Burs Under the Saddle

Burs Under the Saddle

Author: Ramon Frederick Adams

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 628

ISBN-13: 9780806121703

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"This immense book, by a noted bibliographer of the West, is beyond question the fairest, most complete and most learned evaluation of printed references to western outlaws to appear until now....It will stand for many years, solid as a rock amid the flooding maelstrom of western myth and legend, pointing up the truth about those men of the past who lived by their wits and their guns. It will be impossible for anyone studying that era and such men to do so without reference to this volume."—Los Angeles Times "Adams turns again to the books and histories of the western gunmen and outlaws and critically examines 425 titles, most of which rate as ’burs’ under his saddle. Ramon Adams’ plea is that the writers must stop compounding each other’s errors into legend. In this book, with great skill and without malice, he has pointed out past mistakes. His book should be in the essential baggage of every writer on western outlaws and on every library shelf."—American West "The value of this book to writers and historians of the badman tradition cannot be overestimated, for Adams has replaced rumors, myths, and falsehoods with documented historical facts. It is a book for all conscientious students of and writers on the American West; henceforth, any writer of ’authentic Western history’ who refuses to check with Adams should be, as the judge said to Billy the Kid in one legend, 'hanged by the neck until dead, dead, dead.'"—Southwest Review


Deadly Dozen

Deadly Dozen

Author: Robert K. DeArment

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2012-11-09

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0806184701

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For every Wild Bill Hickok or Billy the Kid, there was another western gunfighter just as deadly but not as well known. Robert K. DeArment has earned a reputation as the premier researcher of unknown gunfighters, and here he offers twelve more portraits of men who weren’t glorified in legend but were just as notorious in their day. Those who think they already know all about Old West gunfighters will be amazed at this new collection. Here are men like Porter Stockton, the Texas terror who bragged that he had killed eighteen men, and Jim Levy, who killed a man for disparaging his Irish blood, though he was also the only known Jewish gunfighter. These stories span eight decades, from the gold rushes of the 1850s to the 1920s. Telling of gunmen such as Jim Masterson, the brother of Bat Masterson, or the real Whispering Smith—the man behind the fictionalized persona—whose career spanned four decades, DeArment conscientiously separates fact from fiction to reconstruct lives all the more amazing for having remained unknown for so long. The product of iron-clad research, this newest Deadly Dozen delivers the goods for gunfighter buffs in search of something different. Together the Deadly Dozen volumes constitute a Who’s Who of western outlaws and prove that there’s more to the Wild West than Jesse James.


Life of the Marlows

Life of the Marlows

Author: William Rathmell

Publisher: University of North Texas Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1574411799

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Rathmell's book, biased in favor of the five Marlow brothers, has long been out of print. Robert K. DeArment has sifted through the evidence and presents an objective, annotated edition. Readers can judge for themselves: were the Marlows as law-abiding as Rathmell claims?


Calamity Jane

Calamity Jane

Author: Richard W. Etulain

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 0806152621

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This exhaustive bibliographical reference will be the first stop for anyone looking for Calamity Jane in print, film, or photograph—and wanting to know how reliable those sources may be. Richard W. Etulain, renowned western-U.S. historian and the author of a recent biography of this charismatic figure, enumerates and assesses the most valuable sources on Calamity Jane’s life and legend in newspapers, magazines, journals, books, and movies, as well as historical and government archives. Etulain begins with a brief biography of Martha Canary, aka Calamity Jane (1856–1903), then analyzes the origins and growth of her legends. The sources, Etulain shows, reveal three versions of Calamity Jane. In the most popular one, she was a Wild Woman of the Old West who helped push a roaring frontier through its final stages. This is the Calamity Jane who fought Indians, marched with the military, and took on the bad guys. Early in her life she also hoped to embody the pioneer woman, seeking marriage and a stable family and home. A third, later version made of Calamity an angel of mercy who reached out to the poor and nursed smallpox victims no one else would help. The hyperbolic journalism of the Old West, as well as dime novels and the stretchers Calamity herself told in her interviews and autobiography, shaped her legends through much of the twentieth century. Many of the sensational early accounts of Calamity’s life, Etulain notes, were based on rumor and hearsay. In illuminating the role of the Deadwood Dick dime novel series and other pulp fiction in shaping what we know—or think we know—of the American West, Etulain underscores one of his fascinating themes: the power of popular culture. The product of twenty years’ labor sifting fact from falsehood or distortion, this bibliography and reader’s guide includes brief discussions of nearly every item’s contents, along with a terse, entertaining evaluation of its reliability.


