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Central States Lawman and Outlaws Historic Assoc. In the late 1800s - and early 1900s The River of humanity flowing west, was both wide and deep. Caught in the current of manifest destiny, were settlers, soldiers, business interests, and Outlaws. It was a perfect whirlwind of the Wild west. G.C. Stevens
Thursday, September 24, 2026
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Frontier Photo, US Cavalry Indian Wars (?) Taken by Palmquist and Jergens: By G.C. Stevens
An unknown US Army Officer
A "Mint Condition" Cabinet Cardjust added to the authors collection.
1880's "suspected Indian Wars"
Www.bisonboldcoffee.com
Www.bisonboldcoffee.com
- Sitting Bull / Photographed and published by Palmquist & Jurgens, Cor. Seventh and Robert Str., St. Paul Minn. Summary: Photograph shows Sitting Bull, three-quarter-length portrait, seated, facing front, holding a calumet. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The Palmquist & Jurgens Studio today is mostly known for its series of iconic photographs taken of Sitting Bull in 1884. Sitting Bull had first visited Saint Paul in March 1884, being accompanied by one of his wives, his nephew One Bull, Indian agent James McLaughlin and an interpreter. He returned again the same year on September 4th, this time accompanied by Colonel Alvaren Allen, the owner of the Merchant Hotel in Saint Paul where Sitting Bull had stayed during his first visit. During the earlier visit in March he sat for a photography session with the Palmquist & Jurgens studio, then located at 225 East Seventh Street. It has been reported that a dozen glass plate negatives were taken of Sitting Bull and an additional one of him together with his nephew One Bull. It clearly was not a chance undertaking, in fact Sitting Bull was actually permitted to enter into a contract with the photographers reportedly giving them the exclusive right to sell and market these twelve photographs, finished in the form of albumen print cabinet cards, for a one-year period. It is also certain that Sitting Bull was given supply of prints of the photographs, for him to either give away or to sell.
Saturday, September 19, 2026
Photographer C.H. Hall, Witness to History, Springfield Illinois: By G.C. Stevens
A very common carte de visite,
in good condition
purchased on ebay, subject unknown
Sometimes a rather inexpensive purchase of a photo can yield a special find. When searching for antique photos, I find that it's very important for dealers (some advice here) of carte de visite's to display both the front and back of each photo. Seeing the antique portrait, carte or cabinet card form both sides tells much about the story of the photo. On most carte de visites, the photographer, used their photo as a business card (so to speak) and usually stamped his or her name and studio on the back (back mark) of the card, and in other cases, we sometimes find personal information written on these photos. Clues to the identity of the person in the photos are frequently found because of these notes. The identity of the photo here, a young man holding a book, remains a mystery, however the back mark on this photo indicated that the picture was from a city in Illinois that played a significant role in the American civil war, and that place was Springfield Illinois, Abraham Lincoln's home state.
Photo from the authors collection
I have a habit of looking at the back mark before I even view the photo
Photo taken by C.H. Hall courtesy of the library of congress
The above photo shows a group of armed union soldiers that were guarding the entrance of the original tomb. Its worth noting that Abraham Lincolns body was stolen in 1876 and held for ransom
Photo courtesy of the library of congress
Read more here
https://dnrhistoric.illinois.gov/experience/sites/central/lincoln-tomb.html
https://www.schrc.org/abraham-lincolns-first-gravesite-springfield-2018-lincoln-tour-3/
Thursday, September 17, 2026
The Great American Westerns Youtube Channel, The Meguair family 1861 Jesse James Ambrotype
Join Matthew Pizzalato of The Great American Western
youtube channel as he interviews
Gene Stevens & Patrick Meguiar
about the Meguiar 1861 Jesse James Ambrotype
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Its worth noting that the pose and body structure in both the Meguiar photo and the Jesse James Partisan Ranger photo are identical.
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Two Photos From Virginia, By G.C. Stevens
Collecting historic photos is a treasure hunt, that has yielded many surprising finds.
