A Society Without Women? Sex & Gender in the Wild West

What would a society without women look like? Any conjecture is fanciful and contrived, but there has been a period in American history where an analogous situation prevailed for a sufficient period to provide thoughtful grist – the settlement of the American West. Fewer than one in twenty pioneers to California during the early Gold Rush is female. Even in 1853, only some 8,000 of San Francisco’s 50,000 residents were women. Well into the 1880s, men made up almost two-thirds of California’s pioneer population.

Terry Hamburg explains.

Emigrants Crossing the Plains. Drawn by F.O.C. Darley, engraved by Henry Bryan Hall.

“You have no idea how few women we have here, a San Francisco lawyer writes to his sister back home in 1849,” and if one makes her appearance in the street, all stop, stand, and look. The latest fashion is to carry them in their arms (the streets are incredibly muddy). This we see every day.”

The gender imbalance is a subject of marvel to every observer then and since. The world’s oldest profession thrives in this hormonal tsunami. In the course of 1849, the hamlet of San Francisco’s bolts to 20,000, of which it is estimated 1000 are women - and two-thirds of those work in or manage brothels. Most men pouring into the city are in their raging testosterone twenties and have been deprived of traditional sex for at least six months.

Some of the most successful and powerful women in mid-nineteenth century America live in the frontier where they are vastly outnumbered by men and subject to a more primitive, unfiltered form of masculinity. Madams, in particular, parlay their business into fortune and influence. “The only aristocracy we had here at the time,” remarks Caleb T. Fay, a leading San Francisco politician during the Gold Rush, “were the gamblers and prostitutes.” A brothel proprietress made her money off patriarchy, but that success is a challenge to it as much as an accommodation.

Exporting Virtue

It was a simple proposition. Plenty of California men - most believed rich or soon to be so - without women. Ladies possessing the adventure and pluck to travel to that far-off land might find an ideal situation. “Every man thought every woman in that day a beauty,” a Sacramento woman confesses to her diary. “Even I have had men come forty miles over the mountains, just to look at me, and I was never called a handsome woman, in the best day, even by most ardent admirers.”

The men needed both the carnal and the cultural. Females would deliver a healthy dose of virtue to tame the savage beast. “We do not wish to say, or even imply, that San Francisco is the wickedest and most immoral city in the world,” historian Benjamin E. Lloyd mused in 1876, “but it has not yet overcome the immoral habits contracted in the days when the inhabitants were nearly all males, and had nothing to restrain them from engaging in the most vicious practices; when there were no mothers to chide their waywardness and say in winning tones: “My son go not in the way of evil” and fewer virtuous sisters to welcome brothers home, and by their loving kindness and noble lives, to teach them to cease from sinning.” Readers applauded the sentiment of James Wyld in his 1849 Guide to the Gold Country of California: “Society without woman is like an edifice built on sand. Woman, to society, is like the cement to the stone. The society has no such cement; its elements float to and fro on the excited, turbulent, hurried life of California immigrants.”

There are formal schemes to fill this moral vacuum. The most celebrated is hatched in 1849 by Eliza Farnham, author and former matron of the female section of Sing Sing Prison. She has skin in the California game. Her late husband leaves a large tract of land near Santa Cruz that she is keen to develop. Farnham concocts an ambitious plan: organize a group of well-recommended marriageable women that would “bring their refinement and kindly cares and powers” to the rough-hewn society of male fortune seekers. Ideologically, Farnham goes farther than most feminists of the age, advocating the natural superiority of women. She is prominent, and so are her public supporters, the likes of Horace Greeley and William Cullen Bryant, editors of The New-York Tribune and The New York Evening Post, and Henry Ward Beecher, the renowned clergyman and abolitionist.

Farnham shuttles between cities on the Atlantic coast, addressing meetings, examining applicants, and giving press interviews. Soon, she could announce that more than 130 women had “signified” a desire to join up. The New York Tribune praises her and the “precious cargo . . . on an errand of mercy to the golden land.” Editors on both coasts are captivated by the notion. In California, there is joy. One local mining newspaper reports that “smiles of anticipation wreathed the countenance of every bachelor in town.” However, Farnham is having difficulty finding suitable clients and then closing a deal that yanks young ladies from the comforts of family and friends to trek halfway around the world on a wild speculation, and for a big fee - payable in advance, thank you. No refunds. The ballyhooed April launch is postponed. By June, she is ready to give up the plan and sail with a scant three prospects. Disappointed supporters complain that her personal standards for recruits may have been too high, along with the price tag. TheAlta California accepts the news graciously: “The will is always taken for the deed, and bachelors will unquestionably cherish the liveliest of feelings of regard for the lady who so warmly exerted herself to bring a few spareribs to the market.” Farnham expresses no regrets. After experiencing “the moral and social poverty” of California for six years, she is “grateful that my endeavors failed.”

More women

There are other grand plans to civilize the Wild West by estrogen. A few years later, Sarah Pellet, a noted advocate of temperance, abolition, and woman’s rights pursues a scheme for “amelioration of the condition of Californians.” Again, the plan looks solid on paper: export 5,000 “respectable, marriageable New England girls” to be recommended by the Sons of Temperance as “worthy girls.” The Sons of Temperance in California agrees to serve as guardians upon their arrival. If this initiative works, there are plans to up the contingent to 10,000. Unfortunately, too few worthy girls are willing to be shipped and the plan is abandoned, again breaking miners’ hearts.

The gradual but relentless march of progress will eventually balance the genders in California. 50-50 is the order of nature.

Terry Hamburg is director emeritus of the Cypress Lawn Cemetery Heritage Foundation. His recently published book Land of the Dead: How The West Changed Death In America explores how the demands of survival and adaptation in the Gold Rush western migration changed a multitude of American customs, including the way we bury and grieve for our ancestors. California and San Francisco serve as case studies. Visit his author page: https://www.terryhamburgbooks.com.

Captured by the Comanche in the American West in the 1830s: The Story of Cynthia Ann Parker

In the year 1833 the Parker family moved to Texas, the beneficiaries of large acres of free land, given in the hope that they would establish a settlement in country that at the time was still in contestation between the Mexican government and the United States. They built a fort and homes in what was then one of the most sparsely occupied areas in the state, on the edge of Native American territory. At the time Texas was at the edge of America, and skirmishes were frequent, in particular raids from the feared warrior society of the Comanches. The Comanche were struggling not only with white settlers but many other bands of Native American who had been displaced and forced onto the Plains by rapid American expansion. Their way of life was under threat and they retaliated. Despite this the Parkers, unfortunately, overestimated their safety.

