as men, teams and outfits can be placed on the ground. The cut-
off will be commenced as soon as men, teams and outfits can be
placed on the ground. The cut-off necessitates the building of a
rock causeway across Dale Creek. It is said that it will require
from two to three years time to complete this cut-off. Thousands
of men will be employed.

— Wyoming Industrial Journal
February, 1900

Jort 'David A KussdU a Study of
Jts Mist or y 9rom 1867 to J $90

WITH A BRffiF SUMMARY OF EVENTS
FROM 1890 TO THE PRESENT

Peggy Dickey Kirkus
[Conclusion]

V. HEALTH OF TROOPS

Health of the troops has always been a prime factor in the morale
and effectiveness of an army. During the latter nineteenth century
the medical corps was a special branch of the service under the
command of the Surgeon General in Washington.^ Army doctors
were surgeons, who ranked as field grade officers; assistant sur-
geons, whose rank was that of company grade officers; and acting
assistant surgeons.- Their duties included treatment of the sick
and injured, inspection of food and water supplies, and the super-
vision of all aspects of sanitation on the post. In addition, they
went into the field with the troops and were quite often casualties
themselves.

Army regulations required that the post surgeon make a monthly
report to the Surgeon General on conditions under his jurisdiction.
These reports varied with the men who wrote them, but some of
them contain the most complete record available on life at Fort
D. A. Russell.

The most frequently repeated complaint in these reports during
the first years of the post was overcrowding in the barracks. In
1870, the post surgeon wrote:

The bad sanitary condition of barracks is one of the more important
. . . causes [of mortality from disease], and gives rise more especially
to continued fevers, diseases of the respiratory organs, and tuberculosis
affections. . . .

It has been said that we have the best-fed and worst-housed Army
in the world, and the statement seems more nearly correct than such
generalizations usually are.^

1. Whitman, op. cit., p. 161.

2. Ibid., pp. 164-65.

3. A Report on Barracks and Hospitals, op. cit., p. XXXII.

84 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Fort Russell received many of its troops directly from basic train-
ing stations. Often these men were in poor physical condition be-
fore they entered the army, and they brought with them diseases
which spread to others in the close confines of the barracks. In
July, 1868, the post surgeon reported the following list of condi-
tions which he treated:

Typhoid Fever 3 Cases

Acute Diarrhoea 27

Chronic Rheumatism 7

Colic 11

Piles 7

Sprain 10

During the winter months the types of illness changed, as the men
were exposed to the rigors of heavy snow and chilling wind. This
exposure, in addition to drafty barracks, lowered their resistance to
infection. In December, 1869, these illnesses appeared on the
surgeon's treatment list:

Tonsillitis 4 Cases

Acute Rheumatism 5 "

Acute Bronchitis 16 "

Inflamation of Lungs 2 "

Contusion 6 "

Frost Bite 5 " 5

A chart in the Surgeon General's Report of 1 870 shows the total
of all illnesses treated by the surgeon's staff at Fort Russell for the
years 1868 and 1869:

1868 1869

Mean Strength 589.91 435.08

Whole Number Taken Sick

Typhoid Fever

Malarial Fevers

Diarrhea and Dysentery

Tonsillitis

Venereal Diseases

Rheumatism

Phthisis [Tuberculosis]

Catarrhal Affections*

Number of Deaths 7 2

*lnclude laryngitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, and pleurisy^

The basic cure for almost anything consisted of quinine, cathar-
tics, and whiskey. Quinine was prescribed routinely for fever,

907

413

126

123

215

4. "Fort D. A. Russell: Record of Medical History of Post," op. cit.,
I, 83.

5. Ibid.

6. A Report on Barracks and Hospitals, op. cit., p. 345.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 85

colds, and respiratory ailments. A large wound or amputation was
cauterized, with whiskey used liberally as a sedativeJ

In 1876, the surgeon's report included the case history of Private
John F. Murphy, who shot himself in the wrist while cleaning his
carbine. Attempts were made to save the hand and arm, but two
weeks later he began to hemorrhage heavily from the wound. After
consultation, the doctors present decided to amputate the affected
hand and forearm. The surgeon reported no bad symptoms and
only slight shock to the patient's system. He described the steps
taken after surgery:

The constitutional treatment consisted of Quinine, . . . [illegible],
Alcoholic Stimulants and Cod Liver Oil, beef tea, milk, eggs, etc. ad
libitum. The stump was dressed with weak carbolic lotion. The pa-
tient made a satisfactory recovery.^

In 1899, a smallpox epidemic broke out at Fort D. A. Russell.
The carrier was a recruit who had just come to the post. He was ill
when he arrived, and by the time the rash appeared and was identi-
fied, he had infected others in his barracks. The company was
immediately isolated from the rest of the personnel. The surgeon
ordered contaminated blankets and bedding destroyed. The men
were confined to the barrack, and were kept isolated from each
other as much as possible. Everyone was vaccinated against the
disease, but the vaccine must have been of poor quality, since many
of the men did not react to it. Because of the efforts of the post
surgeon, however, the outbreak was held to six cases, all of whom
recovered from the disease.

Two years later seven cases of smallpox were reported at the
post. These were all new recruits and were quarantined before it
spread to any others.^

One of the first things that many new recruits had to learn was
the fine art of bathing. At the recruiting depots they were in-
structed in personal cleanliness. The Surgeon General instructed
in 1870:

Cleanliness does not mean the washing of face and hands alone; at
least once a week every man should thoroughly cleanse his entire per-
son; and it is economy and good policy to make the facilities for this
purpose such that the men shall consider their bath a pleasure and a
necessity-i*^

Post records mention company bath houses during the 1870s.
The surgeon complained about the men having to walk several
yards from their barracks to reach the bath house. When they

7. Whitman, op. cit., p. 163.

8. "Fort D. A. Russell: Record of Medical History of Post," op. cit., II,
233-35.

9. Ibid., IV, 104-06.

10. A Report on Barracks and Hospitals, op. cit., pp. XVI-XVTI.

86 ANNALS OF WYOMING

returned to their quarters, their damp bodies were exposed to the
elements.

In addition to personal cleanliness, the men were responsible to
see that their clothing was laundered regularly. As there were no
facilities for washing in the barracks, it became customary to hire
women to do this chore. These laundresses were usually the wives
of enlisted men, who needed the extra money. Until water was
piped into the post, they lived in small quarters along Crow Creek.
One room of each house was set aside as a washroom.

When the post was rebuilt in the mid-1 880s, Lieutenant James
Regan, in a letter to the Quartermaster General, requested that a
steam laundry be introduced at the post:

A laundry of this character is, in my opinion, very desirable, especially
now since the great improvement in the men's buildings, etc. Washer-
women are few at the post and the ones now remaining are not always
reliable. 11

Instead of steam laundries, Chinese laundrymen were brought to
the garrison to do the work. There seems to have been few com-
plaints about their work, but the post surgeon reported repeatedly
on the filth of these laborers. In January, 1 896, the post medical
record read:

The premises occupied by Chiman \.sic'\ for laundry purposes near
the post hall are in a very unsanitary condition. They are in the habit
of throwing the washwater and table offal on the ground, causing a
large stagnant pool outside and under the house. 12

By 1899, conditions had become even worse:

The lack of sanitation which has steadily grown worse during the sxim-
mer is now as follows: The kitchen and laundry waste water of ten
years has been turned into the gravel on the north side. For two years
it has accumulated in two large stagnant pools, which show a deposit
of many inches deep of sewerage. The rear of the quarters is littered
with old lumber and other trash soaked with waste water. . . . An odor
arising from the conditions as given above has frequently been per-
ceptible to me at several rods distant.^^

Officials eventually ordered steam laundries installed and connect-
ed with the sewer fines. The old washing areas were destroyed and
disinfected.

In an era of hard drinking, the problem of drunkenness frequent-
ly plagued the post. The men could obtain their Uquor from the
post sutler, who was a retail merchant licensed to operate a store

11. Letter from Lieutenant James Regan to the Quartermaster General,
April 19, 1886, from Kendall, Unpublished Notes, op. cit., File No. HCL
2:1:4.

12. "Fort D. A. Russell: Record of Medical History of Post," op. cit.,
IV, 26.

13. Ibid., IV, 114-15.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 87

on the post, or they could buy it in the city of Cheyenne, where the
supply of alcohol was always abundant. On payday the problem
was at its worst. Often a trooper would spend his whole pay check
on one big spree,

A man was seldom brought before a court-martial for simple
drunkenness. Instead, the men in his company usually found a
way to sober him up without bringing the incident to the attention
of his officers. In one such cure, the offender was bound, gagged
with a bar of army soap, and left in this position for several hours.
The results were revolting and left a permanent memory of the
event. Another routine which effectively sobered the offender was
being spread-eagled on a wagon wheel. The arms and legs were
tied along the edges and the hub of the wheel bulged in the middle
of the back unmercifully. This torture lasted for one-half day to a
whole day. A soldier who was found staggering around the post
with his bottle still in his hand sometimes found himself with the job
of burying it. This he did by digging a hole ten feet square by ten
feet deep, laying the bottle to rest, then replacing the dirt. A man
was usually sober by the time he completed this task.^^

Isolation and boredom were synonymous with daily life on a
frontier post. As the army had no over-all plan for rotation of
troops, a company of men might expect to be stationed at the same
garrison for several years. The regular fatigues and guards became
terribly monotonous, and the men welcomed any diversion from the
routine. Amusements included athletic events, hunting and fish-
ing, dances and musicales.

Since Fort Russell usually had horses, games involving horse-
manship were very popular. Horse racing was the most popular.
They also used their mounts to pursue deer and antelope in the
area. Other sports included ball playing, gymnastics, and tugs of
war. The post surgeon complained in July, 1896, that "the num-
ber on sick report during the past month has been considerably
increased through injuries received in athletic sports. "^^ He agreed
that proper exercise was very beneficial both physically and as
entertainment, but requested that prolonged exertion be limited.
"During the past week," he wrote, "one game of 'Tug of War'
lasted fifty minutes and resulted in the disabling of two men se-
verely and several slightly."^^ He recommended that a time limit
of five minutes be enforced in this game and encouraged modera-
tion in all sports.

Masonic lodges were a popular outlet and allowed the officers
and men to meet together on equal status. A chapter flourished

14. Whitman, op. cit., pp. 92-93.

15. "Fort D. A. Russell: Record of Medical History of Post," op. cit.,
IV, 38.

16. Ibid.

88 ANNALS OF WYOMING

at Fort Russell. ^^ The post also possessed a library of 286 vol-
umes, billiard tables, a theater, and a dance hall.

Drama and musicales were especially popular with the officers
and their ladies. Elizabeth Burt, the wife of a major [Andrew S.
Burt] who was stationed at Fort Russell from 1869 to 1871, de-
scribed some of the productions which they presented:

Among the officers and ladies enough theatrical talent appeared to
make it possible to place on the stage many very entertaining plays
such as "Caste" in which my husband won laurels in the despicable
character of Pop Eccles, and again as Golightly in "Lend Me Five
Schillings," and others. Colonel Bartlett, Major Burt and Lieutenant
Stembel were among the stars. Major Mears shone prominently as
stage manager. Mrs. Royall as the Duchess, with her young daughter
as the Prince, assisted by Major Burt as Ruy Gomez, made "Faint
Heart Never Won Fair Lady" a brilliant success. is

Dances were always popular, and almost any event was occasion
enough to invite friends from Cheyenne to join them for a ball.

The reUgious life of the soldiers was not neglected. Early in
1868, an Episcopal missionary, Reverend Joseph W. Cook, came
to Cheyenne. He soon became friends with a number of people at
the fort. Because of lack of adequate facilities in Cheyenne, Rev-
erend Cook soon moved into the quarters of Surgeon Alden. On
February 2, 1868, the missionary went to Cheyenne to hold serv-
ices, but he

got back in time to see "Dress parade" at Fort. Men made fine ap-
pearance, but I thought it terrible that they should have inspection and
general review in the morning and then have to turn out on Sunday
afternoon also.i^

He held services at the post on Sunday evening.

Edmund B. Tuttle became the first post chaplain. His duties
consisted of holding religious services, performing burial services,
and overseeing the educational program at the post.^^ Attendance
seems to have been quite good at services. Reverend Cook re-
ported that on the evening of March 22, 1868, he substituted for
the chaplain, and that 200 men attended the service.^^

Before the post was rebuilt during the 1880s, both chapel and
school were held in one wing of the hospital. School was held
during the winter months under the supervision of the post chap-
lain. Enlisted men and children of personnel stationed at Fort
Russell and Camp Carlin attended the classes. Qualified enlisted
men received extra-duty pay of thirty-five cents per day for teach-

17. Rickey, op. cit., pp. 66-67.

18. Mattes, op. cit., p. 181.

19. Cook, op. cit., p. 28.

20. Ibid., p. 38.

21. Ibid., p. 57.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 89

ing.^- This education was sketchy, and many parents supplement-
ed the schooling by teaching their children at home.

A woman who was brave enough to follow her husband to a
frontier post had to be prepared to face hardships and privation,
as well as see the joys of keeping the family together. Regulations
of the Indian Wars era did not even recognize the presence of
military dependents. They were looked upon officially only as
camp followers, and as such could claim no privileges or rights. A
few commanders urged their men not to bring dependents and
made life miserable for wives. Some claimed that having wives
with them made the men poor soldiers. ^'-^ Most of the commanders,
however, were happy to have the feminine influence at the garrison.

Women on the frontier faced the same problems as those in more
settled areas and had many trials in addition. Their first difficulty
was getting household goods to their new station. According to
War Department regulations, an officer was allowed a maximum of
1,000 pounds of household goods to be moved at government ex-
pense. Anything above this had to be contracted to a civihan
freighter at a very high cost. As a result, it became the practice for
an officer to have three large wooden chests into which he packed
only those items of greatest necessity. Most of any remaining
goods were sold at auction. The effects which the military family
did choose to take along often arrived in poor condition due to the
carelessness with which the soldiers on the packing detail had
wrapped them. Jolting along rough wagon roads and poor han-
dling also resulted in much breakage and damage, particularly to
glassware and china.^^

Since the War Department did not recognize the existence of
military dependents, the woman who chose to follow her husband
became a pitiful victim of circumstance if he died or was killed
during a campaign. Elizabeth Burt describes the anxiety which
most of the women must have felt when their husbands left for the
field:

These partings were always great trials to me. Our family farewells
were always made in quarters behind closed doors. Then he to his
duty and I in a back room to my tears and prayers. I would choose a
back room to shut out the tune the band played, marching the com-
pany out of the post, "The Girl I Left Behind Me." To this day when
I hear that air tears come to my eyes.-"'

An army widow immediately lost all claim to pay and allowances
and was given notice to vacate quarters within a short period.
Commanders were generally sympathetic and liberal, but it was

22. Kendall, Unpublished Notes, op. cit., File No. HCL 2:1:1.

23. Whitman, op. cit., pp. 144-45.

24. Ibid., pp. 154-55.

25. Mattes, op. cit., p. 21.

90 ANNALS OF WYOMING

their duty to see that when the set time arrived, the women were
gone.-^

The birth and raising of children offered a special problem on the
frontier. Women anticipating childbirth often returned to their
families in the East, if they could afford it. Those who remained
at the post had to accept the fact that the post surgeon would prob-
ably be in the battlefield just when she needed him.^^

Fear for her children's safety pressed upon every mother. Mrs.
Burt recalled an incident which increased her apprehension. While
their company was travelling to Fort C. F. Smith, a group of friend-
ly Crow Indians joined them in camp. The Indian squaws seemed
fascinated with the Burts' baby girl. Mrs. Burt relates that:

Crazy Head's squaw made me understand she wished to hold [the
baby] in her arms. As she seemed dressed in clean garments, I con-
sented, though with reluctance. Soon the baby was the center of ad-
miring squaws, who held a great pow-wow over her.

Crazy Head entered into it, too, with apparent interest. Our cur-
iosity was greatly aroused to know what this animated discussion
meant. The mystery was solved when Crazy Head made an offer to
my astonished husband to buy our blessed baby .28

After offers of twenty ponies, then thirty ponies, and even Crazy
Head's squaw in return for the baby, Major Burt ordered the
Indians to leave camp at once. Mrs. Burt added later:

All the time we were among the Indians I could not divest my mind
of this harrowing fear that some day they would try to steal the
children.29

Despite their mothers' fear for their safety, or perhaps because
of it, children at frontier posts thrived. They became sturdy and
independent, fine horsemen, and competent in the use of weapons.
Because of their contact with battle-hardened soldiers, they often
became proficient in the use of profanity, but this was soon rem-
edied by liberal use of the strap.^*^

Along with these problems, the wives of enlisted men found it
difficult to manage a household on the pay which their husbands
received. To help with finances, these women often sought jobs as
post laundresses or in officers' quarters as cooks or maids.^^

In spite of the difficulties, army wives found time to hunt and fish
with their husbands; go riding; do handwork, such as embroidery or
knitting; write short stories and verses; and take part in planning
the parties and dances which helped raise the spirits of the person-

26. Whitman, op. cit., pp. 153-54.

27. Ibid., p. 151.

28. Mattes, op. cit., pp. 121-22.

29. Ibid., p. 122.

30. Whitman, op. cit., pp. 151-52.

31. Ibid., -p. 145.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 91

nel. Mrs. Burt was especially happy during her stay at Fort Rus-
sell between 1869 and 1871:

On pleasant days to drive to the station in Cheyenne, about three
miles from the post, was one of our pleasures. Often in this way we
had a passing glimpse of friends. A walk to hunt mushrooms was a
pastime for those who were fond of them.32

During the harsh Wyoming winters, most of the recreation moved
indoors. Mrs. Burt was particularly fond of the musicales which
livened the winter evenings :

To hear Mrs. Bradley's rich soprano voice sing "Robin Adair" is re-
called by me now as a rare delight. The diversions, in addition to the
weekly hops, combined to make the long winter evenings pass in a
happy social way, which without these aids, would have been drearily
monotonous.33

VL THE INDIAN PROBLEM

Fort David A. Russell was established to provide a convenient
station for the control of hostile Indians in the area. From the first
months of its existence, numerous scouts and guards went out from
the post to protect crews who were constructing the Union Pacific
Railroad. As the territory became more densely populated, this
protection also became available to the settlers who from time to
time faced the wrath of the Cheyennes, Utes, Arapahoes, and
Sioux.

When the West blazed into the fury of a full-blown Indian war
during the 1870s, Fort Russell became a troop station always pre-
pared with fresh soldiers and horses and a medical center for the
aid of those injured in combat.

The American Indian was continually and increasingly dis-
placed, beginning when the first Europeans established settlements
along the eastern seaboard. Treaties for huge tracts of Indian land
often cost the intruders no more than a few dollars worth of trinkets
and beads. For decades the eastern Indians were traded and cheat-
ed out of their lands. Occasionally a tribe rebelled at seeing its
hunting grounds overrun by white settlers, and bloody battles
ensued.

The white man moved steadily westward under the protection of
army troops until the early 1 860s, when the American nation was
divided by civil war. Then manpower became scarce and the posts
at the western edge of settlement were forced to operate with a bare
minimum of personnel. Little could be done to keep the hostile
Plains Indians from raiding, looting, and killing at will. When the
War Between the States ended in 1 865, there was a great clamor for
increased protection along the lines of settlement. In addition, the

32. Mattes, op. cit., p. 181.

33. Ibid.

92 ANNALS OF WYOMING

decision to build the Union Pacific Railroad brought new impetus
for military force to quell the Indian trouble.

What caused the disturbance in the Northern Plains area? As
the white man had pushed west, he had made treaty after treaty
with various Indian tribes. Some of the tribes had relinquished
large portions of their ancestral hunting grounds to the American
Government. But until the period after the Civil War, the dispos-
sessed Indian always had a place to make a new home. Suddenly
within the decade between the mid-1 860s and the 1870s, the Red
Man found his last good hunting grounds being destroyed and his
lands overrun by miners and settlers. He realized that he could no
longer put faith in a white man's peace. Facing starvation and the
threat of extinction, bands of Sioux and Cheyenne gathered to-
gether with renegades of other tribes to resist further intrusion.

Two Indian treaties which v/ere concluded during the 1870s,
before the founding of Fort D. A. Russell, were of particular im-
portance in the life of that post. In 1 865, a treaty with the Arapa-
ho and Cheyenne Indians provided for the removal of these tribes
from the lands to be crossed by the Union Pacific Railroad. Be-
cause of this treaty there were no hostiles in the immediate vicinity
when the post was built. Another treaty, signed at Fort Laramie in
1868, foreshadowed the reservation system by assigning certain
definite areas into which the tribes must move and provided that
unauthorized white men were forbidden to enter the reserve. The
latter treaty allowed the Sioux to retain their favorite hunting
grounds in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Other boundaries
set aside the lands north of the North Platte River and east of the
Big Horn Mountains as a hunting reserve.

The post medical records provide a ghmpse into the duties per-
formed by the first men stationed at Fort Russell. During the latter
months of 1867 and in 1868, troops left the post regularly to patrol
and guard the railroad workers at Pine Bluffs Station, Sidney Sta-
tion, Salt Lake, and the North Platte Station. Another regular task
was to escort workers and dignitaries to points in the area of Fort
Russell. Such trips took them to Salt Lake City, Alkali Station,
Porter Station, and locations up to 300 miles distant.^

On January 20, 1869, two companies of the Second Cavalry left
the post on an expedition against Indians who had been harassing
settlers near the Republican River. The force returned seventeen
days later with an unusually large number of sick and wounded,
due partially to the harsh winter weather.^

1. U.S., War Department, Surgeon General's Office, "Fort D. A. Russell:
Record of Medical History of Post," Manuscript in the National Archives,
Microfilm Copy in the Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department
(4 vols.), I, 5.

2. Ibid., I, 105.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 93

Troop movements of 1870 included an expedition against the
Indians near Pine Bluffs, a detail toward Laramie City after prison-
ers escaped from the guard house, and regular patrol duty to Sweet-
water Mines; Pine Bluff Station; Antelope Station; Camp Douglas,
Utah; Fort Bridger, Utah; Sherman Station; Hillsdale Station; and
Chug Creek. In September of that year two companies of the Fifth
Cavalry provided escort for members of an Indian Peace Commis-
sion to Fort Laramie.^ Similar missions occupied the troopers of
Fort Russell during the early 1870s and few notable encounters
were reported.

Because of persistent reports of gold in the Black Hills, in 1 874
the United States Government sent troops to investigate. General
George Custer proceeded into the area with ten companies of the
Seventh Cavalry, 110 wagons, and sixty scouts. A number of
newspapermen and photographers joined the party. Upon their
return Custer announced to the world that there was, indeed, gold
in the Black Hills.^

The Interior Department also sent a team of civilians to ascertain
whether or not there were any worthwhile deposits of gold. The
expedition, under Professor Walter P. Jenney, returned with indis-
putable proof that the hills were rich in the precious metal. ^

Gold fever swept the nation. Expeditions of miners began fit-
ting out soon after the announcement came. From Washington,
government officials tried to prevent violations of treaty stipulations
with the Indians. General W. T. Sherman issued orders for troops
to arrest violators and destroy all transportation and property
which might aid them in advancing into treaty lands.

The Black HiUs were teeming with Sioux, and this infiltration of
white prospectors could mean nothing but trouble. In July, 1875,
General George Crook left Cheyenne with orders to eject the min-
ers from the Black Hills.®

The prospectors who slipped into the area paimed for gold until
they were evicted. Then they told of rich deposits which they had
seen. After this testimony, it was impossible for troops to keep
them out. During the latter part of 1875, the Army evicted hun-
dreds of miners, but they found ways to return. Within weeks, a

3. Ibid., I, 16L

4. Merrill J. Mattes, Indiatis, Infants, and Infantry (Denver: The Old
West Publishing Co., 1960), p. 193: and Edward Settle Godfrey, Diary of
the Little Big Horn, ed. Edgar I. Stewart and Jane R. Stewart (Portland,
Oregon: Champoeg Press, 1957), p. vi.

5. Paul I. Wellman, The Indian Wars of the West (Garden City, N. Y.:
Doubleday & Co., 1947), p. 125.

6. George Crook, General George Crook: His Autobiography, ed. Mar-
tin F. Schmitt (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960),
p. 188.

94 ANNALS OF WYOMING

score of mining towns sprang up — Deadwood Gulch, Custer City,
and Keystone among them.

The situation was becoming serious. The Black Hills were not
only the favorite hunting grounds of the Sioux but were also be-
lieved sacred by them. In an effort to prevent war, the government
tried to buy the Black Hills, but the Sioux rejected with scorn the
offer of $6,000,000. The commission failed completely.'^

That fall, the anti-reservation Sioux moved from their assigned
agencies into the wilderness. War seemed inevitable. Late in
December, 1875, messengers were sent to the renegade bands,
which had gathered under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Chief
Crazy Horse. They were ordered to return to their agencies imme-
diately. January 1, 1876 was their deadline.^

Early in 1876, President Grant opened the Black Hills to the
white prospectors and issued orders to the army not to stop them
from going in. The Indian inspector recommended that troops
drive out the renegades during the winter, but the weather was
unusually cold and the Indians were given until January 31, 1876
to get back onto the reservation.^

The January thirty-first deadline passed and the hostiles staunch-
ly refused to be forced onto a reservation. The Department of the
Interior then turned the problem over to the War Department.
General George Crook, Commander of the Department of the
Platte, was ordered to lead a campaign to drive the hostiles back
onto the reservation. The General was familiar with Indian fight-
ing tactics and was aware of the advantages held by the Indians.^"

War plans were made hurriedly. They called for three expedi-
tions to strike the Indian camps during the early spring, while the
cold weather held the hostiles relatively immobile. General Crook
was to move north from Fort D. A. Russell by way of Fort Fetter-
man. He was to meet General George Custer, who was marching
west from Fort Abraham Lincoln, and General John Gibbon, who
was coming east from Fort Ellis. Severe winter weather prevented
Custer and Gibbon from reaching the rendezvous.

On February 21, 1876, General Crook left Fort D. A. Russell
with five companies of the Third Cavalry to conduct a campaign
into the Powder River country. Colonel J. J. Reynolds, com-
mander of the post, also accompanied the party. They were joined
by other troops of cavalry and infantry as they proceeded through

7. Wellman, op. cit., p. 125.

8. Ibid., pp. 126-29.

9. Oliver Knight, Following the Indian Wars: The Story of the Newspa-
per Correspondents Among the Indian Campaigners (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1960), p. 161.

10. S. E. Whitman, The Troopers (New York: Hastings House, 1962),
p. 42.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL

Fort Fetterman. The object of the campaign was, as General
Crook expressed it

to move during the inclement season by forced marches, carrying, by
pack animals, the most urgent supplies, secretly and expeditiously
surprise the hostile bands and if possible chastise them before spring
fairly opened, and they could receive . . . reinforcements from the
reservation.il

The command consisted of ten companies of cavalry and two of
infantry which were organized into battalions in the following
manner:

ittalion

Company

Regiment

Commander

1st

3rd Cavalry

Captain A. Mills

3rd Cavalry

2nd

3rd Cavalry

Captain Wm. Hawley

3rd Cavalry

3rd

2nd Cavalry

Captain H. Noyes

2nd Cavalry

4th

2nd Cavalry

Captain T. Dewees

2nd Cavalry

5th

3rd Cavalry

Captain A. Moore

3rd Cavalry

6th

4th Infantry

Captain E. Coates

4th Infantryi2

In addition the party contained medical personnel, military aides,
scouts and guides, a correspondent from the Rocky Mountain News
of Denver, and a large number of civilians employed to man the
pack trains. The population of the party numbered 883 men.
Horses and mules numbered 1548. The expedition also carried
rations for forty days, including beef on the hoof.^^

The weather was bitterly cold, the thermometer falling as low as
40° below zero. On the afternoon of March 16, as the column
moved into the Powder River area, a scouting party discovered two
Indians. General Crook divided the command into two groups
and sent Colonel Reynolds in command of three battalions in
search of the Indian trail. Reynolds took rations for one day's
march. The remainder of the troops and all the pack trains re-
mained on Otter Creek with General Crook.

The night was cloudy and extremely cold. Reynolds' force
marched throughout the night until 4 A.M. of March 17. At a
point near the Powder River, the command dismounted to await the
report of a scouting party which had been sent on before. Colonel
Reynolds reported that

IL J. W. Vaughn, The Reynolds Campaign on Powder River (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), p. 201.

12. Ibid., p. 203.

13. Ibid., p. 204.

96 ANNALS OF WYOMING

while waiting here for two hours the men suffered intensely from cold,
the officers of the command being obliged to move about among their
men and prevent them from falling asleep in which case they would
almost certainly have been frozen to death as the ground was covered
with several inches of snow and the weather very cold.i^

The scouts returned with the report that they had located a large
Indian village on Powder River. Reynolds ordered the battalion
led by Captain James Egan to charge the village on horseback.
Another group under Captain H. Noyes was to seize the Indian
ponies which were grazing in the vicinity and retain the captured
herd. A third force, under the command of Captain A. Moore,
was to dismount and follow up the attack on foot.^^

The initial attack was very successful. The Indians were taken
completely by surprise. It was shortly after daybreak, and most
were still sleeping. The Sioux ran for the rocky bluffs which over-
looked their camp. By that time, the troopers had captured the
Indian ponies, so that the warrior were afoot.

The hostiles recovered quickly from their original panic. They
organized their lines behind rocks and trees along the hillside and
opened up a deadly fire against the cavalrymen. Captain Anson
Mills led his men in the destruction of the village. All the tepees
and supphes were burned, although the commander had some
difficulties restraining his hungry men from carrying off pieces of
buffalo meat which they saw in the tepees. The explosion of the
ammunition supplies, along with shots from the concealed Indians,
made this task less than safe. Moreover, the Sioux and Cheyenne
were becoming more and more daring, and there was danger that
the troopers would be cut off within the valley. As the casualties
increased, Colonel Reynolds suddenly ordered a retreat.

By sundown on March 17, the command had reached the site
which had been selected for their meeting with General Crook's
troops and supplies. Colonel Reynolds described the condition of
his men:

We had marched fifty-four miles and fought four hours during the last
twenty-six hours had no sleep during the previous night and in fact no
rest during the previous thirty-six hours and march of seventy-three
miles from the camp on the Tongue River.is

General Crook's column failed to arrive to relieve them. The men
were so exhausted that Reynolds ordered the guard changed fre-
quently to prevent their falling asleep.

At this point, the expedition's only achievements were capturing
the pony herd, burning the renegade village with all its supphes, and
killing a very few of the enemy. Colonel Reynolds estimated the

14. Ibid., p. 207.

15. Ibid., pp. 207-08.

16. Ibid., p. 211.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 97

captured horse herd at 400 to 700 animals. Suspecting that the
Indians might attempt to recapture the herd, he ordered that the
Indian ponies be kept separate from the cavalry horses. Upon the
advice of one of the scouts, Frank Grouard, he turned the ponies
out to graze along a ravine, guarded only by a handful of tired
soldiers. Sometime during the night, the ponies disappeared, and
no trace was found of them. It was believed that their Indian
owners probably recovered them as they grazed. ^^

Thus what began as a rout turned into a victory for the Indians.
Reynolds could claim only to have destroyed the village and killed
a few of the enemy, while his own command lost four dead, six
wounded, and sixty-six men badly frozen. ^^ The weary troops
returned to Fort Russell on April 6, 1876.^^

General Crook was furious when he learned of the failure of
the mission. He immediately initiated courtmartial proceedings
against Colonel Reynolds, Captain Moore, and Captain Noyes.
He gave the following reasons:

. . . first a failure on the part of portions of the command to properly
support the first attack. Second, a failure to make a vigorous and
persistent attack with the whole command. Third, a failure to secure
the provisions that were captured for the use of all the troops instead
of destroying them. Fourth, and most disastrous of all, a failure to
properly secure and take care of the horses and ponies captured nearly
all of which again fell into the hands of the Indians the following
morning.20

After a lengthy trial which was marked by enmity and counter-
charges, the tribunal found Colonel J. J. Reynolds guilty and
sentenced him to be suspended from rank and command for one
year. Captains Moore and Noyes were found guUty on lesser
charges. Moore was ordered confined to the post for six months;
Noyes was soundly reprimanded by the department commander.-^

The army lost a decided advantage by showing such weakness in
its first winter campaign. The Indians took advantage of this
warning to mobilize and recruit other hostiles from surrounding
villages. By the time the soldiers appeared again, the Cheyennes
and Sioux, under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse,
had prepared for all-out war.

By mid-May, the snow was clearing, and battle plans were ready.
Again three columns were to converge on the Indians. This time,

17. Ibid.

18. Wellman, op. cit., p. 131.

19. "Fort D. A. Russell: Record of Medical History of Post," op. cit.,
II, 228.

20. Vaughn, op. cit., pp. 201-02.

21. U.S., Bureau of Military Justice, Department of the Platte, Record
Book No. 38, General Court-Martial Order No. 29, May 2, 1876, cited by
Crook, op. cit., pp. 192-93.

98 ANNALS OF WYOMING

General Alfred Terry was to lead 1000 men west from Fort Abra-
ham Lincoln; General John Gibbon planned to bring 450 men east
from Fort Ellis; and General Crook was to come north with 1000
men from Fort Fetterman,

On May 19, 1876, Colonel William B. Royall led several com-
panies of cavalry and infantry and a large part of the wagon and
mule train equipment from Fort D. A. Russell to join Crook at Fort
Fetterman. Because of swollen rivers, these troops were forced to
march north so that they could cross a bridge which had been built
across the North Platte River near Fort Laramie. Then they pro-
ceeded northwest to Fort Fetterman for the rendezvous with
Crook. --

When General Crook concentrated his comm.and at Fort Fetter-
man, Wyoming Territory, the men numbered forty-seven officers
and 1002 soldiers. Colonel Royall was put in command of the
cavalry units, and Colonel Alexander Chambers took charge of the
infantry.-^ This campaign was to be like none known before.
Army training manuals called for leisurely marches relieved by
halting for ten minutes of each hour, long lunch hours, and camping
early in the evening. Accompanying such an ideal unit would be
numerous supply wagons, carrying everything that the men could
conceivably need. Indeed, General Crook ordered that no man in
the command should take more baggage than could be packed in a
saddle. This limited each soldier to one blanket, a saddle blanket,
an overcoat, one rubber blanket, and a mess kit. Supplies were
loaded aboard pack trains, allowing only half rations per man.
This streamlined army was able to move three times as fast.^^

The column left Fort Fetterman on May 29. So large was the
aggregation of men, animals, and supplies that even with the
frugality in supplies the long line stretched for four miles.-^

Crazy Horse, the great Sioux chief, was aware of Crook's move-
ments. He sent a messenger to the American General warning him
not to cross the Tongue River. In reply. Crook proceeded imme-
diately to the Tongue and camped along its banks. On the evening
of June 9, Crazy Horse suddenly opened fire on the encamped
army. Crook quickly organized his troops, shouting orders as the
bullets flew overhead. Captain Anson Mills led a battalion in a
charge, and the Indians retreated. They were not yet ready for a
major encounter.^^

General Crook had every reason to be confident that his troops
could clear the area with little difficulty. Indian agents had assured

22. "Fort D. A. Russell: Record of Medical History of Post," op. cit.,
II, 229; and Knight, op. cit., p. 164.

23. Knight, op. cit., p. 174.

24. Crook, op. cit., p. 205; and Whitman, op. cit., p. 52.

25. Knight, op. cit., pp. 174-75.

26. Wellman, op. cit., p. 132.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 99

him that the Indian camp was composed of about 500 braves who
were led by Crazy Horse, and that most of the young men were
quietly at peace on the reservation. As it turned out, as many as
ninety per cent of the young braves had left the reservation, and
Crook was soon to oppose an army at least the size of his own and
possibly larger. Crook's plan had been to surprise the enemy and
fall upon their main village. Crazy Horse, however, was aware of
the general's every move and planned to encounter the white sol-
diers on a site of his own choice and at his own time.-^

On June 15, almost 300 friendly Indian scouts joined Crook
at his camp on the Tongue River. These were Crows under the
command of AUigator-Stands-Up and Shoshones led by Washakie,
The following day. Crook left his supplies with infantrymen and
crossed the Tongue River. His command now numbered almost
1400 men. They reached the Rosebud River that evening.

Early on the morning of June 17, Indian scouts raced toward
Crook's column yelHng, "Sioux! Sioux! Heap Sioux!" Then on
the bluffs beyond. Crook saw so many braves that he knew he must
be dealing with Crazy Horse's main army. The battle which fol-
lowed was long and bloody. Crook soon found his men engaged
in two separate battles. Captain Anson Mills charged a large
group of Sioux and soon had to call for reinforcements. Captain
Noyes was sent in with his battalion, and still Mills was hard-
pressed to hold his own with the swarm of Indians. Colonel Roy-
all, meantime, was battling the enemy on a nearby bluff. Soon
every man in Crook's army was engaged.

Crazy Horse was fighting as if this were the deciding battle and
he must be the victor. There was no retreat, no falling back.
When the battle was about two hours old, fresh warriors, led by
Little Hawk and American Horse, arrived.

The Sioux suddenly took the offensive. Colonel Royall's com-
mand was cut off from the rest of the column. On the flank of this
group. Captain Guy V. Henry led a company of troops, augmented
by many of the Crows and Shoshones. In a charge which followed,
the troopers were able to retreat into their own lines at the cost of
heavy casualties. Captain Henry called encouragement to his men
from his position at the rear of the line. Suddenly he winced but
kept his face turned toward the enemy. He kept shouting to his
men, trying to rally them. At last the warriors' attack was beaten
off. Only then did his men notice that Captain Henry had been
shot directly in the face. He continued to ride until he fell un-
conscious from his horse. He was rescued by the heroic efforts of
his Indian allies and taken behind the lines for medical attention.^s

27. George A. Forsyth, The Story of a Soldier (New York: D. Appleton
& Co., 1900), pp. 314-15; and Knight, op. cit., pp. 184-85.

28. Wellman, op. cit., pp. 132-37.

100 ANNALS OF WYOMING

The battle raged for several hours. In the afternoon, the war-
riors finally withdrew, leaving the field to the soldiers. Now Crook
knew what he was up against. It was far from the easy victory
which he had envisioned. In fact, many believed that it was more
a victory for the Sioux than for Crook. They had fought to an
impasse. When asked why the Indians left the field that day, one
Indian historian explained, "They were tired and hungry, so they
went home."^^

After the battle. Crook united with his supply train. The injured
were loaded aboard improvised litters, called travois, and trans-
ported back to Fort Fetterman. The most serious cases were taken
on to Fort D. A. Russell. Among these was Captain Henry. He
was not expected to recover from his wound, as the shell had blown
away one of his cheeks and had badly mangled the remainder of
his face. He reached the Fort Russell hospital on July 6, 1876.
To the surprise of many, he recovered and later resumed his com-
mand. On February 27, 1890, he was brevetted a Brigadier
General for his service in the Battle of the Rosebud. ^"^

Following the indecisive encounter on the Rosebud, Crook led
his men on a long, weary search for hostiles through the Yellow-
stone country, then back through the Black Hills of the Dakotas.
While on this lengthy march, supplies were so short that the men
were obliged to kill some of their own horses for subsistence.
The excursion has often been referred to as Crook's "Starvation
March." Finally the commander sent Captain Anson Mills's bat-
talion to search for food.^^

Meanwhile, shortly after the engagement on the Rosebud, the
entire force of the renegade Indians decended on General Custer's
battalion, writing one of the bloodiest pages in Indian warfare.
After the massacre on the Little Big Horn, the Sioux scattered.
They had to hunt for game to supply their needs during the coming
winter.

One of the old chiefs, American Horse, had taken one of these
bands into the Black Hills to hunt. As Captain Mills rode toward
Deadwood seeking supplies for Crook's men, he accidentally dis-
covered the camp of these Sioux near Slim Buttes. On the morning
of September 9, 1876, Mills attacked the village, sending the
Indians scrambling into nearby bluffs. Mills managed to trap
American Horse and four other warriors, along with a few women
and children, inside a cave. The Captain sent a courier for Gen-
eral Crook. The Indians fought bravely, holding off Mills's men

29. Knight, op. cit., p. 186.

30. Ralph C. Deibert, A History of the Third United States Cavalry
(Harrisburg, Pa.: Telegraph Press, n.d.), pp. 27-28; and "Fort D. A. Rus-
sell: Record of Medical History of Post," op. cit., II, 230.

31. Deibert, op. cit., p. 28.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 101

for most of the day and killing two of them. The General arrived
late in the afternoon.

Crook tried to persuade the Indians to surrender. They re-
fused. The cavalry replied by directing intense gunfire into the
mouth of the cave. Again they requested American Horse's sur-
render. Finally he did send out the women and children but
refused to give himself up. Again the shooting began. After two
hours, the return fire ceased. Scout Frank Gruard crept to the
mouth of the cave and once more asked for their surrender. This
time the answer was affirmative. Two young braves emerged,
carrying American Horse between them. The old chief was
fatally wounded.^-

The toll was only three warriors and a woman and child killed.
It was a small victory, but the spoils of battle made it v/orth the
effort. The hungry troopers discovered that the camp contained a
large supply of provisions, including fresh meat. The soldiers
celebrated and feasted before setting out for their posts. ^^ The
troops returned to Fort Russell on November 2, 1876, emaciated
and exhausted.^^

General Nelson A. Miles now took charge of the Sioux problem.
Winter approached. His repeated raids, in addition to extremely
cold weather, drove most of the renegade Sioux and Cheyennes
into submission. Sitting Bull fled with a small band into Canada,
where he remained for some years. Crazy Horse laid down his
arms and led his followers onto the reservation to prevent them
from starving. Thus the Sioux and Cheyennes were pacified, and
for several years, only sporadic raids marred the calm.

The Ute Indians were a fierce tribe who chose the hilly areas of
Colorado and Utah as a habitat. In 1859, the Utes signed a peace
treaty with the American Government under which they were as-
signed reservations, with agents to administer a program of aid.
Their natural enemies were the Arapaho and other Plains tribes,
and they had avoided warfare with the white man even during the
early 1870s when silver was discovered in the mountains which
had long been their hunting grounds.

One band of Utes, led by the great chief, Ouray, took a reserva-
tion on the White River in Colorado. In 1878, N. C. Meeker, the
leader of a white settlement at Greeley, Colorado, obtained an
appointment as agent for the White River Reservation. Meeker
was an honest and sincere man but arrogant and stubborn. One of
his first acts was to move the tribe, despite their uanimous objec-
tion, about fifteen miles away to the richer farmland of Powell

32. Wellman, op. cit., pp. 152-54.

33. Whitman, op. cit., p. 42.

34. Jane R. Kendall, "History of Fort Francis E. Warren," Annals of
Wyoming, Vol. 18, No. 1 (January, 1946), p. 18.

102 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Valley on the White River. This new location was the heart of the
winter grazing and hunting grounds, and the new agency building
frightened away the game in the area.^^ Meeker's dictatorial atti-
tude confused the Indians. One of them, Samson Rabbit, later
reported, "He was always mad. I think he was sick in his head. . . .
We never knew what to do. He was mad all the time."^®

Meeker decreed that every Indian would work or starve. Then
he turned their grazing lands into farm land. In the process, he
destroyed the racetrack which provided a favorite recreation for the
tribe. An agency ploughman began tilling the soil but was fired
on by the angry Utes. They had applied to the government for a
new agent but had received no reply. The Indians began a series
of depredations. Meeker wired for help. He tried to take his
family out, but the Utes refused to let them go.

General Crook received Meeker's request for aid and ordered
Major Thomas T. Thornburg, commander at Fort Steele, to pro-
ceed to the agency. Thornburg left Fort Steele on September 22,
1879, with one company of cavalry and one of infantry plus sup-
plies. At Rawlins, Wyoming, two companies of the Fifth Cavalry
from Fort D. A. Russell joined the expedition.

Thornburg was under orders to find a peaceful solution to the
problem. The commander is reported to have been carrying no
firearms on his person. Near the reservation he met five Indians
who demanded that the soldiers stay away from the reservation.
Thornburg rephed that he must go on but would camp near the
agency and not go directly to it. Then the Indians disappeared.

The troops proceeded toward the agency through Red Canyon.
Suddenly the Utes opened up a deadly fire. Thornburg ordered
the men and wagons into battle position. As they were executing
this maneuver the commander fell under enemy fire on the bank of
Milk River.

Thornburg had ordered the wagons corralled. The troops gath-
ered in the center of the wagons for what protection they could
give. Captain J. S. Payne of the Fifth Cavalry now took command.
He was wounded but continued to give orders. He sent a courier
for rehef .

The messenger arrived at Rawlins at 2 A.M. on October 1st.
News of the attack was then wired to General Crook at Fort
Omaha. Crook immediately wired Cheyenne, notifying Colonel
Wesley Merritt at Fort Russell that he was to go quickly to the
relief of Thomburg's men.

Meanwhile at the agency, Meeker and the other personnel there

35. U. S., Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Commission-
er of Indian Affairs, 1879 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1879).
pp. 17-18.

36. Wellman, op. cit., p. 217.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 103

seem to have been completely ignorant of the battle that was taking
place on Milk River. They went about their regular tasks until a
band of some twenty Utes approached the agency buildings, shoot-
ing and yelling. Before they were through, every white man was
dead, including Agent Meeker. Two women and one girl were
taken prisoner.

The troops in Red Canyon were completely surrounded by Utes.
They had no way of knowing whether or not their messenger had
gotten through the enemy lines. But on October 2, a troop of the
Ninth Cavalry, under the command of Captain Francis S. Dodge,
came to their aid. These colored troops were too few in number
to be of any great help, but they brought with them word that
Colonel Merritt was on his way with troops and supplies.

General Crook's message reached Cheyenne and was carried by
courier to Fort Russell. Merritt received the telegram at 8 A.M.
on October 1. Horses and mules and much of their equipment
were at Camp Carlin. Men and equipment were mobilized, and by
2 P.M. that afternoon a special train, provided by the Union Pacific
Railway, left Cheyenne filled with men and equipment. Another
trainload departed three hours later. They both arrived in Rawlins
early on the morning of October 2.

The column was composed of four companies of cavalry and one
of infantry, each containing about forty-five men. These men,
along with fifteen wagons with supplies, left Rawlins at 10:30 A.M.
on October 2. The army arrived at the scene of battle before day-
light on October 5. The relief was warmly greeted by the ex-
hausted defenders in the trenches.

Colonel Merritt's men were quite tired after three days of
forced march, so he decided to give them a little rest before they
charged the Ute positions. Attack was never necessary, however,
because an Indian messenger brought a copy of a letter from
Ouray, the Ute chief, telling his warriors to desist from further
combat. Colonel Merritt soon received orders to refrain from
pursuing the Indians, as the Interior Department was negotiating
for the release of the captive women and girl.^^

Merritt kept his forces in the area for several weeks, in case of
another flare up. Meanwhile, the injured were transferred to the
Fort Russell hospital. They arrived at the post on October 19; and
hospital records list the injured as Captain Payne, Surgeon R. B.
Grimes, twelve men of the Fifth Cavalry, two of the Third Cavalry,
and two civilian teamsters. On November 29, 1879, Colonel Mer-
ritt returned with most of his troops. ^^

37. M. Wilson Rankin, "The Meeker Massacre," Annals of Wyoming,
Vol. 16, No. 2 (July, 1944), pp. 92-122; and Wellman, op. cit., pp. 216-23.

38. "Fort D. A. Russell: Record of Medical History of Post," op. cit.,
II, 282.

104 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Both the Colorado and Wyoming legislatures passed resolutions
thanking Colonel Merritt and his troops for their prompt action in
reaching and aiding the beseiged men. Indeed, Merritt broke all
existing records for his speed from Rawlins :

Merritt's time from Rawlins to the trenches, including stops to feed,
two-hour stop at Thornburg's reserve camp, and eight hours at Wil-
liams's Fork, was sixty-six and one-half hours, breaking all records
filed by the war department for distance and time in a force march of
cavalry troops.39

The white captives were freed at length, and the Utes again settled
down to reservation life.

During the 1880s, the Indian problem subsided and left time
for other undertakings at Fort Russell. In 1885, they began re-
building the post, substituting permanent structures for those which
had been erected hastily in 1867. The Quartermaster's Record
became rather monotonous as it read continually: "No expenses
incurred by Indian uprising."^*'

In 1890, a strange delusion called the Messiah Craze spread
through the western tribes. About twenty years earUer a Paviotso
Indian in Nevada went into a trance during an illness and recovered
to preach of the wonders which he had seen. According to the
mystic, the ancient life of the Indians was to be restored, along with
the game animals on which they had depended for so long. In
1888, a younger kinsman, Wovoka, claimed to have a personal
revelation in which he learned a dance which was supposed to bring
about a reunion with the dead — a Ghost Dance. In addition to the
dance, he preached peace with the white man. He went so far as
to call himself the Christ, returned to renew the aging earth.^^

Whereas the earlier prophet had only a small following, Wovo-
ka's doctrines spread throughout the Plains Indian tribes. His
vision came at an opportune time. Game was growing scarce.
Mismanagement and dishonesty among the Indian agents was
resulting in great hardship and even starvation for some of the
reservation tribes. The Northern Plains Indians took Wovoka's
words of peace and changed them into reasons for a holy way
against the white man. In revival meetings, they worked them-
selves into hypnotic trances, in which they claimed to see their
ancestors, great herds of buffalo, and open lands — the earth re-
generated.^-

Hostile demonstrations began to break out among the Sioux on

39. Rankin, op. cit., p. 122.

40. Kendall, op. cit., p. 20.

41. U.S., Department of the Interior, "Report of Pine Ridge Agency,"
Fifty-Ninth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (Wash-
ington: Government Printing Office, 1890), p. 49.

42. Robert H. Lowie, Indians of the Plains (New York: McGraw-Hill
Book Co., Inc., 1954), pp. 180-81.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 105

the Pine Ridge Agency. The agent there, R. F. Royer, became
frightened and asked for troops. On December 15, 1890, agency
police attempted to arrest Sitting Bull, who had returned to be with
his people. Officials feared that he was trying to lead an uprising.
Tempers flared and shooting began. In the affray which followed,
Sitting Bull was killed, along with eight other warriors. In addi-
tion, six Indian poUce died.

On November 18, 1890, General Henry R. Mizner, commanding
officer at Fort Russell, received orders to prepare to move toward
the Pine Ridge Agency. Seven companies of the Seventeenth
Infantry boarded a train on December 17, 1890, fully equipped
for a winter campaign.^^

Indian bands scattered over South Dakota. Many fled to the
Badlands. Minor skirmishes continued, but most of the Indians
returned to the reservation. Big Foot's village was the only large
one which refused to return. On December 29th, the camp was
found on Wounded Knee Creek by members of the Seventh Cav-
alry and was surrounded by the soldiers. A shot was fired. Then
the cavalrymen began firing, as if in retaliation for the Custer
disaster. This was, indeed, a massacre. Men, women, and chil-
dren were helplessly encircled, with few weapons. Twenty-nine
soldiers died. General Miles reported the Indian toll at not less
than 200, about half of whom were women and children.'*^

After the Wounded Knee incident, the Sioux resigned them-
selves. They received supplies and food and settled down to life
on the reservation.

The Seventeenth Infantry returned to Fort Russell early in Jan-
uary, 1891, without having had a major encounter with the Sioux.

Scouting expeditions continued from Fort D. A. Russell until
October of 1895, when the last company returned from the field.
The Indian Wars had ended.^^

VIL FORT RUSSELL SINCE 1890

In May, 1894, the commander of Fort Russell, Colonel J. S.
Poland, received a telegram advising him that a mob had seized a
train in Idaho and had taken it to Green River, Wyoming. The
offenders were trying to reach Washington, D. C. to join General
Jacob Coxey in a protest march there. Coxey's Army, as the
gathering was called, was attempting to persuade the government
to aid the victims of a severe depression which was gripping the
nation.

Colonel Poland left Fort Russell on May 1 5 with four companies

43. Kendall, op. cit., p. 20.

44. Wellman, op. cit., pp. 237-38.

45. Kendall, op. cit., pp. 19-21.

106 ANNALS OF WYOMING

of men. At Green River, the United States Marshal requested that
the troops hold 1 47 prisoners who were accused of seizing property
from the Oregon Short Line. On May 18, the defendants were
found guilty and were ordered back to Boise, Idaho. A detachment
of forces from Colonel Poland's column accompanied the group.
These troops of the Seventeenth Infantry quieted the demonstrators
and then returned to Fort Russell.^

The torpedoing of the battleship, Maine, in the harbor at Ha-
vana, Cuba, intensified bad feelings toward Spain and led the
United States to declare war on that nation in April, 1898. The
Eighth Infantry, which was then stationed at Fort Russell, left the
post on April 21 for field service in Cuba. A small detachment
remained to care for the fort.

During this war, American troops saw action in the Pacific, as
well as the Caribbean. Because the active military force was so
small, National Guard units across the nation were ordered into
federal service. The First Regiment of the Wyoming National
Guard was mustered as a battalion of infantry during May, 1898.
After training at Fort D. A. Russell, the unit left for San Francisco,
where they awaited transportation to the PhiUppines. All along the
route of the Union Pacific Railroad, crowds of well-wishers came
out to cheer the soldiers. They brought gifts, flowers, and fruit,
and often in return, the girls asked the men for buttons to keep as
souvenirs. One of the troopers related that "if she was a good
looker, she got one. So when we got to 'Frisco some of us had our
clothes tied on with string."^'

The Wyoming National Guard unit did not reach the Philippines
until July, two months after Commodore Dewey had won control of
Manila Bay. The infantry was under the command of General
Wesley Merritt, who twenty years earlier had led his men from
Fort D. A. Russell to rescue the beseiged soldiers at Milk Creek,
Colorado. General Merritt arrived with a force of almost 11,000
men. The troops disembarked August 6, 1898. One week later,
American troops took the city of Manila. The First Wyoming
Battalion was part of the first brigade to enter the city. At 4:45
P.M., the battalion hoisted the first American flag in Manila. That
flag now rests in the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne. The
troops remained to fight in the Filipino insurrection and did not
return to their homes until the fall of 1899.^

The State of Wyoming also furnished troops for the Second

1. Jane R. Kendall, "History of Fort Francis E. Warren," Annals of
Wyoming, Vol. 18, No. 1 (January, 1946), pp. 27-28.

2. Quoted in "Historical Sketch of the Wyoming National Guard," His-
torical and Pictorial Review, Compiled by Workers of the Writers' Program
of the Work Projects Administration of the State of Wyoming (1940),
p. XX.

3. Kendall, op. cit., p. 29.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 107

United States Volunteer Cavalry. This regiment, which mustered
into service at Fort D. A. Russell in May, 1898, was commanded
by Colonel Jay L. Torrey. The organization became known as
"Torrey's Rough Riders."

This unit left Fort Russell on June 22, 1898, for Camp Cuba
Libre, near Jacksonville, Florida. They hoped to be sent on to
Cuba immediately, but the regiment never saw action. During the
journey to Florida, they were involved in two train wrecks. The
first one, outside St. Joseph, Missouri, did little damage. However,
an accident at Tupelo, Mississippi, left six soldiers dead; thirteen
others were injured, including Colonel Torrey. By the time the
troops arrived at Camp Cuba Libre and reorganized, they were no
longer needed in Cuba. The regiment was mustered out on
October 24, 1898.*

Following the Spanish-American War, Congress passed a mili-
tary reorganization act, limiting the armed forces to 60,000 men.
As a result of this measure, every military installation was studied
as to location and facilities, and many faced the prospect of being
vacated. In an effort to preclude this happening to Fort Russell,
Wyoming Senator Francis E. Warren, who was a member of the
Military Affairs Committee in Congress, used his influence to have
the post declared a permanent installation. In a letter to the Sec-
retary of War, Senator Warren defined the advantages of the post:

Fort Russell is a well-built post, healthy, convenient, with good
water supply, sewerage, etc. It is three miles from the city of Chey-
enne, but a railroad — the Cheyenne and Northern — passes directly
through the post. There is a most excellent target range for artillery
as well as infantry practice, and an immense sweep of advantageous
ground for drill practice of any kind.^

He went on to describe the buildings, which had been constructed
only a few years earlier, and to suggest that only a few additional
structures would be required to house a battery of light artillery, in
addition to a regimental headquarters and a battalion of that Regi-
ment.^ In 1902, a committee from the Adjutant General's Office
officially recommended Fort Russell as a permanent post.'^

By 1906, the studies were completed, and the Secretary of War
made the following recommendation:

4. "Historical Sketch of the Wyoming National Guard," op. cit., p. xxiv;
and "Torrey's Rough Riders and Colonel Jay L. Torrey," Research Memor-
andum in the Miscellaneous Files of the Wyoming State Archives and His-
torical Department, December 8, 1960.

5. U.S., Congress, House, Committee on Military Affairs, A Letter from
the Secretary of War Transmitting Results of Preliminary Examinations and
Surveys of Sites for Militarv Posts, Doc. No. 618, 57th Cong., 1st Sess.,
1902, p. 396.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

108 ANNALS OF WYOMING

It seems to me the general policy should be to do away with the small
posts as rapidly as possible and to concentrate the Army as far as
practicable in regimental and brigade posts, care being taken to utilize
in every possible way those posts of recent construction and especially
those which by their location are capable of being expanded into regi-
mental or brigade posts without too great cost.*^

Fort D. A. Russell was among the posts which he desired to have
enlarged to brigade size, with facilities for four additional batteries
of field artillery to be added. Thus, Fort D. A. Russell survived
when many of the western posts were abandoned. Additional
structures were added throughout the next few years, but not until
World War II strained the capacity of all American military instal-
lations did another large building campaign take place at the post.

Fort Russell sent troops in 1913 to guard the southern border
from Mexican invasion. During the next three years, the army was
involved in a number of skirmishes with the Mexicans. Finally, in
March, 1916, Francisco "Pancho" Villa attacked Columbus, New
Mexico, killing a number of soldiers and civilians there. Imme-
diately following this incident, General John J. Pershing received
orders to pursue Villa into Mexico. With a force of some 15,000
men, Pershing marched 400 miles into Mexico. After several
months of futile campaigning, the army returned to American soil.
The expedition was valuable in that it provided the soldiers with
some practice which they would need when the United States
entered World War I. Truck transportation for the first time
became an integral part of Army communications and supply lines.
Also, during this era, the first tactical aviation group was organized
at San Antonio.^

When the United States declared war on Germany in April,
1917, the American Army was poorly prepared. Congress passed
the first draft legislation in May of that year. National mobiliza-
tion was swift and effective. Men were given a few months train-
ing, then shipped overseas to fight the Kaiser's troops. Fort D. A.
Russell became a mobilization point and a training base for field
artillery units.

The war ended with the signing of the Armistice on November
11, 1918. Under the national demobilization plan, military units
were to be processed out of the service at posts nearest the men's
homes. Fort Russell reported its first casuals in March, 1919.
On March 31 the post Morning Report showed 385 arrivals. By
June 22, the number had risen to 1377. On September 30 only
thirty-seven casuals remained at the garrison. ^^

8. U.S., Congress, House, Annual Reports of the War Department for
the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1906, Vol. I, Doc. No. 2, 59th Cong., 2d
Sess., 1906.

9. Kendall, op. cit., pp. 31-32.

10. Ibid., pp. 32-33.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 109

The years between the two world wars were pleasant ones at Fort
Russell. Much of the time was spent in beautifying the post and
improving living conditions there. Relations with the residents of
Cheyenne were very cordial. Cavalry and artillery units were sta-
tioned there during most of the 1920s. The cavalrymen mounted
their animals and added color to the Frontier Days parades and
rodeos. A local historian described this participation by the troops:

The Frontier parades were the most picturesque ever staged in Chey-
enne, or ever likely to be, for the grim utility of modern war equip-
ment cannot compare in glamour with the magnificent cavalry troops
of that day. The horses were some of the finest the army ever owned,
for they were selected as nearest to standard from the thousands of
World War purchases; and a G. L truck can't inspire the same roman-
tic thrill as the old white covered supply wagons drawn by the army
mules. 11

In the late 1920s, a reforestation program resulted in the plant-
ing of yellow pines and evergreen trees throughout the post. These
plants thrived, and today they highlight the landscape of the base.

On January 1, 1930, a presidential decree changed the name of
the post to Fort Francis E. Warren. Senator Warren, who had
earned the Congressional Medal of Honor during the War Between
the States, had come west to Wyoming and estabUshed himself as a
capable public official. He served on the Cheyenne city council,
as mayor of the city, and as the first governor of the state of Wyo-
ming before being selected to represent the state in the United
States Senate. Warren was a respected member of that body for
thirty-seven years, until his death in 1929.^^ In recognition of his
services to the state and nation, the post with which he had so long
been associated was named in his honor.