Jim Courtright of Fort Worth

Jim Courtright of Fort Worth

Author: Robert K. DeArment

Publisher: TCU Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780875652924

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Timothy Isaiah "Longhair Jim" Courtright operated on both sides of the law and became a legend in his lifetime and after his death. One of the most colorful characters from the wild and woolly days of Fort Worth's Hell's Half Acre, Courtright was at various times city marshal, deputy sheriff, deputy U.S. marshal, private detective, hired killer, and racketeer. Today, he is almost forgotten, either as a gunfighter or a lawman, except in Fort Worth. Little is known about Courtright's early life, though he apparently served in the Union army during the Civil War. But when he arrived in the West, Courtright seemed to attract trouble. He was involved in a shootout during the 1886 railroad strikes and was accused of murder in New Mexico. Deputies were sent to Fort Worth to escort him to New Mexico to stand trial. His escape from them, complete with guns hidden under a restaurant table, is one of Fort Worth's most colorful stories. Finally, he was killed in a shootout that he apparently provoked with gambler and gunman Luke Short. To this day nobody is sure what provoked that feud, but Courtright was honored with the longest funeral procession Fort Worth had ever seen. The myth of Courtright as legendary gunfighter was built in two previous biographies--one by a novelist and the other by a Franciscan priest. After exhaustive research into contemporary newspapers and other accounts and close study of the previous two books, historian Robert K. DeArment deconstructs the myth of Longhair Jim and reconstructs the gunfighter as a real human being, complex, flawed, often courageous, usually both honorable and dishonorable. This book is a must for all those interested in the legends of the West, its lawmen, and its outlaws.


Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters

Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters

Author: Bill O'Neal

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780806123356

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Sifting factual information from among the lies, legends, and tall tales, the lives and battles of gunfighters on both sides of the law are presented in a who's who of the violent West


Outlaw Tales of Montana

Outlaw Tales of Montana

Author: Gary A. Wilson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2011-11-22

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 0762775866

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A refreshing new perspective on some of the most infamous reprobates of the West and Midwest.


Trails

Trails

Author: Patricia Nelson Limerick

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13:

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Reexamination of the role of the West in U.S. history and of the field of western history itself told by ten historians.


Come An' Get It

Come An' Get It

Author: Ramon F. Adams

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1972-05-01

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780806110134

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Come an’ Get It was the most familiar and welcome call on the range era of the great trail drives following the Civil War. In this entertaining volume, Ramon F. Adams, author of the popular Western Words, tell the story of the old cowboy cooks, and the result is another highly original contribution to the folklore of the cattle country. Although the cowboy cleared the Southwestern frontier of savage Indians and opened the land for settlement, the cook and his commissary contributed greatly to the success of the operation; for as an army depends upon its mess-kitchens, so the cowboys depended upon the chuck wagon. Without it, there would have been to trail drives to rescue Texas from bankruptcy following the Civil War, no roundups to speed the development of the cattle industry, and no beef for the heavily populated areas of the United States. The author records the place and influence of the range cook upon Western life. He discusses the functions of “coosie,” the food he served, and his methods of preparing it-giving recipes for sourdough biscuits, fluff-duffs, son-of-a-bitch stew, and other distinctive dishes of the range. He describes, too, “the wagon,” its evolution, and its place in the hearts of the men who called it home. Although there remain a few chuck wagons on the larger ranches today, they have become so scarce that one is rarely seen except in a museum or a rodeo parade, and the younger generation of cooks, like the cowboys themselves has been tamed. Every cook was a “character,” perhaps with reason, for no man ever worked under greater difficulties or with fewer conveniences. Anecdotes and incidents which illuminate the idiosyncrasies of these “Sultans of the Skillets” are recounted with gusto. Nick Eggenhofer’s drawings help Mr. Adams bring the cook and his accoutrement vividly to life.