American Endurance
Page 27
W. W. Wilson’s success at farming was chronicled in the Omaha Daily Bee, March 11, 1892, 6.
The Dawes County Courthouse is profiled in Watson, Prairie Justice, 8–9.
Orlan Carty’s day in court is memorialized in Watson, Prairie Justice, 15.
Bill Malone’s antics and those of other cowboy upstarts are recorded in Watson, Prairie Justice, 2. For more of the adventures inside Angel’s Place, see Rhoads, Stream Called Deadhorse, chap. 5.
Red Jacket is profiled in Watson, Prairie Justice, 35–37.
The Omaha Daily Bee’s description of “cowboys, horse thieves and bad men” circulating through Chadron was published on June 13, 1893, 6.
The sturdy old Blaine Hotel building stands today, and more can be learned in “Blaine Motel Still Making History,” Crawford (NE) Clipper (Summer 1993): 26.
Fannie O’Linn was Chadron’s “first lady.” An amazing woman, she helped establish the community before the railroad pushed west and the O’Linn settlement moved to the new Chadron town site. Details of her story can be found in Watson, Prairie Justice, 24; Compendium of History, Reminiscence, and Biography of Western Nebraska, 150–51; and Radcliffe, Chadron to Chicago Cowboy Horse Race, 4–5.
The Chadron settlement’s relocation to a new site next to the train tracks is beautifully described in Egan, “Old Town Story.”
Much of the lifelong endurance of Louis John Frederick Iaeger, known as “Billy the Bear,” is intimately told by the man himself in his valuable Man of Many Frontiers: The Diaries of “Billy the Bear” Iaeger (Omaha: Working History, 1994). He also lives on in Marianne Brinda Beel, ed., A Sandhill Century, Book I: The Land, a History of Cherry County, Nebraska (Cherry County, NE: Centennial Committee, 1989), 217; Compendium of History, Reminiscence, and Biography of Western Nebraska, 130–32; James E. Potter, “A Peculiar Set of Men: Nebraska Cowboys of the Open Range,” Nebraska History (Fall 2013): 137–38; “Billy the Bear,” Nebraska History (April–June 1933): 98–99; Don Huls, “Billy the Bear,” in Chadron Centennial History, 36–37; and “Nebraskan Has No Feet, No Hands,” Omaha Daily News Magazine, November 16, 1919, 5.
Billy the Bear’s wedding announcement to a niece of one of the cowboy riders appeared in the Dawes County Journal, April 15, 1892, 1. On July 11, 1893, just after the cowboy race was run, the Omaha Daily Bee, 4, reported that Buffalo Bill had presented Billy with a new “pair of artificial legs.”
Billy’s death in March 1930 made the local papers in Chadron, as well as p. 1 of the Omaha World-Herald, March 7, 1930. On March 14, 1930, the World-Herald reported on p. 10 that one of the last acts of this indomitable man was to pick out the Bible reading for his funeral.
John Maher, Chadron newspaper correspondent, Army officer, and business executive, died in June 1939, and his death was reported widely around the state of Nebraska, including in the Lincoln Star, June 10, 1939, 1, and the Lincoln Evening Journal, June 10, 1939, 3, as well as in the Omaha World-Herald, June 10, 1939, 1. The papers duly noted his lively wit and his knack for spinning preposterous stories and often entire fabrications. But Maher could rise to the demands of a correspondent for major Eastern papers. His coverage of the Wounded Knee massacre, the last of the great Indian conflicts, for the New York Herald appeared on the paper’s front pages from December 30, 1890, through January 3, 1891. His “Farmer John at the Fair” column from the Chicago World’s Fair ran in the Chadron Signal, August 26, 1893, 1.