Erin Bienvenu explains the story of the capture of Cynthia Ann Parker.

Cynthia Ann Parker and daughter, Topsannah (Prairie Flower). Image taken around 1861.

Fort Parker Massacre

The morning of May 19, 1836 began normally enough for the extended Parker family. They were busy working on their farms and getting their families ready for another day. Cynthia Ann, nearly nine years old, the oldest child of Silas and Lucinda, was with her mother and three siblings. Inexplicably, despite the dangers of the Texas frontier, the large gate of the fort had been left open.

The morning was soon interrupted by a large group of Comanches who appeared bearing a white flag and professing peace. The Parker men suspected their motives but Benjamin Parker, Cynthia Ann’s Uncle, bravely went out to speak with them. He hoped he could give the women and children enough time to hide in the surrounding woods but he was quickly killed and the Comanches descended on the fort and surrounding farms.

At the end of what became known as the Fort Parker Massacre, five men were dead, including Silas, and the Comanche had taken five hostages: Cynthia Ann, her younger brother John, their cousin Rachel Plummer, her son James, and their Aunt Elizabeth Kellogg. For the captives the days and nights that followed were horrific, they were repeatedly beaten, starved, and the older women raped.

Eventually, after several days of hard riding, the captives were separated and sent to different bands. As fertility rates were low amongst the Comanche, due to their nomadic life style which required almost daily riding, captive children were often adopted by families who had lost a child. This is what happened to Cynthia Ann.

Her childhood then began anew as she was immersed in Comanche culture, taught such practicalities as how to sew buckskin and gather firewood, and how to speak the language. She would also have learnt about the tribe’s customs, religious beliefs, and been raised in preparation for marriage and motherhood.

Life with the Comanche

In 1842 John and James were ransomed back to their families and a few years later Cynthia Ann was discovered by Leonard Williams, a Native American agent. She was said to have ‘wept incessantly’ and tried to hide from Williams, though he offered a substantial ransom for her return. However, the Comanche refused to give her up.

In the years that followed more ransoms were offered but all were refused, often by Cynthia Ann herself. She was now married to a warrior who had participated in her capture, Peta Nocona, and they had three children. She also had a new name, Naduah, which meant ‘someone found.’ She was completely integrated into Comanche life and even her brother John could not persuade her to return. She had already been separated from one family, and she would not be taken from another.

Cynthia Ann and her family were constantly on the move, it was a hard life and she was in charge of most of the work. One of her main tasks was to prepare the buffalo hunted by her husband. Not one part of the huge animal was wasted and Cynthia Ann became a skilled tanner. It was dirty, time-consuming work, but she also found joy in the lives of her children - two boys, Quanah and Peanuts (so named because of her fond memories of eating the nuts during her childhood at the Fort) and daughter, Topsannah (Prairie Flower). Her husband was also a skilled warrior and the family was considered to be quite wealthy in Comanche society.

Return to the Parker Family

In 1860 in retaliation for Peta Nocona’s constant raids on white settlements, his tribe were attacked by a group of Texas Rangers led by Captain Lawrence Sullivan Ross.

Cynthia Ann attempted to flee on horseback but was stopped by Ross who, to his great surprise, realised she was a white woman. He declared that Peta Nocona had been killed during the battle and Cynthia Ann had wept over his body, though their son Quanah was to claim his father had died at a later date.

The rangers took Cynthia Ann and her young daughter to Fort Cooper, though she made repeated attempts to escape. Once again, she found herself violently taken from all she knew, her family and her home, forced to assimilate to a culture and language she had largely forgotten. Despite speaking in a mixture of Comanche and Spanish she did recall the massacre at Fort Parker, and her birth name, responding when called ‘Cynthia Ann.’

She was treated as a curiosity by all who saw her and at one stage, under the ‘care’ of her Uncle Isaac was even put on display so that the citizens of Texas could come and stare at her. She tried repeatedly to run away from Isaac’s home. He, and her wider family, could not understand her longing to return to her Comanche life. They expected her to immediately accept the way of life she had left aged nine, to re-adopt their language, dress and religion, but Cynthia Ann would not comply. Consequently, she was treated by her family, and the wider community, as a woman who did not know her right mind.

Eventually she was sent to live with her brother Silas Jr, but her situation did not improve. Around this time a photograph was taken of Cynthia Ann, in which she is nursing Topsannah with her hair cut short, a symbol of Comanche mourning. She was grieving not only her husband, but her two sons, who she believed were lost on the prairie. When Silas joined the Confederate army Cynthia Ann was sent to live with a different set of relatives, this time her sister, Orlena. Here, life was a little better. There were more sympathetic people to speak with and she earned a reputation as a hard worker and expert tanner. She remained, however, largely unhappy and would frequently lament the loss of her sons, often cutting herself in the traditional Comanche way of expressing grief. The Parker’s promised her that when the Civil War ended, they would take her to find her sons, but as time wore on, she began to realise their promises were empty.

Then in about 1864 Topsannah died from pneumonia and a grief-stricken Cynthia Ann lost all hope. It is believed she died of complications probably bought on by self-starvation around 1870.

Conclusion

Cynthia Ann left no written account of her life, or her feelings about her experiences, what little we do know about her was told through the eyes of those that briefly encountered her, but who often had their own agendas when it came to telling her story. Her son Quanah, regarded as the last of the great Comanche Chiefs, remembered her as “a good woman” who he “always cherished.” Hers was a life between two worlds and, as it was for many people in the early history of the American West, one marked by frontier violence and tragic misunderstanding.

