Fight of the Week: The Battle of Lincoln

The date: July 15^th through 19^th, 1878. The place: Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory. The men: The Lincoln County Regulators versus the Murphy-Dolan Faction and the United States Army. The fight: The Battle of Lincoln, the largest confrontation in the range war known as the Lincoln County War, which led to the fame of Billy the Kid.

Billy the Kid, one of the Lincoln County Regulators

The four day fight had its roots in the Lincoln County war, an ongoing conflict between an established store owner and his partner, Lawrence Murphy & James Dolan, and John Tunstall & Alexander McSween, newcomers who owned a competing store, over who controlled the sale of dry goods in Lincoln County, New Mexico. Murphy and Dolan had a monopoly on dry goods in the county, and were reluctant to give up any business to tenderfoots. Tunstall and McSween had the backing of cattleman John Chisum. Both sides gathered forces including lawmen and outlaws alike. The Murphy-Dolan faction had the support of the local Sheriff and the Jesse Evans Gang. Tunstall-McSween hired their own group, known as the Lincoln County Regulators.

The climax of the war was the Battle of Lincoln. On the 15^th of July, McSween gathered the Regulators in town. Nearby, the members of the Murphy-Dolan faction’s forces gathered and began riding toward the town in force. When the Regulators received word of this, they elected to remain in town instead of fleeing. The Murphy-Dolan faction rode in from the west, surrounding the McSween house, which housed the Regulators as well as the new school teacher and the Presbyterian minister and his family.

Lincoln, New Mexico, as it looked at the time

The Murphy Dolan gang believed they had taken the Regulators by surprise, but this was not the case. When they began firing, they were met with sporadic gunfire from the Regulators for most of the day, wounding five of the Murphy-Dolan posse. At half past four in the afternoon a United States Cavalry detachment from nearby Fort Stanton, under the command of Lt. George Smith, arrived and placed themselves between the two factions, effectively stopping the gunplay.

United States Cavalry

Shooting continued between the two groups until July 18^th. By this time Colonel Nathan Dudley had arrived from Ft. Stanton and had taken command. One of his soldiers was wounded, and he gave the order for the Army to stop the conflict, which would ultimately assist the Murphy-Dolan faction. On the 19^th, the Murphy-Dolan posse set fire to the house.

Dazed by the smoke, McSween staggered from the house and tried to surrender, but was shot and killed, nine shots passing through his body. The other Regulators, with the exception of two who had been killed in the four days of fighting, were able to flee unharmed. For their trouble, the Murphy-Dolan faction suffered several wounded and two killed.

After the battle, and with McSween, one of the business partners involved in the feud, dead, the Regulators were disbanded, effectively ending the conflict. Also, President Rutherford Hayes dismissed the governor of New Mexico and replaced him with Lew Wallace, a Civil War general and author of Ben Hur. For most of the Regulators, Wallace let them go free, while for others, such as Billy the Kid, he issued warrants. With the end of the Battle of Lincoln also came the end of the Lincoln County War, a conflict which had led to twenty-two men dead over who controlled a county’s dry goods stores.

Fight of the Week: The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight

The date: April 14^th, 1881. The place: El Paso Street, El Paso, Texas. The man: Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire, a noted gunfighter that had been a lawman all of three days. The fight: a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it exchange of gunfire that left four men dead in less time than it took to read this sentence.

Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire

The gun battle began as fallout from a trial earlier in the day on the 14^th. Over seventy heavily armed Mexican had rode into town looking for two missing vaqueros, and the entire band was then led to the ranch of a local cattleman and suspected rustler named Johnny Hale by the El Paso County Constable, Gus Krempkau. The bodies of the two dead vaqueros were found on Hale’s ranch, and the entire party, including Hale, returned to El Paso for the court to hold an inquiry as to the men’s deaths.

The verdict was that the two men had died looking for rustled cattle, and were killed by two of Hale’s ranch hands who feared the vaqueros would return with more men to recover the stolen herd. The two ranch hands were immediately arrested. Meanwhile, a large crowd had gathered in El Paso, including Hale and his friend, the former City Marshal George Campbell. Campbell was concerned that the large number of heavily armed Mexicans in the city would cause trouble, seeking retribution for their dead comrades. The arrests made, the trial ended and the crowd ordered to disperse. The Mexicans rode back to Mexico with the bodies.

El Paso, Texas, c.1880

The current City Marshal, Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire, had only been a lawman for three days. He had been in the courtroom throughout the day, and when the inquiry was complete he went across the street to eat dinner. Krempkau went to the saloon next door to get his pistol and rifle. While there, he was confronted by Campbell and Hale. Campbell didn’t like some of Krempkau’s statements made during the trial (Krempkau had been acting as an interpreter for the Mexicans) and Hale, who was already heavily drunk, wasn’t happy that he had been brought into the matter.

