Hollywood took the Wild West and turned it into a backdrop of white hats, blonde damsels, and clean shootouts in the middle of the street. The real history was something else. Outlaws became shoes for governors. Families murdered guests with hammers. Bounty hunters propped corpses against walls for photographs. 42 bizarre facts about the Wild West you did not know. Brace yourself. Some of these will surprise you.
Fact number one, big-nose George Parrot, the outlaw who became a pair of shoes. On March 22nd, 1881, a mob dragged George Parrot from the jail in Rollins, Wyoming, and hanged him from a telegraph pole. He had killed two lawmen while trying to rob a train. When the mob was done with him, the body had no owner. The local doctor, John Osbourne, took the corpse for study. That is when the story unfolded. Osbourne saw it off the top of the skull, claiming to study the criminal brain. He gave the piece to his assistant, Lillian Heath, who used it as an ashtray for years. Lillian would later become the first female doctor in Wyoming. The skin from the chest was sent to a tannery in Denver. It came back as a pair of shoes. In 1893, Osborne was sworn in as the Democratic governor of Wyoming. According to the story, he wore the shoes at the inauguration. They are in the town museum.
Fact number two, the Benders. The family that murdered guests with hammers. Between 1871 and 1873 at an inn on the Osage Trail in Kansas, a family of German immigrants received travelers, father, mother, son John Jr., and daughter Kate. The room had a curtain dividing the front from the back. Kate would invite the guest to sit at the head of the table, leaning against the curtain, and make conversation while he dined. Behind the curtain, someone waited with a hammer. A blow to the back of the head knocked the man down. They cut the throat to make sure through the body in the cellar. They took money, jewelry, and horse, buried them in the orchard behind the house. The scheme worked for two years without anyone suspecting. In May of 1873, when a doctor disappeared along the route, neighbors forced the house open. They found at least 11 bodies buried in the orchard, all with crushed skulls. The benders had already fled. Rewards, raids, expeditions. They were never found.
Fact number three, Elmer McCertie, the outlaw who worked 65 years after dying. On October 7th, 1911 in Oklahoma, McCertie was killed in a shootout with police after robbing a train by mistake. He only got $46 and two bottles of whiskey. The body went to a funeral home in Pahoska. Nobody showed up. The Undertaker inbalmed the corpse with arsenic, dressed it as an outlaw, and started charging a coin from the curious, who came to see the outlaw who would not give up. 5 years later, two men claimed to be relatives and took the body. It was a lie. The corpse entered the circuit of traveling fairs, horror parks, and roadside shows. It changed owners several times. They forgot it was a person. In December of 1976, crew members of a TV show were filming at a park in Long Beach, California. One of them grabbed the arm of a hanging mannequin. The arm broke off. Human bone appeared. It was McCertie. 65 years on display before finally being buried.
Fact number four, Alfred Packer, the man who ate five companions in the snow. In November of 1873, Packer was guiding five prospectors through the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. He was 31 years old. A blizzard caught them in the dead of winter near Lake Slumgullion. In April of 1874, Packer arrived alone at an Indian agency near Gunnison. Wellfed, carrying money and watches from the other five. He said they had separated from him and died of starvation in the mountains. Months later, a hunter found the five bodies at the abandoned camp. Stacked with flesh cut from the thighs and chest, one had been shot. Packer confessed. He said he killed one in self-defense and ate the others. He was tried in Lake City, Colorado. The phrase attributed to Judge Melville Jerry became folklore. “There were seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you ate five of them.” The historical version is more sober. Packer served 17 years.