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References

https://archive.org/details/rachelplummernar00park/page/16/mode/2up?q=cyntha

https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4492&context=etd

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth85556/m1/2/zoom/?q=cynthia%20ann%20parker&resolution=2.565054159331353&lat=3373.065552681177&lon=3245.6007365528353

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth583180/m1/14/zoom/?q=%22cynthia%20ann%20parker%22~1&resolution=2.1904496702355107&lat=3009.330046382758&lon=3003.1985262518583

Exley, Jo Ella Powell (2001), Frontier Blood: The Saga of the Parker Family. Texas A&M University Press

Frankel, Glenn (2013), The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend. New York: Bloomsbury

Gwynne, S.C. (2011), Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanche Tribe. London: Constable

Michno, Gregory & Susan (2007), A Fate Worse Than Death: Indian Captives in the West, 1830-1835. Idaho: Caxton Press

One of the Greatest Tragedies in the History of American Expansion – The Donner Party

The Hastings Cutoff - why would this area in the western part of our country, near Salt Lake City, be so important in the history of westward expansion? All the wagon train had to do was make a simple decision, make the turn, thereby cutting off three hundred miles or about two weeks on their journey to California.

Richard Bluttal explains the tragedy of the Donner Party, a group who took the Hastings Cutoff route.

James and Margaret Reed.

During their first week in the Cutoff, the Donner party made good progress. Hastings, who had promised to lead migrants along the trail, left Fort Bridger with a different company of wagons, and it fell to James F. Reed to act as the company’s guide. As they broke a new trail through the nearly impassable terrain of the Wasatch Mountains, they lost the two weeks’ time.

In May 1846, the last wagon train of the season left Independence, Missouri for the Mexican territory of Alta California. Led by two men from Springfield, Illinois—farmer George Donner and furniture manufacturer James F. Reed—the Donner Party followed the well-established California Trail as far as the Little Sandy River in Wyoming. It is there that they made the fateful decision to take a new, more direct route over the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert. The determination was made despite the warnings from accomplished mountain man James Clyman.

On August 30, after gathering as much water and grass as they could carry, they entered the Great Salt Lake Desert. A note left by Hastings had assured the party that they would be able to cross the desert in just two days, but the journey took five. The party lost dozens of cattle in the desert, and several wagons had to be abandoned. The pioneers lost valuable days conducting a fruitless search for the missing oxen before beginning a circuitous navigation of the Ruby Mountains in modern north-eastern Nevada. By the time the Donner party reached the Humboldt River, where Hastings Cutoff re-joined the main California Trail, it was late September. All the other migrants of 1846 had completed their journey to California, and the Donner party was racing the weather to clear the passes in the Sierra Nevada.

Tension

Tensions were running high among the exhausted migrants, and on October 5 an altercation between Reed and a teamster employed by another family ended with Reed fatally stabbing the man. Some members of the party suggested that Reed be hanged, but he was instead banished from the company. Reed would continue west on horseback while the rest of his family remained with the Donner party.

The migrants began the ascent of the Sierra foothills low on food, and Paiute warriors killed several of the remaining oxen. By this point, the members of the company had cached, or buried, virtually all their personal possessions—except for food, clothing, and the barest essentials necessary for survival—in an effort to minimize the load on their exhausted animals. On October 31 the weary migrants approached what is now Donner Pass across the Sierra Nevada and found their progress blocked by deepening snow.

177 years ago, the Donner Party was unable to cross the Pass in a storm. They returned to the Lake and built cabins. They slaughtered their cattle for food and used the hides as roofs on the cabins. The Breens inhabited the cabin that had been built two years earlier by the Stephens Party. This is the site of the Pioneer Monument at Donner Memorial State Park. The Murphys built a cabin a few hundred yards to the south, against a large rock. This rock is today marked by a plaque in the park. The Graves and Reeds built a cabin about a half-mile down the Creek.

From November 20, 1846 to March 1, 1847, Irish immigrant Patrick Breen, a Donner party member, kept a diary of his ordeal in the mountains. Clinging to survival with his wife Margaret and their seven children, Breen described the harsh winter weather, the leather hides they resorted to eating, and the deaths of their traveling companions.

Diary Entries

“Came to this place on the 31st of last month that it snowed we went on to the pass the snow so deep we were unable to find the road, when within 3 miles of the summit then turned back to this shanty on the Lake, Stanton came one day after we arrived here we again took our teams & waggons & made another unsuccessful attempt to cross in company with Stanton we returned to the shanty it continuing to snow all the time we were here we now have killed most part of our cattle having to stay here until next spring & live on poor beef without bread or salt” - November 20, 1846

“still snowing now about 3 feet deep…killed my last oxen today will skin them tomorrow gave another yoke to Fosters hard to get wood” - November 29, 1846 “... snow about 5 ½ feet or 6 deep difficult to get wood no gong from the house completely housed up looks as likely for snow as when it commenced, our cattle all killed but three or four them, the horses & Stantons mules gone & cattle suppose lost in the Snow no hopes of finding them alive” - December 1, 1846 “... Milt. & Noah went to Donnos 8 days since not returned yet, thinks they got lost in the snow…”

December 17, 1846 “... May we with Gods help spend the comeing year better than the past which we purpose to do if Almighty God will deliver us from our present dreadful situation…” - December 31, 1846

Ordeal

Breen’s account of the winter of 1846–47 would provide the only contemporary written record of the Donner party’s ordeal. On December 15 Baylis Williams, an employee of the Reed family, died of malnutrition at the lake camp; his was the first recorded death. On December 16 a party of 10 men and 5 women set out to cross the mountains on improvised snowshoes. During a month’s harrowing, often overwhelming hardships from cold, storms, deep snow, and inadequate food, they struggled on. Eight of the men died, and the bodies of some of these were eaten by the others. Two men and all the women got through to the Sacramento Valley. The settlers of California organized a relief party which left Fort Sutter (Sacramento) on January 31, 1847. Heroically struggling through the deep snow, seven men reached the lake camp on February 18. They then took twenty-three of the starving emigrants, including seventeen children, back to the settlements; several deaths occurred on the way. Other relief parties followed, but, because of illness and injuries, it was impossible to remove everyone.

After dogs and cowhides had been devoured, many deaths occurred, and the survivors were forced to resort to cannibalism of the dead bodies. The last survivor, Lewis Keseber who had supported himself during the last weeks by cannibalism, did not leave camp until April 21. Five of the emigrants died before reaching the mountain camps, thirty-four at the camps or on the mountains while attempting to cross, and one just after reaching the settlements. Two men who had joined the party at the lake also died. The total number of deaths was thus forty-two, with forty-seven survivors, although many others would soon follow.

