DREAMS FOR SALE--THE STORY OF THE 101 RANCH by CHERYL PIERSON

On a vast open plain a few miles south of Ponca City, Oklahoma, lies the burial ground of one of the greatest ranching empires of the West—the Miller brothers’ 101 Ranch.

Established in 1893 by Colonel George Washington Miller, a former Confederate soldier, and his wife Molly, the 101 became known as the “Largest Diversified Farm and Ranch in America.” It was nicknamed the “White House.”

Not only was the 101 one of the largest working ranches west of the Mississippi, it was even more famous for its Wild West shows. These displays of horsemanship, roping, and daring “rescues” transitioned from local shows to the national level in 1907 when the 101 Wild West Show performed at the Jamestown Exposition in Virginia. In 1908, the tour circuit began in earnest.

The Miller brothers, Joseph, George Jr., and Zack, had permitted some of their cowboys to perform at a local fair, and from this, their own Wild West show grew to become known worldwide.

It was essentially a Wild West show, complete with cattle, buffaloes, cowboys and Indians. It included an all-around crowd pleaser—the attack on the stagecoach. But it also contained elements of the circus with sideshows, and “freaks” such as the Bearded Lady. In the heyday of its popularity, the Millers’ 101 Wild West Show netted them over one million dollars per year!

The idea of formalizing the performing cowboys into a Wild West show came from the Millers’ longtime friend and neighbor, Major Gordon W. Lillie—also known as Pawnee Bill. Pawnee Bill eventually combined his own Wild West show with Buffalo Bill Cody’s. The 101 Wild West Show, however, remained solitary, boasting stars such as black bulldogger Bill Pickett, Bee Ho Gray, early movie star Tom Mix, Mexican Joe, and eventually, Buffalo Bill Cody as well.

The Miller brothers were latecomers to the Wild West show circuit, causing them to suffer financially with the advent of movies. Even so, their show became the largest in the nation by the 1920’s, requiring more than 100 train cars to travel from town to town.

By 1916, the two younger Miller brothers, George Jr. and Zack, gave up trying to work with their temperamental oldest brother, Joe. It was during this time period that Joe hired an aging Buffalo Bill Cody to star in a WWI recruitment show: The Pageant of Preparedness. Cody quit the show due to illness, and died within a year. Still, Joe tried to keep the show going, but was unsuccessful. He offered it for sale to the American Circus Corporation in 1927. They were uninterested, suffering from financial distress as well. On October 21, 1927, a neighbor found Joe Miller dead in the ranch garage of carbon monoxide poisoning. Several months later, his brother, George Jr., was killed in a car accident. In 1932, Zack Miller was forced to file for bankruptcy. The U.S. Government seized what remained of the show’s assets and bought 8,000 acres of the 101 Ranch. Zack Miller died in 1952 of cancer.

Today, what remains of the once-glorious three-story stucco 101 Ranch headquarters is rubble. Over ten years ago, efforts began to turn the site into a roadside park.

Bill Pickett, the inventor of bulldogging, or steer wrestling, is buried there. On the same mound where Bill Pickett lies is a memorial to the Ponca chief, White Eagle, who led his people to a nearby reservation during the 1870’s from their holdings along the Nebraska-Dakota border.

The stone monument was built as an Indian trail marker where signals and messages could be left by different friendly tribes who passed by. These tribes generally understood the signals, and could tell which way the other travelers were going. Gradually, settlers took away the stones for building purposes. Because Colonel George Miller and White Eagle were lifetime friends, and Joe Miller was adopted into the tribe, the renovation of the trail marker had significance to the 101 Ranch for many reasons.

The 101 Ranch was a bridge between these old, lost days of the early West, when Colonel George Miller started the venture as a settler after the States’ War, and the modern times of change. The 101 Ranch was the headquarters for the show business contingent of cowboys and other western performers of the early 1900’s. Will Rogers was a frequent visitor, as well as presidents and celebrities from around the world. Some of the first western movies were filmed on the 101 Ranch.

Though there isn’t much left of the actual building, the 101 Ranch exceeded the expectations for a “cattle ranch.” Indeed, it was a virtual palace on the Oklahoma plains; a place where dreams were lived.

In my novel, Fire Eyes, Kaed Turner talks with his friend and mentor, Tom Sellers, about giving up law enforcement and settling down to ranching. I don't think they ever had anything as grand as the 101 Ranch in mind. At first, Tom sees it as an unattainable dream; but as the conversation progresses, the possibilities look better. Here’s what happens!

FROM FIRE EYES:
Tom smiled. “Glad you’ve got somebody good—deep down—like you are, Kaed. Ain’t too many men who’d take on another man’s child, love her like you do your Lexi.”

Kaed put his hand against the rough wood of the tree and straightened out his arm, stretching his muscles.

Tom drew deeply on his pipe, and Kaed waited. He’d known Tom so long that he recognized the older man was going to broach a subject with him that he normally would have avoided. Finally, Tom said, “I told Harv he needed to find someone. Settle down again. Grow corn and make babies. Think I might’ve offended him. But after seein’ him with little Lexi, it hit me that he seemed content. For the first time in a long while.”

