Western Books

I have often read that Owen Wister's publishing of The Virginian, 115 years ago this week, on May 28, 1902, was the start of Westerns in America.  Nice that the setting was Wyoming, which was still pretty new and still a bit wild at that time. But that was not the first western, not even close. Long before the beginning of the 1900s were the Dime Novel Westerns, sometimes shortened to Dime Westerns.

Elk Mountain as seen from the town of Medicine Bow
the setting for the start of Wister's, The Virginian

The Dime Westerns became popular shortly after the Civil War spanning a time period of nearly 40 years before the publication of, The Virginian. The books were short, almost always less than 100 pages, and priced at a dime or 15 cents. These books centered on fictional escapades of real people, many of the settings were, Wyoming, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Montana.  Mountain Men, Indians, Soldiers and Bad Guys of all kind made up the many characters of these books. Later, a smaller format, adopted for magazines became popular, these were all set to the standard length of 32 pages.

Today westerns make up less than one percent of the overall book market – so what happened? Maybe, not much. If a reader looks, it is easy to find westerns today, just not the old tired, fake Wild West type of story. 

This is my modern day, set in WyomingYoung Adult or Adult Western Mystery

Suspense-Thrillers and Mystery-Detective along with books classified as Young Adult dominate today's best seller lists. I write books I classify as western-mysteries, some set before 1900 and some in modern time. I still read westerns today, some are thrillers, some mysteries, and some suspense, but all are set in the west.

Guess the Western is not dead, it just lost its singular classification, maybe the old time shoot-um-ups died in the street with their boots on, but today great western stories can be found in just about any popular genre.

Here is a link to my books on Amazon – four of these books could fall into the western category. Click on any of the books and read a free sample.

The second of my Blade Holmes Westen Mysteries
Cover photo from Fort Laramie - each book has Fort Laramie settings.

Thoughts on a Warm March Day

Interesting to see the big storm in the east when here in Wyoming I spent three hours sitting on the deck in a short sleeve shirt drinking iced tea. Hope all is well on the coast, and no one is injured by the storm, looks like a bad one.

We often get a bad rap for our terrible Wyoming weather, but not so bad today. In my little part of the state, the weather is our well-kept secret. With mountains a few miles to the west, we seem to live in a moderate climate, not much wind and much warmer than most non-Wyomingites would guess. I have played golf at least twice in 34 of the past 36 months. Today my tomato plants are eight days old and sitting in the sun on the deck. Enough bragging about the weather.

When I was researching my newest novel, I am waiting for the proof now.  I read through many pages of material about the closing of Fort Laramie, The Wounded Knee massacre and Wyoming statehood, all which took place in 1890.

Oddly of all the forts in Wyoming, the 41 years, that Fort Laramie existed was the longest of any fort in the state. It shows the short amount of years that passed with westward expansion, the 49ers, the Indian wars, the transcontinental railroad, the telegraph and the pony express. What a time in Wyoming and what a time in the west.

Cover of my new book - Photo from Fort Laramie
If the proof is good the book will  be available in a few days

  

For many years I had my students do a paper on, What time in history would you go back to, if time travel were possible? They could pick any time period in American history and surprisingly quite a few picked the 1950s and 1960s, my time – maybe I talked too much about my growing up years. Of course, many picked the Oregon Trail or 49ers time. A few always wanted early America and the founding fathers. I told them I wanted the 1820-1840 mountain man time, I always wanted to be a mountain man, but now looking at the time, 1849-1890 of Fort Laramie, that would have been historically fascinating.

Photo from last year at Fort Laramie - Fur Trade Days

Speaking of interesting times in history, in the photo below I am standing by, what I believe, is the only remaining cap house, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, in America. This one is in great shape in Guernsey State Park. Oh, by the way, a cap house stored dynamite caps, far away from the dynamite.

This photo was taken early this week on a terrific day to be in the park.

So ends my thoughts on a beautiful Wyoming day. 