The era of peace ended with Hitler's conquest of Europe. On
September 16, 1940, Congress passed a Selective Service and
Training Act, which was designed to provide a military force suffi-
cient to defend the American nation and its territorial possessions.
The new draft law affected Fort Francis E. Warren immediately.
Contractors began work on the first of 387 temporary frame
buildings which were to house a Quartermaster Replacement Train-
ing Center. These structures were built across Crow Creek, south-
west from the old post.

By the time the United States actively entered the war, Fort F. E.
Warren was sufficiently large to garrison 20,000 men.^^ In 1942,

11. Ibid., p. 33.

12. Marie H. Erwin, Wyoming Historical Blue Book: A Legal and Polit-
ical History of Wyoming, 1868-1943 (Denver: Bradford-Robinson Printing
Co., 1946), pp. 1311-12.

13. U.S., Department of the Air Force, "A Brief History of Francis E.
Warren Air Force Base," Manuscript prepared by the Historical Office,
Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, p. 3.

110 ANNALS OF WYOMING

an Officer Candidate School for the Quartermaster Corps was

needed. The following year a Prisoner of War camp was activated.

The last Prisoners of War moved out of Fort F. E. Warren in

1946, but they left behind lasting memories of their confinement
there. At the edge of the post cemetery, in a plot which has been
fenced off to separate it from the rest of the graves, lie the remains
of nine soldiers — eight Germans and one Itahan — who died at the
camp. The following excerpt from a wartime Army Regulation
defined the method by which the remains of prisoners would be
interred:

It is directed that a separate burial plot in the vicinity of the Post
Cemetery be designated for burials of Prisoners of War, The remains
of a Prisoner of War dying at your station will be buried in the desig-
nated plot, unless such remains be claimed by relatives for shipment
elsewhere, without expense to the government.^*

When the Air Force became a separate branch of the miUtary, in

1947, the Army relinquished the fort to this new service. Eighty
years after its founding, the installation was renamed Francis E.
Warren Air Force Base. It came under the control of the Air
Training Command. That organization brought men from aU over
the nation to train them as mechanics, electricians, clerk typists,
bakers, warehouse custodians, records clerks, and in similar skiUs.^^

The base remained a training center until February 1, 1958,
when the Strategic Air Command acquired it for use as a strategic
missile headquarters. The first Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic
Missile arrived by truck in October of 1959. By November, 1961,
three strategic missile squadrons were active at the base, under
command of the 389th Strategic Missile Wing, the largest Atlas
wing in the nation. On January 1, 1963, the Thirteenth Strategic
Missile Division emerged, with headquarters at F. E. Warren Air
Force Base. Assigned to this division was a Titan I unit at Lowry
Air Force Base, Colorado. By July 1, 1963, the Ninetieth Stra-
tegic Missile Wing, with its Minuteman I, was active, and Warren
became the only division headquarters in the United States to have
all three types of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles : the Atlas, the
Titan, and the Minuteman.^®

Since that time the Titan and Atlas Missiles have been phased
out. A new weapon, the Minuteman II, is replacing the older
models.

14. U.S., Department of the Air Force, "Where Time Stands Still: A
Brief History of the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base Cemetery, Wyo-
ming," Manuscript prepared by the Office of Information Services, Francis
E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming (July 1, 1956), p. 4.

15. Warren Air Force Base (Lubbock, Texas: Craftsman Printers Inc.,
n.d.), pp. 3-4.

16. Ibid., p. 4.

FORT DAVID A. RUSSELL 111

F. E. Warren Air Force Base has no tactical aircraft assigned;
indeed, there is not even a landing strip on the base. For air trans-
port of men and materiel, they use the facihties of the airport in
Cheyenne.

Thus, the old cavalry post has undergone many changes. In
1967, the installation celebrated its centennial. During that one
hundred years, the post has housed at various times horse cavalry,
infantry, artillery, and the most modem weaponry. Francis E.
Warren Air Force Base is living history.

Vhere Jre Mift^s and Min^s

A very good point is raised by an exchange on the mining prop-
osition built up on Indian lore and the like.

Because mining is remunerative, because it is safer than indus-
trials, don't be deceived into believing that all advertised mines are
what they are supposed to be.

For example: There are the mines that were discovered by old
Indians, who had more knowledge of roots and tomahawks than
they had of ore.

There is a mine that has ore running $90,000 on the average and
can be quarried like a sand pile.

Then there the mine that has a vein two thousand feet wide and
that is nothing but ore — no waste rock in it.

There is the mine that can be developed in two months.

There is also the mine that contains some metal that has never
been found in that district before.

And there are other mines with equally romantic stories about
them.

There is just one kind of mine that is safe to invest in, and that is
the one that has been located by men who understand their busi-
ness, and is being opened in a manner that will bring results. In
other words, there must be the property and the men back of it.
These men must be in the business to produce wealth from what
the mine yields.

Ignorant old Indians were not discovering mines. If they were
gifted that way a great many properties would have been developed
before the white man spoiled things. The natives that did find gold
got it from placers, and then only from the surface.

Don't be deceived by pretty stories. It is as unreasonable to
expect mining to be remunerative except through work as it is to
look for a millionaire to build a factory and give it to strangers.
There must always be "value received," and if the investor will look
well to securing his dues he may rest assured that the company will
not be defrauded. Investigation is the most harped on and the
least heeded course in deciding upon investment.

— Wyoming Industrial Journal
April, 1905

Oregon Zrail
and California- Mormon Z rails

FORT BRIDGER TO WYOMING'S WESTERN BORDER

Trek No. 19 of the Historical Trail Treks

Sponsored by

WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, WYOMING
STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL DEPARTMENT

Uinta County Chapter of
Wyoming State Historical Society

Under the direction of
Charles Guild and Maurine Carley

Compiled by
Maurine Carley, Trek Historian

July 13-14, 1968

OFFICERS

Captains: Saturday, Lt. Leonard Wold, Wyoming Highway Patrol;

Sunday, Patrolman Lloyd Sanderson, Wyoming Highway

Patrol.
Wagon Boss: Ralph Harvey.
Announcer: BiU Dubois.

Guides: Charles Guild, Jim Guild, A. B. Hopkinson.
Historian: Maurine Carley.
Topographer: Paul Henderson.
Photographers: Adrian Reynolds, A. B. Hopkinson.
Press: Green River Star, Green River; Uinta County Herald,

Evanston.
Registrars : Rosalind Bealey , Jane Houston, Meda Walker.
Tickets : Fran Boan.

The portion of the Oregon Trail which had not been previously
covered on emigrant trail treks was completed this year. The trail
was approximately seventy-five miles from Fort Bridget to Wyo-
ming's western border. Modem cars and the terrain made it neces-
sary to travel mostly on highways rather than on the old trail. The
mileage is that of the 1968 trek, not that of the original trail.

114 ANNALS OF WYOMING

JULY 12, 1968

On Friday evening the Uinta County Historical Society enter-
tained the trekkers at a deUghtful party from 7:30 to 9:00 P. M. at
Hunting Hall, the Episcopal Parish House in Evanston. Pictures
of early Uinta County were on display as were mementos from the
Evanston Chinese Joss House, which had been one of three in the
entire United States.

Nancy Wallace read an account of the Chinese in Evanston from
Uinta County. Its Place in History, by Elizabeth Arnold Stone.
Several other members added interesting bits about the Chinese
inhabitants and their customs. Chinese fans were presented to the
ladies and the men were given joss stocks.

Coffee, punch and cookies were served by the ladies of Uinta
County Chapter. Several members from the Sweetwater County
Chapter also came to greet the visitors.

SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1968
Caravan: 21 cars, 75 participants
Guides: Charles Guild, Jim Guild.

8 : 30 A.M. The Court House was the meeting place for registra-
tion, introductions and a group picture.

9:00 A.M. We traveled north on old Highway 189 to Interstate
80, and to Kemmerer Junction (15 M.) where we turned north to
the left of Oyster Ridge, a hogback which had been one of the
obstacles for the emigrants on the Oregon Trail.

10:00 A.M. At 23 M. a stop was made below Bridger Gap where
the more adventurous trekkers drove up the steep road which
wound over the hogback. At the summit the ruts of the old trail
were plainly visible in the rocks. Below the Gap to the east, rem-
nants of an Indian corral could be seen. It was made from cedar
boughs laid close together in a large semicircle. The Indians
chased game into the corral.

BRIDGER GAP
By Dorothea Guild

Most everyone who has been in this area knows about Bridger
Gap and many saw it first as children. It seems strange to be tell-
ing its story in 1968 so long after the Gap was used and then
practically forgotten. Those who have seen the Gap marvel that
such a trail could have been traveled by wagons and teams.

There is no doubt that the Oregon Trail crossed this region but
why here and for how long — no one knows. Bridger Gap was
named for the famous Jim Bridger whose fort was nearby. Wheth-
er he discovered the Gap himself or served as guide through the

OREGON TRAIL AND CALIFORNIA-MORMON TRAILS 115

area is not recorded. However, it is one of many places named in
his honor.

In order to reach here the Oregon-bound people, leaving Fort
Bridger, crossed Black's Fork, turned north to Barrell Spring,
crossed over near Bridger Station and then dropped back northeast
over this hogback. An easier route left Fort Bridger, crossed
Black's Fork and went by the Carter Station up to a place called
Waterfall. Enough travel crossed here one hundred years ago to
make ruts that can still be seen.

10:30 A.M. As we departed we could see traces of the trail as it
came down from the hogback to Cumberland Flats where the trail
and highway became one for six miles. The trail then cut across
left through the hills up the Little Muddy toward Elk Mountain.

We passed the site of Cumberland, a busy coal town from 1913
to 1935, and its little cemetery. In the distance an open-hearth
coal mine and hydroelectric plant was operating. It furnishes elec-
tricity and power for Evanston and much of Utah. In this area
coal is mined by removing the surface earth and rock (over-burden)
instead of by the usual shaft mining, leaving the scarred hills on
our left.

1 1 :20 A.M. At 51 M. we turned left into Diamondville to stop at
the Rock Shop where we saw many fossil fish of aU sizes and lis-
tened to a talk by eighteen-year-old Wally Ulrich, who had just won
fourth place at the International Science Fair in Detroit for his
project, "Paleoecology of Fossil Lake."

HISTORY OF FOSSIL LAKE
By Wallace L. Ulrich

The "life" of the Green River Formation began nearly 70 million
years ago when the water of a great seaway extending from the Gulf
of Mexico to Alaska began to recede. The sediments that were
deposited in this vast seaway were slowly uplifted to form the pres-
ent Rocky Mountains. The beginning of this orogeny marks the
end of the Mesozoic era which is commonly known as the "Age of
Dinosaurs" and the beginning of the Cenozoic era, or the "Age of
Mammals". The Cenozoic is divided into two periods known as
the Tertiary, lasting nearly 69 milUon years, and the subsequent
Quaternary which began about one million years ago. The Ter-
tiary is divided into five epochs defined by fauna and flora, which
are the Paleocene, Eocene, Oligeocene, Miocene, and Pliocene.

During the Eocene epoch of the Tertiary, the dwindling seaway
and the orogeny of the land mass established several bodies of
water in the area that is now southwestern Wyoming. These bodies
of water were remnants of other receding and re-forming lakes
which occupied the large basin lying between the Uinta and Wind
River Mountains.

116 ANNALS OF WYOMING

The most interesting exposure of the formation is that which was
deposited in a small narrow lake lying west of the present Kem-
merer, Wyoming. The lake is presently referred to as Fossil
Syncline Lake.

Throughout the lake's five-million-year-existence it fluctuated
slightly in size and shape. At times its maximum size was about
ten miles wide and nearly forty miles long. At its minimum stage
it probably covered an area five miles wide by fifteen miles long.
The lake's fluctuation is and can be related to the cUmatic and
structural unrest of this epoch.

The final disappearance of these lakes was probably brought
about by several factors. The first was sedimentation, the some-
what irregular deposition of carbonate particles from the lake
water, with a possible periodic mixture of volcanic ash from north-
ern volcanoes. The second, a general upUft, brought rejuvenated
streams which carried still more sediment out over the lake beds,
thoroughly covering the lacustrine deposits.

During the following fifty million years, two other processes were
taking place. The first was lithification, which is the conversion of
loose sediments into indurated rock. Lithification is basically
brought about by cementation, compaction and reorganization of
the sediments. The lithification of the sediments deposited in the
lake millions of years ago have now produced an "oil shale" forma-
tion which includes fossils. The other process is concerned with
weathering and erosion. After the rejuvenated streams had re-
duced the upland areas, they began wearing down through the
sediments they had deposited. Eventually the streams cut into the
lacustrine formation, now termed the Green River Formation, ex-
posing the oil shales.

The rock structure of the Green River Formation, when studied
in conjunction with the preserved fossil specimens, can provide us
with an amazingly complete picture of the environment of the lake.

The section of the Green River Formation that was deposited in
Fossil Syncline Lake now totals nearly 330 feet of lacustrine sedi-
ment. Although fossil specimens are located throughout the entire
330 feet of shale, a very fossiliferous eighteen-inch shale unit which
was deposited under "ideal conditions" is found about 250 feet
above the base of the formation. In addition to favorable depo-
sitional conditions, this shale has been protected from harmful
effects of seeping water by two four-to-five-inch layers of dark
dense oil shale directly above and below the fossiliferous unit.

This "eighteen-inch" unit contains thousands of microscopic
layers of deposited materials. Through the simple process of
pressure, these laminations have been greatly compressed. The
unit is composed basically of amorphous organic materials and
precipitates deposited in a cyclic manner in varying amounts. Light
and dark laminations alternate within the unit and suggest seasonal
deposition, the Ught ones being associated with a cold period and

OREGON TRAIL AND CALIFORNIA-MORMON TRAILS 117

the dark with a warm period with more organic matter being pres-
ent. Since seasons as we know them today came into existence
about three milUon years ago, these laminations may not represent
time intervals presently employed to denote seasonal changes.

The climatic conditions which prevailed during the period of
sediment deposition in Fossil SyncHne Lake have been described in
detail by Dr. W. H. Bradley. The fossil plants indicate a generally
warm climate. Some forms suggest a warm moist lowland, and
others a cooler, probably drier, upland region.

All of the vegetation found is of terrestrial origin. The evidence
of two varying land conditions is best explained by realizing that
the streams bordering the lake could have brought upland vegeta-
tion into the lake along with the surrounding flora. Wind currents
also probably brought upland flora into the lake. Dr. Bradley
compares the flora found in the Gulf Coast states today to that of
the Eocene fossil lake. It is believed that during the time when the
"eighteen-inch layer" was deposited the lake's climatic conditions
were very similiar to that of the southern coast states.

Bradley pictures the depths of the Green River lakes as "broad
sheets of water some ten to fifteen feet deep near the shore and
perhaps as much as 100 feet in the middle."

The smooth laminations of the varves indicates that the water
was quite calm, and that the lake (as a typical semi-tropical lake),
was thermally and/or chemically stratified. Under such condi-
tions, the lowest layer of water would become stagnant and lose its
oxygen. With the exception of anaerobic bacteria, life could not
have existed in this lower region.

Such microscopic organisms as spores, pollen grains, insect
parts, and free swimming organisms settled into the ooze from the
upper water layers. Reptiles and a bat have been collected along
with fish from the Fossil Syncline Lake formation.

Through deposition of sediment, along with the pressure and
heat resulting from the accumulation, the dead and trapped organ-
isms became fossilized over millions of years.

12:10 P.M. Lunch was enjoyed in the park in Kemmerer through
the courtesy of the Mayor. Several members of the trek took time
to visit the first J. C. Penney store and the nearby Penney home.

1:20 P.M. We left Kemmerer on Highway 30N toward Sage
Junction. A stop was made here (59 M.) where Mrs. Carl Ulrich
pointed out the old ghost town of Twin Creek and the site of a
trading post frequented by the Indians and early settlers.

1 :45 P.M. We stopped at the Fossil Rest Area to read the legend
and look at the bluffs from which have come fossilized fish, insects,
snails, clams, a few birds and bats, palms and fern leaves. This
area has been recommended for designation as Fossil Butte Na-
tional Monimient.

118 ANNALS OF WYOMING

2:05 P.M. At Sage Junction (81 M.) we turned left on 89 and
again left on a good county road which led us up a hiU for four easy
miles. When the road turned into a sheepherder trail, we stopped
on a bluff and looked down into North Bridger and Spring Creek
Valley where evidence of the old trail, winding along at the foot of
BuU Dog Mountain, could be seen across the valley.

GRAVE SPRINGS
By Earl Nebeker

Grave Springs is about one-eighth of a mUe to the east and a little
north of those alkali knolls you see across the valley. Why the
word springs is used I do not know as there is just one spring which
runs water. I have visited this spot many times in the past forty-
five years and have seen only one spring. There is a bog at the foot
of the "Alkie Noles" and a little to the west of them but they never
run water. This bog may be the reason for the word springs.

The graves are about seventy-five yards due west from the head-
water of the spring. At the turn of the century these graves could
be clearly seen and there was a marker which read "Graves Un-
known." There have been many conjectures about the word
"unknown" but the most likely is that emigrants who died late one
year were found and buried the next spring by early travelers.

This branch of the Oregon Trail was used in early spring or late
fall. To the north another branch which went through a range of
pine trees at an elevation of 9000 feet was usable only in midsum-
mer between spring thaws and fall snows.

The emigrants using this trail which passed Grave Springs came
up Little Muddy Creek to where it meets a hollow coming in from
the west. This hoUow is called Road HoUow probably because of
the weaving of the road there. They then went over the Bear
River — Green River divided just southwest of Elk Mountain and
came down the North Fork of Bridger Creek which runs past
Grave Springs.

Not much water ran in the creek but there were several small
fresh water springs scattered every two or three miles along its route
which made good camping grounds. They are nameless because
evidently no tragedy occurred near them as did at Grave Springs, or
Graves Spring, which would be more nearly correct. It is sug-
gested that a permanent marker be placed at this spot to remind
future visitors of the hazards endured by the emigrants one hun-
dred years ago.

All this country we see before us is known as Bridger Basin.

BACK IN THE MOONSfflNE DAYS
A story told by Earl Nebeker
Back in the moonshine days I was a young man working on a

OREGON TRAIL AND CALIFORNIA-MORMON TRAILS 119

ranch just south of here. Many an evening was spent watching the
activity along the road as a number of stills operated near the
springs on North Bridger and Spring Creeks.

High on the hill, moonshiners would flash lights to indicate that
their product was ready. Responding signals would come from car
lights along the highway to show that it was safe for the moon-
shiners to come out on the main road with their loads of whiskey.
This Green River Whiskey was known far and wide for its ex-
cellence.

2:30 P.M. The trail paralleled the road as we returned to the
highway which we crossed and then stopped at Bridger Rocks
(90 M.), a series of low, sharp rocks along which the Oregon Trail
once passed.

Some members of our party left us here and continued north to
Cokeville to see an Oregon Trail monument erected by Ezra
Meeker. They then went on to Border from where the trail went
to Fort Hall. The trail paralleled the highway all the way but no
traces can be seen today.

Since the gate to the Springs was chained shut, the rest of the
trekkers went north on the highway and turned off on the Pope
Ranch road (97 M.). We passed Succor Spring (101 M.), a large
pool of fresh, flowing water in which watercress grew profusely.
We caught only a glimpse of the spring, as there was no place to
park on the narrow road.

SUCCOR SPRING
By Charles Guild

Succor Spring lies along the bank of the Bear River and flows
from the foot of a hill into the river. What a beautiful sight it must
have been for the weary emigrants who named it for what it meant
to them.

I have excerpts from several diaries which mention this spring
and the surrounding country which I shall read.
James John Diary, 1841. August 2. This day went about 12
miles up the same branch that we encamped on last night (prob-
ably Black's Fork) here one of the waggons broke down and we
were obliged to camp until morning and mend it. We are in a
small valley this evening surrounded by high hills and in sight of
mountains on the right and left or north and south that are covered
with snow some of which are perhaps more than one hundred miles
of. (They were likely on the Little Muddy just before crossing the
Bear River Divide.)

August 3. We traveled about 20 miles today over high hills and
rough places and arrived at Bear River and encamped on its bank.
The river is about 50 yards wide here and has a sandy bottom and
no timber on its banks, excepting small willow, Killed one antelope

120 ANNALS OF WYOMING

today (The high hills were hkely the Bear River Divide and the
rough places would be North Bridger Creek. )
August 5. We traveled 21 miles today on the bank of Bear River.
There is high hills and mountains on each side of the river. (This
could be near Cokeville.)

Bartleson & Bidwell Diary, 1843. Sunday, July 25. Left the
rendezvous this morning — I wiU not omit to state the prices of
several kinds of mountain goods. Powder which is sold by the
cupful is worth $1 per cup. Lead $1.50 per lb. good Mackanaw
Blankets 8 to 15 dollars, sugar $1 per cupful. Pepper $1 also,
Cotton and CaUco shirts from 3 to 5 $, Rifles from 30 to 60; in
return, you will receive dressed deer skins at $3. Pants made of
deer skins $10, Beaver skins $10 Moccasins $1; flour 50 cents per
cupful. Tobacco at $2 per lb.

Monday Aug. 2. Retraced about 2 miles of yesterdays travel, and
went up another defile, in order to find a practicable route across,
the divide Between the waters of Green and Bear Rivers, Plenty of
grass, good spring water, Distance 11 miles."
(This must have been Little Muddy. )

Saturday July 7. This morning we were obhged to make an inland
circuit from the River, the Bluffs approaching so near the river as
to render it impossible to continue along its banks. We however
reached it again by a most beautiful defile, and beautifully watered
by a small rivulet proceeding from a spring." (Perhaps Succor
Springs.)

William Thompson Newley Diary, 1843. Aug. 14. We reached
Fort Bridger at noon in 8 mUes — lay by rest of day Mr. Careys
daughter Katharine died.

Aug. 15. We burry the little girl and travel 8 miles and camp on a
salty branch — ^poor grass. (Big Muddy, near Bridger Station.)
Aug. 16. We reached Muddy at noon. (This would be Little
Muddy.)

Aug. 18. We crossed the divide between Muddy and Bear River.
The worst road we have had hiUey and steep gullies and sidling —
the hills opposite are red. We camp at a fine spring." (Could be
Grave Springs.)

P. B, Reading Diary, 1843. Aug. 14. Came 12 miles up stream
and camped near Fort Bridger a small temporary Fort built by a
Mr. Bridger and old trapper 12 miles W. SW.

Aug. 15. Left camp late and proceeded over a rough rocky coun-
try for about 1 2 mUes when we camped on a small creek with salt
water. (Probably Albert Creek at Bridger Gap.)

Aug. 16. Continued up the stream and camped near its source at

OREGON TRAIL AND CALIFORNIA-MORMON TRAILS 121

a good spring of cold water 17 miles 5° north of west. (Cold
Spring on Little Muddy. )

Aug. 18. Down this creek about 8 miles to Bear River, a stream
20 yds wide, 3 to 5 feet deep, rapid running NW to a beautiful
valley from 5 to 6 miles wide. Here a large and beautiful Spring
from the bluffs on the east side of Bear River. (Succor Spring.)
From this spring made 5 miles in the afternoon.

Rev. Edward Parrish Diary, 1844. Aug. 30, Friday. We had a
fine frost last night. We are now in sight of mountains covered
with snow. (Uintas). We camped last night with the Indians.
Our stock all grazed together — the Indians well behaved. We got
an early start and drove to half past 3 o'clock and camped near the
Green River Fort Known as Bridger's Fort.

Sept. 1. Sunday clear and frosty — made a good start and drove
long and hard and camped on a small creek with very high banks
and plenty of watter. (Little Muddy.)

Sept. 5. We start down Bear River a very pretty little stream in
some respects to that of the Green River. They say good grass
along it. Some passed a large spring. (Succor Spring.) The road
lies down the valley of this beautiful river — the best that we have
traveled — made a great days drive and camped near the Indians.

Theodore Talbet Diary, 1844. Aug. 30. Came nearly west along
Black's Fork passing the bluff on which Vasquizs and Bridger's
houses are built. We found them deserted and dismantled. They
are built of logs, plastered wood need.

John Boardman Diary, 1843. Aug. 14. Lying by at the Fort

(Bridger) — All companies came up — don't know where to go.

Aug. 16. Lying by.

Aug. 17. Started for Bear River, Road bad.

Aug. 1 8. Camped at sunset on Bear River.

Aug. 20. Lay by — went hunting.

Aug. 25. Traded guns for horses with Indians — some talking of

going to California via Fort Hall — no.

3:30 P.M. After leaving Succor Spring we returned to the high-
way which took us through Utah. Miles of dark green wire grass
and remains of coal mines were seen along the way.
5:15 P.M. A stop was made at Almy ( 146 M.) where we all went
in the little Mormon church to listen to the story of Almy.

ALMY, WYOMING
By Charles Guild
Told by Dorothea Guild
Almy, located about three and one-half miles north of Evanston,

122 ANNALS OF WYOMING

was once a booming coal camp. The first coal was mined by the
Bear River Coal Company in September, 1868, from the mine later
known as No. 2.

The Bear River Company consolidated with the Rocky Moun-
tain Coal Company in 1870 to be known as the Rocky Mountain
Coal and Iron Company. They built a "Y" from Almy to Evan-
ston to furnish coal for the Union Pacific Railroad.

In 1875 the Union Pacific Railroad Company took over the
Wyoming Coal and Mining Company, and went into the mining
business itself. This made two big companies operating in Almy,
which had a population of 5000 at that time. Each company had
its own store and seven mines were operating.

The first miners were white men from England and Scotland,
then came 700 Chinese, brought in by the Rocky Mountain Com-
pany. The Union Pacific Company followed suit by bringing in
1200 Chinese. However, after the Chinese Massacre at Rock
Springs in 1885, only white men were employed at Ahny.

In 1881 the No. 2 Mine exploded, killing nine white men and
twenty Chinese. This explosion was followed by others with more
deaths, and the mines became known as the most dangerous in the
West because of firedamp and explosive dust. When the women
heard the dreaded fire sirens they got out big boilers which they
filled with grease and hurried to the mines.

No. 3 Mine, the last to shut down, operated until 1920, when
mining at Almy stopped. All that is left of old Almy is the ceme-
tery, a burning mine, slack dumps and memories.

5 : 45 P.M. We returned to Evanston (151 M. )

7:00 P.M. The Uinta County Chopter arranged a typical western

style chuck wagon dinner for us. The food was excellent and the
program appropriate. Chief Riddle of the Osage tribe wore the
costume of a Medicine Man. He and two Indian maidens, Natalie
Fresques and Diana Sather, repeated the Lord's Prayer in Indian
sign language. After the program the visitors went down town to
see many historical items displayed in store windows.

SUNDAY, JULY 14, 1968

Caravan: 17 cars, 58 participants

The Overland, California and Mormon Trail left Fort Bridger on
a route south of Interstate 80. Today we followed the trail in
reverse as we traveled back to Fort Bridger from Evanston.
Guides: Charles Guild, A. B. Hopkinson, Jim GuUd. Mileage
begins at Evanston.

7:30 A.M. We met promptly at the Court House and by 7:45
were on our way on State Highway 2100 which follows the Bear

OREGON TRAIL AND CALIFORNIA-MORMON TRAILS 123

River. At 8 M. we passed an Overland Stage marker and at 9 M.
saw the place on the left where Johnston's Army camped in 1857.
The trail can still be seen there.

8:05 A.M. We stopped at Myers Crossing (10 M.) where mem-
bers of the Meyers family have lived since 1857.

BEAR RIVER CROSSING

By J. Wesley Myers

(^This is known as the Myers Crossing of the Bear River because
my grandfather, John Myers, settled here in 1857 after having
spent three years in the Salt Lake Valley. He came back here, no
doubt, because of the opportunity to make a living from the "tour-
ist trade" of that day. The enterprise probably began with repair
work and blacksmith service and developed into furnishing food
and other supplies, fresh horses and oxen, board and lodging.

According to Ripley, the Bear is the longest river in the world
which does not empty into an ocean. It meanders some 460 miles
through Wyoming, Utah and Idaho before it reaches the Great Salt
Lake which is only sixty miles from the head of the river in the first
place. I do not know who named the Bear River.

(The emigrant trail came straight down the low gravel hill from
Sulfur Creek just a little north of the present oiled road and passed
north of the present ranch buildings. Since the Bear River bottom
was very good quality mud during much of the year it was graded
slightly even during the trail days and the grading can still be seen
in places. It is hard to say just where the Myers Crossing was at
that time since the river has changed its course. At any rate it was
considerably east of \yhere it is now, running in the old channel
w^ch can still be seen, s

(^The westward travel with horses and oxen and on foot got under
way in volume about 1847 and lasted until the advent of the rail-
road which reached here in 1868. As far as we know no one lived
on this part of the trail until my grandfather came. He built an
el-shaped, three-room log house, an adobe building for a bellows
forge and a horse bam, all with dirt roofs. The travelers slept in
their wagons, though meals were always available in the house.
Later he added a pole corral for a horse pasture. His fence was
different from the regular buck fence most ranchers built, probably
because he was a carpenter. His method was to drill large holes
opposite from each otiier in a pair of posts, then drive a length of
pole between them, creating a sort of ladder effect.) These double
posts were then set and pine poles placed from one to the next.
Thfise were used before barbed wire.

*A bridge was also built here at the crossing. As near as I can
tell it was a log bridge with a rock-filled pier in the middle and a
hewn log floor. This was a toll bridge, at least in high water time,

124 ANNALS OF WYOMING

and the fee was $1.50 per wagon. Some say John Myers manned
it with a rifle.

vWhen the railroad was completed, he built a hotel at the new
town of Milliard and ran it as a business until the Altamont tunnel
cut Milliard off the railroad and he was left without tourists. He
moved the hotel, or at least enough of it to make a large, two-story
frame house, back to the Bear River ranch and went into the cattle
business in earnest. He did well enough at it to earn one of the
first two selections from Wyoming in the Cowboy Hall of Fame in
Oklahoma.

John had had an exciting life before he settled on the Bear.
Bom in England, he was apprenticed to a blacksmith and a carpen-
ter before he came to New Orleans. From there he went to St.
Louis and on to Florence, Nebraska, which was the jumping-off
place for the Saints on their Westward trek. He was proud to think
he could furnish his own outfit of cattle and wagons without re-
course to PEF — Perpetual Emigration Fund.

Probably in June of 1854, he reached the crossing of the Bear
River. As there were no homestead laws at the time, he established
himself on the basis of "squatter's rights," which he successfully
defended. His skill was very valuable to the trains coming through.
The wagon traffic was continually increasing so the business pros-
pered. He established a basis of trade whereby he traded one
rested, fattened animal for two tired ones. The business was very
lucrative.

There was no doubt but that he was a Mormon. It is reported
that he had five women, but it is not quite clear just what their
status was. Anyway, he eliminated three of them and the other
two were maintained as wives. Sometime in 1860 he married my
mother who was in residence at the establishment of Brigham
Young as a seamstress. One of the wives had three children and
my mother had five.

John Myers was an active churchman during the early part of
his life. He obtained quite a high rank in the Mormon Priesthood.
I have a certificate of his appointment as a Seventy and there is a
report that he was one of the Seven Presidents of the Seventy,
which is part of the ruling Priesthood. During the period of my
acquaintance with him he had nothing to do with the church, for
what reason I do not know.

He died at his ranch home May 27, 1901, and is buried in the
cemetery in Evanston.

8 : 20 A.M. After hstening to the paper everyone walked up a little
hill to the grave of Mary Lewis who was bom in Scotland in 1828
and died on a handcart expedition. A new headstone marks the
spot but an older stone lies broken beside it. The relatives who
placed the new stone have their names chisled on the back of it J

8 : 45 A.M. We stopped at the site of old Bear River City ( 1 1 M. )

OREGON TRAIL AND CALIFORNIA-MORMON TRAILS 125

where we could see traces of the trail as it comes down the little
hollow back of the old town site from Aspen Mountain.

BEAR RIVER CITY
By Margaret McAlUster

The little settlement of Gilmer which nestled in this valley was
founded in 1 867 by timber drivers, tree choppers and their families.
Here they lived in peace for a year.

Upon the arrival of the railroad, General Champitt, special mail
agent, was requested to have the name of the town changed to the
more significant one of Bear River City, for the nearby river. This
posed a problem as there was already Bear River North in Utah.
However, the name was changed and the people were advised that
they "no longer need thirteen-cent envelopes to enrich the swin-
dlers but Uncle Sam's three-cent postage on letters and two cents on
papers will grant ingress and egress tq communications to or from
Bear River City, Wyoming Territory." ;■

Bear River City soon became the liveliest, if not the wickedest
town in America. At least 2000 people were as busy as bees sell-
ing liquor, banking, trading and pursuing business generally in
genuine frontier style. One hundred forty buildings quickly went
up and the town was laid out along several streets.

The tracks of the Union Pacific were brought into Bear Town on
the Sabbath morning of December 6, 1868. Editor Legh Freeman
of The Frontier Index prophesied that the town would become a
soUd, permanent one, but this did not prove to be true. The rail-
road company, refusing to put in a switch at Bear River, ruined
it from a business point of view.

Ruffians and a riot put the finishing touch to the town. With
the advent of the railroad came 500 men, roughs and gamblers,
who had been driven from point to point westward and they were
tired of this. They decided to make a stand so took to the hills to
make their plans for a raid on the town.

I Some of the roughs remained in town, robbing the mails, attack-
ing people on the streets in broad daylight and pillaging the stores.
Three of these roughs were noted garroters who had added to their
long list of crimes that of murder. The law-abiding citizens became
angry and suggested hanging the trouble makers which they did.
On Wednesday morning, November 11, three notorious robbers,
Jack O'Neil, Jimmy Powers and Jimmy Reed, were found hanging
to a beam in front of the unfinished jaU on Sulphur Street. )

The Index applauded. It stated that the citizens were justified
in administering sure and speedy retribution and warned that the
ring leaders would be hanged if found in town by midnight of Fri-
day, November 13.

This hastened the conflict and on November 19 three hundred
roughs attacked the town in force. The attack was repulsed by

126 ANNALS OF WYOMING

the citizens but not until the Bear River Riot cost eleven or sixteen
lives, including that of one citizen. The Frontier Index was wiped
out, but Freeman escaped with his life. By the time soldiers
arrived from Fort Bridger the ruffians had abandoned the city and
order was restored.

It is hard to believe that this peaceful little valley was once the
scene of such horrible times. Today no sign of a town can be
found.

9:10 A.M. We left on the highway but turned left in one-half
mile on a gravel road. At 13 M. the old Milliard railroad station
was on our right. To our left were two charcoal kilns.

9:45 A.M. From HiUiard we traveled on the old U. P. roadbed up
Bear River Divide to the summit once called Tapioca (21 M.) . It
was here that the helper engines were turned around after their
hard steep climb from the east. Aspen Stage Station on the Over-
land Trail was located below the hill, and the trail which the
Donner Party used is on the sky line ridge.

10:15 A.M. We departed on the roadbed for Piedmont (28 M.)

PIEDMONT— PROFILE OF A GHOST TOWN
Written by Chfford C. Stuart, Jr. Read by Nancy Wallace

Perhaps no other event in the history of the West had so great an
influence on so many lives as that of the completion of the trans-
continental railroad. All along the length of the tracks, towns
sprang up, some permanent, others just end-of-track towns. Pied-
mont was one of the latter.

A couple of years before the coming of the railroad, logging
operations had been set up south of the townsite to furnish ties for
the roadbed. Logs and ties were hauled by teams to the site of
Piedmont, then a town of some twenty tents. When the tracks were
laid up the winding eight-mile stretch of Aspen Mountain it was
readily apparent that 3ie heavy trains were going to need helper
engines to get to the summit of the mountain. Sidings, an engine
shed and water tank were constructed and the tent town became a
wood and water refueling station.

The first permanent residents were the famihes of Moses Byrne
and Charles Guild. Since the sisters of the two families, Hattie
Byrne and Mary Guild, had come from Piedmont, Italy, the town
was named in its honor. Moses Byrne went into the charcoal
business with his four large kilns and Charles Guild operated a
mercantile business.

Piedmont achieved national fame when 300 graders and tie cut-
ters, who had been discharged but not paid, piled ties on the tracks
and halted the special train, carrying Dr. Durant, financial wizard
and vice president of the Union Pacific Railroad, and other prom-
inent officials on their way to the golden spike ceremony at

OREGON TRAIL AND CALIFORNIA-MORMON TRAILS 127

Promontory Point in Utah. Durant pleaded and argued but the
angry men were adamant. The car would remain on the siding
until the $200,000 in back pay was paid in cash. Durant tele-
graphed east and west. Redfaced and highly perturbed, he sent a
telegram to Promontory Point stating that his delegation could not
possibly reach the Point before May 10. Finally the money arrived
and Durant's car was coupled onto another train and proceeded on
to Promontory Point, three days later. On May 10, 1869, the
Golden Spike was driven, thus completing the nation's first trans-
continental railroad.

In Piedmont as in many of the early railroad towns killings were
frequent. One involved an engineer of one of the helper engines
who killed a Chinaman in a card game. He is said to have carried
the body over to his engine, stuffed it into the firebox and burned
it on his way back to Leroy to pick up another train.

Old timers will tell also of two men getting off the train and drag-
ging a man out of a saloon into the street. When the man wriggled
loose, they shot him in the back, climbed on the train and left.
This man, a complete stranger, was buried on the hUl back of the
hotel with other unfortunate victims. Joseph Canary, Calamity
Jane's father, who was said to have been gunned down in a Pied-
mont saloon, hes in an unmarked grave nearby.

Indians also played a part in the history of Piedmont. A small
hunting party of Sioux kidnapped Eddie Byrne while he was play-
ing near his home. One summer day two years later, the noble
Chief Washakie of the Shoshones, rode into town and handed the
stunned Moses Byrne his now four-year-old son.

The Guild store did much credit business with the Shoshones and
their ledgers show that every Indian account was paid in full.
Washakie contended that a man's word was his law, and when a
brave promised to pay for something he had received, he paid or
was killed.

About 1900, the Union Pacific began digging the Aspen tunnel
through Aspen Mountain. The railroad was rerouted from Leroy
to the tunnel, missing Piedmont by several miles . Piedmont was
stranded and its demise began. The population dropped from 200
to about thirty-five persons. The last resident of the town was
William Taylor, a sheepherder who froze to death in the blizzard
of 1949.

Piedmont, however, left its legacy. Seven thousand dollars from
a Union Pacific train robbery was never recovered and is thought
to be buried somewhere in the area. Also, part of Butch Cassidy's
Montpelier bank robbery loot is supposedly buried around tiie
town. Much of the area has been dug up and the remaining build-
ings have had their floors, walls and ceilings torn out. Ash dumps
have been carefully sifted, and old foundations and holes of base-
ments thoroughly probed. Parts of opium pipes and other Chinese
relics, old bottles and newspapers of the 1900s have been found.

128 ANNALS OF WYOMING

A man with a metal detector is supposed to have picked up three
twenty dollar gold pieces, touching off another thorough probing of
the townsite. What remants are left wiU be reduced still further by
man's lust for riches and his desire to find a link to the past. Pied-
mont is now occupied by her most faithful resident, the biting
Wyoming wind.

10:50 A.M. In one-half mile we stopped to investigate huge stone
cones, the charcoal ovens built in 1 869 by Moses Byrne to furnish
charcoal to the settlers.

11 :00 A.M. We soon crossed the trail, saw a grave marker on the
bank of Muddy Creek and turned right on the old Lincoln Highway
at the Piedmont sign. The Uintas, the only mountain range in the
United States to run east and west, formed a spectacular back-
ground for our last talk (39 M.) .

HAYSTACK BUTTE
By Charles Guild

Haystack Butte is about six miles west of Fort Bridger to the
south of the old Califomia-Overland-Mormon pioneer trail. It can
be seen by travelers today from Interstate 80 while crossing the
Bridger Bench west of the Fort. From where we stand the Butte is
that small round knoU about four miles directly south with the
beautiful Uinta Mountains for a distant background.

In the spring of 1857 Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston's Army
started its march from winter quarters at Fort Bridger to Salt Lake
City. They traveled the old Pioneer Road near the foot of Hay-
stack Butte. The winter before. Lot Smith had left twenty-two
of his young Mormon Scouts in Grass Hollow about twenty miles
west of the Fort to watch for developments and report any activity
to the Saints.

As the Army was passing the Butte these young men rode their
horses and mules around the Butte. Keeping a steady string of
riders in sight of the Army at aU times, they changed mounts, coats
and hats before coming in sight of the Army again. Their forma-
tions also changed from columns of three or four abreast to one
or two side by side. By this strategy they hoped to make Colonel
Johnston believe they had more men than they did.

Several years ago when I was teUing of this incident on this same
spot, I said that I had often heard the story but did not have any
proof of its vahdity. An elderly lady in the group spoke up, "Oh
yes, that is true." At that moment a heavy rain fell, everyone ran
for their cars and I did not get her name. I tried later but was
unable to locate her.

When I was teUing the story again to a group of eastern tourists,
a young man in a ranger's uniform stepped up and said, "That

OREGON TRAIL AND CALIFORNIA-MORMON TRAILS 129

Story is true. My great grandfather was one of those Mormon
scouts." I then confirmed the story with L.D.S. Church records.

Some time ago while watching this Haystack Butte episode on a
Salt Lake TV show I was amused. Another elderly lady told that
her grandfather was with Johnston's Army. She ended her remarks
with, "There were hundreds of those men. My grandfather saw
them."

11:35 A.M. We returned to Interstate 80, turned right for Fort
Bridger (4 M.) where we visited the museum, the old buildings and
cemetery on the grounds. Our last picnic under the trees was
enjoyed before we bade farewell to our Uinta County hosts and
friends.

Many requests were made to travel the Oregon Trail again.
Since Trek No. I was on the Oregon Trail in 1953 it was pointed
out that a new generation of historically minded people could
be interested.

As in the past, space limitations make it necessary to condense
some of the papers which were read on the Trek. However, the
complete original manuscripts are on file at the Wyoming State
Archives and Historical Department, Cheyenne.

TREK PARTICIPANTS

CHEYENNE Mrs. Philip Myers

Mr. E. D. Nebeker

Rosalind Bealey Lela Nubarger

Mr. and Mrs. James Boan and Kelley Frances Painter

R. H. Bray Mrs. James Robbins

Maunne Carley O. Lloyd Sanderson

Mary Carpenter Nancy G. Wallace

Bill Dubois Lt. Leonard E. Wold

Dr. Ralph Gramlich Bertha Bulingos
Jane Hunt Houston
Eleanor R. Thompson

Meda Walker GREEN RIVER

Eunice Hutton
DOUGLAS William Hutton

T „!.» xjn^^K^on^ Mary W. Melonek

Lyle Hildebrand ^^ '^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ Reynolds and

Helen
EVANSTON Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Wright

Mr. and Mrs. G. Hobart Chapman

Charles Guild KEMMERER

Dorothea Guild

Ralph Harvey James E. Hall

Mr. and Mrs. A. B. Hopkinson Mr. and Mrs. Carl Ukich

Ethel Kelly Gail and Wallace Ulrich

Mrs. Edison Lee and Cindy

Margaret McAllister POINT OF ROCKS

Rea Morrow

Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Myers Mr. and Mrs. Ed Varley and children

130

ANNALS OF WYOMING

RAWLINS

Mr. and Mrs. Walter Lambertsen

ROCK SPRINGS

Mr, and Mrs. Henry Chadey

Dorothy Harmon

Mr. and Mrs. Sam Leckie

SARATOGA

Deborah Chastain
Henry Tlohe
Lois Teter

OUT OF STATE

Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Black,

Colorado
Stuart Mitchell, California
B. Weller, California
Pierre LaBonte, Jr., Massachusetts
Mr. and Mrs. E. G. Larson, Ohio
Virginia Layton, Utah

Wyoming State Mis tor tea I Society

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

CuRTiss Root

The purpose of the Wyommg State Historical Society as set forth
by Article II of its constitution is "to collect and preserve all pos-
sible data and materials including historical relics relating to the
history of Wyoming and illustrative of the progress and develop-
ment of the state; to promote the study and preservation of such
data and materials and to encourage in every way possible interest
in Wyoming History." The Wyoming Historical Foundation was
created in order to serve as a gathering agency for private fimds and
historical items to be used to strengthen the activities of the State
Society in its program of collecting, preserving and interpreting our
historical heritage.

Each of us as an individual member working with his County
Chapter can help promote the Historical Foundation by informing
the public of its purposes and needs. The Foundation cannot begin
to function properly until it has sufficient funds to enable it to
undertake any worthwhile project. We can all help by informing
individuals, businessmen, corporations or other foundations of the
goals and urgent needs of the Historical Foundation. There are
considerable sums of money which could be channeled into this
worthwhile project and it is up to us who are interested in pre-
serving Wyoming's heritage to uncover such funds.

The Foundation can accept gifts, donations, bequests, or be
named as beneficiary of a policy of insurance, an annuity or trust
fund. It is a non-profit organization and any contribution will be
tax exempt. It has also been suggested that contributions may be
made through memorial funds honoring pioneers, weU-known per-
sons or any individual. Contributions could also be made in honor
of some person still living. A limited number of letters have been
mailed to potential industrial company contributors by the Founda-
tion Committee. Donations have resulted from a few of these
letters and some replies indicated interest in further information
on activities of the Foundation, especially specific projects for
which the money will be used.

The membership of the Foundation consists of members in good
standing of the Wyoming State Historical Society, each of whom
has one vote in the election of a board of directors which control
the internal affairs of the corporation. These directors serve with-
out compensation in any form and have the authority to designate

132 ANNALS OF WYOMING

where the money will be used, subject to the approval of the State
Historical Society, and will also cooperate and collaborate with the
Wyoming State Library, Archives and Historical Board and the
Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department.

There are a great many needs that could be handled if our
Society had adequate funds with which to work. County and state
organizations involved with projects, with no support from budg-
eted public funds, could be aided greatly in basic work of preserv-
ing material of historical significance. Funds would enable the
Society to more effectively cooperate with educational faciUties,
underwrite informational brochures or booklets, and finance re-
search in some selected cases. Funds would also enable the Society
to set up more activities to stimulate interest of young people in
Wyoming history through achievement awards and special educa-
tional programs. Historically-correct movies for schools and the
general public, traveling historical museums, and acquisition of
historical properties which otherwise might be drained off to out-
side museums are just a few of the other things that could be done
if sufficient funds were available. Several collections of historical
significance have left the state and old stage stations, other histor-
ical buildings, old landmarks, and remnants of the old trails have
been destroyed or allowed to collapse into the dust from lack of
interest or funds to preserve them.

It is hoped that the Foundation funds can be built up until the
income will provide for the preservation of these historic sites and
objects for which funds are not otherwise available. We have more
going for us than just asking for contributions, as do many organ-
izations. Aside from the educational and cultural aspects, there is
certain promotional value in Wyoming history. True, many people
need to be awakened to the true significance of preserving the great
history of this state but investigations have shown that tourists
traveling throughout our country place value on historical attrac-
tions second only to our magnificent scenery and parks.

Through the Wyoming Historical Foundation the machinery has
been set up to enable us to help preserve our historical heritage for
future generations and it is up to us to help put this machinery in
operation.

Contributions may be deposited to the Wyoming Historical
Foundation account at the Wyoming National Bank, P. O. Box
971, Casper, Wyoming 82601.

WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 133

FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING
Jackson, Wyoming September 7-8, 1968

Registration for the fifteenth annual meeting began at 7:30
P. M., Friday, September 6, in the lower level of the Jackson State
Bank. The members then visited the Jackson Hole Museum,
courtesy of the Teton County Historical Society.

The business meeting of the Wyoming State Historical Society
was called to order at 9:15 A. M. by Mrs. Hattie Bumstad, 2nd
Vice President. President Adrian Reynolds, who had suddenly
become ill, was in the Jackson hospital. When Curtiss Root, 1st
Vice President, arrived, he took the chair. The meeting was held
in the lower level of the Jackson State Bank with seventy-five per-
sons present.

Miss Eunice Hutton moved that the reading of the minutes for
the 1967 annual meeting be dispensed with as copies were avail-
able. The motion passed.

Mr. Root appointed Rolla Bray and Ralph Geddes to serve on
the auditing committee. Mrs. Violet Hord and Miss Clarice Whit-
tenburg were appointed to serve on the Resolutions Committee.
The tellers appointed to count the ballots for the new officers were
Miss Eunice Hutton, chairman. Dr. T. A. Larson and Mrs. George
Graf.

The Treasurer gave the following report which was placed on
file for audit:

TREASURER'S REPORT
September 9, 1967 - September 7, 1968

Cash and investments on hand September 7, 1967 $17,626.51

Receipts

Dues $ 4,066.50

Sales

Hunton Diaries $ 14.00

Pinettes 6.10 20.10

Interest 797.16

Gift 25.00 4,908.76

Disbursements

Annals of Wyoming $ 2,839.40

Postage for Department $472.00

Postage, phone for Society 53.66 525.66

Printing, envelopes 103.06

Historic Trek 179.24

Officers' expenses 293.75

Secretary allowance 120.00

Committee expenses 5.00

Annual meeting in Cheyenne 225.00
Miscellaneous

Bond$5;Sec. of State $1,

Bank Checks 7.90

134 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Awards

Scholarship: Glenn Burkes,

Teton County 300.00

Grant-in- Aid: Eugene Galloway,

Dull Knife Site 100.00

400.00
66.13

Junior Historians

Refund to county, over-payment

of dues

1.50

$ 4,766.64

17,768.63

ASSETS

Savings

$10,000 certificate

10,000.00

Federal Building and Loan

883.06

Capitol Savings - Life memberships

4,110.85

Federal Buildings and Loan,

Bishop Fund

351.57

Cheyenne Federal

1,488.32

16,833.80

Cash - First National checking

account

934.83

17,768.63

Cash and investments on hand

Sept. 7, 1968

$17,768.63

MEMBERSHIP

1967

1968

Annual members 1049

1246

Life members 52

PRESIDENT'S REPORT

(Because of Mr. Reynold's illness, he did not give the following
report at the Annual meeting, but it is published here as he pre-
pared it. )

The success of this past year of the Wyoming State Historical
Society must be measured in the reports of the committees and the
chapters. Certainly our junior awards program has gained, for we
have, I am told, eleven schools of the state competing, a record
number. The society has gained one new chapter — Crook county.

You wUl note that this year, the verbal reports of chapters have
been limited to three minutes, with the complete report to be filed.
I believe this will make a more interesting report period and will
allow all chapters to present reports on the floor of the annual
meeting.

I want to especially commend Hattie Bumstad for the wonderful
work in securing interest of school children of the state in historical
research and recommend that the Society make every effort to
continue her program. At Green River, Bill Thomson piloted
historical writing in his high school Social Studies class, and this
should be noted.

Partly through my own fault, the foundation drive has not fully

WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 135

progressed but I do believe we should put our shoulders to the
wheel to help it grow. Chairman Bille found it difficult to function,
he reports, because of scattered executive committee membership,
and because of his company's demands upon his time. It is to be
noted that any person carrying on such work and at the same time
earning his livlihood elsewhere is faced by difficulties.

During the year, the executive board decided to hold the society
Foundation Fund until it reaches $20,000 before any additional
disbursement is made.

Because of rising cost of Annals, including postage increases,
we should further investigate the dues structure in order to meet
the obligation without digging into reserve funds.

During the year, I was able to visit only five chapters other than
my own: Laramie, Albany, Washakie, Fremont and Uinta. For a
person who is in business, the tremendous mileage and expense
involved really calls for the president and officers to make district
visitations rather than to individual chapters. We tried the district
meeting in Big Horn basin, however, without very good coopera-
tion. Distance, business and weather combined at times to keep
me home when I intended to travel. One thing is obvious: The
change in society officers occurs in the middle of the year of most
chapters, so that it is hard to coordinate policies and activities. If
chapter and state officers could be elected at about the same time,
the new chapter officers could attend the state meeting and be able
to start in the fall on new activities and to complete their year's
work at the same time as does the state society. The present dis-
crepancies in dates of terms of offices make it hard on state
officials.

By invitation, I represented the state society at the dedication of
the Trappers' National Landmark in Sublette county.

The president is now automatically a member of the governor's
advisory committee on national historic sites, to act with the
Recreation Commission in recommending landmarks and historical
sites to the federal government. No meetings were held while I
have served as president.

I served as chairman of the western meeting of the John Wesley
Powell Centennial group, held in Green River. Delegates were in
attendance from Washington, D. C, California, Utah and Wyo-
ming, including U. S. Geological Survey, National Park Service,
BLM, USBR, U. S. Wildlife, Utah and Wyoming state historical
societies. Sierra Club and other groups, including Wyoming's state
travel and recreation commissions. The latter have pledged their
fuU cooperation. The national observance officially opens at
Green River May 24, 1969. Dr. Cooley of Utah, R. W. Davis of
Sierra Club and myself are co-chairmen. I respectfully ask that the
Society allow me to represent it on this committee.

Only through the close cooperation of our secretary-treasurer
and of our executive secretary have affairs of the society been kept

136 ANNALS OF WYOMING

moving, for which I thank them. I beUeve the Society owes them a
really sincere vote of thanks.

I have been honored by being able to serve you as president
during the past year, and will continue to serve whenever needed,
within my capabilities and availability.

OFFICER'S REPORTS

Executive Secretary Neal Miller explained the organization of
the Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department. He intro-
duced the department personnel who were present.

Curtiss Root, chairman of Projects Committee, reported that he
had given a news release to the press about the Historical Founda-
tion Fund.

Mrs. Hattie Bumstad, chairman of the Awards Committee, said
she had sent letters to the president of each county chapter suggest-
ing that they look for qualified candidates for awards. She also
sent letters to all Social Science English teachers in Wyoming sug-
gesting they incorporate the historical program in their class work.
There were twenty-three entries in the junior historical contest.
She suggested that the date of August 1 for entries be changed to an
earlier date.

Miss Carley explained the cost of the trek. Several expenses are
necessary — such as mileage and time for exploratory trips (local
people who know the area have to go out and locate the old trails),
postage for the schedules which are sent to many people, phone,
films and photographs.

CHAPTER REPORTS

Complete reports are filed in the Society executive headquarters.
Only highUghts are given here.

Weston County: (read by Lucille Dumbrill) The chapter
handed in a beautifully typed report with pictures and newspaper
clippings. This showed they have been very active discovering,
gathering and preserving history. They are especially proud of
their mobile museum van.

Uinta County: On July 12, 13, and 14, State Historical Society
members were guests of the Uinta County chapter for a trek which
followed the Oregon Trail through Uinta County and also part of
the Mormon Trail and original railroad route of the Union Pacific
in the southern end of the county. The trek ended with a visit to
Fort Bridger. The county organization was happy to host this
interesting trek.

Washakie County: Mrs. Bumstad announced that their new
museum is entirely staffed by volunteer help. They hope to get the
old post office building for the museum.

WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 137

Teton County: Mr. Hay den told that the Teton County His-
torical Society had saved the Miller homestead cabin on the Na-
tional Elk Refuge from being burned, A volunteer group cleaned
the premises and a cyclone fence was placed around the building
by the Refuge. They hope to have the place made an historic site.

Sweetwater County: (read by Eunice Hutton) The Sv^^eetwater
County chapter takes special pride in the fact that it spearheaded
the drive for a museum. Four hundred guests were entertained at
an open house for the museum located in the new courthouse.
Their armiversary dinner was brought in potluck style by the
women,

Sheridan County: (read by Mrs, Hila Gilbert) April 27, 1968,
will be remembered as one of the most noteworthy dates in the
history of the chapter for it marked the opening of the restored and
remodeled saloon and lobby of the Sheridan Inn. On June 23,
1967, the Inn was purchased by Neltje Kings, wife of a local artist
and rancher. As a registered National Historic Site, it will be
developed and furnished in authentic style.

Park County: Lucille Patrick said that all programs given at
their meetings are taped and copies are sent to the State Archives
and Historical Department, Each program includes honoring an
"Oldtimer of the Month". They enjoy two local treks every year.

Platte County: No report.

Natrona County: (read by Rose Mary Malone) Focus has been
placed on assisting the Foundation Fund, Several memorials have
been given to the Fund, For one program slides of Indian draw-
ings in the area of Castle Gardens were shown by Henry Jensen.

Laramie County: (read by BiU Dubois) As usual one meeting
of the year was held in one of the smaller towns in the county. This
year the meeting was held in Carpenter where the members heard
about homesteading in the area. They visited an old barn filled
with antiques of every description,

Lincoln County: Although the county chapter is not yet organ-
ized, three interested prospective members attended the Jackson
meeting.

Johnson County: Reverend Stuart Frazier announced that the
chapter is looking for an authentic chuck wagon which has been
used on round-ups. They hope to display this in Buffalo, Senior
citizens are honored at their meetings.

Goshen County: Mrs, Dorothy Keenan announced that Goshen
County has the doubtful distinction of going in the red about $400.
Through an unusual circumstance they now have everything for a

138 ANNALS OF WYOMING

museum but no place to house it. They did enjoy a picnic at a
ranch and a two-day trek to Saratoga in June even though in snow.

Fremont County: (read by Oscar Deal) The chapter enjoyed
the official visit of the State President, Adrian Reynolds, who
braved a very bad winter storm to meet with them. His talk was
informative and instructive. The chapter welcomed his suggestions.

Crook County: (read by Maurine Carley) This chapter was
organized in June 1968. Already they are making plans for a
museum and the membership is enthusiastic.

Carbon County: (read by Mrs. Ralph Geddes) Regular meet-
ings are preceeded by carry-in dinners with the meat dish furnished
by the host couples. The chapter took an active part in the Cen-
tennial activity in Rawlins. Mrs. Geddes, chapter president, has
visited every 4th and 8th grade in Rawlins to speak on the history
of Carbon County.

Campbell County: (read by Dorothy Van Buggenum) The
Society has made several trips to study nearby petroglyphs, Scoria
boulders and an unusual deposit of animal bones. They have de-
cided that historians would do well to delve into some phase of
prehistoric research.

Big Horn County : No report.

Albany County: Mr. Burton Marston reported that the event
of the year was the formal opening of the Laramie Plains Museum
on May 18, 1968. He amazed the group when he told that $50,000
was obtained through wills, memorials and donations given for the
museum.

Mr. Miller added that the growing interest in museums is prob-
ably due to the potential financial assistance from the Federal gov-
ernment. He advised the members to decide what they wanted
to collect and said the Department would be glad to help with
procedures, preservation processes and exhibit methods.

COMMITTEE REPORTS

Trek. Bill Dubois said that the treks were among the obviously
worthwhile activities of the Society. People from all over the state
as well as from other states enjoy them. He asked that treks on the
Oregon, Mormon, Bozeman and other old trails be repeated as a
new generation is now becoming interested in the history of our
State and many have missed the former treks.

Scholarship Committee. Dr. T. A. Larson annoimced that any-
one seeking a Grant-in-Aid or a Scholarship should write to the
Society's Executive Secretary for the forms that need to be filled
out. Grants-in-Aid amount to $300 of which $100 is paid at the

WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 139

beginning of the project and $200 at its satisfactory completion.
Scholarships amount to $500 of which $200 is paid at the begin-
ning and $300 at the end. Two men at present are working under
the Scholarship program — William Barnhart and Robert Murray.
Two others, Gordon Chappell and Eugene Galloway, are receiving
Grant-in-Aid funds.

Foundation Fund, (read by Mr. Miller for Ed Bille) Contri-
butions amounting to $1,000 to date have been deposited in the
Wyoming National Bank in Casper. No withdrawals can be made
until 1970, and then only upon action and approval of the Exec-
utive Committee of the Wyoming State Historical Society. Mr.
Bille suggested that a small working committee be appointed
immediately to set up a program for eventual use of the Foundation
funds. If individual Society chapters will concentrate on making
memorial collections, substantial amounts will result.

Mr. Bray announced that the treasurer's books were correct and
in good order.

Mrs. Dumbrill, president of the Weston County Chapter, invited
the Society to hold its annual meeting in Newcastle in 1969. Bur-
ton Marston moved that the invitation be accepted. Motion
carried.

Interesting discussions followed. Dr. Larson advised the group
to be aware that the Wyoming Historical Institute was not con-
nected with the Wyoming State Historical Society. Mr. Miller
advised that valuable material should be microfilmed to provide
security copy if the original might be destroyed. A lively dis-
cussion took place over the use of the $17,000 in the savings
account of the Society. Some thought county chapters should
borrow from it, others thought money might be given to chapters
for projects. However, it v,^as decided not to touch the savings
until it at least reached $20,000.

The meeting adjourned at noon.

The afternoon was spent on a scenic trip to Grand Teton Park,
Jenny Lake and Coulter Bay. The weather was perfect. Everyone
was happy to see Wyoming beauty spots as well as the museums
along the way.

DINNER MEETING

After the Invocation by the Reverend Stuart Frazier, Mr. Miller
introduced the people at the head table. He then read a note from
Mr. Reynolds regretting that he could not be present.

