Old West Reference / Western History Books

Jonah Hex

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Hi friends!

In my opinion this is a great topic and I'd like say something me too.

I have many books about the Old West. For references is indispensable Everyday life in the Wild West 1840-1900 by Candy Moulton. It's inescapable.

Are useful books may be:

The look of the Old West by William Foster-Harris, for other things aside those on the Moulton's book.

Encyclopedia of western lawmen and outlaws by Jay Nash, and Encyclopedia of western gunfighters by Bill O'Neal, for useful biographies, also of unknown men.

The gunfighter: man or myth? by Joseph Rosa, for many details about the life and weapons of the gunfighter; The age of the gunfighters for an excellent reference about firearms.

Seeking pleasure on the Old West by David Dary, for details of everyday life.

Life of a soldier on the western frontier by Jeremy Agnew, is an excellent reference about soldiers, forts and war campaigns.

Frontier Living by Edwin Tunis, good reference for everyday life details in the whole period.

Historic dress of the Old West by Ernest Reedstrom, good visual reference.

Best of american cowboy by Ramon F. Adams, about the cowboy life and work.

The American Frontier by William Davis, an excellent Old West history illustrated compendium.
 

J'Dubee

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Because I got absorbed in all the other threads in this site, This very important conversation was overlooked by me.
.

I apologize to Mr. Jinks for missing his excellent discussion thread. I started one last night at Western SYW and thank the folks who moved it to the correct location.

I have this terrific (shall we say) dislike of most published authors who seem to think changing period language to gain favor with the 12 year old boys who pay cash money to see the latest "Cowboy" movies -- then grow up to become lazy authors thinking the latest remake of True Grit or Wyatt Earp is way cool so that must be the way those dudes talked back in the real west.

This thread seems to be covering references for the old west better than any I've looked for on the web.

Maybe the thread I started could be combined with this one or mine could be devoted to strictly (a near forgotten) real life language that the folks here understand and love, less they wouldn't be a-lookin' at this here stuff.

BTW -- Speaking of References, I had an extensive collection of letters written between 1860 and 1912, to and from folks who could call a spade a spade. Sadly, they were lost by a young relative of mine in the 1960's before I could scan them into a yet-to-be-invented-computer for future generations.
Talk about "Reference Materials"!

I hope to see y'all around

Jay
 

Dave Hardy

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Western History Books

Some of the discussions have got me thinking about how we use history in our fiction. There's a lot written about Western history and more being written all the time. No one can have read it all. But sometimes you might want a little information of where to find useful background on some topic or the other.

What I thought we could do is have a thread where we list sources that have been useful (or not, not all history books are of equal value), tell about the subject, and indicate any special interest the book might have.

If this takes off it might be useful to have as a sticky or some other way to organize info. I have lots of books that I can recommend for value.

Here goes with my first candidate:

The Great Range Wars
Henry Sinclair Drago
1970
A very interesting compendium of brief histories about the expansion of the cattle industry and the feuds that often wracked the range country. Any subject here could be researched in much more depth, but this is a good primer if you want to understand the basic dynamics of a variety of violent outbreaks.

Includes accounts of the Lincoln Co War, the Pleasant Valley War, the Fence War of Texas, the lynching of Sheriff John Larn, various Montana vigilante movements, and the Johnson Co. war in Wyoming.

Questions are welcome.
 

bkendall

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Hey, Dave. Good idea by my standards. It would really help me also. My biggest problem about western history is that it's just not taught enough in schools. At least it wasn't in mine. They tended to focus on wars only and not care about real life of people. I get it, because there's only so much time in a year or semester. I haven't got to read as many western novels as I would like. It seems that other works always take up my time. Is there anything good about 49er towns since this will be our next challenge topic? I apologize if you had already posted one. I just kind of skimmed the post.
 

Dave Hardy

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Pretty much everything I learned I had to find out for myself by reading. I didn't have the luxury of visiting lots of sites. It definitely wasn't taught in any detail in school. It's true of all history, but especially western, that it is generally written by those with an axe to grind. You have to read between the lines to get a clear concept of what was really going on.