Wyoming Mule Deer

The Holidays Are Here

As I write this post, Thanksgiving is tomorrow with Christmas soon to follow, then it will be a New Year, wow, 2017, I have barely got used to writing 2016. It seems like years go faster than they used to. I can remember as a kid how much I looked forward to this time of year and time away from school after the grind of three months with only Veterans Day off.

How Did It All Start?

Most people know that President Washington first proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving, but it was never official until October 3, 1863, when President Lincoln, elated with a Union victory at Gettysburg announced the first official Thanksgiving to be celebrated November 26, 1863. The short speech announcing the official holiday was written for Lincoln by his Secretary of State William Seward. The speech declared that hereafter the fourth Thursday of every November would be set aside as an official holiday – Thanksgiving.

Maybe It Should Be Moved

That fourth Thursday of November has been Thanksgiving in the United States every year since, except once. FDR, with hopes to help out the Depression, sieged American, moved it to the third Thursday in 1940, hoping it would encourage more shopping before Christmas. Must not have been very well received as Congress moved it back to the fourth Thursday before Thanksgiving in 1941.

Early Wyoming Thanksgivings

This time of year I often wonder what was on the table for Thanksgiving in early Wyoming homes. Rabbit, Pronghorn steaks, Duck, Goose, maybe something domesticated like beef, pork or chicken. How about sides, no cranberries out here, but may have been some nice strawberry or raspberry jam. Fresh baked bread, potatoes, and gravy, and likely a nice desert could round out the meal. Sounds pretty good.

Black Friday

Onward toward Black Friday, Cannot wait to get out shopping at five in the morning. Not really, I will be home, relaxing, I am not one for crowds, or for that matter, shopping. I may watch some of the crazy shoppers on the evening news. If I get the urge to shop, I might order something online.

Personal Note

My wife and I had a terrific time Monday evening in Chugwater, Wyoming, where I spoke to the local Historical Society about the Civilian Conservation Corps and the building of Guernsey State Park.

South Wing of the CCC built Museum at Guernsey State Park

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone and don’t overeat – just kidding, go ahead.

An Old Cowboy’s Philosophy of Life

An Old Cowboy’s Philosophy of Life

Reading from a famous Worming book of yesteryear I ran across a most interesting philosophy of life. A few snippets I took from the chapter.

·        Time is arbitrary, age is dependent, if and but, are not in my vocabulary and I know not their meaning.

·        Age? Anyone passing over the divide in Wyoming short of the century mark must go by accident or some ancestral ailment passed down through the ages from one of Noah’s sons.

·        Tomorrow is the best day on the calendar; yesterdays are history and irretrievable.

·        The term optimist has been applied to me and aptly, and I am this kind. If a pool of water twenty feet deep, with a rock weighting a ton resting on my chest, I would be thankful it didn’t weigh two tons.

His Book & Legacy

Good stuff and all from Charles A. Guernsey from his book, Wyoming Cowboy Days. Guernsey has a town, reservoir, and a state park named after him.

The book, published in 1936 is hard to find, although there is a more recent redo of it.  Good Stuff, maybe we should all live a bit more optimistic, like Mr. Guernsey.

Guernsey State Park

The Talking Wire Changes the West

The Talking Wire

- .... .- -. -.- ... / ..-. --- .-. / .-. . .- -.. .. -. --. --..-- / .... .- ...- . / .- / --. .-. . .- - / -.. .- -.-- .-.-.-  

Hint – The above is a Morse Code Message – can you read it?

New technology made distances shorter. The telegraph made communication instantaneous. Before it, the pony express took many days to pass on the same information.

 The United States Government offered a subsidy of $40,000 a year for up to ten years to build a transcontinental telegraph line. This line would connect the populated east with the populated west by crossing the Great Plains and parts of Americas, Mountain West. The new line was built from Omaha in the east to Carson City and Salt Lake City in the west.

