On November 20, 1903, Tom Horn was hanged in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for the murder of a fourteen-year-old nester boy. Horn-army scout and interpreter for Generals Willcox, Crook, and Miles in the Apache wars, Pinkerton operative, cattle detective, and "King of Cowboys"-was hanged like a common criminal, many think mistakenly. His own account of his life, written while he was in prison and first published in 1904, is not really a vindication, says Dean Krakel in his introduction. "While the appendix is spiked with interesting letters, testimonials, and transcripts, they don't really add up to anything in the way of an explanation of what really happened." Regardless of Horn's guilt or innocence, his story, beginning when he was a runaway Missouri farm boy, provides a firsthand look at scout Al Sieber in action, at the military both great and small, at the wily Geronimo, the renegade Natchez, and old Chief Nana of the Apaches.
On November 20, 1903, Tom Horn was hanged in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for the murder of a fourteen-year-old nester boy. Horn-army scout and interpreter for Generals Willcox, Crook, and Miles in the Apache wars, Pinkerton operative, cattle detective, and "King of Cowboys"-was hanged like a common criminal, many think mistakenly. His own account of his life, written while he was in prison and first published in 1904, is not really a vindication, says Dean Krakel in his introduction. "While the appendix is spiked with interesting letters, testimonials, and transcripts, they don’t really add up to anything in the way of an explanation of what really happened." Regardless of Horn’s guilt or innocence, his story, beginning when he was a runaway Missouri farm boy, provides a firsthand look at scout Al Sieber in action, at the military both great and small, at the wily Geronimo, the renegade Natchez, and old Chief Nana of the Apaches.
Some of the legendary gunmen of the Old West were lawmen, but more, like Billy the Kid and Jesse James, were outlaws. Tom Horn (1860–1903) was both. Lawman, soldier, hired gunman, detective, outlaw, and assassin, this darkly enigmatic figure has fascinated Americans ever since his death by hanging the day before his forty-third birthday. In this masterful historical biography, Larry Ball, a distinguished historian of western lawmen and outlaws, presents the definitive account of Horn’s career. Horn became a civilian in the Apache wars when he was still in his early twenties. He fought in the last major battle with the Apaches on U.S. soil and chased the Indians into Mexico with General George Crook. He bragged about murdering renegades, and the brutality of his approach to law and order foreshadows his controversial career as a Pinkerton detective and his trial for murder in Wyoming. Having worked as a hired gun and a range detective in the years after the Johnson County War, he was eventually tried and hanged for killing a fourteen-year-old boy. Horn’s guilt is still debated. To an extent no previous scholar has managed to achieve, Ball distinguishes the truth about Horn from the numerous legends. Both the facts and their distortions are revealing, especially since so many of the untruths come from Horn’s own autobiography. As a teller of tall tales, Horn burnished his own reputation throughout his life. In spite of his services as a civilian scout and packer, his behavior frightened even his lawless companions. Although some writers have tried to elevate him to the top rung of frontier gun wielders, questions still shadow Horn’s reputation. Ball’s study concludes with a survey of Horn as described by historians, novelists, and screenwriters since his own time. These portrayals, as mixed as the facts on which they are based, show a continuing fascination with the life and legend of Tom Horn.
?The last great folk tale of the last American frontier??that?s how Jay Monaghan describes the crimson career of Tom Horn, defender of property rights, soldier of fortune, range detective, professional killer. Tom Horn, who had chased after Geronimo and ridden the trains as a Pinkerton operative, was drawn to wherever the action was?ultimately to Wyoming as a hired gun for the cattle barons. Finally he went too far?and paid at the end of a rope in 1903. For years afterward, whenever a man was found murdered on the high plains, people said, ?Somebody tom-horned that fellow.?
Most military biographies focus on officers, many of whom left diaries or wrote letters throughout their lives and careers. This collection offers new perspectives by focusing on the lives of enlisted soldiers from a variety of cultural and racial backgrounds. Comprised of ten biographies, Soldiers in the Southwest Borderlands showcases the scholarship of experts who have mined military records, descendants’ recollections, genealogical sources, and even folklore to tell common soldiers’ stories. The essays examine enlisted soldiers’ cross-cultural interactions and dynamic, situational identities. They illuminate the intersections of class, culture, and race in the nineteenth-century Southwest. The men who served under U.S. or Mexican flags and on the payrolls of the federal government or as state or territorial volunteers represented most of the major ethnicities in the West—Hispanics, African Americans, Indians, American-born Anglos, and recent European immigrants—and many moved fluidly among various social and ethnic groups. For example, though usually described as an Apache scout, Mickey Free was born to Mexican parents, raised by an American stepfather, adopted by an Apache father, given an Irish name, and was ultimately categorized by federal authorities as an Irish Mexican White Mountain Apache. George Goldsby, a former slave of mixed ancestry, served as a white soldier in the Union army during the Civil War, and then served twelve years as a “Buffalo Soldier” in the all-black Tenth U.S. Cavalry. He also claimed some American Indian ancestry and was rumored to have crossed the Mexican border to fight alongside Pancho Villa. What motivated these soldiers? Some were patriots and adventurers. Others were destitute and had few other options. Enlisted men received little professional training, and possibilities for advancement were few. Many of these men witnessed, underwent, or inflicted extreme violence, some of it personal and much of it related to excruciating military campaigns. Spotlighting ordinary men who usually appear on the margins of history, the biographical essays collected here tell the stories of soldiers in the complex world of the Southwest after the U.S.-Mexican War.
Authoritative guide to everything in print about lawmen and the lawless—from Billy the Kid to the painted ladies of frontier cow towns. Nearly 2,500 entries, taken from newspapers, court records, and more.
