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Chuckwagon, 1887


Ghost Cowboy is about real tales from the 19th-century American frontier, when the Old West was young. Most of the posts here are actual news items from the 1800s and early 1900s. We'll be adding "new" content every week. Travel with us and sign up for an account, and you'll be able to leave comments and post in our forums. Your trailmasters, Ken in Alabama and Dave in Virginia, don't get to saddle up and vacation out west as often as they'd like, so they started this site. Drop us a note.

frontiersman


TWO LIVES SACRIFICED TO A DISPUTED MINING CLAIM.


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FOLLOWED HIS VICTIM.

Account published in The New York Times / December 8, 1887

DURANGO, Mexico, Dec. 7. -- The story of a desperate mining claim feud that culminated in the death of two well-known citizens of the United States reached here to-day. The scene of the affair was the hacienda of Otinapa, some 35 miles north of here, owned principally by C. A. Lebold, a banker of Abilene, Kan. Eight miles north of the Otinapa house is situated on Otinapa lands the hacienda Rio Verde, which is the headquarters of the Durango Mining Company of St. Louis, Mo., in charge of Dr. Sidney S. Eady.

Piegan man wearing a headdress


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Piegan man wearing a headdress: Piegan man wearing a headdress made of ermine tails, feathers, and bunches of grass. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, c 1910.Piegan man wearing a headdress made of ermine tails, feathers, and bunches of grass. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, c 1910. View full image

The Idaho Indian War


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The Idaho Indian War: Caption identifies sitters as Eagle of Light, Nez Percé; Joseph, Nez Percé; and (Smohollah). However, Bill Gulick in Chief Joseph Country: Land of the Nez Percé, 1981, identifies sitters in this image as Billy Carter, Ollokot (Chief Joseph's brother) and The Idaho Indian War: Caption identifies sitters as Eagle of Light, Nez Percé; Joseph, Nez Percé; and (Smohollah). However, Bill Gulick in Chief Joseph Country: Land of the Nez Percé, 1981, identifies sitters in this image as Billy Carter, Ollokot (Chief Joseph's brother) and Middle Bear. Photographed by Chas. W. Phillips, c 1877. View full image.

CHASE AFTER BANDITS.


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Ogden Standard-Examiner / August 28, 1921

American and Mexican Forces Join in Search for Nogales Raiders

NOGALES, Arizona, Aug. 27 - American border patrols, detachments of cavalry, Arizona “line riders” and Mexican federal troops tonight joined in an international search for seven Mexican bandits who brutally murdered Frank J. Pearson, postmaster at Ruby, Arizona, and his wife late yesterday.

Mrs. Pearson's head was severed by the bandits after she had been attacked.

The search for the bandits was picked up by American troops from border patrols at the direction of Francis J. Dyer, American consul at Nogales, Sonora, while

 

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