It had struck Kaed, as well. Harv rarely smiled. But when he’d played with Lexi, it seemed that grin of his was permanently fixed on his face.

“Seems that way for you, too, boy.” Tom wouldn’t look at him. “Seems like you found what you’ve been looking for. Don’t let marshalin’ ruin it for you, Kaed. I’ve stayed with it too long. Me and Harv and Jack, we’ve been damn lucky to get this old without gettin’ killed either in the War, or doin’ this job.”

“Tom? Sounds like you’ve got some regrets.”

Tom nodded. “You made me realize somethin’, Marshal Turner, and now I don’t know whether to thank you or cuss you. When I saw the way that woman looked at you, the way that baby’s eyes lit up, it made me know I shoulda give this all up years ago and found myself somebody. Taken the advice I gave Harv. Planted my seed in the cornfield and in my woman’s belly, and maybe I’d’a been happier, too.”

“It’s not too late.” Kaed’s voice was low and rough. The doubt he’d had at starting his own family again was suddenly erased by the older man’s words. Nothing would bring his first family back. But he had a second chance now, and he was a helluva lot younger than Tom Sellers. He’d had it twice, and Tom had never had it at all. Never felt the love flow through a woman, through her touch, her look, and into his own body, completing him. Never looked into the eyes of a child who worshipped him. He wouldn’t have missed that for anything the first time. Or the second.

Tom turned slowly to look at Kaed, the leaves of the elm tree patterning the filtering moonlight across his face. “You think that cause you’re young, Kaed. Twenty-nine ain’t forty-three.”

“Forty-three ain’t dead, Tom. There’s plenty of women out there. Plenty of land. Room to spread out. What’re you grinnin’ at?”

Tom laughed aloud. “Got any particular woman in mind?” Quickly, he added, “Now, remember, Kaed. She’s gotta be young enough to give me a baby, but not so young she’s a baby herself. Gotta be easy on the eye, and I want her to look at me like your Jessica looks at you. And by the way, have you got any idea where a fella could get a piece of good land for raisin’ cattle, with a little patch for farmin’?”

Kaed’s lips twitched. Tom was dreaming, but only half dreaming. The serious half had taken root in his heart and mind. Kaed knew before too much longer, that part would eat away at the lightheartedness until it took over completely, becoming a bold, unshakeable dream that he would do his utmost to accomplish. Now that Tom had envisioned what his life could be, Kaed knew it would fall to him to help make it a reality.

“Let’s end this business with Fallon. After that, we’ll find the land and the cattle.”

“Don’t mean nothin’ without the woman, Kaed. You oughtta know that.”

“I do.” Kaed smiled, his thoughts straying to Miss Amelia Bailey, the not-so-young-but-young-enough school teacher in Fort Smith, who always seemed to trip over her words when Tom Sellers came around. Just the right age. And very easy on the eye. “Stick with me, old man. I may even help you find a decent woman to settle down with.”

I'm giving away an autographed copy of FIRE EYES today to a lucky commenter! Please leave your contact info in your comment and be sure to check back sometime after 9:00 this evening to see if you were the winner of the drawing!

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REMEMBERING THE GOOD THINGS by CHERYL PIERSON

When my husband Gary and I were first married, he would laughingly call me “Pollyanna” –the girl who always saw the good in every situation. Through the years, I have to admit there have been times when that quality has failed me, when things were so bad I didn’t know what we were going to do. I know we’ve all had “those” times. But in general, I’m one of those people who does try to see the good in things.
I think I “learned” to do that from my mom. I thought a lot about this over the last few weeks—fall always makes me remember and miss my parents more than any other time of the year. One night Gary and I were talking about the things our parents had taught us, and I told him one thing my mom taught me was to look on the bright side of things.
I imagine she had to do a lot of that, being the oldest of eleven children in the Dustbowl days of Oklahoma—which was also during The Great Depression. Growing up, I remember how she’d comment on things that meant nothing to me…at the time.
“Oh, Cheryl, I saw the first robin today! That means spring is on the way,” she’d say, with a smile.
And>? my young brain would ask. So spring is on the way.

When spring came along, maybe she’d comment on how green the trees were, or how blue the sky was today—just look at those clouds! Now that I’m older, I realize why these things were important and such a cause of joy to her.
Growing up dirt poor in a small house that had no insulation and very little heat, I’m sure that seeing the first robin was important because it meant those cold days and nights would soon be at an end and warm weather was soon to blow in.
The green of the trees meant there was enough rain to allow things to grow—something I know, as the oldest in such a large family, she was acutely aware of since my grandfather was a hardscrabble farmer and had so many mouths to feed. What a relief, especially here in Oklahoma, that there had been plentiful rain and things were growing well!

The blue of the sky—can you imagine growing up in a time when you could look outside and see huge billowing gales of dust—and nothing else? Animals had to be put up in the barn, families had to be inside, and still, the houses were so poorly constructed there would be layers of dust on the windowsills once the dust storm had passed. So a blue sky was important—no dust, and those beautiful white clouds must have looked heavenly in her eyes.