OT: the ghost town & '49er works for me. I'm already planning a little piece, I just hope I have time to write properly.
 

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Back in the 60's, Time-Life published a series of books about the American West - titles such as the Cowboys, Gunfighters, etc. There were 20 or 24 in the series. I have them all and they're excellent reference books complete with decent pictures. Periodically these show up on e-bay and are worth watching for. Someone here got a set that way about a year ago.

Several of the other series that were done back about that time period included books on the Southwestern, Northwestern, and Plains Indians - also worth having and I do.

But, if I'm looking for specific information, I hit Google. There's a tremendous amount of information available on line if you can figure out exactly how to phrase what you're looking for.

I also use Google Earth to help me visualize the places I'm writing about. Even though it's a hundred years later, you can still see where the rail yards were in the little cow towns, creeks and rivers and other natural features haven't changed that much, and neither have some of the towns. Worth looking at. Puma

ETA: I just checked the sticky in historical that has resources by era and there's very little applicable to the American West.
 
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jdm

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Sometimes history isn't just the big-picture issues that were part of the West. Local history can sometimes provide some interesting minor insight to the day to day living that occurred in that era. Vintage newspapers have lots of little anecdotes that make good inclusions in a Western story. I have used a couple of factual incidents that I read about in a newspaper that was printed in the locale which I wrote about. A lot of political information about the times can be gleaned from them as well.
 

Dave Hardy

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The Time-Life Books, local newspapers & a good Google search are all good. We're lucky to have access to a lot of papers on microfilm in the Austin area.

In another thread, we were talking about Western speech. One good, and entertaining, book that shows how Westerners spoke is Roughing It by Mark Twain. (Bear with me if you already know all this) Sam Clemens brother Orion was secretary to Gov. Nye of the Nevada Territory. Sam accompanied Orion out West in 1861, mostly as a way to stay out of trouble as the Civil War tore apart Missouri. After a period in Nevada, Sam struck out on his own to California.

Roughing It recounts the journey west and Sam's adventures as a prospector, duelist, speculator, travel-writer, and journalist, where he won fame under his pen-name Mark Twain. Sam met prospectors, immigrants, gun-slingers, thugs, Cornishmen, Mormons, Indians, hoodlums, Chinese, and just about everybody else. Roughing It is a unique picture of life in the gold-fields of Nevada & California. Twain was the greatest writer of 19th century America, his facility for language was unparalleled.

Roughing It was published in 1872.

Can be found online here:
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/TwaRoug.html
 

alleycat

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Back in the 60's, Time-Life published a series of books about the American West - titles such as the Cowboys, Gunfighters, etc. There were 20 or 24 in the series. I have them all and they're excellent reference books complete with decent pictures. Periodically these show up on e-bay and are worth watching for. Someone here got a set that way about a year ago.

It might have been me. I bought a nearly perfect set off ebay two or three years ago. The price was much less than the original cost.

I have a number of reference books, such as Single Action Sixguns by John Taffin.
 

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I kind of thought it was you, Alleycat, but couldn't remember for sure.

In addition to Twain, I recently re-read Bret Harte's The Luck of Roaring Camp, about the same vintage. It's really interesting to go back and read some of the oldies. Puma
 

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Harte & Twain

I kind of thought it was you, Alleycat, but couldn't remember for sure.

In addition to Twain, I recently re-read Bret Harte's The Luck of Roaring Camp, about the same vintage. It's really interesting to go back and read some of the oldies. Puma

I think Harte & Twain were the first to really employ Western idiom. They were there & heard it first hand.

I'm partial to Tennessee's Partner & Outcasts of Poker Flats. If this thread does nothing else, I hope it causes someone who has never read Harte or Twain to read these classics.

There are tons of online sources for Harte. Here's one at random:

http://www.online-literature.com/bret-harte/
 

Alessandra Kelley

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A specialist book: Calico Chronicle by Betty J. Mills from Texas Tech University Press. It's a history of pioneer women's clothing, how, where, and why they got and made it. It's well-researched, well-written, and well-illustrated (although only in black-and-white). It has a great selection of photos of actual surviving garments, as well as supplementary material.