Edward Creighton finished it in 1861, mostly following the Oregon Trail. Many of the stations set up as Pony Express stops became the new Telegraph stations of the west.

Old Telephone Pole, Don't See Many of These Anymore

Did it change the west? The Pony Express went out of business two days after the first messages were sent along the new line. It lasted until 1869, when it was replaced by a new multi-line telegraph that followed the tracks of the Transcontinental Railroad, it lasted up to the time of the telephone,

The Message at the top - Thanks for reading, have a great day.

I was unable to find any historical documentation that proved the Indians called the telegraph the, “talking wires,” may be a Hollywood thing but I always enjoyed that story.

Did you know there is a Morse Code Translator online? Try it, great fun.  

These Guys Were Tough on Early Telegraph Poles

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Wyoming's First Tribal People

Much has been written, motion pictures and television shows have been made, and a lot has been taught about Indians in the west. In Wyoming the focus is on the: Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Shoshones and Crow. But of these tribes only the Shoshones were here long term.

In 1700 the tribes of Wyoming included, along with the Shoshones, the Comanche, Kiowa and Staitans. By 1800 the Comanche had moved south and the Crow and Cheyenne found a place to live in Wyoming. The Sioux were soon to follow, arriving shortly after 1800.

Interesting that so little is written about the century and a half of the more peaceful time for Native people in Wyoming. The first mountain men/trappers came around 1820 and by the 1840s wagons were rolling on the Oregon and Mormon trails, and the west of movies and television was born.

Wyoming the Wonderful Rectangle

Remember one of the first puzzles you put together as a kid, sure we all do? It was the wooden map of the United States. Just find the shape of the state and put it in the correct place, which was properly embossed into the cardboard or wood backing for young learners. Every state had a unique shape and this made learning where each state was located fast and easy. But wait a minute, hold on here, what about Colorado and Wyoming, they are square, or almost so, properly rectangles. How did they get their rather non-unique shape? Not sure about Colorado as I am a Wyoming guy, but as for Wyoming.

Wyoming is the only state whose territory was taken from all four of the major land accusations of the United States. Parts of Wyoming have been claimed by five different countries and parts of Wyoming came under the rule of a dozen Spanish kings between 1479 and 1821. Not that it’s important but there were four kings named, Charles, four Phillips and four named Ferdinand.  

France also ruled parts of Wyoming under kings, Francis One and two, three Henry’s, Charles IX and four guys named Louis. At long last the little Emperor himself, Napoleon, gave up the French claim to Wyoming when Jefferson made the greatest land purchase in history, the Louisiana Purchase, in 1803.

Wyoming was also part of:  Utah Territory, Washington Territory, Nebraska Territory, Colorado Territory, Dakota Territory, and Idaho Territory.

It took thirty boundary changes to come up with the present day shape of Wyoming, an almost square rectangle- ahh, the government at work.

Oh- then we named it after a valley in Delaware.

Wyoming where mule deer sleep in your front yard, bear’s wander through local parks, elk, moose and pronghorn outnumber the people, mountain views are everywhere and people ski in the morning and play golf in the afternoon. It really is like no other place on earth.

It’s good to be back. 

What's In a Name

 

Seventy, or so, years ago, The Wyoming Game and Fish Department did a study, trying to identify all bodies of water in the state. They found 38 Spring Creeks, 30 Cottonwood Creeks, 29 Beaver Creeks, 25 Bear Creeks, 23 Dry Creeks, 21 Horse Creeks, 18 Sand Creeks, 17 Sheep Creeks and 17 Lost Creeks. Makes me wonder if they didn’t have much imagination or if they only had a short book entitled, Best Names for Rivers and Streams, I would have named one after myself, Old Guy River, now that has a ring to it!

 How anyone found their way through the state, or all of the American West, before roads and railroads might be one of the great mysteries of American history. Hope they didn’t tell people to hurry along Spring Creek, turn left when they reached Sand Creek and follow it to Lost Creek, seems they could have ended up about anywhere in the state with directions like that. But the state did have some names for streams that were unusual enough to remember. Dry Donkey, Robbers Gulch, and Nameit are my favorites.