Mama always found happiness in the small things—small in MY eyes. A good meal she’d cooked for her family, getting the laundry done and put away for the week, finding a good sale on orange juice—yes, those were the days when people would look through the Sunday or Wednesday paper at the grocery store ads, make several stops to find the things at each store that were on sale, and several trips home to put the perishables away—a very different time.
It was not just the fact of the accomplishment itself, but what it meant to her from the things that had happened in her past. A good meal meant there was enough food to go around for everyone, served on a matching set of dishes. No one went to bed hungry. Laundry being done meant that everyone had clothes for a solid week—not one or two good dresses that had to be laundered over and over. Making the rounds of the different grocery stores and finding good “deals” meant she was able to provide some extras with what Dad made in the oilfield. She knew how hard he worked.
So though I didn’t have the past that Mama had—mine was much easier in comparison—I think I learned that attitude through watching her. I’m sure there were times she wanted to just go into the bathroom and have a good cry, but instead, she looked for the good, and found it.

I think of her every time I see that first robin. What a gift that has been to me, in so many ways. Part of writing is thinking about our characters and WHY they act and react like they do. This has been a whole new area of enlightenment for me. I understand so many of my characters even more than I did when I wrote them—their reasoning, and their motivation.
Do you have an aspect to your personality that you inherited or learned from one of your parents or another family member? What are they? Do you think that these behavior patterns can be multi-generational? My mind is whirling! What do you think?

ONE OF MY FAVE PICS OF MAMA AND DADDY TAKEN APRIL 9, 1991, ON THEIR 47th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

The Strange Journey of Elmer McCurdy – The Outlaw Who Wouldn’t Give Up

Elmer McCurdy

What do an Oklahoma bandit, a traveling carnival, Skeletor, and the Six Million Dollar Man have in common? To find out, you need to know the story of Elmer McCurdy, the bungling outlaw who wouldn’t be taken alive, and who had more success in death than he ever did in life.

Elmer McCurdy was born on New Year’s Day in 1880 in the town of Washington in the southern part of Maine. He was the son of an unwed 17-year-old by the name of Sadie. The father was rumored to be Sadie’s cousin, Charles Smith, a name that McCurdy would use as one of his aliases during his later years. The baby was raised by Sadie’s brother George, and his wife Helen as their own. Ten years later, George died of tuberculosis, and Helen, Sadie, and Elmer moved sixty miles away to Bangor, Maine. Sometime during his teen years, Sadie confessed to Elmer that she was his real mother, not Helen, and that she wasn’t sure who his biological father was. During his mid-teen years, McCurdy worked with his grandfather as an apprentice plumber. He began drinking during this time, but was, by all accounts, a good worker.

In 1898, McCurdy lost his job, and in 1900 Sadie passed away, followed one month later by his grandfather. McCurdy left Maine after the death of his mother and grandfather and, over the course of the next few years, worked as a lead miner and as a plumber. His drinking continued and made it difficult for him to keep a steady job. On at least one occasion, in 1905, he was arrested for public intoxication.

Then in 1907, McCurdy joined the Army. He served as a machine gun operator at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He was honorably discharged from the Army in 1910. While in the Army, he gained some (little) knowledge of explosive ordinance, in particular, he learned how to work with nitroglycerin.

By 1911, McCurdy was living in Lenapah, Oklahoma where his short-lived career as a bungling bandit began. In March, he and three other men decided to rob the Iron Mountain-Missouri Pacific train. They stopped the train and located the safe, but McCurdy used too much nitro to blow the safe open and wound up destroying most of the money that was inside. Instead of making off with the four-thousand dollars that were inside the safe, they only managed to salvage four-hundred and fifty dollars, including silver coins that were melted and fused together.

Later that same year, in September, McCurdy and two of his gang attempted to rob the Citizens Bank in Chautauqua, Kansas with pretty much the same results. McCurdy, using nitroglycerin to blow open the door of the bank’s outer vault, wound up blasting the door of the vault through the bank, destroying the interior of the bank, but leaving the safe inside the vault untouched. Before they were able to successfully blow open the safe, their lookout man was scared off, so the remaining bandits grabbed one-hundred and fifty dollars in coins and fled.

The Guthrie Daily Leader October 09, 1911

The final entry in his criminal log took place on October 4, 1911, near Okesa, Oklahoma. McCurdy and his accomplices had heard that a particular train was carrying four-hundred thousand dollars that was on its way to the Osage Nation. However, in his usual bungling style, McCurdy and his gang stopped the wrong train. This was a passenger train with no big payday for the bandits. Instead of the four hundred thousand dollars they were expecting, they made off with forty-six dollars, a pocket watch, a coat, a revolver, and two jugs of whiskey.

