by Jon E. Lewis
1889 First land rush into Oklahoma, formerly the Indian Territory; celebrated female outlaw Belle Starr is murdered; Montana, Washington, North and South Dakota admitted to the Union, November.
1890 US Census announces the closing of the frontier; Idaho and Wyoming admitted to the Union, July; Sioux Ghost Dancers massacred by units of the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, and Indians at the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation flee in panic, December.
1891 Sioux Indians surrender to Nelson Miles and return to Pine Ridge, January; gold and silver rush to Cripple Creek, Colorado.
1892 Range war in Johnson County between large stock growers and alliance of homesteaders and cattle rustlers; Dalton gang of bank robbers ride to disaster at Coffeyville, south Kansas; historian Frederick Jackson Turner delivers his seminal paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”
1896 Al Jennings begins – and ends – his risible career as a road agent in Oklahoma; Bill Doolin, “King of the Oklahoma Outlaws”, killed by deputy marshal Heck Thomas while resisting arrest, August.
1898 The Wild Bunch reaches the apex of its career; Pearl Hart and Joe Boot commit the last hold-up of a stagecoach in Western history.
1901 Major oil field found at Spindletop, Texas; Butch Cassidy of the Wild Bunch, accompanied by the Sundance Kid and Etta Place, flees to South America via New York.
1903 Kid Curry, Wild Bunch member, commits suicide as police storm his hideout; range detective and hired killer Tom Horn is executed in Wyoming; first true Western movie, Kit Carson, is released; three months later The Great Train Robbery was released.
1905 Ex-Governor Frank Stuenenberg assassinated in Caldwell, Idaho.
1907 Oklahoma admitted to the Union.
1908 Pat Garrett murdered.
1909 Geronimo of the Apache dies; professional assassin Jim Miller lynched.
1911 Massacre of Shoshoni Indian family in Nevada; last land rush into Oklahoma.
1912 Ben Kilpatrick (“The Tall Texan”) is killed during the hold-up of a train at Dryden, Texas.
1913–14 Strike by United Mine Workers in Colorado ends in Ludlow Massacre.
1913 Riot of hop-pickers, Wheatland, California; Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show closes, burdened by debts.
1916 Henry Starr killed attempting to rob the People’s National Bank at Harrison, Arkansas.
1917 Striking mineworkers deported from Bisbee, Arizona, by owners and vigilantes; International Workers of the World (IWW) leader Frank Little lynched by vigilantes in Butte, Montana; 18,000 people attend funeral of Buffalo Bill Cody, Denver, Colorado.