But then again we name towns mostly after people, or maybe people named towns after themselves. Guess that’s why we have towns like Bill, Aladdin, Patrick, Elwood, Merna, and Rosie’s Ridge in Wyoming.

Oh, we also have Jackass Pass up in Fremont and Sublette County, (yep, named after explorer John C. Fremont and trapper William Sublette) but that is another story for another time. Early trappers said the ancient Indian trail was so steep that only a Jackass could make its way on it.

We Need Snow Like it's 1886 Again

This winter has been so open in our part of Wyoming that it reminded me we are still in drought. We need snow, we’ll take rain, but we need snow. Hope the weather is not setting up for another disaster like the one in 1886. Won’t happen because we are better prepared today than the ranchers of more than a century ago, we hope.

The Wyoming summer of 1886 was hot and dry; cattle went into winter in less than perfect condition. In November heavy snow came and it stayed for two months. In late January the snows came again, snowing for four days and three nights before letting up. By spring the bad news was apparent, piles of dead cattle, many others were wobbling from starvation. Wyoming in 1886 proudly boasted of it being the greatest place on earth to raise livestock with over nine million cattle on the range. By 1895 only three million were left.

The main lessons learned from drought and blizzards were simple. Put up hay for winter feed and sell down when the grass is bad in the summer. Cattle once again cover the pasture lands of Wyoming, but never again will ranchers overdo like days past. We are getting better and proud of it. But we still need snow or rain.

How dry and warm has it been this winter? I have played 18 rounds of golf since the first of December, shouldn’t happen in Wyoming. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying the golf, but right now I would rather go sledding, sit by the fire and sip hot chocolate.

Custer, Smoke Signals and Hollywood

At the time of the massacre of Custer and the 7^th Frank Grouard read smoke signals in the sky and reported a battle was going on and the Indians were winning.

General Crook had sent Lt. F. W. Sibley and twenty-five men to locate the Indians. Frank Grouard and Big Bat Puerrier led the troopers. Sibley, recently out of West Point, was told by Crook  to do whatever Grouard said, but Sibley still would not believe a group of Indians could win a battle against the army.

So did Smoke Signals really convey messages or was it something Hollywood made up?

Maybe more Hollywood than fact. But if you can see much smoke from an Indian campfire it would indicate they were not worried about anyone seeing it-therefore all is well. I have books in my personal library that explain how to build a smoke signal box to send real, American Indian smoke signals. I think this may be more modern day Boy Scouts than Indians. Smoke may have been used as a predetermined signal, such as, If you see smoke keep away or come on in, but I doubt any tribes had any real Morse code of smoke signals.

This means when Grouard saw the big smoke he knew the Indians were celebrating, a guess, maybe, but an educated and correct one by a truly great scout.

 

The Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother

 

Sounds like a very unusual name for an important battle with the Sioux under Crazy Horse allied with warriors of the Cheyenne under Little Hawk. This strong group was involved in an ongoing series of battles with the famous General George Crook during the Indian Campaign of 1876.  This encounter, which history books call, “Battle of the Rosebud, Montana,” was one of these fights.

One of the Indian leaders, Two Moons was heading a group of about 200 warriors and one women, Buffalo-calf-Road-Women, who refused to let her brother, an under chief named, Comes-In-Sight, go to battle alone. When Comes-In-Sight’s horse was shot from under him, Buffalo-Calf-Road-Women, rushed to the rescue. Riding her pony into the battle she scooped up her brother, saving him.

Eight days later, and not far away, Custer and his men of the 7^th were wiped out near the Little Big Horn River in present day Montana.

 

 

 

 

Wyoming Humor - Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye

Like all states Wyoming has had its share of colorful characters, none more colorful than Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye. Nye came west to Wyoming in 1876 and stayed seven years until 1883. He settled in Laramie and found his true passion and maybe what he was put on this earth to do – writing humor.