Fact number five, Charles Kennedy, the man of the cabin between Elizabeth Town and Talos. Around 1870 in New Mexico, Kennedy kept an isolated cabin on the road between the two towns, offering beds to travelers. His wife, Gregoria, was ute. When the guest went to sleep, Kennedy killed them in bed. He took money, guns, horse, burned the body in the fireplace or buried it near the house. He operated for years without anyone suspecting until the night his own son said too much. During dinner, a guest asked if there were many Indians in the area. Kennedy’s son, still a child, answered without understanding. He told the man to smell the floor carefully that his father had buried an Indian right under there. Kennedy exploded. He killed the guest right there. He smashed his son’s head against the fireplace stone. He locked his wife in and drank until he passed out. Gregoria managed to escape and fled to Elizabeth Town. Clay Allison’s vigilantes killed Kennedy before the trial.
Fact number six, the Chinese cribs of San Francisco, 1850s. During the gold rush, Chinese women were brought on ships to the West Coast. Some were tricked with promises of marriage. Others arrived chained in the ship’s hold. In Chinatown, trafficking rings changed their names and placed them inside cubicles called cribs. Wooden crates with no window at street level, a great at face height. The client paid on the sidewalk and entered. They spent the day receiving worker after worker. They did not leave. They ate, slept, and worked in the same cubicle. Those who tried to escape were beaten. Those who got sick were forgotten. The police knew about the scheme. Missionaries like Donald Dena Cameron entered the houses to rescue girls some 12, 13 years old. Local politics pretended it was Chinese commerce like any other. It was only partially dismantled after the earthquake of 1906.
Fact number seven, James Miller, the deacon who killed for hire. Born in 1861 in Arkansas, raised in Texas, he attended Methodist church every Sunday. He did not drink, did not smoke, did not swear. Neighbors called him Deacon Jim. Under the long black coat, he wore a steel plate strapped to his chest. The plate saved him from several pointlank shots. People saw Miller take lead to the chest and remain standing as if nothing had happened. He worked as a hired gun. He charged hundreds of dollars per kill. He killed his brother-in-law on the porch. He killed a sheriff in Toya. He is suspected of killing Pat Garrett, the man who brought down Billy the Kid. Actual kills, well more than 14. In 1909, after killing a marshall in Ada, Oklahoma, a mob grew tired of the court. They dragged Miller from the jail before dawn and took him to a barn. Last words before the hanging. “Let me keep the hat. I will see you all in hell.”
Fact number eight, John Wesley Harden, the gunman who killed a man for the sound of his snoring. Born in Texas in 1853, son of a Methodist preacher, he killed his first man at 15. By 18, he already had a dozen kills. He claimed 44. In August of 1871, he stayed at the American House Hotel in Abalene, Kansas. The walls were thin, separated by just a plank. The guest in the next room, Charles Cougar, was sleeping. The famous version says, “Ker was snoring too loud.” Harden yelled for him to stop. Cougar kept going. Harden fired several shots through the wall. The bullets went through the plank and killed the man in his bed. The local newspaper says Koger was sitting up reading. Either way, he died without understanding. Harden knew Wild Bill Hickok, sheriff of Abene, would not let this slide. He jumped out the hotel window in his undershirt, slept in a haystack, and stole a horse at dawn. He was killed with a shot in the back in El Paso, 1895.
Fact number nine, Bell Star, the bandit queen killed on an empty road. Myra Maybel Shirley was born in 1848 in Missouri into a wealthy family. The Civil War destroyed her father’s farm. By 20, she was already riding with outlaws. She married three times, all to criminals. She rode with Cole Younger, sheltered Jesse James in Indian territory, and ran horse theft rings. She wore velvet, rodeside saddle, and carried two revolvers, nicknamed the bandit queen. Four husbands died violently. Sam Star III, died in a shootout. Belle had already been arrested for horse theft and tried by Judge Parker in Fort Smith. Her face appeared in newspapers across Texas and Arkansas. On February 3rd, 1889, 2 days before turning 41, she was riding back from the market on the road near Eufala. Someone was waiting. She took shotgun blasts to the back, the back of the head, and the face. The killer was never identified. Suspect, her own son.