1919 Massacre of IWW activists at Centralia, Washington.
1924 Killing of Marshal Bill Tilghman in Cromwell, Oklahoma.
1929 Wyatt Earp and cattleman Charles Goodnight die.
1935 Last of the “bronco” Apaches living in the Sierra Madre gives up the old, free life.
Appendix II: Bibliography
The library of Western Americana is vast, and any bibliography necessarily selective. Among the most influential works and those which informed the preceding pages are:
Abbott, Edward C. and Helena Huntingdon Smith, We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1939
Adams, Andy, Cattle Brand. Boston: Houghton, 1906
—— Log of a Cowboy. New York: Airmont, 1969
Alderson, Nannie T. and Helena Huntingdon Smith, A Bride Goes West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1942
Alter, J. Cecil, James Bridger: Trapper, Frontiersman, Scout and Guide. Columbus, OH, 1951
Ambrose, Stephen E., Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors. New York: Penguin, 1975
Andrist, Ralph K., The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indians. New York: Collier Books, 1964
Applegate, Jesse, A Day with the Cow Column in 1843. Chicago: Caxton, 1934
Arnold, Oren, Hot Irons: Heraldry of the Range. New York: Macmillan, 1940
Atherton, Lewis, The Cattle Kings. Bloomington, 1961
Baber, D. F., The Longest Rope: The Truth about the Johnson County Cattle War. Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1940
Baldwin, Leland D., Steamboats on the Mississippi. American Heritage, 1962
Barnes, William C., Story of the Ranger, Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, 1926
Barth, Gunther, Bitter Strength: A History of the Chinese in the United States, 1850–1887. Berkeley, 1964
Bartlett, Richard A., The New Country: A Social History of the American Frontier 1776–1890. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974
Bergon, Frank (ed.), The Journals of Lewis and Clark. New York: Penguin, 1989
Betzinez, Jason (with W. S. Nye), I Fought With Geronimo. New York: The Stackpole Company, 1959
Billington, Ray Allen, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier. New York: Macmillan, 1974
Bourke, John G., An Apache Campaign in the Sierra Madre. New York: Scribner’s, 1886
Breakenridge, William M., Helldorado. Boston: Houghton, 1928
Breihan, Carl W., Badmen of the Frontier Days. New York: McBride, 1957
—— Great Lawmen of the West. New York: Bonanza Books, 1963
Brininstool, Earl A., Trail Dust of a Maverick. New York: Dodd Mead, 1914
Brisbin, James S., The Beef Bonanza. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1881
Brown, Dee, The Fetterman Massacre. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1972
—— The Gentle Tamers: Women of the Old West. New York: Bantam Books, 1974
—— Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow – Railroads in the West. New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1977
—— Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: Indian History of the American West. London: Arena Books, 1987 (reprint)
Brown, Richard Maxwell, No Duty To Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society. New York, 1991
Burdick, Usher L., Marquis de Mores at War in the Bad Lands. Fargo, ND, 1929
Burns, Walter Noble, The Saga of Billy the Kid. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1926
Canton, Frank M., Frontier Trails: The Autobiography of Frank M. Canton (edited by E. E. Dale), Boston: Houghton, 1930
Capps, Benjamin, The Great Chiefs. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1975
Carrington, Frances C., My Army Life. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1911
Casey, Robert J., Pioneer Railroad. New York: Whittlesey House, 1948
Clancy, Foghorn, My Fifty Years in Rodeo. San Antonio: Naylor Co., 1952
Clay, John, My Life on the Range. Chicago: privately printed, 1924
Cody, William F., Buffalo Bill’s Own Story of His Life and Deeds. Chicago: Homewood Press, 1917
Connell, Evan S., Son of the Morning Star. New York: Harper, 1984
Cook, James H., Fifty Years on the Old Frontier. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923
Corey, Elizabeth, Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909–1919 (ed. Philip L. Gerber). Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990
Cronon, William, “Revisiting the Vanishing Frontier: The Legacy of Frederick Jackson Turner,” Western Historical Quarterly 18:2 (April, 1987)
Cruse, Thomas, Apache Days and After. Caldwell, ID, 1941
Cunningham, Eugene, Triggernometry: A Gallery of Gunfighters. New York: Press of the Pioneers, 1934
Curtis, Natalie, The Indians Book. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1907
Custer, George A., Wild Life on the Plains and Horrors of Indian Warfare. St Louis, 1891
Dale, Edward Everett, The Range Cattle Industry. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1930
—— Cow Country. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1942
Dalton, Emmett and Jack Jungmeyer, When the Daltons Rode. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1931