Maher’s lively times in Nebraska are recorded in Louise Pound, Nebraska Folklore (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1959), 104–21, which includes the embarrassing interview with Mari Sandoz; Addison E. Sheldon, Nebraska: The Land and the People (Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1931), 197–98; David Dary, Red Blood & Black Ink: Journalism of the Old West (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 235–37; “Tall Tales,” Nebraska Folklore Pamphlets, from the Federal Writers Project in Nebraska, July 1938, 1–10; Welsch, Treasury of Nebraska Pioneer Folklore, 151–54; Patricia C. Gaster, “A Celestial Visitor Revisited: A Nebraska Newspaper Hoax from 1884,” Nebraska History (Summer 2013): 90–100; and Austin E. Fife, “The Bear Lake Monsters,” Utah Humanities Review (April 1948), 99–106. Maher also is mentioned quite often throughout Billy the Bear’s diaries, Man of Many Frontiers.
On November 29, 1892, the Arizona Republic reported that cowboys in Nebraska and the Dakotas were hoping to raise $1,000 and a gold medal to spur interest in a race from Chadron to Chicago.
The New York Sun’s boast that American Western horses could stand more hardship than those that had raced a year earlier between Germany and Austria ran on November 28, 1892, 6.
As early as the first weeks of 1893, Chadron Citizen newspaper editorials questioned the idea of a cross-country cowboy race, deriding it as something that “originated in the fertile brain” of John Maher.
McGinley called for a meeting to lay out the race plans in the Dawes County Journal on December 16, 1892. Doc Middleton planned to ride, as did Emmett Albright.
Ed Lemmon’s log books can be found in Lemmon, “Developing the West,” 6.
The Omaha Daily Bee announced on December 25, 1892, 2, that talk of a long-distance cowboy race was sweeping the West.
On February 23, 1893, the Chadron Citizen reported on its front page that as many as three hundred cowboys from Nebraska alone might enter the race and that advertising for the endeavor was spreading around the region.
The first meeting of race committee officials was held March 18, 1893, at the Chadron Opera House, as reported in the Dawes County Journal, March 24, 1893, 1, and the Chadron Citizen, March 23, 1893, 1. Here the preliminary set of rules was announced.
Buffalo Bill agreed to help sponsor the race and to place the finish line at his Wild West show tent grounds in Chicago, as reported in the Chicago Inter Ocean, March 19, 1893, 13. The text of Cody’s telegram to Sheriff Dahlman announcing his cosponsorship was published in Walter Livingston, “Riders East,” Adventure (December 1941): 66.
George Angell’s initial protest against the race appeared in his column, “Our Dumb Animals,” on April 1, 1893, in the newsletter of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Clabe Young surfaced as a potential rider in the Chadron Signal, April 1, 1893, and the Dawes County Journal, April 7, 1890, 1. Jeptha Sweat, as reported in the Chadron Signal, April 15, 1893, was prepared to race. The Helena (MT) Independent, April 5, 1893, 3, reported that Narcisse Valleaux Jr. would ride.
Updated race rules were reported in the Chicago Inter Ocean, April 6, 1893.
“Texas Ben” and Jim Murray were likely riders, according the Chicago Inter Ocean, April 12, 1893. The New York Sun, May 14, 1893, 4, reported that Indian tribal horsemen might join the race, as well as Jack Flagg of the Big Horn Basin, Emma Hutchinson of Colorado, and others. The contestants from Kearney, Nebraska, were identified in the Kearney Daily Hub, April 20, 1893, 3.
The Chadron Citizen, April 27, 1893, 1, reported that John Berry, the railroad man, had been slipping in and out of town recently and that Paul Fontaine of the Minnesota Humane Society had fired off a letter encouraging his colleagues around the country to join him in protesting the race.
Special gifts for some of the riders—the saddle and the bridles—were noted in the Dawes County Journal, June 9, 1893, 1.
The judge in Lincoln submitted his letter of protest to the Lincoln State Journal, and the Chadron Signal reproduced it on April 29, 1893, 1.
More details on Buffalo Bill’s involvement in the race, and the news that he would donate $500 of his own money and award the golden Colt revolver, appeared in the Chadron Signal, April 29, 1893, 1.
The letters from Barron, Wisconsin, and from Caroline Earle White and the Women’s Branch of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, sent to Iowa Governor Boies, were retrieved from the Iowa state archives. White also wrote a separate letter of complaint on May 25, 1893, to Nebraska Governor Crounse, included in the Nebraska state archives.