McCurdy fled to a ranch belonging to a friend of his named Charlie Revard near Bartlesville, Oklahoma. He spent the next couple of days hiding out in a hay shed, drinking the stolen whiskey. On the morning of October 7^th, a posse, which had trailed him to the ranch, surrounded the hay shed and a gunfight ensued which lasted about an hour before McCurdy was killed by a single shot to the chest.

McCurdy’s body was taken to nearby Pawhuska, Oklahoma, to the Johnson Funeral Home where his body was embalmed with an arsenic-based embalming fluid that was in common use at the time. This type of embalming fluid was used, particularly when they weren’t sure if the body would be claimed by anyone within a reasonable amount of time because it helped preserve the features of the body for a longer period.

It’s probably a good thing that the undertaker, Joseph L. Johnson, used this method because McCurdy’s body went unclaimed for the next five years. Sometime during this five years, the enterprising undertaker decided that he might as well make some of his money back while he was waiting for someone to come and claim the body, so he propped McCurdy up in a coffin and charged onlookers five cents apiece to see “The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up.” People would drop their nickels into McCurdy’s open mouth where they would later be retrieved by Johnson, who wound up making quite a substantial side income from McCurdy’s corpse.

Finally, in October of 1916, two men showed up claiming to be McCurdy’s brothers. After convincing Johnson and the Osage County Sheriff of their rightful claim to the body, they took possession and hauled McCurdy away to give him a proper burial. As it turned out, the two men weren’t McCurdy’s brothers at all. Instead, they were two carnival promoters named James and Charles Patterson, owners of the Great Patterson Carnival Show. After hearing of the success of Johnson in exhibiting McCurdy’s body to the public, they concocted the scheme to get McCurdy for their own use. For the next six years, “The Outlaw Who Would Never Be Captured Alive” traveled the country with the Patterson carnival. This was just the beginning of McCurdy’s strange journey.

In 1922, James Patterson sold his carnival to a man named Louis Sonney who operated the traveling “Museum of Crime” which featured wax figures of famous outlaws. In 1933, Sonney loaned the body out to director Dwain Esper who used it to promote his film "Narcotic." Esper would prop McCurdy’s body up in the lobby of movie theaters as an example of what drug addiction would do to a person.

Sonney died in 1949, and McCurdy’s body was placed in storage in Los Angeles for fifteen years. Then in 1964, Louis’s son Dan lent the body to another filmmaker, David F. Friedman, where it played a part in his 1967 film "She Freak."

In 1968, Dan Sonney sold the body, along with some wax figures, to the Hollywood Wax Museum. The owner, Spoony Singh, allowed the body to be exhibited in a show at Mount Rushmore. By now, the corpse had deteriorated quite a bit, the body shrinking in size and the skin hardening and tightening. To add insult to injury, while at Mount Rushmore, McCurdy sustained some damage, losing the tips of his ears and some fingers and toes in a windstorm. By now, he was probably already thought to be an actual wax figure. Singh retired poor old McCurdy until 1976 when he sold him to Ed Liersch who was part owner of an amusement park in Long Beach, California, where McCurdy found a place hanging from a gallows in the “Laff in the Dark” funhouse.

The amusement park, called the Pike, was in a rough part of town with tattoo parlors and bars, and it provided a rather seedy atmosphere that attracted several television shows including Columbo and The Six Million Dollar Man. It was on December 8^th, 1976, when the production crew for The Six Million Dollar Man was preparing to film a scene in the funhouse at the Pike when a crew member went to move the body of Elmer McCurdy. The body had a waxy complexion and had been painted orange and looked out of place in the scene. When the crew member picked up the body, an arm fell off revealing human bone and tissue.

The authorities were called and over the next few days, a number of clues helped them to identify the body as that of the Oklahoma bandit, Elmer McCurdy. Among these clues were a 1924 penny and ticket stubs to Louis Sonney’s Museum of Crime that were lodged inside the throat of the corpse.

The Chief Medical Examiner for Los Angeles County allowed the body to be turned over to officials from Oklahoma, and on April 22, 1977, Elmer McCurdy reached his final destination in the Boot Hill section of the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Two feet of concrete was poured over the casket before the grave was filled in – just to make sure that McCurdy stayed put. As fate would have it, Elmer McCurdy, the bungling bandit who never pulled off a successful heist, was laid to rest next to one of the most successful outlaws in the history of the American west – Bill Doolin, founder of the Wild Bunch. Whether McCurdy has picked up any pointers from Doolin since being interred next to him is a matter of speculation.

Final resting place - Doolin and McCurdy

Although McCurdy was finally laid to rest, his influence continues. He has been the subject of several documentaries and television shows. He was the inspiration for a 2009 song entitled, “Body of an Outlaw” by the group Rotary Downs. He was the inspiration for the mystery book, “The Castlemaine Murders” by Kerry Greenwood. He even has a pizza named after him in the Washington General Store in his hometown of Washington, Maine. He is also suspected of being the inspiration behind the highly popular Jonah Hex comics and film franchise, as well as the inspiration of the Mattel toy, Skeletor, who was created by a Mattel toy engineer after recalling a scary afternoon in the Laff-In-The-Dark Funhouse in Long Beach as a child.