During the dinner Nancy Miller, a folk singer, entertained the
guests as she strolled from table to table. She wore an attractive
brown costume which she had made from Wyoming sheepskin.

The speaker of the evening was the Honorable Harry Clissold,
mayor of Jackson for twenty-eight years. He said, "he served well
over 150 years in civic endeavor." He told of old times in

140 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Jackson — homesteading, hunting and fishing and suggested that
everyone try homesteading sometime.

The state was well represented and members were proud to stand
for their county as the roll was called.

Mr. Root presented the following junior historian awards:

1st place (Senior High School) - Anne Marie Olson, Sher-
idan, $25.

2nd place (Senior High School) - Toni Horton, Green
River, $10.

3rd place (Senior High School) - Bobby Gordon, Green
River, Book.

1st place (Junior High School) - Susan Dillinger, Buf-
falo, $25.

2nd place (Junior High School) - Lynn Wilkinson, Rock
River, $10.

3rd place (Junior High School) - Janet Anesi, Lander, Book.

Mothers, fathers, grandparents and teachers of the young his-
torians were present.

Mrs. Bumstad, chairman of the Awards Committee, presented
the following awards :

Dr. T. A. Larson for compiling and publishing Bill Nye's
Western Humor. (Laramie)

Burton Hill for his publication of a series of articles. On the
Platte and North. (Buffalo)

Mabel Brown for a series of articles pubUshed in a Wyoming
magazine. (Newcastle)

Clarice Whittenburg for the radio script. Portrait of a Pioneer
City. (Laramie)

Robert Edgar for the establishment of a private museum of
early ranch reUcs. (Cody)

Boy Scout Troop 62 of Casper for the preservation of histor-
ical sites.

First National Bank of Laramie for the use of historical ma-
terial in advertising.

Department of Speech and Drama. University of Wyoming,
for radio presentation of historical material. (Laramie)

Yvonne Sedgwick for her painting, "The Chuck Wagon."
(Newcastle)

Alice Stevens for her work in preserving historical materials
over a long period of time. (Laramie)

Honorable Mention awards were received by:

Newcastle Women's Club for their assistance in the preser-
vation of historical materials.

WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 141

Angeline Weller's 4th grade, Casper, for group presentation of

historical material.
Lucille Dumbrill for her painting, "Homestead Relics."

(Newcastle)
Elizabeth J. Thorpe for her painting, "The Picket Lme."

(Newcastle)
Mary Capps for the preservation of historical materials.

(Newcastle)

Mr. Miller announced the 1968-1969 officers as follows: Pres-
ident, Curtiss Root; First Vice President, Mrs. Hattie Bumstad;
Second Vice President, Reuel Armstrong; Secretary -Treasurer,
Miss Maurine Carley; Executive Secretary, Neal E. Miller.

Mrs. Hord read the following resolution: Resolved that the
members of the Wyoming State Historical Society wish to express
their thanks to the Teton County Chapter for arranging this fine
meeting. We appreciate the time and effort spent which has made
these days so pleasant. Mr. Hayden, in particular, deserves our
thanks. We are grateful for the fine dinner, the entertaining
speaker, the trips to your museums and especially for the oppor-
tunity to see the beautiful scenery nearby and for the wonderful
weather you have provided. Our thanks for everything.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8

The Teton County Chapter was host at a breakfast at the Silver
Spur Cafe which was appreciated by the Society members. Follow-
ing the breakfast, many went to Teton Village to see the new ski
development.

We all look forward to meeting again in Newcastle next year.

Maurine Carley
Secretary-Treasurer

Contributors

Dr. Wilson O. Clough, professor emeritus at the University of
Wyoming, has appeared previously in the Annals of Wyoming as
the author of articles on a variety of subjects. He has published
several books, including History of the University of Wyoming,
Our Long Heritage, Intellectual Origins of American Thought and
The Rocky Mountain West in 1867, which he translated and anno-
tated for 1966 publication. Dr. Clough is a former professor of
EngUsh at the University and more recently was WiUiam Robertson
Coe professor of American studies.

James C. Murphy, presently teaching in Lillooet, British Co-
lumbia, is a former Cheyenne resident, having taught in the junior
and senior high schools from 1938 to 1961. He also taught Arap-
ahoe children when he lived on the Wind River Reservation during
1928 and 1929 and again from 1933 to 1935. He earned his B. A.
at the University of Wyoming. The Arapahoe study pubhshed in
this issue was written as his master's thesis at the University of
British Columbia, where he received his M.A. in 1966.

Dr. Austin L. Moore, who edited "The Last Eden," is a pro-
fessor of humanities at Michigan State University, East Lansing.
He has written a number of books, among them Souls and Saddle-
bags, the Wyoming experiences of his father, the Reverend Frank
Moore, and My Career as a Knight Errant. Dr. Moore has trav-
eled widely throughout the world and plans to return to Africa this
summer to photograph wild animals in the game parks. In addi-
tion to travel, his hobbies include golf, gourmet cooking and pho-
tography.

Alice Moore Sawyer, who wrote the diary edited by her broth-
er, now lives in San Pedro, California.

Peggy Dickey Kircus was born and raised in San Antonio,
Texas, and received her B.A. and M.A. degrees at Texas Christian
University, the latter in 1967. Her major was history. She is mar-
ried to Air Force Chaplain Ernest E. Kircus, and is the mother of
two children. The Kircuses were stationed at Francis E. Warren
Air Force Base in 1962 and 1963. They have since spent two
years in Turkey, have had a tour of duty in South Dakota and are
now stationed at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii.

Mook Heviews

Military Posts in the Powder River Country of Wyoming, By Rob-
ert A. Murray. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1968) Index. Illus. 189 pp. $5.50.

This book presents a unique approach to a study of the military
forts on the Bozeman Road within the Powder River watershed.
The author's background is in the National Park Service, and he
works from the point of view of an architect, engineer and archae-
ologist intent upon restoration. He emphasizes the strategic qual-
ities of each site, the merits of its physical plan, and the logistics
involved in its construction and maintenance.

Excellent research in primary sources in the National Archives
and Wyoming libraries have furnished materials heretofore not
readily available. The numerous drawings, plans, maps, sketches
and photographs of the forts give the book a high rank as a ref-
erence tool.

The book in its first division considers the early posts, 1865-
1868, developing the "structural history" of Fort Reno (Fort Con-
nor) and Fort Philip Kearny. In a second part, 1868-1876, the
structural history of Cantonment Reno and Fort McKinney is re-
corded. Accompanying the description of each fort, brief but well
chosen incidents illustrate the relations with the Indians, and daily
life at the fort. A view of the strength of the military personnel
is presented, as are the qualities of the commanding officers, the
problems of transportation and communication are noted, as well
as the usually neglected but important items of food, forage, arms
and ammunition, clothing, fuel and civilian assistance.

Even at second glance the author appears to give only incidental
attention to the history of the region. The reasoning behind the
Bozeman and Bridger Roads is not mentioned, major migratory
expeditions are not noted, the Montana-Idaho mines are ignored,
the significance of the closing of the Road in 1868, the closing of
the early posts, and the demands which led to the reopening are
given only light treatment, although this governs the organization
of the book. Attention is focused upon four posts erected in the
isolation of the Powder River Country in one decade. The addition
of at least Fort Fetterman to the south (since Fort Laramie fits into
the Oregon Trail pattern, and its structural story has been told),
and Fort C. F. Smith to the north, would have enabled the author
to round out the story of protection for an avenue of migration of
national importance, and thereby give greater significance to the
Powder River posts.

The narrative does include, however, a discussion of changing
military pohcy, and relates this by brief reference to the increasing

144 ANNALS OF WYOMING

pressures upon the Indians, such as the expansion of the raihroads,
the discovery of gold in the Black HiUs, and increased settlement
leading eventually into the Johnson County War. Actually the
major points of interpretation are included, but so tersely, and often
segmented, that they are likely to be overlooked in this day of
extensive philosophic palaver.

Other than the primary sources in military records, the bibhog-
raphy is brief. Appendices listing the mihtary contingents at the
forts, and military commanders provide an excellent reference.
Within the scope of its subject the book is fresh, direct, highly
readable, and useful. The format and craftsmanship is admirably
suited to display the valuable illustrations.

Montana State University Merrill G. Burlingame

Tales of the 0-4 Ranch. By Harold J. Cook. (Lincoln: Univer-
sity of Nebraska Press, 1968) Illus. 221pp. $5.95.

Harold Cook's book of reminiscences is not only an enjoyable
story of a ranch boyhood at Agate in northwestern Nebraska. To
a student of the history of the early West, it is authenticity itself.
It is real ranch life as one boy lived it.

But it is more. Outside of the Haystack Dome at nearby Jay
Em, Wyoming, and a few others, there are no other ranches like
the 0-4. James H. Cook, father of the author, bred cattle and fine
horses, he fought wild animals, brutahty, floods and blizzards,
much as did any other rancher. It is hardly a tale for one with a
weak stomach, realistic as it is with accidents and ruthless nature.
A gun stood behind every outside door of the ranch house, ready
for an emergency. The plus factor here was the presence under the
hills of a treasure in ancient fossils, of old rhino bones by the ton,
of prehistory by the acre. This was the unique facet that set the
0-4 off from most other western ranches.

Another angle that made the ranch distinctive was its nearness
to the Oglala Sioux Indian reservation at Pine Ridge, South Da-
kota, and the Cook family's friendly relations with that tribe. Red
Cloud and other famed Indian chieftains walk affectionately across
the pages, supporting Mari Sandoz' sympathy for those oft sinned-
against first citizens.

Add in varied cowhands, desperadoes, a woman missionary,
noted paleontologist, museum curators, Lalee Hunton, the cook —
all in the human kingdom — and a boy's beloved pony, Ladybug,
the magpie around the house, the evasive, well-nigh indestructible
white wolf, and you have a dramatis personae Mke none other in
literature.

James Henry Cook was not going to raise any sissy on his ranch.

BOOK REVIEWS 145

Son Harold from young boyhood could handle a gun or a rope or a
wild colt like a man. But his father did not try to prevent him from
also becoming a gentleman, a platform lecturer and a museum
curator, equally at home in the backshop of a museum, so long as
he came home to run the ranch when his father retired. Which
he did.

A dip into the vocabulary of the book sends the reader scurry-
ing for his dictionary or science text, and on for a book of western
lore. Antelope, sandhills, gathng, calcite crystals, Miocene, talons,
water gap, soddy, peace pipe, moccasins. Pliocene, lumbar verte-
brae. Sharps, ecologist, Carnegie museum, dehorn, plaster of Paris,
Tombstone, mesquite, shellac. These could inspire a whole win-
ter's reading.

This reviewer's interest is heightened because of a remembered
summer evening about 1928 when the genial Harold Cook stopped
to visit her father, Ernest Logan, in Cheyenne, and stayed to tell a
roomful of visitors in true lecture fashion about deep-sea fishing in
the Gulf of California. Especially fascinated was guest A. D. Fa-
ville, first Commissioner of Agriculture for Wyoming, and an avid
fisherman in Wyoming waters, who conducted an informal inter-
view with Cook. When Logan began to speak of his own remem-
brance of James H. Cook in Cheyenne in the early days, and again
at Fort Laramie, Harold Cook was the one to ask questions and
write down answers.

There is one little wish for an addition to a second printing, a
wish for a few vital statistics to serve as pegs for the facts. When
was James H. Cook bom? When did he die? When did Harold
Cook die? These dates would help other writers to place the father
and son precisely with their contemporaries at times when the
senior Cook's standard Fifty Years on the Old Frontier is not avail-
able for reference. A re-reading of James Cook's volume places
his birthdate at 1857, his passing at 1942.

Much credit goes to Harold Cook's wife, Margaret Crozier
Cook, who taped her husband's narrative and edited the manu-
script, preserving for the reader his colorful idiom and authentic
speech. The introduction by Agnes Wright Spring, top-flight west-
em historical writer, gives the stamp of her approval to an able
piece of writing, a sort of guarantee of its success.

The Sioux words with which Cook ends his Tales of the 0-4
Ranch may well apply to the book itself. Was-te. Was-te. — Good.
Good.

Cheyenne Grace Lcxjan Schaedel

146 ANNALS OF WYOMING

This Was Pioneer Motoring. By Robert F. Karolevitz. (Seattle:
Superior Publishing Co., 1968) Index. lUus. 192 pp. $12.95.

This author of the "Old West" (Newspapering in the Old West,
This Was Trucking, Doctors of the Old West) has again presented
a book of nostalgia, this time "an automotive trip down memory
lane" as he states in his foreword.

The early history of the development of the automobile including
the name itself is well covered. The Seldon patent on engines and
the circumventing of same by Ford and others is most interesting.
Many pioneers in the field, names both known and unknown to
most of us, are mentioned with their contributions. The transition
from the horse to the self-propelled, the promotion of the car and
the survival of the fittest is documented by word and picture.

Mr. Karolevitz's collection of pictures is the best I have seen on
this subject. The reproduction is well done and the pictures are
well grouped. All pictures are apparently original which is unusual
for the number he shows. Of particular interest to Wyoming people
is one of Laramie in 1905, and of the first four-wheel-drive-vehicle
in 1911. Others show Pershing, Richenbacker, Oldfield, Buffalo
Bill Cody and several presidents including Eisenhower, then a
lieutenant colonel. Pictures of automobiles on the mud roads with
chains "on all four" will emphasize the road building program.

Toil roads (the turning of the pike after payment of fee — ^hence
turnpike) were developed by private enterprise and later by gov-
ernment. Bicychsts were first to try for paved and better roads.
President Wilson in 1916 signed the first bill to establish a nation-
wide interstate road system. Gulf Oil Company had the first road
maps in 1913 and Shell Oil Company had the first service station
chain. Motels developed later, with about 600 by 1922.

The famous 999 Ford is shown as well as a steamer Rocket
which set a speed record by going 127.6 mph in 1906. Manufac-
turing survival was dependent on racing and on dependabiUty as a
family vehicle, just as is advertised today. Installment buying was
promoted in 1905 as was the two-car-family concept in 1909.

ReHability tests of city-to-city tours, the Glidden tours and cross-
country ones were used to promote the product. Imagine driving
an open car through a snowstorm in Wyoming in 1905 without
antifreeze or snow tires and on cowpath roads. I wonder if our
present-day cars would have made it — or was it the hearty human?

In short, this is an authentically illustrated and well presented
book of interest to many and, I believe, a must to the antique
car buff.

Cheyenne Dan B. Greer, M.D.

BOOK REVIEWS 147

Tetoniana. History of the Exploration of Grand Teton National
Park. Number 1. The Grand Teton 1923. By Leigh N.
Ortenburger. (Privately published, 1968) Illus. 41 pp.
$2.00.

The Grand Teton 1923, by Leigh N. Ortenburger, is a forty-one
page booklet on two ascents of the Grand Teton in 1923, which set
off a growing interest in scaling Teton Peaks. Mr. Ortenburger
will yearly add other booklets on Teton climbing to form a series,
which he has named Tetoniana, and subtitled History of the Ex-
ploration of Grand Teton National Park.

After the 1898 ascent of the Grand Teton by the Owen party, no
further ascent was accomplished until 1923, when two parties made
it to the top within two days of each other. It is with these two
ascents that the Number 1 volume of Tetoniana is concerned. The
best-known ascent, headed by Prof. Albert R. EUingwood of Lake
Forest, Illinois and made up of experienced mountaineers, was
encouraged by the National Park Service, which was then interested
in extending the southern boundary of Yellowstone Park to include
the Jackson Hole area, and needed a spectacular ascent for pub-
licity. The EUingwood climb received prior publicity in the press,
and EUingwood's carefully written article on his party's successful
achievement appeared shortly afterward in Outdoor Life.

The other ascent, which received almost no publicity, was
achieved by three University of Montana students, Quin A. Black-
bum, David F. DeLap and Amedius (Andy) De Pirro, on August
25, 1923, two days before the experienced and well-equipped
EUingwood party reached the top. There is no suggestion that the
two parties were racing each other, as each gave the other much
credit in a sportsmanlike way; but the Montana boys were in a
hurry and planned to make the cUmb up and back in one day.
They left their car at a ranch at the foot of the Grand Teton, went
up Bradley (Garnet) Canyon and were on top by 5:55 P.M. In
the dark they descended to timberline by 11:00 P.M.; and next
morning at 9:00 were back at their car and on their way. They
had had no ropes nor any equipment other than a geology hammer
and a canteen; their food consisted of a few bacon sandwiches,
chocolate bars and boxes of raisins and two loaves of bread.

Most interesting is the way Mr. Ortenburger tracked down these
unsung heroes of a difficult and weU-executed climb. It gives the
narrative an 007 flavor.

In 1956 the Sierra Club pubUshed Mr. Ortenburger's A Climb-
er's Guide to the Teton Range, which has since been republished
and expanded. Mr. Ortenburger is tireless in his mountaineering
research and fair in his conclusions. He also knows how to write.

Jackson Elizabeth Wied Hayden

148 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Almost Up Devils Tower. By Mae Urbanek, Boulder, Colo.:
Johnson Publishing Co., 1968) 104 pp. $3.00.

Almost Up Devils Tower, the author states, "is a novel for the
tourist." We feel residents of Wyoming wUl find this book equally
enjoyable, for Mae Urbanek speaks and writes in the language they
will understand.

The happenings of this work of fiction center in and around a
camping expedition of the main characters, one of which is Bum-
pas, a rabbit-chasing, trouble-finding Collie, twelve years old. The
dog has been Donald McAUen's pet since Bumpas was a puppy.

The action of the story takes place against a backdrop of the
Wyoming wonderlands, from a pack trip into the Great Wilderness
area to a climb of Devils Tower.

The plot revolves around a young Wyoming native, Donald Mc-
Allen. Abandoned as an infant, Donald is the beloved, adopted
son of Uncle Mac McAllen, an old-time rancher of Crook County.

As a son, Donald will inherit the McAllen spread. At twenty-
two years of age, he wishes to go on to the big world outside of
Wyoming. He has no desire to spend the rest of his days as a
rancher.

At Uncle Mac's invitation two girls arrive from Chicago, to
spend their vacation on the McAllen ranch. Glenna is Uncle Mac's
niece. Cathy is Glenna's best friend.

Glenna attends college and wishes to become a field geologist.
Cathy is a "high school dropout," who had to leave her studies to
support her mother.

Her mother having passed on, Cathy finds herself alone in the
world and still working at the same job in a factory she took when
she left school.

As the story opens, Donald is loading the station wagon which
is to be used in making the camping trip. Among the items packed,
he stows away the equipment to chmb Devils Tower. He also sees
through Uncle Mac's reason for asking two girls to come to the
ranch. He speaks of this openly before Uncle Mac and the girls.

"With a wife tied around my neck," he says, "I'd have to ranch
or starve,"

"Ya gotta try tamin' a wild hoss that knows it all, if ya want him
broke to ride," Uncle Mac retorts.

With Uncle Mac wishing, Donald resenting, the journey is begun.

In Almost Up Devils Tower Mae Urbanek does description with
a poetic flavor. For example, on the wilderness ride she writes,
"Ahead were the mountains warming themselves under looseknit
shawls of white clouds."

We find within the pages much factual material on the geological
formations of the state.

How Donald McAllen solves his problem and the other charac-

BOOK REVIEWS 149

ters solve theirs makes for an interesting novel every member of the
family may read, be they tourists or citizens.

Wheatland Rachel Ann Fish

Ghost Town El Dorado. By Lambert Florin. (Seattle: Superior
Publishing Co., 1968) Illus. 173 pp. $12.95.

Whatever your definition of a ghost town, you'll find a town to
fit it in Lambert Florin's Ghost Town El Dorado. From the attrac-
tive dust cover to the sketches on the end papers of this book, you
will find pictures and legends of "towns that were."

You'll read about Oysterville, the town that oysters built; of
Rosalyn, where coal was king and of Canyon City, Oregon, home
of writer-poet Joaquin Miller, who during his tenure as judge in
Canyon City dispensed justice with a six-shooter in each hand.

There's a tale about a man named Rasberry who was hunting
jackrabbits near what became the town of Angels Camp, Cali-
fornia. Rasberry shot several times before his gun developed
ramrod trouble. He became angry and shot several times into a
rock about twelve feet away. The ramrod came out and in doing
so knocked a weathered crust off the rock reveaUng a yellow gleam
of gold. Forgetting all about the rabbit hunting,, Rasberry picked
up $700 worth of gold before dark.

Hiram Hughes had been prospecting for some time, quite unsuc-
cessfully. A ledge of rock with a greenish-rust color caught his
eye, but didn't look like much. Hiram figured people would think
he was a danged fool if he took a sample of that stuff to the assay
office. He hunted longer — in the Sierras for gold and for silver in
the Washoe area — all to no avail. He remembered the ledge of
greenish rock and went back to it. The assayer's report made him
"want to holler clear back to Kansas!" The sample was about one-
third copper and worth $120 per ton.

DeLamar, Idaho, provides pages of reading enjoyment, as do the
towns of Gilmore, Custer and Bonanza.

Stories of Mormon immigrants and their problems are related.
A Mormon mother gave birth to a son while crossing a flood-
swollen stream. The child was named Marvelous Flood Teney.

Then there is the story of Amanda, a soiled angel of mercy with
two major weaknesses — whiskey and men.

A teen-ager named Arango was known as a peacable lad until
an officer raped his sister. Arango killed the officer, took a new
name and entered on a career of banditry and revolution. The
exitement brought an era of prosperity to the town of Lajitas,
Texas, for the teen-ager was no other than the bandit Pancho Villa.

Yes, whether you like your ghost towns dustily dead or peopled
with descendants of former residents, you'll enjoy Mr. Florin's
El Dorado. The larger share of pictures are photos of the towns

150 ANNALS OF WYOMING

as they now are but the captions take you back to the "days that
used to be."

Ghost Town El Dorado is a book you will enjoy leafing through,
then going back and reading and reading it again.

Newcastle Mabel E. Brown

The Phil Sheridan Album. By Lawrence A. Frost. (Seattle: Su-
perior Publishing Co., 1968) Index. Illus. 173 pp. $12.95.

The Superior Pubhshing Company has been issuing photograph-
ic albums on miUtary posts, railroading and other western topics
for some time. Some, hke the two volumes of photographs of
Indians by Samuel Curtis, are quite attractive and useful. Law-
rence Frost, a leading Custer buff and editor of The Court Martial
of General George Armstrong Custer has now added The Phil
Sheridan Album to his earlier albums on Ulysses S. Grant and
George Custer.

The book is divided into chronological sections, each introduced
with a brief account of that aspect of Sheridan's career. Included
are photographs, paintings and sketches of battle scenes and loca-
tions such as Fort Yamhill in Oregon, which Sheridan constructed
in 1857, as weU as numerous pictures of Sheridan and members of
his family. There are also photographs of colleagues such as Cus-
ter, Grant, George Cooke, a West Point roommate, Wesley Merritt
and opponents such as J. E. B. Stuart, Jubal Early, John S. Mosby
and the Kiowa, Satanta. Some of the photographs and paintings
have been reproduced quite often while others are less famUiar.

WhUe just a small section of the book is devoted to Sheridan's
western career, it is a convenient collection of photographs which
will undoubtedly appeal to Sheridan fans. The price, however,
may be a deterrent for many.

University of New Mexico Richard N. Ellis

On the Cattle Ranges of the Oregon Country. By J. Oriti OUphant.
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968) Index. Illus.
372 pp. $8.95.

Professor Oliphant's book is concerned with the open range cat-
tle industry of the Oregon Country from 1782 to 1890. Cattle in
Oregon originally came from two directions : CaUf omia, and over-
land from the states east of the Rockies. The Hudson's Bay Com-
pany was the first major promoter of cattle in the area. These were
primarily Spanish Cattle and not well suited to the type of pastoral
enterprise anticipated by Dr. McLoughlin. American missionaries
brought in some eastern cattle but the great influx of cattle came
over the Oregon Trail with the immigrants of the 1 840s.

BOOK REVIEWS 151

Throughout the decades of the 1850s and 1860s the cattle mdus-
try was limited to the coastal area where the mining communities
were the major markets. The transcontinental railroad and the
restricted grazing, moved the industry to "Transcascadia", that
area in the Oregon Country between the Cascades and the Rockies.
The market broadened, with Oregon cattle being shipped East to
market, to feed lots, and especially to the high plains country where
they accordingly stocked the cattle industry of that area. By 1 890
the cattle industry of the open range had given way to one of beef
production and, one more compatible with general agriculture.

The story of the cattle industry in "Transcascadia" is not unlike
that of the Great Plains in most respects. It had its troubles with
the Indians, who as usual, lost in their struggle to keep the reserva-
tions. The farmer and the sheepmen invaded the ranges in the
1880s creating tension and driving the cattlemen to less productive
ranges or restricting their movements. The Oregon Country cat-
tlemen organized "associations" to prevent importation of diseased
cattle, bargain for better rail rates, press for favorable legislation,
deal with rustlers, and in general give order to their business.
However their associations never paralleled those of Montana or
Wyoming. As in other areas of the open range country the weather
was the one prime uncontrollable factor. The Chinook wind was
expected to melt the snow and break up the ice, but it more often
arrived too late, or not at all, than it did on time. Losses from the
weather were heavy in most seasons.

There are two apparent differences in the cattle industry of the
Oregon Country and that of the high plains. The Oregon industry
does not appear to have been heavily financed by foreign capital,
and much more attention was given to producing breed stock.
Professor Oliphant admits that precise figures on the numbers of
cattle shipped from the territory are unattainable but considering
the figures offered and the rate of winter kill, the Oregon cattle
must have been a prolific lot.

There is a deluge of factual information with multiple citations
to support a point. Certain aspects of the study could have been
more fully covered — financial structure, corporate enterprise ab-
sentee ownership, herd structure, and certain aspects of range
management. These are perhaps some of the areas that Professor
Oliphant states could not be adequately documented.

The book is an excellent guide to materials for this phase of the
cattle industry. As such it fills in an otherwise obvious gap in the
study of the cattle industry. Names, facts, figures and other data
are prolific. A few illustrations and a map or two beyond those of
the end papers would be of great assistance to the reader unf amihar
with the Oregon Country of the nineteenth century.

Northwest Missouri State College Harmon Mothershead

152 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Introduction to Archaeology. By Robin Place. (New York: Phil-
osophical Library, Inc., 1968) Index. Illus. 146 pp. $6.00.

The title is somewhat misleading, as the book is not about ar-
chaeology per se, nor about archaeology anywhere except Britain
and Europe. To the great advantage of the British reader partic-
ularly. Place's discussion of archaeology as a way of studying pre-
history is skillfully interwoven with a competent introduction to the
prehistory of the British Isles, and to a lesser extent, to portions of
the Continent.

The American professional can readily locate a few nits to per-
secute, especially with regard to the author's conception of what
can and cannot be successfully studied by archaeological tech-
niques. The author is aware, however, that this study method can
and will become a great deal more sophisticated than it is as com-
monly practiced now. In any case, the book will seldom be of
concern to the professional except in his capacity as a reviewer.
The notable exception should be chapter nine, in which Mrs. Place
gently dissects the over-digging and understudying syndrome com-
mon in the field today, especially within the amateur societies.

Introduction to Archaeology is particularly recommended as
reading for the British citizen who has developed a beginning inter-
est in the field, and who may have already read some of the stand-
ard works by Wheeler, Wooley or others. Because of the relative
up-to-dateness of its content and concepts. Introduction to Archae-
ology should be on the reading list of all but the most advanced
British amateur.

The American amateur will find the book pleasant fare and a
profitable one to have read for at least three reasons, (a) for the
sake of palatably expanding his concepts of theory and method in
archaeology, (b) to help dispel the notion that an amateur archae-
ologist must participate in digging in order to contribute to research
or to learn about the past, and (c) for having broadened his back-
ground in world prehistory.

The price is rather staggering and it seems likely that most ama-
teurs will choose to do without a personal copy on this basis. The
individual may do well, however, to recommend it for his society's
library.

Cheyenne Gene Galloway

A Catalogue of the Everette D. Graff Collection of Western Amer^
icana. CompUed by Colton Storm. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1968) 873 pp. $37.50.

The Everett D. Graff Collection of Western Americana con-
sists of some 10,000 books, manuscripts, maps, pamphlets,

BOOK REVIEWS 153

broadsides, broadsheets and photographs, of which about half
are described in this catalogue. The Graff Collection displays
the remarkable breadth of interest, knowledge and taste of a
great bibliophile and student of Western American history.
From this rich collection, now in the Newberry Library, Chi-
cago, its former curator, Colton Storm, has compiled a dis-
criminating and representative catalogue of the rarer and more
unusual material. Collectors, bibliographers, librarians, his-
torians and book dealers specializing in Americana will find
the Graff Catalogue an interesting and essential tool.

The Sociology of Colonial Virginia. By Morris Talpalar, LL.B.
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1968) Index. 447 pp.
$8.75. Second revised edition.

The Days of My Years. The Autobiography of An Average Amer-
ican. By Earl R. Smith. (Portland: Oregon Historical So-
ciety, 1968) [Paperback]

The Old Oregon Country. A History of Frontier Trade, Transpor-
tation, and Travel. By Oscar Osburn Winther. (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1969) $2.95. [Paperback,
Bison Book]

Law West of Fort Smith. By Glenn Shirley. (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1969) $1.50. [Paperback, Bison Book]

A Bride Goes West. By Nannie T. Alderson and Helena Hunt-
ington Smith. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969)
$1.95. [Paperback, Bison Book]

i^^L^

'^"^)!lli

N • 0 B S ft R *

A C,6 A M -^

A R A M I E

Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department

rhese five brass vessels for liquid measure were among a number of devices used in Territorial
ind early Statehood days of Wyoming for official verification of wet and dry volume, weight
nd linear measurement. The vessels, of turned brass, have capacities ranging from one-half
int to one gallon. The one-gallon container, shown here on the left, is marked as having been
abricaled in 1844, and possibly was made at one of the government armories. The collection
if measuring devices originally was sent from the Office of U. S. Weights and Measures in
Vashington, D. C, to the State Department of Agriculture, which recently presented the col-
;ction to the Wyoming State Museum.

October 1969

WYOMING STATE LIBRARY, ARCHIVES AND
HISTORICAL BOARD

Judicial
District

Robert St. Clair

Mrs. Wilmot McFadden

Mrs. Frank Emerson

Cheyenne
Rock Springs
Evanston

Miss Jennie Williams

Sheridan

5
6

Richard I. Frost, Chairman
Mrs. Virgil L. Thorpe

Cody
Newcastle

Mrs. Frank Mockler

Lander

Member at Large
Ex-Officio

Mrs. Dudley Hayden

Attorney General James E. Barrett

Jackson

Cheyenne

WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT

STAFF

Neal E. Miller Director

Walter B. Nordell Administrative Assistant

Mrs. Mary Purcella Secretary

Mrs. Katherine Halverson Chief, Historical Research and

Publications Division

Mrs. Jullv Yelvington Chief, Archives and Records Division

Kermit M. Edmonds Chief, Museum Division

ANNALS OF WYOMING

The Annals of Wyoming is pubhshed semi-annually in April and October
and is received by all members of the Wyoming State Historical Society.
Copies of current issues may be purchased for $2.00 each. Available copies
of earlier issues are also for sale. A price list may be obtained by writing to
the Editor.

Communications should be addressed to the Editor. The Editor does
not assume responsibility for statements of fact or of opinion made by
contributors.

Annals of Wyoming articles are abstracted in
Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life

^^m/5 of Wyoming

Volume 41

October, 1969

Number 2

Neal E. Miller
Editor

Katherine Halverson
Associate Editor

John W. Cornelison
Research Assistant

Published biannually by the

WYOMING STATE ARCHIVES AND HISTORICAL
DEPARTMENT

Official Publication of the Wyoming State Historical Society

WYOMING STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

OFFICERS 1969-1970

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Mrs. Thelma G. Condit, Buffalo 1959-1960

E. A. Littleton, Gillette 1960-1961

Edness Kimball Wilkins, Casper 1961-1962

Charles Ritter, Cheyenne 1962-1963

Neal E. Miller, Rawlins 1963-1965

Mrs. Charles Hord, Casper 1965-1966

Glenn Sweem, Sheridan 1966-1967

Adrl^n Reynolds, Green River 1967-1968

CuRTiss Root, Torrington 1968-1969

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ZabU of Contents

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY .. 159
By Carl M. Moore

WYOMING'S PIONEER LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY 187

By Edmond L. Escolas

EYEWITNESS REPORTS OF THE WAGON BOX FIGHT 193

Compiled by Walter N. Bate

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES IN THE
RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE
INDIANS OF THE PLAINS, 1851-1879 (conclusion) 203

By James C. Murphy

HISTORIC SITES INTERPRETATION 261

By Robert A. Murray

THE HAT SITTING BULL WEARS , 272

Edited by Patricia K. Ourada

AN ANALYSIS OF SCOTTISH POPULATION 275

By Paul M. Edwards

CONTRIBUTORS 277

BOOK REVIEWS

Kraus, High Road to Promontory 279

Rosa, The Gimfighter: Man or Myth 280

Beaver, Some Pathways in Twentieth Century History 281

Rowse, The Cousin Jacks: The Cornish in America „. 282

Waters, Pumpkin Seed Point 283

Backus, Tomboy Bride 285

Yost, Boss Cowman: The Recollections of Ed Lemmon, 1857-

1946 286

Mockle, Montana, An Illustrated History 287

ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover

Brass vessels for liquid measure
Following page 178

O'Mahoney in 1952

Senator O'Mahoney explaining payroll charts

O'Mahoney, James A. Farley and W. W. Howes

Joseph O'Mahoney and Milward L. Simpson
Following page 202

'The Days That Are No More . . ."

W. E. Mullen

LeRoy Grant

Home offices, Wyoming Life Insurance Company

Sergeant Samuel L. Gibson

Mr. Max Littman

The map used as the background for the artifacts on the
cover is a copy of one published by the Clason Map Co.,
Denver. Although the original bears no date imprint,
the twenty-one-county map of Wyoming was published
sometime between 1913 and 1922. In 1913 Goshen,
Hot Springs, Lincoln, Niobrara and Platte Counties were
organized. Teton County, organized in 1922, and Sub-
lette County, organized in 1923, do not appear on this
map. Other maps, of varying dates, will be used from
time to time on the covers of the Annals of Wyoming.

Joseph Christopher O'MdhoHcyz
A Wief Kiography

By
Carl Moore

Joseph Christopher O'Mahoney represented Wyoming in the United
States Senate for twenty-six years. During that period he earned the
reputation as an outstanding constitutional lawyer, a person devoted
to the interests of Wyoming, natural resources and the West, an eco-
nomic theorist without peer. Some fellow Senators considered him
one of the outstanding Senators of all time.

Joseph Christopher O'Mahoney^ was born at Chelsea, Massa-
chusetts, on November 5, 1884,^ one of eleven children of Dennis

1. The name, O'Mahoney, is tricky to pronounce. The Boston Post,
January 20, 1913, suggested that, ". . . the O is accented and the a is flat
and prolonged as for instance in baa, in accordance with the custom of the
ancient Gaels." The heritage of the name was stressed in the Boston Eve-
ning American, February 24, 1933: "And don't call it O ma-HO-ney. It's
O-MAH-oney, with the accent on the second syllable and the last one
clipped short. That's not any snobbish accent, either. Its the real Gaelic,
or the real McCoy as you might say. And Gaelic is Gaelic whether in
Boston or Washington." A slight variation was the suggestion, according to
the Sioux City Sunday Tribune, April 21, 1945, that, ". . . the 'a' sounded as
in 'man' and drawn one Isic] as if there were two a's — O'Mahoney." A
seemingly inconsistent suggestion in the Literary Digest of December 2,
1933, explained that one should be careful to pronounce ". . . the 'a' as in
mayonnaise." In a letter to Anne I. O'Mahoney, Joe O'Mahoney personally
related "... a family method of instruction in pronounciation," he heard his
father recite: "O' the bleat of the lamb/ And the fruit of the bee/Spell the
name of the man/Who is talking to thee." A lengthy comment regarding
the pronounciation of O'Mahoney can be found in Joe's reminiscences in his
oral history interview: "Why is the name pronounced O'Afnhoney instead of
0'Mahc>;7ey? He [Joe's father] came here pronouncing his name O'Ma-
honey, because that was the Irish pronounciation, and he taught all his chil-
dren to pronounce it that way. C)ne of the stories he used to tell was that
there never was a Mahoney in Ireland until the English came. The English,
he said, couldn't get their tongues around the Gaelic pronounciation. Then
he would add, 'The Maho«eys are fine people — they're intelligent, they're
brave, they're all that one could expect. But,' he said, 'the O'A/rrhoneys
never surrendered.' Now, to make it clear, the word 'honey,' is not pro-
nounced hoeny, its pronounced hunny. The accent on most Irish names
falls on the first syllable. In this name, forgetting the O, the first syllable
is Ma, so that the accent should be on the Ma and the honey should follow.
So the name is Mahoney, not Maho^ey."

2. This, like much of the information about his early life, was taken from

160 ANNALS OF WYOMING

and Elizabeth Shehan O'Mahoney. He arrived the day the Demo-
crats celebrated the election victory of Grover Cleveland.

Joe's mother died in 1893 when he was eight years old. His
recollections were limited: ". . . we hved on Chestnut Street, we
had a very nice house which was convenient and I had no childish
desires that weren't filled there."^

He recalled more detail about his father because he lived longer,
had a greater influence on Joe and Joe had the benefit of contacting
people later in life who had known him.

Dennis O'Mahoney was from County Cork, Ireland.^ Having

The Reminiscences of Joseph O'Mahoney (Oral History Research Office,
Columbia University: New York, 1961), pp. 1-2. Future references to this
source will be called Rems. Regarding his birth date he related the follow-
ing, pp. 1-2 of Rems.: ". . . it was during the election of 1948, when Mr.
Truman was elected, after the Chicago Tribune had announced that Dewey
was elected. The outlook in Cheyenne was very glum, because of the two
hours' difference in time between the Eastern Time Zone and the Rocky
Mountain Time Zone. We had assembled at the home of one of the big
Democratic leaders of the state for dinner that night, to receive the returns,
and as they came in the company became rather gloomy. But by and by,
the returns seemed to brighten up a little. At this moment I was invited by
the radio station to come down to the studio, in order to make some com-
ment. Well, I never object to making comments on the radio, and was
happy enough to do it. By the time I reached the studio, why, the Truman
tide was running high, and the announcer said to me — FU never forget this —
'Well, Senator, this must be the most exciting election day you ever ex-
perienced!'

'No,' I said, 'it's not. It's a very exciting election day, but I've had two
other experiences in my life.'

'Well, what were they?'

"Well, back in 1916,' I said, 'I was the editor of the Cheyenne State
Leader. That was the year in which Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans
Hughes were candidates for President. Charles Evans Hughes went to bed
in a hotel room in New York believing that he had been elected President.
The Democrats in Cheyenne who were crowded around the Leader office
had become utterly disgusted and had disbanded and deserted. Nobody was
left but Mrs. O'Mahoney and an engineer, a man by the name of Jim True
and myself, and the workers around the shop. But at that moment the eve-
ning paper, which was a Republican paper, published an extra claiming the
election of Hughes. That made me a little bit mad. So I hauled in Jim
True, who was a good mathematician, and I said, 'Let's count up these
electoral votes again.' We counted them up, and we discovered that both
Minnesota and California were out. Each had 15 votes, as I recall it now,
and it was clear that if Wilson would carry either one of these states, he'd be
elected. I said, 'Wilson has carried California. Let's put the paper to bed.'
I put the paper to bed. It came out — the first paper in the U.S. to announce
the re-election of Woodrow Wilson. That was a scoop, attached to my
birthday.'

I stopped with the tale of Woodrow Wilson and the announcer said,
"Well, Senator, you said two election days.'

I said, 'The first one was the day I was bom.' "

3. Rems., p. 3.

4. Senator McGee, Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 8, p. 10675.

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 161

come to this country around the time of the Civil War, in 1861, as
a youth of sixteen or seventeen, he enlisted from West Cambridge
(now Arlington), Massachusetts, in the Irish Brigade and served
throughout the war as a member of the 28th Massachusetts Vol-
unteers.^

By profession Dennis O'Mahoney was a furrier, he cleaned and
processed the raw furs which came to his shop. Most furs on the
market were being sent to the garment industry which was develop-
ing in New York City. Dennis wanted to follow the industry to
New York, but his wife did not want to have to build a new home.
He was eventually forced to leave the fur business and become a
clerk in the Boston post office.

Dennis O'Mahoney was socially conscious and, as such, had an
influence on his son: "My father established a ten-hour day in
Massachusetts. When he started, men worked twelve hours. He
became the master of the shop, and he established the ten-hour day.
So I inherit my inclination to support the masses of the people
against the classes — or rather than the classes."^ Dennis tried to
air his beliefs in the public forum. He ran for town officer in
Arlington. In his reminiscences Joe reported: "Much to the sur-
prise of the electorate, he came within six votes of winning it. It
wasn't customary in those days for a person with an Irish name to
be a victor at the polls. "^ According to the Arlington Advocate of
February 28, 1879, he was 109 votes from election.

Most of the O'Mahoney siblings died at childbirth. As second
youngest, his recollections of the others were limited. He related
the following about his eldest brother, Jerimiah, who died while

5. Rems., p. 40. In 1870 he received a commendation from the Gov-
ernor and Adjutant General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: 'The
Commonwealth of Massachusetts honoring the faithful services of her sons
who formed a part of the land and sea forces of the United States employed
in suppressing rebellion and maintaining the integrity of the nation has
by a RESOLVE of the GENERAL COURT of 1869 directed the under-
signed to present to you this Testimonial of the people's gratitude for you
patriotism." Given April 19, 1870.

6. Rems., pp. 32-33.

7. Rems., p. 6. Timothy O'Leary, a friend of Dennis O'Mahoney, wrote
Joe about his father's political experience: "The number of registered voters
of our people on the town register just 200 your father was sure to get every
one. He was first nominated at the Knights and later at Town Hall caucus.
At the Knights meeting everything looked all right, at the town caucus the
Farmer members, 5 in committee of the nominating committee, 5 started to
make trouble because your father was known to be a friend of labor. Mr.
Bailey was their man. Your father was a good friend of labor always. At
that time he was foreman of the fur factory and the conditions were the best
in town. Shortest hours, highest pay, best living conditions, on the farms
in summer at 4 in the morning and 8 at night; so after doing all he could as
soldier and citizen in peace and war even at the peril of his life, they did not
seem to appreciate his services as they should. That started a fight in the
committee. Your father at a town meeting later had the floor and in

162 ANNALS OF WYOMING

attending Boston College: "I was a member of the debating team
at Cambridge Latin School. Along about 1902, I think, this hap-
pened. I received the greatest compliment that my father had ever
given me. I took him to the debate as an auditor, and when we
were walking back to the house in which we were living, he said to
me, 'Well, Joe, your brother Jerry couldn't have done any better.'
Knowing the place that Jerimiah had, as the first born, in his esti-
mate, I felt that I had been given a pretty high compliment. Of
course, we lost the debate, I might add. So there might have been
a little family coloring in the reference."** Three brothers survived
childbirth, Dan who was twelve years older than Joe, Michael who
was ten years older, and Frank who was the youngest. Dan and
Michael fought in the Spanish American War, eventually dying of
illnesses that developed there. Dan, a plumber by trade, became
president of the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union in New York
City. Later he severed his connections with the union in order to
become an executive for Thompson-Stark building contractors.

After his mother's death the family moved to Daniels, Massa-
chusetts, and Joe attended Thorndike School, a parochial school in
Peabody. He graduated from Cambridge Grammar School. For
the graduation exercise, "The principal gave me a choice of topics.
So when I chose the subject it was : 'A letter from our Washington
Correspondent.' "^

He claimed that the choice of a high school was his, and he chose
Cambridge Latin School because he wanted to prepare to attend
college. Raymond G. D'Arcy, current headmaster of The High
and Latin School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, relates the following
information, taken from the Cambridge Latin School record book.
Joe entered the school on September 11, 1899, at the age of four-
teen years, ten months. He hved at 189 Columbia Street, Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts, and then moved to 2217 Massachusetts
Avenue, Cambridge Massachusetts. In 1899-1900, he was in the
fifth class, his subjects were English, Latin, algebra, and history,
his average for the year was 92.1%, and he ranked second in his
class. In 1900-1901, the fourth class, his subjects were Latin,
French, geometry, and English, his average for the year was 88%,
and he ranked fifth in his class. In 1901-1902, the third class, his
subjects were English, Latin, French, geometry, and chemistry, his
average for the year was 85%, and he ranked seventh in his class.

language of no uncertain meaning told what he knew about the war from
Bull Run to Appomattox; those who volunteered and those made it neces-
sary to call a draft; those who made money in safety while others bled.
Well, he delited his friends, silenced his oponents, more later Isicl." Tim-
othy O'Leary, letter, May 28, 1935.

8. Rems., pp. 3-4.

9. Rems., p. 7.

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 163

In 1902-1903, the second class, his subjects were EngUsh, Latin,
French, German, and algebra, his average for the year was 81.3%,
and he ranked thirteenth in his class.

Joe's reminiscences of high school were pleasurable. In his
freshman year, he was surprised at being second in his class
because he was involved with class football, class baseball, debat-
ing, and newspaper work. He wrote for the school magazine and
was not concerned with marks.

He was president of the debate team. He reported his impres-
sions in the following way: "We debated every issue of the day, as
they stiU do. I can't begin to think of them now. True, there was
an issue about whether or not we should be imperialistic; that was
one of the issues. Massachusetts had a very liberal Republican
senator by the name of George Brisley Hall. He was very popular
with me, because he was an anti-imperialist, and that was an issue
those days."^*^

Joe's early life was primarily influenced by his parents, his home
life, and his work at Cambridge Latin School, especially his debat-
ing and newspaper work. He credited his interest in history and
politics to his parents' interest in those subjects and his blood line-
age: ". . . perhaps I would say that it was the heritage of a young
man who was born into a family of Irish blood. The Irish people
have always been interested in public life."^^ He claimed that his
interest in debating was innate. His interest in public affairs was
primarily attributed to his work on the Cambridge Democrat, for
which he was both editor and delivery boy, and the atmosphere of
free discussion which could be found in his home: "My house was
a house of books, and a house of freedom of debate and frequent
debate. Everybody who had any occasion to express a view had
the opportunity to express it. Oh, yes, at the dinner table it would
be usual to discuss politics — yes — anything that was current."^-

The famous men who shaped his early life were J. C. Calhoun,
Teddy Roosevelt, and William Randolph Hearst. He campaigned
for Hearst because Hearst was against the trusts and for free enter-
prise. He was impressed with Teddy Roosevelt the first time he
heard him speak and shaped his politics after him.^^ His attach-
ment to Calhoun was the most unusual of all. He claimed him as

10. Boston Globe, April 20, 1923, p. 1. Rems., p. 6.

11. Rents., p. 7.

12. Rems., pp. 7-8.

13. Senate Democratic Leader Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Joe O'Ma-
honey to the Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Commission. In making the
appointment he said, "Theodore Roosevelt was a man who dearly loved the
great western stretches of our country. There is no man who has done more
to develop the great West than Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney and I think
his appointment would be a fitting recognition of his great services. It
would also bring to the commission one of the Keenest minds in the Senate."

164 ANNALS OF WYOMING

his first boyhood hero, ". . . because I combed my hair the same
way he did. When I first saw his picture, I thought, well, now, by
gosh, my hair comb isn't so bad. My hair was long."^^

In 1903, Joe's father died of the grippe. Although Joe was in
the class of 1904 at Cambridge Latin School, he had to pack and
leave for New York to live with his brother Dan. He worked for a
year with the J. J. Mitchell and Co., publishers of the Ladies'
Taylor, the Men's Taylor and other tailoring publications, before
entering Columbia University.

Joe claimed that on a trip to New York with his father he went
by Columbia University, became impressed with the Seth Low
Library and, from that time, wanted to attend that school. There
is reluctant evidence which indicates that upon the death of his
father Joe's wish to attend Harvard could not be realized so he took
advantage of what was available to him, Columbia University.^"

His remembrances of Columbia first turned to his professors.
He had history under James Harvey Robinson. Max Eastman, his
philosophy professor, became a close friend. Joe and Max attend-
ed school debates together. He also became friends with Charles
Beard. Their friendship lasted for years and resulted in coopera-
tion on certain legislative measures which Joe introduced on the
floor of the United States Senate. He recalled Seligman, the eco-
nomics professor, but never had an opportunity to study under him.

O'Mahoney's primary interests at Columbia were debating and
literary work with the Columbia Spectator. He was president of
the College Men's Municipal League and a member of Phi Kappa
Sigma social fraternity.

He earned his v/ay through Columbia by holding various odd
jobs. One summer as a plumber's helper he worked on the then
new Wanamaker Building. Frequently during the summer he
worked for the Hudson River Day Lines as a ticket agent in the
main office. During the school year he worked as a free lance
writer. He wrote fillers, at two dollars a filler, which were usually
around three lines, sometimes as many as ten, and consisted of
anything, just so long as they filled spaces for the printers. He also
wrote for the Associated Sunday Magazine. One of his articles,
written October 21, 1906, and called "One Hundred Years

14. Rems., p. 8.

15. Joe told the following story on himself: "One of the members of my
staff was in the gallery of the Senate one day when I happened to be en-
gaged in a colloquy with the late Bronson Cutting who was Senator from
New Mexico, and who was a graduate of Harvard. There were 3 ladies in
the gallery listening to us, and one of them (she seemed to be the hostess)
said to the other two, 'Now, listen to those two Senators talking. One of
them is Senator O'Mahoney of Wyoming. The other is Senator Cutting of
New Mexico. But you can tell from their language that they're Harvard
men. That's how Harvard runs this government.' " Rems., pp. 15-16.

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 165

Hence," predicted television, REA, nuclear science, and other
more recent innovations.

Just as graduation from Cambridge Latin School was denied
him, Joe had to leave Columbia before graduating with his class of
1908. He had just completed the three-year preparatory curricu-
lum for law school when his younger brother Frank became ill with
tuberculosis and doctors advised him to go west. Joe explained
that he only stayed in New York long enough to vote for Taft
because Roosevelt had recommended him. He and his brother
traveled all night and all day via the New York Central before
arriving in Chicago. It took them two nights and two days to get
to Denver.

They arrived in Denver with fifteen dollars between the two of
them. Joe had a letter from a fraternity brother at Columbia to
his uncle who was a real estate man in Denver but nothing came
of it. Needing work he answered an ad for a temporary two-week
job at a Boulder, Colorado, newspaper.

When Joe arrived for the interview, the manager began by asking
him if he could write an editorial. His response was that he could,
and what did the manager want him to write. The explanation
was, "The editor of the the other paper, the Daily Camera, has the
county printing, and we don't like it. I want you to write a letter
castigating him." The "free journalism" was not out of vogue with
the times. Editors scolded one another and invective was in style.
All Joe recalled about the editorial was the last line: "Lucius Cas-
ius Paddock, you're as crooked as a bent stick."^** Joe was given
the job.

The job must have been agreeable to both Joe and his employer
for rather than staying the designated two weeks, he remained with
the Boulder Herald for seven years. The pay was twenty-five dol-
lars per week, a good wage then, and he had the opportunity to do
free lance work. Besides working as an Associated Press corre-
spondent, he wrote for the Rocky Mountain News, the Denver
Post, and other area newspapers. Joe's involvement in politics was
only as an editorial writer, and then for a Republican newspaper.

Joe O'Mahoney voted Republican one time in his life. It was in
1908 for Taft, but only because of Teddy Roosevelt's recommenda-
tion. The result of his early admiration for Roosevelt was that in
1912 he joined the Bull Moose campaign. He contended that his
insistence, through editorials, that the names of Roosevelt and Taft
be placed on the Republican primary ticket in Colorado resulted in
the first presidential primary election. He was an active supporter
of Colonel Roosevelt and led the delegate fight in Colorado for his
election. So effective was his personal campaign for Roosevelt

16. Rents., pp. 19, 22-23.

166 ANNALS OF WYOMING

that he had an interesting poUtical offer: "Mr. Tom Todd, leader
of the Republican delegation to the Chicago convention, came to
see me at the Boulder Herald, and urged me to run for the state
senate on the Republican ticket. 'Well,' I said, 'Tom, I can write
editorials for Teddy Roosevelt, but I can't run on the Republican
ticket.' ""

On June 11, 1913, Joe returned to Winchester, Massachusetts,
and married Agnes Veronica O'Leary. Joe met Agnes before he
went west. He claimed that his meeting with her, April 11, 1908,
"... made a far greater impression on me than the six million
dollar Chelsea fire which took place the next day and burned the
house in which I was bom to the ground."^'' Upon returning to
Boulder, Agnes enrolled in law school at the University of Colo-
rado. The two of them spent their evenings reading cases. The
next year, when Joe moved on to a new position, she stayed in
Boulder in order to finish the year of law school.

According to their niece, Agnes was the only person who ever
helped Joe with his Senate writing and research. "She read the
Congressional Record each day from cover to cover and if Uncle
Joe missed anything going on on the 'floor,' because of committee
meetings, etc., she would keep him advised on everything. "^^ He
discussed his speeches and bills with her before presenting them.
Agnes wrote a column called "A Wyoming Woman in Washington"
which was published in five Wyoming newspapers.

One of Joe's favorite stories about Agnes was that during the war
she was secretary to Ambassador Balfour of Great Britain. She
handled practically all of his American correspondence. Joe found
it humorous that Agnes O'Leary O'Mahoney wrote the letters Bal-
four signed.^"^

Joe expected that eventually he and Mr. H. Russell Thompson,
the manager of the Boulder Herald and his close friend, would buy
the paper. The owner, however, held out for twenty-five thousand
dollars. The two of them did not have any money; they wanted to
buy the paper on a note. A doctor came to Colorado and bought
the paper for his tubercular son. Thus, in 1916, Joe O'Mahoney
did not see a future for himself in Boulder and was prepared to
leave. He explained: "I began to look around for another job.
The first offer came from the Associated Press. It was an offer to
go to Texas, to El Paso, to go to work as an editorial writer on a
newspaper down there. I accepted the job, and then just as I was

17. Rems., p. 18.

18. Robert McCraken, "Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney: In Washington,
No Figure More Towering," Wyoming State Tribune (Aug. 13, 1952), p. 24.

19. Agnes Sullivan, Letter, Sept. 12, 1969. "Senator Joseph C. O'Ma-
honey," Cow Country, Vol. 88, No. 6 (Dec. 15, 1960), p. 1.

20. Rems., pp. 53-54.

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 167

about to start, I changed my mind, and notified them that I
couldn't accept."-^ Instead he accepted a job in Cheyenne, Wyo-
ming, as city editor and editorial writer for the State Leader. The
owner of the newspaper was Governor John B. Kendrick, a Wyo-
ming stockman who was campaigning for the United States Senate.

John Kendrick was the third Wyomingite to be elected governor
on the Democratic ticket. He was the first Wyoming Democrat to
be elected senator. In 1916 he was running for his first term in the
United States Senate against the then Senator Clark, chairman of
the Senate Judiciary Committee. After his election Kendrick in-
vited Joe to come to Washington as his secretary. Kendrick orig-
inally wanted another man but was ultimately pleased with his
second choice.

Joe accepted the position for essentially three reasons. First, he
saw it as an opportunity for personal advancement. Second, he
saw it as an opportunity to meet great and near-great men. He was
soon to be disappointed.^^ Finally, he found Kendrick's politics
attractive and in later years was to profit greatly from the associa-
tion.2-^ Once, referring to Kendrick's picture, Joe said: "That's
John B. Kendrick, who was at one time the president of the Ameri-
can National Livestock Association. He was really a great man, a
man with the common touch. He was a gentleman, and had a
great deal of human sympathy, great common sense, and he was a
Democrat because he believed in the humanitarian principles of the
Democratic party. "^* Not only did Kendrick provide Joe with a
source of admiration, he taught him about the world of politics.
For example, one of O'Mahoney's assistants claimed that it was
Kendrick who inculcated in Joe the political importance of thor-
oughness, one of Joe's political virtues.^^

Joe commenced work at Georgetown University on his LL.B.
degree on October 2, 1917. He went to school in the evening and
worked in Kendrick's office during the day. Nonetheless, he com-
pleted his work in three years, graduating 8th in his class on June

21. Rems., pp. 40-41.

22. Charles Lucey, "O'Mahoney Going Out Still Looking Ahead," Knox-
ville News-Sentinel (Dec. 28, 1952), p. 1.

23. An illustration of the political attraction Joe held for Kendrick can
be found in Joe's description of a social ill which existed in Wyoming at the
time: "I had plenty of opportunity to visit the coal mines, and I knew how
the operators saw them. I knew how the miners were kept in debt to the
company store. Their weekly pay was stamped on the top, and their ac-
counts ran ahead of them. They didn't have economic freedom. The own-
ers tried even to deprive them of political freedom, because they always
tried to force their vote." Joe agreed with Kendrick when he opposed the
operators who tried to force the votes of the miners.

24. Rems., p. 12.

25. Jerry A. O'Callaghan and Mrs. R. F. Love, Interview, December 19,
1968.

168 ANNALS OF WYOMING

8, 1920. Ye Domesday Booke of 1920, the yearbook for his
senior year, reported: "His sterling character, his prominence in
student activites and his aU-round good fellowship have combined
to make him one of the most popular and influential students in the
Law School," He was ascribed the epithet, "He was the noblest
Roman of them all," perhaps because of his outstanding record of
accompUshments: president of his class, third year; prom com-
mittee, first and second year; senior debating society; junior debat-
ing society; winner, prize debate, second year; law journal staff,
third year; smoker committee, first and second year.

After graduation from law school, Joe quit Kendrick to practice
law and took over legal, contractual aspects of the Mineral Leasing
Act. He practiced in Washington from 1920-1922, and then re-
turned to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and the law offices of Haggard and
OMahoney. He retained his law offices in Washington, however,
which indicated that his return to Wyoming may have been politi-
cally motivated.

Joe's legal practice changed somewhat upon his return to Wyo-
ming. He no longer concentrated on the Mineral Leasing Act,
although his knowledge of the act helped him in his representation
of certain clients. As he was personally and professionally more
interested in the rank and file than in large interests, he primarily
represented small businessmen.

In a speech given honoring Senator O'Mahoney upon his retire-
ment from the United States Senate, Carl Hayden, United States
senator from New Mexico, told of a previously undisclosed aspect
of Joe's career: "Few may know that he had a great deal to do
with arousing the interest of his own senator (Kendrick) and others
in what was happening to our naval oil reserves. We all know
where that interest led — to the Teapot Dome inquiry, and all that
followed."^^ In his reminiscences, and in an article in the Denver
Post, Joe related the incident in the following way:

I was trying a case in Wyoming involving some mineral applications,
under a newly passed leasing act to which Kendrick had contributed
a great deal, and on the preliminary work of which I had cooperated.
One of the witnesses was testifying in behalf of my client, and told me
that the Teapot Dome had been released, and he wanted me to come
back to Washington and lease with him, because he had some lands
in Salt Creek. I told him that I thought it was very unHkely that any
lease would be granted on Teapot Dome, because it was Naval Re-
serve, but an advertisement would have to be made. He told me that
I was wrong, that there was an inside deal.

So I came to Washington and I called up Kendrick, He said, 'I suppose
you want to lease on Teapot Dome.'
'No,' I said, 'Senator, that isn't what I want. I want to make a sug-

26. Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 9, p. 11346.

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 169

gestion to you, because I've been hearing rumors that Secretary Fall
is about to lease the Teapot Dome.'

I made this call from a railroad station, and we had lunch that day.
I suggested to him that he let me draw a resolution calling for the
investigation of the leasing of Teapot Dome and the Black Hills in
California. I said, 'I'll draw up two resolutions, and you take one to
Hiram Johnson, the senator from California. Let him introduce the
one for California, and you introduce this for Wyoming, and there's
no doubt whether or not the leases are to be granted secretly.'
After discussing the matter for about two weeks, Kendrick finally
consented. He was reluctant because he didn't believe that Fall was
going to do it, and secondly he and Fall had been associated as peers
when Fall was in the Senate (from New Mexico). But I pointed out
to him that he was coming up for election again in 1922, and this was
in 1921, and I said, 'This will insure your election, in my judgment.'
So he finally consented. Hiram Johnson did not accept the suggestion.
He wasn't interested. But Kendrick introduced the Teapot Dome
Resolution, and it started the investigation which eventually sent
Secretary Fall to the penitentiary.^^

A coincidence was that the newspaper job with the Associated
Press in El Paso, which Joe almost accepted upon leaving the
Boulder Herald, was with Fall's newspaper. Instead he accepted
the job with Kendrick's paper, the man responsible for sending Fall
to prison.

The 1922 senatorial election in Wyoming provided Joe with his
first political "break." Besides being in charge of Kendrick's cam-
paign for re-election, in May he became vice-chairman and secre-
tary of the Democratic state committee.