/> The meeting of the Illinois Humane Society was held May 6, 1893, and reported in the Chicago Daily Tribune, May 7, 1893, 11. On p. 2 the same day, the paper reported that Nebraska Governor Crounse had been invited to kick off the race in Chadron by firing the pistol to send the cowboys to Chicago.
Reverend David Swing’s sermon was reprinted in the Chicago Inter Ocean, May 22, 1893.
Two separate protest letters from the Wisconsin Humane Society, May 9, 1893, were obtained from the Iowa and Nebraska state archives.
Nate Salsbury’s extraordinary May 19, 1893, letter to race committee secretary Harvey Weir was printed in full in the Chicago Inter Ocean, July 2, 1893, 5, after the Humane Society officials publicly released it as part of their final report on the Great Cowboy Race.
Paul Fontaine’s May 15, 1893, letter of protest to the Chadron Signal appeared in the paper on May 20. That day, the paper also reported that the Colt was on display at the jewelry store in downtown Chadron. The Dawes County Journal further cited the Fontaine letter on May 19, 1893, 1.
The Aurora, Illinois, Humane Society entered the protest against the race in a letter to the editor, run on May 23, 1893, 7, in the Omaha Daily Bee and in the Chadron Citizen on June 1, 1893.
Shortall, head of the Illinois Humane Society, announced on May 24 that he was encouraging Buffalo Bill to drop his sponsorship of the race. This comes from an unnamed newspaper source included in the files of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. In a May 27 letter to the race committee and secretary Harvey Weir, Shortall wrote “I beg you” to cancel the race. The letter was obtained from the Dawes County Historical Museum. The letter also was published in the Chicago Inter Ocean, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Herald, all on June 4, 1893.
The Salsbury correspondence and Cody’s misgivings about the race once it received a flurry of national protests are discussed in Bernard Schuessler, “Great Chadron to Chicago Horse Race,” 1.
Governor Altgeld’s proclamation warning against any cruelty to the horses and threatening arrests appeared in newspapers throughout the nation. See the Chicago Herald, June 14, 1893, 1, and the Sioux City (IA) Journal, June 14, 1893, 1. For more, see Harry Barnard, “Eagle Forgotten”: The Life of John Peter Altgeld (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938), 178–79.
The Intelligencer in Wheeling, WV, editorialized against the race on June 6, 1893, 4.
Angell’s reward of $100 and/or a gold medal to stop the race was reported around the country, including in the Freeport (IL) Bulletin, May 29, 1893, 1.
The so-called Dalton Gang letter threatening harm if the race were stopped was printed widely, including in the Shenandoah (PA) Evening Herald, June 6, 1893, 3.
Doc Middleton was quoted that he would ride—come hell or high water—and his determination was reported in the Iowa City Daily Citizen, June 3, 1893, 3.
Sheriff Dahlman vowed not to shut down the race, in comments quoted in the Dawes County Journal, June 2, 1893, 1.
Efforts to organize humane society officials in Dubuque, Iowa, were reported in the Omaha Daily Bee, June 4, 1893, 2.
The Shortall letter to Iowa Governor Boies is dated June 3, 1893. It is included in the Iowa state archives. The governor’s request for Iowa county sheriffs to be on the lookout for animal cruelty was printed in the Algona Upper Des Moines newspaper, June 14, 1893, 4, and again, once the race had started and the cowboys were approaching Iowa, in the La Porte City (IA) Progress-Review, June 17, 1893.
The story of Rattlesnake Pete and his drinking buddies chasing after the circus parade was reported in the Chadron Signal, June 10, 1893.
The Chicago Inter Ocean’s call urging Buffalo Bill to “exercise his influence” and halt the race was reported in the Lincoln County (NE) Tribune, June 7, 1893, 2.
Broncho Harry’s defense of Buffalo Bill and the cowboy race was printed in the Chicago Daily Tribune, June 9, 1893, 7.
Reverend Swing’s objections to the race ran in the Chicago Inter Ocean and the Chicago Daily Tribune on June 9, 1893, both on p. 7.
The Chadron Citizen’s boast that there were “plenty of men in the West” who could ride over 100 miles a day, even for two or three days in a row, appeared on June 8, 1893, 1.
