There is nothing left of the gold camp of Buckskin Joe except its cemetery. Although it is still in use, many old markings have been lost, and big trees have grown up through some graves. Local tales say that Silver Heels’ ghost walks that graveyard at night, dressed in mourning gray, weeping for those who died in the smallpox epidemic. I got an eerie feeling standing in that cemetery just before sundown and decided I did not want to stay to see if it was true.
Smallpox was a terrible scourge that the Spanish brought with them to the New World. It wiped out more than half the Indians in Central and South America, enabling the invaders to conquer the people. Later it was one of the first diseases used in germ warfare” by the British who gave infected blankets to northern Indians. It gets its name because it was feared second only to the great pox,” syphilis. The last death in the United States from smallpox occured in 1949. The last smallpox deaths anywhere in the world occurred in 1977. Today the disease has been wiped off the face of the earth—except for samples contained in two test tubes: one in Moscow, and the other in the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.
By the way, I talked to a neurosurgeon about Cherokee’s sight while I was reasearching this book. He told me a person could suffer an injury to the base of the skull and have nerve damage that would only temporarily blind the victim if the wound wasn’t too severe. In this case, Cherokee would gradually regain his sight.
Is there still gold to be found in Colorado? Yes, it’s still mined commercially in Mosquito Gulch, and now and then, someone pans a little from the streams. If you’d like to try it, you can buy equipment in many shops and get instructions. Just remember not to trespass on private land. A word of caution: don’t try the road up Mosquito Pass unless you own a good four-wheel-drive vehicle.
The biggest gold nugget ever found in America was found at Carson Hill, California, in 1854 and weight 195 troy ounces (162 pounds). The biggest ever discovered in the world was the Welcome Stranger” nugget, found in Australia in 1869, weighing 2,248 troy ounces. You figure out how many pounds that is!
While Buckskin Joe is gone, the town of Fairplay still exists, but as only a shadow of its rowdy, boomtown days. Fairplay may be the only town in the world with a burro buried under an elaborate gravestone on its main street. Prunes, a little pack burro who worked the mines of the area, lived to be sixty-three years old. Buried with him are the ashes of his last owner.
Fairplay has also moved Haw Tabor’s old original store into town as part of a tourist attraction. Some of you may recognize Haw Tabor as the man who became one of the richest men in Colorado, then a U.S. Senator. He finally left his wife, Augusta, for a young beauty known as Baby Doe. But that story is too long and tragic to tell here. Even the President of the United States attended the wedding. Baby Doe’s wedding dress cost $7,000 when the average working man didn’t earn half that in a year. The dress is on display at the Historical Museum in downtown Denver, the same museum that displays the Cheyenne sketch book mentioned in my Zebra hologram that came out in January 1990, Cheyenne Caress, #2864-4. This book is still available from Zebra.
If you get to Denver, be sure and see the state capitol building, the only one with a 24-carat-gold-covered dome. The gold came from Colorado’s own mines.
Gold and other metals are not the only things of value to be found in that state’s mountains. The biggest block of marble ever quarried in the world weighed 100 tons and came from west central Colorado. Today that piece of marble marks the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery.
Colorado is a fascinating place to visit and I highly recommend it to you. Its nickname is the Centennial State because it came into the Union during 1876, the year our country turned one hundred years old. It holds the honor of being the second state to give women the right to vote in 1873. As I told you in an earlier book, Wyoming was the first.
The U.S. government did indeed recruit Southern volunteers from Yankee prison camps during the Civil War to go West and fight Indians. The execution of William Dowdy, the red-haired blacksmith from Tennessee who was aboard the Effie Deans, actually occurred on September 9, 1864. A twenty-three-year-old Yankee colonel, Charles Dimon, determined in advance that he would execute a Galvanized Yankee on the trip to maintain discipline and show his authority. Illegal in the manner in which it was done, the poor unfortunate Dowdy was given a hasty trial, found guilty, taken off the boat just above Omaha, shot, and buried on the bank of the Missouri River.
If you have any interest in Native Americans, you are surely familiar with the Cherokees’ tragedy. The first gold strike in American was in Georgia in the 1830s, making whites clamor for possession of the land. The party that discovered gold in Colorado was made up of Cherokees. In Georgia, with Cherokee land and most possessions confiscated, the government started them on a long death march in the autumn of 1838. Some hid out in the hills, refusing to go, and their descendants are in the South yet. Almost one-fourth of the Cherokees in the march died before they reached Arkansas and Indian Territory. At the moment of this writing, they are discussing adding a new emblem to their tribal flag to represent this Indian holocaust. A memorial was recently dedicated in Faulkner County, Arkansas.
Approximately 43,000 Cherokees still live around Tahlequah, their tribal headquartes in northeastern Oklahoma. They put on a wonderful outdoor pageant, Tsa-La-Gi, every summer.