SDG

About the Author

Mike Ritt describes himself as Conservative, Christian, Pro-life, and Pro-gun. He is a drinker of copious amounts of coffee. Happily married to his redheaded sweetheart, Tami, they live in the mountains of western Montana. He is a writer of western short stories, poetry, and humorous fiction and has been published in a number of anthologies and magazines. He has finished his first western fiction novel and is patiently waiting for publication. You can visit his blog and his Facebook page by clicking on the following links: http://michaelrritt.blogspot.com
https://www.facebook.com/MichaelRRittAuthor

U.S. Marshals Service and Nineteenth Century Violence

Troy D. Smith

Being a peace officer is, well, not always peaceful. It is a dangerous profession. Being in the federal marshals service has its own set of attendant dangers, as one of our regular contributors knows from experience. 

That particular profession was especially dangerous, though, in the late 19^th century.

You can go to the Officers Down Memorial Page and read through a list, with some details attached, of every member of the U.S. Marshals Service to die in the line of duty since it was established in 1789. The list includes both Deputy U.S. Marshals and deputized posse members. The first to fall was Marshal Robert Forsyth, killed in Georgia in 1794 –he was shot through a door while attempting to serve papers. The most recent name on the list (as of this writing) is that of Deputy Commander Patrick Thomas Carothers, a 26-year veteran –he, too, was shot in Georgia while attempting to enter a home to serve a warrant. In all, the list contains 280 names (again, so far).

190 of those men died between 1870 and 1910. That is more than two-thirds.

It will come as no surprise to many of our readers and contributors that one-half of those 1870-1910 deaths, 95 to be specific, occurred in the area known initially as Indian Territory, later divided into Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory, and by the end of that era the state of Oklahoma. To do a little more math, that means that ONE-THIRD of all members of the Marshals Service to die in the line of duty did so in Oklahoma in the space of a few decades.

That’s because Oklahoma was, as they say, wide open. Or as a saying from the time put it, “There is no Sunday west of St. Louis, and no God west of Fort Smith.”

This was due to a very unique set of circumstances surrounding Oklahoma. The eastern half was the home (not by choice, for many of them) of the “Five Civilized Tribes”: Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, who had been removed to Oklahoma in the 1830s (and 1840s, for the resisting Seminoles), although a minority had acquiesced and come peacefully of their own accord before the Trail of Tears. The western half of Oklahoma was, at that time, home to the so-called “wild” tribes- Comanches, Kiowas, and etc.

The Five Tribes had written laws and their own police forces, called light horse, to enforce them (depending on the tribe, individual districts also had sheriffs). This was all well and good when dealing with Indian criminals and Indian victims, but a jurisdictional morass arose when non-Indians were involved. You see, the Indians had no jurisdiction over crimes that involved American citizens (non-Indians, in other words). At the same time, the Supreme Court had long since determined that, constitutionally, state and local governments had no jurisdiction over Indian country. In such cases (and this is still true), only the federal government has authority. At that time, this meant the U.S. Marshals Service, which eventually operated out of the court in Fort Smith, Arkansas (which was right on the border of Indian Territory). For many years, that court was presided over by Judge Isaac Parker, known widely as “The Hanging Judge.”

What this meant, in the 1870s and 1880s, was this: if you were an outlaw operating in Texas, Arkansas, or Missouri, you could “light out for the Nations” and have a very good chance of getting away and being able to continue your wayward career. The local Indian authorities could not touch you, and state or county lawmen could not follow you. The only people who could come after you were members of the U.S. Marshals Service. (Sometimes this situation was altered by Indian peace officers, such as the Cherokee Sam Sixkiller, also being deputized as Deputy U.S. Marshals. There were also quite a few black marshals, Bass Reeves being the most famous.)

Therefore, there were a lot of outlaws in the Nations, with a finite number of federal marshals to track them down. It’s no surprise, then, that so many marshals were killed in the attempt to do so. Look through that 280 name list, and you might be surprised how many lawmen were killed in Oklahoma after catching their man –by sleeping on the return trip to Fort Smith, and being killed with axes or big sticks or whatever the prisoners who managed to work their way loose were able to get their hands on.

The situation got worse in the 1890s, after the Dawes Act had allowed for the allotment of most tribes’ land and the opening of parts of Oklahoma for settlement. The Five Tribes were excluded from this at first, since they were technically already “civilized”, although an addition to the law in 1898 brought them under allotment as well. Starting at the end of the 1880s and growing exponentially by the year, the Five Tribes were surrounded by more and more settlers, making the jurisdictional issue ever more pronounced as more non-Indians in the region magnified the problem. These were the days of the Doolins and the Daltons, of Cherokee Bill, of the Starrs, of the famed “Three Guardsmen” (Chris Madsen, Heck Thomas, and Bill Tilghman) leading federal posses after outlaws, and of the efforts to capture Ned Christie (and other, lesser-known Cherokees such as Bill Pigeon).