Hale shot first. Drawing one Campbell’s two pistols, he yelled, probably in a drunken slur, “George, I’ve got you covered!” and shot Krempkau. Krempkau slumped backwards against a doorframe and drew his own pistol.

Next door in the Globe Restaurant, Marshal Stoudenmire heard the shot and immediately headed toward the door, drawing his pistols. Now, I got conflicting information when it came to what kind of pistols Stoudenmire favored, but in all likelihood it was a pair of .44 caliber Smith and Wesson Model 3’s: even at the time he was noted for carrying two pistols, instead of the regular one, and was equally accurate with both of them.

A pair of S & W Model 3 Revolvers

Stoudenmire ran out into the street and fired wildly, and instead of hitting anyone involved he nailed Ochoa, an innocent, college, college educated Mexican man who had been diving for cover, killing him instantly. Hearing the shot, Hale jumped for cover behind an adobe pillar, but Stoudenmire then drilled him right between the eyes with his off hand when Hale drunkenly poked his head out from behind cover.

Campbell jumped from cover with his pistol drawn, and when he saw Hale collapse he yelled to Stoudenmire that it wasn’t his fight. Krempkau shot him twice instead, thinking he was the one who had initially shot him. Krempaku’s first shot hit Campbell in the wrist, causing him to drop his gun, and the second hit Campbell in the foot. Krempkau then lost consciousness. Campbell scooped up his gun, but before he could get a shot off Stoudenmire fired, hitting Campbell in the stomach. Stoudenmire slowly walked toward the dying Campbell, and the two men glared at each other. Campbell’s dying words: “You big son of a b****! You murdered me!”

Both Krempkau and Campbell died within minutes of being shot. The gunfight had not lasted for more than about five seconds.

Three days after the fight, James Manning, who had been a friend of Hale and Campbell, hired a former deputy to assassinate Stoudenmire. The drunken deputy tried to bushwhack Stoudenmire by hiding behind a stack of bricks, but his wobbly legs caused him to fall, making him pull both triggers of his side-by-side shotgun and narrowly missing Stoudenmire with the buckshot. Stoudenmire whipped out his guns and fired eight shots, blowing off his testicles. The deputy quickly bled to death. This started a feud between Stoudenmire and Manning, which would ultimately lead to Stoudenmire’s death over a year later.

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For a different account, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Dead_in_Five_Seconds_Gunfight



Fight of the Week: Captain Jonathan R. Davis vs. 14 Bushwhackers

 The date: December 19, 1854. The place: The Sierra Nevada Mountains, near Coloma, California. The man: Captain Jonathan R. Davis, a Southern prospector and gun/knife fighter. The fight: an ambush gone wrong for a fourteen man bandit gang in the middle of a crime spree, who realized at the last minute that they had messed with the wrong South Carolinian.

Captain Jonathan Davis

On December 19^th, 1854, Captain Davis and his two friends, James McDonald and Dr. Bolivar Sparks, were doing some prospecting in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Following an old miner’s trail, the three men entered a small canyon with brush and rocks on both sides. Unbeknownst to them, however, a crew of fourteen bushwhackers was hiding in the brush hear the mouth of the canyon. To put how many men this is into perspective, here’s a picture of fourteen hard-as-nails old western lawmen.

The guys in this picture don’t even have guns. Now imagine the same number of men armed to the teeth with pistols, rifles and knives, lying in ambush, and filled with malicious intent to kill and rob any unwary travelers that may come their way. They had already robbed and/or killed ten men in the past couple of weeks using this tactic. On this day, the unfortunate travelers were to be Captain Davis and his two friends.

As the three men approached the top of the gully, the bushwhackers sprung their trap, leaping from the brush and opening fire. McDonald never knew what hit him, dying in the first volley. Dr. Sparks fared a bit better; he was able to pull his pistol and get off two shots before being hit and falling to the ground. With one friend dead and the other gravely injured, Captain Jonathan R. Davis stood alone in the hail of gunfire. Unperturbed, he did what any good Southern boy living in the Old West would do when faced with such a situation; he bit off a wad of chewing tobacco, pulled his pistols and began to return fire.

Though it’s not implicitly stated what kind of heat Davis was packing (such minutiae are unfortunately lost to the mists of time and legend), I like to imagine that the good Captain was handling a pair of these bad boys:

This is the Walker Colt, according to the description that came with the above picture when I found it to be “the most powerful handgun until the introduction of the .357 Magnum.” To give you an idea as to the size of this thing, the barrel is 9 inches long and the whole thing weighs four and half pounds. The reason I like to think he’s toting a matching pair these around is because for what he’s about to do with them, having Davis carrying a pair of the most powerful handguns in the world at the time just makes things better.