The ordeal of the Donner party highlighted the incredible risks that were inherent in the great overland trek, but it did little to slow the pace of migration. Indeed, even the survivors of the party encouraged others to undertake the journey. In a letter to her cousin in Illinois, Virginia Reed recounted that “I have not wrote you half of the truble, but I hav Wrote you anuf to let you now what truble is,” before concluding, “Dont let this letter dishaten anybody. Never take no cutofs and hury along as fast as you can.” The discovery of gold in California in 1848 would turn the flow of migrants into a virtual flood, and the legacy of the Donner party would become less a cautionary tale and more a grim historical footnote in the story of the great westward movement.

After examining remains from the Alder Creek campsite, researchers in 2010 announced that they had been unable to find any human bones or other physical evidence of cannibalism. The researchers themselves clarified, however, that the absence of archaeological evidence did not rule out the possibility that cannibalism had occurred, especially given the extensive contemporary accounts by members of the rescue parties.

Key problems

There has been a lot written about the Donner party’s own problems, below were a number of them.

1. The Donner Party started its trip dangerously late in the pioneer season. The core of what became the Donner Party did not leave their jumping-off point at Independence, Missouri until May 12. They were the y fell behind schedule after taking an untested shortcut.

2. After reaching Wyoming, most California-bound pioneers followed a route that swooped north through Idaho before turning south and moving across Nevada. In 1846, however, a dishonest guidebook author named Lansford Hastings was promoting a straighter and supposedly quicker path that cut through the Wasatch Mountains and across the Salt Lake Desert. There was just one problem: no one had ever traveled this “Hastings Cutoff” with wagons, not even Hastings himself. Despite the obvious risks—and against the warnings of James Clyman, an experienced mountain man—the 20 Donner Party wagons elected to break off from the usual route and gamble on Hastings’ back road. The decision proved disastrous. The emigrants were forced to blaze much of the trail themselves by cutting down trees, and they nearly died of thirst during a five-day crossing of the salt desert. Rather than saving them time, Hasting’s “shortcut” ended up adding nearly a month to the Donner Party’s journey.

3. The emigrants lost a race against the weather by just a few days. Despite the Hastings Cutoff debacle, most of the Donner Party still managed to reach the slopes of the Sierra Nevada by early November 1846. Only a scant hundred miles remained in their trek, but before the pioneers had a chance to drive their wagons through the mountains, an early blizzard blanketed the Sierras in several feet of snow. Mountain passes that were navigable just a day earlier soon transformed into icy roadblocks, forcing the Donner Party to retreat to nearby Truckee Lake and wait out the winter in ramshackle tents and cabins. Much of the group’s supplies and livestock had already been lost on the trail, and it was not long before the first settlers began to perish from starvation.

4. During the “Forlorn Hope” expedition, the hiking party included a pair of Indians named Salvador and Luis, both of whom had joined up with the Donner emigrants shortly before they became snowbound. The natives refused to engage in cannibalism, and Salvador and Luis later ran off out of fear that they might be murdered once the others ran out of meat. Indeed, when the duo was found days later, exhausted and lying in the snow, a hiking party member named William Foster shot both of them in the head. The Indians were then butchered and eaten by the hikers. It was the only time during the entire winter that people were murdered for use as food.

Conclusion

Of the eighty-one pioneers who began the Donner Party’s horrific winter in the Sierra Nevada, only forty-five managed to walk out alive. The ordeal proved particularly costly for the group’s fifteen solo travelers, all but two of whom died, but it also took a tragic toll on the families. George and Jacob Donner, both of their wives and four of their children all perished. Pioneer William Eddy, meanwhile, lost his wife and his two kids. Nearly a dozen families had made up Donner wagon train, but only two—the Reeds and the Breens—managed to arrive in California without suffering a single death.

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The Legacy of 19th Century American Military Leader George Custer

Lieutenant Colonel George Custer played a role during the American Civil War on the Union’s side. However, he is most famous for his engagements with the Plains People in the American West. Here, Olivia Jacobs, in her debut article for the site, explores Custer’s legacy.

George Armstrong Custer in the mid-1860s.

Introduction

One of the United States' most notable military figures is Lieutenant Colonel George Custer. His legacy is gilded with themes of Manifest Destiny and the romanticization of the American West. In the past, Custer has been painted as a great hero who sacrificed his life to defend America, and Western media have idolized his story. He has been depicted in at least twenty films beginning in 1912 with the silent film Custer's Last Fight. Many of these depictions portray the lieutenant colonel as the gallant hero that the history books have described him. However, a shadow has been cast on him in a select few pieces of American media.

The musical legend and staple of American culture, Johnny Cash, performed a song called Custer. It details the unspoken dark parts of Custer's story. His likeness is also used in the Dreamworks film Spirit; Stallion of the Cimarron. Unlike most depictions of Custer, the character, only referred to as "The Colonel," is a significant antagonist of the children's film. However, as the character is not referred to by name, it is clear to older audiences who The Colonel should be.

Simply by analyzing the media of Colonel Custer, it is clear that his reputation is hyper-complex. By diving into his military career and reading first-hand experiences of both his friends and victims, historians have attempted to sort out Custer's morality. Despite these efforts, however, the water remains murky.

George Custer's legacy began in 1861 when Custer enlisted in the Union Cavalry. He was present for significant battles, including the most famous American Civil Conflict, Gettysburg. By 1865, Custer had distinguished himself as a successful military man, even finding himself at the surrender of the Confederate military. He earned the Brigadier General rank and supported the Union Army at the Appomattox Court House (Wert 225).

Custer and the Plains People

By mid-1866, Custer was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment. Up until 1868, he found himself on the frontier and scouting duty. Later that year, Custer raided the territory of the Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle. The conflict is commonly known as the Battle of Washita River; this 'victory' caused casualties to the Cheyenne peoples and forced a significant portion of their territory under American Control (Hardoff 30).

The Battle of Washita River was not uncommon, as during this age, the United States government was driving people away from their ancestral land in hopes of eradicating the traditions and cultures that differed from their narrative of white greatness. Despite the unfortunate commonality of Custer's actions, he was set on the Plains people like a rabid dog.