So that explains the high mortality rate of officers in Oklahoma. But what about the rest of the country during that same period? Going back to that concept of mathematics, fully one-third of federal marshals ever killed in the line of duty fell from 1870-1910… outside of Oklahoma. So it was still a pretty violent time everywhere else, as well.

Not all of them were murdered. Thomas Foley was killed in Virginia in 1870 when a courtroom balcony collapsed and killed him and 61 other people. Clement McCausland died in Dakota Territory in 1872 while pursuing a fugitive, when he got lost in a blizzard. James Arnold died in 1891 while transporting a prisoner to a prison on an island off the coast of Washington (the state) –a sudden squall capsized their sailboat and he drowned.

Almost all, however, were murdered. As one would expect, a large number of those deaths occurred in the American West (not counting Oklahoma). We should probably count the two marshals killed in Alaska in separate incidents during the Klondike gold rush among those. Some names on the list who died in the West might jump out at the western reader: Bob Olinger, for example, killed in Lincoln County, NM, by Billy the Kid during a jailbreak.

Here’s the interesting part, though. Taking the 95 deaths in Oklahoma out of the mix, there were 30 marshals killed in the line of duty in the American West. There was a grand total of ONE killed in the North –stabbed while trying to arrest a deserter from a Russian ship in New Jersey.

And there were 56 killed in the South.

Most of these men died in Tennessee, Kentucky, northern Georgia, and North Carolina. And most of them were killed by moonshiners, either while serving warrants, transporting prisoners, or in ambush. (Two were killed by the Ku Klux Klan during the federal government's efforts to suppress that terrorist group in the early 1870s, one in Tennessee and one in Mississippi.)

Actually, several marshals who died in Oklahoma were killed while raiding stills or trying to arrest bootleggers (remember Rooster Cogburn’s testimony in True Grit?) The circumstances were slightly different, though. All sales of alcohol were forbidden in Indian Territory; in the South, it was not the sale or private distilling of alcohol that was the problem, it was the fact that no taxes were being collected on it.

Farmers making their own liquor was a longstanding tradition- in fact, at one time it had been more a general rural tradition than a specifically Southern Appalachian one. Turning your grain into alcohol made it easier to store and transport, and brought more money. The first federal tax on a specific item was on whiskey, which led to the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania in the 1790s. That tradition had remained strong in the Mountain South.

After the end of the Civil War, presidents Grant and Hayes stressed the enforcement of tax laws on whiskey as a way to pay down the war debt. This led to what was known as the Moonshine Wars of the 1870s (and later, as well). Federal agents started sweeping through the mountains, forcing licensed still owners to pay taxes and shutting down unlicensed ones. Most of the Mountain South had been pro-Union during the war, but during and after Reconstruction there was a growth of ex-Confederate sensibility in the region, and in this case it was exacerbated by federal “outsiders” trying to control what had become a mountain tradition.

Which led to the surprising fact that –if you take Oklahoma, a unique case, out of the equation –if you were in the federal marshals service in the late 19^th/early 20^th century, you were statistically almost twice as likely to be shot by Southern moonshiners as by Western outlaws (in reality, of course, this would depend on where you were serving).

Oklahoma and the Mountain South had something else in common besides violence (and Cherokees). I’m speaking of public reaction to that violence.

As I mentioned earlier, at first the Five Civilized Tribes were exempt from allotment. To clarify, allotment, made government policy by the Dawes Act of 1887, meant that control over Native lands would be taken away from tribal governments and instead each Indian family would be given (allotted) a small farm. For most tribes, this resulted in a lot of land being left over, previously under control of the tribe. This “leftover” public land, controlled by the federal government, was opened to settlement.

As more settlers poured into Oklahoma, many of them eyed the prime lands still controlled by the Five Tribes. Those settlers, and the governments of neighboring states, immediately started proclaiming how unfair it was that all this land was under the control of “wild, uncivilized savages.” But wait, one might say, the Five Tribes were exempt from the new law because they were “civilized.” Many of them operated modern businesses and spoke perfect English. Well, many Americans started saying, if they’re so doggone civilized…. Why is it so wild there in the Nations? Why is there so much violence and lawlessness? And it was impossible to argue that there was no violence, because there definitely was. The true reason for it, of course, was the complicated legal situation in which the Five Tribes had been placed by the federal government, but no one (aside from the Indians) was saying that. Rather, the violence was being used as a justification for the government to come in and take over… and to redistribute the Indians’ resources to white Americans.

Meanwhile, in the Mountain South, northern investors and their southern partners started expanding industry after the Civil War. New railroads were built –the antebellum Southern railroad system had existed primarily to link cotton plantations to harbor cities so as to ship their product overseas –and that led to new businesses. In particular, lumber and coal mining started to boom post-Civil War. Before the war, most of the coal mining had taken place in northern Appalachia, in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Once new railroads extended into the southern mountains, coal mining became a viable operation.

However, a lot of southern mountain folk were hesitant –or downright unwilling –to sell or lease their land, or even the mineral and timber rights to it, to these new businesses. They were, in effect, “holding up progress” due to a strong affinity for their own land and traditions.