Nye practiced law, became postmaster of Laramie and worked for the local paper before started his own, The Laramie Boomerang,  (still a six day a week paper) his newspaper columns became so popular that they were reprinted far from the small town in Southeast Wyoming being picked up by papers all over America and reprinted by more than a dozen newspapers in Europe.

Nye was indeed a first rate humorist, one of the best of his time, later in life he often shared the stage, and equal billing with Mark Twain. Unfortunately Nye’s humor has not been as lasting as Twain’s but in the last quarter of the 1800s he was one funny guy.

One of my favorite excerpts from his writing follows. This writing explains his resignation as Laramie’s Postmaster.

 It is a full newspaper column I have reduced to only four of the thirteen paragraphs.

 Enjoy!

                                                                        Postoffice, Divan, Laramie City, W.T.

Sir.—

I beg leave at this time to officially tender my resignation as postmaster at this place, and in due form to deliver the great seal and the key to the front door of the office. The safe combination is set on the numbers 33, 66 and 99, though I do not remember at this moment which comes first, or how many times you revolve the knob, or which direction you should turn it at first in order to make it operate.

You will find the postal cards that have not been used under the distributing table, and the coal down in the cellar. If the stove draws too hard, close the damper in the pipe and shut the general delivery window.

Tears are unavailing. I once more become a private citizen, clothed only with the right to read such postal cards as may be addressed to me personally, and to curse the inefficiency of the postoffice department. I believe the voting class to be divided into two parties, viz: Those who are in the postal service, and those who are mad because they cannot receive a registered letter every fifteen minutes of each day, including Sunday.

Mr. President, as an official of this Government I now retire. My term of office would not expire until 1886. I must, therefore, beg pardon for my eccentricity in resigning. It will be best, perhaps, to keep the heart-breaking news from the ears of European powers until the dangers of a financial panic are fully past. Then hurl it broadcast with a sickening thud. *

*Excerpt taken from—Bill Nye’s  Western Humor

                                                        Selected and with an Introduction

                                                        By T. A. Larson

                                                       University of Nebraska Press

                                                      Lincoln, NE  1968

If you would like to see the letter in its entirety you can find it here- http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/here-roads-seem-to-fork.html

Good Ol' Cowboy Food

So what did cowboys eat? Well it depended on who was doing the cooking. If it was the cowboy doing the cooking most meals were the same, the three Bs, bacon, biscuits and beans, washed down strong coffee. If it was ranch cooking or trail drive food it was much more varied and likely tastier.

Here is what you might find in a well stocked kitchen or chuck wagon in the days of the Old West

·        Flour

·        Coffee

·        Tea

·        Salt pork

·        Bacon

·        Dried fruit

·        Beans

·        Rice

·        Dried peas

·        Canned tomatoes

·        Canned peaches

·        Condensed milk

·        Corn meal and dried corn

·        Sugar

·        Molasses

·        Vinegar

·        Onion/garlic powder

·        Black pepper

·        Eggs

·        Potatoes

·        Chickens - around the ranch house and even on the trail

·        Other spices such as ginger

·        And of course the ranch always had beef and wild game when they could find it. Many ranches also raised a few, eatin’ hogs, even if they did not like to admit it.

Looks pretty good to me.

 

Fort Laramie-Oh Those Prices

Fort Laramie, beloved in western legend and story may not have been quite so popular in its day. Francis Parkman in his wonderful book, The Oregon Trail, described his visit to the famous fort in 1846. This year was specific as 1846 was the year the fort went from a private concern (one of the trading-posts established by the American Fur Company) to a government owned fort with the purpose of protecting travelers along the trail and protecting settlers, if any, in and around the fort.

Parkman described the fort itself, the buildings within and even spent quite a few words talking about building materials, roofs and windows. But what I found most interesting was the following. “Prices are most extortionate: sugar, two dollars a cup; five-cent tobacco at a dollar and a half; bullets at seventy-five cents a pound. The company is exceedingly disliked in this country.”