Custer's most popularized military feat is the Battle of Little Bighorn. Many films, including the very first, Custer's Last Fight, depict the events of Little Bighorn. However, much of this conflict is shrouded in mystery. What is known is that with the help of the Crow People, the Seventh Cavalry identified a significant encampment. Said encampment consisted of recorded history's most considerable convergence of Plains Peoples. Members of the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho peoples had gathered together to oppose the American government.

On June 25, 1876, Custer divided his forces into two groups. Five companies remained with Custer, while the others were entrusted to Marcus Reno. His tactics at Little Bighorn were similar to his actions at the Battle of Washita River. The strategy consisted of using non-combats as hostages to force the 'hostiles' into submission. These non-combats would typically consist of women, children, elders, and disabled members of the community.

The intention was for Reno's team to lure the active combatants away from the encampment, and Custer would flank the encampment to kidnap the unarmed innocents. Unfortunately for the Seventh Cavalry, they grossly underestimated the size of the indigenous forces. Their presence was also already known by the occupants of Little Bighorn. Due to this, Reno's companies were forced to form a skirmish line instead of luring the warriors away. Marcus Reno's forces could not hold the line and were forced to withdraw as at least five hundred furious Plains warriors counterattacked (Perrett 8).

After taking control of the non-combats, Custer was supposed to reinforce Reno's team, but they have yet to make it that far. At this point, it needs to be clarified on the precise details. What historians do know for sure is that Custer and all of his companies were successfully wiped out. The other details come from the oral accounts told by indigenous survivors.

An Apsáalooke Crow woman, Pretty Shield, recounted that Custer died while attempting to ford the river of Little Bighorn. She remarks seeing the multiple white men in blue attire attempting to cross the river. Pretty Shield's story is countered by the story of Chief Gall, a Lakota, who claimed that Custer did not attempt to ford the river. Chief Gall stated that Custer died near the famous Custer Hill. Other Lakota people corroborate Gall's story, also present at Little Bighorn (Michno 284-285).

The exact circumstances of Custer's idolized death are foggy; however, when his remains were found, Custer had two bullet wounds. There was a bullet in his skull and a bullet in his chest. To make the story more complex, some historians suspect that the wound on the left side of his skull indicates assisted suicide. Current speculation suggests that the right-handed Custer was fatally shot in the chest, and one of his men shot him in the head shortly after. However, that is only speculation, and the Lakota narrative claims that Custer was shot off his horse (Brininstool 60-62).

Frustratingly, events after Reno and Custer split ways are mostly speculation, as the survivor stories do not align. Even the exact location of the encampment and the subsequent is uncertain. Custer's death via gunfire and the length of the conflict (under an hour) is clear to modern-day historians (Graham 88)

The Legacy

In less than a week after George Custer's death, he was immortalized by the American newspapers. The New York Times ran an article titled Massacre of Our Troops, thrusting the hero narrative into Custer's lap (New York Times 1). He was romanticized as a gallant hero who sacrificed himself to protect United States territory.

His wife, Elizabeth Custer, was said to have insisted that her late husband was a war hero and heavily pushed the popular narrative. Her efforts were solidified when the painting Custer's Last Fight by Cassilly Adams circulated throughout the continental United States. Budweiser Beer reproduced the painting from 1888 as a branding effort, further popularizing the Custer story.

George Custer's legacy held firm until World War II, as distrust and skepticism in the government rose in the West. Historians began to dig beyond the gilded legacy, bringing light to the reality of Custer's actions. Undeniably, Custer and his men were active participants in eradicating the Indigenous populations. However, the toxic legacy is not the fault of Custer. Although those around him described Custer as glory-hungry, he did not spread his narrative. He can and should be faulted for the atrocities committed by his hand, but the heroic idolization can not be blamed on Custer.

Conclusion

Lieutenant Colonel George Custer was seared into the American history books regardless of if he was a hero or a hedonist. To readjust the scales, stories about Crow woman Pretty Shield or Cheyenne man Chief Black Kettle deserve to be immortalized. The fantasy of American greatness and the "sacrifice" of Custer comes at the cost of ancient cultures deeply rooted in the land. The stories of victims deserve to be known and reach far beyond Custer's untruthful blaze of glory.

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References

Brininstool, Earl A. Troopers with Custer : Historic Incidents of the Battle of the Little BigHorn. Stackpole Books, 1994. p. 60–62.

Graham, William A. The Custer Myth : A Source Book of Custeriana. Stackpole Books, 1986. p. 88.

Hardorff, Richard G. Washita Memories: Eyewitness Views of Custer's Attack on Black Kettle's Village. University of Oklahoma Press, 2006. p. 30.

Linderman, Frank B., et al. Pretty-Shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows. University of Nebraska Press, 1931. pp. 135-136.

Michno, Gregory F. Lakota Noon, the Indian Narrative of Custer's Defeat. Mountain Press, 1996. pp. 284-285.

Perrett, Bryan. Last Stand: Famous Battles Against the Odds. Arms & Armour, 1993. p. 8.

Taft, Robert. "The Pictorial Record of the Old West 4." Kansas Historical Society, www.kshs.org/p/the-pictorial-record-of-the-old-west-4/13042. Accessed 27 May 2023.

The New York Times. "MASSACRE OF OUR TROOPS.; FIVE COMPANIES KILLED BY INDIANS.GEN." The New York Times, 6 Jul. 1876, p. 1.

Wert, Jeffry D. Custer: The Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer. Simon & Schuster, 1996. p. 225.

Modern American Gun Culture and the American Frontier

With the most citizen-owned firearms of any nation in the world and a higher-than-average rate of gun-related deaths, America stands out from every other developed Western nation. Here, Greg Hickey argues that this American gun culture exists because American history is unique - no other nation has experienced such rapid expansion or enjoyed so large a frontier as the United States did shortly after its independence. Stemming from the American frontier of the nineteenth century, guns have become enmeshed with America in a relationship that persists through the new frontiers of the twenty-first century.

1890s painting of cowboys: The Herd Quitter by C.M. Russell.

Guns in America

United States citizens own a total of 393,347,000 firearms. India—a country with four times as many people as the U.S—is a distant second with 71,101,000 civilian-owned firearms. Americans own 120.5 firearms per 100 people, meaning that, on average, every American owns more than one gun. The tiny Falkland Islands ranks second with 62.1 firearms per 100 people, just over half the rate in the United States.