At the end of Reconstruction (which was officially over after the inauguration of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877) there was a clarion call among progressives in the former Confederate states for a “New South” –one that was open to industry and business (other than just cotton), and was modernized. Southern mountaineers –who had always been presented as the ultimate frontier heroes (Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, even Andrew Jackson if you think about it) –were standing in the way of that, and the economic benefits (for some) that would come with it.

Therefore, just like newspapers in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri were doing with the Five Tribes, papers started focusing heavily on the violence of the Moonshine Wars as evidence that Southern mountain folk were backward, wild, and uncivilized. They especially latched onto the Hatfield and McCoy feud on the Kentucky-West Virginia border, with papers all around the country taking it up. 

In the 1880s, therefore, the national image of southern mountain folk changed from that of rugged, self-sufficient frontier heroes to what we now call the “hillbilly stereotype” –violent, ignorant, wild, savage, lazy, dishonest, and incompetent. That is a far cry from Davy Crockett.

“Hillbilly” became shorthand for a group of people that it was okay for everyone else to make fun of and look down on (which is still the case –watch reality TV at any random time.) But more to the point –just like those “wild” Cherokees –hillbillies were both violent and backward, mentally incapable of knowing what was in their own best interests, and of controlling their own resources. So, just like in Indian Territory, it was okay for government and private business interests to come in and make those decisions (especially concerning resources) for them. By the 1920s and 1930s, by the way, Appalachian violence and the need to suppress it had expanded to include striking coalminers (watch the movie Matewan.)

Ned Christie, the “Cherokee outlaw”, and moonshiners in Southern Appalachia were both resisting what they considered to be a foreign government, and the act of their resistance reinforced the idea that they needed to be more firmly controlled (I think it could be strongly argued that the Cherokees had a lot more justification than moonshiners who didn’t want to pay taxes –my point is not the justification, but the mindset.) In both cases, this led to control of their natural resources passing out of their own hands.

The federal marshals, of course, were just doing their jobs… a hard and thankless job, made more dangerous by the circumstances of their times.

(by the way, to have the last portion of this piece essentially set to music, listen to the song above: "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive." The song was played in each season finale of Justified, a TV series about a former coal-miner turned Deputy U.S. Marshal in Appalachian Kentucky.)

OKLAHOMA'S TERRIBLE TWISTERS by CHERYL PIERSON

Hard to believe two years have passed since our state was hit by a spate of tornadoes that killed 7 elementary school aged children in the city of Moore, Oklahoma. Even so, our state has still not voted in money to be used for storm shelters in schools! Some smaller schools are taking matters into their own hands and raising the funds on their own. I published this blog 2 years ago, but wanted to remember those victims of the storms once again on this anniversary of their deaths. No matter how far we've come since I grew up "back in the day", there are major obstacles to overcome before we can all be safer from these storms.

Growing up here in Oklahoma, every spring was the same story—tornado season. My dad would carry me out on the front porch with him to watch the clouds. He’d talk about them, and command the thunder to roar! The lightning to flash! Looking back on it now, I understand that he was trying to teach me not to be afraid of the weather, and it worked. And maybe he was trying not to be afraid, too.

In those days, there was little to no warning before the storm hit. In today’s world, so many improvements and inventions have come along that our weathermen can pinpoint the minute the storm will hit a certain area. There is round the clock coverage on the three major stations when we are in a severe weather watch. They also broadcast from sister-station radio channels, in case you’re not near a television or are in a storm shelter. Doppler radar is one of the greatest life-saving inventions that ever happened, in my opinion.

Every elementary school child here is trained in our “tornado drills” just as they are trained in fire drills. How well I remember the hardships of trying to crouch on our knees, bowed over next to the walls in the hallway! At that time, most little girls wore dresses. Our biggest worry was trying to hold our dress down so no one could see our underwear.

Most families here don’t have storm shelters or cellars. Most houses don’t have basements. Our home was no exception—no basement and no cellar. Our water table is so high here that it’s hard to keep the dampness and/or flooding out. Even the pre-fab shelters are sometimes prone to leaking water.

One of my enduring memories was of the time when I was about five years old and we were caught at my grandparents’ just before the storm hit. They had an old root cellar—dug out of the red Oklahoma dirt, with an old tin door that my grandfather had made, and some cinder block steps that led down into the darkness. I remember my mother not wanting to go down into the cellar for some reason. When I got down there, I understood. My grandfather lit a kerosene lamp and we could see spiders…There was an old cot against the wall, and Mom and I sat down on it. Across the cellar, no more than 5 feet away, there were rough shelves that my grandmother’s jars of canned goods lined. And in the space between two jars…two eyes looked out at me.

“Look, Mom…there are eyes looking at us,” I said. In the next few seconds, I found out something about my granddad I would never have suspected. He could move like the lightning above us outside! He had everyone stand to one side, and he took up a hoe and an axe from the corner (hmmm….this must have happened before down there!) and quick as anything, he had that snake out of the shelf and on the floor with its head chopped off. I learned later it was a copperhead.

