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Saddles East: Horseback Over the Old Oregon Trail
By Chaplain John W. Beard. 2017
Saddles East: Horseback Over the Old Oregon Trail, a book by the WWI ‘fighting chaplain,’ John W. Beard, was first…
published in 1949. It is an informal narrative of a horseback ride in modern times over the famous covered-wagon route of the pioneers. For countless ages the Red Man knew this trail. In the fullness of time the trapper, the mountain man, the fur trader found it and lived their life among its reaches. The seeker after gold hastened over it. The priest with the cross and the missionary with his Bible made it beautiful with their message of life and peace. The hardy pioneer and he eager emigrant traveled it into the land of their dreams. The pony express rider flashed his phantom; the Overland Stage rumbled by. The soldier built his forts. Who knows even a little of the story of the old trail and does not wish to know it all? Who has ever traveled over any part of the old trail and does not long to travel over all of it, even to its very end? Who has ever heard the story of wagons west, who does not want to take Saddles East and ride into the sunrise, as the pioneers rode into the sunset?They Die But Once: The Story of a Tejano
By James B. O’Neil. 2017
Here is an utterly new departure in biography of the Old West. Writing in the hangered, hard-boiled style made famous…
by Hemingway and O’Hara, James B. O’Neil has succeeded in transferring the color and idiom of the wild and roaring days of the West to the printed page. They Die But Once is authentic biography—the life story of Jeff Ake, last of the Western gunfighters and vaqueros—yet because of the facility with which the author has translated the spirit of the period into language attuned to the twentieth century, the story moves with all the breathtaking speed of a current gangster thriller. O’Neil discards all the saccharine sentimentality that has clouded the real West of the seventies and presents Jeff Ake’s story in the sharp, biting understatement of contemporary prose.With the reek of a Texan prison camp in his nostrils, Jeff Ake rode, rampant unreconstruction in his heart, away from the looted Federal Treasury in Austin, with three hundred of Price’s army, into Mexico, where he joined Porfirio Diaz’s bodyguard. Back he came, with horse-trappings of human Comanche-hide and six-guns blazing, to enter the bloody range wars. Hell-bent-for-leather, he rode up and down the range, while pistols barked their staccato tale of sudden death.In They Die But Once, you will find the reason why Pat Barrett died; the sad tale of the bullet of Billy the Kid; the true cause of John Wesley Hardin’s capture. Bill Longley, Jim Gillett, John Ringo, Kit Carson, Jesse and Frank James, General Custer, Gene Rhodes and Roy Bean (“The Law West of the Pecos”) live and fight and love and die in the thrill-studded pages of They Die But Once. You who have read and not quite believed Clarence Mulford and William Patterson White, hear and know: What they told is only what they dared tell, Jeff Ake tells even more—and can prove a lot of it!Why the North Star Stands Still, and other Indian Legends
By William R. Palmer. 2017
No one knows how old the charming legends in this unusual book really are. By word of mouth they have…
been handed down from generation to generation among the Pahute Indians, one of the most ancient and primitive tribes on this continent, who settled centuries ago in what is now the state of Utah.In the main, the legends tell of the origin of all living things—which to the Indian includes the trees, the flowers and grass, the wind, the water, the moving clouds that suddenly darken into storm over the mountains, as well as man and the animals of this earth. They also tell why living things behave as they do.Here, for example, is the Pahute version of why the sun rises cautiously, why the coyote looks up when he howls, how the beaver lost the hair on his tail, how the flowers got their colors, and of many more interesting phenomena. In language of great beauty and simplicity the stories explain how the Pahute gods, Tobats and his younger brother Shinob, created the earth and ruled all its inhabitants.The author, William R. Palmer, who was taken into the tribe as a token of gratitude for his work in securing better living conditions for the dwindling number of Pahutes in Utah today, listened to the legends as they are still related around Pahute campfires. At last (and only after his Indian brothers were certain he would not misinterpret them) he obtained their permission to translate the stories into English and so to make a book of them.Here then is a rare collection in which young and old alike are sure to find hours of enjoyment. This book makes a significant contribution to that all-too-scant segment of our literature—the folk tales of the first Americans.For this and other historical contributions Dr. Palmer was given the highest recognition of an honorary doctorate degree by Utah State University.California Indian Folklore
By Frank F. Latta. 2017
California Indian Folklore, which was first published in 1936, is a fascinating book, well written, and full of interesting first…