I've rarely seen it cited, but it's an excellent resource.
 

ElisabethF

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I'll have to keep an eye out for that one! It usually seems easier to find information about the height of upper-class fashion in a certain period, but not too much about what the majority of middle-class women wore.
 

Dave Hardy

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Thanks for posting resources on women's lives. I think those get overlooked in the riding, shooting, roping, sort of stories. But I suppose that's the West, good for men and cattle, Hell on boys and horses.

I have several books by an interesting Texan author who had a lot of varied experiences in the West. Charles Siringo wrote several influential memoirs.

A Texas Cowboy
Or fifteen years on the hurricane deck of a Spanish pony.
1885

Siringo grew up very poor on Galveston Island. The Civil War was particularly hard on the Siringo family. Siringo began working as a cowboy for Shanghai Pierce, iirc. His memoir recounts adventures as diverse as dodging hostile Indians and working as a stock detective. His employers considered him reliable and Siringo was often sent to investigate stock theft. He even accompanied Pat Garrett on his hunt for Billy the Kid. Eventually Siringo left cowboying to open a store in Kansas.

A Cowboy Detective
A true story of twenty-two years with a world-famous detective agency
1912

Siringo relocated to Chicago, having won some fame with his biography. He was outraged by the Haymarket bombing and vowed to fight Anarchism by joining the Pinkertons. His experience as a cowboy led him to be assigned to the Denver office under McParland, the guy that broke the Molly Maguires. Siringo's cases included chasing Butch Cassidy & Kid Curry, investigating feuds & murders in New Mexico, chasing wanted men in Alaska, going undercover among Kentucky feudists, and increasingly investigating the labor movement in Western mining industry. Siringo was a specialist in undercover investigations and was often in considerable danger.

Two Evil Isms
Pinkertonism ans Anarchism
1915

The Pinkerton Agency demanded heavy censorship of Siringo's memoir, to the point of trying to suppress it. Siringo was not one to back down from a fight. He wrote Two Evil Isms as an expose of corruption in the Pinkertons. This came at a time when the Pinkertons were effectively the police for big business.

Taken as a group, Siringo's memoirs give an insider's view of the life of a cowboy & diverse aspects of crime fighting in the hey-day of the West.

All three can be found online at Archive.org and other sources.
 

Shadow_Ferret

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Back in the 60's, Time-Life published a series of books about the American West - titles such as the Cowboys, Gunfighters, etc. There were 20 or 24 in the series. I have them all and they're excellent reference books complete with decent pictures. Periodically these show up on e-bay and are worth watching for. Someone here got a set that way about a year ago.

I've been picking some of those up at Half Price Books.

I also picked up "A Dictionary of the Old West" by Peter Watts. Really helps me with all sorts of terms.
 

Dave Hardy

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Coronado's Children

Coronado's Children
J. Frank Dobie
1930

Dobie was one of Texas's best-known folklorists (he is something of an Austin icon). Coronado's Children is his collection of Texas treasure legends. They are a mixture of tales as he heard them, rather than attempts to correlate the legnds into master narratives. Dobie offers directions and maps less as guidebooks than as examples of the folklore. Stories include many variations on the Lost San Saba Mines, Emperor Maximilian's Gold, various treasures of the pirates Lafitte, etc. The San Saba mines are particularly interesting and inspired Jim Bowie's famous treasure hunt into the Texas interior back in the 1830s. A number of Western writers have worked on this theme including Robert E. Howard & Elmer Kelton.
 

Dave Hardy

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A Vaquero of the Brush Country

A Vaquero of the Brush Country
John A Young & J Frank Dobie
1929 (still in print)
In addition to collecting folklore, Dobie also gathered oral history. A Vaquero of the Brush Country is John Young's account of life as a South Texas cowboy from the 1870s to the early 20th century. The book covers a lot of ground from daily life, to the cattle business as a business, the cattle business as a way of life, and a fair bit about plain old Texas violence. Young tells a lot about the hide & tallow business on the Texas coast. There is interesting material about Shanghai Pierce, the King & Kenedy ranches as well.