A nearby museum that might interest you is the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Oklahoma. If you time your visit in the early spring, the flowering azaleas of nearby Honor Heights park are magnificent.
The Cherokees are the largest tribe in Oklahoma and, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the largest in the country. However, the Cherokees themselves say their own more accurate tribal records list less than half the number the census claims and that the Navajos are still the biggest tribe.
I’ve had a surprising number of letters from readers who have reason to believe they are part Cherokee and wonder how to investigate. The chances of attaining official tribal membership now are slim. To do so, you’ll have to produce birth and death certificates, etc., proving your ancestor was one of those listed when the Dawes Commission made up the roll of all the members of the tribe back at the turn of the century.
As far as the Sand Creek Massacre, it has been written about so much, that I won’t go into great detail here. Of course, I have already been up there to walk the site and interview the present owner. There’s not much to see, but if you want to go there, please remember that it is on private land and respect that rancher’s rights. The site is in southeastern Colorado, not far from the Kansas border. Look for the nearby town of Chivington on the map. One of the best books on the subject has been written by a friend of mine, another Edmond resident, Dr. Stan Hoig.
Before some of you write and ask about the safety of Iron Knife’s family, I’ll tell you that they escaped at Sand Creek. Many of the others weren’t so lucky. The little boy, Bear Cub, was wounded but lived to play a major part in Cheyenne Caress.
If you read my second Zebra Heartfire, Cheyenne Princess, about Iron Knife’s missing sister, you already know about the Great Outbreak of 1864. The Plains tribes realized that many of the white men had gone off to fight each other during the Civil War. They saw this as a golden opportunity to try to take back their land. Through the whole spring and summer of that year, the Cheyenne and their allies were on the war path.
Whether the Confederates actually caused much of this trouble or only took advantage of it to further their own aims has been a subject for speculation and debate. Denver itself was cut off and placed under martial law. Its people suffered severe shortages of food and supplies. Because of the Civil War, there weren’t enough troops to protect the settlers. That was why the Union was desperate enough to use former Confederate soldiers along the frontier. But the attack at Sand Creek only caused more Indian trouble.
If some of the characters in the book you just read seem familiar to you, it’s because they ca
me originally from earlier books. Big ’Un and Pettigrew came from Bandit’s Embrace, but Iron Knife, Summer Sky, Gray Dove, Jake Dallinger, and even Sergeant Baker were characters in my first novel, Cheyenne Captive, the Zebra Heartfire that launched both that line and my career in 1987. Captive made the Waldenbooks Best Seller List, placed in the Affaire de Coeur Reader’s Poll of the Ten Best Historical Romances of 1987, and won the Romantic Times Award that same year as Best Indian Romance by a new Author.
The novel you hold in your hands is number seven. Besides the books previously mentioned, there have been three other Zebra Holograms. I wrote about Chief Quanah Parker and half-breen Maverick Durango in September 1988, Comanche Cowboy. Comanche placed in the Affaire de Coeur Reader’s Poll of the Ten Best Historical Romances of 1988, and sold out.
In March 1989 came Bandit’s Embrace, ISBN #2596-3, about Colonel MacKinzie’s covert raid against the Kickapoo and Mescalero Apache down in Mexico. Bandit was named to the Affaire de Coeur Best American Historical Romance list of 1989. It is still available from Zebra.
Then in July 1989, I told you about the Pony Express and the Paiute Indian wars in Nevada Nights, ISBN #2701-X. Nevada was a finalist for the 1988-1989 Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice for Best Western Romance award. It is still available from Zebra,
No, I don’t have any extra copies of any of my seven books, but you can order the ones still available at this moment, Bandit’s Embrace, Nevada Nights, Cheyenne Caress, and Quicksilver Passion, from your favorite bookstore or directly from Zebra. See details about mail orders on the advertising pages of this book. Send the cover price plus 50¢ each postage. My early Holograms are $3.95. Beginning with the January 1990 titles, the rising costs of paper pushed the price up to $4.50. You’ll need title, author, and ISBN# to order by mail. If the romance editor gets enough letters asking about my first three books, I think they will finally be reprinted for those who want a complete set of this long series which I call: Panorama of the Old West.”
I don’t do a newsletter, but if you’d like to write me, include a stamped, self-addressed long envelope and I’ll be happy to answer and send you a bookmark. Sometimes letters are lost in the forwarding process. I always answer my mail, so if you haven’t heard from me, I didn’t get your letter. In the future, write me directly at: Box 162, Edmond, OK 73083-0162.
Zebra is forwarding some mail out here to Oklahoma and my readers ask questions. Did I see the television show Unsolved Mysteries in October 1989, about the ghost lights” near Marfa, Texas? Yes, I did. But remember I told you about those lights myself way back in 1987 in Cheyenne Princess?