Shortall’s complaint that “horseflesh is cheap” out on the Western Plains was reprinted in the Sioux City (IA) Journal, June 11, 1893.
6. Race Day
Details about the women’s meeting in Chadron on the eve of the Great Cowboy Race can be found in Sly, “1000 Mile Horse Race,” 3. It also was detailed in the Chadron newspapers. See esp. the Dawes County Journal, June 16, 1893, 1.
For more on Mary E. Smith Hayward, see the Chadron Journal, February 11, 1938, 1.
Harry Rutter’s cowboy life and times are chronicled in his personal recollections, taken down by Georgia Rechert and written up as “Cow Tales” in 1931. I found this document at the Montana Historical Society. See also Pat Hill, “Harry Rutter Was a Cowboy: He Drove Cattle to Montana, Put Away Outlaws, and Got the Girl,” Montana Pioneer (March 2010): 9. In 2009, Rutter was posthumously inducted into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame; his profile is at www.montanacowboyfame.com/151001/212712.html.
Rutter’s distaste for seeing Cowboy Annie’s drawers hanging in a friend’s cabin is documented in Tinkle and Maxwell, Cowboy Reader, 193–201, and Abbott and Smith, We Pointed Them North, 105–13.
Emma Hutchinson’s wandering ride from Denver to Chadron was followed closely by the nation’s press. See the Chicago Evening Journal, June 13, 1893, 1; New York Sun, June 13, 1893, 5; Salt Lake Herald, June 13, 1893, 1; Wichita Daily Eagle, June 22, 1893, 6; Dawes County Journal, June 21, 1893, 1; Kearney (NE) Daily Hub, May 8, 1893, 1; Salt Lake Tribune, June 11, 1893, 11; and Charlotte (NC) Democrat, June 30, 1893, 3.
Achievements of other horsewomen were recorded in the Du Quoin (IL) Tribune, June 1, 1893. Broncho Kate Chapman’s abilities were showcased in the St. Paul Daily Globe, July 10, 1892, 11.
The W. B. Lower missive blasting the “human cranks” who opposed the race appeared in the O’Neill (NE) Frontier, June 15, 1893, 1.
T. H. McPherson was interviewed by a reporter in Sioux City, Iowa, and the story ran in the Sioux City Journal, June 13, 1893, 1.
E. C. Walker’s letter from Boston to Nebraska Governor Crounse is included in the governor’s correspondence file at the Nebraska state archives.
The letter from “the Rustler” criticizing the race was published in the Omaha Daily Bee, June 3, 1893, 8.
Army Captain E. L. Huggins’s thoughts about the stamina and strength of horses in a cross-country race were published in the Chicago Post, June 13, 1893, 1. Also quoted was the Reverend F. M. Bristol, decrying the racing cowboys. The story further detailed Shortall’s determination to continue protesting the race and waving off any “implied threats” that humane society officials might be harmed.
Newspaper coverage of the Blaine Hotel meeting was extensive. Of note are the Chicago Record, June 14, 1893; Chicago Times, June 14, 1893, 1; Chicago Herald, June 14, 1893, 1; Chicago Times, June 14, 1893; 1; Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1893, 2; Omaha Daily Bee, June 14, 1893, 1; New York World, June 14, 1893; 3; Sioux City (IA) Journal, June 14, 1893, 1; Chadron Citizen, June 15, 1893, 1; Dawes County Journal, June 16, 1893, 1; Chadron Signal, June 17, 1893, 1; and Rushville (NE) Standard, June 23, 1893, 1.
Jack Hale is profiled in Bob Lee and Dick Williams, Last Grass Frontier: The South Dakota Stock Grower Heritage (Rapid City, SD: Black Hills Publishers, 1964), 58–59.
Sheriff Dahlman, a town leader in Chadron and later across the state of Nebraska, came to embody the “cowboy mayor.” The best sources on him are Fred Carey, Mayor Jim: An Epic of the West (Omaha: Omaha Printing, 1930); “Recollections of Cowboy Life in Western Nebraska,” an address that Dahlman delivered January 10, 1922, to the annual meeting of the Nebraska State Historical Society, later published in Nebraska History (October–December 1927): 334–39; J. R. Johnson, Representative Nebraskans (Lincoln: Johnsen
Publishing, 1954), 60–64; Sandoz, Cattlemen, 407–17; Minnie Alice Rhoads, “Ol’ Jim Dahlman a Real Cowboy,” Chadron Record, August 1, 1960; Watson, Prairie Justice, 30–31; and Chadron Centennial History, 25.