Travelers along the trail often needed to re-supply by the time they got to the fort—hope they had a lot of money with them as prices were much more than they were expecting.

Anything to make a buck!

 

 

Jim Bridger Architect

In 1862, President Lincoln signed a bill that created the Union Pacific Railway Company. General Dodge and other government officials were unsure of which route through Wyoming would be the best, follow the Oregon Trail or take a more southern route. So they called in America’s foremost authority on the Rocky Mountains, Jim Bridger. Word was sent to Bridger in St. Louis that he was needed in Denver on important business.

When Bridger arrived in Denver, the engineers showed him their plans and asked the old mountain man where the best place to cross the mountains might be. Bridger asked for a piece of paper, grabbed a charcoal burned stick out of the fire and preceded to draw a map of the Rockies in Colorado and Wyoming. Never one to miss a chance to take a job at government officials, Bridger told them they should have saved their money, he could have drawn the map in St. Louis, but he was secretly grateful for this one last chance to visit his beloved Rockies.

On that little sheet of paper Bridger drew the exact rout that the transcontinental railroad followed across the state of Wyoming. The railroad still follows that same route today, through the rugged pass between Cheyenne and Laramie. Later Interstate 80 paralleled the transcontinental railroad across Wyoming. Making ol’ Gabe (Jim Bridger) not only a mountain man but a builder of railroads and interstates, Bridger may have never learned to read and write but he was one fine map maker and architect.

Stagecoaches, U.S. Mail and the Railroad

In 1860 the famous western company, Russell, Majors and Waddell, became the Overland Stage Company. They had recently obtained the contracts to carry all of the mail from the Missouri River to the Pacific coast. To supplement their income they also carried passengers. (Mark Twain gives a great account of travel by the overland stage in his book, Roughing It, 1872, didn’t sound like much fun to me) Stage stations were stretched across Wyoming and the west. A need for more speed brought in the Pony Express with stations 15 mile apart and young riders making wild dashes across the country.

By 1862 the overland stage line was changed to a southern route (the old Cherokee Trail) to help alleviate the Indian problems on the more northern route. The entire history of the Overland Stage lasted only six years; by then the Railroad was the means of moving both mail and people.

And the Dead Guy Takes Two

And the Dead Guy Takes Two

In the last half of the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth Hartville, Wyoming was a wide open cowboy and miner town. Main Street boosted several bars, gambling houses and even a few upstairs of ill-repute businesses.

In the spring of 1902 a man only know as, the White Swede, came to town intent on a little drinking and gambling. He drank some, partied some, and died. Not a very good story, not until he was dead anyway.

The town of Hartville had no undertakers and no one seemed willing to make the five mile trip over iffy roads to Guernsey to see if an undertaker could be coerced into making a dangerous five mile trip under pitch dark skies. Because the Swede had no known family, and no close friends, the small group in the bar where the heart attack, or some other natural cause took him, decided to wait for morning and then do something about a burial for the poor guy.

The body was moved, out of respect for the dead, to a more suitable room away from the hustle and bustle of Main Street. Two cowboys and a copper miner volunteered to watch the body until morning and helped carry the old Swede to a room a block away from the main action of the town. It didn’t take long for the three helpers to get bored. And what better way to pass the time than to play some cards, poker to be precise. The three started a lively game but it didn’t seem quite right without a fourth. So they propped up the old Swede, put a cigar in his mouth, poured him a shot, sat the bottle near his right hand and dealt him in.

After each deal they put the Swede’s cards in his ever stiffening hand and took turns betting and playing cards for him each time his turn came up. The foursome played through the night with visitors often stopping by to see how this most unusual game was going.

The next day the Swede was buried and the undertaker was paid from the Swedes all night poker winnings. He didn’t clean his playing partners out, but he came close.

