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Si Wa Wata Wa, 1903


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


AN INDIAN SCALPED AND ROASTED


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New-York Times / July 26, 1882

LORDSBURG, New Mexico, July 26. -- A courier from Clifton reports that a large party of Indians attacked a wagon train three miles this side of Clifton yesterday morning, killing two men. The teamsters, seven in number, stood off the Indians for two hours, mortally wounding one, whom they dragged into camp in the face of heavy firing. After the fight was over they scalped him and roasted him alive.

THAT SANTA FE TRAIN ROBBERY.


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New-York Times / November 29, 1889

GAINESVILLE, Texas, Nov. 29. -- A party from Ardmore brings information of the arrest of two women in that city charged with being implicated in the recent train robbery on the Santa Fe Road. The information which led to the arrest of the men was obtained from the women. The morning after the robbery the officers suspected that these two women knew something about it. It was agreed that the women were to occupy the same room on the same night, and an officer secured a room adjoining. When the women retired the officer heard them discuss the robbery, the plan, and its details. They mentioned the names of those suspected of the robbery, and on Thursday they were arrested

TRAIN ROBBERS HAVE AN EASY TIME IN GETTING BOOTY.


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DISARMED THE SOLDIERS.

New-York Times / December 13, 1886

ST. LOUIS, Mo., Dec. 12 -- Particulars of the train robbery yesterday near Bellevue Station, Texas, are that the three robbers, who were unmasked and made no effort at concealment, arrived at the water tank a few minutes before the train. When the train arrived, one of the robbers with drawn pistol ordered Engineer Ayers and his fireman and O.G. Miller, another engineer who was riding in the cab, to alight, which they did. He then marched them some 30 feet from the train and went through them, taking all the valuables they had. While this was going on the other men went through the train.

Battle of Buffalo Wallow: 1874


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KIOWA LEDGER DRAWING possibly depicting the battle of Buffalo Wallow in 1874, a skirmish in the larger "Red River War," a series of clashes between southern Plains tribes and Army troops attempting to enforce their relocation to Indian Territory reservations in what later became Oklahoma. View full size.

 

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