W.C. Jameson - Unsolved Mysteries of the Old West

Unsolved Mysteries of the Old West

Unsolved Mysteries of the Old West

Second Edition

W. C. Jameson

Taylor Trade Publishing

Lanham New York Boulder Toronto Plymouth, UK

Published by Taylor Trade Publishing

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

Distributed by National Book Network

Copyright 2013 by W. C. Jameson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jameson, W.C., 1942

Unsolved mysteries of the old West / W.C. Jameson. Second edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-58979-741-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58979-742-0 (electronic) 1. West (U.S.)HistoryMiscellanea. 2. West (U.S.)BiographyMiscellanea. I. Title.

F591.J38 2013

978dc23

2012042514

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

Most observers of human culture and society in America have long been aware of the notion that there are two things that people continue to be fascinated by: the Old West and a good mystery.

No one can deny the enduring attraction and mystique of the frontier American West, a geographic and cultural region that has yielded indelible images of outlaws, lawmen, gunfights, train robberies, wagon trains, trail drives, settlements, gold mining, and more. Though fictionalized, fantasized, glorified, and mythologized via film, novels, and song, these images continue to provide us with adventure, excitement, romance, and mystery.

A number of Western events and personalities have yielded some of Americas most elusive mysteries. Because of a variety of factors, the life, death, and times of many famous Western figures are fraught with contradiction. Huge gaps exist in the knowledge and information pertaining to them. In addition to people, places and things also provide compelling mysteries.

With the passage of time, the images of some Western personalities have actually evolved from bad men to heroes. Real-life crimes ranging from horse rustling to murder are often obscured by the outlaws contemporary and overriding image, a persona that has sometimes been reshaped such that it bears little or no relationship to truth and reality. Outlaws of yore are oftentimes re-created, not as the bad men they actually were, but as rebellious and individualistic souls who have been misunderstood and persecuted by law enforcement authorities. Today, many criminals of yesteryear are viewed by the public as merely rule-breaking free spirits who had to contend with crooked capitalists and corrupt politicians. The outlaw of the Old West, along with some Western lawmen and other figures have, in truth, become folk heroes in American and world society. In the process, much of the truth of their lives and deaths remains unknown or misunderstood.

Mysteries, like the people, places, and things of the Old West, are likewise compelling. Particularly intriguing are those mysteries that have never been solved. On a global scale, there exist several prevailing unsolved mysteries that continue to fascinate, baffle, perplex, taunt, and entertain. Examples include the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, Unidentified Flying Objects, and the hypothesized existence of Noahs ark atop Turkeys Mount Ararat.

The serious investigator of Western American history encounters an array of mysteries as compelling and baffling as those listed above, accounts replete with conundrums, loose ends, and examples of twisted logic and truth. The more one immerses oneself in the details of the life, times, and deaths of notable figures such as Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Butch Cassidy, Etta Place, Belle Starr, John Wilkes Booth, Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain, and others, the more one grows keenly aware of the reasons why these and other cases remain mysterious and unsolved.

For one thing, many Western figures, including outlaws, lawmen, and even some politicians, led somewhat clandestine lives and commonly suppressed knowledge and information pertinent to their backgrounds and activities. Men and women sometimes arrived in the American West as a result of escaping complications, legal and otherwise, encountered elsewhere. In so doing, the newcomers often invented fresh backgrounds for themselves and in many cases assumed different names. Their lives were sometimes so cryptic or camouflaged that they left behind little or nothing helpful to researchers who followed decades later.

For another thing, the newspaper reporting during the early settlement times in the American West, when and if it occurred at all, was often spotty, inaccurate, biased, and often politically motivated. Additionally, since the deaths of noted Western figures, subsequent research on them has, in far too many cases, been sloppy and amateurish which has often only served to obscure, rather than reveal, the truth.

To further complicate matters, a lot of Americas Western history, and in particular Western outlaw and lawman history, is sometimes treated as little more than an intellectual stepchild among serious scholars of American history. Western outlaws and lawman history is seldom provided much, if any, attention by credentialed and qualified researchers, many of whom are employed by colleges and universities. Academic departments generally encourage their professors to undertake research into areas deemed to have greater import, research pertaining to major influences on shaping the history of America, and research that has the potential to attract significant grants. The academic reward system is based, in large part, on such things. As a result, a great deal of the history of the American West is neglected by the very people who should be concerned about it.

Many of those who pursue the study of this kind of history tend to be enthusiasts or hobbyists. Though committed, and occasionally qualified, many of them lack proper research and investigative credentials and experience. As a result they often wind up being responsible for clouding issues rather than clearing them up. However pure their motives and sincere their efforts, they are often guilty of simply copying and repeating what has already been written, much of which has long since been proven to be inaccurate. Rather than solve the mysteries that have puzzled folks for so long, they actually perpetuate them. Manifest in a lot of research oriented toward Americas Western history today is a bias for maintaining the status quo, and a kind of reverence for things as they are perceived but not necessarily as they really were.