hand lore of California’s Yokuts Indians. It is because Frank Latta was able to interview the last of the old tribal leaders that this book exists. Latta’s expertise in gaining information from the Yokuts has enabled us to preserve, in writing, some of their heritage.California Indian Folklore is a valuable resource on the life of the Yokuts of the San Joaquin Valley. The Yokuts, overall, were a happy people who made admirable use of the natural resources that surrounded them. It would make excellent first person quotes for exhibits or school study, even at the elementary level. The reader who has an interest in early California native ways will enjoy this historic volume.Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier
By J. Evetts Haley. 2017
This book, which was first published in 1952, first began as a history of San Angelo and the adjacent region…
drained by the Conchos rivers. It grew, in writing, into a history of West Texas. It embodies author J. Evetts Haley’s unequaled knowledge of the country from the Rio Grande to the Canadian, from San Antonio and Austin to the border of New Mexico.It could have been written only by a man familiar by personal acquaintance with the location of every water hole and spring, the exploration of every trail from Coronado’s to the Overland Mail, the great cattle drives of the seventies and eighties, the establishment of every military post, and the shifting Indian policies of the United States from the annexation of Texas to the final retirement of the Comanches to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Haley has an intimate knowledge of hundreds of salty characters who played their picturesque roles in transforming the land from nature to civilization.Haley possesses all this equipment—gained from intensive study, personal experience, and thoughtful reflection—for writing a vivid story. Five previous books and unnumbered articles on phases of the region contribute to the facility with which he tells this stirring tale and account of its comprehensiveness. It is no less than a history of West Texas in its heroic age.Alder Gulch
By Ernest Haycox. 2017
BLAZIN’ JUSTICEVirginia City, Montana. Gold fever struck hard in 1863, with miners pannin’ for nuggets up and down the length…
of nearby Alder Gulch. But a gang of guntoughs was ridin’ them roughshod. With the law lookin’ the other way, the sidewinders dealt out hot lead for a man shippin’ his poke or even carryin’ gold dust for his grubstake.Jeff Pierce had been on the hard dodge since Portland, until he staked his claim at Alder Gulch. As a favor, he carried another miner’s poke through the forty miles of danger to Bannack, only to find that the scummy gunhawks had filled the old-timer with buckshot. Now the varmints had Pierce as a marked man. The gang was fixin’ for a showdown, but they’d be a mite less cocky if they knew the charge he was up for—murder!“Ernest Haycox is a master and ALDER GULCH is one of his best.”—Dallas Times HeraldAnnie Oakley: Woman at Arms, A Biography
By Courtney Riley Cooper. 2017
Not long ago, Annie Oakley died, and bequeathed to the famous comedian, Fred Stone, her diaries and personal papers. Adding…
to personal knowledge, Courtney Ryley Cooper, well-known author and friend of Buffalo Bill, has written a splendid biography.It is a true American epic—the story of a pioneer, who as a little girl was forced to forage with her gun in order that her family might not starve, and who eventually became, with Buffalo Bill, internationally famous as a trick marksman, the idol of youth and the darling of royalty.The Consummate Canadian: A Biography of Samuel Weir Q.C.
By Mary Willan Mason. 1999
Samuel Edward Weir Q.C. (1898-1981), a man both loved and reviled with scorn, was born in London, Ontario. Descended from…
pioneer stock, with roots in both Ireland and Germany, Samuel Weir possessed incisive wit, exceptional intelligence and a passionate zest for any subject that caught his eye. Over a period of sixty years he built an extraordinary collection of approximately one thousand works of outstanding art and sculpture. This extensively researched biography of a talented yet quixotic lawyer who contributed much to Canada’s heritage begins in the early 19th century and covers well over a hundred years of our nation’s growth, until his death at his home, River Brink, in Queenston, Ontario. Today, River Brink is the gallery in which The Weir Collection is exhibited and housed.Rough and Tumble: An Autobiography of a West Texas Judge
By William Paul Moss. 2017
This is the autobiography of West Texas judge William Paul Moss, which was first published in 1954, and predominantly explores…
his youthful adventures on his ranches in Texas and New Mexico, where he loved to raise cattle and hunt. Judge Moss describes his life as having consisted of three parts: cattle, law, and oil. In describing his job as a judge, he portrays himself as a conscientious lawyer and judge and proclaims his love for his adopted city and state, observing that “the judge passes upon all questions of law, subject to the right of appeal to the appellate courts.” His jurisdiction included both civil and criminal matters. Though not required by law he would appoint lawyers for those who could not afford them. Moss believed that a judge should try “to make his courthouse into a temple of justice” and he believed this involved keeping his mind “on the spirit of the law rather than its technicalities.” He observed: “A country judge is, in many respects, like a country lawyer. He has to know a little bit about everything. There are times when he may not even know much about the law.”The Bar-20 Three