Of most significance was the campaign he ran for Kendrick.
When Kendrick's opponent. Congressman Frank W. Mondell, ar-
rived from Washington to campaign in Wyoming, he found that Joe
had a large "jump" on him. He seemed to follow Joe no matter
where he went. Joe's political actions in behalf of Kendrick so
angered Mondell he lashed out at Joe as well as Kendrick.^^ Thus,
the 1922 election provided Joe with the opportunity to conduct a
statewide campaign, involved him with the state political hierarchy,
and advertised his name throughout the state.

27. Rems., pp. 42-43. Denver Post, June 12, 1960, p. 1.

28. In Rems., pp. 46-47, Joe related, "In 1922, when I was practicing
law, Kendrick was running for reelection against Frank Mondell, who was
the Republican Congressman from Wyoming, and had been in the House
many years. By rule of seniority, and his ability — and he was a very able
man — he had become the Republican floor leader. So he announced in
1922, without consulting Kendrick as to whether or not Kendrick was going
to run, that he was to be a candidate for the Senate.

I was managing Kendrick's campaign, and I immediately seized upon this
announcement, saying in public speeches that this was a very unusual thing
that Frank Mondell was doing. He was the Republican floor leader, and if
his party is going to win — as he thought it would, and as he thinks it ought
to win — he would be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, by
the rule of seniority. 'But he's throwing that great honor, for Wyoming, out

170 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Indicative of the role that she was to play in future years, Agnes
helped the campaign by giving teas and receptions in her home at
502 East 22nd Street in Cheyenne.

As soon as his re-election was assured, Kendrick sent the follow-
ing message to Joe: "My re-election is due more largely to your
unfailing loyalty and devotion to my interests and to your tireless
efforts in my behalf, not only during the past few months, but be-
ginning the day we left Cheyenne for Washington and extending
over a period of six eventful years. I appreciate it all more than I
can express in words. "^^ Wilham B. Ross was elected Governor
that year. Thus, while Joe was directly responsible for Kendrick's
re-election, he was also partially responsible for the Democrat's
success in electing, for the first time in the history of the state, two
men to major offices.

An indirect result of the election was that Joe was offered,
ahnost immediately after the election, a retainer from a large oil
company operating out of Denver. Realizing that they were more
concerned with his influence than his legal ability, especially since
the offer came on the heels of the election, Joe refused it. He
explained, "I declined to accept that retainer, because I didn't want
to sell the influence I had gained by fighting a battle in the public
interest — I didn't want to capitalize that in the law business."^*^

the window, in order that he may go against Kendrick, and put Kendrick
back on the ranch, instead of in the Senate where he has been serving our
people so well.'

The result of that thing, of course, was that it caught on, and it made
Mondell very mad. So he advertised all over the state of Wyoming, saying
This man who calls himself O'Mahoney, and whose name is Mahoney,
makes this outlandish suggestion.'

Incidentally, it gave me tremendous advertisement all over the state, and
people who never otherwise would have heard of me learned of my existence
through that incident."

29. Boston Globe, April 20, 1923, p. 1. After his re-election, Kendrick
had the following statements to make about the man who served as his
secretary from 1917 to 1920 (they appear in the Boston Globe article):
"My boy, I can't tell you much about Joe O'Mahoney's early career back
East, but I can say of him as a resident of the State of Wyoming, that he is
a fine chap and one of the most loyal friends ever a man had. Nothing you
say of him is too good. Joe is just one of the lovliest boys God almi^ty
put on the face of this earth.

"Why, that tenderfoot took hold of things just as if he'd been bom under
the blue sky of the Rockies. He is an authority on our mining and land
laws. He is one of our best stump speakers. He never makes a statement
unless he's got the facts to back it up. That's one reason why we liked him
and think so much of him.

"He's doing well out in our country and if he keeps up his interest in
politics I'll be mistaken if our folks don't elect him to do something pretty
good." Kendrick was proud of the fact that Joe had used his time in Wash-
ington judiciously, not only immersing himself in political concerns but
using the opportunity to obtain his law degree.

30, Rems., p. 55.

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 171

In 1924, besides being a delegate to the national convention,
where he was a strong supporter of Al Smith, he ran a gubernatorial
and a senatorial campaign.

Governor William Ross died shortly before the expiration of two
years of his elected term. The state Democratic party nominated
his widow, Nellie Tayloe Ross, to run for the vacant post. Joe
managed the successful campaign of the first woman governor in
the United States. ^^ She was elected in the same election as the
better known Ma Ferguson of Texas but took office two months
earher.

The senatorial campaign he ran was his own. He ran on the
platform of "A New Day and a New Deal:"

I STAND FOR farm relief; FOR justice to labor; FOR honesty and
economy in government; FOR World Peace, through the League of
Nations or the World Court; FOR the exercise of every governmental
instrumentality primarily in the interest of ALL, rather than in the
interest of the few. I stand FOR all the liberal as opposed to the
reactionary of government.

AGAINST all grants of special privilege, in whatever form they
may appear; AGAINST the growth of bureaucracy in government;
AGAINST the control of our financial and tax systems by Big Busi-
ness; AGAINST all forms of exploitation, whether of the farmer, the
laborer, the public or the public resources.

I am a progressive Democrat. If nominated, I shall owe allegiance
only to the people. •■^''

This program represented a combination of John B. Kendrick's
political influence and a realization of what would appear signifi-
cant to a predominantly Republican state such as Wyoming. Joe
was a political realist. He wanted to be elected to office.

Joe was not realistic, however, in his selection of a political
opponent. He ran against ". . . Senator Warren, one of the most

31. Rems., p. 56; Boston Globe, Jan. 20, 1933, p. 1; "They Stand Out
From the Crowd," Literary Digest, Vol. 116 (Dec. 2, 1933), p. 11.

32. "Joseph C. O'Mahoney for United States Senator," My Platform,
Democratic Primaries, August 19, 1924. Joe's decision to run for the Sen-
ate in 1924 was based, at least in part, on the advice of John D. Clark, at
the time vice president and assistant to the chairman of Standard Oil Com-
pany of Indiana. In a letter to Joe dated July 27, 1923, Clark suggested
the following: "Your letter of July 25th is at hand, and I am sorry to note
the ommission of one well-developed candidacy and I hope that it is not
due to any recent access of modesty that never before interfered with your
progress. As an expert politician who is in training you do not need any
advice from one who is entirely out of practice, but even so I want to remind
you that Rule 3 on Page 5 is that it does no particular good to announce that
you will be a candidate, but under no circumstances should you deny that
you will be. This is the principle you and I had such a hard time to impress
on Kendrick, and I don't want to see you violating it. Lots of things can
happen between now and next June and most of those that seem likely to
happen would inspire a democrat full of jazz and nerve to take a shot at the
senatorship,"

172 ANNALS OF WYOMING

powerful figures for a generation in the Republican party in the
Senate, last of the Civil War veterans and father-in-law of General
Pershing. "••■'■ Joe was defeated.

Two events which added to Joe's political experience were his
membership on the Conference on Uniform State Laws, 1925-26,
and his term as Democratic national committeeman for Wyoming,
beginning in 1928.

After Joe O'Mahoney's death the comment was made that he
"... launched his political career in 1932 as a delegate to the
Democratic National Convention that first nominated Franklin
Roosevelt."^^ This statement is historically accurate. It was Joe's
work at the 1932 national Democratic convention which won him
the attention of the national party. But this was not merely a
matter of coincidence. Joe gained the attention of the party be-
cause he was willing to work and because he produced a quality
product.

Joe went on the Democratic national convention as the Demo-
cratic national committeeman from Wyoming. He was one of the
eleven members of the convention selected to draft the national
platform.^^ Adopting the theory of a short platform, which met
with Roosevelt's favor, he wrote the bulk of the platform along with
Cordell Hull and David Walsh. His efforts on the platform com-
mittee drew the praise of party officials.

After the convention Joe, as a substitute for the official repre-
sentative, went to New York to attend the general session of
national committeemen. He became involved with the machinery
of headquarters, especially with Jim Farley's work, and was asked
by Farley to become vice-chairman of the national campaign com-
mittee. Joe was second in command, after Farley, at national
headquarters, and in Farley's absence saw that orders were carried
out. After the national organization was established Joe was
placed in charge of the western end of the campaign, comprising
fourteen western and Pacific coast states. He left New York to
campaign for Roosevelt.^^

33. Boston Post, Jan. 20, 1933, p. 1.

34. McCraken

35. Boston Evening American, Feb. 24, 1933, p. 1; Boston Post, Jan. 20,
1933, p. 1; Douglas Budget, no date; Senator McGee, Congressional Record,
Vol. 106, No. 8, p. 10675; Rems., pp. 15, 55; Julian Snow, "Joseph C.
O'Mahoney: His Answer to the Enigma," Public Men In and Out of Office,
John Thomas Salter ed. (Chapel Hill: 1946), p. 114.

36. Communications between Farley and Joe concern themselves with
the 1932 election. After the nominating convention Joe received a telegram
from Farley and Louis Howe, dated July 2, 1932: "We appreciate your fine
work in assisting Franklin D. Roosevelt to secure the nomination the coop-
eration of his loyal friends made this possible we are counting on you to go
forward in the campaign to make him the next president with assurances
of my personal regards I am sincerely yours." Later that same month, July

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 173

Joe first received national attention at the expense of Herbert
Hoover. In December of 1932, Hoover gave an order to transfer
the general land office from the Department of the Interior to the
Department of Agriculture. In the order OMahoney and others
saw a blow to the pubUc land states. Joe won national recognition
as a result of his argument against the transfer which Senator
Kendrick read into the Congressional Record. The reasons ad-
vanced by Joe and presented in the form of a letter addressed to
Kendrick, contributed much to blocking the transfer.^^

Around the first of the year, 1933, and immediately previous to
his inauguration, speculation over who Roosevelt would appoint
Secretary of the Interior included the name of Joseph O'Mahoney.
The Salem News, Douglas Budget, Wind River Mountaineer, and
Boston Post, to name a few, all mentioned the serious consideration
Joe was receiving for the cabinet post. The Wyoming legislature
caught wind of the same news and decided to help it along. A
resolution was introduced jointly by the Democratic and Republi-
can leaders of the state senate and was unanimously passed January
23, 1933, by a Republican Senate and a Democratic House. It
read:

Be it resolved by the Senate of the State of Wyoming, the House of
Representatives concurring:

Whereas, the Honorable Franklin D. Roosevelt, President-elect of
the United States, will in the near future appoint a Secretary of the
Interior; and

Whereas, it is the sense of the Twenty Second Legislative Assembly
of the State of Wyoming that Honorable Joseph C. O'Mahoney, by
reason of his character, ability, knowledge and training is eminently
qualified and fitted to discharge the duties of that office.

Now, Therefore, be it resolved that this Legislative Assembly rec-
ommends Joseph C. O'Mahoney to the President-elect and respectfully
requests his appointment as Secretary of the Interior.

And be it further resolved, that the Secretary of State be authorized
to transmit this resolution to the President-elect by telegraph.

Such a move was unprecedented, especially since it was the fruit
of a Republican Senate.

Jim Farley responded in a letter dated January 28, 1933. He
said he was for the action 100%. Joe's response to Farley, while
guarded, indicated that he was interested in such an appointment:
"I was glad to receive your note acknowledging receipt of the reso-
lution adopted by the Wyoming legislature. Only yesterday I
received a letter from the state chairman of Colorado advising me

27 to be exact, Joe received a lengthier letter from Farley thanking him for
the effort he extended in Roosevelt's behalf and indicated that he, Farley,
"shall ever be grateful." On November 11, after the election, Joe received
another letter from Farley, once again thanking him and once again indi-
cating that he would not forget the help Joe provided.

37. Douglas Budget, Wind River Mountaineer, and Wyoming State Trib-
une, December 22, 1932.

174 ANNALS OF WYOMING

that he and Raymond Miller had joined in a letter to Governor
Roosevelt. I v/ant you to know that all of this has been v/ithout
solicitation upon my part, and that to all persons who have ap-
proached me on the subject I have asserted my belief that a position
in the cabinet is altogether too great a distinction to justify any
persons 'legging' for it."^^ Nellie Tayloe Ross, a close friend of
Joe's since he managed her campaign for governor, joined in by
writing an enthusiastic letter to Louis Howe of the Democratic
National Committee. After writing about Joe's liberal principles,
creative ability, intelligence, and maturity, she closed by saying:
"Assuming that press statements are true reporting the selection
of eminent seasoned statesmen for some of the major posts, I
entertain the earnest hope that Mr. O'Mahoney's sheer worth will
also so commend itself to the president-elect that he will caU him
to administer the affairs of the Interior. "^^ The analysis concern-
ing the likelihood of Joe's appointment to Secretary of the Interior
offered by the Douglas Budget, January 29, 1933, was astute.
They explained that of all the men considered for cabinet posts by
the President only Joe was without the prestige of national prom-
inence. Therefore, he was most likely to be appointed a first
assistant with the ever-present possibility that before Roosevelt's
term was over he would be elevated to a more important post.

On January 31, 1933, Senator Kendrick announced that the post
of first assistant postmaster general in the Roosevelt administration
had been offered to Joseph C. O'Mahoney, Democratic national
committeeman from Wyoming.^" Because of the publicity he re-
ceived concerning his possible appointm.ent as Secretary of the
Interior, Joe received responses such as that in a letter dated Febru-
ary 23, 1933: "If the first assistant postmaster generalship is
acceptable to you, I want to be one of the first to congratulate you,
but I thought you would be in the cabinet, and that's where you
belong. While I am elated in a way, yet I am disappointed." Joe's
replies were good natured and did not express disappointment.

The appointment can best be understood if it is realized that the

38. Joseph C. O'Mahoney, letter to Jim Farley, Feb. 4, 1933.

39. Nellie Tayloe Ross, letter to Louis Howe, February 6, 1933. An
interesting consideration was the way Nellie and Joe "scratched each other's
backs." While Nellie Tayloe Ross tried to help Joe get the post of Secretary
of Interior, Joe used his influence to get Governor Ross appointed as Direc-
tor of the Mint. Governor Ross's respect for Joe was evident in a letter to
him dated February 20, 1933 (two weeks after her letter to Louis Howe in
Joe's behalf) : "Joe, do you understand, I wonder, that whatever you agree
to for me, with Mr. F. [Farley] and the others, is going to be satisfactory
to me. Who knov/s me better than you do — my ability and lack of ability,
my deserts and lack of deserts? — positively nobody. Who would handle my
case more ably and faithfully than you — positively nobody — "

40. Boston Post, Jan. 31, 1933, p. 1.

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 175

postmaster general traditionally has been chief patronage dispenser
of the government. Therefore, the campaign manager of the suc-
cessful candidate has, historically, been appointed to the post of
postmaster general. In keeping with the tradition Farley was so
appointed. Immediately following the presidential election Farley
was busy with party business. Therefore, it was necessary to have
an assistant he could trust to carry on the duties of the office.
Since Joe had been his chief aid during the election and was known
for his faithful adherence to Farley's instructions, he seemed a
logical choice for first assistant postmaster general.

Joe explained that after the election Farley called him back to
Washington, the two met at the Biltmore Hotel:

Farley announced that Roosevelt had requested him to become
postmaster general, and he wanted me to come in as first assistant
postmaster general.

He explained that he was going to be very busy, and that eventually,
too, with all the Democrats coming in from all over the United States
to express their qualifications for vacancies that were bound to come
up, he paid me the compliment of saying that he wanted me to be in
the job so that I would be running the Postoffice Department while he
would be taking care of these other affairs. ^i

Joe responded that the only other "job within the gift of the Presi-
dent" which he would prefer was solicitor general in the Depart-
ment of Justice, because it was a professional position he would
like to fill. Feeling that the President would not select a lawyer
from Wyoming to fill that post, he was satisfied with the position
offered him.

On March 6, 1933, Joseph C. CMahoney began his first and
only administrative office for a salary of $6,500. His acceptance
of the position, and its low financial remuneration, indicated his
political concern. He had to persuade Agnes that the job held
political opportunity.

He quit his law practice. Besides wanting to devote his full time
to government service, he did not want his position unduly influ-
enced.

In November, 1933, John Benjamin Kendrick suffered a serious
stroke. As the situation required immediate attention, Governor
Leslie Miller of Wyoming called in his two closest political asso-
ciates, Tracy McCraken and John D. Clark. The three men met
with Senator Kendrick's secretary to assess the gravity of the situa-
tion. The next afternoon it was announced that Kendrick had
died. The decision was made by Leslie Miller, in conjunction with
John Clark and Tracy McCraken, that Joseph O'Mahoney was the
logical choice to complete Kendrick's remaining year in office.^-

41. Rems., pp. 13-14.

42. Leslie Miller, Interview, March 15, 1968.

176 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Joe's appointment is not difficult to explain. First, he was very
much responsible for Leslie Miller's election as governor of Wyo-
ming. Not only because of the efforts he extended in behalf of
Miller's campaign but because of more than fifteen years of social
and political association. O'Mahoney and Les Miller had been
friends ever since Joe first came to Cheyenne to work for the State
Leader in 1916. Second, John D. Clark favored the appointment
of Joe to the office. He exerted a financial and professional influ-
ence over Miller.^'' Third, Joe had worked more closely with
Senator Kendrick than any other man in public life. He was even
familiar with the senator's office organization, having helped him
to establish it in 1916. Finally, Les Miller and Joe O'Mahoney
were both close friends of the party in power in Washington.

Joe's appointment met an obstacle. The obstacle was not direct-
ed at Joe but at Governor Miller's power to appoint a replacement
for Kendrick. Wyoming law required a special election if a Senate
seat became vacant more than a year before the next general
election" and Congress was not sitting. Therefore, it was argued
that a special election was necessary. To guarantee that election a
writ of mandamus was presented to the Supreme Court of the State
of Wyoming on behalf of realtor Fred W. Wyckoff and charged
respondent Leshe A. Miller. The state senate, supporting the
governor, held a special session to rush through both houses an
amendment to the election laws in order to allow for O'Mahoney's
appointment.^^ This was the second time the Republican Senate
came to Joe's support.

The appointment became official on December 18, 1933, when
Leslie A. Miller, governor of the state of Wyoming, sent an official
letter to Edwin A. Halsey, secretary of the senate, notifying him of
the appointment.

43. The choice of O'Mahoney, rather than John Clark, was perplexing
until answered in a letter from John Clark to President Roosevelt on Novem-
ber 11, 1933. Clark, wanting consideration for the appointment as ambassa-
dor to the newly recognized Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was rather
blunt: "Having given you every assistance in your nomination and election
I have now made it possible for you to enjoy the loyal and intelligent support
of Joe O'Mahoney in the United States Senate. There would be no Demo-
cratic governor in Wyoming to make the appointment if I had not com-
pletely financed the last campaign in the state through the ten thousand
dollars I contributed to your national committee and I doubt if the governor
would have denied me the appointment had I asked for it. Because as an
professional economist, I do not belong to that school of economic thou^t
which just now has your ear. I believed Mr. O'Mahoney would be able to
support your entire domestic program far better than I could and accord-
ingly I requested that he be appointed."

44. Time, Jan. 1, 1934, p. 7. The controversy is clarified in a series of
letters between Joe, John Clark, Warwick Downing, and Julian Snow. The
letters are available in Senator O'Mahoney's papers, archives, University of
Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming.

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 177

Joe was influential from the start of his tenure in the Senate
because he inherited all of Kendrick's committees. While this was
not the usual practice, Joe had worked closely with the senator
during his four years as secretary, and the party decided to appoint
him to the same committees. The committees were appropriations,
public lands and surveys, irrigation and reclamation, Indian affairs,
and post offices and post roads.

Even more unusual was that Joe was assigned the same offices
as those held by Kendrick. The assignment of offices depended on
seniority and Kendrick, having served seventeen years in the Sen-
ate, had excellent accomodations. By a special provision Joe was
assigned to Suite 232, making him the only senator who occupied
the same office where he had served as a senatorial secretary.^^

An indication of Roosevelt's pleasure with Joe's appointment
was evident in a letter dated January 5, 1934, and made in response
to Joe's letter of December 28, 1933, announcing his resignation
from the cabinet assistantship : "Of course it is unnecessary for me
to teU you how pleased I was with Governor MiUer's appointment
of you to fill the Senate vacancy caused by the death of Senator
Kendrick. The one fly in the ointment is losing you in the Post
Office Department, and I want to take this opportunity to express
what you already know, my appreciation for the fine, loyal and
constructive work you have done. I am looking forward to a
continuation of our very pleasant relationships, now that you are
wearing the toga."

Although in his first year of office, Joe was faced with an elec-
tion, the campaign thrust of the opposition was that he was an
administration "rubber stamp" and "yes man," that he had sup-
ported the administration on every issue, even voting to sustain the
President's veto of the soldier's bonus bill. Although his Repub-
lican opposition was Congressman Vincent Carter, known as the
"best vote getter in the state," he won by a majority of 12,987
votes.

Senator O'Mahoney's opposition to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
attempt to "pack" the Supreme Court of the United States was con-
sidered the legislative event which brought him into the national
spotlight,*^ his greatest debate,^'^ his most dramatic moment,^* and
the hardest and most important task in his career.^^ While the
Daily Worker said that Joe was one of the "decoy liberals who are
leading the forces of reaction in the crusade against Supreme Court

45. Wyoming Eagle, Jan. 16, 1959, p. 1; Wyoming State Tribune, October
14, 1958, p. 1.

46. "Joseph C. O'Mahoney," Current Biography (Oct. 1945), p. 436.

47. McCraken.

48. Lucey.

49. McCraken.

178 ANNALS OF WYOMING

reform,""^ other accounts of his effort commended him on the
meaningful way in which he followed his personal beliefs rather
than party loyalties. ^^

Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to enlarge the membership of
the Supreme Court so that he would be able to appoint justices
sympathetic to his legislative proposals. One senator he was
counting on for support was Joseph C. O'Mahoney. O'Mahoney's
support was important because he was a member of the Senate
Judiciary Committee which would conduct the hearings on Roose-
velt's bill. Roosevelt assumed he could count on Joe's support
because Joe had campaigned vigorously for him, Joe had always
supported Roosevelt's legislation in the past, and Joe was still a
close friend of Roosevelt and Jim Farley, Roosevelt's campaign
manager. The day before Joe announced the course he would
pursue, Harold Brauman, a Washington correspondent for the
Philadelphia Ledger wrote, "He will desert the President about the
time Jimmy Roosevelt does. Those who have jumped to the con-
clusion he will oppose the President fail to appreciate his back-
ground and inclinations. They forget that for the first year of the
administration he served as a first assistant to Jim Farley. He and
Farley became great friends and he would no more think of turn-
ing against the administration . . . than he would of jumping off a
cliff."^^

The reason there were even "whisperings" that Joe would desert
the administration on this issue was that he closely questioned
certain administration spokesmen, such as Attorney General Ho-
mer Cummings, during the hearings before the judiciary commit-
tee.^'^ This motivated Farley to warn Joe not "to get behind the
eight ball," and Senator James F. Byrnes arranged a luncheon
engagement where he was to meet the President. Joe told the
President that the court bill would not pass, rather he should sup-
port a constitutional amendment providing for retirement of jus-
tices at a specified age. Joe returned to his office and drew up just
such an amendment. Roosevelt repUed, "Dear Joe. As you know,
I am an optimist. I think you are a worse optimist than I am."^*
Roosevelt's response, indicating that he was not willing to seek an
alternative solution, motivated Joe to come out in opposition to the
bill. Not only did he speak in opposition to the bill in committee,

50. Snow, p. 117.

51. "Officials Mourn Death," Wyoming State Tribune (Dec. 2, 1962),
p. 1. Senator Holland and Senator Dworshak, Congressional Record, Vol.
106, No. 8, pp. 10682, 10689.

52. Snow, p. 117.

53. Snow, pp. 116-117.

54. Robert C. Albright, "A Great Old Dissenter Fades Away," Washing-
ton Post (June 12, 1960), p. 1.

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Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department

O'MAHONEY IN 1952, THE YEAR IN WHICH HE LOST HIS SENATE SEAT
TO GOVERNOR FRANK A. BARRETT

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JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 179

he wrote a portion of the committee's adverse report and spoke
against the bill on the floor of the United States Senate and over the
radio. He recommended that the bill be defeated so decisively,
"that its like would never be sent to Congress again."^^

The reasons for Joe's opposition were clear. First, he was a
jealous defender of the Constitution and especially the separation of
powers spelled out in that document. Second, he took pride in
his independence. He did not want to be "buUeyed" into any-
thing. ^^ Finally, as explained earlier, Joe was a political realist.
He received negative reactions because he adhered too closely to
the Roosevelt programs. The court packing attempt provided him
with an opportunity to rid himself of the damaging label of an
administration "yes man." Thus, he was philosophically, emo-
tionally, and politically opposed to the action.

The judiciary committee voted to prepare an adverse report to
the court-packing bUl. Various accounts disagreed as to Joe's role
in the writing of the report. One source said he wrote the entire
report,^^ another that he wrote much of the report,^^ and another
that he wrote the bitter and more acrid part of the report.^^ What-
ever his role, the report was a significant document. The Chicago
Tribune called it "the second Declaration of Independence."*'"

Senator O'Mahoney made at least two speeches in the Senate in
opposition to the court packing bill.^^ His major speech, compris-
ing at least seventeen pages of Congressional Record, was, accord-
ing to the New York Times of July 13, 1937, ". . . one of the
outstanding Senate orations of recent years." Senator Vandenberg
contended that it was one of the speeches responsible for changing
votes.**- Senator Byrd and Senator Sparkman both suggested that
Joe O'Mahoney's speech was one of the reasons for the failure of
the court-packing plan. Senator Byrd considered the speech one
of the greatest orations he ever heard.^^ Charles Brooks Smith,
Washington correspondent for the West Virginia Intelligencer,
wrote on July 13, 1937: "It matters not what the inscrutable
future may hold for Senator O'Mahoney, good or ill, it will never
dim July 12, 1937. By a great speech on the Court issue, in which
he opposed the proposed change, he vaulted to the forefront of

55. Albright.

56. Senator Church, Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 8, p. 9967.

57. Senator Case, Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 8, p. 10679.

58. Snow, p. 117.

59. Hubert Corey, "O'Mahoney Wants Facts — Not Scalps," Nations
Business, Vol. 10 (Sept. 1938), p. 15.

60. Snow, p. 117.

61. Lucey.

62. Arthur A. Vandenburg, "The Biography of an Undelivered Speech,"
Saturday Evening Post (Oct. 2, 1937), p. 32.

63. Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 8, p. 10678.

180

ANNALS OF WYOMING

Senate statesmanship, as it rates today. He lifted debate . . . from
mediocrity to a high plane."^^

The effect achieved by Senator O'Mahoney's speech was not left
to chance. Jerry A. O'Callaghan, his legislative aide for his last
term in office, explained that the Senator knew when to speak, that
he timed presentations, especially on legislation, for their impact.
Senator O'Mahoney waited until late in the dispute over the court
packing bill just so that his speech would have the effect which
it had.<*^

The immediate political effect of Joe's role in the court packing
plan was that it cost him the President's favor. It was more than
a year before the two men, previously very close, reconciled their
differences. This "loss of favor" was politically beneficial to Joe
as it proved to his constituents that he was not the President's
pawn, and it established his independence on the floor of the
United States Senate. His effectiveness as a senator was enhanced
as a result of the fight over the court packing bill.

Senator O'Mahoney's work as chairman of the Temporary Na-
tional Economic Committee was considered the most important
contribution of his public service."*^ Joe took great pride in the
work of the committee. In fact, of all the bills he signed as a
senator the one he was proudest of was the resolution asking for the
creation of a committee to make an exhaustive study of our eco-
nomic system, the resolution calling for the creation of the Tem-
porary National Economic Committee.®" The source of his pride
was twofold, the value of the findings of the committee and the way
they were received by the general public. When the investigation
began Joe predicted that the results would be "dull but important."
He had no idea that the eighty-four volumes of hearings and mono-
graphs would become a Government Printing Office best seller,
bringing more than $82,000 into the treasury.^^ Besides its
financial success, the report and its implications were highly re-
garded. Senator Murray of Montana called it, ". . . tiie first
exhaustive, thorough and workmanlike evaluation of this nation's
economy."^*^ Carl Hayden called it the first full length portrait of
America, the producer J° The study, the most comprehensive ever
made in the field,'^^ would, according to Senator Church of Idaho,
". . . be remembered and applauded through many years to

64. West Virginia Intelligencer, July 13, 1937, p. 1.

65. O'Callaghan

66. Senator Humphrey, Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 9, p. 12184.

67. Barnet Never, "O'Mahoney Fights for Strong West," Denver Post
(Dec. 12, 1948), p. 1. "Officials Mourn Death"

68. O'Callaghan; Lucey; Current Biography, p. 437; Snow, p. 119.

69. Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 8, p. 10112.

70. Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 9, p. 11346.

71. "Officials Mourn Death"

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 181

come."^2 Even Senator O'Mahoney did not foresee its full impact
as an authoritative source of congressional committees, government
departments, universities, economic foundations, and even the
United States Supreme Court and lesser tribunals."'^ Senator Gale
McGee explained that the hearings and reports were "Bibles."^^

There were speculations offered as to why the TNEC was
formed. One suggestion was that it was designed to guarantee that
the O'Mahoney-Borah National Charters Bill would be passed.^"
Another suggestion was that O'Mahoney engineered the creation of
the committee because it represented the logical extension of his
grand plan to enhance the development of the West by preventing
Sie growth of monopolies in government and business. ^^ Joe
described the formation of the TNEC in the following way:

Back in 1937, I introduced a bill to create the Temporary National
Economic Committee to conduct an investigation of the concentration
of economic power. Roosevelt had sent a message to the Congress
recommending that the executive departments be authorized to con-
duct this investigation, and to have the authority to issue subpoenas
and to get testimony. I had fallen out, to some extent, with the
Roosevelt Administration, over the Court fight, but I was all for this
investigation of the concentration of economic power.
So I went to Senator Borah. He and I were in agreement on this
court fight. I asked him to join me in introducing a resolution to
establish this economic committee, but to make Congress a part of it.
Roosevelt was in a great hurry to go off on a week-end trip, so he sent
this message up to Congress at the end of the week, without a bill. By
Monday morning when he came back, I had introduced a bill which
made Congress a part of the investigation. Of course they couldn't
take that away from Congress, since they were asking Congress to
pass the bill.

So the Temporary National Economic Committee was established be-
ing composed both of members of the House and members of the
Senate and representatives from the executive department. Imme-
diately after the bill was passed and the President had signed it, I
was made chairman.''^^

The generally accepted reason why Joe made the move was that
he was interested in the study, and he did not want the executive
branch usurping what he felt were congressional rights. The com-
mittee was purposefully designed to be temporary.

The formation of the TT^EC stemmed from the President's
message to Congress of April 29, 1938. The operating time stip-
ulated in the resolution, passed June 16, 1938, was extended twice

72. Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 8, p. 9967.

73. Snow, p. 119.

74. Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 8, p. 10676.

75. Raymond Moley, "The Great Monopoly Mystery," Saturday Evening
Post, Vol. 212 (March 30, 1940), p. 10.

76. Phil J. Rodgers, Rocky Mountain Empire Magazine (Feb. 16, 1947),
p. 5.

77. Rems., pp. 36-37.

182 ANNALS OF WYOMING

and the committee had its operating funds extended once. The
resolution called for six Congressional representatives and six
executive representatives. Dewey Anderson was staff director.
The resolution calling for the establishment of the TNEC appro-
priated $500,000 to the committee. Because only $100,000 was
to be controlled by the congressional representatives, and because
of the six congressional representatives at least one, Congressman
Eicher, was ". . . an Administration wheelhorse," the feeling was
that the committee's policies would be dominated by the executive
representatives.'^^ The committee met for tvv'o years and nine
months, 1938-1941, and examined patents, life insurance, petro-
leum, iron and steel, prices, investments, technology and concen-
tration of economic power, cartels, "... everything under the
economic sun."^^ The TNEC report stated a case against monop-
oly,^" provided information leading to numerous postwar reorgan-
ization plans,^^ and provided congressmen with information they
needed to frame new legislation in the economic field.^^ Examples
were modifications in the patent laws,^^ O'Mahoney's bill for the
development of petroleum reserves on public lands,^^ and sugar
and wool legislation.

In 1940, a presidential election year, Joe received the largest
vote ever given a candidate for the Senate in Wyoming. He also
won by the largest majority ever obtained by a senatorial candidate,
19,340 votes.

In 1946, he was the only Democratic senator north of the
MasoR-Dixon line and west of the Mississippi to survive the Re-
publican landslide. He won by a majority of 10,129 votes.

In 1948, he was considered a possible vice-presidential candi-
date. Some believed that he was "far and away" the most popular
candidate. One explanation for his not running was that Truman's
friends Ed Flynn and Howard McGrath, both Catholics, vetoed
the possibility of O'Mahoney because he was a Catholic.^^ An-
other explanation was simply that Truman wanted Barkley for his
running mate.

An editorial in the Wyoming State Tribune of November 10,
1950, entitled "Is he losing touch?" addressed itself to how closely
Senator O'Mahoney was not keeping touch with the people. It was
motivated by the fact that his predictions regarding the 1950 elec-

78. Time, Vol. 32 (July 4, 1938), p. 9.

79. Snow, p. 121.

80. Rodgers.

81. Current Biography, p. 437.

82. "Officials Mourn Death"

83. Snow, pp. 121-122.

84. Rodgers.

85. Drew Pearson, "O'Mahoney Ending Long Career," Washington Post
(Aug. 29, 1960)

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 183

tions in Wyoming were totally erroneous; he was wrong on every
count. Conjecturing that it was a dangerous sign when a man who
was dependent on the people for his professional survival was
unable to tell how they were thinking and reacting, the paper
warned, "It's just two short years, you know, until he must stand
again for re-election." An indication that the Senator was appre-
hensive about the upcoming election was the report in January of
1952, that he went on an extensive tour of the state in which he
drove four-thousand miles in twenty-six days, visited every county
and spoke at forty-seven pubUc gatherings.^^ In October he must
have been even more apprehensive. A straw-vote taken that month
by the "Wyoming Tru-Poll Committee" showed he would only
receive thirty-seven percent of the vote.

His Senate seat was in jeopardy because of the campaign run by
Frank Barrett, his Republican opponent, and, most importantly,
the Republican candidate for president, Dwight David Eisenhower.
The Barrett campaign contended that Joe was not really the friend
of Wyoming and the West that he pretended to be. Two motion
pictures were circulated widely throughout the state. "The Fall-
brook Story" claimed that O'Mahoney, as chairman of the Senate
Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, bottled up the remedial
FaUbrook legislation which had passed the House unanimously
and refused to let it go to the Senate floor. In "Freedom's Shores"
he played a conspicuous role in opposition to returning the tide-
lands to the states. In October, full page advertisements were
circulated throughout the state in order to demonstrate that he was
not a friend of wool as he had so often claimed.

Although he received forty-eight percent of the vote, rather than
the October projection of thirty-seven percent, he lost his seat in
1952 to Governor Frank Barrett. He polled eighteen percent of
the vote more than the Democratic presidential candidate, Adlai
Stevenson, and if the Eisenhower landslide had not exceeded
twenty-five to thirty thousand votes in Wyoming, he would have
emerged victorious.

In a letter addressed to Agnes, Tracy McCraken, one of Joe's
closest political and social acquaintances from the time of his
arrival in Cheyenne in 1916, reaffirmed that Joe's defeat was a
product of the Eisenhower victory. He claimed, that "Joe . . .
made the greatest race he has ever made. His showing this year,
when one analyzes the returns, is far more impressive, the Eisen-
hower landslide considered, than were his victories that were
Democratic."^'^ Another variable was that a number of Republi-
cans indicated they thought Joe would be elected and would there-

86. Frank Hewlett, "O'Mahoney Starts 19th Year," Salt Lake Tribune
(Jan. 6, 1952), p. 1.

87. Tracy S. McCraken, letter, Dec. 3, 1952.

184 ANNALS OF WYOMING

fore go ahead and vote their party ticket. Scores of letters, re-
ceived by Joe from admirers all over the nation, especially Wyo-
ming, expressed sorrow at the outcome of the election.

The analysis of why he was defeated did point to hope for a
possible return to office in the next election — when Joe would not
be a victim of political circumstances. Estes Kefauver, in a hand-
written note to Joe dated December 31, 1952, was rather certain:
"Joe, you are among the real great of our Senate. I shall always
appreciate the time I spent with you here and you will be back."^*

Joe took the election better than some of those surrounding him.
His philosophical acceptance was, "I've always known that holding
public office is a hazardous occupation. I accept the verdict of
Wyoming voters without regret and have only gratitude that they
kept me in the Senate more than three full terms."^^

Joe stayed in Washington. He opened up law offices in the
Southern Building, the same place he had his original law offices in
1920. He was a lobbyist for the Cuban sugar industry, registered
with the government as foreign agent number 783,^° the Upper
Missouri Development Association,^^ and North American Air-
lines.''^ He was a registered lobbyist according to the Federal
Regulation of Lobbying Act. This representation of special inter-
ests was considered by his critics to be inconsistent. The Tempor-
ary National Economic Committee, under his direction, had inves-

88. Found in personal correspondence files, archives, University of Wyo-
ming, Laramie, Wyoming.

89. Lucey.

90. The fact that he was a "foreign agent" became a major issue in his
campaign for re-election in 1954.

91. According to the Congressional Quarterly, Vol. IX, 1953, p. 604, Joe
registered as an agent for the Upper Missouri Development Association,
Williston, N.D., on May 13, 1953. He anticipated two months employment
and explained his obligations as follows: Army Engineers were constructing
a dam at Garrison, N.D., 200 miles below the city of Williston. He said
Williston was surrounded by a number of established dams and that the
engineers had been condemning land in the Williston area to build un-
planned dikes in connection with the Garrison project. The Engineers had
requested $6 million in appropriations for the dikes. The organization, said
O'Mahoney was opposing the appropriation. It wanted to see the dike con-
struction plans before an estimated 23,000 acres of farmland were inundat-
ed." O'Mahoney explained that he was also ". . . supporting, on behalf of
the organization, a bill (S1857) to amend certain statutes providing expedi-
tious jurisdictional proceedings for condemnation of lands for public pur-
poses." Remuneration was listed as: "taxi fares, meals compensation to be
covered by lawyer's fees. Retainer paid, $1,000."

92. According to the Congressional Quarterly, Vol. IX, 1953, p. 590, Joe
registered as a representative of North American Airlines, Burbank, Cali-
fornia, on July 16, 1953. He was a director of the North American Air-
coach Systems, Inc., and said that his registration ". , . reflected an interest
in legislation affecting air transportation generally." He was retained for
$5,000 and compensated on a merit basis.

JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER O'MAHONEY 185

tigated lobbying, and he had advocated strict control of such
pressure groups.

The law firm of Arnold, Fortas, and Porter engaged Joe as the
trial attorney for Owen Lattimore, accused by the McCarthy hear-
ings as having communist leanings. ^^ Joe won the case which was
tried before the Supreme Court.

When Joe was defeated in 1952, he announced that he was
through with politics forever. In 1954, however, he was paid, at
the age of sixty-nine, ". . . one of the highest tributes ever paid to a
former public official. They (the people) insisted, through a tre-
mendous, statewide draft movement, that he give up his law prac-
tice and run for the United States Senate again."®* When he con-
sented to go along with their wish, he did so on the grounds that the
principals which guided his actions would be clear: He would not
be a candidate for re-election; he had never raised his voice in
personal attack of an opponent and he would not in the upcoming
campaign; he had no personal or partisan objective to serve and
would therefore work only for those causes which, in his judgment,
were for the public good.

The 1954 election was for both a short term, to fill the unexpired
portion of Senator Lester C. Hunt's tenure, (Hunt had committed
suicide in office) and for the next full six-year term. His opponent
was Congressman-at-large William Henry Harrison, a proved vote
getter who in 1952 had polled 76,161 votes, an all-time Wyoming
record.^" Joe emerged victorious. By virtue of the short term, he
served in the only Congress he might have missed since 1933.

At the age of seventy, he returned to Washington as the junior
senator from Wyoming. He was to once again attempt to rebuild
the influence which he had gained as the result of his nineteen years
in office and which he lost in his defeat of 1952. Joe was not
treated as a newcomer. He was given important committee assign-
ments and his advice and counsel were sought. He was even
eventually returned to his old suite of offices. They had been
occupied by Senator Watkins of Utah. Joe occupied 344, but
upon Watkins' defeat in 1958, Joe was returned to the familiar
232.»«

Early in the morning of June 19, 1959, Joe was taken by ambu-
lance from his apartment at the Sheraton-Park Hotel to the United
States Naval Hospital at Bethesda, Maryland. The Senator suf-

93. United States of America, appellant, v. Owen Lattimore, appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Brief for appellee. Joseph C. O'Mahoney, Thurman Arnold, Abe Fortas,
Paul A. Porter, attorneys for appellee. . . . Filed Oct. 2, 1953, Washington,
B. S. Adams (1953) v. 55 p.

94. Cheyenne Eagle, May 11, 1960, p. 1.

95. Time. Vol. 64 (July 12, 1954), p. 22.

96. Wyoming Eagle, Jan. 16, 1959, p. 1.

186 ANNALS OF WYOMING

fered a stroke. The day before, he returned home at 12:35 a.m.,
after the Senate voted to refuse the confirmation of Lewis Strauss
as secretary of commerce, an action which Joe had not only sup-
ported but took a key role. According to his wife, Agnes, he had
gone to bed tired but weU.

The stroke, which affected his left side, was not disabling. Joe
responded well to treatment and his condition improved steadily.
He was visited almost daily by his staff and wife, who had been
victim of a stroke herself the previous year.^^ The stroke did not
stop his activity. He continued his work from his hospital bed by
telephone.^^

Joe returned to "active duty" on October 21, 1959,^^ but never
did function at full capacity after the stroke. He kept his word
and in a letter to Democrat state officials in Wyoming, convened
for their state convention at ThermopoUs in May of 1960, Senator
Joseph C. O'Mahoney said that he would not file for re-election.

He died on December 2, 1962, at the age of seventy-eight. He
had entered the United States Naval Hospital nineteen days pre-
viously for treatment of what was diagnosed as a heart ailment.

97. Louise Love, Washingtonews, June 26, 1959.

98. Senator McGee, Congressional Record, Vol. 106, No. 14, p. 18112;
Rocky Mountain News, May 11, 1960, p. 1.

99. Joe's return was greeted by the following poem, signed "The 232
Crew": "WELCOME HOME/ We have missed you, oh so much/ We're
glad to have you back./ We've kept the office neat and clean/ And every-
thing intact./ It's been a treat to talk to you/ Whenever you would call,/
But having you in the office/ Is the greatest treat of all!"

Wyoming's
Pioneer Cife jHsumnee Company

By
Edmond L. Escolas

Wyoming's first domestic life insurance carrier was appropriate-
ly, althou^ rather unimaginatively, named the Wyoming Life
Lisurance Company.^ Incorporated on March 23, 1911, as a
stock company, Wyoming Life commenced business on April 15,
1912, in the fields of life and health insurance as well as annuities.
The home office was located in The Citizens National Bank Build-
ing in Cheyenne with William R. Schnitger as legal agent. The
board of directors consisted of twenty-one persons, all of whom
were stockholders.^

The venturesomeness of launching such an enterprise may be
revealed in part by indicating Wyoming's sparse population at the
time. In 1910, state population stood at 145,965. Cheyenne, the
largest city, had 11,320 persons; Sheridan, 8,408; Laramie, 8,237;
Rock Springs, 5,778; Rawlins, 4,256; while Casper, still referred
to as a town, had some 2,639.^

At this time, life insurance in America was truly in its embryonic
stage. In 1915, total life insurance in force amounted to about $21
biUion. Ten years later there had been more than a threefold jump
to $69 billion. These figures, impressive as they must have been at
the time, appear rather insignificant compared to the $985 biUion
for 1966, and to the sales figure of $122 billion for that year alone.*

The original capitalization of Wyoming Life amounted to
$300,000 or 3,000 shares of $100 par value common stock^ of
which approximately 2,000 shares were outstanding. In later
years, as 1919 and 1923, the Company's paid-in capital was in-

1. Later companies, for example, called themselves; Yellowstone Nation-
al Life (1924), Old Faithful (1953), Great Plains (1957), Pacific-Atlantic
(1959), Teton National (1960), and Big Horn National (1962).

2. Wyoming, Office of the Secretary of State, Index to Corporations,
Filings 12,616 and 13,291.

3. United States Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United
States: 1910. Population, Vol. Ill (Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1913), pp. 1104 and 1110.

4. Institute of Life Insurance, Life Insurance Fact Book (New York:
1967), pp. 17 & 19.

5. Wyoming, Index to Corporations, Filing 12,616.

188 ANNALS OF WYOMING

creased or decreased as the occasion warranted to bolster surplus
or meet legal requirements. The incorporators were, as The
Wyoming Tribune stated, ". . . all well-known citizens of Wyo-
ming . . ."*' — a cattleman, a doctor, a lawyer, a marshal, and a
merchant-banker.

Brief background sketches of these men confirm that they did
indeed occupy prominent positions in the economic, political, and
social affairs of Wyoming. LeRoy Grant, of Laramie, was a cattle-
sheep man with extensive holdmgs in the Tie Siding area, as well as
interests in a large general store and the Windsor Livery Feed and
Sale Stable. He served in the territorial legislatures of 1884, 1886,
and 1888, as well as the Wyoming House of Representatives in
1897-1899. He was mayor of Laramie in 1886 and later became
state auditor for the years 1899 to 1911.'^

Dr. George P. Johnston was a well-known Cheyenne physician,
and served as the company's medical director.^

William E. Mullen had been mayor of Sheridan and was an
established attorney who came to Cheyenne to serve as attorney-
general from 1905-1911. He ran for governor in 1910 on the
Republican ticket, but was defeated by Judge Joseph M. Carey.*

William R. Schnitger came to Wyoming in 1878, serving under
his father as deputy United States marshal of the territory. He
became city marshal of Cheyenne in 1883 and mayor in 1897.
Mr. Schnitger was elected to Wyoming's first state legislature as a
senator in 1890-1891, and was president of that body in the same
year. He served in the Senate and the House, and as secretary of
state from 1907-1911.^^ Also active in business affairs, he was
associated with Charles W. Riner and Company of Cheyenne,
which was engaged in insurance and real estate. ^^ Mr. Riner,
although not an incorporator, later became connected with Wyo-
ming Life as a director.^^

Edward W. Stone, as well as the other incorporators, was prom-
inent in business and civic affairs. He was a partner in the Chey-
enne merchandising firm of Vreeland and Stone and also had
extensive mining interests. He was treasurer of Laramie County in
1889. Beginning in 1899, he served several terms in the State

6. Wyoming Tribune [Cheyenne], March 9, 1911, p. 1.

7. Erwin, Marie H., Wyoming Historical Blue Book — 1868-1943 (Den-
ver: undated), p. 934; Coutant, probably, Progressive Men of the State of
Wyoming (Chicago: 1903), p. 479; and Burns, R. H., Gillespie, A. S., and
Richardson, W., Wyoming's Pioneer Ranches (Laramie: 1955), pp. 151,
276-277.

8. Wyoming Tribune [Cheyenne], March 9, 1911, p. 1.

9. Erwin, op. cit., p. 972.

10. Erwin, op. cit., p. 930.

11. Wyoming Tribune [Cheyenne], March 21, 1923, p. 3.

12. Wyoming, Index to Corporations, Filing 23,782.

WYOMING'S PIONEER LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY 189

senate and was president of that body in 1915. At the time of
Wyoming Life's incorporation, he was cashier of the Citi2ens
National Bank of Cheyenne. ^'^

By the end of 1912, seven months after opening its doors, the
young company had $587,000 of insurance in force. Wyoming
Life offered both participating and non-participating life insurance
policies in the regular forms of ordinary, term, and endowment, as
well as annuities. The company had no limit as to the amount it
would write on one life but retained only $5,000. Insurance on
women was limited to $5,000 but written at the same rates as
men.^^

In January, 1914, v/ith William R. Schnitger as president and
Frank J. Niswander as secretary, stockholders of Wyoming Life
voted to reduce board membership to eleven because :

. . . experience in the administration and management of said company
has shown that a board of twenty-one directors is impracticable, un-
necessary, and cumbersome, in that where the directorate is chosen
from among stockholders residing throughout the state, it is difficult
to secure the attendance of a sufficient number of the board to com-
prise a quorum for the transaction of business, caused by the distance
necessary to be travelled and the attendant expense, there being no
provision for the payment of travelling expenses. , A^

In 1916, with some $919,410 insurance in force, controlling
interest in Wyoming Life was acquired by The Western Holding
Company, headed by J. T. Kendall. In a management changeover,
Mr. KendaU, who had been state agent for Colorado and Wyoming
of the Bankers Life Company of Des Moines, became president of
Wyoming Life.^*'

As a special meeting on April 3, 1917, held in the home office in
Cheyenne, the stockholders voted to reduce the amount of author-
ized common stock from 3,000 shares to 2,050, which coincided
with the amount paid up, and also to change the corporate name to
Western National Life Insurance Company. Attention is also
called to the fact that debts totaled $250 and that considerable
difficulty was encountered in selling stock. ^^

In commenting on the name change and company affairs, the
Tribune stated :

. . . This change is made preparatory to expanding the company's busi-
ness with a view of making it ultimately a national institution. Here-
tofore, the business of the company has been confined to the State of
Wyoming and the local name, Wyoming Life Insurance Company, was
suitable and desirable so long as the company was doing a local busi-

13. Coutant, probably. Progressive Men of the State of Wyoming (Chi-
cago: 1903), p. 32.

14. Best's, Life Insurance Reports - 1926 (New York: 1925), p. 944.

15. Wyoming, Index to Corporations, Filing 16,380.

16. Best's, op. cit., p. 944.

17. Wyoming, Index to Corporations, Filing 18,983.

190

ANNALS OF WYOMING

ness, but now that the company is preparing to enter other states for
business and will in time operate in all desirable territory, it was
thought by the stockholders to be advisable to change the name so as
to better indicate the scope of the company's business.
. . . The past four months have been devoted to a complete revision of
the company's policy forms and rates, so as to make them the most
attractive and up-to-date policies possible. The result is that the com-
pany has succeeded in enlisting, through its attractive policies, the
services of a number of capable insurance men. The company now
has three supervisors of agents devoting all of their time and attention
to organizing for business the territory in which the company is now
operating. Applications are coming in splendidly, and it is confidently
predicted by the management that the company's business will be more
than doubled during the current year.^^

As to the financial position of the company, the Tribune quotes
from Robert B. Forsyth, state auditor and Wyoming's first insur-
ance commissioner:

. . . The detailed examination of the company from its organization
[shows] the company's financial condition to be most excellent. 1
wish to congratulate the company upon the report in general and par-
ticularly upon the splendid condition of the company financially and
the manner in which it has its funds invested. Mr. Paul L. Woolston's
[actuary] comment, "in general, the company's loans are first class,
the interest on nearly all being eight per cent, and the securities at
least double the loan" is as strong a commendation as anything I
might add. 10

An advertisement on the same page solicited home support for
the company in these words :

It is believed that Wyoming will in general, and Cheyenne in partic-
ular, give the company most loyal support and will aid the manage-
ment in building for Wyoming one of the largest financial institutions
in the West.2o

At a special meeting held on February 17, 1919, stockholders of
Western National Life discussed the possibility of increasing the
amount of authorized stock back to 3,000 shares, because some of
the present owners hoped that Western National would be in a
position to acquire other life companies through an exchange of
shares."^

An excerpt of the minutes of this meeting reveals the thinking of
this group at the time — as the proposal carried:

... it would be advantageous and in the interest of said company to
increase its authorized capitalization from $205,000.00 to $300,000.00
for the following reasons:

By reason of excessive mortality recently experienced by life insurance
companies, caused for the most part for what is known as a general
epidemic of influenza that has prevailed during the past year tlu-ough-
out the country, there are existing opportunities for this company to

18. Wyoming Tribune [Cheyenne], April 5, 1917, p. 2. Also see Table I.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Wyoming, Index to Corporations, Filing 23,782.

WYOMING'S PIONEER LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY 191

take over, consolidate and absorb the business and assets of other life
insurance companies, and in that way greatly improve its condition by
increased volume of insurance business in force. It is believed that
this may be readily accomplished by offering for sale the increased
number of shares of this company to the shareholders of such other
companies, on a ratable basis of value which would be satisfactory to
the directors of this company.22

On June 25, 1919, the board of directors, made up of J. T. Ken-
dall, president; H. G. Hewitt, secretary; and A. H. Marble, George
P. Johnston, C. W. Riner, M. R. Johnston, and W. E. Mullen,
resolved to sell an additional 200 shares of stock and to increase
authorized capital from $205,000 to $300,000, of which $225,000
was fully paid.2^

By the end of 1920, Western National had $8,933,035 insurance
in force and admitted assets of $530,511. The amount of insur-
ance increased in the next year to $10,367,402. The major reason
for this jump was the acquisition on February 21, 1921, of
Colorado Life Insurance Company of Denver, Colorado, with its
$1,285,300 of insurance outstanding.-^

The rather slow growth and high lapse ratio of Western National
can be seen in Table I for the years 1920-1923. With these prob-
lems in mind, a special stockholders meeting was held on March
27, 1923, with President Kendall and W. E. Mullen, vice-president,
presiding. The owners agreed to reduce capital stock from
$300,000 to $225,000. The reason for this action was that in
some states authorized capital must be fully paid up if a foreign
company desires to enter and transact business.^^ In view of its

TABLE I

ASSETS, NET RESERVE, CAPITAL

SURPLUS, INSURANCE WRITTEN, and

INSURANCE IN FORCE

WESTERN NATIONAL LIFE

1912-1925*

Admitted

Net

Capital

Insurance

End of

Assets

Reserve

Surplus

Written

in Force

1912

$ 344,742

$ 4,415

$338,748

$ 587,000

1920

530,511

230,285

243,059

4,888,035

8,933,035

1921

703,531

355,689

275,563

5,296,565

10,367,402

1922

831,673

469,811

275,636

5,124,053

12,005,345

1923

1,003,065

601,624

260,396

3,401,769

12,554,414

1924

1,082,117

733,023

243,975

3,683,930

13,605,827

1925

1,131,270

907,184

119,732

4,168,461

14,305,377

* Source: Best's,
p. 944.

Life Insurance

Reports -

1926 (New York: 1925),

22.

Ibid.

23.

Ibid.

24.

Best's, op. cit.

, p. 943.

25.

Wyoming, Index to Corporations, Filing 29,022.

192 ANNALS OF WYOMING

hope for expanding operations, executive offices were moved to the
fifth floor of the Boston Building in Denver, and the company was
licensed to do business in Kansas and Texas, as well as Wyoming
and Colorado.^^

One of the last stockholders meetings of Western National Life
was held on August 3, 1925, in the H. N. Boyd Building in Chey-
enne. With President Kendall presiding, it was voted to reduce
paid-in capital from $225,000 to $100,000, with the difference
going to surplus, and to reduce the number of directors from thir-
teen to seven.2^

As a result of an examination by the Wyoming Insurance De-
partment in August, 1925, Western National regained its inde-
pendence by entirely disengaging itself from Western Holding
Company for the sum of $75,000 in settlement.^^

In the 1926 issue of Best's Life Insurance Reports, the following
analysis and evaluation of Western National Life appeared:

The company has had a slow growth but suffers from lapses in com-
mon with some other western companies. The ratio of net resources
to liabilities is only sufficient after the reduction in capital stock. The
expenses of management are high and the cost of new business is fairly
high. The mortality rate is favorable. Its investments are diversified
and yield a good return, although low for a western company. The
cash item is too large. The company's actuarial methods are sound.
Death claims are promptly paid.29

Decreasing sales, high lapses, high expense, low yields, and in-
adequate resources sum up the problems which continued to plague
Western National Life. Consequently, in July, 1926, the com-
pany, without ever having paid a dividend, withdrew from business
and reinsured with the Central States Life of St. Louis, Missouri.
The reinsurance was for $15,000,000 insurance in force and assets
of $1,000,000.30

So the story of Wyoming's first domestic stock life insurance
company came to an end, but this was far from the end for Wyo-
ming's life insurance industry. In 1966, the state had six very
much alive and vigorous domestic companies — Big Horn, Great
Plains, Old Faithful, Pacific-Atlantic, Teton National, and Western
Reserve Life — selling all types of life insurance and annuities.
These companies, with over $202 million of insurance in force and
assets of over $11.4 million, give every indication of additional
growth in the years ahead.^^

26. Best's, op. cit., p. 945.

27. Wyoming, Index to Corporations, Filing 31,59L

28. Best's, op. cit., p. 943.

29. Best's, op. cit., pp. 943-44.

30. Personal letter dated March 20, 1968, to the author from Thomas J.
Lewis, Customers Relations Manager, Alfred M. Best Company.

31. Wyoming, Insurance Department, 48th Annual Report - 1967, p. 16.

Bye witness Keports
of the Wag OH Moz dight

Compiled by
Walter N. Bate

On driving across the middle-west plains today, no stretch of the
imagination permits a realization of the numerous fierce battles and
skirmishes that were required to change the vast territory from a
savage-dominated area to civilized country. Many fierce and cruel
engagements took place at various locations, and by no means did
the paleface win them all. Details of many of these fights, not
being immediately written, have become lost or confused as time
marches on.

Many different stories have been written about the blazing fron-
tier Indian battle known as the Wagon Box Fight which occurred at
Fort Phil Kearny, near present-day Buffalo, Wyoming, on August
2, 1867. Various opinions have been expressed regarding the
number of Indians engaged and their losses. The main controversy
concerns the number of Indian casualties, with reports varying
from five to 1500. No fight has ever been described by so many
differing stories. Apparently circumstantial evidence from eye-
witnesses should be used to establish a reasonable estimate.

Even though the palefaces always desired to heap all blame upon
the redskin, the Indians, even with their savage way of life, did
have some logic in upholding their ferocious defense of land which
they considered their own. The Annals of Wyoming, April, 1964,
states: "In 1851 at the Horse Creek Council, the U. S. Govern-
ment promised the Indians the Powder River country if they would
stop their attacks upon the travelers on the Oregon Trail. Unfor-
tunately, soon after this promise was made, gold was discovered
near Virginia City, Montana, and the mad rush was on. There
were several routes to the Montana gold fields, but they all took too
long for the eager gold seekers. In 1 863 John Bozeman traveled
down the east side of the Big Horns, thereby blazing the shortest
route, but it ran right through the promised Powder River Country.
The Bozeman Trail then became the battleground for the angry
Sioux, and Red Cloud warned that he would kill every white man
he found on it."^

1. Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 36, No. 1, April, 1964, "Bozeman Trail
Trek," p. 43

194

ANNALS OF WYOMING

Shortly after the Bozeman Trail was laid out, the Government
established three forts along it to protect the travel over it. Fort
Reno was located farthest south, Fort Phil Kearny farther north
and Fort C. F. Smith up in Montana Territory. The anger of the
Indians knew no bounds, and they kept the trail and forts under
constant harassment. In 1866, the Indian's success at the Fetter-
man Massacre greatly encouraged Sioux Chief Red Cloud and his
aUies, the Cheyennes and the Arapahos. In the summer of 1867,
Red Cloud and his group advanced toward Fort Phil Kearny and
attacked the Wagon Box Corral which was about five miles from
the fort. There were 32 soldiers and civilians in the corral with
new breechloading rifles and plenty of ammunition. They stood
off a reported several thousand Indians and killed and wounded
many of them. It was a fierce engagement lasting several hours.

Many strange estimates have been made concerning the number
of Indians killed. Each of two noted frontier historians, Stanley
Vestal and George Hyde^ have reported six Indians killed. Some
Sioux accounts say that five or six were killed and as many wound-
ed. In 1904, chiefs White Bear and Whitewash, both of whom
participated in this battle, agreed that the casualties were very few.
An Indian by name of Red Feather was reported as stating that five
Indians were killed and five wounded.

The progression and circumstances of the fight rule out such
small estimates of casualties. A battle in which only six Indians
were killed would not make news nor create controversy, and above
all, would not affect the future of Chief Red Cloud, which the
Wagon Box Fight certainly did. Casualty estimates by eyewitness-
es may well be considered in establishing an approximation of
casualties based on the circumstances of the fight, and the accounts
of a number of eyewitnesses are available.

A good description of the battle has been told by Sergeant Sam-
uel S. Gibson who was one of the participants of the fight.^

"We were detailed," stated Sergeant Gibson, "to relieve Com-
pany A, which had been on duty guarding the woodchoppers dur-
ing the entire month of July.

"We pitched our tents around the outside of the corral, made by
the beds of the wagons. All our stock was kept within the en-
closure at night to prevent a stampede by the Indians.