Gun safety advocates cite high gun ownership as a significant factor in the above-average rate of gun deaths in America. In 2019, this figure stood at 3.96 deaths per 100,000 people, more than eight times higher than the rate in Canada and almost 100 times higher than in the United Kingdom. The question is how and why modern gun culture became so pervasive in America compared to other developed Western nations.

The Right to Bear Arms

There are three countries in the world with the right to own firearms enshrined in their constitutions: the United States, Guatemala, and Mexico. All three are relatively new nations. The U.S. gained its independence from Great Britain in 1783; Guatemala and Mexico got theirs from Spain in 1821.

Of course, firearms were present in the Americas from the moment the first European settlers arrived in the fifteenth century. These weapons played a major role in the wars of colonization and independence fought on the continent. In contrast, Europeans did not use guns to conquer Europe. Nations fought wars against each other, yet the European nations we know today are descendants of ancient Europeans: Romans, Gauls, Franks, Normans, Slavs. But Europeans did use guns to conquer the Americas.

Thus, the post-indigenous histories of the United States, Guatemala, and Mexico are comprised entirely by the history of firearms. The Europeans who settled in these regions brought guns. Their descendants who severed ties with the colonial powers fought with guns. And their descendants living in newly independent nations inherited those guns and acquired new ones. Yet despite the historical and legislative parallels, gun ownership in the United States far exceeds that of Guatemala and Mexico.

Independence and Its Aftermath

When the Mexican War of Independence began in 1810, the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain stretched from modern-day California to the isthmus of Panama (including Guatemala) and covered what would become the southwestern United States. The Spanish had conquered most of southern Mexico by 1525. By 1536, they had overtaken Jalisco and other regions on the Pacific coast. By the eighteenth century, they had established colonies in present-day Louisiana, Texas, and California. In other words, Spaniards had thoroughly permeated the land that would become Mexico and Guatemala by those nations gained independence.

By contrast, the United States in 1783 consisted of the original thirteen colonies on the Atlantic Ocean plus territory stretching west to the Mississippi River and north to the Great Lakes. In 1803, the U.S. nearly doubled in size with the completion of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1845, the U.S. annexed Texas. One year later, Americans agreed to divide the Oregon Country with the British along the border of present-day Canada. And in 1848, following the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded territory that would become the southwestern United States. In the 65 years since it became a nation, the territory owned by the United States effectively tripled in size.

No other nation in the world faced a comparable situation. Mexico, thanks to the aforementioned Mexican-American War, lost a considerable amount of territory shortly after its independence.

Canada became a nation in 1867 with the union of the British colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Canada. Three years later, Canada acquired Rupert’s Land, a northern wilderness territory that made up most of present-day Canada, from the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). The HBC had acquired the land, which stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains and north to the Arctic Circle, under a charter from England in 1670, and had exclusive rights to colonize and trade in the territory. Unlike America, the vast majority of Canadian land was under British control when Canada became a nation.

Likewise, the British had colonized practically all of Australia by 1832, well before Australian independence in 1901. In another contrast to America, neither Canada nor Australia fought a war to gain independence. Instead, Britain willingly ceded control of these overseas territories to local governance.

The American Frontier

Consequently, the early history of the United States proved unique in comparison to other nations in the world. And this early history has directly influenced modern gun culture. Americans fought a war with guns to gain their independence. They subsequently acquired territories that tripled the nation in size, some of which involved more fighting with guns. The eastern Americans then pushed west into new territories, hunting and protecting themselves and driving away understandably hostile Native Americans with guns. From Lewis and Clark to the Oregon Trail to the Wild West, westward expansion claimed a defining chapter in American history, and this expansion was made possible by individual citizens with guns.

Whether as a cause or effect, the American firearms industry took off in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1776, George Washington ordered the establishment of the Springfield Armory in Springfield Massachusetts. In 1816, the U.S. government hired Eliphalet Remington’s Remington Arms Company to produce flintlock rifles. And in 1836, Samuel Colt patented his Single Action Army Revolver, also known as the Colt 45 or “the gun that won the west.” Americans needed guns, and gunmakers provided new models to fit their needs.

The Second Amendment

In 1791, the existing state legislatures ratified the U.S. Bill of Rights containing ten amendments to the Constitution. In particular, Amendment II states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This Second Amendment has provided legal support for private gun ownership in the 230 years since ratification.

Yet the Second Amendment does not capture the spirit in which early Americans used their guns. Guns did not rise to cultural prominence in the hands of New England militiamen sitting at home and protecting their farmland. Rather, guns captivated the American imagination on the frontier, in the hands of pioneers and explorers and cowboys and outlaws.

By the 1870s, guns were so prevalent in the American West that some towns started cracking down on armed citizens. The first law passed in Dodge City, Kansas was an 1878 ban on carrying guns in town. The infamous 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral occurred when a group of cowboys defied the Earp brothers’ orders to turn over their weapons in accordance with a Tombstone, Arizona law requiring all town visitors to disarm upon arrival. American gun culture and the American gun control movement both began on the American frontier.

The New American Frontier

Not every American frontier town followed the examples of Dodge City and Tombstone. In many places, the American West remained a lawless territory governed by individualism and determination. In the words of Matt Jancer in his Smithsonian article “Gun Control Is as Old as the Old West”:

“As the West developed, towns pushed this mythos of the West as their founding ideology. Lax gun laws were just a part of an individualistic streak that manifested itself with the explosion in popularity of concealed carry licenses and the broader acceptance of openly carrying firearms (open-carry laws) that require no permit.”

This individualistic frontier mythos remained well after Americans settled all the nation’s territories. It spawned an entire genre of film and literature. John F. Kennedy invoked the frontier ideal when he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, stating, “We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier,” beyond which were “the uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.” Six years later, the television series Star Trek echoed Kennedy with an opening monologue that began, “Space… the final frontier.”

In short, the American ideal is inextricably linked with determined, productive individuals pushing boundaries and exploring new frontiers in science, technology, space, society and human rights. This ideal extends from the time when American settlers set out into the physical frontier of a new nation. And this historical frontier is inextricably linked with guns. Modern American gun culture and American ideals of liberty, individualism and self-determination derive from the same historical events—events that were unique to the formation of America. The eighteenth-century pioneer, the Old West outlaw and sheriff, and the ambitious tech entrepreneur are all operating on the same fundamental principle.