Public shelters? Few and far between. Liability is a huge responsibility that no one wants to assume. And in these sue-happy days, it’s a very real possibility that organizations who are just trying to be good neighbors and offer safety could lose everything to one lawsuit. This is true of governmental and private organizations alike. Another fear, quite justified, is the fact that many people trying to get to a shelter create a traffic jam and are sitting ducks.

In light of all the tragedy that has happened lately here in our great state, I’m relieved to learn that FINALLY there is some positive action being made toward outfitting our schools with a safe place for the kids and teachers to be. That should have been done long, long ago. Of course, it’s all a matter of money. It’s expensive to do. But what price can we put on a child’s life?

I guess we can say that is the “silver lining” to all this. Thanks to each and every one of you who has kept us in your thoughts and prayers. There is still a great need for help and healing, but what a country we live in! I’m so proud to be an American. We have our differences, but when tragedy strikes, no one stands together like we do. I’m so thankful for that.

This is one of the most touching pictures I’ve seen. It reminds me of how, someway, there’s always someone who manages to fly Old Glory in the direst of circumstances and remind us that we are all just human beings, trying to make it in this world, helping one another when our world is literally ripped away from us. There has been such an outpouring of love and help from all over not only our own nation, but other countries as well, and yet–for whatever reason, we are always surprised and humbled that other care so much.

Last but not least, I leave you with a picture of one of my favorite Oklahomans, Miranda Lambert, married to another favorite Oklahoman, Blake Shelton. Blake organized a benefit concert and got tons of performers, not just fellow Okies in the business–to come out and give their all for our ravaged state. God bless them all!

INDIAN HOSPITALS--FOR INDIANS ONLY--PART 2--by Cheryl Pierson

Welcome to “Part 2” of my “For Indians Only” series. The last time we talked about this topic, we talked about the boarding schools our country set up for Indian children to help “assimilate” them into white American society. It was a huge failure. Part 2, Indian Hospitals, is a true horror story from our nation’s past.

I want to talk a bit about a specific hospital in my state of Oklahoma. I’m sure there were many others like this, scattered around, but this is one I have a little personal knowledge of.
Located in Talihina, Oklahoma, in a secluded area on top of a large hill in the Kiamichi Mountains, the Harper Building is one of several from the former Eastern Oklahoma Tuberculosis Sanitarium. It was built in the early part of the 1900’s, specifically to house Indians (Choctaws and Chickasaws) with tuberculosis.

Here’s a little of the article that appeared at the time in our largest state newspaper, The Daily Oklahoman, in explanation of why it was being built. (Rootsweb Ancestry)—partial article

The Daily Oklahoman
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
December 22, 1917 p 4
Sanitarium Is Provided
Six years ago the Choctaws, noting the increase of tuberculosis among them, took the first step toward establishing a tubercular sanitarium, the report says. On Dec. 14, 1911, the last Choctaw council passed an act appropriating $50,000 for such a sanitarium. This act was supplemented by a later act of congress, approving the appropriation, but it was not until the present year that the institution, located near Talihina, was completed. The hospital as established is doing a general hospital work, however, and no special provision has been made for the care of tubercular patients.
Therefore, the following detailed recommendations were made:

First: The Talihina Sanitarium - This sanitarium should be devoted particularly, if not exclusively, to tuberculosis. It offers the principal and immediate remedy for existing conditions. It is centrally located in the home country of the Indians, and if it is properly conducted Indian patients may be induced to reside there, where they will be properly clothed and fed and will receive the medical and surgical attention they need. They can be provided with religious services, and open air classes can be carried on for children so that they may not grow up in ignorance.

Jump to the next century, ca. 2008-2009. I was teaching a novel writing class, a small class with only 8-10 students. One of those students was an incredible Choctaw Indian lady, who I will call Emma. She told the class that she was there to learn how to write her life story. And she proceeded to tell us some of the stories of her life.

She’d gone to an orphanage at a young age, her single mother unable to feed her and her younger brother. When she reached her teen years, perhaps 16 or 17, she was sent from the orphanage to the Talihina Indian Tuberculosis Hospital. Young Emma made friends—most of the patients there were children and teens, but there were some adults. But because of the nature of the illness, Emma lost many of her friends to death.

She told of a particular instance, after the death of one of her good friends, when the janitor, who also helped dig graves, saw her in the hallway. He gave her a slow grin and pointed a bony finger at her. “When will I be coming for YOU?” he asked.

Even worse, experiments were conducted on the patients there at the Indian hospital. Why? Because there was a white tuberculosis hospital in the same area (my dad was a patient there a few years later) and they needed to find out the best treatments to use…so the Indians were the ones they experimented on. Emma told the story of going in and having them collapse her lung—with no anesthesia—when she was around 17 or so.

The hospital still stands, but is said to be haunted by all the children and others who died there. The government now owns the property, and it’s run by Oklahoma Veteran Affairs. These pictures are of the Harper Building where the Indian hospital was, and is being considered for demolition at this time.