7. Post Time
Many local and national newspapers covered the crowds and the excitement of the start of the cowboy race. They included the Chicago Times, June 14, 1893, 1; Chicago Herald, June 14, 1893, 1; Chicago Tribune, June 14, 1893, 2; Omaha Daily Bee, June 14, 1893, 1; New York World, June 14, 1893, 3; Sioux City (IA) Journal, June 14, 1893, 1; Chadron Citizen, June 15, 1893, 1; Dawes County Journal, June 16, 1893, 1; Chadron Signal, June 17, 1893, 1; and Rushville (NE) Standard, June 23, 1893, 1.
Bill McDowell of Casper, Wyoming, a descendant of John Berry, pulled together various family materials, historical accounts, and photographs. These sources included newspaper clippings and family letters as well as Wyoming stories that chronicled Berry’s life. Equally valuable were old newspaper obituaries from Newcastle, Wyoming, beginning April 3, 1913. I thank Bill for sharing his time and collections.
Berry’s work as a railroad man is cited in Albert Watkins, History of Nebraska: From the Earliest Explorations to the Present Time (Lincoln, NE: Western Publishing and Engraving, 1913), 455; and Nebraska: A Guide to the Cornhusker State, 313, 320.
One of the best descriptions of Berry comes from the Chicago Herald, June 26, 1893. Doris Bowker Bennett mentions her uncle John Berry in A Girl in Wyoming, 26–27. David Howell, a nephew of John Berry, was interviewed by the author on December 8, 2013.
Berry’s wife, Winifred, recalled the race and her life with John in “Cowboy Race Winner Called at Last Minute,” Lincoln (NE) Star, July 27, 1960, 17. See also Dolly Donlin, “Chadron to Chicago Race,” Casper (WY) Tribune-Herald and Star, September 30, 1962; and an undated, unnamed newspaper article titled “Berry Never Got His Purse—Sheriff Gambled.”
Doc Middleton’s life on both sides of the law is told best in Hutton, Doc Middleton. Hutton further deals with Middleton in Vigilante Days: Frontier Justice along the Niobrara (Chicago: Sage Books, 1978), 15–30. No one better captures the man, the outlaw, and the reformed thief. Middleton also rides again in John Carson’s thirty-three-page pamphlet The Unwickedest Outlaw (Santa Fe, NM: Press of the Territories, 1966). He also can be found in I. S. Bartlett, ed., History of Wyoming (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1918), 622–23; Butcher, Pioneer History of Custer County, 119–33, 172–76; Laurence J. Yadon and Robert Barr Smith, Outlaws with Badges (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2013), 203–27; Faulkner, Roundup, 86–90; Sandoz, Cattlemen, 128–29, 200, 226–27; T. D. Griffith, Outlaw Tales of Nebraska (Helena, MT: TwoDot, 2010), 33–42; Bob Rybolt, “Even a New Name and State Couldn’t Save Doc Middleton,” Omaha World-Herald Magazine of the Midlands, November 18, 1984, 14–15; Alan J. Bartels, “On the Trail of Doc Middleton,” Nebraska Life (May–June 2011): 122–31; James H. Cook, “Early Days in Ogallala,” Nebraska History (April–June 1933): 89–92; Barbara E. Andre, “Doc Middleton: Horsethief or Lawman?” Golden West (May 1968): 15, 51–52; Elizabeth Parker, “Doc Middleton, Nebraska’s ‘Gentleman Outlaw,’ Eventually Reformed and Even Became a Lawman,” Wild West (February 1999): 12, 14, 66; Omaha Daily Bee, May 24, 1893, 5; and Chicago Evening Journal, June 24, 1893, 1. Further, he is repeatedly mentioned in Iaeger, Man of Many Frontiers.