Davis, Britton, The Truth About Geronimo. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929
De Voto, Bernard, Across the Wide Missouri. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947
—— Course of Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952 Debo, Angie, A Hi
story of the Indians of the United States. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970
—— Geronimo. London: Pimlico, 1993 (reprint)
Dick, Everett, Vanguards of the Frontier. New York: Appleton-Century, 1941
—— The Sod House Frontier. New York: Johnsen, 1954
—— Tales of the Frontier: From Lewis and Clark to the Last Roundup. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964
Dimsdale, Thomas J., The Vigilantes of Montana. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953
Dinsmore, Wayne, The Horses of the Americas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978
Dobie, J. Frank, On the Open Range. Dallas: Southwest Press, 1931
—— The Longhorns. Boston: Little, Brown, 1941
Drago, Henry Sinclair, Great American Cattle Trails: The Story of the Old Cowpaths of the East and the Longhorn Highways of the Plains. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1965
Duffus, R. L., The Santa Fe Trail. New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1930
Durham, Philip and Everett L. Jones, The Negro Cowboys. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965
Duval, John C., Adventures of Big Foot Wallace. Macon, GA: J. W. Burke & Co., 1885
Dykstra, Robert R., The Cattle Towns. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968
Edwards, J. B., Early Days in Abilene. Abilene, 1938
Elman, Robert, Badmen of the West. Secaucus, NJ: Ridge Press, Inc., 1974
Faulk, Odie B., Land of Many Frontiers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986
Fee, Chester A., Chief Joseph, the Biography of a Great Indian. New York, 1936
Forrest, Earle R., Arizona’s Dark and Bloody Ground. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers Ltd., 1952
Frazier, Ian, Great Plains. New York: Penguin (US), 1989
Frewen, Moreton, Melton Mowbray and Other Memories. London: Jenkins, 1924
Fulton, Maurice, Lincoln Country War. University of Arizona, 1968
Gard, Wayne, Frontier Justice. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949
—— The Chisholm Trail. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954
Gardiner, Dorothy, West of the River. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1963
Gardner, Charles M., The Grange: Friend of the Farmer. Washington, DC: National Grange, 1949
Garrett, Pat F., The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. Santa Fe: New Mexican Printing and Publishing Co., 1882
Goetzmann, William H., Exploration and Empire: The Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the American West. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1966
Graham, William A., The Story of the Little Big Horn. Harrisburg, PA, 1941
Greeley, Horace, An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in 1859. New York: Saxton, Barker & Co., 1960
Grinell, George B., The Fighting Cheyennes. New York, 1915
Hagedorn, Herman, Roosevelt in the Bad Lands. Boston: Houghton, 1921
Haley, J. Evetts, Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman. Boston: Houghton, 1936
Hampsten, Elizabeth, Read This Only to Yourself: The Private Writings of Midwestern Women, 1880–1910. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982
Hardin, John Wesley, The Life of John Wesley Hardin – Written by Himself. Seguin, TX: Smith & Moore, 1896
Harris, Frank, My Reminiscences as a Cowboy. New York: Boni, 1930
Hassrick, Royal B., Cowboys: The Real Story of Cowboys and Cattlemen. London: Octopus Books Ltd., 1974
—— The Colourful Story of the American West. London: Octopus Books, 1975
Havighurst, Walter, Annie Oakley of the Wild West. London: Robert Hale Ltd., 1955
Hawgood, John A., The American West. London, 1967
Hebard, Grace R. and Earl A. Brininstool, The Bozeman Trail. Cleveland, 1922
Hendricks, George D., The Bad Man of the West. San Antonio: The Naylor Company, 1942
Hiesinger, Ulrich W., Indian Lives: A Photographic Record from the Civil War to Wounded Knee. Munich/New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994
Hill, Tom and Richard W. Hill, Sr, Creation’s Journey. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994
Hine, Robert V., The American West. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973
Holliday, J. S., The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981
Hollon, W. Eugene, Frontier Violence: Another Look. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974
Horan, James D., Women of the West. New York: Bonanza Books, 1952
—— and Paul Sann, Pictorial History of the Wild West. London: Spring Books, 1961
Hough, Emerson, The Story of the Cowboy. Gregg, 1970
—— The Story of the Outlaw. New York: Outing Publishing Co., 1907
Howard, Helen A., Saga of Chief Joseph. Caldwell, ID: The Caxton Printers, 1965
Howard, Robert West, The Great Iron Trail. New York: Putnams, 1962