Anyways, with a six-gun in each hand, Davis began to return the bandit’s fire, and with downright deadly results. With the outlaws’ bullets passing harmlessly through his hat and clothing, Davis unloaded both pistols on the bandits, dropping seven of the cut-throats while managing to suffer only two slight flesh wounds from their fusillade. That’s seven dead men hit with twelve shots; for those baseball fans out there, that’s a .583 batting average. Which is pretty good.

Their own pistols empty, four of the bandits, including their leader, rushed in to finish Davis off the old fashioned way: with a knife fight. Three of the men pulled out knives while the leader himself drew a cavalry saber.

U.S. Model 1840 Cavalry Saber

Captain Davis was ready for the onslaught. He holstered his still-smoking pistols, spat out a stream of tobacco juice, and went to his belt to draw his own weapon, a pretty sweet Bowie knife with a twelve inch blade.

A pretty sweet Bowie knife

As we learned last week from the Sandbar Fight, a man armed with a Bowie knife that knows how to use it is a deadly man indeed. Captain Davis was no exception. Without blinking an eye, he threw himself at the gang’s leader with the saber, swinging his knife with skill and efficiency. Davis slashed at the leader, the razor sharp blade slicing off the bandit’s nose and finger, causing him to drop his sword. Davis stabbed him for good measure, and then went after the other three. They fell just as easily, some of them having been weakened during earlier robberies.

When the dust settled, Captain Davis was left alone standing over the four sliced up bodies. Having just seen eleven of their comrades either shot or stabbed in front of them in a span of about two minutes, the remaining bushwhackers did the smartest thing they had done all day and ran away. Taking no notice of his own wounds (which were pretty much just scratches), Captain Davis ripped up his own shirt to start banging up Dr. Sparks. While he was doing this, he noticed movement from the trail and instinctively dove for the dead McDonald’s still loaded revolver, expecting more enemies.

Luckily for the three miners that had witnessed the entire fight from an adjacent hilltop and were now coming to help Captain Davis, the good Captain didn’t shoot them outright. They started going through the bodies of the eleven dead men and found nearly $500 in gold and silver coins, some gold dust and some fancy pocket watches, which they gave to Davis. Davis then thanked them, picked up Dr. Sparks, and carried him back down the mountain to his house, where Sparks would die of his wounds a few days later. Being the selfless type, Davis gave the gang’s loot to Dr. Sparks’ family.

At the time, Davis and his exploits became famous all across the country, even inspiring an epic ballad. Even though he had witnesses, several men challenged Davis, saying that what he had done was impossible. Captain Davis challenged each of these men by saying he would personally lead them to the eleven shallow graves containing the bushwhackers’ bodies. No one took him up on this, and Davis slipped from legend into anonymity.

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For a straight version of the story, see

http://www.truewestmagazine.com/jcontent/history/history/classic-gunfights/3848-the-gang-slayer

For a hilariously embellished (but R rated) account of Captain Davis’ fight, see

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/captaindavis.html

For a contemporary epic ballad concerning the fight, see

http://www.elfinspell.com/SparrowgrassPapersBallad.html

Halfway There!

My second clothing order came in today! Yay!

Within the package lay my shirt and suspenders (for my trousers that are still in the postal system, apparently). I will do a full review of the items later this evening, but it will suffice for now to say that Blockade Runner Sutlery delivered the goods, and pretty timely too; I'll have them to take home over Christmas!

Until next time...

Some Friday Thoughts...

My mother sent this to me today, and I thought it was pretty good so I'm sharing it here.

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Although the Code of the West was unwritten, every cowboy knew what it was. The Ten Principles are Jim Owen's distillation of the timeless, universal cowboy values that are still relevant to our lives today. They are at the heart of cowboy ethics and of Jim's book, Cowboy Ethics: What Wall Street Can Learn from the Code of the West.

1 Live each day with courage
2 Take pride in your work
3 Always finish what you start
4 Do what has to be done
5 Be tough, but fair
6 When you make a promise, keep it
7 Ride for the brand
8 Talk less and say more
9 Remember that some things aren't for sale
10 Know where to draw the line

Until next time...

The Continuing Tale of the Trousers

I shipped the ill-fitting pants back today. According to the post office, they should get there Thursday, and if they are as fast with their return shipping as they were the first time then I should have them before I leave for Christmas break. Yay!

Just a quick shoutout to the folks at River Junction Trade Company, who have been quite helpful so far in the returns process. I'll discuss them further when I do my product review of my pants.

Until next time...