Fact number 10, Wild Bill Hickok, the gunfighter who died for switching seats at the poker table. James Butler Hickok was the most famous gunfighter in the West. Former scout, former sheriff of Abalene. His rule, never sit with your back to the door. On August 2nd, 1876 in Deadwood, he entered the Nuttle and Man Saloon to play poker. The chair with its back to the wall was already taken. He asked the player to switch. The man refused. He asked a second time, refused again. Hickock sat with his back to the rear door. He played a few hands, lost to a captain named Massie. He grumbled that the old man had cleaned him out. It was his last sentence. Jack McCall came in through the back and shot him in the back of the head. Hickock felt dead over the table. The cards he was holding entered legend, two black aces and two black eights. To this day, poker players call that combination the dead man’s hand.
Fact number 11, Alfgo Baka, the 19-year-old who held off 80 cowboys for 33 hours. In October of 1884, Baka, a young Mexican-American born in Sakoro, New Mexico, went to Frisco because Texan cowboys were tormenting the Hispanic population. He made a deputy badge at home, arrested a cowboy named Charlie Mccardi, who was shooting drunk, and took him in for trial. That was the day things escalated for good. McCarti’s friends started gathering outside the station. More cowboys kept arriving through the night. When Baka counted, there were about 80 armed men wanting his head. Baka ran to a jacal, a flimsy hut made of adobe and sticks, and locked himself inside with two revolvers. The standoff lasted 33 hours. The cowboys fired approximately 4,000 rounds at the Jakal. They tried dynamite. They tried fire. Baka shot back from a hole in the floor. He came out alive. A broom beside him had eight bullets embedded in it.
Fact number 12, Rattlesnake Dick, the gold that is still buried in the mountain. Richard Barter, a Canadian of British descent, arrived in California during the gold rush at 20 years old. He did not find gold. He became an outlaw. The nickname came from the Gulch where he mined. In 1856, he planned the biggest heist of his career. He sent George Skinner and three accompllices to intercept a mule train carrying gold from the Eureka Mining Company crossing the Trinity Mountains. Skinner took $80,000 without firing a shot. The problem came when it was time to haul it. The mules were exhausted. Skinner buried about 40,000 on a hillside, marked reference points, and tried to flee with the rest. He was cornered and killed before revealing the exact location. About 15,000 in gold was recovered on the hillside. The rest remains buried in the Trinity Mountains to this day. Rattlesnake Dick was killed in a shootout in 1859. At 25 years old, he took half the secret. Skinner had already taken the other half.
Fact number 13, the Johnson County War. In April of 1892 in northern Wyoming, the Cattle Barons decided to wipe out the small ranchers they called thieves. They had a list of 70 names, among them the county sheriff and three commissioners. They took a private train from Cheyenne. They boarded 52 men, including 23 Texas hired guns, contracted at $5 a day, plus $50 per confirmed kill. They carried dynamite rifles, and enough ammunition to kill everyone in the state. They cut the telegraph wires, surrounded a ranch called the KC, and killed the first two names on the list, including the leader, Nate Champion. The news spread. Ranchers, merchants, and workers took up arms and surrounded the invaders. About 200 men surrounded the TA ranch. The tension grew so intense that Washington sent the army. The soldiers arrived not to protect the ranchers, but to escort the rich men out safely. Not a single invader was convicted.
Fact number 14, Big-nose Kate, the woman who set a town on fire to free Doc Holiday. Mary Katherine Horny was born in Hungary in 1850. Orphaned in Iowa, she ran away from an adoptive family. She worked as a dancer, prostitute, and brothel owner across the South. She met John Henry Doc Holidayiday in Fort Griffin, Texas, and the two became partners for years to come. They fought, separated, got back together. Doc was a dentist, gambler, and tuberculosis patient. In 1877 in Texas, he was arrested after a brawl. A man died. A mob formed to carry out rope justice before the trial. The jail was flimsy. Kate knew that if she waited, Doc would be lynched. She set fire to a shed near the jail. The town ran to put out the flames before taking to the street. Meanwhile, Kate entered the station armed, held the guard at gunpoint, and freed Doc Holiday. The two fled on horseback into the early morning. Few men would have had the courage this woman had alone. They remained partners with fights for more than a decade.