Hunter, J. Marvin, Trail Drivers of Texas. Argosy-Antiquarian Ltd., 1963 (reprint)
—— and Noah H. Rose, The Album of Gunfighters. Bandera, TX, 1951
Hutton, Paul Andrew (ed.), The Custer Reader. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992
Ise, John, Sod and Stubble. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967 (reprint)
James, Will, Lone Cowboy. New York: Scribners, 1930
—— Cow Country. New York: Scribners, 1931
Jeffrey, Julie Roy, Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–1880. New York: Hill and Wang, 1979
Jennewein, J. Leonard, Calamity Jane of the Western Trails. Huron, SD: Dakota Books, 1953
Jensen, Joan M., With These Hands: Women Working on the Land. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981
Jensen, Richard E., R. Eli Paul and John E. Carter, Eyewitness at Wounded Knee. London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991
Jordan, Teresa, Cowgirls. Lincoln: Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, 1992
Josephy, Alvin M., The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest. London: University of Nebraska Press, 1980
Katz, William Loren, The Black West. Seattle: Open Hand Publishing, 1992
Kelly, Fanny, My Captivity among the Sioux Indians. The Citadel Press, 1973
Kesey, Ken, Last Go Round. London: Black Swan, 1995
Krakel, Dean F., The Saga of Tom Horn. Laramie: Powder River Publishers, 1954
Lake, Stuart N., Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal. Boston: Houghton, 1931
Lamar, Howard R. (ed.), The Reader’s Encyclopedia of the American West. New York: Crowell, 1977
Lavender, David, The American Heritage History of the Old West, 1965
Leckie, William H., The Buffalo Soldiers. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967
Lewis, Jon E., The Mammoth Book of the Western. London: Robinson, 1991
Limerick, Patricia Nelson, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987
Lomax, John A. and Alan Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. New York: Macmillan, 1938
Love, Nat, Life and Adventures. New York: Arno Press, 1968 (reprint)
McCoy, Joseph G., Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade (ed. Ralph P. Bieber). Glendale, CA: A. H. Clark, 1940
McGrath, Roger D., Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984
McHugh, Tom, The Time of the Buffalo. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972
McLaughlin, James, My Friend The Indian. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books, 1989 (reprint)
McLoughlin, Dennis, Wild and Woolly: An Encyclopedia of the Old West. New York: Doubleday, 1975
Mails, Thomas E., Mystic Warriors of the Plains. New York: Doubleday, 1972
Marks, Paula Mitchell, And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight. New York, 1989
Marshall, James, Santa Fe: The Railroad that Built an Empire. New York: Random House, 1945
May, Robin, The Story of the Wild West. London: Hamlyn, 1978
Mayer, Lynne Rhodes and Kenneth E. Vose, Makin’ Tracks. New York: Praeger, 1975
Meeker, Ezra, Ventures and Ad
ventures of Ezra Meeker. Seattle: Rainier Publishing Co., 1908
Mercer, Asa Shinn, The Banditti of the Plains, or the Cattlemen’s Invasion of Wyoming. San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1935
Miles, Nelson A., Personal Recollections and Observations. Chicago: Werber, 1896
Miller, Nyle H. and Joseph W. Snell, Why the West Was Wild. Topeka, 1963
Mooney, James, The Ghost Dance-Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. Chicago, 1965
Morgan, Dale, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merill, 1953
—— (ed.), Overland in 1846. Georgetown, CA: Talisman Press, 1963
Murray, Keith A., The Modocs and Their War. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959
Myers, John Myers, Bravos of the West. Lincoln: Bison Books, 1995 (reprint)
Myres, Sarah L., Westering Women and the Frontier Experience, 1800–1915. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1982
Niehardt, John G., Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979
O’Connor, Richard, Bat Masterson. London: Alvin Redman Ltd., 1958
O’Neal, Bill, Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979
Parrish, Randall, The Great Plains. Chicago: McClurg, 1907
Payne, Doris Palmer, Captain Jack, Modoc Renegade. Portland, OR, 1938
Petersen, Karen Daniels, Plains Indian Art from Fort Marion. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971
Poe, John W., The Death of Billy the Kid. Boston: Houghton, 1933
Prassel, Frank R., The Western Peace Officer: A Legacy of Law and Order. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972
Raine, William Macleod, Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws. New York: Doubleday, 1929
Rascoe, Burton, Belle Starr. New York: Random House, 1941
Rawling, Gerald, The Pathfinders. New York: Macmillan, 1964
Ray, Clarence E., The Dalton Brothers. Chicago: Regan. Publishing Brothers, n.d.
Reader’s Digest, Story of the Great American West. New York: The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1977