The True Origin of Modern American Gun Culture

Thus, American gun culture is not an outgrowth of the Second Amendment or the mark of a particularly warlike nation. Instead, America’s fascination with guns stems from the circumstances surrounding the country’s early history—circumstances that set the United States apart. No other country matches America in firearms ownership because no other country began with its citizens venturing out into a massive frontier in the same way - armed with their ambition and wits and firearms. American gun culture is so widespread because guns played an essential role in the events that defined America.

Author Biography

Greg Hickey is a forensic firearms examiner and the author of Parabellum, a novel about American gun culture and a fictional mass shooting at a beach in Chicago.

Find more of his work at greghickeywrites.com.

The 1803 Louisiana Purchase: The Start of the American Midwest

The Louisiana Purchase was the purchase of a vast area of land by the United States from Napoleonic France in 1803. While France only occupied a small amount of the territory, it comprised vast swathes of what is now the American Midwest. William Floyd Junior explains the history of the territory and how the US came to acquire it.

The Louisiana Purchase on a modern map. Source: William Morris, available here.

The first administration of Thomas Jefferson (1801-1805) basically turned on one event, the purchase of the Louisiana Territory and control of the Mississippi River. It was the river, which occupied the President’s mind along with its free navigation, which would lead to the acquisition of the vast territory of approximately 828,000 square miles. Jefferson first began contemplating his vision about the time of the Revolution. In confronting the problem of Virginia’s frontiers, he thought of his idea as “Empire of Liberty.” In his first inaugural address, Jefferson spoke of the United States as, “a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the hundredth and thousandth generation.”

European Exploration

The story of the Louisiana Territory began as far back as 1519, when a Spanish sea expedition explored the Gulf of Mexico. This would be the first time that Europeans would site the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1528, there was another Spanish expedition of some three hundred men travelling inland from the coast of Florida. After a torturous expedition, four emaciated survivors would reach a Spanish settlement in Mexico after wondering through southern Louisiana and much of the southwest for eight years.

In 1541, Hernando de Soto, the newly appointed governor of Cuba, organized an expedition of six hundred soldiers for the purpose of exploring the Louisiana territory. De Soto would die the following year of yellow fever. The force would be reduced by hunger, disease, and Native American attacks to about half of its original size, causing it to sail down the Mississippi to safer surroundings.

The first European settlers to move into the Mississippi Valley were French, who would come in from the north instead of the usual southern route. Samuel de Champlain became governor of new France in 1633 and would encourage his countrymen to expand further into the interior.

When King Louis XIV became ruler of France, he moved to shut the Spanish out of North America and curb British expansion. A great Anglo-French rivalry for control of the Mississippi Valley would ensue.

Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, a young adventurer-explorer would name the territory he was exploring, Louisiana after the king. On April 9, 1682, La Salle planted a column and cross-painted it with “the arms of France.” La Salle would also formulate a plan for the colonization of the lower Mississippi Valley. La Salle would be murdered by two of his own men before he could establish settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi River. In the summer of 1684, France made peace with Spain. The peace and LaSalle’s failure led the French government to abandon immediate plans for attacking New Spain by establishing colonies on the lower Mississippi.

In September 1715, after being in power for seventy-two years, Louis XIV died. He would leave France and the empire bankrupt by the cost of years of war around the world. Several years after Louis died, the rivalry between England and France would gain momentum. France would go on to claim the entire Ohio valley. English leaders looked at Louisiana along with Canada as a wall confining their colonies to the Atlantic seaboard. The French continued exploring trying to find a route to the Pacific Ocean. By 1752, they planted the French flag at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. By the early 1790s, a mass migration had started dividing the country.

1800s

By 1800, France would reign supreme in Europe and Napoleon turned his energies to rebuilding his overseas empire. Louisiana and the Floridas were major elements of his grand design centered on Santo Domingo, the richest of the colonies. In the same year, Spain ceded Louisiana to France on October 1, by the Treaty of San Ildefonso. However, Spain refused to part with the Floridas. Napoleon would now mount an expedition to take possession of Louisiana at the port of New Orleans. Jefferson became aware of the retrocession causing a shadow to fall over his administration.

Napoleon planned to build a commercial bloc in the Caribbean Basin that consisted of the strategically important West Indian Islands Martinique and Saint Dominque which would be linked with Louisiana. The French in the Mississippi Valley would be President Jefferson’s first great diplomatic crisis. He had been a long- time friend of France since his days as ambassador in Paris (1784-1789), which made him familiar with French diplomacy and politics.

Although Jefferson had never been west of the Shenandoah Valley, his attitude about the Mississippi Valley and beyond was long-standing. When news that Spain had ceded its rights to Napoleon and France, Jefferson recognized this as a fundamental shift in the strategic situation. It both threatened American security and would block western expansion.

Jefferson’s instructions to Robert Livingston, the newly appointed American ambassador to France were very direct. The fact that France would now control the Louisiana region was a major disaster that “completely reverses all the political relations with the United States and will fill a new epoch in our political course.” It constituted, he believed, the greatest challenge to American independence and national integrity since the American Revolution. Despite prior friendships with France, the moment the French occupied New Orleans, the two nations became enemies.

Monroe mission

Livingston was more than capable, but he was not a Virginian. Jefferson wanted someone in Paris whom he could trust beyond any doubt. In effect, he would order James Monroe, who was at the time Virginia’s governor, to become a special envoy to France. Monroe’s instructions authorized the purchase of New Orleans and as much of the Mississippi Valley as possible. The boundaries of the French acquisition from Spain were not clear, but Jefferson was offering up to ten million dollars.

During the winter and spring of 1803, while the outcome of the Monroe mission was yet to be decided, Jefferson’s management of the prospective crisis was both smart and shrewd. He would see to it that an old French friend, du Pont de Nemours, was provided information about America’s intentions that could be leaked in the corridors of Versailles. 

When the Spanish official governing New Orleans abruptly closed the port to American commerce, Jefferson came under considerable pressure to launch a military expedition to seize both the city and the Floridas, abandoning diplomacy in favor of war with both Spain and France. In spite of Congress authorizing the president to raise eighty thousand volunteers for a military campaign, Jefferson would reject the idea and continue to pursue a peaceful outcome. Time and demography were on America’s side, justifying Jefferson’s patient approach.