Fact number 15, Bird Cage Theater. The theater that never closed for 8 years. Opened on December 25th, 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona at the height of the Silver Rush. The owner, William Hutchinson, wanted to run a respectable variety theater. It became something else. In the main hall, suspended from the ceiling in two rows, hung 14 small curtained booths, the cages. They were cubicles where prostitutes served clients while the show went on down on the stage below. You paid admission and chose. It operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for eight straight years without closing a single night. Wyatt Herp, Doc Holiday, Bat Masterson, they all passed through. A poker game in the basement supposedly lasted 8 years. The walls of the bird cage still hold about 120 bullet holes. 26 people were killed inside the building in fights, jealous rages, and gambling debts. When the silver mines flooded in 1889, the place closed. It reopened as a museum later.
Fact number 16, Base Reeves, the black marshall who may have inspired the Lone Ranger. Born into slavery in Arkansas in 1838. He escaped during the Civil War to Indian territory where he learned several native languages and lived for years among the Cherokee and Creek. In 1875, Judge Isaac Parker hired him as a federal deputy marshal. He was the first black man to wear the badge west of the Mississippi. He worked 32 straight years without ever being wounded. Official tally, 3,000 arrests and 14 kills in self-defense. Reeves could not read. He memorized every warrant. He used disguises dressed in the rags of a drunk cowboy to get close to fugitives. He carried handcuffs on one side of his belt and a Bible on the other. In one arrest, he brought his own son in chains to Fort Smith. Decades after Reeves died, the series The Lone Ranger was created in Detroit, a masked white man with an indigenous companion. Several historians argue the inspiration came from Reeves. Others disagree. Reeves existed and he did all of it.
Fact number 17, Charlie Parkhurst, the stage coach driver who was a woman. Charlotte Parkhurst was born in 1812 in New Hampshire in an orphanage. She ran away dressed as a boy at 12 years old. She never wore women’s clothing again. She learned to break horses on the east coast. She moved to California in 1851 and became one of the most well-known stage coach drivers in the state. She drank whiskey, chewed tobacco, played poker, and swore like any other driver. A horse kick blinded her left eye. She wore a patch. She drove for 30 years between Santa Cruz and San Jose on roads with bandits and cliffs. She killed a robber in an ambush. On November 3rd, 1868, she registered to vote in the presidential election, 52 years before women’s suffrage. Charlie died of tongue cancer in December of 1879 in a cabin near Watsonville. When the Undertaker went to prepare the body, he discovered that Charlie was in fact Charlotte.
Fact number 18, the diamond hoax. The con that fooled the American banking system. In 1872, two cousins from Kentucky, Philip Arnold and John Slack, showed up in San Francisco with a bag full of rough diamonds. They said they had found a field out west. The bankers took the bait. Arnold had worked at a diamond drilling company and stolen industrial stones. He bought more in London. He sprinkled everything on an isolated plateau in Colorado and took the investors to the site blindfolded. The men dug into the ground and found diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. They returned convinced. Investors like Charles Tiffany and General Benjamin Butler put in millions in shares. It was one of the biggest financial cons of the century. The hired engineer Henry Janon bumped into the government geologist Clarence King by chance on a train in California. King went to the site, noticed the stones were in absurd spots in the soil, and exposed the fraud. In November of 1872, it went public.
Fact number 19, Judge Isaac C. Parker, the hanging judge. In 1875, Parker took over the federal court in Fort Smith, Arkansas, responsible for the lawless Indian territory. He was 36 years old. President Grant sent him to end the disorder. He served for 21 years. He presided over approximately 13,000 cases. He sentenced roughly 160 men to death by hanging. About 79 were actually hanged in the courtyard. The executioner, George Maladan, became known as the prince of hangman. Maladon weighed the ropes for each condemned man. On mass execution days, he hanged six men at the same time on the same gallows. Crowds took the train to watch. They sold pamphlets with the condemned man’s biography at the entrance of the yard. Despite the nickname hanging judge, Parker was considered humane by the standards of the era. He slept poorly, said every sentence weighed on his stomach. He approved Bass Reeves and other black and indigenous marshals. He died in 1896 after losing jurisdiction.