"On the first of August, I was on the detail guarding the wood-
choppers at the lower pinery and was on picket all day and several

2. Jim Bridger, Mountain Man, by Stanley Vestal (New York: W. Mor-
row & Co., 1946) p. 293; Red Cloud's Folk, by George E. Hyde (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1937), p. 159

3. "The Wagon Box Fight," by E. A. Brininstool, The Teepee Book, Vol.
I, No. VIII, August, 1915, published by Herbert Coffeen, Sheridan, Wyo-
ming

EYEWITNESS REPORTS OF THE WAGON BOX FIGHT 195

of us, when questioned by the sergeant in charge of the detail as to
whether we had seen any Indians, replied that we had not.

"After breakfast on the morning of the 2nd, the wagon trains
started for their different destinations. One started for the fort
with a load of logs, and the other pulled for the lower pinery. I
was with this command. Arriving there, I was ordered to relieve
the private on picket on the banks of the Little Piney. I fixed up a
sort of shade to keep off the hot sun and had laid under it perhaps
fifteen minutes with Private Demming, when suddenly Private Gar-
ret jumped to his feet and shouted to Demming and me, 'Indians!'

"Demming and I jumped to our feet, and sure enough, away to
the east of us we saw seven Indians mounted, coming across the
divide from the north, on a dead run, riding toward the Little Piney.
As none of us had fired a shot at an Indian since receiving the new
breech-loading Springfield rifles with which we had been armed
only three weeks. I sat down, adjusted my sights to 700 yards, and
fired at the Indian in advance. My bullet struck the ground in
front of the Indian, ricocheted off and wounded his pony. As the
pony fell, the Indian rose and got astride the next warrior's horse
behind.

"Immediately following my shot, we looked toward the main
camp and over the Big Piney to the foothills to the north, and there
we saw Indians in hordes swarming down the slopes. Hearing
shots across the Little Piney, I sent Demming to the other camp to
see what was doing there. Demming soon returned and reported
that the Indians had run off the herd, and that all the men had
started for the mountains to try to escape.

"We at once decided it was getting too warm there for us and
started for the wagon box corral, but had gone only 75 or 100
yards when the Indians commenced to come up out of Little Piney
creek by ones, twos and threes, at different places. The first one I
saw was coming up the bank of the creek, and he carried an old
Spencer carbine in his hand and was waving it at the others to come
ahead. He saw me at once, and we both aimed at the same time.
My bullet knocked him off his pony, and I heard his shot whiz
past my head.

"All of us were now on the dead run, and the arrows and bullets
began whistling around our ears, and it seemed as if hell had
broken loose. The Indians whooped and yelled as they tried their
best to surround us and cut us off from the main camp.

"We saw one of our men run out from the corral as we neared
camp. He dropped to one knee and opened a rapid fire on the
advancing hordes of savages, killing several and wounding others.
This man proved to be a bright, blondeheaded German boy named
Littman, who by his courage in coming out to meet us, and by the
rapidity and accuracy of his fire, saved us from being surrounded
and cut off.

"Upon our arrival at the corral, completely winded, I at once

196 ANNALS OF WYOMING

reported to Capt. Powell as to why we had left the picket post
without orders. He looked me in the eye and replied, 'You did
nobly, my boy.' Then addressing us all he said, 'Men, find your
places in the wagon beds. You'll have to fight for your lives today!'

". . . The wagon boxes . . . were the ordinary government wagon
boxes, simply made of thin wood, while some were from make-shift
wagons belonging to the contractor's bull-train, the heaviest of
them being only inch boards. There was not a particle of iron
about them except the bolts, stay straps and nuts used in holding
the rickety concerns together. . . .

"I soon found a place on the south side of the corral with Sergt.
McQuiery and Private John Grady. ... I was the youngest boy in
the company, being but 18 years of age, . . . Leaning my rifle
against the side of the wagon bed, I carried a hundred rounds of
ammunition to my place. . . I joined a group of five or six men
who were watching Lieut. John Jenness as he surveyed the oncom-
ing hordes through his field-glasses. There seemed to be thousands
of Indians all mounted on their finest war ponies, riding here and
there, chanting their war and death songs. I heard Jenness say to
Capt. Powell, 'Captain, I believe that Red Cloud is on top of that
hiir — pointing to the east. The captain made no reply, but hear-
ing a commotion among the men to the south of us he saw the
Indians beginning to form and exclaimed: 'Men, here they come!
Take your places and shoot to kill!' . . . "We all quickly obeyed.
. . . Resting my rifle across the top of the wagon box, I began firing
with the rest. The whole plain was alive with Indians shooting at
us, and the tops of the boxes were literally ripped and torn to
slivers by their bullets. How we ever escaped with such slight loss
I have never been able to understand, but we made every shot tell
in return, and soon the whole plain in front of us was strewn with
dead and dying Indians and ponies. It was a horrible sight! The
Indians were amazed at the rapidity and continuity of our fire.
They did not know we had been supplied with breech-loaders and
supposed that after firing the first shot they could ride us down
before we could reload.

"During a lull in the firing ... we got a fresh supply of ammu-
nition out of the seven 1000-rounds cases which had been opened
and placed at convenient places around the corral.

"The fight had commenced about seven in the morning, and I
did not hear any man ask about the time of day during the fight.
Most of us were bareheaded, having used our caps to hold ammu-
nition. The sun beat down with a pitiless glare. . .

"The time between the charges dragged heavily, yet the savages
kept us constantly alert. Along about 2 in the afternoon, as near
as I can judge, we heard a loud humming sound which grew louder

EYEWITNESS REPORTS OF THE WAGON BOX FIGHT 197

and louder, and presently there was a loud cry from the west end
of the corral. 'Here they come again!' We all looked to the west
and saw a sight I never will forget to my dying day, and it chilled
my blood at the time. We saw the naked bodies of hundreds upon
hundreds of Indians swarming up a ravine about ninety yards to
the west of the corral, all on foot, and in the shape of a letter V,
led by Red Cloud's nephew. We opened a terrific fire on them and
the leader fell, pierced by many balls. But the mass came on
slowly and in great numbers, the places of those who fell being
immediately taken by others.

"And now the great horde of savages were so close that the
heavy bullets that we fired must have gone through the bodies of
two or three Indians, and it seemed as if nothing could prevent
their swarming over the tops of the wagon boxes, in spite of our
withering fire. Some of the men, in their excitement, jumped to
their feet and hurled sticks and stones in the faces of the enemy,
forgetting to reload their guns for the moment, but nothing could
stand before that galling fire we poured in upon them, and just as it
seemed as if all hope had gone, the great mass of Sioux broke and
fled. Not a member of our party was hit in that last charge. The
several hundred Indians who were mounted, and who were on the
plain to the south of us, intently watching the charge on foot, never
offered to assist their comrades by making a mounted charge, but
remained out of rifle range.

"Just then someone at the east end of the corral cried out, 'Hark!
Did you hear that?' Everybody ceased firing, and another moment,
we heard the boom of a big gun to the east of us. It was the relief
from the fort, and the big gun was driving the Indians off the hill,
and soon those on the plain to the south could be seen disappearing
into the pinery to the west. Suddenly one of the men jumped to
his feet and shouted, 'Here they come!' And as we looked toward
the east we could see our comrades as they appeared in a long
skirmish line.

"Major Smith was in command of the rescue party, and our post
surgeon. Dr. Samuel Horton, was with him. Our rescuers told us
they did not expect to find a single man of us alive.

"When we started back for the fort, we looked back up the Big
Piney valley and saw a long train of Indian ponies, three and four
deep, and fully a quarter of a mile long. They were carrying off
their dead and wounded. . . .

". . . Red Cloud [later] . . . acknowledged that he went into the
fight with 3,000 of his best warriors, and that his loss in killed and
wounded was 1,137. . ."

Sergeant Max Littman, another participant in the Wagon Box
Fight under Captain Powell, and who was the soldier who ran out
of the corral to help Gibson and his companions through the sur-

198

ANNALS OF WYOMING

rounding Indians to the corral, wrote letters confirming the authen-
ticity of the details of Sergeant Gibson's account. Littman's con-
firmation amounts to a public statement that a large number of
Indians were killed and wounded in the fight.^

Frederick Glaus, another soldier under Gapt. Powell in the
Wagon Box Fight, also wrote an account similar in battle descrip-
tion to that of Gibson's, but ending with: "I have read somewhere
in some magazine about the number of Indians which are said to
have been killed in this fight, and the figures given were between
1200 and 1300. This sounds to me pretty unreasonable and over-
drawn, and i cannot believe their loss was so great as that.""^

Mr. R. J. Smyth, civihan teamster at Fort Phil Kearny, and who
fought in the corral, also wrote a letter concerning the Wagon Box
Fight that largely resembles the account of Gibson. He stated to
Cyrus T. Brady concerning the high estimate of 1,137 mentioned
by Brady: "As to the Indian loss, I think you have overestimated
it. We thought we had killed and wounded some more than four
hundred. However, you may be right in your estimates. We had
the opportunity to clean up that number, and we certainly did our
best to do so."^

A report from another eyewitness comes from Captain James
Powell, the officer in command at the corral. On August 4, two
days after the battle, he stated in his official report: "... I was
surrounded by about 800 mounted Indians, but owing to the very
effective fire of my small party they were driven back with con-
siderable loss. Finding they could not enter the corral they retired
to a hill about 600 yards distant and there stripped for more
determined fighting; then with additional reinforcements continued
to charge us on foot for three consecutive hours, but were each
time repulsed.

"The hills in the immediate vicinity were covered with Indians
who merely acted as spectators, until they saw how fruitless were
the efforts of their comrades near my corral when they also moved
up, and seemed determined to carry my position at all hazards and
massacre my command, which they would undoubtedly have done
but that Bvt. Lieut. Col. Benjamin F. Smith, Major, 27th U.S. Inft.
was seen approaching with reinforcements, when they retired, leav-
ing some of their dead and wounded near the corral, thus closing
the fight about half past twelve O'clock, p.m.

4. "The Wagon Box Fight," by E. A. Brininstool, The Teepee Book, Vol.
1, No. VIII, August, 1915, published by Herbert Coffeen, Sheridan, Wyo-
ming, p. 24

5. Reprinted by permission of the publisher from The Bozeman Trail, by
Hebard and Brininstool (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1922) p. 62
(Claus)

6. Indian Fights and Fighters, by C. T. Brady (New York: Doubleday,
Page & Co., 1928).

EYEWITNESS REPORTS OF THE WAGON BOX FIGHT 199

"In my opinion there were not less than sixty Indians killed on
the spot, and one hundred and twenty severely wounded, although
the citizens who took part in the action are of the opinion that my
estimate is far below the actual figures."

Captain Powell's report of 60 killed appears to have been made
with the intent to avoid being criticized for reporting an unbeliev-
able estimate killed, and his modesty and honesty should be ad-
mired. Investigation through the War of the Rebellion records
reveal that as a union soldier and officer Captain Powell made an
excellent record in the Civil War, and his official report indicated
that he meant to retain that good record. He was a good soldier,
a good officer, and was wounded in battle.

The battle circumstances as reported by other eyewitness ac-
counts indicate that his estimate could have been increased much
for greater accuracy.

On August 27, 1867, Brevet Major General C. C. Augur, in
command of Headquarters Department of the Platte, Omaha, Ne-
braska, issued general orders No. 39, in which he repeated the
battle action much as Powell reported it, then added: "Major
Powell modestly claims sixty Indians killed and one hundred and
twenty wounded. It is but just, however, to state, that reliable
citizens and others, well informed as to result and indications,
assert their firm conviction that not less than three hundred Indians
were killed or disabled. Major Powell, by his coolness and firm-
ness in this most creditable affair, has shown what a few deter-
mined men can effect with good arms and strong hearts, even with
such temporary defensive arrangements as are almost always at
hand, and that it is always safer, leaving out the questions of duty
and professional honor, to stand and fight Indians than to retreat
from them. Had this party attempted to fall back, every one would
have perished. As it was, it lost one officer and two enlisted men
killed "

General Augur certainly made it definite that he had confidence
in his informants regarding excess casualties over Powell's modest
report.

Gibson, Littman, Claus and Smyth, all eyewitnesses, knew and
respected Powell's low casualty estimate, yet maintained confident-
ly their own higher estimates.

Another important eyewitness to the Wagon Box Fight was the
crafty Chief Red Cloud, leader of the ferocious warriors that
attacked the corral. In an interview with General Grenville M.
Dodge about 1885, Red Cloud informed the General that the total

Captain Powell's Report. General Services, Washington, D. C.
General Augur's Report. General Services, Washington, D. C.

200 ANNALS OF WYOMING

loss of the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapahos was more than 1,100 in
killed and wounded.^

In 1904 Mr. W. R. E. Collins of New York wrote the author
Cyrus T. Brady, ... "I have just read your last article and it recalls
a conversation with Red Cloud twenty years ago. He was with my
dear old friend, "Adirondack Murrey" and, I think, J. Amory Knox
and myself. He, Murrey, and Knox had been photographed in a
group. In reminiscing in regard to the Piney Island Battle, he said
he went in with over three thousand braves and lost over half.
Murrey asked him if he meant over fifteen hundred had been killed
then, and he said: "I lost them. They never fought again. . . ."^"

When Red Cloud was stating this heavy estimate, he had been
without a large following for several years, and he was no longer
on the warpath. Could it be that he needed a large casualty count
to explain his failure to v/ipe out the little Wagon Box Corral?

Still another eyewitness was a wounded Sioux chief who visited
the post of Colonel Richard I. Dodge at North Platte late in the fall
of 1867. He told the Colonel that over 3,000 Indians were in the
fight, and that a prominent "Medicine Man" of the Sioux had told
him that the total loss in killed and wounded of all tribes in that
fight was 1,137.^^ This was the Indian casualty estimate being
broadcast in the same year of the fight.

At the beginning of the fight, 7,000 rounds of rifle ammunition
had been placed at various convenient places within the corral. At
the end of the fight. Captain Powell reported that the ammunition
supply was so low that he feared another charge of the Indians
would have exhausted the total supply. Since the poor shots
among the defenders had been ordered to load instead of to fire
rifles, only the good shots were left to do the firing. Therefore, it is
logical to assume that a high percentage of the expended ammuni-
tion must have found an intended mark, and this would necessarily
make a high casualty count because those fellows did not miss too
often. In fact, they shot well enough to stop all Indian charges
during the hours-long fight. By ail practical reasoning, the first
fierce charge should have overrun the little corral. But it was
stopped!'

What was the one thing that would stop the charges of those
brave, fanatic savages? Only the sight of falling dead and wound-
ed brother warriors would stop them! Twenty-nine living paleface

9. Fighting Indian Warriors, by E. A. Brininstool, published by Stockpole
Books, Harrisburg, Pa. 17105

10. Indian Fights and Fighters, by C. T. Brady, Ch. 3. Doubleday Page
& Co. Pub. 1928.

11. Our Wild Indians, by Col. Richard I. Dodge, p. 178. Pub. by New
York Archer House, N. Y. C.

EYEWITNESS REPORTS OF THE WAGON BOX FIGHT 201

fighters in the corral at the end of the fight is the evidence that
the charges were stopped!

If the criterion of dead to wounded — that is, two wounded to one
dead — were used, which criterion Captain Powell used in his esti-
mate, then the estimate of Red Cloud and other high estimates may
not be grossly exaggerated. This would mean that two-thirds of
Red Cloud's estimate was wounded men leaving about 370 killed,
and this estimate would not be a great difference between some of
the other estimates by paleface eyewitnesses. His total count of
over 1,100 casualties, as reported to Colonel Grenville M. Dodge,
seems high, but there is one certain fact that must attend the battle
situation. Many wounded warriors would ride or walk away from
the battlefield to live for an hour, a day, or for weeks before dying.
Any paleface estimate at the battlefield could not count these
casualties, while Red Cloud would have to include them, thus
making a high tally report from him.

These opinions of the eyewitness writers are convincing. They
saw the battle action and avoided exaggeration. In their attempts
to strive for something like accuracy, their intimated estimates were
made lower than Red Cloud's estimate, but they had no way of
knowing how many warriors rode away and died. Since the In-
dians were continually occupied in carrying away their dead and
wounded, no accurate count could be made on the field. With
both dead and wounded in the Indian camp, it is reasonable to
assume that an accurate count could be made only in the Indian
camp. It follows then, how accurately could the Indians count?
However, most large Indian camps generally included some mem-
ber or members that could count in paleface fashion.

Meetings were held at the site of the Wagon Box Fight in 1908
and 1919. Sergeant Gibson attended both meetings and located
the site of the corral for the placement of a marker.^^ At the 1919
meeting he gave a lecture on the Wagon Box Fight, and a member
of the audience reported that he was very sincere and earnest in his
description of the details of the fight.

In The Teepee Book of August, 1915, the same issue in which
Sergeant Gibson's article appeared, the editor mentions affidavits
from Sergeant Gibson and letters from Mr. Littman confirming the
authenticity of Gibson's battle details.

At a recent All American Indian Days celebration at Sheridan,
Wyoming, the Wagon Box Fight was partially re-enacted. The
high casualty legend was a subject of discussion between some of
the Indians present, and they were overheard to state that the In-
dian casualties amounted to 1,200 to 1,500.^^ No doubt they were

12. Miss Jennie Williams, Sheridan, Wyoming.

13. Mrs. Elsa Spear Byron, Sheridan, Wyoming.

202 ANNALS OF WYOMING

repeating the legend that came down to them through tribal chan-
nels, but even a legend must have some basis for a source, and this
high estimate indicates a high original count. To their credit, they
were maintaining the tribal legend that had been handed down to
them, even though it greatly depreciated their own Indian side of
the fight.

No explanation is available to justify the low casualty estimates
broadcast by the two historians and the several Indians previously
mentioned herein.

* Reminiscent of early-day agricultiiral activities in Fremont County, this
water wheel was probably used to provide irrigation for apple orchards, Ed
Young developed an orchard in the late 1870s which was a showplace in
central Wyoming. He was one of the earliest settlers at the mouth of the
Little Popo Agie Canyon.

Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department

HOME OFFICES OF THE WYOMING LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY WERE ON THE

SECOND FLOOR OF THE CITIZENS NATIONAL BANK BUILDING IN CHEYENNE.

THIS PHOTOGRAPH OF THE BANK WAS TAKEN MARCH 10, 1915

Zhe Place
of the J^orthem ^rapakoes

IN THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES
AND THE INDIANS OF THE PLAINS

1851-1879

James C. Murphy

[Conclusion]

Disiilusionment and Distrust Appear, 1851-1861

In spite of the fine spirit and high hopes of the Fort Laramie
Conference of 1851, it was soon apparent that the treaty would not
solve the Indian problem on the plains.^ Disillusionment, disap-
pointment and distrust made their appearance. The beauties and
convenience of Washington, D. C, failed to create among the In-
dians the anticipated desire to adopt the white man's way of life.
Amazement, if it appeared, soon was replaced by homesickness and
a longing for their people, their lodges, and the unblemished sun-
shine of the plains. One member of the delegation, it will be
recalled, committed suicide.^

In Washington, too, ratification of the Treaty of 1851 was long
delayed. The United States Senate objected to the clause providing
for the issuance of annuities over a fifty-year period, of $50,000
worth of goods to be distributed annually to Sioux, Arapahoes and
Cheyennes for that length of time. Using its constitutional pre-
rogative to modify the agreement, it reduced the period to ten
years, with the proviso the President, if he deemed it advisable,
could extend it to fifteen years. (This eventually was done.) The
treaty, of course, was thereby invalidated until it could be returned
to the scattered Indians in amended form for their final approval.
To accomplish this, great obstacles had to be overcome; most
authorities state it never was referred to the Indians in its amended

L It will be recalled that D. D. Mitchell, one of the negotiators of the
treaty, had said that nothing but bad management or perverse misfortune
could ever mar the spirit of the Ft. Laramie Conference. (See Chapter 3,
p. 51.)

2. See Chapter 1, p. 26.

204 ANNALS OF WYOMING

form, but this is an unfounded assumption.'' Again responsibility
fell upon Thomas Fitzpatrick, who, as his last official accomplish-
ment before his death, returned the amended instrument to the
Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahoes. In November 1853, more than
two years after the initial agreement, he reported qualified success
in gaining their consent. Of those who had approved the treaty in
1851, he wrote, some signed the amended document, one or two
were absent and others dead.^ There is no mention of the Indians'
feelings about the treaty made in the name of the United States
Government which had to be modified two years after they had
accepted it in good faith.

In the communication noted above, Fitzpatrick expressed his
dismay at finding Arapahoes, Cheyennes and many of the Sioux in
a "starving state". ^ With bison in scant supply, their women were
pinched with want and the children cried out with hunger. In
1854, Fitzpatrick's successor at the North Platte Agency cited sim-
ilar conditions, warned that the Indians must change their ways or
perish, and advised a policy of force to bring it about. Even
though starving, they would not voluntarily abandon their mode of
life; therefore he advocated a thorough drubbing for every band
from Texas to Oregon.^ Only after that could they be expected to
give up the chase and use the plow.

The new agent's vindictiveness may be better appreciated in the
light of the tragic events preceding his remarks. About mid-
August 1854, Lieutenant John L. Grattan, a young army officer
totally lacking in diplomacy, moved soldiers and cannon in upon a
Sioux encampment to take by force a brave who had captured and
butchered a lame cow, astray from an emigrant train. When he
callously opened fire upon their village, the frightened Sioux anni-
hilated his entire command.''' Shortly thereafter the new agent met
with Northern Arapahoes and Cheyennes who had arrived at the
agency for their annuities. The spokesman for a Cheyenne band,
who had witnessed the Grattan massacre, demanded that emigrant
travel on the Platte road should cease, and that for the ensuing year
the Cheyennes should receive $4000 in money, the balance of tiieir
annuities in guns and ammunition, and one thousand white women
for wives.^ Not satisfied with the impression they had made upon
the agent, the band returned after dark, galloped close to the

3. Lillian B. Shields, first to break with the traditional attitude, shows
that the treaty was returned to the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. (See Lillian
B. Shields, "Relations with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes to 1861", The
Colorado Magazine, 1927, v. 4, p. 149.)

4. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1S53, p. 366.

5. Ibid., p. 368. Fitzpatrick's italics.

6. Ibid. 1854, p. 303.

7. Ibid., p. 301. This occurred near Fort Laramie, Wyoming.

8. Ibid., p. 302.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 205

agency corral, and fired three guns. It is not surprising that the
terrified agent, citing the Cheyennes as the "sauciest" Indians
he had ever seen, failed to appreciate their grim sense of the
ridiculous.^

The Sioux, who in the Grattan affair warred upon United States
troops, had to be punished. Without regard to the logic of their
actions, nor the fact that but one band of this mighty tribe was
implicated, to the astonishment of several of the bands hostilities
were declared against their entire nation.^*' General Harney deci-
sively defeated the Brule Sioux in the Bluewater Battle of 1855,
bringing the war to a close. In this final fight, the casualties among
Indian women and children ran high, a feature which too often
accompanied Indian warfare in the West.^^ The importance of
whipping the Indians seems frequently to have outranked other
considerations in military minds.

Although the Cheyennes previously were involved in hostilities
with Indian enemies, no serious charges of raids or depredations on
the whites were brought against them until 1856. In that year they
had a brush with United States troops near Casper, Wyoming,
after a dispute over stolen horses.^^ One brave was killed, a sec-
ond arrested, and the band, doubtless aware of the Sioux debacle
of the previous year, fled south to join their brethren on the
Arkansas. ^^ Months later, when a group of Cheyennes prepared
to raid the Pawnees, shots were exchanged between a frightened
mail driver and two young warriors who had approached him to
beg tobacco, the driver receiving an arrow wound. ^^ Too late the
Cheyenne leader intervened, for although he saved the whites, gov-
ernment troops attacked his band next moming.^^ Retahations
followed. Hostilities continued into the summer of 1857, when
Colonel Sumner dismayed the Cheyennes with a saber charge, and
ended the war against them.^* No further hostilities occurred upon
the plains until 1860, when, with Kiowas and Comanches in dis-
turbance in the south, military expeditions took the field against
them.

Perhaps no single factor caused greater dislocation of the Fort

9. Loc cit.

10. Ihid., 1856, p. 619.

11. Some of the more notorious battles in which many Indian women
and children were killed were the Sand Creek, Colorado, massacre of South-
ern Cheyennes and Arapahoes in 1864, Custer's attack upon the same groups
on the Washita, Oklahoma, in 1868, and the Wounded Knee, South Dakota,
battle with the Sioux in 1890.

12. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1856, p. 638.

13. Op. cit., Grinnell, pp. 111-112. Three horses were recovered, but
one Cheyenne stubbornly refused to yield the fourth stolen animal.

14. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1856, p. 650.

15. Loc. cit,

16. Op. cit. Grinnell, pp. 119-125.

206 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Laramie Treaty than the discovery of gold in Colorado in 1858.
The invasion of 150,000 gold seekers into the territory molested
the game and alarmed the Indians." The return to the East of
more than half of them through Cheyenne and Arapahoe hunting
grounds, with its untold damage to their food supply, increased the
Indians' alarm. Denver, Colorado, and other townsites were
selected and construction begun by prospectors on lands guaran-
teed to the Cheyennes and Arapahoes by the Treaty of 1851.^^
Organized bands of horse thieves, preying indiscriminately on gold
hunters and aborigines caused further tensions.^^

In February 1859, Agent Twiss of the North Platte Agency,
expressed his concern to J. W. Denver, Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, regarding the disruption in the gold lands, and proposed
that the Cheyeimes and Arapahoes cede them to the United States
in exchange for annuities to be agreed upon.^^ Seven months later
he met with Northern Arapahoes and Cheyennes and some of the
Sioux bands, and drafted a treaty, arranging for the cession of large
blocks of Indian lands — including the gold fields — and their ac-
ceptance of annuities and reservations, the latter containing good
agricultural lands.^^ Chief Medicine Man of the Northern Arapa-
hoes, as spokesman for all three groups, requested government
aid in learning to farm the lands assigned for that purpose. The
Arapaho reservation, specifically chosen for them, was to run along
the Cache la Poudre in Colorado, from the mountains to its junc-
tion with the South Platte, an area which today includes some of
the richest agricultural land in eastern Colorado — a fertile, irrigat-
ed district — embracing the city of Greeley and the State College of
Education.2-

Agent Twiss' efforts went for naught; the treaty failed to receive
Senate endorsement. But the gold lands were not forgotten. Less
concerned than Twiss for the welfare of his wards, the new Com-
missioner of Indian Affairs, A. B. Greenwood, journeyed to Fort
Wise on the Upper Arkansas in Colorado. There, he met with
Southern Arapahoes and Cheyennes, with the expressed aim of
persuading them to part with the unneeded areas of their reserva-
tion so they could settle down and farm, for the game was rapidly

17. Ibid., p. 125.

18. LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen (ed.), Relations with the Indians
of the Plains, 1857-1861, Glendale, the Arthur H. Clark Co., 1959, p. 173.

19. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1860, pp. 239 and 317. The thieves in-
fested the country between the Missouri River and Pike's Peak, Colorado.

20. Op cit. Hafen and Hafen, Relations with the Indians of the Plains,
1857-1861, p. 175.

21. Ibid., pp. 179-182.

22. Hazel E. Johnson, Letter of Jan. 8, 1962. Miss Johnson, regional
Vice President of the State Historical Society of Colorado, calls these lands
"the cream of the crop". Over a period of some years the Northern Arapa-
hoes tried to obtain a reservation there.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 207

dwindling.^^ He succeeded in separating the Indians by a suppos-
edly safe distance from the gold fields, the route of the Overland
Stage Line, the proposed right-of-way for the first transcontinental
railroad, and the more promising agricultural lands of the territory.

Without the aid of an interpreter to clarify the terms of the treaty
to the Indians, with no evident effort to determine their desires nor
provide for their welfare, the Commissioner assumed that they
were willing to part with their lands. Although he expected all
members of both tribes to be bound by the treaty, the assent of the
absentees (all of the Northern bands and a few of the Southern)
was considered to be of no importance.-^ Thus he pushed through
one of the greatest territorial grabs of his day, the Fort Wise Treaty
of 1861. Thereby Cheyennes and Arapahoes lost great tracts of
the finest land in the area for the dubious privilege of gaining
annuities and retaining an arid rangeland in southeastern Colo-
rado.-^ When they found themselves barred from free use of their
birthright lands, they vehemently protested the Fort Wise swindle
of 1861.-6

Throughout the difficult ten-year period following the Treaty of
Fort Laramie, the Northern Arapahoes remained at peace with the
United States, although they pillaged livestock when driven by the
fear of famine. Neither the pangs of hunger nor the appeals of
their friends succeeded in embroiling them with the federal troops.

It will be recalled that Thomas Fitzpatrick in 1853 and his suc-
cessor at the North Platte Agency in 1854 reported distress from
hunger among the Indians they served. Likewise Agent Twiss
found them suffering and starving in 1855.^^ Yet the Arapahoes
remained apart from the Sioux troubles of 1854, and the war which
followed. Later, when the Cheyennes were involved in hostilities
(1856-1857), the Northern Arapahoes disregarded the pleas of
these long-time friends and allies, and gave them no assistance in
the fighting.

By the middle of the decade, emigrant inroads on the buffalo
precipitated a crisis among the Arapahoes. Hardest hit were the
old and the very young, who, weakened by the lack of food and
protection from the weather, died in considerable numbers.-^ With
smallpox adding to their troubles, they helped themselves to the
easiest game at hand, the cattle and sheep of emigrant whites.
Their agent had no difficulty in obtaining their consent to withhold
their annuity payments untU the owner of the livestock should be

23. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1860, pp. 452-454.

24. Loc. cit. Many of the absentees refused to be bound by the treaty.

25. Ibid., 1868, p. 33.

26. Ibid., 1863, p. 130.

27. Jbid., 1855, p. 398.

28. Ibid., p. 403.

208 ANNALS OF WYOMING

fully reimbursed, although it might take several years to do so.2»
In 1858 and 1859, they were commended for their efforts to ob-
serve all Fort Laramie treaty stipulations with other Indian tribes
as well as with the whites, although the frictions arising from the
occupation of the gold fields in Colorado made the latter especially
difficult.3o

In welcome contrast to the frustration, fear and fighting in this
period of Indian history are reports of friendly visits of Northern
Arapahoes left by W. F. Raynolds and V. F. Hayden, respectively
commander and naturalist of the U. S. Government expedition to
explore the Yellowstone River. A small group of Arapahoes
called upon the former in his camp near the present town of
Glendo, Wyoming, in 1859, brought him word of mail awaiting
him at Fort Laramie, exchanged fresh meat for bacon, and obvi-
ously enjoyed the fellowship.^^ Hayden recorded a number of
visits by Northern Arapahoes similar in their spirit of friendliness.

Both Raynolds and Hayden were highly impressed by Chief Fri-
day, the latter describing him as the man of greatest influence
among his people at this time.^^ Since Friday alone, of all the
tribe, had fluent command of the English language and frequently
interpreted for his fellows, it is not surprising that white men have
reached this conclusion, but the preponderance of evidence indi-
cates that Chief Medicine Man probably was held in highest regard
by the Northern Arapaho people. He, it will be recalled, was des-
ignated spokesman not ordy for the Arapahoes but for the Chey-
ennes and Sioux as well at the treaty conference of 1859 (which
failed to gain Senate approval), a responsibility which would nor-
mally be assumed only by the most influential member of a tribe.
Moreover, his followers constituted the largest band within the
Northern Arapaho group, comprising half the tribe at least, and
more than double the number of Friday's followers at their
maximum.

Judging by the actions of Medicine Man and Friday during the
ensuing years, it seems probable that both of them, through the
period of disillusionment and distrust following the Fort Laramie
Treaty of 1851, were instrumental in keeping the Northern Arapa-
hoes at peace with the United States, an achievement of no mean

29. Ibid., p. 401.

30. Op. cit. Hafen and Hafen, Relations with the Indians of the Plains,
1857-1861, p. 170 and 184-185. In his report of 1858 (p. 170) the agent
admitted difficulty in holding his wards in check when enemy tribes raided
them for horses. Actually, as shown in the first part of this paper (pp. 19-
21), none of the tribes involved cared to abandon the practice.

31. W. F. Raynolds, Report of the Exploration of the Yellowstone River,
Washington, Government Printing Office, 1868, p. 64.

32. Op. cit. Hafen and Ghent, Broken Hand, p. 275.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 209

distinction. Without more definite documentation, however, this
must remain an unverified conjecture.

The Civil War Period, 1861-1865

During the Civil War period, 1861-1865, Indian relations deter-
iorated until they reached an unprecedented low point during the
latter year. Cheyennes and Arapahoes rankled with the realization
that the United States Government, under the Fort Wise Treaty of
1861, had alienated their inestimably valuable lands in Colorado
(Chapter 4, pp. 50-51). Gold seekers and land-hungry emigrants
continued to pour into the territory, giving little thought to the
feelings or needs of the Indians whose lands they now possessed.
The idea that red men neither could nor would utilize the soil and
other resources to good advantage so colored their viewpoint that
few desired even peaceable Indians as neighbors. The pioneers
regarded them as one among many obstacles to be overcome in
fulfilling the white man's destiny, the peopling and developing of
the plains. As the settlers occupied more and more land for town-
sites, ranches, farms and mines, the Indians made way reluctantly,
unwilling to be pushed aside; and the feeling against them gradually
intensified.

Loss of their land and the continuous destruction of their game
by the whites left the Indians gravely unsettled, worried for their
daily needs and fearful of the future. Small groups of braves,
usually young men, sometimes ran off ranchers' or emigrants' live-
stock, thus compensating in some degree for the lack of game for
food. Continuance of their age-old pastime of raiding enemy tribes
for horses, scalps and prestige agitated the settlers, who feared that,
through accident or intent, they might become embroiled with one
Indian group or another. As mutual distrust deepened, the raiding
custom easily led to clashes between reds and whites, mistaken
identity and misunderstanding of intentions serving as contributory
factors. Attempts by Indian agents and other officials to persuade
the braves to abandon the practice availed little, chiefly because it
meant so much to them as a part of their way of life. Furthermore,
the white man's logic contained a serious flaw, for the federal gov-
ernment showed no inclination to make peace with its Indian
enemies until it had first taught them a lesson by drubbing them.
Thus the Indians did not feel obliged to keep the peace with their
own traditional enemies, insisting that it was "a poor rule that will
not work both ways."^^

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, many federal troops

33. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1869, p. 54. These words were six)ken by
Medicine Arrow, a Southern Cheyenne.

210 ANNALS OF WYOMING

were withdrawn from Indian country and sent south.=^^ This gave
plains tribesmen an opportunity to strike a telHng blow at the set-
tlers, had they been so minded; but despite dissatisfaction with the
Fort Wise Treaty and occasional forays by hungry braves, evidence
is completely lacking that they planned to take advantage of the
situation. Yet apprehension soon appeared that the Confederacy
might attempt an alliance with them to encourage war upon the
plains. ^^ This fear increased as minor activities of Confederate
sympathizers in the Denver area came to light. But in August,
1862, a feeling akin to terror of all Indians gripped the plains.
When some seven hundred whites were slain during a single week
of the Eastern Sioux uprising in Minnesota, the entire region was
electrified, even to Denver, Colorado, a thousand miles from the
disturbances. To the settlers of the area the word "Indian," be-
came equivalent to treachery, and few discriminated in this regard.
The effect of this feeling upon Indian relations throughout the
period can scarcely be overestimated.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, considering white satisfaction of
greater importance than Indian displeasure, initiated direct nego-
tiations with those bands of Cheyennes and Arapahoes which had
not approved the Fort Wise Treaty, but still occupied desirable
lands in Colorado and Wyoming. To Governor Evans of Colorado
Territory fell the unsavory task of convincing the Indians that by
ceding their other lands and settling on the arid Upper Arkansas in
southeastern Colorado with their southern kinsmen, they could be
converted to farmers and become self-supporting.^*^ With this end
in view he contacted the northern bands of both tribes even to the
Powder River region in northern Wyoming and southern Montana,
where buffalo were comparatively plentiful, and requested them to
report to the Upper or North Platte Agency near Fort Laramie.^^
There, a council would be held in the hope of persuading them to
join their brethren on their barren reservation. The preposterous
unreasonableness of the plan can be better appreciated in light of
the report of Colley, agent to the Southern Cheyennes and Arapa-
hoes, that unregulated slaughter of buffalo had resulted in the
extermination of every head of these animals within 200 miles of
the reservation on the Upper Arkansas, and that other game also
was scarce. ^^

Since none of the Indians were willing to move to the reservation
and attempt to live like white men, an indirect approach was used

34. Op. cit. Grinnell, p. 127.

35. LeRoy Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, Reports from Colorado, the Wild-
man Letters of 1859-1865 with Other Related Letters and Newspaper Re-
ports 1859, Glendale, the Arthur H. Clark Co. 1961, p. 301.

36. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1863, pp. 242-245.

37. Loc. cit.

38. Ibid., pp. 252-253.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 211

and a unique method of coercion devised. Although the govern-
ment was treaty-bound to issue annuities until 1 866, those for 1 863
were to be withheld until the bands concerned should promise to
sign either the Fort Wise Treaty, or a similar one, still to be
drafted. -^^ Many Cheyennes refused to be coerced, but the North-
em Arapaho Chiefs, Medicine Man, Black Bear and Friday, at-
tached their signatures to the promise, after which their rations
were issued.^" What went through the minds of the three chiefs
remains a mystery, for none had put his name to the Fort Wise
Treaty, nor to another of a similar nature, and Medicine Man
shortly afterward made it plain to Governor Evans that they would
not go to the Upper Arkansas. Perhaps they thought better of the
matter, and exercised the prerogatives used by the U. S. Senate in
rejecting treaties arranged by the executive branch of the govern-
ment. At least it can scarcely be argued that they misunderstood
the preliminary agreement they had made, for Friday not only
spoke EngUsh well, but also could read and write.^^

When John Evans became governor of Colorado Territory, and
ex-officio regional superintendent of Indian affairs in 1862, the
idea of an Indian war seems to have been foreign to his mind. But
the eastern Sioux uprising of that summer, which shocked the
settlers of the plains and made every Indian suspect, must have
had a marked effect upon his thinking. Lacking knowledge of the
Indian mind, he readily became suspicious, heeded the counsel of a
man of doubtful character rather than that of friendly Indians or
officials who knew them better than he, and unwittingly helped to
set up a situation which culminated in large-scale hostilities.

By 1863 the talk of war among both settlers and aborigines
caused Governor Evans grave concern. In November, about a
month after Medicine Man had informed him that the Northern
Arapahoes, though they opposed hostilities with the whites, would
not settle on the Upper Arkansas, an illiterate and irresponsible
white man who was married to an Arapaho and spoke the language,
persuaded him that the Arapahoes, Sioux, Cheyennes, Kiowas and
Comanches would unite in hostilities against the whites as soon as
they could obtain sufficient ammunition in the spring.^^

The motives behind the story told by Robert North, as he was
named, are enigmatic, but he convinced the Governor that he had
gained the full confidence of the Arapahoes in rescuing a woman of

39. Ibid., pp. 249-250.

40. Loc. cit.

41. Friday's fluent command of English has been a subject of favorable
comment among whites who knew him.

42. Robert North, elsewhere described as the demented, renegade leader
of an outlaw band of Arapahoes, was later hanged by vigilantes or robbers.
(See Joseph Henry Taylor, Frontier and Indian Life and Kaleidoscopic
Lives, Valley City, 1889, pp. 148-154.)

212 ANNALS OF WYOMING

that tribe from the Utes; therefore his warnings should be heeded.
In gratitude for his rescue of the woman the Arapahoes had given
him a big medicine dance (Sun Dance) near Fort Lyon (formerly
Fort Wise), in Colorado. He said it was there he had seen North-
em and Southern Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Sioux, Kiowas, and
Comanches pledge themselves to war together on the whites.*^
Had no massacre of settlers occurred the year before in Minnesota,
the Governor might have been less ruled by emotionalism, and
sought other sources of information. But he accepted North's story
at face value, and anticipated trouble in the spring.

Handicapped by his meager knowledge of Indians and their
customs, Governor Evans did not, of course, realize that Northern
and Southern Arapahoes, with friendly visitors from other tribes,
had come together, not for warlike purposes, but to celebrate the
ceremony of the Sun Dance, or the Offerings Lodge, as the Arap-
ahoes called it, the most meaningful religious ritual of the plains
Indians.^^ Also, he was not aware that the Arapaho Sun Dance
could not have been given for North, since it always is the result of
a sacred vow; in this case the vow of a Northern Arapaho woman
who had escaped from the Utes, and through the aid of Henry
North, not Robert (who claimed credit for it), returned safely to
her people. ^-^ The story of this Sun Dance, in short, is an Arapaho
epic, still commonly known among both Northern and Southern
groups; but it was Henry North, not his brother Robert, who had
an important part in it. A detailed account, "The Story of a Wom-
I! an's Vow", is related by George A. Dorsey in "The Arapaho Sun

i! Dance", ^''' The Northern Arapahoes at this time were not pre-

paring for war.

When Governor Evans first came to Colorado he sought to stop
the practice of inter-tribal raiding which so often kept the settlers
on edge. He rather easily convinced himself — but not the In-
dians— that they would abandon the custom. The hostilities which
broke out in the spring of 1864 came as an indirect result of this
practice, rather than the inter-tribal pledge of warfare erroneously
reported by Robert North.

Due to depredations in the Platte Valley by hungry Sioux and
Cheyennes, General Mitchell, hoping to preserve peace, met the
Brule Sioux in council near Fort Kearney, Nebraska. But all
chances of success were spoiled when the encamped Indians, in the
dark of night, mistook a party of whites for their Pawnee enemies

43. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1864, pp. 224-225.

44. For a brief explanation of the Sun Dance, see Chap. 1. pp. 18-19.

45. Jessie Rowlodge, Letter of June 21, 1961. This Southern Arapaho,
who has a remarkable knowledge of his people's past, explains that Henry
North had a brother Robert.

46. George A. Dorsey, "The Arapaho Sun Dance" Anthropological Pa-
pers of the Field Columbian Museum, v. 4, Chicago, 1903, pp. 5-8.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 213

on a foray, attacked them, and killed several.^^ The troops re-
sponded in kind, and warfare began.^*^

Intermittent fighting continued throughout the spring and sum-
mer until various bands of Apaches, Comanches, Kiowas and
Southern Arapahoes and Cheyennes were drawn in, the last two
groups, at least, reluctantly. Stating that unwanted war had been
forced upon them, they approached Governor Evans in an effort to
obtain peace, but met with discouragement, for he distrusted them
and referred them to the military for negotiations.^^ But there,
also, their efforts were repelled.

From Colorado to Montana feelings ran high against the Indians.
In the north, Montana and South Dakota were the main field of
combat, and the Sioux the principal belligerents. In late July
General Sully's troops and artillery caught up with them, defeating
them at Knife River, South Dakota.^" Closer to the North Platte
Agency and the routes of travel in Wyoming and Nebraska, even
friendly Indians were treated as hostiles by emigrants, settlers and
soldiers, who made little effort to differentiate between the guilty
and the innocent.

With the danger of widening hostilities increasing, Governor
Evans decided on an effort to separate the friendly Indians from
the hostiles. In the early summer of 1864 he called upon all who
intended to be friendly to report to designated stations in Colorado
for protection and rations. From these points they would be able
to go to the buffalo range or otherwise procure the major part of
their food. To his disappointment, there was little immediate
response.

About 175 Northern Arapahoes under Friday and White Wolf
reported to Camp Collins on the Cache la Poudre, not far from
the former's long-preferred camping grounds. ^^ Left Hand's small
band of Southern Arapahoes came in to Fort Lyon on the Arkan-
sas, the other designated station; but they soon departed again.
This, in the Governor's estimation, confirmed their hostile inten-
tions. But it is probable that fear of hunger played an important
part in Left Hand's decision to leave, for the area was sadly
depleted of game. Even at Camp Collins, which was far more
favorably located, subsistence for Friday and White Wolf's bands
proved to be a perplexing problem.^^

The governor had small success in assigning satisfactory hunting
grounds, and the funds allocated for subsistence fell short of paying

47. Op. cit. Grinnell, p. 151.

48. Loc. cit.

49. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1865, pp. 23-24.

50. James McCIellan Hamilton, From Wilderness to State-Hood, Port-
land, Binford and Mort, 1957, pp. 156-157.

51. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1864, p. 236.

52. Ibid., p. 223.

214 ANNALS OF WYOMING

for the food they required. Beef, when procurable, was compara-
tively inexpensive, but speculators had cornered the wheat and
flour market; their cost was prohibitive.-''"'

By August of 1864, Indian troubles in Colorado, considerably
heightened by imagination, had produced a sad effect. With only
one exception, every ranch along a 370 mile stretch of the Overland
Stage Route in Colorado was reported to be deserted, the occu-
pants having fled to the nearest forts."'^ In the popular mind
Indians were pitiless savages, ready for unprovoked attacks upon
the whites and their possessions. General panic prevailed between
Camp Collins and Denver, a distance of nearly seventy miles;
farmers improvised fortifications to repel anticipated forays. Three
women reportedly went mad from fright.

Governor Evans, disappointed by the poor response to his invi-
tation to friendly Indians, was convinced of general hostility on
their part. Fearful of attack, he advised the settlers to hunt down
j all hostiles, and called for a regiment of one-hundred-day volun-

: teers for the same purpose. ^^ With all Indians regarded as enemies,

a determination for vengeance against the red men replaced fear.
A party of one hundred armed men headed for the Cache la Poudre
' with the intention of cleaning out Friday and his friendly band of

|: Northern Arapahoes, but the report of actual hostilies near Fort

Lupton, about forty miles closer to Denver, turned them in that
I direction, and modified their purpose.^^

f During the frightening days of August, 1864, an incident oc-

:! curred which further incensed the settlers against the Indians,

f This was the capture and alleged mistreatment of a white woman,

Mrs. Eubanks, and her child, by Indians. Later when they sur-
rendered the woman and child to military authorities at Fort Lara-
mie, three Sioux were hanged for their complicity in the affair."^
The Colorado settlers, who already held the Indians responsible for
the disruption in their territory, grew more inflamed than ever
against them, and demanded a general drubbing for all the savages
(as they called the Indians) to drive home a much-needed lesson.
Colonel Chivington of the Colorado Volunteers, who wished to
make a name an an Indian fighter, utilized this demand in making
an unprovoked attack upon an encampment of Southern Cheyennes

53. Ibid., p. 236. The price of flour at La Porte, advanced from $6 per
Cwt. to $28. La Porte was near Camp Collins.

54. Ibid., p. 237. This is from the report of Superintendent G. K. Otis
of the Overland Stage Line to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

55. Ibid., p. 23.

56. Ibid., p. 237.

57. Arapahoes were at first mistakenly blamed for the capture of Mrs.
Eubanks. Grinnell, op. cit., p. 155, states that Cheyennes and Sioux were
responsible.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 215

and Arapahoes who were treating for peace with the commandant
at Fort Lyon.^^

In the advice of Governor Evans to make their peace with the
military, these tribes had approached Major Wyncoop at Fort Lyon
to negotiate with him. Encamped on their own reservation, close
to the fort, they believed themselves to be under the protection of
the federal troops, and awaited the outcome of their mission. There
it was that Colonel Chivington and his volunteers fell upon them
with merciless slaughter, the Colonel insisting that no Indian should
be taken alive, not even a child, as nits would become lice. Two-
thirds of those killed in this battle, known as the Sand Creek Mas-
sacre, were women and children,^"

This ended the chances for peace in Colorado. Most of the
Cheyennes, who had suffered the greater number of casualties, felt
themselves forced to fight against extermination; but one band even
now refused to war upon the whites. The Sioux, however, were
easily persuaded to join in such a venture, and eighty lodges of
Northern Arapahoes on the Republican River in Kansas were
induced to unite with the hostiles.^** This band, evidently Black
Bear's, had come from Powder River to visit the Southern Arap-
ahoes, but failed to find them there, for after the Sand Creek affair
they had fled farther south to avoid the troops.^^

From December, 1864, until February, 1865, one thousand
marauding warriors of the combined tribes terrorized the settlers
between the North and South Platte Rivers, raiding Overland Stage
Line stations and burning telegraph poles in the process. ^^ Jules-
burg Station in northeastern Colorado was struck and plundered
twice within a few weeks, and, on the second occasion, was burned
to the ground. The raiding finally over, the Indians lived well for
awhile on the loot they had taken, but when that was gone the
three tribes separated to return to their northern hunting grounds.®^

Most of the Northern Arapahoes, during this period of turbu-
lence and ill-feeling from 1861 to 1865, remained at peace with the
whites. With the exception of Black Bear's band, they could at
no time be counted among the hostiles, and Black Bear's bellig-

58. Op. cit. Condition of the Indian Tribes, p. 5.

59. Op. cit. Grinnell, p. 173. Although reports of the number killed vary
greatly, lOO to 800, there is little doubt of the proportion of women and
children kiUed. For an idea of Indian resistance in this battle see p. 21 in
Chapter 1.

60. Ibid., p. 181.

61. Black Bear is not named as the chief of this hostile band, but the
location of the other Northern Arapaho bands of any size is otherwise
known at this time. Likewise, the 80 lodges, about 450 people, is close to
the figure of 400 given for his band in the Rocky Mountain News (Denver),
July 8, 1865.

62. Op. cit. Grinnell, pp. 182-194.

63. Loc. cit.

216 ANNALS OF WYOMING

erency occurred only after the unwarranted attack on Southern
Arapahoes and Cheyennes at Sand Creek in late November, 1864.

Among the many reports of intertribal raiding in the early
1860s, no definite involvements of Northern Arapahoes are cited.
Yet it is unlikely that they had abandoned the practice, for a few
years later they were known to raid Shoshones, Utes and Crows.
Interestingly, when Northern Arapahoes, in 1862, found six stray
mules bearing the Overland Stage Line's brand, they took them to
the North Platte Agency, requesting their agent to return them to
their owner. This elicited the commendation of the agent, who
referred to them as the most honorable tribe within his jurisdic-
tion.*'* Actions of this nature on the part of the Arapahoes prob-
ably reflected the influence of the older heads in the tribal hier-
archy, who wished to avoid trouble with the whites.

Chief Friday, with his knowledge of English and understanding
of the whites, was better able to convince Governor Evans and
others in authority of his peaceful intentions than were other In-
dians. His stand became equally clear to his fellows. Within a
year of the Eastern Sioux uprising, when the possibility of war on
the plains was a topic of common conversation among both settlers
and Indians, Friday, approached by emissaries on the Cache la
Poudre in Colorado, refused to support the Sioux in a suggested
war upon the whites. At approximately the same time, in the fall
of 1863, Chief Medicine Man, through a white interpreter, in-
formed Governor Evans that the matter of war had been discussed
at an intertribal meeting on Horse Creek, Wyoming. Many favored
a war to drive the whites off the land, but he and other Northern
Arapahoes opposed such a course. ''^ But Medicine Man's profes-
sions of friendship were far less convincing to the Governor than
were those of Friday, perhaps because of the language barrier.
Evans suspected him of double dealing, and reported that Smith,
the interpreter, and Colley, agent to the Southern Cheyennes and
Arapahoes, shared his suspicions.^*^ Such a conclusion evidently
was unwarranted, for letters of Smith and Colley, though indicating
distrust of Sioux, Cheyennes and Kiowas, express faith in the
Arapahoes. ^^

During the fighting in the north in 1864, when General Sully's
forces pursued the Sioux, the greater part of the Northern Arap-
ahoes and many of the Northern Cheyennes remained aloof from
hostilities through their customary practice of hunting in the Pow-

64. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1862, p. 14.

65. Ibid., 1863, pp. 240-241, and 511. Governor Evans usually referred
to Medicine Man as Roman Nose, a name which the whites commonly used
for him.

66. Ibid., p. 541.

67. Ibid., pp. 542-543.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 217

der River area, well over one hundred miles from the scene of
military activity.®^ When, however, they left the comparative
safety of their hunting grounds to report to the North Platte
Agency, war was all but forced upon them by emigrants and Fort
Laramie troops, who regarded them as belligerents and took action
against them.^** But the Indians did not retaliate, though they com-
plained bitterly to their agent. The smaller bands of Friday and
White Wolf remained at peace with the whites, although the settlers
did not appreciate their presence on the Cache la Poudre in Colo-
rado, a few miles west of Latham, near present-day Greeley. As
has already been noted, these two responded to Governor Evans'
call to friendly Indians to report to Camp Collins.

During these bitter days of 1 864, with the stage line traffic nearly
paralyzed because of the Indian scare, Friday struck up the ac-
quaintance of the agents at the Overland Station in Latham, and
occasionally had Sunday dinner with them. While they ate to-
gether or enjoyed after-dinner cigars, he regaled them with stories
of his early life, his schooling in St. Louis, and of gold nuggets
across the Rocky Mountains of Colorado,''^"

In the meantime he pressed Governor Evans for his desire of
many years, a reservation on the north side of the Cache la Poudre,
land which with irrigation was soon to become wonderfully pro-
ductive. It may be Siat Friday's youthful experiences in Missouri
had equipped him to judge the fertility of soils. At any rate, he
would not consider a reservation on the headwaters of the streams
to the north of the Cache la Poudre, as the land there was too rocky
for agriculture.'''^ But sixteen white families had settled on the land
which Friday wished for his tribe, and where whites came in In-
dians usually were forced out.''^ In disregard of Arapaho and
Cheyenne title to the land, title which the northern bands of the
two tribes had never surrendered, his request was refused.

Evidence is lacking that the Northern Arapahoes engaged in
hostilities against the whites prior to the final weeks of 1864. But
as already noted. Black Bear's band of eighty lodges, which had
left the Big Horn-Powder River region of Wyoming to visit the
Southern Arapahoes, joined the Cheyennes and Sioux in the Platte
Valley raids after the Sand Creek massacre of late November.'^^
When the three tribes separated, probably in March, 1865, Black
Bear purportedly returned to the Powder River hunting grounds;
but his stay in Wyoming must have been brief, for in April he

68. Ibid., 1864, p. 223.

69. Ibid., p. 387. This occurred a number of times.

70. Op. cit.. Root and Connelly, p. 347.

71. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1864, p. 235,

72. Loc. cit.

73. Black Bear must have had about 160 braves, as two warriors per
lodge were usually figured.

218 ANNALS OF WYOMING

brought his band to Colorado to join Friday on the Cache la
PoudreJ^ Thus, after having taken an active part in the Platte
Valley raids, Black Bear accepted Governor Evans' invitation of
the preceding summer for friendly Indians to report for protection
and rations!

The agent at Camp Collins assigned him hunting grounds so his
band could procure subsistence, but since game was scarce and no
rations were issued to them, it was only natural that he soon
departed for his preferred hunting grounds in the Big Horn Moun-
tains of Wyoming. By early July his entire band was gone, taking
with them White Wolf (or Wolf Moccasin) and most of his follow-
ing, leaving Friday with a group of only eighty-five in Colorado.'^^

Through Friday's persistence, Governor Evans seems to have
become convinced that Medicine Man might make a good peace
risk, and in the summer of 1864, sent Robert North to southern
Montana with his offer of protection and rations to Indians who
intended to be friendly. North having failed to reach him, Friday,
still hoping for a Northern Arapaho reservation on the Cache la
Poudre, dispatched several of his own young men to persuade him
to come south. In the spring of 1865, Medicine Man, who had
remained apart from the hostilities of the winter months, responded
to the Governor's call. As though to prove that Arapahoes were
(i preponderantly peaceful people, with his following of 120 lodges,

* near seven hundred people, he traveled from the northern Powder
River area to the Little Chug (Chugwater Creek) in southern

I Wyoming, about thirty-five miles north of Cheyenne.'^®

J Before replying to his request, the Governor contacted the In-

• dian Office in Washington, D. C., informing Commissioner Dale
'r that the Sand Creek massacre had spoiled the chance of peace with
[E all of the Indians except Medicine Man's Northern Arapahoes; but
|» if this counted for anything in Washington, it did not appear in the
! course which was followed. The reservation requested, it was said,

was too close to the great routes of travel for the safety of the
whites, and was therefore unsatisfactory.^^ It mattered not that
the land on which Medicine Man had requested settlement was
their own by treaty right.

The correspondence between Governor Evans and the Indian
Office involved considerable delay. Before an interview could be
arranged with Medicine Man, General Connor was reported on his
way west to punish Sioux, Arapahoes and Cheyennes for their

74. Op. cit. Rocky Mountain News, July 8, 1865.

75. Loc. cit. The Arapaho referred to as Wolf Moccasin by the Rocky
Mountain News is called White Wolf in the Annual Report of the Commis-
sioner of Indian Affairs, 1864, p. 387. The figure of 85 Indians remaining
with Friday appears in the Annual Report of 1868, p. 181.

76. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1865, pp. 176-177.

77. Loc. cit.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 219

depredations, and the matter was dropped. Their pilgrimage a
failure, Medicine Man's band returned to the Powder River coun-
try, where the rewards of the chase, meat for food, and hides for
clothing and lodges, were more readily obtainable than in the
Chugwater valley.

Throughout the Civil War period, the independent action of the
bands within a tribe, so characteristic of the plains Indians, was
strikingly apparent among the Northern Arapahoes. Although
none of them were stationary, Medicine Man's followers generally
frequented the Big Horn-Powder River region; Friday's group
spent much of their time on the Cache la Poudre in Colorado;
White Wolf and Black Bear's bands followed a more transient
pattern, the latter particularly, as it moved from the Big Horns to
Kansas, to Colorado and Nebraska for raiding, to the Big Horns
again, then to Colorado, and back to the Big Horns. Yet the bands
apparently kept in touch with each other, and each seemingly knew
where to find the others when it so desired.'*^ Only Black Bear's
band warred upon the whites. The others, about two-thirds of the
entire tribe, kept the peace in spite of numerous provocations to
belligerency.

The Powder River War, 1865-1868

With the end of the Civil War in 1865, the center of conflict
between red men and white shifted into Wyoming, but the incom-
patibiUty of their interests remained. Colonel Collins, an exper-
ienced Indian fighter and retiring commander at Fort Laramie,
probably spoke the mind of the West in recommending that the
United States Government construct and garrison forts in the
buffalo country of Wyoming, whip the Indians into submission,
compel them to sue for peace, and remove them from the mineral-
rich Big Horns, Black Hills and Yellowstone country.'^ When
freed from the occupation of the Indians (savages, and an impedi-
ment to the white man's progress in Collins' opinion), the territory
and its resources could be constructively developed by the superior
race.

Although the government did not consciously follow the advice
of the retiring colonel, its Indian policy during the course of the
next three years developed a pattern in many respects similar to
that which he had proposed. Gold, this time in southwestern Mon-
tana, played an important part. Prior to 1865, Virginia City, the
center of the diggings, could be reached only by two circuitous

78. An example of this may be seen in the fact that Friday's young
emissaries succeeded in reaching Medicine Man, well over 300 miles away
in Montana, when Robert North, sent out by Governor Evans, was unable
to find him.

79. Op. cit. Coutant, p. 430.

I 220 ANNALS OF WYOMING

I routes, but in that year construction began on the Bozeman Trail,

j a much more direct course from Fort Laramie in southeastern

! Wyoming to Virginia City. In violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty

I of 1 85 1 , it cut through the headwaters of the Powder River and the

I Yellowstone, the famed Big Horn-Powder River area, which com-

I prised the last reasonably good hunting grounds of the Sioux,

I Crows, and the Northern Arapahoes and Cheyennes. [All author-

I ities do not interpret the estabUshment of the Bozeman Road and

the construction of the Powder River forts as a violation of the
1851 Treaty. Ed.] Since the antipathy of the Indians was evi-
dent at this invasion of the land which had hitherto been theirs
I alone, the Government constructed and garrisoned forts through

I the buffalo country to protect the trail and keep it open.

j The Indians long had been dismayed as their game supply dwin-

1 died beneath the guns of emigrants and hide and tallow hunters,

especially of the latter, who slaughtered the buffalo indiscriminately
and left their flesh to rot. They were deeply concerned when the
I white man's livestock grazed off the nutritious prairie grasses on

I' which the buffalo and their horses depended, for in a land in which

I one head of cattle required thirty acres or more for year-around

jl pasture, large areas along the traveled routes were quickly depleted

I of their cover by emigrants' horses and cattle, and wind erosion set

I in. The grass and the buffalo were their natural resources from

* which came the bulk of their food, lodges and blankets, resources

which they had used for generations, but never abused. Needless
I to say they did not relish the prospect of a horde of gold seekers

i| trekking through the heart of their hunting lands, scaring away their

^ game and depleting their resources still further.

fc Another factor which contributed to Indian tension and unrest

P was the cessation in 1865 of all government annuities resulting

j* from the Fort Laramie Treaty.^" Having received the payments of

food, textiles and implements since 1851, Sioux, Cheyennes and
Arapahoes had learned to depend upon them. The abrupt termi-
nation of the issues made the Indians more keenly aware of white
inroads upon their game, and of impending disaster if the supply
continued to diminish.