Jefferson was also lucky in that Napoleon’s decision was not to just to sell New Orleans but the entire Mississippi Valley and the modern-day American Midwest. In the early morning of April 11, 1803, Napoleon announced to his Finance Minister Barbe-Marbois that, “I renounce Louisiana.” Within hours the French were enquiring if the United States had interest in the entire territory of Louisiana. Napoleon’s abrupt decision was prompted by the resumption of the Anglo-French war. Ambassador Livingston had complained in the past that negotiating with the French was impossible: “There is no people, no Legislature, no counsellors. One man is everything. He seldom asks advice, and never hears it unasked.” This was typical of Napoleon’s all-or-nothing style. The payment that Napoleon would receive would help subsidize his European army. This worked directly to Jefferson’s advantage. Napoleon’s losing of Santo Domingo was another reason why Napoleon was willing to depart with Louisiana.

Agreement

Livingston knew what to do. “The field open to us is infinitely larger than our instructions contemplated,” Livingston would tell Madison, and the chance “must not be missed.” Livingston and Monroe, now in Paris, negotiated a treaty which gave the United States the Louisiana Territory. The area was so big that the borders were not clearly defined by either party, for about fifteen million dollars or three cents an acre.

The news of the signing of the deal that reached Jefferson on July 3, 1803, was official but not direct. The news came in a letter from the two ministers to Rufus King who got the news shortly before leaving London, brought it with him on his return home, and sent it to Madison from New York. The report of the acquisition of territory west of the Mississippi surprised the American people more than it did Jefferson or Madison. They had learned of the prospect a number of weeks earlier and had approved a larger negotiation in a private letter sent to Paris. Nevertheless, Jefferson was still surprised by the scope of the deal.

The news of the Louisiana Purchase was not accepted favorably by everyone. In Boston George Cabot wrote to his friend Rufus King, the leader of New England Federalism, regarding the recent purchase as being advantageous to France. It is like selling us a ship after she is surrounded by a British fleet,” he said. He would also write that France was, “rid of an encumbrance that wounded her pride,” while obtaining money and regaining the friendship of the United States.

As Jefferson was taking in the news, he wrote to Merriwether Lewis concerning his exploration of the newly acquired territory, “In the journey which you are about to undertake for the discovery of the course and source of the Mississipi (sic) and of the most convenient water communication from thence to the Pacific Ocean . . .” This was a letter full of optimism but also realistic. Jefferson had now done all he could to control the largely uncontrollable nature of Lewis’s dangerous mission.

The official documents concerning the deal would reach Washington on July 14 and were not made public. However, a summary of them would be given out and the financial terms made public. The terms included a payment of $11,250,000 to France in six per cent stock, redeemable for fifteen years, and the assumption by the United States of the claims of its citizens against France in the amount of $3,750,000. For a period of twelve years French and Spanish ships and merchandise were to pay no higher duties than American in the parts of the ceded territory. Finally, the inhabitants of Louisiana were to be incorporated with the United States as soon as possible, consistent with the Constitution, and were to be secure in their personal rights in the meantime. The financing was arranged with the Anglo-Dutch Merchant Banks, Barings Brothers and Hopes, which in effect bought Louisiana from France and sold it to the United States, making nearly $3,000,000 from the deal.

Constitutional matters

On January 13, 1803, Jefferson’s Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, would write to the President explaining his constitutional position regarding the purchase of the Louisiana Territory. He would sum up his opinion by stating the following:

1st. That the United States as a nation has an inherent right to acquire territory.

2d. That whenever that acquisition is by treaty, the same constituted authorities in whom the treaty-making power is vested have a constitutional right to sanction the acquisition.

3d. That whenever the territory has been acquired, Congress have the power either of admitting into the Union as a new state, or of annexing to a State with the consent of that State, or making regulations for the government of such territory.

Later in January, Jefferson would reply to Gallatin saying, “You are right in my opinion, to Mr. L’s proposition: there is no constitutional difficulty as to the acquisition of territory, and whether where acquired it may be taken into the Union by the Constitution as it now stands, will become a question of expediency. It must be assumed at this point that the administration recognized as constitutional the acquisition of territory by treaty. The point of what should be done with it would not be answered at this point in time. For Jefferson to have suggested any difficulties to Congress at this stage would have been to invite trouble. The Senate would finally approve the treaty by a vote of 24 to 7, sealing the deal.

What do you think of the Louisiana Purchase? Let us know below.

Now read William’s article on three great early influences on Thomas Jefferson here.

Sources

1.     Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson & the new nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 745, 746, 747, 748.

2.     Alexander De Conde, This Affair of Louisiana (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976),  4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 15, 20. 

3.     www.loc.gov/collections/louisiana.

4.     Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 243, 244, 245, 246.

5.     Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (New York: Random House, 2012), 385, 387.

6.     Dumas Malone, Jefferson The President: First Term 1801-1805 (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1970), 296, 297, 302, 312, 313.

7.     Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Merriwether Lewis, July 4, 1803, National Archives.

8.     Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life (New York: Penguin Group, 2014), 324. 

History Books – Episode 7 – A War in the American Southwest

In episode 7 of our podcast series History Books, we look at how a great war broke out in the American south-west

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 The podcast is on a book called The Wrath of Cochise by David Mort.

The book is about the disputes that led the outbreak of the Apache Wars. The Apache Wars were a series of conflicts between the United States and a number of Apache nations fought in the American Southwest from the mid-nineteenth century until the 1880s.

And as we shall soon see, a key factor in their starting was that in February 1861, the twelve-year-old son of Arizona rancher John Ward was kidnapped by Apaches. Ward followed their trail and reported the incident to patrols at Fort Buchanan, blaming a band of Chiricahuas led by the infamous warrior Cochise.

The book then tells the story of how events dramatically escalated, leading to the death of many and the destruction of parts of the states of Arizona and New Mexico. As well as the devastation of a way of life.

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If you enjoy the podcast, you can purchase the book here: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Take care,

George Levrier-Jones

email: info@itshistorypodcasts.com

web: www.itshistorypodcasts.com

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