*When I first moved to this area, 80 years after the White Swede was laid to rest, the old timers were still telling this most unusual story. To add either more fact or fiction to this story, they mentioned, the White Swede had dark hair, was short and rotund and looked nothing at all like a Swede.

Maybe Next Year

Jan 1, 2013 – Going on official record – “I love the New Year and I love New Year’s Resolutions.”

6:00 a.m. - Eight hours of sleep, healthy, balanced breakfast, went for a walk, did my stretching and lifting workout, spent some hobby time, did some putting away and picking up in my workshop.

8:00 a.m. - New Years are great-reinvigorating, life anew

9:00 a.m. - Feel like I need a nap, have a bit of an upset stomach, my shoulders, hips and feet ache.

10:00 a.m. – Doing much better now, reclining on the couch, watching first of many New Year’s Day Bowl Games, still resting after my workout, and dreaming about the next year.

11:00 a.m. - Very soar, dull pain starting on top of my head and ending on the bottom of my feet, not feeling well at all, will take a handful of pain killers and continue resting on couch.

I really do not like New Year’s—except for the Football

Noon – Drinking soda, eating chips and peanuts, still resting on couch, feeling some better, game has reached halftime, watching shootout on the Western Channel until second half starts.

“Maybe Next Year, never have liked New Years stuff, too much hype, just another day for this ol’ cowboy”

-Happy New Year-

Ride Proud Rebel & Rebel Spurs

I consider myself to be a prolific reader (100+ books a year) and once in a while I run across something accidentally that is really terrific. The two novels in the title kept me very interested and eager to turn pages, I wish this was a trilogy, I need to know more. The first is set in the Civil War with the protagonist a scout for the Confederacy. The second is set in early Arizona immediately after the war.

Andre Norton (1912-2005) wrote the two novels but she (Born Mary Alice Norton) only dabbled in historical fiction, most of her writing efforts, and she published over 100 books, were science fiction and fantasy for young adult and children readers. And she was really good at it as evidenced by the dozens of awards she won in her more than 70 year writing career. Her novel, The Beast Master, became a classic to sci-fi readers and movie goers.

Ms. Norton, who published more than 30 books after the age of 80, also wrote under name of Andrew North and Allen Weston. Wish she would have published a few more westerns.

NOTE-I came across the first novel in a two dollar Kindle download of a 25  western megapack and found the second for free download. Both are worth the reading and each is only around 200 pages, (estimate).

 

Comanche, The Only Survivor

 A childhood interest in the west: cowboys, Indians, mountain men and explorers lead to a lifelong job as a history teacher (now retired). I remember well my first lesson in the Indian wars, Custer and the famous last stand, what else?

That day we learned everyone died in the fight on the Greasy Grass river (Little Big Horn), everyone. None of us questioned this fact. But what about the Indians, why didn’t we ask? Not sure, but years later I still remember being taught that the Calvary horse Comanche was the only survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn. Maybe we didn’t really study the Indian wars in the west, we were just told about them. Told about them by a teacher not so many generations removed from the plains battles and maybe still just a little bit prejudiced.   

My question since I became a teacher of western history has always been why had Custer not followed General Terry’s orders, instead following his own wrong instincts? He should have known of the great camp of Cheyenne and Sioux, must have known. Some historians speculate he knew but expected the warriors to fight and retreat to fight another day, (a common practice among plains tribes). But this day they outnumbered Custer and the 265 members of his 7^th by such a huge margin that they stood their ground and in less than two hours the battle was one for the history books.

 Hundreds, or maybe thousands of Indians survived and much of what we know of the actual battle comes from their stories. Much has also been made of Benteen and Reno and the rest of the 7^th that day, but that will be for another time.

I hope that today’s teachers are doing a better job of presenting both sides of the western Indian wars today than they did in the past. That is if today’s schools have enough time to squeeze in some history as they fight battles over, No Child Left Behind and the multitude of  new government mandates to teach better and for students to learn better than they have in the past. But that will also be left for another time.