Fact number 20, Stage coach Mary, the former slave who carried the mail in Montana. Mary Fields was born into slavery in Tennessee around 1832. Freed after the Civil War, she ended up working for Urseline nuns. In 1885, she moved to Montana. She stood over 6 feet tall, weighed close to 200 lb, smoked cigars, drank whiskey, went around armed, and brawled in saloons. She was expelled from the mission by the bishop, who found her presence inappropriate for nuns. She needed to figure out life on her own. In 1895, at 63 years old, she won a postal contract for an independent route in Cascade, Montana. She was the first black woman to receive a Star Route. She drove a carriage with six horses, shotgun on the seat, a mule named Moses on a leash. For 8 years, she faced wolves, robbers, and blizzards. When the snow stopped the carriage, she crossed the route on foot with the mail sacks on her back. She never missed a delivery. Cascade closed its schools on her birthday. She died in 1914.
Fact number 21, The Reno brothers and the first train robbery in American history. On October 6th, 1866 in Jackson County, Indiana, two brothers named John and Simeon Reno had an idea that changed American crime. Before that, trains were stopped. The Renos were the first to stop a moving train in an empty stretch far from any authority. They jumped into a car of the Ohio and Mississippi railroad, overpowered the safe attendant, and threw the safe out the moving door. They took about $13,000, a fortune at the time. They created the model that Jesse James, Frank James, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and dozens of others would copy for decades across the West. The Pinkertons were hired to hunt them all. In July of 1868, John was caught. Frank, William, and Simeon were captured in Minnesota. On December 12th, 1868, a masked mob stormed the jail in New Alb, Indiana, and hanged the three Renos from the bars of a staircase.
Fact number 22, Blackbart, the robber who wrote poetry and was afraid of horses. Charles BS, former Union soldier, failed minor, wanted revenge specifically on Wells Fargo, a company he accused of having ruined his mind. Starting in 1875, he always traveled on foot. He walked 20, 25 miles to the ambush point. He wore an overcoat, a flower sack mask, and carried a double-barreled shotgun. The shotgun was never fired, almost certainly not even loaded. Over 8 years, he robbed 28 Wells Fargo stage coaches. He never killed anyone. He was polite to drivers and passengers and refused to take anything from the passengers. In two robberies, he left poems in the empty safe-signed “black bart, the poet.” He was caught in 1883 because of a ridiculous detail. He left a handkerchief near the site of the last robbery. The handkerchief had a laundry mark. Wells Fargo traced the mark to San Francisco. He served four years and disappeared into anonymity.
Fact number 23, The Pinkertons, the private army of the Barons. Alan Pinkerton, a Scottish immigrant, founded the agency in Chicago in 1850. He started as a railroad detective. He allegedly saved Abraham Lincoln from an assassination attempt in 1861. After that, it became something else. The baronss of steel, railroads, mines, and oil discovered it was cheaper to rent a private army than to wait for the police. The Pinkertons offered everything. Detectives infiltrated into unions, strike breaking with clubs and revolvers. In July of 1892 in Pennsylvania, Carnegie Steel hired 300 Pinkerton men to invade the Homestead plant and break a strike. The men arrived by boat on the Manonga River at dawn. The strikers were waiting on the bank. It was a 12-hour shootout. Seven strikers and three Pinkerton men died. Carnegie won the strike in the end with help from the National Guard. The United States saw that capital had its own army. The Pinkertons still exist today.