Perhaps the times were ready for a leader who could weld the
bands and tribes into a greater degree of common purpose than
they formerly had shown in the face of white intrusion. Such a
man appeared in the person of Red Cloud, the sagacious Ogallala
Sioux, a chief of great cunning and iron determination. Backed
by many of the powerful Sioux bands, the Cheyennes, and a part
of the Arapahoes, he prepared to resist further encroachment upon
the land of his people.

80. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1868, pp. 40-41

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 221

In June of 1865, fighting broke out in central Wyoming along
the Sweetwater River, which rises near South Pass on the Oregon
Trail, through which tens-of-thousands of emigrants passed on
their way to the Pacific Coast. Several skirmishes occurred until,
in late July, 1 ,000 warriors, Sioux, Cheyennes and Northern Arap-
ahoes, defeated a small contingent of soldiers and killed their com-
mander, Lieutenant Caspar Collins, at the Platte River Bridge, a
strategic point on the Oregon Trail near the present town of Cas-
per.^^ Soon afterward the Indians moved north to their Big Horn
hunting grounds.

How many of the one thousand warriors in the attack on Collins
at the Platte River Bridge were Northern Arapahoes cannot be told.
Friday's band was not among them, for it was still in Colorado.
Medicine Man's band also was absent, since it had not returned
from the Little Chug in southern Wyoming. It is probable that the
Northern Arapahoes involved were members of Black Bear's and
White Wolf's bands, as some members had left the Cache la Poudre
in Colorado in the spring, purportedly headed for the Big Horns,
perhaps to join the hostiles. By early July the last of them were on
their way.

General Connor, sent to Wyoming to lead the western division
of the Powder River expedition, left Fort Laramie on July 30,
1865, to strike the Indians in their hunting grounds, punish them
for their depredations, and bring safety to the Bozeman Trail. He
instructed liis men to grant no quarter, but to kill all male Indians
over twelve years of age.*^-

Along the way to the Big Horns, where he hoped to strike a
telling blow. General Connor took care lest news of his approach
might precede him. Few Indians that crossed his path survived; a
group of forty-two Sioux including two women, and various smaller
parties were annihilated.-^^ Finally in late August, close to the
Tongue River in the northern part of Wyoming's Big Horns, the
General spotted what he had hoped to find, a good-sized Indian
village. It was Black Bear's band of Northern Arapahoes.

The troops surrounded the village in the dark, and when morning
came and the Indians were taking down their lodges to move camp,
the soldiers attacked.^* In true Indian fashion, Connor's Pawnee

81. Op. cit. Hebard and Brininstool, Bozeman Trail, v. 1. pp. 160-163.
The town of Casper, despite its spelling, was named for Caspar Collins.

82. Leroy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, Powder River Campaigns and
Sawyers Expedition of 1865, Glendale, the Arthur H. Clark Co., 1961, p. 43.
Connor's superior, General Pope, countermanded these orders when they
came to his attention, saying they were atrocious.

83. F. G. Burnett, "History of the Western Division of the Powder River
Expedition," Annals of Wyoming, v. 8, January, 1932, pp. 572-574.

84. Robert Beebe David, Finn Burnett, Frontiersman, Glendale, the
Arthur H. Clark Co., 1937, p. 89.

I 222 ANNALS OF WYOMING

I scouts, far more interested in obtaining horses than in fighting,

I rounded up their enemies' ponies while the completely surprised

j Arapahoes, unhorsed, strove to protect their women and children.

I Although outnumbered by the soldiers they fought until midnight

I in the hope of regaining their lodges and suppUes of robes and

meat, all of which were burned by Connor's troops.**^ Women and
! children were counted among the dead, due, it was said, to the

' unfortunate fact that the soldiers did not have time to take careful

aim at the braves.^"

Three days later an intriguing incident occurred which cast

I Black Bear's braves in a more amicable role. Near the present

! town of Dayton, in the Big Horns, they attacked a wagon train of

i Bozeman Trail roadbuilders commanded by Colonel Sawyers. His

j small party, greatly outnumbered by the Indians, found itself in

I grave danger until the Arapahoes, according to Sawyers' journal,
finally realized that this was a party of workers, with no soldiers

i among them, and made them an offer of peace.**" Sawyers wanted

i help to get his wagons through; the Arapahoes needed horses,

i' having lost theirs in the battle with Connor. They proposed that

li , three of them and three of Sawyers' men should go together to the

|i general; if the whites would aid them in regaining their ponies they

• would guarantee safety to the roadbuilders. And so it was agreed.
i Several Arapahoes voluntarily remained with Sawyers as hostages,

* pending the return of the six couriers. The suspicious wagoners
_ kept careful watch on the many Indians who came into camp to
I consult with the hostages, but since they were always friendly
i their fears proved groundless.

ft ' Next day the three Arapaho messengers returned alone, having

encountered a party of armed white men who were on their way to
the relief of the wagon train. Since they feared further trouble with
the approach of soldiers, they returned to Sawyers' camp, reported

85. Op. cit. Hafen and Hafen, Powder River Campaigns, p. 46. Hafen
and Hafen estimate a village of more than 500 souls, which is possible if
White Wolf's band was combined with Black Bear's. (It is referred to as a
village led by Black Bear and Old David, but as Old David is otherwise un-
known this may have been the soldiers' name for White Wolf.) Connor
had 800 troops. The 250 lodges which most authors reported burned is
probably a gross exaggeration on the part of the original authority, which
was a common failing in reporting Indian fights. It is unlikely that at this
time the Arapahoes, reported by their agent to be poorly equipped, could
have had so many extra lodges for the storage of furs. They averaged SVi
to 6 people per lodge, v/hich should have meant not more than 100 lodges
in the entire village. A few years later, when game was further depleted,
they crowded two families, about 10 to 12 people, into each badly worn
lodge.

86. Ibid.,^. 131.

87. Ibid., pp. 262-263.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 223

to him what had happened, and the entire group of Indians
moved on.*^

General Connor continued his maneuvers until he discovered
another Indian village in the Big Horns, which he also hoped to
destroy. But disappointment was his lot, and he was sorely tried
when word came from Washington ordering him to desist from
hostilities and return to Fort Laramie.^** Convinced that his show
of force had taught Black Bear a much-needed lesson, he hated to
leave the hunting lands without drubbing other Indians and ending
their depredations.

In January, 1866, through the snows of a fearful winter, mes-
sengers were sent out from Fort Laramie to invite the Indians
to a peace conference.^^ The Northern Arapahoes could not be
reached, and Colonel Maynardier, Commander at Fort Laramie,
feared that they might continue hostilities. In this event, he would
seek Sioux aid in chastising them.®^ But they caught wind of the
move for peace, and in late June, when the snows were gone, sent
six couriers to Fort Laramie to make sure that they could share
in it.«-

Several bands of the great Sioux tribe approved the Treaty of
1866, but agreements with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes were not
concluded. The government had no intention of abandoning the
Bozeman Trail forts nor removing the garrisons; but realizing that
the Indians would bitterly oppose the depletion of their hunting
grounds, it stressed the need of great tact in maintaining travel
through their country.''^ Red Cloud's determination and tenacity,
however, had not been fully considered. Neither he nor his
Ogallala Sioux would accept tactful travel over the Bozeman
Trail, nor retention of the forts, nor the treaty, nor peace, until the
road was closed and the hated forts abandoned. They prepared
for further war.

Red Cloud's feelings were brought home strongly to the nation
on December 21, 1866. A large body of warriors, who had
resolved to drive the soldiers from their Big Horn hunting grounds,
slaughtered eighty troops under Colonel Fetterman. This inex-
perienced, boastful Indian fighter had claimed that a single com-

88. Holman, one of Sawyers' men, gave quite a different account of the
Arapaho incident. The gist of it is that the Indians planned treachery, and
were finally ordered out of camp. Holman's version is entirely reminiscent,
related thirty years after the event, whereas Sawyers' journal was written at
the time the events occurred. (See Hafen and Hafen, Powder River Cam-
paigns, pp. 322-323.)

89. Op. cit. Burnett, p. 577.

90. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1866, p. 205.

91. Ibid., p. 206.
92 Ibid., p. 208.
93. Ibid., p. 211.

224 ANNALS OF WYOMING

pany of soldiers could defeat one thousand Indains. Red Cloud's
group of Sioux, Cheyennes, and a few Northern Arapahoes, with
i very little aid from firearms, proved him wrong.^*

With the help of the Crows, their erstwhile enemies, Sioux,
Cheyennes, and Arapahoes defended their last important game area
in northern Wyoming and southern Montana. Fighting continued
into the summer of 1867. In early August, the Indians learned the
deadly effectiveness of the new, breech-loading rifles which had
replaced muzzle-loaders in the hands of the troops."^ With these
weapons the soldiers twice defeated them, inflicting heavy casual-
ties.*^^ But although Red Cloud lost the battles he was to win
the war.

As a result of the annihilation of Fetterman's command in 1866,
President Johnson ordered an investigation into the causes of In-
dian dissatisfaction and violence.'-*' A commission of civilians and
military officers met with the Indians, heard their grievances, and
concluded that the establishment of forts and stationing of soldiers
along the Bozeman Trail had precipitated the trouble. The Indians
had never agreed to this, and felt that, with the consequent effect
upon their game they must fight or die of starvation,
jl ! Again a council was called at Fort Laramie to end the Powder

i, , River War. In mid-September, 1867, about three hundred Indians

i| 1 came in, largely Crows and Arapahoes, who were very friendly,

* ' and a few Cheyennes.^^ General Harney, head of the peace com-

mission, awaited the arrival of the Sioux before proceeding with the
treaty, but Red Cloud, wary of the white man's promises, refused
to report to Fort Laramie until he had seen the government troops
depart from the posts along the Bozeman Trail.'-*^ He finally ar-
rived in the spring of 1868. With the signing of the Hamey-
Sanbom Treaty in May the war was ended, and Red Cloud never
fought again.

Whereas the Indian office in Washington praised the newly-
inaugurated policy of conquering the Indians with kindness, the
Cheyenne Leader (Wyoming) commented caustically on the
"Quaker" influence which had instigated the surrender of the entire

94. Most authors indicate the presence of only a few Arapahoes, but
Dunn, op. cit. p. 246, says one hundred lodges took part. Dunn is fre-
quently inaccurate.

Hebard and Brininstool, op. cit., v. 1, p. 339, state that Eagle Head and
Black Coal led the Arapaho contingent, Taylor, op. cit. p. 151, credits the
leadership to the white man, Robert North.

95. Op. cit. Hebard and Brininstool, v. 1, pp. 50 and 180.

96. Ibid., V. 1, pp. 70 and 181. These were the Hayfield Fight in Mon-
tana and the Wagon Box Fight in Wyoming. In the latter a howitzer also
inflicted heavy damage.

97. Op. cit. Grinnell, p. 244.

98. Op. cit. Cheyenne Leader, Sept. 19, 1867.

99. Ibid., May 13, 1868.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 225

Powder River area to the Indians, and pessimistically prophesied
continued hostilities in Wyoming and South Dakota.^^ The final
peace, the Leader editorialized, would be dictated by the invincible
whites, whose destiny it was to civilize the plains. ^"^ The treaty
barred them from access to the Black Hills gold, as it was on Indian
land; but, the Leader cynically stated, though the government pro-
poses, the pioneer disposes. ^•'^ With such an attitude held com-
monly in the West, a stable, lasting peace could scarcely be ex-
pected. Only a temporary respite had been gained.

As criticism of the soft policy toward the Indians continued,
proponents of a tougher course revived their demands to return the
Bureau of Indian Affairs to the War Department. Commissioner
N. G. Taylor opined in reply that the proposed transfer would be
tantamount to continual war, whereas the true policy toward the
Indians should be one of peace. Citing the Sand Creek Massacre
of 1864 as a mistake of the military, he estimated the cost of the
resulting war, only recently brought to a close, at $40,000,000. ^"^

Within the Indian Bureau, nonetheless, signs appeared of yield-
ing to the pressure of land-hungry settlers. Preliminary plans were
drawn for confining some 130,000 Indians on two reservations,
thus freeing the remainder of their lands for the whites. ^"^ One
reservation would comprise the greater part of Oklahoma, the other
the western half of South Dakota. But if necessary to prevent
another Indian war, the latter might be temporarily extended west-
ward to the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, the unceded Indian
land which they had fought so hard to retain for their own use!^°^
A glowing future was depicted for the red men. Stocking the res-
ervations with cattle, sheep and goats would instill in them a desire
for individual ownership of land and goods, thus paving the way for
the mastery of agriculture and the mechanical arts.^"^ With the
crowning work of teacher and missionary their rosy future would
be perpetuated.

Further study indicates that this was mere glossing of a hopeless
situation for the Indians, and rationalizing of the brutal fact that
they must be moved out of the white man's way. The practical
impossibility of preventing settlers from encroaching on Indian
hunting grounds was admitted.^"' Furthermore, the two eastern

100. Ibid., March 18, 1868. Wyoming and South Dakota were then
included in Dakota Territory. With the completion of the Union Pacific
Railroad in 1869, Wyoming became a separate territory.

101. Ibid., April 3, 1868.

102. Loc. cit.

103. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1868, p. 8.

104. Ibid., pp. 44-45.

105. Ibid., 1867, p. 8.

106. Ibid., p. 73.

107. Loc. cit.

226 ANNALS OF WYOMING

divisions of the Pacific Railroad were rapidly approaching Denver,
a fact which demanded the concentration of the Indians on reser-
vations, far enough removed from the steel rails to preclude any
danger to them.^''^ Peace, perhaps, would last until the pressures
again became too great.

The extent of Northern Arapahoe participation in the Powder
River War is somewhat enigmatic. Some warriors, as already
indicated, engaged in the Sweetwater and Platte Bridge skirmishes
in June and July of 1865, probably members of Black Bear's and
White Wolf's bands. During the same summer, General Connor
attacked a village of five hundred or more. Black Bear's band and
possibly White Wolf's. The same bands later had a brush with
Sawyers' wagon train, followed by a unique armistice. No further
record of Northern Arapaho hostilities appears until the time of
the Fetterman fight, in December, 1866. A small contingent
engaged in this affair. Thereafter the records are indefinite, ex-
cepting for the final days of fighting, such as the Hayfield and
Wagon Box fights. The bands represented and the numbers en-
gaged is nowhere indicated.

Friday's band was never numbered among the hostiles, for this
group of eighty-five remained on the Cache la Poudre in Colorado
throughout the period of fighting. Despite the fact that they were
destitute — the governor of the Territory had been unable to provide
them with rations — they did not depart from their encampment
there untU the summer of 1868.^^^ They were the last of the
Arapaho and Cheyenne bands. Northern or Southern, to quit Colo-
rado Territory. They wished to remain in this land which by right
belonged to them, and left only under pressure, because the white
settlers did not want them there.^^**

Medicine Man's relationship to the Powder River War cannot
be so positively stated. He and his band of 120 lodges, more than
half the tribe, returned from southern Wyoming to the Powder
River hunting lands during the summer of 1865. Whether he
succeeded in keeping any of his followers out of the conflict can
only be conjectured. Certain facts, however, indicate that Med-
icine Man may have stood for a peaceful course. Nowhere, for
instance, is his name mentioned as a hostile during the war period.
This is likewise true of Friday, who, as already shown, had no part
in the war; but Chief Black Bear and three others of less impor-
tance are named as Arapaho leaders in the fighting. ^^^ As the
Northern Arapahoes' most important chief, and one who had been

108. Ibid., p. 73.

109. Ibid., 1868, pp. 180-181.

110. Loc. cit. TTiis news of Friday's band comes from the report of
Governor Hunt of Colorado Territory.

111. These three were "Old David", Eagle Head, and Black Coal.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 227

tribal spokesman on a number of occasions, the omission of his
name from among the hostiles is very interesting. Again, like
Friday, Medicine Man failed to sign the Hamey-Sanbom Treaty of
1868, which ended the Powder River War, although Black Bear
and more than twenty other Northern Arapahoes attached their
signatures. ^^- This may have special significance, for customarily
a major chief who had engaged in hostilities against the United
States would have endorsed the agreement which brought the con-
flict to a close. When the bulk of the tribe, 119 lodges, arrived at
Fort Laramie for the treaty signing, Medicine Man and twenty-five
lodges of his people stayed behind in the Big Homs,^^^ Whether
the 140 to 150 people represented by these twenty-five lodges had
remained aloof from the war still is unknown.

During the early months of the fighting (sometimes called the
First Powder River War), less than half of the Northern Arapa-
hoes were involved, but from December, 1866 until the end of
hostilities (the Second Powder River War), a greater number may
have taken part. Friday's band stayed completely out of it; but
more than this cannot definitely be stated.

Land Pressure and Sporadic Warfare, 1868-1874

The Treaty of 1868 brought an uneasy peace. Whites were
barred from the unceded lands which the red men retained as
hunting grounds, and the government tried to confine the Indians
as far as practicable to their reservations. The Interior Department
regarded the treaty as an expedient only, and looked hopefully
toward the day when the buffalo would be gone, each Indian would
cultivate his individual allotment of land, and the broad prairies,
emancipated from their hold, would be settled by the whites.

Determined efforts to dispossess the Indians of their remaining
useful lands marked the period. With the completion of the Union
Pacific Railroad in 1869, steel rails united the nation from coast to
coast. Emigrants and household goods now could be moved
across the plains in a few days time, in contrast to the former
wagon trains which consumed weeks of travel through dust and
mud under conditions of extreme privation. With the thousands
of settlers which the railroad brought into the West came scores of
buffalo hunters, many drawn to the prairies solely for the thrill of
shooting the huge bovines, whose speedy extinction now was as-
sured. During a single summer, a party of sixteen killed 28,000

112. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1868, pp. 253-254.

113. Loc. cit. The letter of Charles Geren, Sioux interpreter at Ft. Lara-
mie (published in the Annual Report), states that 119 Arapahoes arrived at
the fort; but it is evident from the rest of his letter that 119 lodges was
intended. Both clothing and tents of the Northern Arapahoes were sadly
worn.

228 ANNALS OF WYOMING

buffalo.^" While such unregulated slaughter rapidly forced the
Indians to depend upon government rations for their subsistence,
no one has recorded their reaction at this wanton waste when the
stench of millions of pounds of the decaying flesh of these animals
reached their nostrils.

In Wyoming, such towns as Cheyenne, Laramie, Rawlins and
others which had sprung up during the railroad's westward progress
were assured of permanence. They also offered convenient jump-
ing-off places for prospectors, miners and others interested in the
natural resources of the region, whether they were on or off the
Indian lands.

With the influx of population accompanying the opening of the
railroad and its efficient service from the east, the federal govern-
ment created Wyoming Territory, with its capitol in Cheyenne.
This afforded a ready instrument through which miners, stock
raisers and other pressure groups could work; and they were not
slow to make their wishes known. ^^■"' A ready ally was at hand in
the person of territorial Governor J. A. Campbell, regional ex-
officio superintendent of Indian affairs, for he championed the
settlers' interests from the first. In his inaugural address to the
legislature (1869) he argued that each Indian should be allotted
sufficient land to support himself with proper cultivation, but no
more. The remainder should go to the whites. ^^'^ The result, of
course, was further pressure on the Indian lands, which seemed
never to relax; and the Indians felt the relentless squeeze.

Although Red Cloud gained his ends in the Powder River Wars,
his braves had learned to appreciate the deadly effects of howitzers
and breech-loading rifles in the hands of trained soldiers, and
probably would be loathe to face them again. With the transcon-
tinental railroad running, capable of moving troops and munitions
readily to convenient disembarking points, the prospect of armed
resistance by the Indians seemed remote. To ensure astute behavior
on their part, and to protect the settlers and their investments, five
new forts were garrisoned in Wyoming, four of them close to the
railroad. From these, troops could proceed handily into Indian
territory if needed.

Although the Northern Arapahoes felt the pinch of the times on
their lands and game, they endeavored to retain peaceful relations

114. Congressional Record, Forty-third Congress, Washington, Govt,
Printing Office, 1874, p. 2106.

115. Op. cit. Dale, pp. 100-102. Founded in 1873, the Wyoming Stock
Growers' Association soon became the most powerful pressure group in the
area, and influenced Wyoming's Legislature very strongly. Within a few
years it extended its operations into Colorado, Nebraska, Montana and the
Dakotas.

116. Op. cit. Cheyenne Leader, Oc\. 13, 1869. The Governor suggested
no restriction on the amount of land a white man might hold.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 229

with the whites. In an attempt to further such an effort, they
separated from their Sioux friends and made two trips to meet
with their traditional enemies, the Shoshones, to arrange a peace
and obtain the right to stay on the Wind River Reservation in
Wyoming, The second of these trips was a journey of nearly seven
hundred miles from a temporary encampment on the Musselshell in
Montana. When their hopes for peace in their new home ended
with a burst of violence against them, they refrained from the
bloody vengeance which was within their power to wreak on a
group of ruffian miners who were seeking to exterminate them.^^^
Leaving the Wind River region, they returned to Montana for a
time, where the pressures of conflict were less obvious.

During this period, they had slight association with the Sioux
malcontents, that is, with the followers of Crazy Horse and Sitting
Bull. In 1873, when they finally spent most of the year at Red
Cloud Agency, their agent complimented their good behavior.^^^
Although the pressures of the time and their reluctance to abandon
traditional ways brought them into conflict with federal troops in
1874, few of the charges made against them during this period can
be substantiated. Generally, they held to a path of peace in their
relations with the whites.

Of the unceded Indian territory in the region, three sections were
especially coveted, the gold tracts of Wyoming's Sweetwater dis-
trict, the Black Hills of South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming,
and the Big Horn-Powder River country west of them, purportedly
rich in soil and minerals. In 1872, after two years of dickering,
the federal government purchased the Sweetwater gold lands from
the Shoshones, finally legalizing the presence of mines, stamp mills
for crushing ore, homes and the entire town of Miner's Delight on
land guaranteed to the Eastern Shoshones in 1868. This foothold
gained, the pioneers demanded the opening of the Wind River and
Popo Agie Valleys to settlement, arguing that fresh vegetables for
the miners should be produced on the arable land.^^^ But the
Shoshones would not surrender these rights.

Eastward in the territory, stockmen south of the North Platte
looked covetously across the river, as though straining at the leash
to enter the cattlemen's paradise from which the Treaty of 1868
excluded them. Stung by the apparent unreasonableness of a
decree which elevated Indian hunting rights above their grazing

117. Op. cit. Nickerson, p. 3. They set out, says Nickerson, to anni-
hilate the Arapahoes.

118. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1873, p. 612.

119. The Popo Agie (pronounced Poposia), near Lander, Wyonung, is a
tributary of the Wind River. The latter becomes the Big Horn between
Shoshone and Thermopolis, flowing north to discharge into the Yellowstone
in Montana.

230 ANNALS OF WYOMING

privileges, they pressed the territorial legislature and Congress for
a change.

Representing a variety of interests, in 1870 the newly-formed
Big Horn Association determined to explore the soil and mineral
resources of northern Wyoming, despite the treaty and government
red tape which excluded them from the land they longed to use.^^o
Eventually, with the permission, if not the blessing, of Washington,
an expedition left Cheyenne in May, explored the Big Horns, met
with no open opposition from the Indians, and though it found no
gold, returned in August with optimistic reports. ^^i

In 1872 Governor Campbell hopefully reported that Wyoming's
Indians, or "non-producing savages", would be removed to a res-
ervation in Dakota, thus freeing 20,000 square miles of incalculably
valuable land for the stockmen, farmers and miners of Wyoming
Territory. 1-- A year later he confidently predicted the early ex-
pulsion of all Indians except the peaceful Shoshones (friends of
the whites) from the territory. ^^3 Shortly after, a government
commission met with Sioux, Northern Arapahoes and Northern
Cheyennes at Red Cloud Agency in Nebraska, but failed in an
effort to persuade them to relinquish their treaty rights in the
Big Horns.124

In direct violation of the Treaty of 1868, and over the protests
of the Indians, General Custer in 1874 led a military party to the
Black Hills to make a rough survey of their resources. Lack of
open hostihties from the Indians during this and the earlier Big
Horn expedition led to the premature conclusion that Indian de-
pendency on the coffee, bacon and beans issued at the agencies
had broken their will to resist, and that large-scale hostilities were
a thing of the past. Francis A. Walker, commissioner of Indian
affairs, endorsed the widely credited opinion that the alternative of
war for the Indians had run its course, and added that any hostile
"savages" would be readily crushed by troops moving north and
south respectively from the Union Pacific and Northern Pacific
Railroads. ^^^

In 1872, federal troops moved into five forts in Wyoming, os-
tensibly to protect the Union Pacific Railroad, but especially to
prevent the Indians north of it from taking unauthorized leave of
their reservations.^^o jjjg attempt to thus curtail their roaming

120. Op. cit. Cheyenne Leader, March 3, 1870.

121. Ibid., August 23, 1870.

122. House Journal of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of
Wyoming, Cheyenne, Daily Leader Office, 1872, p. 16.

123. Ibid., 1873, pp. 25-26.

124. Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, Wash-
ington, Govt. Printing Office, 1873, p. 157.

125. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1872, p. 397.

126. Ibid., p. 79.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 231

habits, it was hoped, would render them more amenable to civil-
ization, and give the settlers greater safety from their depreda-
tions. ^^7 Advocating a somewhat sterner policy, the Wyoming
press suggested that the red men be warned to remain on limited
reservations or be shot on sight. ^-^ The whites, it added candidly,
needed their immense, unceded tract of land in the Big Horn-
Powder River area.

Once the buffalo were exterminated, the Indians would be
forced to depend upon the government rations issued at the agen-
cies. With only lesser game to hunt, there would be little need of
roaming in the Big Horns, still less in the valley of the far-off
Smoky Hill River in Kansas, where the Sioux and Northern Arapa-
hoes and Cheyennes retained the right to roam and hunt as long
as there were enough buffalo to justify the chase.

The tribesmen then could be confined to smaller reservations,
and the frontiers of settlement extended even further. These were
the main criteria by which Secretary of the Interior Columbus
Delano judged the success of Indian policy. ^-^ Under his direction,
the Interior Department winked at the terrible slaughter of buffalo
for hides, tallow, tongues, and the joy of killing. Thousands of
tons of buffalo meat rotted on the plains. Justifying the prospect
of their total disappearance, Delano pointed out in 1872 that only
total elimination of the buffalo could force the Indians to cultivate
the land. To Delano, this was a highly desirable goal.^^° Due
largely to his opposition, a bill designed to halt the useless slaughter
of buffalo (H. R. 921 ) met defeat in the House of Representatives
in 1874.^^^ The Indians, it was argued, could not be confined to
restricted reservations until the last buffalo had vanished from
the prairie.

From 1870 to 1875, a large number of delegations from the
various plains tribes visited Washington and other eastern cities at
government expense. Advocating this cheap means of convincing
its wards that war on the whites was futile, the Indian Bureau ex-
pressed its pleasure with the apparent results. ^^^ To impress the
Indians with the desirabihty of the white man's way of life,
they attired them in the style of the day, complete with silk hats.

127. Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, Wash-
ington, Govt. Printing Office, 1875, pp. 5-6.

128. Op. cit. Cheyenne Leader, Jan. 27, 1874.

129. Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1872, Washington,
Govt. Printing Office, 1873, p. 3. The extension of western railways was
another criterion which pleased him.

130. Ibid., p. vi.

131. Op. cit. Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commis-
sioners, 1872, pp. 123-131.

132. Op. cit. Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commis-
sioners, 1872, pp. 123-131.

232 ANNALS OF WYOMING

black suits and paper collars. ^''^ Though they visited the zoo in
New York, the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, and other places
of note, they invariably looked forward to the end of their trip.^34
They yearned for their own societies and their homes in the West.

A somewhat sinister facet of the trips to Washington was the
pressure applied on chiefs and headmen to give up additional land
and accept restricted reservations for their bands. A group of
Northern Arapahoes and Cheyennes was subjected to such pressure
in 1873. The Indian Bureau wished them to remove to Indian
territory, to join their southern brethren. Although the Indians
strongly opposed the plan, the bureaucrats insisted, and eventually
several chiefs yielded to the pressure and gave their consent. ^^^
Washington officialdom had begun to realize that agreement more
readily could be obtained from the Indians in small groups than in
a tribal assembly. Once this lesson was learned it was not
forgotten.

The technique of congregating many thousands of Indians within
a limited territory was foreshadowed by the treaties of 1866 with
the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory, the Cherokees,
Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles.^^*^ Yielding un-
willingly to government demands, these tribes were forced to break
up their tribally-owned lands, accept individual allotments for
themselves, and allow other Indians to settle within their reserva-
tions. Five years later, the Indian Bureau recognized the situation
as a golden opportunity to start the wild Indians of the plains
definitely and painlessly upon the road to civilization. Settled on
the land, owning individual plots of ground, the Arapaho and the
Apache would learn from the agriculturally successful Cherokee
and Choctaw, for example, the advantages of farming over the
nomadic mode of life.^^^ Thus, the plains Indian problem finally
would be solved, and the lands over which they roamed would be
released to the whites. ^^^

By 1871, Americans had gained Uttle understanding or appre-
ciation of the Indian way of life. Few indeed knew of its finer
side, and the phases which caught the public eye were difficult to
comprehend. The red men's attitude toward enemies of his own
race was of this kind. Although Custer's slaughter of Southern
Arapahoes and Cheyennes on the Washita (Oklahoma) in 1868

133. Loc. cit.

134. Loc. cit.

135. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1874, p. 46.

136. Ibid., 1871, p. 466.

137. Ibid., p. 467.

138. John Collier, Indians of the Americas, New York, the New Ameri-
can Library, 1947, pp. 125-129. Collier shows that of nearly 4Vi million
acres of Cherokee tribal lands, individually allotted against their will, nine
tenths was lost to whites within 20 years.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 233

made little stir, the whites were plainly shocked at the massacre of
Pawnee buffalo hunters by Sioux who were similarly engaged in
1873. The Indian commissioner asked Congress to revoke the
latter's right to hunt off their reservation, while on his own author-
ity it was temporarily suspended.^"^^ Moreover, he requested mili-
tary commanders to prevent Indians from passing without a permit
from one reservation to another.^*"

Although increasing pressure on their lands forced the Indians
into a greater realization of tribal unity than they formerly had
known, bands of diverse sizes occasionally reverted to independent
action. Shortly after the Treaty of 1868, for example, a few
Northern Arapahoes and two Sioux villages joined Southern Chey-
ennes in battling federal troops in Colorado, while nearby kinsmen
abstained from hostilities, and others, in their Wyoming hunting
grounds, were far away from the fighting.^*^

The doctrine of individual land allotments, so dear to those who
wished to raise the Indians from a "barbarian herd" to the status of
civiUzation, made little headway with the red men, who clung
tenaciously to their traditional customs. ^^- Sioux, Arapahoes and
Cheyennes on the Red Cloud Reservation in Nebraska, who ac-
cepted individual allotments in 1874, found themselves stuck with
barren soil, worthless for farming.^^^ The climate was too dry, and
irrigation was impracticable.^** Their fellows, unfavorably im-
pressed with this example, were loathe to follow the white man's
path.

Due to their numerical strength and their power to war, the
Sioux were the Indians most dreaded by the whites. Red Cloud,
the uncompromising leader of the warring tribesmen from 1 866 to
1868, by the 1870s exerted a restraining influence among his peo-
ple. But the names of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse ranked high
among the malcontents. Depredations by and dangers from the
Sioux made front page news. Numerous items, both true and false,
published in the western press, testify to the importance of their
impact upon the frontiersman's mind. And well they might. Cus-
ter, in 1873, fought Sioux along the Yellowstone River in Mon-
tana.^*^ A group of wild ones, so-called, new to the Red Cloud
Agency and its ways, arrested its agent, surrounded and immo-
bilized a contingent of soldiers summoned to his aid, and precipitat-
ed a serious situation. Some seven hundred regular agency Indians,

139. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1873, p. 376.

140. Loc. cit.

141. Op. cit. ..Grinnell, pp. 279-281.

142. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1873, p. 372.

143. Ibid., 1877, p. 415.

144. Ibid., p. 459.

145. Op. cit. Cheyenne Leader, Feb. 18, 1873.

234 ANNALS OF WYOMING

probably Sioux, Cheyennes and Northern Arapahoes, rescued both
agent and troops, thus averting possible tragedy.^**

Unidentified Indians often were called Sioux, and when depre-
dations occurred this tribe most frequently received the blame.
Their unexpected appearance near the settlements produced among
the whites forebodings of trouble. In 1874, the erroneous report
of a band of Sioux on Horse Creek, north of Cheyenne, sent shivers
of apprehension through the town.^^^ But relief ensued when the
Indians were identified as Cheyennes and Arapahoes, only forty
strong, heavily laden with dried meat after a successful buffalo hunt
in the Republican Valley.^^^

A news report of February, 1874, attributed most of the plun-
derings of the past six or seven years to the northern bands of
Sioux. ^^'^ Before the end of that year Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse
i\ had recruited from these and other bands a considerable following

»' of braves who, hke themselves, mistrusted the white man's inten-

se tions. Resenting his constant pressure to part them from their

* lands, they regarded him as a prime usurper. Determined as they

were to resist further encroachment, it was, perhaps, more accident
,1 than planned intent which postponed their great outbreak until

« 1876.

I Some historians insist that the Northern Arapahoes also engaged

» in sporadic warfare against the whites in the bitter years from

1868-1874, except for Friday who vainly counseled peace.^^*'
!• Although this evaluation generally is accepted, it is not the entire

ji truth. There is reason to believe, indeed, that the Northern Arapa-

J hoes as a whole were less responsive to the belligerency of their

i' Sioux and Cheyenne friends than at any time since the Civil War

,; period, when two-thirds of the tribe abstained from hostilities

^ against the whites.

After signing of the Treaty of 1868, 119 lodges of Northern
Arapahoes — some seven hundred souls — went south with Black
Bear to visit their kinsmen. Finding their Cheyenne friends em-
broiled with United States troops, a few Arapahoes and two Sioux
villages joined them for a while, the Arapahoes desisting after the
defeat of General Forsythe in the Beecher Island fight (eastern
Colorado ).^^^ I is not recorded whether Black Bear was impli-
cated in the fighting, but the bulk of those who had come south
with him remained at peace, as did those who had stayed in the
north with Medicine Man and Friday.

146. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1874, p. 45.

147. Op. cit. Cheyenne Leader, Feb. 18, 1874.

148. Ibid., Feb. 19, 1874.

149. Ibid., Feb. 6, 1874.

150. Op. cit., Hafen and Ghent, Broken Hand, p. 278.

151. Op. cit., Grinnell, pp. 279-281.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 235

Black Coal, though frequently portrayed as anti-white, in 1869
assisted federal troops from Fort Fetterman in picking up the trail
of marauding Indians who had killed two whites on La Prele
Creek, near the present town of Douglas, Wyoming.^^- Coinci-
dently Medicine Man, Friday and a number of other Arapahoes
were en route to Fort Bridger (southwestern Wyoming) to make
peace with Chief Washakie of the Shoshones and gain the chance
of staying on the Wind River (or Shoshone) Reservation. But as
the Shoshones were in the Big Horns on their autumn buffalo hunt,
the Arapahoes returned to Fort Fetterman. ^^^ They left word at
Fort Bridger that they would return in three months' time.^^*
Suspicious when he learned their object, Washakie wondered why
the Arapahoes now wished to dissociate themselves from their
Sioux and Cheyenne allies; but he thought better of the plan when
he learned of Friday's connection with it.^^^

True to their word, the Arapahoes returned in February, 1 870,
and concluded terms for a temporary stay on the Shoshone Reser-
vation. They agreed to maintain friendly relations with the Sho-
shones and the whites, and to notify them of the coming of northern
hostiles. Thus began their stay on the reservation, a stay which
endured less than two months, and ended in an outburst of violence
in which eleven Arapahoes were killed.

Historians generally accept the thesis that the Arapahoes were
insincere, that they intended neither to keep the friendly relations
they promised, nor to notify Shoshones and whites of impending
hostile raids. The resulting ill feeling and blood-letting was
attributed to Arapaho treachery. The examination of a number of
facts, however, casts grave doubt upon this conclusion.

A possible explanation of why the Arapahoes sought harbor on
the Shoshone Reservation may be found in the report of Agent
Daniels that they did not like to remain at Red Cloud Agency
because the Sioux were apt to cause them trouble. ^''"^ He had, he
added, found them well disposed and quiet.

When they failed to find Chief Washakie at Fort Bridger in the
fall of 1869, Medicine Man, Friday and the greater part of the tribe
set out for the Milk River Reservation in Montana, where their
Gros Ventre relatives and Crow enemies were domiciled. They
left behind the Sioux and Cheyennes, who had been more deeply
embroiled in hostilities than they. One hundred and sixty lodges,
upwards of 900 Arapahoes, were reported on the way; ten lodges

152. Op. cit., Cheyenne Leader, Nov. 8, 1869. The marauders were said
to be Sioux.

153. Ibid., Nov. 12, 1869.

154. Loc. cit.

155. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1869, p. 274.

156. Ibid., 1872, p. 651.

236 ANNALS OF WYOMING

reached the agency. But when smallpox struck, wiping out most of
the advance guard, the main camp moved back to the Musselshell
in alarai.i^^

February saw them in Wyoming again, still determined on peace.
They found and negotiated with Washakie, and hopefully en-
camped on the Shoshone Reservation. Depredations occurred,
and though these were by no means new to the Sweetwater settle-
ments, the Arapahoes were suspected. Stolen horses reported in
their camp afforded an indication of guilt accepted by the settlers
as proof, despite the fact that similar identification of stolen stock
had proved faulty on various occasions. When on the 31st of
March a raid resulted in the loss of more horses and three hunter's
lives, the miners acted quickly. Nearby army officers from Fort
Stambaugh blamed Cheyennes and Sioux, but the settlers held the
Arapahoes accountable, though the latter denied all knowledge of
the affair.^"^ Convinced that they had "undisputable" evidence of
Arapaho guilt, 250 armed civilians headed for their camp.^'"^^

Of what the evidence consisted there is great confusion. Ban-
croft indicates that H. G. Nickerson, who spied on the Arapaho
camp, found enough in it to verify a verdict of guilt, but gives no
clue to what he saw.^^*^ The South Pass News cited the presence in
Friday's camp of harness taken from St. Mary's Station on the
Sweetwater, where the three hunters were murdered. ^'^^ But Nick-
erson's own version of his spying trip readily leads to the conclusion
that the Arapahoes were judged guilty by conjecture only.

Since Friday was indebted to him for a former act of kindness,
Nickerson went directly to his camp, set somewhat apart from the
main group headed by Medicine Man. This assured him of pro-
tection from the other Arapahoes who correctly surmised that he
had come to spy.^^^ Fearing for his own life, he seems not to have
realized that they may have been equally fearful. He saw no stolen
horses, no harness from St. Mary's Station nor other manifestations
of guilt; but he learned that many young braves had gone over on
the Sweetwater — for a buffalo hunt they said. Not until his return
home did Nickerson learn of the St. Mary's killings, which occurred
on that day. Thereupon, he and others, putting the coincidences
together, convinced themselves of Arapaho guilt. ^^^ On such
flimsy evidence the Arapahoes were condemned, and vengeance

157. Ibid., 1870, p. 201.

158. Ibid., p. 176.

159. Loc. cit. This is quoted from the report of Governor Campbell of
Wyoming Territory.

160. Op. cit. Bancroft, p. 767.

161. Op. cit. Cheyenne Leader, April 21, 1870. The South Pass News
of April 1 1 is quoted by the Leader.

162. Op. cit. Nickerson, "The Early History of Fremont County".

163. Loc. cit.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 237

planned against them. The idea that hungry Indians would leave
camp for such a sensible purpose as hunting buffalo evidently
seemed preposterous.

On their way to clean out the Arapaho camp, the armed band of
vigilantes raised for the purpose met Chief Black Bear and an
unarmed group of mixed sex and age, on their way to Camp Augur
to trade. Firing upon them, they killed Black Bear and ten others,
and continued on their way toward the main body of the tribe. ^^^

When dusk fell the vigilantes halted for the night, building great
campfires for their light and heat. Thus exposed they were easy
marks for Indian vengeance; yet only a few Arapahoes came near,
and shot into the blazing fires, which then were extinguished. ^^^
The Indians did no more.

In their grief and burning anger only a powerful influence for
peace could have withheld the young braves, as it did, from violent
retaliation. Records did not indicate whether this was exerted by
Medicine Man, Friday, the elders of the hierarchy, or all of them.
Convinced they were the victims of white treachery and Shoshone
duplicity, the Arapahoes left the region, most of them heading for
Montana and the Milk River Agency.^^^

It should be borne in mind the Arapahoes legally were on the
Shoshone Reservation at this time, having approached Governor
Campbell of Wyoming Territory and Chief Washakie of the East-
ern Shoshones, making a treaty with the latter which granted them
the right of temporary residence on Shoshone land. But the vig-
ilantes were trespassers hving illegally on Indian soil and extracting
gold to which they had no right. The town of Miner's Delight
itself had been built about a mile and a half within the southern
boundary of the reservation.^^^

Although he felt the effect of the vigilantes' lesson to the Indians
had been salutary. Governor Campbell of Wyoming Territory
showed doubt of Arapahoe complicity in the St. Mary's slaying
when he said there was "no means of ascertaining" it.^^^ Lieu-
tenant G. M. Fleming, Shoshone agent, went far beyond this and
bitterly assailed the vigilantes' actions in firing upon Black Bear's

164. A young boy from Black Bear's party was adopted by an army
officer and educated in the east. Under the name of Slherman Coolidge he
returned to Wyoming in 1884 as a missionary to his people.

165. Op. cit. Nickerson, "The Early History of Fremont County," p. 4.

166. Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, Wash-
ington, Govt. Printing Office 1873. p. 83. Friday told Commissioner
Brunet that the Shoshones had aided the whites in the Black Bear episode.
Of what this aid consisted is not indicated.

167. Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners,
Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1872, p. 51.

168. House Journal of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of
Wyoming, Cheyenne, N. A. Baker, 1870, p. 15.

238 ANNALS OF WYOMING

party, depicting them as thieves and cutthroats.^**" The command-
er at nearby Camp Augur, he alleged, readily could have prevented
their murderous action. But instead, Fleming charged, he con-
doned their deed with tacit approval."^

Though used to violence in the mining towns, Sweetwater resi-
dents were quick to hold the Indians accountable for outrages
which could not be traced to the residents' own brawls. ^'^^ Results
of this attitude sometimes were tragic, sometimes ludicrous. Dis-
trust and fear of Indians were ever-present factors, accented by the
common practice of prejudging the aborigines. How many of the
purported Indian atrocities may have been precipitated by miners
in pursuit of summary justice is an open question. When a hunter
remained too long afield, a punitive expedition against the red men
was in the wind. If he turned up unmolested before Indians were
I located, the vigilantes disbanded, and tragedy was averted. ^'^- But

* it did not always work out this way.

" In 1872, Michael Henan's murder in the Popo Agie Valley put

I the settlers' nerves on edge. Blamed at first upon Arapahoes, it

was probably the work of white horse thieves; but the effect was

»| just the same. ^"^2 The next day, while the search for the murderers

* was under way, two hunters disappeared, and their horses suppos-
^ edly were identified in Indian hands. Here, it seemed, was con-
} elusive evidence the Indians had murdered them. A hail of bullets

spattered about the "guilty" braves, but they escaped unharmed,
I* with the horses. Two parties, independently organized, set out in

*' pursuit; and one, mistaking the other for the hostile Indians, fired

5 upon it, continuing to shoot for a considerable length of time before

■; discovering the error. ^'^^ Terrorized South Pass residents who

;. heard the firing sent word to nearby Fort Stambaugh of 300 ram-

paging Arapaho and Cheyenne warriors, requesting all available
troops and a howitzer to repel them.^^^ Meanwhile, the two "mur-
dered" hunters rode safely into town on their own horses, having

169. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1870, p. 176.

170. Ibid., p. 179.

171. Street fights were common. The leader of the vigilantes who
murdered Black Bear was later killed in one. Coutant (op. cit. p. 666)
lists five fatal brawls in one year.

172. Such an incident is related by James Chisholm in South Pass 1868,
Lincoln, Univ. of Nebraska, 1960, pp. 148-149.

173. Op. cit. Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commis-
sioners, 1872, pp. 112-113. The murderers left imprints of high heeled
boots, indicating that they were whites or Mexicans, possibly accompanied
by a few Indians.

174. Op. cit. Nickerson, "The Early History of Fremont County", pp.
4-5.

175. Op. cit. Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commis-
sioners, pp. 112-113.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 239

seen no Indians! Miraculously, no one, neither white nor Indian,
was killed or wounded.

Such incidents in the Sweetwater region cast much doubt on the
validity of the charges against the Arapahoes.

One hundred miles away at Rawlins Springs, near the town of
Rawlins and the Union Pacific Railroad, four young Arapahoes
lost their lives in a brush with a sheriff's posse in 1873. The
Indians, allegedly out to raid the Utes, were charged with shooting
a white boy and stealing his horses. Denying both accusations,
they claimed they were attacked by the posse and their horses taken
without reason. An investigating committee headed by territorial
Governor Campbell, after hearing both sides, exonerated the whites
and declared the Indians guilty. ^^^ A study of the governor's re-
port, however, indicates the decision may have been reached before
the hearings. The commission, he reported, accepted the sworn
testimony of the whites rather than the story told by the Indians,
as their "proverbial disregard for truth" made it "of httle worth". ^'^^

Other sources, to which little attention has been paid, also cast
doubt upon the verdict of Arapaho guilt. Colonel John E. Smith,
commandant at Fort Laramie, said he dissuaded all but twenty of a
large group of Arapahoes from going to Rawlins Springs to bury
the four young men, because he feared they would avenge them-
selves on an equal number of whites. ^^^ The possible punishment
of those who perpetrated the outrage against the Indians caused
him no worry, but he feared Indian vengeance might be wreaked on
innocent people. ^'^^ In like vein, the Board of Indian Commission-
ers, after a visit to Red Cloud Agency, wrote tersely of the "unjusti-
fiable murder" of peaceable Indians near Rawlins. ^^'^ Despite the
official condemnation by Governor Campbell's investigating com-
mittee, Arapaho guilt at Rawlins Springs was not a proven fact.

While seeking to avoid collisions with the whites, the Arapahoes
vented their rage for Black Bear's death upon the Shoshones, whom
they accused of complicity in his murder. In an 1871 raid they
killed a Shoshone boy, leaving coup sticks behind as evidence of
their revenge.^^^ This was an example of traditional Indian war-
fare, a game of risk in which a man's prestige was based upon his

176. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1873, p. 251.

177. Loc. cit. The Arapahoes were also accused of violating the Treaty
of 1868 by their presence south of the Platte. But as the river flows nearly
due north at this point, the Indians were west of it rather than south.

178. "Indian Troubles", Annals of Wyoming, January, 1933, p. 757.
This is from Smith's letter to his superior officer in Omaha, Nebraska.

179. Loc. cit.

180. Op. cit. Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commis-
sioners, 1873, p. 26.

181. Ibid., p. 83. The facts of the raid were reported by Friday; and the
coup sticks were found where it had occurred.

240 ANNALS OF WYOMING

skill at counting coup (touching an enemy with a coup stick),
taking scalps or stealing horses, and getting away unharmed. It
was a game the white never could understand. Charged with an-
other raid in 1873, in which two white women in the Popo Agie
valley lost their lives, the Arapahoes denied the accusation. Friday
contended they had been in the vicinity only once since Black
Bear's death, the time the Shoshone boy was killed. It seems
unlikely that he withheld the truth, for on the same occasion he
volunteered information that a small party of Arapahoes, Chey-
ennes and Sioux, out to steal horses from the Crows, killed a white
man in western Montana. ^^^ Evidently unconvinced in the Popo
Agie valley case, Brunot of the Board of Indian Commissioners
attributed the women's slaying to friends of the young Arapahoes
killed at Rawlins Springs.^^^ But the Wyoming press and the
Bureau of Indian Affairs blamed it on the Sioux, naming Red
Jl Cloud's son-in-law as one of the principals. ^^^

^' Neither Arapaho innocence nor guilt definitely can be estab-

^ lished in the Popo Agie valley murders, yet two significant facts

should be noted. First, the raiders on this occasion left no coup

0i sticks behind, unlike the traditional Arapahoes in their incursion

*' against the Shoshones. Second, Nickerson, who was in the vicinity

J[ when the murders occurred, did not implicate the Arapahoes in

» his description of the case, even though he had httle use for this

tribe of Indians. These facts support the claim of Arapaho inno-

9- cence made by Friday, who enjoyed a reputation of veracity.

S With the death of Chief Medicine Man in the winter of 1871-

S 1872, the Arapahoes lost one of their strongest influences for

S! peace. Black Coal, as his successor, was loathe to embroil himself

i in difficulties with the whites, but felt no such compunctions about

^ the Shoshones. By 1873 his raids against them were a common

occurrence. Discomfiting and counting coup upon them may have

been Black Coal's objectives. Although he broke down the banks

of their newly-constructed irrigation ditches, and threatened the

workers in the field, the govenmient farmer who worked with the

Shoshones reported no casualties. The troops, under orders to

shoot only in self defense, found no need to resort to fire-arms. ^^^

Indeed, the field workers feared the ever-present rattlesnakes as a

greater menace than the Arapahoes. ^^^^

In 1874, Captain Alfred E. Bates of the United States Army set
out to end Black Coal's depredations. With a small command of

182. Ibid., p. 26.

183. Loc. cit.

184. Op. cit. Cheyenne Leader, August 15, 1873, and Annual Report,
1873, p. 612.

185. Op. cit. David, p. 257.

186. Ibid., p. 265.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 241

soldiers and Shoshones, he met the Arapahoes about forty miles
east of Thermopolis, Wyoming, and forty to fifty Arapaho braves
were killed. Although the Arapahoes made a courageous stand,
they did not attempt to follow when the soldiers withdrew.^^^ With
1,100 people or less in the Northern Arapaho tribe at the time, the
loss would be cruelly felt, sufficient reason, probably, for not
pressing the battle further. Also, it may be, the Indians had as
little understanding or stomach for the white man's manner of war-
fare as he did for theirs. Whatever the reason, Black Coal's raids
were over. With the exception of seven individuals, the Northern
Arapahoes did not fight United States troops again until the Custer
debacle in 1876.

Pressure on the Indian lands characterized the period from 1868
to 1874 to a greater extent than in earlier years. As more natural
resources came to public attention in the West, growing numbers of
settlers looked upon the Indians as an impediment to progress,
which must somehow be removed. Suspecting the red men fre-
quently of thievery and treachery, the whites often judged and
acted too hastily, thus laying themselves open to similar charges.
Sometimes stolen horses allegedly identified in Indian hands, mere-
ly resembled horses known to belong to whites. Though settlers
occasionally attacked Indians to forestall suspected duplicity, the
latter often had equally valid reasons for fearing them.

The biased reports of Indian activities in Wyoming's press indi-
cate a perspective shared by many rough frontiersmen of the area.
More tihan mere grim humor prompted a journalist writing of a
skirmish near South Pass to say that no whites "fortunately" nor
Indians "unfortunately" were killed. ^^^ And only a careful perusal
of a column captioned "The Indian Murders at Ft. Laramie" would
reveal that two of the three principals in the killing were white
men.^^^ Such reporting of Indian news typified the times, and
makes it extremely difficult to ferret out the facts from a morass
of sensational journalism.

Despite some lapses, the peace force among the Northern Arap-
ahoes still was in evidence from 1868 to 1874. Small groups
aided their Cheyenne friends against federal troops in 1868, but
most of the tribe refrained from warlike actions. With the shock
of Black Bear's killing in 1870, the force was badly strained, but
did not break, for the vigilantes responsible for his death were
not wiped out, though it was within the Arapahoes' power to do so.

187. Op. cit., Cheyenne Leader, August 5, 1874. This was the Bates
Battle of July 4, 1874. Various sources report from 400 to 3,000 Indians
engaged, although the entire Northern Arapaho tribe could muster less than
400 fighting men at this time.

188. Ibid., July 6, 1869.

189. Ibid., Jan, 13, 1873.

242 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Even after death removed Medicine Man's strong influence for
peace, they were unwilling to war against the whites. They must
have realized that settlers were the real source of many Arapaho
sorrows, yet under Black Coal's leadership they vented their spite
upon their Shoshone enemies. They could share, at least, an
understanding of the Indian mode of warfare, which the whites
could not.

Yet it was the forays against the Shoshones which led to their
final clash with the United States troops, in the Bates Battle men-
tioned above (page 72). Earlier in the period, only individuals
and small groups participated in hostilities against the whites, but
it is likely that a large proportion of the tribe, with perhaps the
exception of Friday's band, engaged the soldiers at this time, in the
battle which permanently ended Black Coal's belligerent role.^^^

The Second Sioux War and the Loss of Tribal Lands, 1874-1878

it When would the magnificent unceded Indian lands, especially

* the mineral-rich Black Hills and Big Horns, fall into the waiting

hands of the whites? That was the great question in the minds of
!* western settlers from 1874 to 1876. They were certain despite

I* impeding treaty provisions and definite Indian opposition, they

1 5 would obtain them. Barred from both areas by the Treaty of

I' 1868, they violated its restrictive clauses with few important reper-

^ cussions. In the autumn of 1874, after General Custer's recon-

[«* naisance party returned from its illegal incursion into the Black

\% Hills, a group of miners went in, sank twenty-five prospect holes,

|iJ and reported pay-gold in all of them.^^^ Others flocked in, until

" President Grant, perhaps better aware of Indian agitation than the

|r man in the street, ordered General Crook to the region to drive

i« the prospectors out, and forestall possible dire consequences.^^^

Nonetheless, interested people formed mining companies, and hun-
dreds more headed for the Black Hills. Cheyenne, Wyoming,
with the advantages of a jumping-off point, tingled with excitement
as outfitters prepared to share the wealth others might gain.^^^

Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahoes, approached by a special com-
mission in 1874, adamantly refused to relinquish their rights in the
Big Horn-Powder River region.^^* Indeed, the Indians' unfavor-
able response to the proposal convinced the commission that more

190. There is no documentary evidence that Friday ever fought the
whites. Yet, if he was with Black Coal when Captain Bates attacked, he
may have had no other choice.

191. Op. cit. Bancroft, p. 774.

192. Martin F. Schmitt (ed.). General Crook, His Autobiography, Nor-
man, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1946 (new edition, 1960), pp. 188-189.

193. Op. cit. Bancroft, p. 775.

194. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1874, p. 87.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 243

would be lost than gained by pressing the matter, except for Chris
C. Cox, who insisted the Big Horns were of little value to the
Indians, and recommended abrogating the "obstructive" provisions
of the treaty (those barring whites from the desired Indian lands),
thus opening the Big Horn area to settlement. ^^^ Citing the agri-
cultural and mineralogical potential of the unceded territory, he
contended that in fairness to the people of Wyoming it should be
settled by a "white, enterprising population" — not by Indians. ^^^

Cox was not alone in this opinion. Upon his inauguration in
1875, Governor Thayer of Wyoming Territory decried the occu-
pation of the Big Horns and Black Hills by "wild Indians" who
would neither cultivate the soil nor develop its mineral wealth. ^^'^
Upon his urging, the legislative assembly adopted a resolution re-
questing Congress to remove the unwanted Indians from the terri-
tory, reviling them in the bitter terms of uncompromising racists
(Annals of Wyoming, 41 : 1 :42) . Across the border in Nebraska,
Agent Saville of the Red Cloud Reservation, which serviced Sioux,
Northern Arapahoes and Cheyennes, urged the speedy destruction
of game in Wyoming's hunting lands, freeing them for white settle-
ment. If this could not be arranged by treaty it should be accom-
plished by force. ^^^ Only in this way could hostile Indian bands be
sufficiently pauperized to bring them permanently to the agencies.

The Black Hills of western South Dakota and northeastern Wyo-
ming were peculiarly fitted to the needs of Indians in transition
from a hunting to a herding and agricultural economy. ^^^ With
grasslands, forests, soil and water resources, the area left little to be
desired. The Indian Bureau frankly admitted the probability that
no other land available to the government for the use of the Indians
was at all comparable in this respect.^*^** Nothing seemed more
logical than retaining these lands for Indian usage and develop-
ment, and expending every reasonable effort to start them on their
way to self-support in an area which Sioux, Arapahoes and Chey-
ennes already held in common, as they had for many generations.
But the land was rich in gold, so some means must be found to
dispossess the aborigines and obtain it for the whites. The mineral
rights were not enough. Since miners had to eat, the agricultural
potential of the adjacent countryside also must be controlled and
developed by the whites.^^i If the Indians were to become herds-

195. Ibid., p. 90.

196. Loc. cit.

197. Op. cit. House Journal of the Legislative Assembly of the Terri-
tory of Wyoming, 1875, pp. 35-36.

198. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1875, p. 753.

199. Ibid. p. 8.

200. Loc. cit.

201. Loc. cit.

244 ANNALS OF WYOMING

men and farmers as the bureaucrats insisted, they would have to go
elsewhere to do so.

In 1875 another special commission met at Red Cloud Reserva-
tion with the representatives of the Northern Cheyennes and Arap-
ahoes, and the various bands of Sioux, who comprised a tribe of
many thousands, with single bands sometimes much larger than the
Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes combined. The commission made
an offer of $6,000,000 to procure the Black Hills for the Govern-
ment of the United States, but the Indians turned it down because
they valued the land at a much higher figure.^^'^ Countering with
a request for $60 to $70 million, they asked that the money be put
away at interest, on which they would hve well.""^ Although the
Indian Bureau for years had stressed the desirability of winning
their wards to the ways of the whites, this indication of business
1 1 acuity was poorly received by the commissioners, however admi-

"1 rable it might have appeared in an eastern financier. They dis-

• ; gustedly reported that no worthwhile agreement could be success-

* fully concluded in Indian country by means of a grand council of
chiefs in the presence of a large body of Indians. 2*^^ The deal was

0\ dropped; but Indian agitation over the recurring attempts to part

them from their choicest possessions did not disappear.

Officials of the Indian Bureau noted with apparent satisfaction
the impunity with which soldiers, prospectors and others violated
various provisions of the Treaty of 1868, and voiced the opinion
that another general Indian war never could occur. Conflicting
tribal interests, they reasoned, rendered unified action impossible,
and the advancing settlements rapidly filled up the country between
the tribes, thus further dividing them.^"^ Custer's penetration of
the Black Hills had brought no violent repercussions from the In-
dians; and the military camps near the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail
Agencies, surrounded by Indians outnumbering the troops ten or
twenty-to-one, remained, to all appearances, in perfect safety.^^^
The peace policy, originated in 1868, seemed fully justified. Re-
sults indicated the wisdom of feeding and parleying with the
"unreasoning savage", and convincing him that the government
wished only for his welfare, but could also compel him to submit
to law.-**^ Seeming success bred smug assurance.

Few reahzed the extent to which the success of the peace policy
depended upon the tolerance of the Indian population, nor that a
breaking point might soon be reached. But for those who cared to

i«

202. Ibid., p. 190.

203. Ibid., p. 198.

204. Ibid., p. 199.

205. Ibid., 1874, p. 4.

206. Ibid., p. 5. The two agencies were only 40 miles apart.

207. Loc. cit.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 245

look, the signs were there. Minneconjous, Sans Arc, Uncpapas,
and other so-called wild bands of Sioux new to Red Cloud Agency,
resisted attempts to count them in 1874 for the issuing of rations,
arrested the agent, and surrounded the contingent of soldiers called
to his aid, holding them helpless until some seven-hundred regular
agency Indians interceded, and freed the captives.-"'^ Although
not obstreperous at this time, the regulars, who had been reporting
to the agency for years, were far less content to sit down to the
enjoyment of their issues of coffee, sugar and beef than the Wash-
ington bureaucrats could realize.^*^^ In 1875, an investigation of
corruption and inefficiency at Red Cloud Agency disclosed shock-
ing conditions and real distress among the Indians. ^^°

Sioux, Northern Arapahoes and Northern Cheyennes who were
called upon to testify brought these to light. The Ogallala Chief
Red Cloud, demanding the agent's removal, made serious charges,
many of which were substantiated by the investigating commission.
The testimony of the Arapaho Chief Black Coal, and the Cheyenne
Chief Little Wolf — largely verified by others — while somewhat
milder than that of Red Cloud, still portrayed a scandalous picture.