By Clarence E. Mulford. 2017
A HARD-RIDING, QUICK-SHOOTING ADVENTURE, FEATURING HOPALONG CASSIDYHopalong Cassidy, Red Connors and Johnny nelson rode across the searing inferno of the…
Staked Plains and challenged Kane—who dominated the country like a colossus.They rode with vengeance in their hearts and with an implacable resolve to wipe Kane and his cohorts out.“Kane,” Johnny said, “you’ve been too big for too long. We’re cutting you down to size—with guns.”Johnny Nelson, Hopalong Cassidy’s young protégé, has finally got hitched, bought into a ranch, and run into rustlers, bank robbers, and thieves with murder on their mind. It is possible Johnny, Hoppy, and Red Conners, three men from the Bar-20, can bring an end to this reign of terror?“Nevada”: A Romance of the West
By Zane Grey. 2017
THE BLAZING BESTSELLER BY THE GREATEST NAME IN WESTERN FICTIONFrom the deep wild gorges of the sinister Mogollons in the…
north, down to the shimmering wastes of the Painted Desert, the rustlers murdered and robbed—while Arizona seethed dangerously. There was only one man who had the guts, the guns and the driving, urgent reason to buck that crew—and his name was Jim Lacy. Wanted by both sides of the law, Jim Lacy, alias Texas Jack, alias Nevada, wanted only one thing—”Dead or alive, clear my name.” “NEVADA” by Zane GreyCLEAR MY NAME!A Wayward Quest: The Autobiography of Theresa Helburn
By Theresa Helburn. 2017
A WAYWARD QUEST, which was first published in 1960, is the autobiography of a woman who for forty years was…
one of the most important figures in the American theater—and who loved every minute of it. Small, vivacious, imaginative, Theresa Helburn was a wonderfully attractive person who at one time or another knew most of the great talents of the century—from Gertrude Stein and Isadora Duncan (her youthful heroines during a sojourn in Paris) to G. B. Shaw and Eugene O’Neill. Her consuming interest in the theater, her convictions about its past and present and dreams for its future, form the background of her story, against this runs a sparkling stream of stories and anecdotes about people and plays she knew and loved.A Ghost Town on the Yellowstone
By Elliot Paul. 2017
The charm of Elliot Paul’s storytelling is that nowhere does he allow relevancy to cloud the brilliance of his art.…
Mr. Paul seeks to pleasure you. Like a skilful skater on a frozen pond he cuts intricate figures on memory’s gleaming surface. If, here and there, the ice is thin he chances it rather than interrupt the onlooker’s delight. To Mr. Paul, the figure’s the thing.So, in A Ghost Town on the Yellowstone, which was first published in 1948, Mr. Paul reaches back to the year 1907 and to his youthful adventures on a project of the United States Reclamation Service in Montana. With him you start on one of the oddest stagecoach rides in history—a ride in which no matter how the passengers change at various stops their number is always thirteen, a circumstance to make the driver consult his whisky jug more frequently than usual. The hapless coach—jinxed to the whiffletrees, overturns, dumps its passengers into the sagebrush and thus precipitates the founding of the town of Trembles. Thanks to Mr. Paul’s keen observation (vitamin enriched and thoroughly irradiated) you meet the first citizens of Trembles—a saloonkeeper, two Chinese, a scissorbill, and a woman somewhat less ancient than the profession she follows. Thenceforth you participate in some of the most astonishing, humorous and touching events ever to take place in that part of the Wild West. To tell you more would be to cheat you of your full quota of agreeable surprises.Carrington: A Novel of the West
By Michael Straight. 2017
EIGHTY-ONE MEN under the command of Lt.-Col. W. J. Fetterman were ambushed by the Sioux in northern Wyoming on December…
21, 1866. Not one survived to tell their story. Old army records prove that Fetterman, a Civil War hero, was acting in defiance of explicit orders, given by his commanding officer, Col. Henry Carrington. Yet Carrington, the senior officer of the regiment, was held responsible for the disaster. In all our history there have been only two battles comparable to it: the Alamo and Custer’s Last Stand.The events of the Fetterman Massacre provide the framework for Michael Straight’s deeply moving personal story of Carrington the man, whose whole life reaches its climax in the inevitable catastrophe. Harassed by the Sioux, accused of cowardice by his officers, unsupported by his friends and even his own wife, he nonetheless sees clearly what he must do. In essence, Carrington’s tragedy is that of a man whose virtues, in time of stress, become his flaws.Michael Straight captures the very smell of battle in many scenes of Indian fighting, but it is his insight into the lives of the men (and women) of a tormented battalion on a hazardous frontier which makes Carrington a novel to set beside those of A. B. Guthrie and Walter Van Tilburg Clark on the narrow shelf of first-rate novels of the West.A Personal Narrative of Indian Massacres, 1862
By Lavinia Day Eastlick. 2017
This is a fascinating, detailed firsthand eyewitness account of the Sioux Indian massacre at Lake Shetek in Minnesota that took…