Fact number 24, Sitting Bull, the Lakota chief who annihilated Kuster and became a show attraction. On June 25th, 1876 at Little Bigghorn, Montana, Sitting Bull led the Lakota Cheyenne Coalition that destroyed the seventh cavalry of Lieutenant Colonel Kuster. Kuster died along with 267 of his men in one of the worst military defeats in American history. But the army hunted the Lakota communities in the months that followed. Sitting Bull fled to Canada, spending four years in exile. He surrendered in 1881, starving. He was imprisoned at Fort Randall, transferred to the Standing Rock reservation. In 1885, William Buffalo Bill Cody invited him to tour with his show. He earned $50 a week, plus whatever he made selling photos. The warrior who had humiliated the army now rode in arenas for paying crowds that booed him. In four months, he quit and returned to the reservation. On December 15th, 1890, he was killed on the reservation by Indian police.
Fact number 25, Pearl Hart, the last stage coach robber. Pearl Taylor was born in 1871 in Canada into a wealthy family. She ran away from home at 16 with a gambler named Frederick Hart who beat her. She saw Buffalo Bills show in Chicago and was captivated. She left her children with her mother and went to Arizona. In 1899, she received a letter saying her mother was ill. Pearl did not have a scent. Her partner, Joe Boot, suggested the solution, “Rob, a stage coach.” On May 30th, she cut her hair and dressed as a man. The two stopped the stage coach between Globe and Florence. They took $431 from the passengers. Pearl returned $1 to each victim to buy food. She was arrested 3 days later, lost in the desert. New York newspaper sent reporters. At the trial, she said, “I shall not submit to a law in which my sex had no voice in making.” She was sentenced to 5 years. She served just over one year in Yuma. She was released claiming to be pregnant. It was the last stage coach robbery in the United States.
Fact number 26, bounty hunters and the standing corpse. Before photography, the bounty hunter who killed a fugitive needed to drag the body to town to collect the reward. In hot climates, days of travel with a decomposing corpse on a horse. When the camera arrived in the West in the 1860s and 1870s, it changed the job. The hunter could bring photographic proof to the nearest sheriff. But the corpse needed to look recognizable in the image. Lying on the ground, turned over, it did not work. A macob practice emerged. They propped the corpse upright against a wall, a door, or a crate, dressed in the clothes it was killed in. Sometimes they tied the chin so the mouth would not fall open. Sometimes they forced the eyes open. The photographer needed to be fast. The body started to deteriorate shortly after death. Photographs of dead fugitives became a genre of their own. Jesse James and decades later, Bonnie and Clyde displayed standing against the wall as if they were alive.
Fact number 27, Geronimo from feared gerilla fighter to photo seller at fairs. Goyale known to the Mexicans as Geronimo was born around 1829. In 1851, Mexican soldiers attacked his camp. They killed his mother, his wife, and three children. Gono never stopped fighting. For more than 25 years, with 30 to 40 Apache warriors, he evaded American and Mexican troops crossing the border on horseback. The United States sent as many as 5,000 soldiers just to hunt him. In September of 1886 on the Arizona Mexico border, Geronimo surrendered for the last time. He was the last indigenous leader still at war with the United States. They sent him and his band to prison in Florida, then to Oklahoma. In old age, he became a star. In 1905, he rode in Theodore Roosevelt’s inauguration parade. He appeared at fairs in Omaha and St. Louis. He sold buttons from his own shirt, hats, and autographed photos. He asked to return and die in Arizona. He was denied.
Fact number 28, Wild West whiskey, the water that caught fire. In the saloons of mining towns and railroad camps, what was sold as whiskey had little relation to today’s bourbon. Bourbon existed, but it was expensive and rare outside the cities. What circulated in most saloons was a homemade mix, pure grain alcohol, wellwater, burned sugar for color, chewing tobacco for bitterness. Sometimes they added gunpowder, pepper, or snake oil for punch. Sellers poured a measure into the campfire to prove its strength. If it caught fire, it was considered good. Hence the nickname given by the indigenous peoples who traded pelts for the drink, “fire water.” Frontier doctors prescribed it as medicine. Cowboys said they would rather face a duel than endure the hangover from a night on that stuff. Blindness, deafness, paralysis, and memory loss were effects documented by doctors. In some saloons, the cheapest glass cost 5 cents. Whoever walked out of there walked out changed.