Fight of the Week: The Sandbar Fight

The date: September 19, 1827. The place: a sandbar in the middle of the Mississippi River, near the town of Natchez, Mississippi. The man: legendary soldier, frontiersman, Texas patriot and knife fighter Colonel James “Jim” Bowie. The fight: an after-duel brawl contemporarily known as the “Great Sandbar Duel,” but more commonly known as the Sandbar Fight. While not “western” per se, this scrape marked the prominence of Jim Bowie, now famous as a frontiersman, patriot and soldier who helped win Texas from Mexico, in American folklore.

Jim Bowie

On September 19^th, 1827, Bowie was one of over a dozen men who went to watch a pistol duel between Samuel Wells III and Dr. Thomas Maddox. At the time, a duel was fought between two gentlemen in order to settle a disagreement, and such duels were governed by complex codes of conduct. As it turned out, the duel on this day was bloodless, each party firing two shots and settling the dispute with a handshake.



Kind of like this, but with less effectiveness.

With the duel over and all parties satisfied, the brawl began. One of the spectators, General Samuel Cuny, called out Colonel Robert Crain. Crain’s first shot missed Cuny but nailed Bowie in the hip; the following volleys were more effective, Crain killing Cuny and Cuny wounding Crain in the arm.

Despite the wound in his hip and dodging the gunfire, Bowie charged at Crain, who hit Bowie so hard over the head with his pistol that the gun broke, causing Bowie to fall to the sand on his knees. Now remember what pistols were like during these times: large, heavy and with full wooden stocks.

U.S. M1819 Flintlock Pistol

I don’t care who you are, if you get hit in the head hard enough to break one of these bad boys you’ve taken quite a lick. In a classic case of “kick ‘em while they’re down,” Major Norris Wright, who had a feud with Bowie, approached Jim and fired his own pistol, missing. Wright then pulled out his sword cane and proceeded to stab Bowie in the chest with it.

Imagine this thing sticking out of your sternum…

When this happened, Jim pulled out his brand new toy, a large hunting knife with a 9 inch blade that would one day bear his name. The Bowie knife was actually designed by Jim’s brother Rezin; however, it would be Jim’s use of the weapon at the Sandbar Fight that would forever associate the man with the knife.

Bowie Knife

While Wright was busy tugging at the sword which had embedded itself in Bowie’s chest, Bowie reached up and stabbed Wright in the gut with his knife killing him instantly. After the dead Wright collapsed at his feet, and with the handle of Wright’s sword cane wobbling in the air two feet in front of him, Bowie, for his trouble, was shot and stabbed again by some of the other spectators. Rising to his feet, Bowie pulled the sword from his chest and turned to face his new attackers, the brothers Alfred and Carey Blanchard.

The brothers fired their pistols at Bowie, one shot hitting him in the arm. In retaliation, Bowie spun around and lashed out with his knife, cutting off a piece of Alfred’s arm. Carey fired another pistol, but missed. The brothers then decided to run, but not before Carey was shot by one of Bowie’s few allies Major George McWhorter (is it just me or is there a disproportionate number of high ranking officers present at a no-holds-barred fight to the death?).

The fight had lasted more than ten minutes. In that time two men lay dead and another four were wounded, including Bowie. As Crain helped carry Bowie away, Bowie is said to have remarked, “Col. Crane [sic], I do not think, under the circumstances, you ought to have shot me." After the fight, it was agreed that Bowie had not attacked first and determined that the reason everyone had turned to attack Bowie was because "they considered him the most dangerous man among their opposition."

At the time, newspapers circulated the story of the battle around the country, propelling Bowie and his famous knife into legend. Despite suffering grievous wounds, fate had other plans for Bowie, who would be killed less than ten years later defending the Alamo.

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For the less embellished account upon which this telling is based, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbar_Fight

Coming Soon to Chuck's Cowboy Shooting Blog...

In an effort to post with greater frequency in the times where not much is going on, I've decided to start a weekly column, if you will. So, starting tomorrow, Mondays will feature Chuck's "Fight of the Week."

No, this will not be me testing my fighting prowess every Monday versus an opponent, but rather a little snippet of history that will highlight some of the best Old West fights that I know of. I am a military history major, after all.

So sports fans, stay tuned for the pilot instalment of "Fight of the Week" tomorrow, featuring the famed Jim Bowie in the Sandbar Fight.

Until next time...

The Good News and the Bad News

Happy December!

So, some good and bad news today. The good news: I recieved my pants for my costume today! The bad news: I accidentally ordered a size too small!

I placed the order on the 29th, and they arrived here today. That's super fast shipping, and kudos go to River Jucntion Trade Co. for that. It just sucks that I clicked the size smaller than I needed, but I've emailed them and hopefully I'll get them exchanged soon. If their service is as good as their shipping, I'll be in good hands.

Until next time.