place on August 20, 1862 by one of its survivors, Mrs. Lavinia Eastlick.“In presenting this pamphlet to the public, I have given merely a plain, unvarnished statement of all the facts that came under my own observation, during the dreadful massacre of the settlers of Minnesota. Mine only was a single case among hundreds of similar instances. It is only from explicit and minute accounts from the pen of the sufferers themselves, that people living at this distance from the scene of those atrocities can arrive at any just and adequate conception of the fiendishness of the Indian character, or the extremities of pain, terror and distress endured by the victims. It can hardly be decided which were least unfortunate, those who met an immediate death at the hands of the savages, or the survivors who, after enduring tortures worse than death, from hunger, fear, fatigue, and wounds, at last escaped barely with life.”—Mrs. L. EastlickThis book also includes photos, affidavits, and other material that were compiled by Mr. Ross A. Irish, Mrs. Eastlick nephew.Canadian Scholars Bundle: Lucille Teasdale / Robertson Davies / George Grant / Marshall McLuhan
By T. F. Rigelhof, Nicholas Maes, Deborah Cowley, Judith Fitzgerald. 2013
Presenting four titles in the Quest Biography series that profiles prominent people in Canada’s history. In these books we explore…
Canada’s rich academic and philosophical history through the fascinating lives of some of its most influential figures. Profiled are: prescient media guru Marshall McLuhan, physician Lucille Teasdale, political philosopher George Grant, and novelist and literary theorist Robertson Davies. Includes: George Grant, Lucille Teasdale, Marshall McLuhan, and Robertson Davies.Overland with Kit Carson: A Narrative of the Old Spanish Trail in ‘48
By George Douglas Brewerton. 1993
Gold had just been discovered in California at the close of the Mexican War when Kit Carson started east from…
Los Angeles with dispatches. Going with him was Lieutenant George Douglas Brewerton, who describes their journey over the Old Spanish Trail. It was a torturous route across deserts and mountains requiring the kind of expert survival skills that made Kit Carson famous. The scout, who was carrying the news that would begin the rush for gold, went as far as Taos, where he was reunited with his wife. From there Brewerton joined a wagon train that labored over the Santa Fé Trail to Independence, Missouri.Overland with Kit Carson is a colorful and authentic account of encounters with Indians and white adventurers and of the hazards and hardships that accompanied anyone who undertook such a long journey in a sparsely populated country.“Of prime importance to many general readers as well as to historians will be Brewerton’s intimate and concrete pictures of Kit Carson.”—Southwest Review.Cowboy: The Cowboy Lore Of Ross Santee
By Ross Santee. 1981
“I always wanted to be a cow-puncher,” says Shorty Caraway. “As a little kid back on the farm in east…
Texas I couldn’t think of nothin’ else.” Shorty’s father took some persuading, but in the end he staked his fourteen-year-old son to a white pony, a second-hand saddle, and “forty dollars to go with the two I had, an’ he said that ought to run me until I got a job.” What happened from that day until Shorty was taken on as a regular hand is told in the pages of Ross Santee’s Cowboy, first published in 1928.“From beginning to end the reader is made at home in a world of unique standards, customs and preoccupation through the eyes of a boy who absorbs them with quick, keen ardor. He tells his own story without a backward glance toward home, without any curiosity concerning the lives of the millions who live in other worlds than his. By virtue of this contracted point of view one gets a singularly intensive and intimate picture of the cowboy and the things that make up his existence.”—New York Herald Tribune Books“Here is a Wild West narrative that is literature—and it closely verges upon being ‘Treasure Island’ literature. Here the boy is, ‘all boots an’ spurs,’ with dreams in his head and the will to make them materialize.”—Saturday Review of LiteratureA Cowman’s Wife
By Mary Kidder Rak. 2017
A Cowman’s Wife is the true account of the author’s experience as co-owner of Old Camp Rucker Ranch, a 22,000…
acre spread north of Douglas, Arizona that she purchased with her husband in 1919. It chronicles a woman’s view of cattle ranching in Northern Arizona, with all the hardships of the 1920’s and 1930’s, Native Americans, Mexicans, wolves, and horse thieves. She also tells of the pleasures of ranch life: spectacular sunsets, mountain scenery, camaraderie of ranch people, and all-night dances at neighborhood school house.A wonderful escapist read!Firewater and Forked Tongues: A Sioux Chief Interprets American History
By M. I. McCreight. 2017
As a dedicated Native American advocate since the age of 20, author Major Israel McCreight saw the sad plight of…
the Indians in the period following the Custer Fight and the Battle of Wounded Kane.This book, first published in 1947, is the account of the versions of U.S. history according to the old Sioux Chief, FLYING HAWK. Flying Hawk, who was a nephew of Sitting Bull and fought with Crazy Horse at Little Big Horn, dictated his narrative to McCreight, thus making this an account not from the perspective of “the white man”—but as it really happened…A fascinating read!