When Black Coal and his Northern Arapahoes arrived at Red
Cloud Agency from their Wyoming hunting grounds, they were
very low on food, clothing and tent materials. Although it was
winter, many lacked covering for their lodge poles because the
hides had worn out and could not be replaced since game was
scarce.-^^ Due to the transportation difficulties from Cheyenne,
and the deep snows of a hard winter, the badly needed agency
rations were in short supply. Nor were the rations satisfactory
when available. Spoiled pork and mildewed coffee were not un-
usual; tobacco so strong it caused headaches and blankets too
short for a tall man to use were regular issues.^^^ Agent Seville
could not have been responsible for aU of these conditions; few, if
any, were unique to his agency. But serious charges had been
made against him, and the commissioners were there to investigate.
His Indian census seemed markedly high, a tempting and lucrative
practice at various agencies, for an overshipment of goods and
rations (assigned to the agencies on a population basis) could be

208. Ibid., p. 45.

209. Indian Commissioner E. P. Smith had optimistically prophecied that
the Indians would not risk the loss of such agency comforts for a campaign
against the whites. {Op. cit. Annual Report, 1874, p. 5.)

210. Red Cloud complained bitterly to Yale geologist O. C. Marsh, who
had come west to collect fossils. March contacted President Grant, who
ordered an investigation.

211. Op. cit. Report of the Special Commission to Investigate the Af-
fairs of the Red Cloud Agency, p. 449.

212. Ibid., p. 375. This was a part of Black Coal's testimony, translated
by Friday. Little Wolf spoke in a similar vein.

i 246 ANNALS OF WYOMING

profitably disposed of by an agent and his friends. Saville, for
example, recorded 1,535 Northern Arapahoes, a perfectly ridic-
I ulous figure when it is realized that there were less than two-thirds

i of that number to move to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming

i from 1878 to 1880.-^^ Although they did not prove him guilty

j of corrupt practices, the commissioners concurred in a verdict of

! inefficiency, and Saville was removed from office.-^^

The Indian Bureau soon was to realize the prematurity of its
conclusions that agency Indians were too content with their de-
pendency on Government rations to give serious thought to the
warpath as a means of improving their lot. Many of the regulars,
I acquainted with agency ways for years past, despite the sugar,

I mildewed coffee, spoiled pork and strong tobacco issued to them,

i responded to Sitting Bull's challenge and prepared to resist the

I I whites. Hundreds of Sioux from various bands, and scores of

\ * Cheyennes, both Northern and Southern, deserted the agencies to

j * cast their lot with the hostiles.-^"' Shortly before the assault on

I * Custer in the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, a tiny contin-

i gent of Northern Arapahoes, seven braves, according to Grinnell,

1,0 offered their services to the Sioux. -^^^ The latter, suspecting them

|<* of spying for the soldiers, insisted that they camp apart until they

• * could make sure of them.^^''^

jf The Sioux Chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail stood for peace,

apparently realizing the power of the whites and the futility of
I* making a stand against them. Spotted Tail worked particularly to

^S end the belligerencies. Visiting camp after camp he urged the

ijj hostiles to surrender, until the last large band gave up in August,

k 1877.-1^

U» Custer's debacle on the Little Big Horn in 1876 stimulated to

even greater efforts the advocates of the policy of concentrating the
western Indians on a few large reservations. As usual when ulter-
ior motives are important, they offered ample justification for the
proposal. Secretary of the Interior Chandler estimated a saving to
the government of $100,000 annually in transportation costs alone
on Indian supplies; moreover, he was sure that the control and

213. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1875, p. 752.

214. Repercussions in Washington led to the resignation of Columbus
Delano as Secretary of the Interior.

215. Op. cit. Vestal, p. 143. Vestal states that a fair number of Arapa-
hoes answered the call, but in this he evidently is misinformed, for author-
ities who had wider acquaintance with the Indians participating differ mark-
edly with him in this respect. See Grinnell, op. cit. p. 347, James McLaugh-
lin, My Friend the Indian, Boston, Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1910, p. 130, and
E. S. Godfrey, The Field Diary of Edward Settle Godfrey, Portland, Cham-
peeg Press, 1957, p. 347.

216. Op. cit. Grinnell, p. 347.

217. Op. cit. Godfrey, p. 69.

218. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1877, pp. 412-413.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 247

teaching of the aborigmes would thereby be greatly enhanced.-^®
Further rationalization depicted the replacement of tribal custom
by United States' law and court jurisdiction, and affording the
Indians greater protection through the power of government in life,
liberty and character, thus identifying them legally with the white
citizenry.2''^ Yet with such good reasons readily available, the
actual purpose behind the policy occasionally found its way into
print. A recommendation to Congress in 1878 requested that
body to reduce the number of reservations not only for the benefit
of the Indians, through the resultant civilizing influences, but also
as a means of freeing the bulk of their lands for white occupancy .^^^

Under the constant prodding of miners, stockmen, and agricul-
turists who longed for the red men's lands, the Indian office for a
number of years had brought pressure to bear upon the Northern
Cheyennes and Arapahoes to join their southern relatives in Indian
Territory. It mattered not that both groups opposed the plan.--^
The Northern Arapaho Chief Black Coal epitomized their feelings
in stating that God had given them the land in the north; they had
all been bom there; they liked it and had no desire to go south.-^^
To compel agreement to the move in 1874, their agent at Red
Cloud was instructed to withhold their annual issue of food and
goods until their transfer south.-^^ Because the Indians remained
adamant, the use of troops was planned to ensure their removal.225

In 1876, similar coercive measures were applied to those peace-
able Sioux who remained at Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies.
A special commission at this time persuaded them to consider
transfer to Indian Territory, and an act of Congress forbade any
appropriation for their subsistence until they agreed to relinquish
all lands outside their permanent reservations, including, of course,
the invaluable Black Hills which they jointly held with the Northern
Cheyennes and the Northern Arapahoes.--® Disarmed as the In-
dians were, under the surveillance of troops, with scant opportunity
for subsistence in their hunting grounds, it required no stroke of
genius for a commission, avoiding a grand council of chiefs in the
presence of their people, and other mistakes of the previous year,
to travel from agency to agency — seven in all — and obtain the
assent of the headmen of each group to the cession of their beloved

219. Op. cit. Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1876, pp. v and vi.

220. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1876, p. 388.

221. Ibid., 1878, pp. 440-442.

222. Ibid., 1874, p. 46.

223. Op. cit. Report of the Special Commission to Investigate the Af-
fairs of Red Cloud Agency, p. 376.

224. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1874, p. 11.

225. Ibid., p. 97.

226. Ibid., 1876, p. 333.

248 ANNALS OF WYOMING

lands,^^^ The government in return agreed to furnish subsistence
to the Indians until they could become self-supporting. Although
twelve bands of Sioux and the Northern Arapahoes and Cheyennes
were included in the compact, the many hundreds still counted as
hostiles had no voice whatever in the matter.

The Second Sioux War caused postponement of the transfer of

Northern Arapahoes and Cheyennes to the south. Now with

belligerencies ended, the Indian Office revived its efforts to remove

them and the Sioux to Indian Territory, where, it was planned, the

three tribes, so long together, would at last be separated. Although

they were loath to leave the north, the Ogallala and Brule bands of

Sioux yielded to bureaucratic pressure, and sent delegates to Indian

Territory to examine potential locations for their bands. But a cry

of protest arose in the House and Senate of the United States,

|! where the lawmakers expressed their dread of the powerful Sioux

m] in an interesting way. Fearing the presence of this mighty tribe

i i might ruin the chance for peace among both reds and whites within

i«' the general vicinity, they forbade by an act of Congress the

'* removal of any portion of the Sioux to Indian Territory. ^-^ Red

^ Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies were transferred instead to South

!* Dakota, where most of the Sioux reside today on six reservations.

I ■■» Much against their will, the Northern Cheyennes were forced to

1 5 go to Indian Territory, where many of them sickened, as was

'' "always the case" with northern Indians.^^^ In 1878, Dull Knife's

^ band of about 300, disheartened by their situation, broke away

[0 from the unwanted surroundings and headed north.^^o After weeks

iC of eluding United States troops, about half the band were captured

'5 and taken to Fort Robinson, Nebraska, as prisoners of war. In a

I'* vain effort to force their return to Indian Territory, food, water

5" and fuel were withheld from them in the dead of winter, until, in a

I • desperate break for freedom, all were killed. The other half of the

band, somewhat more fortunate, succeeded in reaching their Sioux

friends. Ultimately they were given a reservation on the Tongue

River in southern Montana; and there they remain.

The Arapahoes, in a final recognition of their loyalty, were per-
mitted to remain in Wyoming. During the period from 1874 to
1878, characterized by the alienation of Indian lands and the spill-
ing of blood, their peaceful relation with the United States Govern-
ment was practically unimpeachable, and stands in sharp contrast

227. Ibid., p. 336. The unsuccessful Commission of 1875, it may be
recalled, blamed their failure on the fact that they had met with an assembly
of chiefs in the presence of a large body of their fellows.

228. Op. cit. Congressional Record, Forty-fourth Congress, Second Ses-
sion, 1877, pp. 1617 and 1736.

229. Eleventh Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners,
1879, Washington, Govt. Printing Office, 1880, p. 84.

230. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1878, p. 445.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 249

to the belligerency of hundreds of their Sioux and Cheyenne
friends. Great numbers of the former cast their lot with Sitting
Bull and Crazy Horse, while many of the Cheyennes quietly
slipped away from the Red Cloud Agency in small groups for the
same purpose. But when General Reynolds started in pursuit of
Sitting Bull's braves in the late winter of 1876, the Northern
Arapahoes, determined to stay out of trouble, moved from the
vicinity of Fort Fetterman (near Douglas, Wyoming), into Red
Cloud Agency in Nebraska.^^^ Overbalancing the seven Arapa-
hoes who fought Custer's men in the Battle of the Little Big Horn,
twenty-five accompanied General Crook as scouts in his campaign
against the Sioux and Cheyennes.^^^ After Custer's defeat they
probably were instrumental in disarming their own brethren and
other non-hostiles, as the rounds of four agencies were made by the
troops for this purpose — a precautionary measure — and Red
Qoud, where the Arapaho tribe remained, fell to the lot of
General Crook.

When Crook left Fort Fetterman in November, 1876, in pursuit
of Crazy Horse's braves, the Arapaho and other Indian scouts were
assigned to General McKenzie to assist him in tracking down Chief
Dull Knife's band of Northern Cheyennes. Indeed, the presence
of many Sioux and Cheyennes, in addition to the Arapahoes in
McKenzie's forces, caused grave concern in a mission such as
this.233 But the misgivings proved unfounded; the service of the
Indian scouts, and particularly that of the Arapaho Chief Sharp
Nose, proved invaluable to McKenzie in his surprise attack on Dull
Knife's Cheyenne village during a bitter winter night in Wyoming's
Big Homs.23* This debacle set the stage for their surrender later
in the spring.

Through their final years of association with the Sioux and
Cheyennes at Red Cloud Agency, and despite unsatisfactory treaty
issues of food and goods, the usurpation of their lands, and the last
desperate effort of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse to change the
course of plains Indian history, the Northern Arapahoes kept peace
with the Government of the United States. Although many hun-
dreds of Sioux and Cheyennes were drawn into the conflict, the
Arapahoes, as their agent stated, remained loyal, almost to the
man.2^^

The peaceable disposition of the Northern Arapahoes finally
gained official recognition. Fearful of their projected move to the

231. Op. cit. Cheyenne Leader, Mar. 2, 1876.

232. Loc. cit.

233. Ibid., Jan, 20, 1877.

234. Loc. cit. Sharp Nose was at this time second in importance to
Black Coal among the Northern Arapahoes.

235. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1877, p. 415.

250 ANNALS OF WYOMING

south now that peace had returned to the plains, a delegation jour-
neyed to Washington with the earnest plea that they be permitted
to reside on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, rather than
making the dreaded transfer to Indian Territory, and in cognizance
of their abstinence from hostilities against the United States, the
President granted their request.-^^ The Shoshones, who occupied
the Wind River Reservation, also consented, and in August, 1878,
900 Northern Arapahoes arrived for permanent residence.^^^

The End of the Trail, 1879

Conceived by President Fillmore in 1849, the Indian peace pol-
icy produced the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, with the hopeful
promise of a new era. Based upon the supposition that kindness
and fair-dealiag would win the faith of the Indians for the United
|i States Government, its advocates expected them to abandon their

%. nomadic life and rapidly replace it with the white man's civilization,

jjl whose advantages, they felt, would be speedily recognized and

9 accepted. As the red men became dependent upon annual issues

of food, clothing and other necessities, they would be amenable to
■<[ the win of the government. Three main obstacles, unforeseen at

*, the time, prevented the fruition of this hope, and brought the plains

0< Indians to the end of the trail of their old, free life without equip-

l"*' ping them for a successful adaptation to the challenges of an alien

culture. These were the Indian policy of the federal government,
*■ public hostility toward the red men, and the love of the latter for

* their own institutions and traditions.

* With Uttle understanding of the people with whom they dealt,
'•i the federal government followed a pohcy which was consistent in
^, only one respect — the obliteration of Indianhood, the destruction

of a culture. Beginning with the sincere intention of guiding the
Indians through a transition period to self-support by agriculture,
the best interests of the aborigines soon were lost to view as the
clamor of settlers for their land and resources resulted in pressure
which the federal government could not withstand. As the more
arable lands came under white control, the Indian Office made
feeble attempts to teach its wards to farm, but under such unfavor-
able conditions of climate and soil that the efforts usually were
foredoomed. Although the Indian Bureau recognized the Black
Hills region as one of unusual excellence in which to develop a
grazing industry among the aborigines, it spared no efforts to

236. Ibid., p. 19.

237. Ibid., 1879, pp. 166 and 224. The Annual Report of 1877 gave the
Northern Arapaho census as 1100 souls, perhaps a little high. Two or three
small bands may have been hunting or visiting elsewhere at the time of the
transfer to Wyoming, and moved later to the Reservation, for it is known
that somewhat more than 900 eventually arrived.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 251

transfer its soil and invaluable resources to the settlers of the West.
As with so many of their most useful lands, the Indians could not
retain this area to help them on their way to self-support.

From 1868 to 1876, peace policy advocates claimed success in
dealing with the Indians, but almost inevitably the whites, rather
than the native bison hunters, enjoyed the benefits of this success.
"While bureaucrats spoke platitudes of the advantages accruing to
the Indians from placement upon limited reservations, they pushed
plans to transfer large tracts of their tribal holdings to the more
enterprising race. Solemn treaty pledges often failed to material-
ize; schools promised to the Northern Arapahoes by the Treaty of
1868 appeared only after ten long years and another Indian war.
A teacher arrived in the fall of 1878, followed finally by the
opening of classes in January, 1879.-'^*^

Of the irritants which fostered insecurity among the Indians and
kept their nerves on edge, the role of the military in government
policy ranks high. Acknowledging its inefficacy in 1849, Congress
transferred the Indian Bureau from the War Department to that of
the Interior, yet this, unfortunately, did not sufficiently minimize
its importance as an instrument of policy, a situation which the
Indians understood and deeply resented.

In 1853, Thomas Fitzpatrick, a man respected for his fairness
to the Indians, warned of their agitation over the presence of troops
in their vicinity. Convinced that they destroyed timber, scared off
game, excited hostile feelings, and afforded a rendezvous for worth-
less and trifling characters, the Indians felt uneasy in their prox-
imity.--^*^ Twenty years later, on the basis of discussion with various
tribal groups, Powell and Ingalls of the Board of Indian Commis-
sioners reported that opposition to reservation life was based pri-
marily upon Indian dread of the soldiers, whose very name syno-
nomized evil. Social demoralization and venereal diseases fol-
lowed in their wake. "We do not wish to give our women to the
embrace of the soldiers," the Indians declared.-^^

As commander of United States forces in the West, General Phil
Sheridan only added to their fears when, in June, 1869, he officially
ordered that the Indians off the limits of their reservations should
be under the exclusive jurisdiction of the military, and usually
would be considered hostile. -^^ This he directed in spite of the
rights, guaranteed to them by treaty, to hunt and roam in various
places off their reservations.

Whether in ignorance or disregard of Indian bitterness toward
the military, when peace was restored in 1878 the House of Repre-

238. Op.cit. Annual Report, 1879, pp. 166-167.

239. Ibid., 1853, p. 362.

240. Ibid., 1873, p. 443.

241. Ibid., 1876, p. 340.

252 ANNALS OF WYOMING

sentatives approved a bill to return the Indian Bureau to the War
Department. Indian reaction, as might well have been expected,
was one of agitated and unqualified opposition.^^^ Fortunately,
the Senate held up the bill, pending study and investigation. It
never became law.

In testifying before an investigating commission in 1875, Chief
' Black Coal of the Northern Arapahoes tersely expressed the feel-

ings of the red men toward the military. He spoke as follows :

We used to live first rate before the soldiers came to this country;
when they came the first thing they did was to try to raise a war. We
used to travel with the old mountaineers, but since the soldiers came
to this country they have spoiled everything and want war.

; I have heard something about changing the agent we have now.

I t We don't want a military officer for an agent. We want a citizen, the

; * same as we have now.243

• ■*
; m

I cj As settlers and fortune-seekers flocked into the West, encroach-

1'^ ing upon the Indian domain, public hostility toward the aborigines

I I engendered constant pressure upon Congress and the Indian Bu-

IJlS reau to alienate more lands from their nomadic owners. They

\a> greatly resented the legal bars which kept them from developing

i J the resources which, they believed, the Indians never would put to

1' proper use. Thus Indian treaties, in effect, were made only to be
broken. Though often called finalities, they were frequently mere

I* expediencies; white civilization found them as barriers in the way,

i»* so they could not stand. As frequent and rapid changes occurred,

"•iS the Indians were the victims of great injustices.^^*
fi"/

l^ With the end of the Indian war in 1877, the settlers rejoiced at

I"' the unfettering of the frontier, for, as the red men were shunted

!•' onto reservations, the unceded lands north of the Platte, where

I they had hunted and roamed, were thrown open to the stockmen.

Freed at last from the legal restraints which had bound them, they
drove cattle and sheep across the river to graze on land which for
years they eyed wistfully.^^^ At this time, the white population of
Wyoming Territory had increased to 20,000 or more.^^^ The figure
compares roughly to the number of friendly Indians reportedly

242. Ibid., 1878, pp. 9-10.

243. Op. cit. Report of the Special Commission to Investigate the Af-
fairs of Red Cloud Agency, July, 1875, pp. 316-3)11. Friday interpreted
for Black Coal.

244. Op. cit. Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1877, p. ix. This
observation was made by Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz.

245. R. E. Strayhorn, The Handbook of Wyoming and Guide to the
Black Hills and Big Horn Regions, Chicago, Knight and Leonard, 1877,
pp. 20-21.

246. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1878, p. 1182.

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 253

served by the agencies of the region in 1876, who were now
stripped of the bulk of their tribal lands by a more aggressive
people.-^"

From the time of their final placement on the Wind River Res-
ervation in Wyoming in the fall of 1878, rumors of a planned
uprising among the Northern Arapahoes abounded. Characteriz-
ing the stories as spurious, their agent added that many frontiers-
men would be glad to see such an insurrection.-^^ It would, of
course, have afforded the desired excuse to force the Indians finally
out of Wyoming, and turn over their reservation lands, with ranges
for livestock and irrigation for agriculture, to the covetous whites.

Finally, the Indian way of life, coupled with the two obstacles
already reviewed, comprised an almost insurmountable barrier to a
smooth transition from the hunting to a grazing, agricultural, or
industrial Livelihood. With little appreciation for the Indian point
of view, thousands of Americans, officials and laymen ahke, ex-
pected him to abandon a culture that satisfied his social and emo-
tional needs, and surrender the major part of his lands as well.
Obviously, the period anticipated for the adaptation proved too
short; and even now, 115 years after the Fort Laramie Treaty of
1851, the transformation is incomplete. Justly proud of the faith
of their fathers — their own hereditary culture — many Indians are
not content to exist merely as dark-skinned white men.

Gone, of course, is the free hunting and roaming life of the older
times, to which the Indians clung until their game supply had
shrunk dangerously, and they were penned up on reservations so
the whites could settle on their lands.^^^ But their lodges or
sodalities, and the hierarchical structure of their society remained
for many years. As recently as 1939 it had not entirely disap-
peared.-'"'° Even today, the Northern Arapahoes hold their Offer-
ings Lodge or Sun Dance — a religious ceremony of tribal signifi-
cance— with annual regularity on the Wind River Reservation in
Wyoming. Although the pre-reservation Arapahoes have passed
away, and some changes necessarily have occurred, it remains
Indian in all essentials, with its stress upon the necessities of life —
food, water, earth and sun. Those who enter it still do so by cere-

247. Op. cit. Eight Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commis-
sioners, 1876, p. 11.

248. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1881, p. 183.

249. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1878, p. 1184. In October, 1878, Gover-
nor John W. Hoyt of Wyoming Territory, regional Superintendent of Indian
Affairs, gave this as the real reason for assigning Indians to reservations.

250. Op. cit. Murphy, personal notes.

251. The 1930s and early 1940s saw the passing of the remnant of pre-
reservation Arapahoes. Nakash (Sage), over 90 years of age, was among
the last of these to go.

254 ANNALS OF V/YOMING

monial vow, prepared for the ordeal of three and one-half days of
rituals with neither food nor drink, under the hot July sun.-'^^

Despite the optimism for a comparatively painless transition per-
iod, anticipated in 1851, the Northern Arapahoes, Northern Chey-
ennes and the great Sioux group found themselves confined on
reservations in 1879, their nomadic mode of life essentially a thing
of the past, but with little of a constructive nature to take its place,
or to inspire confidence for the future. Largely dependent upon
the government for the necessities of life, they were little more than
started on the long, weary road which they must follow before the
desired adaptations could be made.

During the period of dispossession between the first Fort Lara-
mie treaty and their eventual confinement, the Northern Arapahoes
generally displayed an attitude of peaceful intentions toward the
United States Government. They remained aloof from the Sioux
campaign of 1855 and the Cheyenne hostilities of 1857. Even
after Chivington's treacherous attack on Southern Arapahoes and
Cheyennes at Sand Creek, Colorado, in 1864, an action which
shattered the faith of most Indians in the white man's purposes,
only Black Bear's band of Northern Arapahoes joined Sioux and
Cheyennes in their retaliatory depredations. Chiefs Friday and
Medicine Man amply demonstrated their preference for peace.
The former was first to respond to Governor Evans' offer of pro-
tection to friendly Indians who would report to designated points,
and the latter moved the tribe's largest band from their hunting
grounds to southern Wyoming in acceptance of the invitation, after
the Sand Creek affair had sent more than a thousand braves upon
the warpath.

When government troops carried the war into their hunting
grounds in 1865, more Arapahoes than merely Black Bear's band
probably became involved, as they felt themselves forced to fight.
Unfortunately, no records indicate whether Medicine Man's mod-
erating influence prevailed upon 140 to 150 followers to keep the
peace, although this many remained in the Big Horns with him
when the known belligerents reported to Fort Laramie to sign the
treaty of 1868, which ended the war. Friday's band stayed
throughout this time in the Cache la Poudre in Colorado, many
miles from the scene of battle.

In the distressing days of 1870, after the unjustified slaying of
Black Bear and his unarmed party, the Northern Arapahoes re-
frained from violent retaliation against the whites, but left the Wind
River region of Wyoming for the Milk River Agency in Montana.

Following the death of Medicine Man in the winter of 1871-
1872, Black Coal, his successor as the major chief of the tribe,
raided the Shoshones recurrently on their Wyoming reservation,
until stopped by United States troops in the Bates' Battle of

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 255

1874.2^- This marked the end of armed conflict between the
Northern Arapaho tribe and government soldiers. Only seven
individuals joined the hostiles against Custer on the Little Big
Horn, whereas twenty-five served as scouts under Generals Crook
and McKenzie in the Second Sioux War.

After the Arapahoes were assigned to a reservation in Wyoming
in 1878, Territorial Governor Hoyt visited them to investigate
insidious rumors of insurrection which were common talk through-
out the region. Consultations with members of their tribe, as weU
as the Shoshones, who shared the same reservation, convinced him
that the fears were groundless,^^^^ as he found evidence of only
peaceful intentions among them. Their agent also was satisfied
with their quiet, peaceable conduct.^^^ This characteristic was
noted again in 1881, the year that Friday died, when they were
described as friendly and peaceable "toward all mankind."-''^

An incident which occurred about 1879 further substantiates this
picture of the Northern Arapahoes as friendly and peaceable to-
ward all. A small band of Shoshones, having traveled all day
through snow and wind in the Standing Rock region of the Dakotas,
came at evening upon many tipis, where meat hung drying upon
poles. Not knowing whether the Indians encamped there were
friends or enemies, they took the chance that they might be given
food. A hunting party of Arapahoes — long their enemies — made
them welcome, divided them among their various tipis, filled their
hungry stomachs with boiled buffalo meat, and lodged them for the
night.^^^ Before the Shoshones moved on in the morning, the
Arapahoes who had fed and lodged these traditional enemies,
warned them in sign language to use great care in leaving, as many
Sioux were camped to the northwest of them, and there they might
be far less welcome.^^'^

252. The Arapahoes had charged the Shoshones with duplicity in Black
Bear's death in 1870.

253. Op. cit. Annual Report, 1878, pp. 1182-1183.

254. Ibid., p. 651.

255. Ibid., 1881, p. 183.

256. D. B. Shimkin, "Childhood and Development among the Wind
River Shoshone," Anthropological Records, v. 5, Berkeley and Los Angeles,
University of CaHfornia Press, 1943, p. 314. This incident was related by
Pivo Brown, a Shoshone who lived until 1938.

257. Loc. cit.

256 ANNALS OF WYOMING

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Affairs, 1933-1945.)

Johnson, Hazel E. Letter of January 8, 1962. (Regional Vice-President,
Colorado State Historical Society.)

Murphy, James C. Personal Notes Taken on the Wind River Reservation
of Wyoming, 1933-1939.

Nelson, Mildred. Index to the Cheyenne Leader, 1867-1890. (Microfilm,
University of Wyoming.)

Rowlodge, Jessie. Letter of June 30, 1961. (Southern Arapaho Indian.)

Thunder, William C. Letter of December 23, 1938. (Arapaho Indian,
Etliete, Wyoming.)

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Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1853 to 1881).
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Carter, John G. "The Northern Arapaho Flat Pipe and the Ceremony of
Covering the Pipe." Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 119. pp. 69-
102. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1938.

A Compilation of all the Treaties between the United States and the Indian
Tribes Now in Force as Laws. Washington, Government Printing Office,
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Dorsey, George A. 'The Arapaho Sun Dance. The Ceremony of the
Offerings Lodge." Anthropological Papers of the Field Columbian Mu-
seum, v. 4. Chicago, 1903.

Executive Documents of the House of Representatives of the Third Ses-
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Hilger, M. Inez. "Arapaho Child Life and Its Cultural Background."
Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 148. Washington, Government
Printing Office, 1952.

Hodge, Frederick Webb, (ed.) Handbook of American Indians North
of Mexico. New York, Pageant Books Inc., 1959. (Washington, Bureau of
American Ethnology, 1907.)

House Journal of the Legislative Assemblv of the Territory of Wyoming.
Cheyenne, Daily Leader Office, 1872-1881.

Kroeber, Alfred E. "The Arapaho, Part 11." Bulletin of the American
Museum of Natural History, 1902. v xviii. New York, 1902.

Kroeber, Alfred E. "The Arapaho, Part 11." Bulletin of the American
Museum of Natural History, 1904. v. xviii. New York, 1904.

Kroeber, Alfred E. "The Arapaho Dialects." University of California
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1917.

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Congress." Thirty-first Congress Executive Document No. 5. Washington,
printed for the House of Representatives, 1849.

"Message from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of
Congress." Thirty -third Congress Executive Document No. 1. Washington,
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THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 257

"Message from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of
Congress." Thirty-second Congress Executive Document No. 2. Washing-
ton, A. Boyd Hamihon, 1851.

Miscellaneous Documents of the House of Representatives. Forty-fourth
Congress, First Session, 1875. Washington, Government Printing Office,
1876.

Mooney, James. "The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of
1890." Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1892-1893.
Part 2. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1896.

Raynolds, W. F. Report on the Exploration of the Yellowstone River.
Washington, Government Printing Office, 1868.

Report of the Special Commission to Investigate the Affairs of the Red
Cloud Agency, July 1875. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1875.

Senate Document Number 319. Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties.
v. 2. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1904.

Shimkin, D. B. "Wind River Shoshone Ethnography." Anthropological
Records, v. 5, no. 4. Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1947.

Periodicals

Burnett, F. G. "History of the Western Division of the Powder River
Expedition." Annals of Wyoming. Jan 1932. pp. 569-579.

Cheyenne Leader (1867-1879. Microfilm. State Historical Department,
Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Collier, Donald, "The Sun Dance of the Plains Indians." America
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"Indian Troubles." Annals of Wyoming. Jan. 1933, pp. 757-759. (Let-
ter of Col. John E. Smith to Gen. D. G. Ruggles.)

Koch, Elers, (ed.) "Journal of Peter Koch — 1869 and 1870." The
Frontier, v. 9, Jan. 1929, pp. 148-160.

Lemly, Lieut. H. R. "Among the Arapahoes." Harpers, v. 60, Dec.
1880, pp. 494-499.

Nickerson, H. G. "Early History of Fremont County." State of Wyo-
ming Historical Department Quarterly Bulletin. July 15, 1924, pp. 1-13.

Rocky Mountain News. July 8, 1865. (Photostat of p. 2 from the Li-
brary of the State Historical Society of Colorado.)

Scott, Hugh Lennox. "The Early History of the Names of the Arapaho."
American Anthropologist, (n.s.) v. 9, pp. 545-560, 1907.

Shields, Lillian B. "Relations with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes to
1861." The Colorado Magazine. Aug. 1927, v. 4, pp. 145-154.

General Works

Bancroft, Hubert H. The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, v. 25, History
of Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming, 1540-1881. San Francisco, The His-
tory Co., 1884 (1890).

Bartlett, I. S. History of Wyoming. Chicago, S. J. Clark Publishing Co.,
1918.

Beard, Charles A. and Beard, Mary R. The Rise of American Civiliza-
tion. (Revised Edition).

Burt, Maxwell Struthers. Powder River, Let 'er Buck. New York, Farrar
and Rinehart, Inc., 1938.

Byrne, P. E. The Red Man's Last Stand. London, A. M. Philpot Ltd.,
1927.

Chisholm, James. South Pass, 1868. Lincoln, University of Nebraska,
1960.

Chittenden, Hiram Martin and Richardson, Alfred Talbot (ed.). Life,
Letters and Travels of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, S. J. 1801-1873, v. 2.
New York, F. P. Harper, 1905 (c 1904).

Clark, W. P. Indian Sign Language. Philadelphia. L. R. Hamersly and
Co. 1885.

Collier, John. Indians of the Americas. New York, the New American
Library, 1948 (c 1947).

258 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Coues, Elliot. New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest.
New York, Frances P. Harper, 1897.

Coutant, C. G. The History of Wyoming. Laramie, Chaplin, Spafford
and Mathison, 1899.

Dale, Edward Everett. The Range Cattle Industry. Norman, Univ. of
Oklahoma Press, 1930.

Daly, Henry W. "War Path." The American Legion Monthly, April,
1927, pp. 16-19, 52, 54, 56.

David, Robert Beebe. Finn Burnett, Frontiersman. The Arthur H. Clark
Co., Glendale, 1937.

Dodge, Richard Irving. Our Wild Indians. Hartford, A. D. Worthington
and Co., 1883.

Driver, Harold E. Indians of North America. Chicago, Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1961.

Dunn, J. P. Jr. Massacres of the Mountains. New York, Archer House,
Inc., 1958.

Emmitt, Robert. The Last War Trail. Norman, University of Oklahoma
Press, 1954.

Fey, Harold E. and McNickle, D'Arcy. Indians and Other Americans.
New York, Harper and Brothers, 1959.

Godfrey, E. S. The Field Diary of Edward Settle Godfrey. Portland,
Champoeg Press, 1957.

Grinnell, George Bird. The Fighting Cheyennes. New York, Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1915.

Hafen, LeRoy R. and Ghent, W. J. Broken Hand. Denver, the Old West
Publishing Co., 1931.

Hafen, Leroy R. and Hafen, Ann W. (ed.) Reports from Colorado. The
Wildman Letters of 1859-1865 with Other Related Letters and Newspaper
Reports 1859. Glendale, the Arthur H. Clark Co., 1961.

Hafen, Leroy R. and Hafen, Ann W. Rufus B. Sage. His Letters and
Papers 1836-1847. v. 2. Glendale, the Arthur H. Clark Co., 1956.

Hafen, Leroy R. and Rister, Carl Coke. Western America, New York,
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1941.

Hafen, Leroy R. and Young, Frances Marion. Fort Laramie and the
Pageant of the West, 1834-1890. Glendale, the Arthur H. Clark Co., 1938.

Hamilton, James McClellan. From Wilderness to Statehood. Portland,
Binfords and Mort, 1957.

Hebard, Grace Raymond. The Pathbreakers from River to Ocean.
Chicago, the Lakeside Press, 1911.

Hebard, Grace Raymond. Sacajawea. Glendale, the Arthur H. Clark
Co., 1957.

Hebard, Grace Raymond. Washakie. Cleveland, the Arthur H. Clark
Co., 1930.

Hebard, Grace Raymond and Brininstool, E. A. The Bozeman Trail.
Cleveland, the Arthur H. Clark Co., 1922.

Larpenteur, Charles, Forty years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri.
Chicago, the Lakeside Press, 1933.

Lowie, Robert H. Indians of the Plains. New York, McGraw HiU Book
Co., Inc., 1954.

McLaughlin, James. My Friend, the Indian. Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1910.

McNickel, D'Arcy. They Came Here First. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippin-
cott Co., 1949 (Copyright by D'Arcy McNickel).

Miller, David Humphreys. Ghost Dance. New York, Duell, Sloan and
Pierce, 1959.

Paxson, Frederick L. History of the American Frontier 1763-1893.
Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1924.

Premier World Atlas. Chicago, Rand McNally Co., 1952. (Population
statistics for the Great Plains Area.)

THE PLACE OF THE NORTHERN ARAPAHOES 259

Root, Frank A. and Connelley, William Elsey. The Overland Stage to
California. Topeka, Root and Connelly, 1901.

Schmitt, Martin F. (ed.) General George Crook, His Autobiography.
Norman, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1960 (1946).

Strayhorn, R. E. The Handbook of Wyoming and Guide to the Black
Hills and Big Horn Regions. Chicago, Knight and Leonard, 1877.

Stuart, Granville. Forty Years on the Frontier. Glendale, the Arthur H.
Clark Co., 1957.

Taylor, Joseph Henry. Frontier and Indian Life and Kaleidoscopic Lives.
Valley City, 1889.

Thwaites, Reuben Gold, (ed.) Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition, 1804-1806. New York, Dodd, Mead and Co., 1904.

Vestal, Stanley. Sitting Bull. Norman, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1957.

Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration. Wyoming. New
York, Oxford University Press, 1941.

260 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Mr. Q. A. Myers who is down from the saw mill txxiay reports a
fine band of mountain sheep loafing around the vicinity. It is, of
course, contrary to law to kill these animals now, but if they show
any symptoms of wanting to "bite" anyone, the boys will shoot in
self defense

Casper Weekly Mail, February 8, 1889

An old lawyer used to say a man's requirements for going to
law were ten in number, and he summed them up as follows:
Firstly, plenty of money; secondly, plenty of patience; thirdly, a
good case; fourthly, a good lawyer; fifthly, plenty of money; sixthly,
a good counsel; seventhly, a good witness; eighthly, a good jury;
ninthly, a good judge; tenthly, plenty of money. Bill Barlow's
Budget, February 19. 1890.

Cheyenne was lively yesterday, great ado being made over the
distinguished delegates from the northern country. Red Cloud and
Spotted Tail put on heaps of airs, while the other seventeen Sioux
seemed quite conscious of their importance. They left on the
afternoon train for Washington.

Laramie Daily Sun, May 12, 1875

"He who would thrive must rise at five." So says the old proverb,
though there is more rhyme than reason for it; for if "He who
would thrive must rise at five," it must naturally follow, that,

He who'd thrive more must rise at four;
And it will insure as a consequence, that,

He who'd stUl more thriving be

Must leave his bed at turn of three;

And who this latter would out do.

Will rouse him at the strike of two.
And by way of climax to it aU, it should be held good, that

He who'd never be out done

Must ever rise as soon as one.
But the best illustration would be

He who'd flourish best of all

Should never go to bed at all.

— Laramie Daily Sentinel, June 13, 1872

Mist or ic Sites hterpretation

By
Robert A. Murray*

Historic sites are today of prime concern to many park managers
at the State and local level. This is true for several reasons: first,
their numerical preponderance as compared to other recreation
lands; second, their frequent complexity of interpretive story; and
far from least, because of the variety of possible management and
interpretive solutions that may be appUed to them.

Most numerous as a class of sites are the many small sites pres-
ently unmarked or else featuring a single sign or marker. Many of
these sites are destined for fiscal reasons, if no other, to remain as
essentially uncomplicated, unmanned sites. Such sites range in the
hundreds for virtually every state here represented. They deserve
quality interpretation, and certain of the generalizations presented
here today will apply to them, but I prefer not to dwell upon them,
since much that will be presented in another paper at this confer-
ence will bear on such low-budget sites.

At the focus of public attention today are the many manned
historic sites, historical parks, and historic buildings in what is
basically a park setting. Most states represented here today place
such sites and buildings under the jurisdiction of their prime park
management agency. This to me seems wise. In most cases these
areas are very different in their complex of management problems
from the museum in a metropohtan setting, and also quite different
from the isolated "historic house" in a basically urban setting.

At the same time, it must be said that they have their own com-
plex of interpretive and related management problems, and it is to
these problems that I now wish to turn your attention.

Rurming throughout all these problems are certain questions of
staffing of these manned areas. Initial development at one of these
sites may be based upon several different staffing concepts, and the
management choice between these concepts at the outset of opera-
tions will have much to do with the course of subsequent develop-
ment, and with the kind of public service the site will provide
through its early development years.

* Mr. Murray presented this article during proceedings of the Third
Annual Rocky Mountain-High Plains Parks and Recreation Conference held
in February, 1968, at Fort Collins, Colorado. The article was first pub-
lished in the Rocky Mountain-High Plains Parks and Recreation Journal
(Fort Collins: Colorado State University, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1968).

262 ANNALS OF WYOMING

The classic and almost traditional mode of staffing might be
termed "custodial staffing." Usually this means that in selecting
an on-site manager for such an area, the responsible agency looks
first at the preservation and maintenance aspects of management
and chooses a park manager accordingly. Occasionally the agency
is lucky enough to find a man with a custodian background who
also has an uncommon knowledge of history and an interest in
communicating the park story to visitors. Usually it does not work
out this way, and communication of the park story takes second or
lower priority to a welter of maintainence work, such as grass cut-
ting, painting, road work, picnic ground clean up, and the like.
The problem can be further compounded when the managing agen-
cy selects its custodian from among near-retirement age veterans of
other fields within the organization. Often the performance of
persons so selected is marginal in all fields. Chances are strong
that political selections for such positions will be even less satis-
factory. Many a historic site has been for years saddled with a
succession of men who got their position because someone, whether
supervisor or politician, just had to "make a job for good old Joe."
No one can deny the need for custodial services at a manned his-
torical site, but it seems short sighted indeed to build the areas
operations around the custodial requirements of the site. In es-
sence, the custodial services are supportive to the site's prime func-
tion of public service. For this reason, many areas have moved
toward interpretive staffing.

I v/ould define interpretive staffing as the selection of key staff .
members with a view to their playing a basic role in communicating
the park story effectively to the visitor. For the small, isolated
"one man" development, the adoption of the interpretive mode of
staffing may well mean that the interpreter must also be young
enough, energetic enough, and realistic enough to handle at least
some of the custodial chores himself, before or after the hours of
heavy visitation, or even sandwiched between groups of visitors in
the lighter travel season. Usually careful selection will make it
easier to find an interpreter who will handle basic routine maintain-
ence work than it is to find a custodian who possesses the requisite
public contact skills to also handle interpretation. I would venture
at this point that if one must make a choice, then get the interpreter.
If necessary, the maintainence chores can be contracted out or oth-
erwise handled with less than full-time personnel. Obviously I
regard the interpreter as the key man and interpretation as the pri-
mary business at any manned historic site. Until such time as the
site may develop so large a staff as to require specialized manage-
ment personnel to coordinate a broad range of staff activities.

Once committed to an interpretive development at a historic site,
the managing agency must engage in an appropriate amount of re-
search while the project is still in the planning stages. The expend-
iture of sufficient funds for adequate and meaningful research for a

HISTORIC SITES INTERPRETATION 263

historical development appears to be a rarity even at this date.
Few other phases of development are so hard to sell to managers
and to legislative committees. This should not be so! If we accept
the end product of the historical park as effective interpretive serv-
ice, and if we accept the idea that a public body engaged in inter-
pretation has a moral obligation for accuracy and objectivity in its
presentations, then research is a must. To do less is to engage in
pure showmanship or in propaganda. It should be evident on
reflection, that virtually any interpretive effect is an act of general-
ization. No generalization nor set of generalizations can be more
accurate nor more meaningful than the sum of the data upon which
they are based. Hence the heavy responsibility for competent re-
search as a component of interpretive planning. Research must be
dofie in sufficient depth not only to detail the events which the park
commemorates, but to set them effectively in their historic context.
This has not always been done in the past. I would observe that a
majority of the historical signs and markers in the high plains and
Rockies are deficient in their interpretive depth and accuracy be-
cause of this failure to expend sufficient time on the research that
preceded their composition. Once cast in bronze or aluminum or
chisled in granite, these errors become on the one hand, contin-
uously embarrasing in the face of an increasingly sophisticated
public, and on the other hand damnably expensive to replace when
the facts are really known. Really thorough preliminary research
as a prelude to any interpretive planning is in reahty a low-cost
item, viewed over the life of a developm.ent.

Who should perform the research for a historic site develop-
ment? Since it seems wise for much really basic research to pre-
cede intensive planning and development, it is clear that the man-
aging agency must assume the responsibihty for seeing that effec-
tive research is done at this stage. Ideally, the agency should have
at least some personnel sufficiently competent in history of the
region to be able to manage and supervise research work through-
out the jurisdiction involved. As a practical matter it may be de-
sirable for the real detail work on a given project to be assigned to
specialized researchers in the agency or put out on contract to
competent scholars. Most agencies find it difficult to secure suffi-
cient positions to allow for a full staff of research specialists. This
situation is so widespread as to indicate that in the future a major
portion of this basic research will be done on contract. So long as
competent scholars are selected, and really adequate funds for re-
search provided, the results should be gratifying. Planners who
make use of this contract research must, however, have sufficient
research know-how themselves to enable them to effectively make
use of data gathered and presented in a professional manner. _Re-
search of a continuing nature seems desirable, too. This research
should supplement the basic research documents prepared as a pre-

264 ANNALS OF WYOMING

liminary to planning of a development. It may include archeolog-
ical projects, architectural research as a prelude to restoration or
reconstruction of a historic building, research for details needed to
answer the growing volume of visitor questions, research on which
to base segments of a broad interpretive publications program. I
am convinced that it is desirable to have much of this continuing
research program carried on by the area interpreters. Such proj-
ects can often be completed in light travel seasons, and make
efficient use of the interpreter's time. Certain intrinsic merits of
the continuing research program, however, would seem to warrant
such assignments for the interpreter, even if it means keeping his
workload of administrative detail and red tape to a minimum by
separating administrative and interpretive assignments. First, there
is no better way for the interpreter to gain a kiiowledge in depth of
his subject and his area, than by being in continual touch with the
original source materials involved. Second, this detailed knowl-
edge will give him the fund of data readily on tap to answer the
inquiries of visitors, which seem year by year to increase in their
scope and depth.

It has been said all too often in recent years that the interpreter
should be primarily a communicator rather than a researcher. I
think we should set our recruiting sights higher than either of these
goals. We should seek interpreters who are possessed of both
public contact skills and research skills in adequate quantity for
the job at hand. No researcher can be truly effective in history
unless he can communicate well, for so much historical research
depends on effective communication between researchers. Cer-
tainly a communicator without research skills is little more than a
slightly more sophisticated audio-visual device! There are many
young people today who possess a nicely balanced combination of
scholarship and public contact skills, and it is these people we
should seek out for our interpretive work. Neither the medieval
cloistered scholar nor the wheeling-and-dealing ad-man wUl do
the job.

Young people with the requisite experience, education and ma-
turity for career park-interpretive work will typically be in their
mid-twenties and possessed of two college degrees at the beginning
of their career. If we are to recruit them successfully, then we must
offer interesting, challenging, meaningful work. We must offer a
maximum of constructive opportunity, and a minimum of bureau-
cratic routine. We must be able to keep them in touch with both
their subject field and with the public. We must offer living con-
ditions well above the poverty level that long passed for park
quarters. We must offer salaries that start in the professional
range, for they will have a comparable investment in education to
the lawyer, the architect, the veterinarian, the dentist, and the CPA.
It seems obvious that many agencies wiU have to revise their posi-

HISTORIC SITES INTERPRETATION 265

tion qualifications and their salary scales to secure the kind of
personnel they really need.

Over the years a number of tools and techniques have been de-
veloped for use of the park interpreter. Some of these have been
developed in the park experience. More of them have been bor-
rowed or adapted from the field of education, or from the various
media of mass communications. Included are signs and markers,
museum exhibits, publications, automatic or semi-automatic audio
devices, and full-scale audio-visual presentations. It seems impor-
tant to attempt to define the respective roles of these media. It is
perhaps equally important at the outset, to point out that they are
all only tools for the interpreter, and that no single tool nor combi-
nation of tools can at this point be termed a panacea for interpretive
problems. This reality seems an essential one for good interpreta-
tion, since each generation of interpreters seems faced with a hand-
ful of energetic and well-meaning devotees and prophets of special-
ized media, and these savants are usually each convinced that he
has the solution, be it publications, exhibits, or sound-and-light
programs. Interpreters and managers alike may be well served by
a healthy skepticism of such charlatans. Ideally, the interpreter
must be prepared to experiment, and skilled at identifying the use-
ful elements of some new media or technique and integrating it
successfully with proven approaches to achieve an efficient and
economical interpretive package at any given area.

Oldest of the interpretive media for historic sites are without
doubt the historic signs and markers. At the time these basically
simple interpretive devices are open to more improvement than any
other presently available media. Until a quarter century ago,
historic signs and markers over most of the U.S. were only removed
in time and scale from the monuments of antiquity. The high
plains and rockies are still liberally dotted with the markers of this
period, a school more monumental than interpretive. The granite
tablet, the marble shaft, the stone obelisk and the cast metal plaque
abound. They have a look of history about them, deriving from
their traditional forms. They are expensive, perhaps to the point
of being a symbol of conspicious consumption in an affluent so-
ciety. That they possess some basic disadvantages is abundantly
clear. Their very solidity of late seems a challenge to urban bar-
barism of our age. Worse yet, they do not lend themselves to
presenting a written message of any depth, nor illustrative material
of any really intelligible kind.

The monumental approach to interpretive signs and markers
seems outdated at this point. What should be the characteristics of
good signs and markers? What functions can they effectively
fulfill?

The role of the sign or marker or outdoor exhibit seems to be
that of supplementing the work of the human interpreter. It does
this by being out there at various locations, when the interpreter in

266 ANNALS OF WYOMING

an understaffed area can be in only one place at a time, while the
visitors can be well scattered over the park. The sign or marker
can provide a written message at a level that will reach the visitor
of average literacy. In modem materials it can also offer many
other things, such as maps, geological sections, sequence pictures,
or actual photographs of "how it looked here in the old days." It
will both supplement the information an interpreter has time to
provide and will stimulate further intelligent questions on the part
of visitors.

Good signs and markers should have a reasonable life span but
be easy to replace when damaged, worn, or outdated by continuing,
research. They should be made of materials or combinations of
materials that will fulfill these requirements and help to tell the
story effectively. Routed aluminum plate, metalphoto, safety glass,
plastics, stainless steel, printer material, actual photographic prints,
plant samples, artifacts, models all seem to have their place in
various situations.

Museum exhibits have proven themselves an effective adjunct to
interpretation in many historic site developments. Only museum
exhibits can successfully and efficiently relate the hardware of the
past to the historic experience. In many instances this hardware
is a product of a particular historic experience, as with the "long
rifle" and the trade musket. In many instances the hardware itself
has been a determining factor in the success or failure of an his-
toric enterprise. The railroad and the telegraph offer many items
of this kind. Graphic materials and modest amounts of interpretive
text all have their place in museum exhibits so long as they are
utilized to set the stage for the artifacts that form the heart of the
display. The breaking plow and a turned furrow of real sod are
much more meaningful against a background of endless prairie or
of an illustration of the sod house. The art work of an exhibit or
of an exhibit sequence should serve primarily to point out salient
features and to tie the exhibit elements into a coherent whole. It
should not dominate either the artifacts or the graphic materials
used.

What is the useful life span of a museum exhibit at a historic
site? This will depend upon many factors. In general, though a
really good exhibit can serve until it needs refinishing or until a
really more meaningful exhibit to tell a specific story can be de-
signed. Repeat visitation moves on a slower cycle to the historic
site than to the metropolitan museum, and there may not be the
need of constantly changing exhibits at such a site. On the other
hand the twenty-year replacement cycle for exhibits used by one
federal agency for a number of years seems unreaUstic if only in
that it does not permit exhibits to have a fresh and live look. The
well done exhibit does have its place, and it has several unique
advantages over other interpretive media. The visitor can see the

HISTORIC SITES INTERPRETATION 267

exhibits at his own pace. He can absorb much or Httle as he
chooses. A good exhibit can serve both the kindergartner and the
graduate student, the general visitor and the buff. It goes on doing
its job when personnel shortages, power failures, mechanical
"bugs" and electronic idiosyncrasies may put other interpretive
media out of action.

Publications are an important part of an overall interpretive pro-
gram. They can serve two really basic on-site functions: that of
providing basic orientation data that the visitor can carry around
with him for reference, and that of providing special guidance for
interpretive trails and tours. Publications which go beyond these
aims must be regarded as supplemental, the sort of thing that a
visitor will take home with him to read, or will hand to a friend or
relative. To serve these ends, basic publications should be up-to-
date in content, based on sound information and professional re-
search, written for the site's average audience, and printed at
moderate cost so as to achieve maximum distribution.

Steady increases in the cost of interpretive manpower over the
past quarter century have led more than anything else to the use of
recorded messages of various types in many different kinds of
audio-installations. Managers have most often turned to such
devices for orientation or for supplemental interpretation when
forced to do so by the rising cost of manpower. Extensive field
experience has shown, however, that such devices have special
utility at a historic site. These message repeating machines are
most useful in dispensing basic, repetitive information that most
visitors will need. By this, relieving the live interpreter from the
deadry, dull routine of presenting essentially canned information,
the machine frees him for the role for which he is best suited, that~
of providing supplemental information suited to a particular visitor
or group of visitors. It also frees him to answer visitor questions
with a depth, flexibility and sophistication impossible at this point
in the most advanced machines.

Capturing the movement, the color, the drama of a particular
historic event, or setting the stage of context effectively for an
understanding of the material presented by some or aU of the above
media can often be done best with a well prepared audio-visual
presentation. Sound motion pictures and synchronized tape slide
presentations are both highly useful. The motion picture gives the
most true-to-life presentation for relatively brief historic events,
but is the most expensive media available, with production costs for
documentary type fihns running above $2,000 per minute of screen
time, and replacement cost (around $10.00) per minute of screen
time running for each standby or replacement film. Slide tape
presentations are more easily altered, better adapted to use of
documentary materials, photos, and art objects, and cost about
1/10 as much over all. They cannot, of course, capture motion
and present it so effectively. Other sophisticated a-v media are

268 ANNALS OF WYOMING

either so clearly experimental or so costly at this time that they may
be out of reach of the historic site developer, but they will bear
watching in the future. Videotape and the closed circuit.television
system seem to be the runners to watch in this field.

All of the audio-visual media seem to function best when well-
integrated in use with other interpretive media. All of the audio
and audio-visual media are limited to some degree in their useful-
ness of the individual park by frequent breakdowns and the high
cost of competent maintainence service, in remote locations.

Most manned historic site developments will include a combina-
tion of some or many of the above mentioned media. No two
historic site developments really ever present the same precise
combination of management realities. We should not expect two
such sites to be well served by the same precise package of inter-
pretive media. The planner and the manager and the site's own
interpreters have the obligation to work together to evolve the com-
bination of media that will provide the maximum of service and of
effective interpretation for the dollars invested in the site. Some-
times the effectiveness of a device can best be determined by on-site
experiment. Changing volume or character of visitation can alter
the relative efficiency of various devices in a given setting. For
these reasons the site's interpreters and their supervisors in higher
offices must be alert to changing conditions and ready to modify
interpretive offerings accordingly.

Several basic levels of development have such a basic impact on
the visiting public that changes between them seem to form irrev-
ocable commitments on the part of the managing agency. Usually
public reception of improvements is such that on passing to a new
level of development the managing agency has a further choice of
refining and stabilizing development at the level, or of going on to
another level. Seldom will the pubhc accept a retreat.

As an example: Suppose a site, unmarked and unidentified for
years, is marked with some sort of monument or interpretive sign.
Generally it is going to have to stay marked, and the manager in-
volved has his choice of simply maintaining the existing sign or of
installing a more accurate or a more attractive one.

The line between the non-manned and the manned site seems to
be a similar one, though the public will accept a broad range of
variation year to year in the precise nature and utilization of the
interpretive manpower available.

Sites with historic buildings face another critical decision line in
today's park operating context. The support for preservation and
even restoration of historic buildings comes fairly easily nowadays.
So easily in many cases that agencies are under frequent pressure
to preserve structures that really have no intrinsic nor associated
historic significance. Some persons have a basically antiquarian
approach to buildings, and seek to preserve a structure simply
because it is old, rather than for reasons of historic significance.

HISTORIC SITES INTERPRETATION 269

The old buildings business is expensive, and for most agencies a
really hard and professional evaluation of a given structure is
worthwhile. The preserved or restored structure can be inter-
preted in some depth as is, or the critical decision line can be
crossed with a commitments to refurnish the building to some par-
ticularly significant period of occupancy. To cross this line takes
the managing agency into a whole new dimension of interpretive
opportunity, but also into a whole new complex of management
realities.

For certain buildings at particular sites, refurnishing can capture
for the visitor the physical setting of a historic event, or the material
context of a way of life as little else can. This is not to say that
every room of every structure at every site should be refurnished.
Some selectivity is in order, to avoid the trite, the repetitious and
the plainly fatiguing in the visitor's experience.

The manager will see in a refurnished structure new costs, new
maintenance problems, a wholly different protection situation, and
the need for more and perhaps different interpretive personnel.

For the visitor the refurnished structure will lure him to the site
more easily and more often, and will generally make him stay
appreciably longer. He will likely want "to see the houses" in all
kinds of weather and at any time of year. He will not be content
to look at the old fort or village from the picture window of a
museum. He will be a better salesman for your project than ever
before, he will question your interpreters more often and in greater
depth, but he is most of all going to "want to see those houses."

Refurnishing projects seem capable of attracting sizeable blocks
of privately donated funds. The manager faced with such oppor-
tunity after years of dealing with a tight-fisted legislative body
should approach a possible furnishing project with both enthusiasm
and a cautious realism. Funding for a furnishing project should
take into account not only the cost of specimens, but the cost of
research, planning, procurement and installation. The completed
project must be viewed not as a goal, but as a beginning, and must
be realistically funded in terms of interpretation, maintainence,
protection and administrative overhead. Unless all these consider-
ations are kept in mind, your angel's sugar lump may prove dis-
turbing, if not indigestible.

At an earlier point I talked about the kind of interpreters one
needs at a historic site. What is true of the career interpreter is
also true of the seasonal employee. There are some additional
considerations. The seasonal interpreter must possess maturity,
but he must have, if anything, more enthusiasm than the career
man! He will be working longer hours in direct contact with the
puT^lic, for lower pay, and in less varied assignments, with less
scholarly and career motivations. Enthusiasm, morale and good
training are the only things that will keep him at it, doing a good
job for even one season.

270 ANNALS OF WYOMING

It is in utilization of seasonal personnel that our present and last
irrevocable decision line seems to lie. Private historical groups
have experimented for many years in their own operating context
with the employment of period costumed interpreters and with per-
iod costumed specialists demonstrating weapons, tools, and tech-
niques of the past. Publicly managed historic sites have expanded
their experiments in this field in recent years with such favorable
public response that I think in every case they intend to continue
and to expand this type of seasonal staffing. Here too lies a new
dimension of interpretive opportunity and a new range of manage-
ment reahty!

The mere sight of the period costumed interpreter at a historic
site or building tends to attract the visitor more strongly and to hold
his attention longer (even if he is only attracted by the opportunity
for more life in the snapshots and shdes he takes.) Our own
experience in this field leads to several observations. First, that
neither the interpreter nor the manager nor the seasonal employee
so costumed should get the impression that his role is that of an
actor. The costumed interpreter is much more than this. He does
have to be able to act well enough to learn to handle the costume
and the weapons, tools and equipment with proficiency. He is,
however, in direct contact with his audience. They will expect an
effective orientation. They will ask questions in such scope and
depth that the interpreter must be well informed, quick thinking
and gifted at ad lib explanations. We find that the audience will
expect much more in depth of knowledge and in skills from the
period costumed interpreter. They apparently make some allow-
ances for the uniformed civil-servant, but not for the costumed
individual.

Assuming the commitment, the funds, and the capability for
training exist, and competent personnel are available, then they
must be costumed and equipped. It seems essential that this cos-
tume and equipment must be of the same level of quality, authen-
ticity as our other interpretive presentations. Every audience will
have a few persons who can spot the makeshift, the inappropriate,
and the anachronistic, and who will take considerable pleasure in
so doing. If you can do it right from the outset, this will not be a
matter of concern. It costs no more to costume correctly than to
l-jdo so incorrectly.

; We believe that it will pay to put only part of your seasonal em-
ployees in costume even if abundant funds are available. My
reason for saying this, is that there are many jobs at a park that
seem more effectively done by men or women in your regular serv-
ice uniform. Particularly I refer to traffic control, law enforce-
ment, first aid, and the manning of information and sales counters.
Staffing levels at many parks are low enough so that some persons
may have to spend part of the day in costume and part of the day
in conventional uniform, according to the balance of activities in

HISTORIC SITES INTERPRETATION

271

the changing daily cycle of visitation. Your own particular situa-
tion wiU require experiment on this problem.

The planning of interpretive developments and the management
of interpretive services is never static and always challenging. I
can offer here no panaceas for your interpretive problems. One
can only say that there is broad variety available in a wide range of
complex media, and that telling the park story effectively and effi-
ciently will require the ability to plan carefully, to select and adapt
the best combination of media and techniques for your park, and
to do so with your eyes open to the realities involved in both spe-
cific choices and their interactions in your situation. ^ —

Zhe Mat Sitting Ml Wears

Told by Andrew Fox^
Edited by Patricia K. Ourada

INTRODUCTION

Much has been written about the life of Sitting Bull. His exploits, deeds,
adventures, wars, travels with William F. Cody, and other incidents of his
life have been popularized and widely publicized. Whatever turn his life
story takes, and whatever interpretation is given to his actions. Sitting Bull
remains a prominent figure in American history. Here is an accoimt of
personal drama to add color to the stories of those western favorites, Chief
Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill. The little story reproduced in this study was
found in the Walter S. Campbell Collection, in the Division of Manuscripts
at the University of Oklahoma Library.-

The Campbell Collection, consisting of 321 boxes, many oversized pieces,
and 3,000 photographs represents the private papers of the late Walter S.
Campbell, professor of creative writing at the University of Oklahoma for
forty years, 1912-1914, and 1919-1957. Throughout his lifetime, Walter
Campbell was a devoted student of Plains Indian history, and today he Ues
buried at the Custer Battlefield National Monument and Cemetery ". . .
among the Sioux warriors he respected and loved, and their white soldier
foes who provided him with the grist of the history he best wrote."^

In some of the pictures I had seen of Chief Sitting Bull one shows
him wearing a felt hat. The old chief hardly wears a hat and this
seemed to account for his scalp immune from baldheadedness.*
But he did wore a felt hat — the only one I have known him to
wear.^

People have asked where he had obtained this hat. To me, such
questions are simply absurd. Where did he get it? Did the gov-

1. Andrew Fox is identified by Walter Campbell as Sitting Bull's educat-
ed son-in-law. See Stanley Vestal [Walter S. Campbell], Sitting Bull:
Champion of the Sioux (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1932),
p. 282.

2. Andrew Fox, "The Hat Sitting Bull Wears," Campbell Collection, Box
104, Manuscript Division, University of Oklahoma Library.