Dobie often interpolates his own account of Texas history, filling in details that Young didn't know or didn't comment on. This is the only book that gives an inside view of the "Skinning War" in S. Texas. Young also pioneered in West Texas. A Vaquero of the Brush Country is invaluable if you want to get an idea of what life was like on the S. Texas in the heyday of the cattle trade.
 

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Coronado's Children
J. Frank Dobie
1930

Dobie was one of Texas's best-known folklorists (he is something of an Austin icon). Coronado's Children is his collection of Texas treasure legends. They are a mixture of tales as he heard them, rather than attempts to correlate the legnds into master narratives. Dobie offers directions and maps less as guidebooks than as examples of the folklore. Stories include many variations on the Lost San Saba Mines, Emperor Maximilian's Gold, various treasures of the pirates Lafitte, etc. The San Saba mines are particularly interesting and inspired Jim Bowie's famous treasure hunt into the Texas interior back in the 1830s. A number of Western writers have worked on this theme including Robert E. Howard & Elmer Kelton.

I have that one, it's excellent. Another one I would recommend is Buried Treasures of Texas by W.C. Jameson. The stories are short and sweet but there is some really good fodder for Westerns in there.
 

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Fine Gold (1998) and Atlantic City Nuggets (1978) by Betty Carpenter Pfaff.

Both books are accounts from "the old timers" in the South Pass City, Atlantic City, Lewiston, and Miners Delight areas in Wyoming. Great information on pioneer days and spirit, placer gold mining, and hardships in the mountains.
 
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Dave Hardy

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Indian Captives

Sorry it's been a while since I added anything to this thread.

Texas Girl: I was surprised to find how much buried treasure lore there is in Texas. Coronado's Children is just the tip of the iceberg. Thanks for adding more sources.

Snowstorm: Wyoming history is something where my knowledge is a bit spotty. Thanks for giving some places to look for more info!

Captivity narratives have formed a big element of frontier lore since Mary Rowlandson wrote of her experiences in 1682. While Mrs. Rowlandson's story is the model for the narratives of women who were captured and returned, there is a sub-set of narratives by Texas men who were captured as boys, raised as Indians, and became warriors fighting the advance of white settlement. In fact the most famous foe of Texas was chief Quanah Parker, himself the son of a white captive, Susannah Parker the daughter of a prominent Texas family.

Nine Years Among the Indians
Herman Lehmann
1927
Herman Lehmann was a boy from a German family settled in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, Texas. At the age of 11 in 1870 he was captured by Apache raiders. At first Lehmann resisted Apache ways, but after time came to regard the Apaches as his people and was initiated as a warrior. Lehmann's memoir is an account of those years. While deeply attached to Indian life, the narrative spares no details of bloody raids and counter-attacks.
Eventually Lehmann's Apache father was killed in a feud and Lehmann went north to join the Comanche becoming a protege of the war-chief Quanah. Lehmann did return to his family and wrote of his life among the Indians. But Lehmann could never be entirely comfortable among white culture. Although he was a popular celebrity at Texas rodeos, Lehmann preferred to live in Oklahoma among the Comanche.

The Boy Captives
Clinton L. Smith
1927
Clinton & Jeff Smith were captured from their family's ranch on Cibolo Creek west of San Antonio in 1871. The raiders were a mixed group of Lipan Apache & Comanche. Jeff was taken by the Apaches while Clint went to live among the Comanche. Clint Smith's memoir is not as harrowing as Lehmann's, but still this is an invaluable inside view of Indian life. Like Lehmann, Smith became a dedicated Comanche. And like many other captives, he struggled to adapt to white life after growing up Indian.

The Captured
Scott Zesch
2004
Scott Zesch is a relative of Adolf Korn, a well-known Indian captive of the 1870s. Korn's captivity and the subsequent efforts to bring him back to his family excited much comment at the time. What is less well-known is that Korn never adjusted to white life after being an Indian. He became a hermit, living in a cave above the Llano River. The Captured is Zech's effort to make sense of great-uncle Adolph's experiences. Zesch compares the stories of many Texan child-captives, detailing Indian raids, parents' efforts to recover their children, frontier warfare, and captives' lives after their return home.
Zesch's work is fascinating and essential for anyone trying to write about Indian captives on the Texas frontier. If there are two topics that could be explored more fully it would be the role of the Kickapoo in ransoming captives and the Parker family as a group both divided & united by captivity.
 