Fact number 29, Scalping and the official market paid for by governments. Hollywood showed scalping as an indigenous ritual. The history is more complicated. The practice existed among some native peoples before the Europeans. In a ceremonial context, British, French, and Dutch colonial governments began paying cash bounties for indigenous scalps. Pennsylvania in 1756 offered 130 in silver for the scalp of an adult Delaware man, 50 for a woman or child. Other states followed. The official market created professional scalp hunters, white men, mixed race men, indigenous people from other tribes. They attacked villages, killed women and children, brought the scalps to the county seat, and collected the silver. It lasted decades. During the Civil War, William Anderson, known as Bloody Bill, commanded Confederate gerillas in Missouri. He hung Union soldiers scalps from his horse’s harness. He was killed in an ambush in 1864 at 24 years old. His men would go on to form the Jesse James Gang.
Fact number 30, The United States Army camels in the Texas desert. In 1855, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis authorized an absurd experiment, importing camels from the Middle East to use as pack animals in the Southwest. Horses and mules were suffering. In May of 1856, the ship USS Supply docked in Indianola, Texas with 34 camels purchased from Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia. A year later, 41 more. The animals were taken to Camp Verde in central Texas and trained for military hauling. They worked. They withtood the heat, needed little water, and carried up to about 600 lb, three times more than a mule. The problem was everything else. They spat at the soldiers, bit, and smelled horrible. The army horses panicked around them. The Civil War came in 1861. The experiment was forgotten. Camp Verde fell into Confederate hands. The camels were sold at auction, set loose, or stolen. For decades, travelers in Arizona swore they had seen wild camels on the horizon.
Fact number 31, the black cowboys that Hollywood erased. The image the movie sold is the lone white man with a tilted hat. Historians estimate that between 1865 and 1885, one in every four cowboys on the great Texas trails was a black man. Many were formerly enslaved people who already knew cattle handling. The skills of driving, branding, and breaking had been learned in slavery. When the Texas owners left to fight in the Civil War, the enslaved kept the work going. After emancipation, these men had a trade. They drove herds along trails like the Chisum and the Goodn Night Loving, covering thousands of miles from Texas to Kansas, Wyoming, and Montana. Natlo, Bose Ikard, Bill Picket, others without a name. When the movies decided to turn the cowboy into an American myth, they erased these men. Films with John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood. A black cowboy almost never appeared. Bill Picket invented bulldoging and rodeo. The credit went to a white actor.
Fact number 32, Mattie Silks, the millionaire businesswoman of Denver. Martha Ready was born in 1846 in Pennsylvania. Raised in Indiana. She left home as a teenager. By 19, she was already running a brothel in Springfield, Illinois. She always led. She was always the madam. She moved to Colorado during the silver boom. In 1876, she bought her first brothel in Denver on Holiday Street, paying $13,000 in cash. It was a fortune. A three-story mansion, 27 rooms, an orchestra in the parlor, dresses from Paris. She ran the place for more than 20 years like an executive. Disciplined staff, clear rules, books closed every night, a list of regular clients she never showed to anyone. Anyone who misbehaved was removed from the list for good. When her rival Jenny Rogers died in 1909, Maddie bought the House of Mirrors, the most luxurious brothel in the city. She walked through the streets of Denver wearing expensive jewelry. Newspapers tried to block photos of her alleging encouragement of indecency. The money kept coming in.
Fact number 33, Laura Bullion, the thorny rose of the wild bunch. Born around 1876 in Texas, daughter of a cowboy who turned outlaw, Laura grew up in the middle of the criminal world. She met the Carver brothers and the Kilpatricks as a child when her father received them at home. At 15, she began an affair with William News Carver, one of the most wanted outlaws in the Southwest. Through the same network, she met Ben Kilpatrick, the tall Texan, and the others fr