For those of you who wrote, worried about the government killing the wild mustangs that I mentioned in Nevada Nights, you will be delighted to know there’s a happy ending. There are now two refuges for the wild mustangs besides the Nevada ranges, one in South Dakota, one right here in Oklahoma. While the government is still trying to adopt out many of the wild horses, those that are too old or too ugly to be adopted have been turned loose to live peacefully on 18,000 acres the government has leased for them up in Osage and Washington counties in northeastern Oklahoma. The Prairie National Wild Horse Refuge is near the town of Bartlesville. It seems fitting somehow that these wild horses now run free on the vast prairies of Indian country, right here in my home state.
Some of you are complaining I don’t write the books fast enough. Sorry, but I spend as much time researching as I do writing. The only way I could do more books is cut out all the research. Would you really like that?
For those who want to know what happened to little Waanibe, the half-breed Arapaho girl, and Keso, the Ute boy who thinks he’s Cheyenne, those are stories I will finish later, as well as the tale of Shawn O’Bannion and his elegant wife, Savannah. Arrogant and handsome Southern aristocrat, Rand Erikson, who was in the Yankee prison with Cherokee, will turn up again in a future book, as will the historic ship, the Continental. Yes, even Lulu, the whore who stole Cherokee’s father, and Elmer Neeley will appear again and get what’s coming to them in another book. No, I haven’t forgotten about other stories I didn’t finish telling. Iron Knife will finally meet his lost sister in a future book. Be patient.
For those who are keeping up with my career, I am most grateful for the 1988 Romantic Times Magazine Lifetime Achievement in Indian Romance trophy I was awarded and the two Silver Pen Favorite Author awards that Affaire de Coeur Magazine gave me in 1989 and 1990. You readers have helped build my career by telling your friends about me and I’m much obliged, as we say here in Oklahoma.
Yes, that is my photo on the cover of the Romance Reader’s Handbook, and again, yes, I do have an article in the book, How to Write a Romance and Get It Published, which came out in a revised edition in 1990. Besides loyal readers, those in the publishing industry itself have been kind to me. I am happy to tell you I am signing a new contract with Zebra Books that assures you the series will go on for at least four more books through 1993. However, I will have only one book out in 1991, probably in early autumn. Alert your bookstore to watch for it.
What’s it about? In my research, I have uncovered an incredible true story about an Apache brave who scouted for the U.S. Cavalry in Arizona. In 1886, Geronimo and his warriors were at last defeated. The army decided to send these ringleaders by train far away to prison in Florida. In an unbelievable twist of injustice, someone also ordered that the loyal Apache scouts be chained and sent as prisoners, too.
On the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri, one of those Apaches managed to overpower a guard and escape from the train. He was all alone, half-naked, injured, in chains, and without weapons. Worse yet, he was thousands of miles away from home with armed citizens and the U.S. Cavalry searching for him with orders to shoot to kill.
Determined to return to his own land, he decided to take a hostage, and chose a beautiful woman alone on a farm near the railroad tracks. How could he know he had selected a girl who hated his people with a terrible vengeance? She was the widow of a Cavalry officer who had been recently killed in action against the Apache.
I invite you to return to the West that existed more than a hundred years ago. Together, we’ll experience this desperate and romantic adventure crossing the continent with the Apache savage and his voluptuous captive.
Come slip back in time with me ...
Georgina Gentry
Here are a few of the dozens of research books I used that you might find at your public library:
Brown, Dee, The Galvanized Yankees, University of Illinois Press, 1963; University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
Butler, Anne, M., Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West, University of Illinois Press, 1985.
Ehle, John, Trail of Tears: The Rise & Fall of the Cherokee Nation, Anchor Doubleday, 1988.
Hoig, Stan, The Sand Creek Massacre, University of Oklahoma Press, 1961.
Noel, Thomas J., The City and the Saloon, Denver 1858-1916 , University of Nebraska Press, 1982.
Ware, Captain Eugene F. The Indian War of 1864, Crane & Co., 1911. Reprints: St. Martin’s press, 1960; University of Nebraska Press, 1963.
Married to a mixed-blood Choctaw Indian, and the mother of three, GEORGINA GENTRY was born and reared in Oklahoma, where she still lives in a house built on land war parties once roamed. Winner of numerous awards for the authenticity of her novels, she spends winter months writing and summers attending rodeos and pow wows. Her previous Zebra historical romances include Bandit’s Embrace, Cheyenne Caress, Cheyenne Princess, and Nevada Nights. To her many fans, she says in Cheyenne, Hahoo naa ne-mehotatse.” (Thank you and I love you.)
ZEBRA BOOKS
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Copyright © 1990 by Georgina Gentry
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, exceptin
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ISBN: 978-0-8217-3117-8
Quicksilver Passion Page 36