Dave Hardy

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The Texas Rangers

The Texas Rangers
Walter Prescott Webb
1935

You may have figured out by now I am a fanatic for Texana. The Texas Rangers are uniquely Texana. Webb's 1935 history of the Rangers was the most thorough single volume on the subject. The book was written at the approach of the Texas Centennial and in the wake of the 1919 Canales Hearings on the Rangers. Webb was out-and-out pro-Ranger. He covered every aspect of the force from the early days of the Republic, through the Rangers' service during statehood. The Rangers lapsed in during the Civil War and Reconstruction brought in a State Police (to this day we have no State Police in Texas, we have State Troopers, State Investigators, no State Police) which became the target of angry Confederates.

Webb puts a lot of detail into the revived Rangers that appeared in the 1870s. Indian fighting, crime fighting, and feud busting were of prime importance. Webb also covers teh highly controversial border wars that erupted from time to time such as the San Elizario Salt War & McNelly's Nueces Strip operations.

The last, bloodiest border war, the Bandit War of 1915-16 nearly destroyed the Rangers. Hearings were convened by Rep Canales of Brownsville and the Ranger force was accused of murder and corruption. The force survived but took a beating as politicians used them as a way to reward political cronies. Frank Hamer, the man who tracked down Bonnie & Clyde, emerged as the 20th century hero of the Rangers.

Webb has taken a few beatings too. Pena's Gunpowder Justice was a full-frontal attack on the Rangers & Webb's history. With His Pistol in His Hand by Paredes was another anti-Ranger history. More recently, the revisionists have gotten revised by Harris & Sadler's Texas Rangers & the Mexican Revolution and Robert Utley's two-volume history of the Rangers. While they all have something to say, Webb's overview is the trail-blazer & remains indispensable. Only Utley comes close to Webb's thoroughness.
 

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Bald Knobbers



Interesting find J'Dubee. Academics will still write about Westerns. We just need to get other folks reading & writing them!

I know you are interested in Ozark topics so here's one for you!

Bald Knobbers: Vigilantes on the Ozark Frontier
1988
Mary Hartman & Elmo Ingenthron

You might think that in the 1880s the Ozarks of South Missouri were a peaceful backwater. You'd be wrong. Homesteaders were taking advantage of Federal law to take up lands bypassed by earlier migrations or abandoned during the Civil War. Bitterness from the Bushwhacking days of the war lingered. Crime, ranging from moonshining, horse-stealing, to homicide, was on the upswing. In the midst of this Nathaniel McKinney, a Union veteran and bare-knuckle boxer, stepped in and organized the Bald Knobbers. They were a vigilante movement dedicated to driving out anyone they identified as a criminal by any means necessary.

The Bald Knobbers made their mark by lynching suspected criminals and intimidating others. They were noted for the elaborate devil-mask disguises they wore.

As was so often the case, the vigilantes soon considered any opposition to their reign to be the same as criminal activity. Throughout S. Central Missouri the Bald Knobbers and their foes waged a covert war of assassination, threats, lynchings, and gun battles. Hartman & Ingenthron document the events in excellent detail with impartiality. A timeline of events is included along with numerous maps & illustrations. Though some might say this is more Southern than Western history, one can argue these categories are not entirely separate.

I highly recommend Bald Knobbers for anyone looking into Ozark history.
 

J'Dubee

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I'm familiar with the Bald knobbers.

Jayhawkers were Kansas men intent on raiding, and Bushwackers were known on both sides. Both of those labels were used with pride by the men who bore them.
Paul R. Petersen's books on Quantrill covered the border wars better and more researched than any I've read. I know he wrote mine and my wife's kin's verbal stories like they've been handed down through the generations. He also handled the animosity of the abolitionists toward the southern sympathizers after the war very fairly. The Border Wars were a pretty bloody place, but it's been overlooked by many historians.

I'll be posting some of those stories in the coming year.