3. Donald J. Berthrong, "Walter Stanley Campbell: Plainsman," Arizona
and the West, VII: 2 (Summer, 1965), 194.

4. Sitting Bull's hair was described frequently by men who met and inter-
viewed him. The following description appeared in the Detroit Evening
Journal, Septbember 5, 1885, (Campbell Collection, Box 73), when Sitting
Bull performed in that city with the Wild West: "His glossy black hair
reaches to his waist. He divides it in the middle and braids it on each side
very tightly. After this has been done the rawhide cords were bound tightly
about the braids, the ends suspending down each side of the warrior's chest."

5. This statement can be used to confirm the authenticity of the hat in
the accompanying photograph.

THE HAT SITTING BULL WEARS 273

ernment issue him the hat?^ Such questions! In the first place,
the government never issued a hat to any Indian, not even half as
good in quality as the hat Sitting Bull wears and, in value, I don't
think he would sell or dispose of this hat for anything.

When Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill became acquainted and
friendship formed, among other presents Buffalo Bill had bestowed
upon Sitting Bull, this particular hat was placed on the chief's head
by his white friend J This was done when the chief was traveling
with Buffalo Bill's circus in 1887.8

The old Chief valued this article of clothing very highly — not so
much for the hat itself but on account of the friend that had favored
him with this gift.

The old Chief at one time was asked about this hat replied as
follows: "My white friend, Buffalo Bill gave me this hat and I
have valued it very highly, for the hand that had placed this hat on
my head, had a friendly feeling toward me."^

He always wore this hat on all special occasions.

Walter Campbell, in his famous biography of Sitting BuU, tells
the following story for which he offers no documentation.

At the end of the season, Buffalo Bill gave him a gray circus
horse to which he had become attached, ^° and a big white som-

6. At the Standing Rock Agency at Fort Yates, North Dakota where
Sitting Bull lived from July, 1881 until his death December 15, 1890, there
was a bi-weekly ration day for the distribution of beef, foodstuffs, and
clothing. See "Report on Standing Rock Agency," by James McLaughlin,
Indian Agent, Sixtieth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs
to the Secretary of Interior (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1891), p. 332.

7. No other primary source of information could be located on the hat.
A telephone conversation with Mr. John Strickland, of the Buffalo Bill
Museum in Cody, Wyoming, December 13, 1968, revealed that the Mu-
seum has no information on this hat. Mr. Strickland extolled the gen-
erosity of Buffalo Bill, and said that the Museum would like to have the hat.

8. This date of 1887 is incorrect. Sitting Bull with ten of his tribesmen
worked with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show for four months during the
summer and early fall of 1885. Usher L. Burdick of North Dakota pos-
sesses the original contract, but he permitted it to be reproduced in the
Middle Border Bulletin, 111:2 (Autumn, 1943, pp. 1-2. Campbell Collec-
tion, Box 73. An excellent account of the Wild West Show is that by Henry
Blackman Sell and Victor Weybright, Buffalo Bill and the Wild West (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1955), 278 pp.

9. See the Campbell version of this story which accompanies this work,
and which is quoted by Don Russell in The Lives and Legends of Buffalo
Bill (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960), p. 317.

10. See verification for the gray horse. McLaughlin in the Standing
Rock Agency Report already cited states that Sitting Bull planned to escape
the soldiers on his "favorite horse." Vestal makes a similar report, but
identifies the horse as the gray circus horse. See Vestal, Sitting Bull,
pp. 294-95.

274 ANNALS OF WYOMING

brero/^ size 8/^ and sent him home with a warm feeling of friend-
ship for the Colonel, . . . Sitting Bull's horse attracted much atten-
iton at Standing Rock; it could do tricks, such as sitting down and
then raising one hoof. The hat the Chief wore only on state occa-
sions. In one of his photographs it is shown with a tiny American
Flag attached to the band^^ — a sign that he had fought against the
United States troops. One day one of his relatives wore this hat.^*
Sitting Bull lost his temper, and said, "My friend Long Hair gave
me this hat. I value it very highly, for the hand that placed it upon
my head had a friendly feeling for me." After that nobody ven-
tured to touch it.^^

11. Buffalo Bill wore a white Texan sombrero when hunting, and adopt-
ed this hat for his Wild West appearances. Outing, Sport-Adventiire-Travel-
Fiction, LXIX (October, 1916-March, 1917), 705. Campbell CoUection,
Box 73.

12. 'The Wild West," Boston Daily Globe, August 24, 1885, describes
Sitting Bull's appearance, and states that he had a large head, size 8.
Campbell Collection, Box 73.

The accompanying photograph is the only one in the Campbell Col-
lection of Sitting Bull in a hat. Note that there is no flag.

13. This version is not mentioned in the Andrew Fox account.

14. The Fox account says "My white friend, Buffalo Bill . . ."

15. Vestal, Sitting Bull, p. 251.

MMdlysis

of Scottish Population

By
Paul M. Edwards

In 1869 Wyoming's Governor John A. Campbell needed to
make some initial appointments required by the organic act. This
was necessary prior to the regular Territorial election scheduled
for September of 1869. The base for these poUtical appointments
was established by a census, the first of its kind, taken late in the
year. This census was conducted by U. S. Marshal Church Howe
and sixteen assistants and disclosed that Wyoming's total popula-
tion was 8,014 and was divided between Carbon, Laramie, Albany
and Carter Counties, with the citizens of the unorganized areas
being listed with Carter County.^ This 1869 figure was less than
half that suggested in previous years.

In 1870 the first official Wyoming census was taken under the
Federal decennial system and showed a population of 9,1 18.^ The
1880 census indicated a population of twice that, with a total citi-
zen count of 20,789.^ The amount of information that is available
from these early records is limited compared to what is available
now, but the records themselves do indicate trends and show some
very human facts. In searching the 1870 and 1880 census for
materials on the influence of the Scots in Wyoming I have collected
some interesting data concerning persons of immediate Scottish
descent.

There were more first generation Scots than might be expected.
The 1870 records showed a Scottish population of 137, about
1.5% of the total population. By 1880, however, this figure had
risen to 434, which is something over 2% and is an increase of
about 320% as against a total population increase of about 220% .
Of these 137 in 1870 the sexes were fairly equally divided with
fifty-nine females and seventy-eight males registered. By 1880,
the male population had increased by about 390% , to 305 with the
female increase only about 220%, to the figure 129. The oldest
Scot in 1870 was a man listed as sixty years of age. Ten years

1. Larson, T. A. History of Wyoming. University of Nebraska Press,
Lincoln, 1965, p. 7 L

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

276 ANNALS OF WYOMING

later, however, the oldest Scot was seventy-eight, female, with a
large number over the age of 65. The youngest listed was four
years old in the 1870 census, and three years of age in 1880. The
average age was a somewhat old thirty-one in 1870, and this
jumped to thirty-four by 1880.

The 1870 census lists Wyoming's Scottish residents as being
employed in forty-five different occupations including housekeep-
ers, jewelers, machinists, carpenters, miners, laborers, cooks and
clerks. One young man who was obviously not optimistic enough
to call himself a miner settled on the term "gold seeker." The
largest number of these 137 Scots were employed as miners, with
nearly 40% of them, some sixty-eight, in this position. Surprising-
ly enough only a few were listed as laborers, only eleven which is
less than 9% most, were engaged in some semiskilled occupation.

In 1880 the picture had changed a great deal. Among the 434
Scots, eighty different occupations were listed. These ran from
miners (reduced to fifty now, less than 19% ), laborers (increased
to forty-six but still less than 9%, herders (an increase of from one
to twenty-seven), to such interesting frontier occupations as pris-
oner (local jail), freighter, stenographer, actor, domestic servant,
two who listed their occupation as gentleman, a nurse, a salt manu-
facturer, one officer and sixteen enlisted men and one young Chey-
enne resident, named Puss Newport, who listed her occupation as
prostitute. The "gold seeker" is not to be found in the 1880 census
under any listing and must be presumed to have moved on to better
"diggin's." One older lady, well aware of her station in life, lists
her occupation as "mother-in-law." Of those listed in 1880 only
one, a miner, is recorded as being unable to either read or write;
even Archibald McYue, whose occupation is listed as vagrant, is
reportedly literate.

There seems to have been a great deal of movement among the
Scots. It is very hard to read the hand-written 1870 census, but as
far as the names can be checked only 35 of those listed among the
137 Scots on the 1870 census are reported on the 1880 census.
This would seem to indicate that while there were only 434 Scots in
the territory in 1880 that this was an increase of 332 new emigrants
rather than the 297 suggested by first reading of the figures. Where
the others have gone, we can only guess.

Contributors

Carl M. Moore, Assistant Professor of Speech at Kent State
University, Kent, Ohio, has attended Texas Western College at
El Paso where he received his B.A. degree, and completed work
on his M.A. at the University of Arizona. He is presently working
toward his Ph.D. through Wayne State University at Detroit. He
is a member of professional and honorary societies including the
Speech Association of America. Collecting political campaign but-
tons is one of his hobbies. Mr, and Mrs. Moore have a one-year-
old son.

Edmond L. Escolas, Professor of Business Administration at
the University of Wyoming, has been a resident of Wyoming since
1954. He is a graduate of Assumption College, in his home town
of Worcester, Massachusetts, and received his M.A. and Ph.D.
degrees from Clark University. He is a member of several pro-
fessional societies. He is married and he and his wife have three
daughters and two sons.

Walter N. Bate, Corpus Christi, Texas, is a member of the
Texas State Historical Association, the South Texas Historical
Association, the Nueces County History Society and the S. A. R.
A former tax auditor, for the state of Texas, he has been retired
since 1958.

James C. Murphy, presently teaching in Lillooet, British Co-
lumbia, is a former Cheyenne resident, having taught in the junior
and senior high schools from 1938 to 1961. He also taught Arap-
aho children when he lived on the Wind River Reservation during
1928 and 1929, and again from 1933 to 1935. He earned his
B.A. at the University of Wyoming. The Arapahoe study pub-
lished in this issue was written as his master's thesis at the Univer-
sity of British Columbia, where he received his M.A. in 1966.

Robert A. Murray is a consultant on historical projects and
historical properties. Prior to that time he was associated with the
National Park Service. He has served as Museum Curator and
Chief Historian at Fort Laramie National Historic Site, historian at
Pipestone National Monument and ranger-historian at Custer Bat-
tlefield. He has published numerous articles and books, the most
recent of which was Military Posts in the Powder River Country
of Wyoming, 1865-1894.

278 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Patricia K. Ourada is currently working toward a Ph.D. at the
University of Oklahoma. She is on a sabbatical leave from Boise
State College, Boise, Idaho, where she has been an associate pro-
fessor of history since 1962. Prior to her position at Boise State
College, she taught high school for 12 years in North Dakota and
Minnesota. She received her B.A. degree from the College of
St. Catherine, St. Paul, Minnesota, and her M.A. degree from the
University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.

Paul M. Edvv^ards spent the last academic year teaching and
researching at St, Andrews College, St. Andrews, Scotland. Ed-
wards received his B.A. degree from Washburn University and an
M.A. from the University of South Dakota. Following his work in
II* Scotland, he returned to Graceland College, Iowa, where he is

Kii assistant professor of history and philosophy. He is former chief

jSlI of the Museum Division of the Wyoming State Archives and His-

i*'! torical Department, and has served as a museum assistant with the

Kansas Historical Society.

llll

f^ook Keuiews

High Road to Promontory: Building the Central Pacific Across the
High Sierra. By George Kraus. (Palo Alto: American West
Publishing Company, 1969) Index. lUus. 317 pp. $7.95.

This is a centennial history. That is, it was occasioned by the
enthusiasm and interest of the Centennial. The book would un-
doubtedly have appeared without the Centennial, however, as the
author has spent more than ten years gathering material and
writing.

It is written for the general reader, the Centennial market, rather
than for the expert. For this audience it gives an adequate account
of the Central Pacific and its activities. It deals in passing with the
financial problems of the promoters and developers and the effect
that they had on the progress of the road, and construction plans.
The major personalities, the Big Four of Huntington, Hopkins,
Stanford and Crocker and the original engineer Judah are given
considerable space. In addition the appendix contains data on
these five and another five leaders in building the railroad. The
strength of the book, and its major space, is devoted to the con-
struction of the railroad and overcoming the problems of con-
struction.

To make the story much more effective the author and publisher
have lavishly illustrated the book with contemporary photographs,
mostly taken by Alfred A. Hart, who was hired by the Central
Pacific in 1864 and followed it through the construction phase to
Promontory. There are about 150 illustrations. Some are repro-
ductions of advertisements, formal photographs of prominent indi-
viduals and other general material, but well over 100 are pictures
of railroad construction, both of constructed features as trestles
and bridges and of work in progress.

Unfortunately, while the photographs make the book much more
interesting, the reproduction of photographs and the quality of
bookmaking in general is not of a quality to give the kind of artistic
production that makes a truly satisfactory memento of the Cen-
tennial. The placement of pictures, the legends connected with
them, the effect of type faces used, leading, paper and other factors
make a reasonably good, but not an outstanding book.

The author has gathered interesting and much original material
and the illustrations add greatly to the book. But overall its effect
is disappointing. In part this is because the author is openly and
unashamedly a partisan of the company. Also, while construction
is well handled, other elements of road building are less surely

280 ANNALS OF WYOMING

treated. It is a useful addition to material on the Central Pacific
but it is not the definitive book one hopes a centennial history
might be.

University of Cincinnati W. D. Aeschbacher

The Gunjighter: Man or Myth. By Joseph G. Rosa. (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1969) Index. lUus. 211pp.
$5.95.

The English writer, Joseph G. Rosa, has followed up his widely-
praised biography of Wild Bill Hickok with a study of the gun-
fighter in legend and reality. He rightly assumes his subject to be
perennially fascinating. The actual importance of the gunfighter
may have become inflated down the years, but there is more general
interest in him than in other great symbolic figures of the West like
the cowboy and the Plains Indian.

Mr. Rosa skillfully demolishes the myth of the gunfighter, but
neither debunks nor hero-worships the men behind the myth. His
summing up of the lethal breed is masterly.

"The qualities they shared — ^pride, arrogance, and indifference
to human life — and the destructive emotions that drove them —
fear, anger, resentment, and jealousy — place them well and truly
among men and not immortals."

Unfortunately, and in view of its title, the book is too Kansas-
orientated, and there is far too much about guns in it. As well as
expertly commenting on the technique of gunfighting, Mr. Rosa
self-indulgently explores backwaters of gun history and gun lore.
His admittedly first-rate picture of the Kansas cowtowns leads him
to neglect the Southwest. The O.K. Corral is featured, but the
importance of Reconstruction Texas in breeding the gunfighter is
not brought out fully enough. Even Bill Longley only just scrapes
in and Cullen Baker is not mentioned at all.

Mr. Rosa claims that only two famous gunfighters, Hickok and
Masterson, lived lives resembling their legends. It depends what
one means by famous. The great Texas Ranger captains often
matched their legends, and how the author, who rightly scorns the
myth of the classic confrontation between Hero and Villain, could
leave out Commodore Perry Owens' epic battle with the Blevans
family and the Homeric fight at Blazer's Mill is a mystery.

The book is well-documented, but the author sometimes relies on
outdated secondary sources. He cites Cunningham's grand Trig-
gernometry for his account of the Short-Courtright fight when there
is more recent scholarship available. The statement that six to
seven million Texas longhoms arrived in south-central Kansas in
the summer of 1871 is so incredible that one can only assume it
got into print by some appalling mischance.

BOOK REVIEWS 281

The book remains a thoughtful, enjoyable and valuable study,
however, and most readers will probably forgive it for not quite
living up to its title.

Wimbledon, England. Robin May

Some Pathways in Twentieth Century History : Essays in Honor of
Reginald Charles McGrane. Ed. by Daniel R. Beaver. (De-
troit: Wayne University Press, 1969) Index. 313 pp.
$11.95.

This collection of nine essays and a biographical sketch, all by
Ph.D.s and former students of Dr. McGrane, is actually a readable
and enlightening glimpse of U.S. history between 1898 and 1945.
The link with Wyoming is slender, consisting simply of the fact that
Dr. McGrane, a one-time fellow student at the University of Chi-
cago with Dr. Laura A. White, long head of History at the Univer-
sity of Wyoming, was a visiting professor on Wyoming's campus in
1918, and here taught his first course in American History, his life-
time preoccupation.

Dr. McGrane, long professor of history at the University of Cin-
cinnati, produced a number of books in his field, including the
standard edition of "The Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle," plus
many papers and some thirty-five biographical articles for the
Dictionary of American Biography. His students paid high tribute
to his passion for integrity and accuracy in the writing of history.

Though these papers are in part for the specialist, they will in-
terest any student of our more recent past. The first two papers
precede World War I, in that the first deals with our 1898-1900
"open door" policy in China, still a topic of great concern; and the
second with the part played by Theodore Roosevelt in the election
of William Howard Taft. A third regards the contribution of
General George Goethals to the task of directing military supplies
in World War I as equal in importance to that in the construction
of the Panama Canal.

The next two papers touch on British history. The first studies
the influence of the British Labour Party upon the peace terms that
followed World War I, and that party's demands for disarmament
and a League of Nations, both aims defeated by the ruthless logic
of political realities. Equally significant, and equally doomed to
failure, was the work of Leopold Emery, now all but forgotten, who
devoted his efforts to forging a massive economic empire to unite
Great Britain and the Dominions in a productive race to challenge
the United States. His scheme was defeated by Dominion demands
for autonomy, labor's defense of free trade, and a pacifist oppo-
sition to imperial ambitions.

The collection concludes with three papers dealing with America

282 ANNALS OF WYOMING

in World War I. The first reviews Franklin Roosevelt's secret ef-
forts to stave off that war, though hampered by American isola-
tionism and his unwillingness to disrupt his domestic program, plus
Great Britain's embarassment at Italy's African campaign and her
knowledge that she was not prepared to risk a war. Thus Roose-
velt's congratulatory telegram to Chamberlain, "Good man." The
second surveys the American "Arsenal of Democracy," a Roose-
veltian phrase, its limited aid to the anti-Axis powers before Pearl
Harbor, and its phenomenal productive capacity thereafter. The
last paper turns to the Tehran Conference of 1943, to demonstrate
that much that the Yalta Conference of two years later is known for
was actually discussed at Tehran.

Even so sketchy a glance at the contents, then, of this book will
indicate that good history, as someone said, "unlearns" the more
popular assumptions, and, in the hands of competent writers, as
these men all are, may provide valuable evidence for the guidance
of present and future.

University of Wyoming Wilson O. Clough

The Cousin Jacks: The Cornish in America. By A. L. Rowse.
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969) 451 pages,
$8.95.

Few Americans are aware of the role that Cornish people have
played in American history. Perhaps this is because they have
been miners or workers with their hands rather than writers or
publicizers of their deeds. They deserve more notice, and it is
their importance in our history that Professor A. L. Rowse, a most
literate Oxford don and Cornishman, has set out to depict.

Who were these Cousin Jacks, as they have been called, who
immigrated from the small, most southwestern area of England?
In the first two chapters, the author outlines their Celtic back-
grounds, the origins of their names, and their most apparent char-
acteristics. The remainder of the volume tracks down the where-
abouts and doings of many Cornish families and individuals in the
varied areas of America. The treatment is chronological — begin-
ning with the earliest settlements in Virginia and New England and
terminating with the taming of the Far West.

Because the greatest number of Cornish people who came to
America were miners, the largest communities were in Pennsyl-
vania, Minnesota, California, Colorado, and Nevada. Though
individualistic, the Cornish were gregarious and community minded
once settled in the New World. They brought with them some of
their cultural baggage: the Methodist Church, their political con-
servatism (most would vote Republican), and their love of folk
lore and hymns. Few Cornish men were strikers; labor radicalism

BOOK REVIEWS 283

they left to their Irish cousins. For the most part they were (and
are) a contented lot and have been patriotic Americans who never
wished to forget "from whence they were digged."

This is an entertaining book. It is well written, witty, and easy
to read. The author corrals all sorts of stories, yams, and hearsay
to add to his lively narrative. Along the way, his friendly en-
emies— the Irish, the politicans, and the imperialists — take a beat-
ing. And the Puritans, Quakers, and Mormons fare none too well,
but Professor Rowse, as a good Cornishman, is much more gentle
with the Methodists,

Unfortunately, not all the author's views are convincing. He
overstresses the importance of Hugh Peter among the Puritans, and
his views on the realism of Bret Harte's mining stories would not be
accepted by many students of Western literature. More important,
he overplays the identity consciousness of the Cornish people.
Other immigrant groups — the Irish, the Italians, the Spanish, and
the Basques — have been just as conscious of their heritage and
have been just as tenacious in trying to hold on to it in new sur-
roundings. One wishes, too, that the author had refrained from
listing so many Cornish names throughout his book. Some pages
are merely lists of Cornish family names. If every family men-
tioned in the book purchases it, the author will make money.

But a major purpose of the volume is carried out successfully:
to show how one group of immigrants has acclimated itself to the
American scene and how it has managed, at the same time, to keep
hold of the "old ways." This achievement alone makes this book
a worthwhile one. The footnotes evidence wide and varied re-
search, and research needs are listed for those who wish to pursue
further the ideas and men that Professor Rowse introduces.

Dartmouth College Richard W. Etulain

Hanover, N. H.

Pumpkin Seed Point. By Frank Waters. (Chicago: Sage Books,
Swallow Press, 1969) 175 pp. $6.00.

The author spent three years among the Hopi Indians of north-
em Arizona recording much of their religious beliefs and philos-
ophy. The results of this research were published as Book of the
Hopi (New York: Viking Press, 1963). In the Foreword to
Pumpkin Seed Point, Waters states that "The present book is a
personal narrative of my inner and outer experiences in this sub-
terranean world of Indian America." The result is a curious mix-
ture of historical interpretation, ethnology, reUgion, mysticism, and
personal narrative.

The Hopis have long been known as the most secretive, with-
drawn, and least "progressive" of the many tribes of American

284 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Indians. Living on, or near, three bleak mesas in the forbidding
land of the Colorado plateau, they have stubbornly resisted the
efforts of the white man, both Spanish and Anglo, to bring them
into the contemporary world. The author says (p. xii) this was
out of a "sense of inferiority as an impoverished minority." While
some have been baptized into the Christian Church, the Christian-
ity of most converts seems to be but a veneer over a dark, myster-
ious form of animism. Like many other reUgious groups, the
Hopis are convinced that they have the only true religion and way
of life. They are waiting the coming of Pahna — the lost white
brother — which will signal the destruction of the white man and all
that he stands for, leaving only the pure, true Hopis to repopulate
the world.

Basically the book tells the interesting story of the author's diffi-
culties in dealing with these highly suspicious people. He had
trouble getting the older people to talk of their beliefs so that they
might be tape recorded and then transcribed by typewriter. It was
a long time before he was allowed to witness the secret ceremonials
and get an explanation of the symbolism of the ceremonies and the
paraphernalia. The author also limns the confUct, both external
and internal, of those Hopis who have accepted greater or lesser
amounts of the white man's ways and culture. He tells of two Hopi
children "sharp and avid to learn" that were forbidden to go to
school because their father, a Traditionalist, had been in trouble
with the white man's law and the bureaucracy of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs and thus they "faced the prospect of growing up
uneducated."

Scattered throughout the book are long, introspective passages
in which the author analyzes his own dreams and impressions. He
also does the same for others. For example (p. 67) he says that
the decimation of the buffalo herds came about "Not for sport or
profit alone, but to indulge a wanton lust for killing. . ." If there
had been no market for buffalo hides, the farmers on the Great
Plains might still be having trouble raising their crops. Other long
passages are devoted to comparison and correlation of the Hopi
beliefs with those of the Toltec and Aztec civilizations and even to
the Spanish-Portugese legend of the seven cities of the Lost Atlan-
tis. As fundamentally a fiction writer. Waters tends to overstate
cases for the sake of impact, as when he says that "radioactive
fallout ... is laying waste wide swaths around the whole planet."
He also talks about dinosaur tracks "imprinted in the smooth vol-
canic rock floor of the canyon. This must have been the first
'hot foot.' "

It is as a historian that Waters is at his weakest. Out of sym-
pathy for the aborigines of the Western Hemisphere, he completely
distorts the story of the conquest of Mexico by Cortez. The story
of the reception given by the Hopis to Pedro Tovar in 1540, pre-
sumably based on Hopi legend, is greatly at variance with the writ-

BOOK REVIEWS 285

ten record left by the Spaniards. Although admitting that the
Aztec "barbarians" overran the great Toltec empire and converted
their religion to a bloody saturnalia of human sacrifice he says that
Aztec civilization was the "greatest civilization in pre-Columbian
America."

In the end he says that after the white man has mended his ways
in some undisclosed manner, the Indians "will understand that
universal truths cannot be preserved as the exclusive property of
any one tribe or race." Some Christian churches might take note
of this statement.

While the name Frank Waters may sell this book, a historian
must classify it as a curio.

Tucson, Arizona Henry P. Walker

Tomboy Bride. By Harriet Fish Backus. (Boulder: Pruett Press,
1969) Illus. 273 pp. $6.50.

As the young bride of a Colorado miner in the early 1900s,
Harriet Fish Backus confronted situations of severe weather, prim-
itive living conditions and other colorful episodes for which her
San Francisco home had not prepared her.

However, in her autobiography. Tomboy Bride, one realizes that
she met all situations with high good humor and a wilUngness to
hurdle the obstacles. She loved the early-day life in the mining
towns of Telluride, Leadville and other Western Slope mining
meccas.

Mrs. Backus has written an interesting book that records the
hardships, tragedies and triumphs of a young woman in the colorful
era of the mining boom. She has not neglected to describe, with
charm and graphic talent, the beauties of the rugged Rockies and
the people who made the West so fascinating.

Historically prominent names and incidents dot the text — they
seem more incidental, however, with her own story the main con-
cern of the book. She has given a warm account of her confron-
tations with high altitude cooking, incredible weather and the
robust mining characters that became a part of her life.

The book is an enjoyable, easy-reading story — one that does not
tax the mind. It records incidents of living in Colorado, British
Columbia and the copper mines at Britannia Beach, Idaho and
back to LeadviUe.

Female readers will be delighted with her description of "silk
feather-stitching of my long flannel petticoat — white corset covers
with eyelet embroidery and white drawers with ruffles — black lisle
stockings — shiny patent leather shoes accented by pearl grey but-
tons— white felt hat with tumed-up brim faced with black velvet
and topped with a curving white ostrich plume — "

286 ANNALS OF WYOMING

Reading her experiences as a bride living near the Tomboy Mine
above Telluride throughout the following years, readers will chuck-
le at the amusing situations and silently applaud the writer's even-
tual mastery of disconcerting difficulties.

Her story revolves around her husband, George Backus, who
died in July of 1964. He is credited with helping develop a process
for milling molybdenum said to be still in use. Several old photo-
graphs add to the charm and historical richness of the book.

"Tomboy Bride" should be a valuable addition to the libraries of
those who savor Western history.

University of Wyoming Patricia S. Queai.

Boss Cowman: The Recollections of Ed Lemmon, 1857-1946.
Ed. by Nellie Snyder Yost. (Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 1969) Index. 321pp. $6.95.

Ed Lemmon's life spanned a wide spectrum of American history,
from the pre-Civil War to the post-World War II years. His was
a life fully lived, through such occupations as staging, farming,
freighting and mail carrying through Indian country, but especially
through ranching. Well-known in the cattle business, he worked as
a cowboy and range manager and eventually owned his own ranch.
His home range was in western South Dakota, but he knew those of
Wyoming, Montana, and Nebraska and recounts his adventures in
these and other states of the cattle kingdom as well. Unlike some
of his contemporaries, Lemmon had little aversion to sheep and
turned to raising the once-despised woolies. In the end Ed retired
to the South Dakota town named after him and spent his remaining
years writing his reminiscences.

Lemmon wrote voluminously in his twilight years, and out of the
material Nellie Yost has produced this volume. Two men before
her tried to organize the story but failed because Lemmon was still
alive and writing additional material which swamped them. The
present editor finally decided to go back to the articles Lemmon
originally produced for various local newspapers, and from these
came Boss Cowman.

The reader will find this book both rewarding and discourag-
ing— rewarding because of the first-hand glimpse of an era now
gone. Lemmon knew the cattle frontier inside and out, from the
work of each day to its relaxations. The best chapters are those
dealing particularly with his range experiences. The scholar and
general reader alike can gather a host of insights into the life and
times of a cattleman from the 1 870s until past the turn of the cen-
tury. Lemmon further met the well-known and now-forgotten men
and women who helped tame the frontier. His recollections of
them add depth to his story. He does not ignore the women in

BOOK REVIEWS 287

what was basically a masculine world and presents a fascinating
chapter on "Scarlet Poppies."

The reader will find this discouraging reading because in parts it
lacks continuity, and Ed presupposes the reader's knowledge of
people and places. Further, Lemmon was writing from memory,
reminiscing, and he tends to drift easily from subject to subject,
dragging his reader along. This latter fact also contributes to mis-
information, especially in the first three chapters which amount to
a potpourri of events recalled after seventy years and not too
accurately.

Lemmon's West, as he remembered it, was full of the "gunsmoke
and gallop," with killings recalled in detail, although Ed himself
was not involved. Either he was extremely unfortunate in his
acquaintances or he tends to magnify a few events he saw and
recall many he heard about. Realizing that the image of the
frontier was not all it should have been, struggling here with some
of his own stories, he wrote an article, "The West That Wasn't,"
which concludes this book.

There is much of significance to be found in Boss Cowman and
it represents another important contribution in the University of
Nebraska's Pioneer Heritage Series.

Fort Lewis College Duane A. Smith

Durango, Colorado

Montana, An Illustrated History. By Myrtle Mockle. (Chicago:
Sage Books, Swallow Press, 1969) lUus. 102 pp. $5.00.

The majority of the general studies dealing with Montana's com-
plex and colorful past tend to run to extremes. They are intended
either for a well-informed and frequently argumentative group of
scholarly specialists or for students at the elementary and secondary
levels. This work is a welcome exception, striking a happy medium
between the above mentioned extremes. The resulting study is one
that can be read with profit by the general reader and the beginner
seeking a broad frame of reference for the future perusal of special-
ized volumes.

The format is attractive, and the illustrations are copious and
well chosen. The price for a slim volume totaling only 102 pages
might appear to be exorbitant, but the market for such studies is
such that this should prove no serious drawback.

Mrs. Meckel's work is predominantly derivative, as the contents
and bibliography indicate, and owes much to the work of scholars
such as Merrill G. Burlingame, Joseph Kinsey Howard, and K.
Ross Toole. It is at its best in dealing with traditional themes
which have already been thoroughly researched — exploration, the
Indian, the missionary era, the fur trade, mining, cattle raising.

288 ANNALS OF WYOMING

territorial politics, and the eariy stages of political and economic
development following the achievement of statehood.

As any such study abundantly reveals, the urgent need at present
in Montana historiography is for pioneering research of the kind
that will get the state's historic record into the twentieth century,
an epoch now nearly three-fourths complete.

In any event, the author is to be congratulated for the research
and writing of a brief and thoughtful introduction to the field.

Carroll College Thomas A. Clinch

Helena, Montana

Ezra Meeker-Pioneer, A Bibliographical Guide, by Frank L. Green
(Tacoma: The Washington State Historical Society, 1969)

42 pp., illustrated. $ 1 .00.

This booklet is a guide to the Ezra Meeker papers in the li-
brary of the Washington State Historical Society. The vol-
ume includes detailed descriptions of the material available in
the papers, which include genealogical information, legal pa-
pers, photographs, correspondence, manuscripts and other
documents. Ezra Meeker's family, in 1852, began a trek
across the plains from Iowa to Oregon. In Oregon, Meeker
made and lost a fortune in the hop business. When the town
Puyallup, which Meeker platted in 1877, was incorporated in
1 890, Meeker became its first mayor. It is at this point the
Meeker story can be picked up in the papers in this collection.

Case of Marcus A. Reno, by Barry C. Johnson (London: The
English Westerners' Society, 1969) 92 pp., $5.50.

This paperbound volume deals, in four parts, with the two
courtsmartial of the 7th Cavalry's Major Marcus A. Reno;
Reno's struggle for reinstatement; the 1967 Correction Board
hearing; and the untried charges of the 1877 court-martial.
The highly detailed, documented volume presents the first
publication in full of the 1967 hearing of the Board of Cor-
rection of Military Records when it was ordered that the rec-
ords be changed to show that Major Reno was honorably dis-
charged from the United States Army. Seventy additional
notes and a critical assessment of the Board's competence in
dealing with the case also are included. The section on the
courtsmartial in 1877 and 1879 includes hitherto unpub-
lished reviews by the Bureau of MiUtary Justice. The book
is far from a droll presentation of official documents and
correspondence cramped within the formal framework of legal
and military terminology. Mr. Johnson's text adds greatly to

BOOK REVIEWS 289

produce a comprehensive survey of the demise of the highly
controversial Major Reno. Surely the book is a "must" for
students of the Custer fight, the frontier army, and, of course,
the Reno controversy.

Caspar Collins: The Life and Exploits of an Indian Fighter of the
Sixties. By Agnes Wright Spring. (Lincoln: Universitv of
Nebraska Press, 1969) Illustrated. 187 pp. $1.80. [Pa-
perback, Bison Book] .

America's Great Frontiers and Sections: Frederick Jackson Turn-
er's Unpublished Essays. Edited by Wilbur R. Jacobs. (Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969) Illustrated. In-
dex. 217 pp. $1.95. [Paperback, Bison Book]

Buckskin and Blanket Days: ..Memoirs of a Friend of the Indians.
By Thomas Henry Tibbies. (Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 1969) 336 pp. $1.95. [Paperback, Bison
Book] .

Qmemlhde)c

"Adirondack Murrey," 41:2:200.
Aeschbacher, W. D., review of High

Road to Promontory, 41:2:279-

280.
"Almy, Wyoming," by Charles

Guild. Told by Dorothea Guild,

41:1:121-122.
Almost Up Devils Tower, by Mae

Urbanek, review, 41:1:148-149.
An Analysis of Scottish Population,

by Paul M. Edwards, 41:2:275-

276.
The Anglo Oil Fields Limited, 41:

1:8.
Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Mis-
sile, first to arrive at F. E. Warren

Air Force Base, 41:1:110.
Augur, Brevet Major General C. C,

41:2:199.

Bouree, M. Albert, 41:1:11-12, 29.

Bozeman, John, 41:2:193.

Bozeman Trail, 41:2:193-194.

Brady, Cyrus T., 41:2:198, 200.

Brass vessels for liquid measure,
photo, 41:2:cover.

"Bridger Gap," by Dorothea Guild,
41:1:114-115.

Briggs, Laura, 41:1:65.

Brown, Mabel E., review of Ghost
Town El Dorado, 41:1:149-150.

Burlingame, Merrill G., review of
Military Posts in the Powder Riv-
er Country of Wyoming, 41:1;
143-144.

Burt, Maj. Andrew S., 41:1:88, 90.

Burt, Elizabeth, 41:1:88-91.

"Back in the Moonshine Days," by
Earl Nebeker, 41:1:118-119.

Backus, Harriet Fish, Tomboy
Bride, review, 41:2:285-286.

Bate, Walter N., Eyewitness Reports
of the Wagon Box Fight, 41:2:
193-201; biog., 41:2:277.

Bates, Capt. Alfred E., 41:2:240-
241.

Bates Battle, 41:1:34, 56.

"Bear River City," by Margaret Mc-
Allister, 41:1:125-126.

"Bear River Crossing," by J. Wesley
Myers, 41:1:123-124.

Bear River Riot, 41:1:125-126.

Beaver, Daniel R., ed.. Some Path-
ways in Twentieth Century His-
tory, review, 41:2:281-282.

Beaver (oil-bearing basin), 41:1:8.

Belgo -American Drilling Trust
Company, 41:1:10, 19-21.

Bluewater Battle, 1855, 41:2:205.

Blunk, Edith, 41:1:65; Forrest S.,
41:1:65.

Boss Cowman: The Recollections of
Ed Lemmon, 1857-1946, ed., Nel-
lie Snyder Yost, review, 41:2:286-
287.

California-Mormon Trail, Trek No.
19, 1968, 41:1:113-130.

Campbell, Gov. John A., 41:2:228,
275.

Carey, Judge Joseph M., 41:2:188.

Case of Marcus A. Reno, by Barry
C. Johnson, review, 41:2:288-289.

Chambers, Col. Alexander, 41:1:98.

Chatterton, Gov. Fenimore, 41:1:
16-18, 22, 24, 26.

Cheyenne Daily Leader, 41:1:33,
41-42.

Chicago and Northwestern Railroad,
41:1:22, 25, 29.

Chivington, Col. 41:1:38, 41; 41:2:
214-215.

Citizen's National Bank, Cheyenne,
41:2:187.

Claus, Fredrick, 41:2:198-199.

Clinch, Thomas A., review of Mon-
tana, An llustrated History, 41:
2:287-288.

Clough, Wilson A., Portrait in Oil.
The Belgo- American Oil Com-
pany in Wyoming, 41:1:5-31;
biog., 142; review of Some Path-
ways in Twentieth Century His-
tory, 41:2:281-282.

Cody, William F. (Buffalo Bill),
41:2:272-274.

CoUey, A, G., 41:1:46.

292

ANNALS OF WYOMING

Collier, John, 41:1:40.
Collins, W. R. E., 41:2:200.
Connor, Gen., 41:1:55; 41:2:221-

223.
Cook, Harold J., Tales of the 0-4

Ranch, review, 41:1:144-145.
Cook, Rev. Joseph W., 41:1:88.
Cota, Percy "Blackie," 41:1:67.
The Cousin Jacks: The Cornish in

America, by A. L. Rowse, review,

41:2:282-283.
Coxey, Gen. Jacob, 41:1:105; Cox-

ey's Army, 41:1:105.
Craig, L. J., 41:1:23.
Crook, Gen. George, 41:1:93-103.
Custer, George Armstrong, 41:1:34,

38, 40, 45, 57, 93-94, 100; 41:2:

230.

Dale Creek Camp, The, of the
Moore Family, Looking Toward
Sunset Cliff, 1915; photo, 41:1:
following p. 72.

Demming, Pvt., 41:2:195.

DeSmet, Father, 41:1:59-60.

"Diary of Alice Moore at the XX
Ranch, The," Austin L. Moore,
ed., 41:1:63-81.

Dodge, Capt. Francis S., 41:1:103.

Dodge, Gen. Grenville M., 41:2:
199, 201.

Dodge, Col., Richard L, 41:2:200.

"Dome" field, 41:1:15-16.

XX Ranch, 41:1:63-81.

Dutton (oil-bearing basin), 41:1:8.

Edwards, Paul M., An Analysis of

Scottish Population, 41:2:275-

276; biog., 41:2:178.
Egan, Capt. James, 41:1:96.
Ellis, Richard N., review of The

Phil Sheridan Album, 41:1:150.
Escolas, Edmond L., Wyoming's

Pioneer Life Insurance Company,

41:2:187-192; biog., 41:2:277.
Etulain, Richard W., review of The

Cousin Jacks: The Cornish in

America, 41:2:282-283.
Eubanks, Mrs., 41:2:214.
Evans, Gov. John, Colo. Terr., 41:

1:47-48, 55; 41:2:211-212.

Eyewitness Reports of the Wagon
Box Fight, compiled by Walter N,
Bate, 41:2:193-201.

Ezra Meeker-Pioneer, A Biblio-
graphical Guide, by Frank L.
Green, review, 41:2:288.

Farley, Jim, 41:2:172, 175, 178.
Fetterman Massacre, 41:2:194.
Fish, Rachel Ann, review of Almost

Up Devils Tower, 41:1:148-149.
Fish Fossil From Fossil Syncline

Lake; photo, 41:l:following p.

72.
Fillmore, President M., 41:1:58, 61.
Fitzpatrick, Thomas, 41:1:60-61.
Flat Pipe (Arapaho Sun Dance),

41:1:52.
Florin, Lambert, Ghost Town El

Dorado, review, 41:1:149-150.
Forsyth, Robert B., 41:2:190.
FORTS AND CAMPS

Carlin, 41:1:88.

Ellis, 41:1:98.

Fetterman, 41:1:94-95, 98, 100.

Kearny, Phil, 41:2:193-194.

Laramie, 41:1:98.

Lincoln, Abraham, 41:1:98.

Reno, 41:2:194.

Smith, C. F., 41:1:90; 41:2:194.

Steele, 41:1:102; tie drive, photo,
41:1: following p. 32.
Fort David A. Russell: A Study of

Its History From 1867 to 1890

With a Brief Summary of Events

From 1890 to the Present, conclu-
sion, by Peggy Dickey Kircus,

41:1:83-111.
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, 41:1:

34, 37, 41, 53. 58, 61; 41:2:203-

208, 220.
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, 41:1:

42, 92; 41:2:227, 230.
Fort Wise Treaty, 1861, 41:2:207.
Fossil Lake. See, History of Fossil

Lake.
Fossil Syncline Lake, 41:1:116-117.
Foundation Fund, Wyoming State

Historical Society, 41:1:139.
Fox, Andrew, The Hat Sitting Bull

Wears, Patricia K. Ourada, editor,

41:2:272-274.
Franco- American Oil Company, 41:

1:30.
Frost, Lawrence A., The Phil Sheri-
dan Album, review, 41:1:150.

GENERAL INDEX

293

Galloway, Gene, review of Introduc-
tion to Archaeology, 41:1:152.

Garret, Pvt., 41:2:195.

Ghost Dances (Messiah Craze), 41:
1:56-57, 104.

Ghost Town El Dorado, by Lambert
Florin, review, 41:1:149-150.

Gibbon, Gen. John, 41:1:98.

Gibson, Sergt. Samuel S., 41:2:194,
197-199, 201; photo, following p.
202.

Gilmer. See Bear River City.

Grady, Pvt. John, 41:2:196.

The Grand Teton, 1923, by Leigh
N. Ortenburger, Vol. 1 of Teton-
iana, review, 41:1:147.

Grant, LeRoy, 41:2:188, photo, fol-
lowing p. 202.

Grant, President Ulysses S., 41:1:
39, 94.

Grattan, Lt. John L., 41:2:204.

Grattan Massacre, 41:1:37; 41:2:
204-205.

"Grave Springs," by Earl Nebeker,
41:1:118.

Green, Frank L., Ezra Meeker —
Pioneer, A Bibliographical Guide,
review, 41:2:288.

Green River Formation, 41:1:116-
117.

Green River whiskey, 41:1:119.

Greenwood, A. B., 41:2:206-207.

Greer, Dan B., M.D., review of This
was Pioneer Motoring, 41:1:146.

Grimes, Surgeon R. B., 41:1:103.

Grouard, Frank, 41:1:97, 101.

Guild, Charles, "Almy, Wyoming,"
41:1:121-122; "Haystack Butte,"
41:1:128-129; "Succor Spring,"
41:1:119-121.

Guild, Dorothea, "Almy, Wyo-
ming," 41:1:121-122; "Bridger
Gap," 41:1:114-115.

The Gunfighter: Man or Myth, by
Joseph G. Rosa, review, 41:2:
280-281.

Harney, Gen., 41:1:37.
Harney-Sanborn Treaty, 41:2:224.
The Hat Sitting Bull Wears, told by

Andrew Fox, ed. by Patricia K.

Ourada, 41:2:272-274.

Hayden, Elizabeth Wied, review of
The Grand Teton, Vol. 1 of
Tetoniana, 41:1: 147.

"Haystack Butte," by Charles Guild,
41:1:128-129.

Henan, Michael, 41:2:238.

Henry, Alexander, 41:1:49, 53.

Henry, Capt. Guy V., 41:1:99-100.

Hewitt, H. G., 41:2:191.

High Road to Promontory, by
George Kraus, review, 41:2:279-
280.

Historic Sites Interpretation, by
Robert A. Murray, 41:2:261-271.

"History of Fossil Lake," by Wal-
lace L. Ulrich, 41:1:115-117.

History of The Belgo- American
Company of Wyoming Petro-
leums, by Louis Magne, 41:1:
6-13, 26-27.

HoUiday, J. T., 41:1:64.

Holliday, W. H., 41:1:64.

Horse Creek Council, 1851, 41:2:
193.

Horton, Dr. Samuel, post surgeon,
41:2:197.

Howe, U. S. Marshal Church, 41:
2:275.

Hyde, George, 41:2:194.

Iba, Cy, 41:1:5-6, 16; photo follow-
ing p. 32.
INDIANS:

AGENTS AND AGENCIES:
Milk River Agency (Montana),

41:1:55.
North Platte Agency, 41:1:47.
Red Cloud Agency (Nebraska),

41:1:54; 41:2:245-246
Royer, R. F., agent, Pine Ridge

Agency, 41:1:105.
Twiss, Agent, North Platte
Agency, 41:1:47; 41:2:206.
CHIEFS AND INDIVIDUALS:
American Horse, 41:1:99-101.
Big Foot, 41:1:105.
Black Bear, 41:1:42, 55-56; 41:
2:211, 215-219, 221-222,
237, 241.
Black Coal, 41:1:54, 56; 41:2:
240-242.

294

ANNALS OF WYOMING

INDIANS (continued):

CHIEFS AND INDIVIDUALS:

Black Kettle, 41:1:41.

Calling Thunder, Cleone and
William, Northern Arapa -
hoes, Wind River Reserva-
tion, 1939; photo., 41:1:
following page 72.

Crazy Horse, 41:1:34, 38, 56-
57, 94, 97-99, 101.

Cut Nose, 41:1:60.

Eagle Head, 41:1:60-61.

Friday, 41:1:48, 54, 56, 60;
41:2:208, 211, 216-219, 226,
235, 255.

In- Among-Them, 41:1:53.

Left Hand, 41:1:52; 41:2:213.

Little Hawk, 41:1:99.

Medicine Man (Roman Nose),
41:1:55-56; 41:2:200, 206,
208, 211, 216, 218-219, 226-
227, 235, 240.

Ouray, 41:1:101, 103.

Red Cloud, 41:1:193-194, 196-
197, 199-201; 41:2:220, 223-
224, 233.

Red Feather, 41:2:194.

Red Plume, 41:1:53.

Sampson Rabbit, 41:1:102.

Sitting Bull, 41:1:34, 38, 56-57,
94, 97, 101; 41:2:272-274.

Spotted Tail, 41:2:246.

Tempest, 41:1:60.

White Bear, 41:2:194.

White Wolf (Wolf Moccasin),
41:2:213, 217-219.

Whitewash, 41:2:194.

Woman-runs-out, 41:1:53.

Wovoka, 41:1:104.
Interior, Department of, 41:1:39-40.
Introduction to Archaeology, by
Robin Place, review, 41:1:152.

Karolevitz, Robert F., This Was
Pioneer Motoring, review, 41:1:
146.

Kendall, J. T., 41:2:189, 191-192.

Kendrick, Gov. John B., 41:2:167,
169-170, 175.

Keyes, Jennie, 41:1:67, 72.

Kircus, Peggy Dickey, Fort David
A. Russell: A Study of Its His-
tory From 1867 to 1890 With a
Brief Summary of Events From
1890 to the Present, conclusion,
41:1:83-111; biog., 142.

Knight, Prof. Wilbur C, 41:1:6-8,
15, 20, 27.

Knight field. See "Dome" field.

Knox, J. Amory, 41:2:200.

Kossuth, Louis, Hungarian revolu-
tionary, 41: 1:61.

Kraus, George, High Road to Prom-
ontory, review, 41:2:279-280.

Landauer, Rudi, 41:1:26-27.
Laramie Plains Museum, 41:1:138.
Le Roux, Hughes. See La Roux,

Robert Charles Henri.
Le Roux, Robert Charles Henri, 41 :

1:5, 9, 14-16.
Last Eden, The. The Diary of Alice

Moore at the XX Ranch, ed. by

Austin L. Moore, 41:1:63-81.
Lewis and Clark, 41:1:46, 49.
Linder, M., 41:1:11-12.
Littman, Sergt. Max, 41:2:195, 197-

199, 201; photo, following p. 202.
Lobell, Joseph H., 41:1:5, 14, 16,

19, 29-30. photo following p. 31.

Jenness, Lt. John, 41:2:196.
Jenney, Prof. Walter P., 41:1:93.
Johnson, Barry C, Case of Marcus

A. Reno, review, 41:2:288-289.
Johnston, Dr. George P.. 41:2:188,

191.
Johnston, M. R., 41:2:191.
Joseph Christopher O'Mahoney: A

Brief Biography, by Carl Moore,

41:2:159-186.
Julesburg Station, Colo., 41:2:215.

McAllister, Margaret, "Bear River

City," 41:1:125-126.
McQuiery, Sergt., 41:2:196.
McYue, Archibald, 41:2:276.

Magne, Louis, 41:1:6-13, 26-27.
Maine, battleship, torpedoed, 41:1;
106.

GENERAL INDEX

295

Marble, A. H., 41:2:191.

May, Robin, review of The Gun-
fighter: Man or Myth, 41:2:280-
281

Meeker, N. C, 41:1:101-103.

Merritt, Col. Wesley, 41:1:102-104,
106.

Midwest Refining Company, 41:1:
30.

Miles, Gen. Nelson A., 41:1:101,
105.

Military Posts in the Powder River
Country of Wyoming, by Robert
A. Murray, review, 41:1:143-144.

Miller homestead (Teton County),
41:1:137.

Mills, Capt. Anson, 41:1:96, 98-100.

Mills, J., 41:1:10.

Minuteman I Missile, 41:1:110;
Minuteman II, 110.

Mitchell, D. D., 41:1:59.

Mizner, Gen. Henry R., 41:1:105.

Mockle, Myrtle, Montana, An Illus-
trated History, review, 41:2:287-
288

Mondell, Frank W., 41:2:169.

Montana, An Illustrated History, by
Myrtle Mockle, review, 41:2:287-
288.

Mooney, James, anthropologist, 41:
1:54.

Moore, Capt. A., 41:1:96-97.

Moore, Alice, diary of, 41:1:63-81.

Moore, Austin L., ed.. The Last
Eden. The Diary of Alice Moore
at the XX Ranch, 41:1:63-81;
biog., 41:1:142.

Moore, Austin and Alice, Dale
Creek Camp, 1909, photo, 41:1:
following p. 72.

Moore, Carl, Joseph Christopher
O'Mahoney: A Brief Biography,
41:2:159-186; biog., 277.

Moore, Coral, 41:1 :66.

Moore, Frank, 41:1:66.

Moore, Roger, 41:1:66.

Mothershead, Harmon, review of
On the Cattle Ranges of the Ore-
gon Country, 41:1:150-151.

Mullen, William E., 41:2:188, 191;
photo, following p. 202.

Murphy, James C, The Place of the
Northern Arapahoes in the Rela-
tions Between the United States
and the Indians of the Plains,
1851-1879, part 1, 41:1:33-61;
conclusion, 41:2:203-255; biog.,
41:1:142, 41:2:277.

Murphy, Pvt. John F., 41:1:85.

Murray, Robert A., Military Posts in
the Powder River Country of
Wyoming, review, 41:1:143-144;
Historic Sites Interpretation, 41:
2:261-271; biog., 41:2:277.

Myers, J. Wesley, "Bear River
Crossing," 41:1:123-124.

Myers, John, 41:1:123-124,

Nebeker, Earl, "Grave Springs," 41:
1:118; "Back in the Moonshine
Days," 119.

Newport, Puss, 41:2:276.

Nickerson, Capt. H. G., 41:1:41;
41:2:236.

Niswander, Frank J., 41:2:189.

Noyes, Capt. H., 41:1:96-97, 99.

Offices of the Belgo-American Com-
pany, Cheyenne, 1903; photo, 41:
1 : following p. 31.

Oil Well at Lander, 1902; photo, 41:
1: following p. 31.

Oliphant, J. Orin, On the Cattle
Ranges of the Oregon Country,
review, 41:1:150-151.

O'Leary, Agnes Veronica. See
O'Mahoney, Agnes.

O'Mahoney, Agnes Veronica
O'Leary, 41:2:166, 170.

O'Mahoney, Dan, 41:2:162.

O'Mahoney, Dennis, 41:2:159-162,
164.

O'Mahoney, Elizabeth Shehan, 41:
2:160.

O'Mahoney, Frank, 41:2:162, 165.

O'Mahoney, Jerimiah, 41:2:161-
162.

O'Mahoney, Joseph Christopher,
41:2:159-186; votes republican,
165; marriage, 166; secretary to
Kendrick, 167; vice-chairman and
secretary. Democratic State Com-
mittee, 169; Democratic primar-
ies, 1924, 171 & fn.; appt. of first
assist, postmaster general, 174-
175; appt. to Senate post in 1933,
176; Senate election, 1940, 182;
Senate election, 1954, 185; illness
& death, 185-186; photos, O'Ma-
honey in 1952, explaining payroll

296

ANNALS OF WYOMING

charts, with James A. Farley and
W. W. Howes, with Milward L.
Simpson, following p. 178.

O'Mahoney, Michael, 41:2:162.

On the Cattle Ranges of the Oregon
Country, by J. Orin Oliphant, re-
view, 41:1:150-151.

O'Neil, Jack, robber, 41:1:125.

Oregon Trail and California-Mor-
mon Trails: Fort Bridger to Wyo-
ming's Western Border, Trek. No.
19 of the Historical Trail Treks,
compiled by Maurine Carley, 41:
1:113-130.

Ortenburger, Leigh N., The Grand
Teton, Vol. 1 of Tetoniana, re-
view, 41:1:147.

Ourada, Patricia K., ed.. The Hat
Sitting Bull Wears, told by An-
drew Fox, 41:2:272-274; biog.,
41:2:278.

Pardon, M. Noel, 41:1:5, 11-12,
19-20, 22.

Payne, Capt. J. S., 41:1:102-103.

Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Company,
Wyoming, 41:1:6, 13.

Pershing, Gen. John J., 41:1:108.

"Piedmont — Profile of a Ghost
Town," by Clifford C. Stuart, Jr.,
41:1:126-128.

The Phil Sheridan Album, by Law-
rence A. Frost, review, 41:1:150.

Place, Robin, Introduction to Ar-
chaeology, review, 41:1:152.

Place of the Northern Arapahoes in
the Relations Between the United
States and the Indians of the
Plains, 1 85 1 -1 879, The, part 1, by
James C. Murphy, 41:1:33-61;
conclusion, 41:2:203-255.

Poland, Col. J. S., 41:1:105-106.

Portrait in Oil. The Belgo-Ameri-
can Oil Company in Wyoming, by
Wilson O. Clough, 41:1:5-31.

Powder River Wars, 41:1:34, 38.

Powell, Capt. James, 41:2:196-201.

Powers, Jimmy, robber, 41:1:125.

President's Report, 15th Annual
Meeting, Wyoming State Histor-
ical Society, 41:1:134-136.

Pumpkin Seed Point, by Frank Wa-
ters, review, 41:2:283-285.

Queal, Patricia S., review of Tom-
boy Bride, 41:2:285-286.

Redwood, Dr. Boverton, 41:1:6-9.

Reed, Jimmy, robber, 41:1:125.

Regan, Lt. James, 41:1:86.

Reynolds, Adrian, "President's Re-
port," 15th Annual Meeting, Wy-
oming State Historical &>ciety,
41:1:134-136.

Reynolds, Col. J. J., 41:1:94-97.

Riner, Charles W., 41:2:188, 191.

Rocky Mountain News, 41:1:95.

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 41:2:
178-179.

Root, Curtiss, President's Message,
41:1:131-132.

Rosa, Joseph G., The Gunfighter:
Man or Myth, review, 41:2:280-
281.

Ross, Gov. Nellie Tayloe, 41:2:171.

Ross, Gov. William B., 41:2:170-
171.

Rowse, A. L., The Cousin Jacks:
The Cornish in America, reviev/,
41:2:282-283.

Royall, Col. William B., 41:1:98-99.

Salt Creek oil field, 41:1:5, 30.

Salt Wells [Dome], 41:1:21.

Sand Creek (Colo.) Massacre, 41:

1:38, 41-42, 55; 41:2:214-215,

225.
Sawyer, Alice. See Alice Moore.
Sawyers, Col., 41:2:222-223.
Sayous, Andre Emile, 41:1:5, 11,

17-18, 20, 22.
Schaedel, Grace Logan, review of

Tales of the 0-4 Ranch, 41:1:

144-145.
Schnitger, William R., 41 :2: 187-189.
Scott, Hugh, 41:1:52.
Shannon, Philip, 41:1:6.
Shelter used during Sun Dance,

Wind River Reservation, 1939;

photo, 41:l:following p. 72.
Sheridan Inn, 41:1:137.
Sherman, Gen. William T., 41:1:93.
Smith, Maj., 41:2:197.

GENERAL INDEX

297

Smith, Major Benjamin F., 41:2:
198.

Smith, Duane A., review of Boss
Cowman: The Recollections of
Ed Lemmon, 1857-1946, 41:2:
286-287.

Smith, Col. John E., 41:2:239.

Smyth, R. J., teamster at Ft. Phil
Kearny, 41:2:198-199.

Sodalities, Northern Arapaho soci-
ety, 41:1:50-51.

Some Pathways in Twentieth Cen-
tury History, ed. by Daniel R.
Beaver, review, 41:2:281-282.

Stone, Edward W., 41:2:188.

Strategic Air Command, 41:1:110.

Stuart, Clifford C, Jr., "Piedmont —
Profile of a Ghost Town," 41:1:
126-128.

"Succor Spring," by Charles Guild,
41:1:119-121.

Sumner, Col., 41:1:37.

Sun Dance, 41:1:43-44, 52.

Sun Dance Field, Wind River Res-
ervation, 1939, photo, 41:l:fol-
lowing p. 72.

"Syndicate of Wyoming," 41:1:9,
12.

Tales of the 0-4 Ranch, by Harold

J. Cook, review, 41:1:144-145.
Teapot Dome inquiry, 41:2:168-

169.
Temporary National Economic

Committee, 41:2:181-182.
Terry, Gen. Alfred, 41:1:98.
Thayer, Gov. John M., 41:1:42; 41:

2:243.
This Was Pioneer Motoring, by

Robert F. Karolevitz, review, 41:

1:146.
Thornburg, Maj. Thomas T., 41:1:

102.
Titan I Missile, 41:1:110.
Tomboy Bride, by Harriet Fish

Backus, review, 41:2:285-286.
Torrey, Col. Jay L., 41:1:107.
"Torrey's Rough Riders," 41:1:107.
Tuttle, Edmund B., 41:1:88.

Ulrich, Wallace L., "History of Fos-
sil L^ke," 41:1:115-117.

Urbanek, Mae, Almost Up Devils
Tower, review, 41:1: 148-149.

U.S.S. Wyoming punch bowl, photo,
41:l:cover.

Vestal, Stanley, 41:2:194.
Villa, "Pancho," 41:1:108.

Wagon Box Corral, 41:2:194-195,

200-201.
Walker, Henry P., review of Pump-
kin Seed Point, 41:2:283-285.
Walter, Charles, 41:1:19.
Walter, Henry, 41:1:8-9.
Warren, Francis E., 41:1:107, 109.
Water wheel, Fremont County,

photo, 41:2:following p. 202.
Waters, Frank, Pumpkin Seed Point,

review, 41:2:283-285.
Western Holding Company, 41:2:

189, 192.
Western National Life Insurance

Company, 41:2:189, 191-192.
Williams, Arthur, 41:1:64.
Williams, Chester, 41:1:63-65.
Williams, Earl, 41:1:64.
Williams, Edith, 41:1:63, 65.
WilHams, Hattie, 41:1:64.
Williams, Harry, 41:1:64.
Williams, Margaret Keyes (Mrs.

Dick), 41:1:64.
Williams, Rachel, 41:1:64.
Williams, Stella, 41:1:64.
Williams, William Richard, founder

of XX Ranch, 41:1:63-65.
Williams' XX Ranch, The, Dale

Creek, 1912; photo, 41:l:follow-

ing p. 72.
Wilson, Jack, originator of Ghost

Dance, 41:1:56.
Wind River Reservation, 41:1:52,

57.
Wounded Knee, battle of, 41:1:105.
Wyoming: A State of the American

West; and General Considerations

on the Far West, by Andre Emile

Sayous, 41:1:5.
Wyoming: An Anecdotal History of

Petroleum, by Robert Charles

Henri Le Roux, 41:1:5, 14-16.

298

ANNALS OF WYOMING

Wyoming Industrial Convention,
Laramie, Dec. 12-13, 1901, 41:1:
15.

Wyoming Insurance Department,
41:2:192.

Wyoming Life Insurance Co., incor-
porated 1911, 41:2:187; home of-
fices, photo, following p. 202.

Wyoming National Guard, 41:1:
106.

H'yoming State Historical Society
Fifteenth Annual Meeting, 41:1:
133-141; President's Message,
131-132.

Wyoming State Historical Society

Officers 1968-1969; photo, 41:1:

following p. 72.
Wyoming's Pioneer Life Insurance

Company, by Edmond L. Escoias,

41:2:187-192.

XYZ

Yost, Nellie Snyder, ed.. Boss Cow-
man: The Recollections of Ed
Lemmon, 1857-1946, review, 41:
2:286-287.

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