These are two photos that came out of Virginia, taken probably in the late 1800's to early 1900s. The above photo is a bit of a mystery and we don't know a lot about the photographer. But a very poetic expression of love was inscribed in the back of the photo. The second photo in this group was taken by Rufus Holsinger who a very well-known and prominent photographer in central Virginia. This was confirmed by the Albemarle Charlottesville Va. Historical Society. The names of the people who sat for these photos are both unknown.
Transcription
"Life [without] sweet love! Or it would be [A world] without a Sun—
[Or as a] snow-capped mountain, dark [Or as] midnights in one; [Or a] fair scene, without one spot to glad the waste, Without one blossom of delight, Of feeling, or of taste!"
Notes on Missing Text: The left margin has sustained significant paper loss. The missing or damaged words enclosed in brackets [...] are reconstructed based on
remaining visible letter traces and poetic context.
Photo by Rufus Holsinger
Rufus Holsinger was a prominent photographer here in Charlottesville and the Holsinger Studio he had established in the late 1800s was active until 1977. The University of Virginia Library's Special Collections has a vast collection of the studio's
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
PODCAST: The Passing of The Buffalo, By Henry Inman, Edited by: G C. Stevens
THE PASSING OF THE BUFFALO!
Podcast
THE PASSING OF THE BUFFALO
BY
HENRY INMAN
EDITED BY
G.C. STEVENS
Monday, September 14, 2026
Tales of the Frontier, Did General Custer Commit Suicide? By G.C. Stevens
General Custer, from Inman's book
From Iman's book,
"These "Tales of the Trail" are based upon actual facts which came under the personal observation of the author, whose reputation as a writer of the frontier is national. His other works have met with phenomenal success, and these sketches, which have appeared from time to time in the current literature of the United States. Some of the characters around which are woven the thrilling incidents of these "Tales" were men of world-wide reputation; they have long since joined the "choir invisible," but their names as pioneers in the genesis of great States which then formed the theater of their exploits will live as long as the United States exists as a great nation."-JAMES L. KING, State Librarian TOPEKA, KANSAS, March 1, 1898
A THEORY AS TO GEN. CUSTER'S DEATH. DID HE COMMIT SUICIDE?
The Theory explained by Colonel Henry Inman
Little is known of the origin of scalp-taking, and that, vague and indefinite: nearly every tribe has some wild, weird legend to account for the custom, but these traditions vary widely as to the cause. That "raising the hair" of an enemy is of great antiquity, there is no doubt, as in the Bible it is related how the soldiers tore the skin from the heads of their whipped foes. All, (sic) or at least all Indian tribes with which I am acquainted, scalp their enemies killed in battle. With the Indian there appears to be some close affiliation between the departed spirit and his hair. I have questioned many a blood-begrimed warrior why he should want a dead man's hair, and invariably there have been assigned a number of reasons, three of which are most prominent: First, it is an evidence to his people that he has triumphed over an enemy; second, the scalps are employed very prominently in the incantations of the "medicine lodge"--a part of their religious rites; third, the savage believes there is a wonderfully inherent power in the scalp of an enemy. All the excellent qualities of the victim go with his hair the moment it is wrenched from his head. If it be that of a renowned warrior, so much the more are they anxious to procure his scalp, for the fortunate possessor then inherits all the bravery and prowess of its original owner. I have known of but one instance in all my experience among the Indians, where a white man taken prisoner in battle escaped death. It was a great many years ago; the party, a dear friend, still living, was a grand old mountaineer,--but the homeliest man on earth, probably. He was red-faced, wrinkled, and pockmarked, with a mouth as large and full of teeth as a gorilla's, and there was no more hair on any part of his head than there is on the head of a cane. He was captured in a prolonged fight and taken to the village of the tribe where the principal chief resided. The latter gave one look at the prisoner, shook his head, and said he was "bad medicine"; that if he was not the "evil spirit" himself, he was closely allied to him. He then ordered his subordinates to furnish him with a pony, loaded him with provisions, provided him with a rifle, and told him to go to his people. This incident, which is a fact, shows that you cannot account for the occasional vagaries of the North-American savage.
The Indians of the Plains and Rocky Mountains would rather, for the reason last above stated, take one scalp of a famous scout or army officer who has successfully chastised them, like Custer, Sully, and Crook, than a dozen of those of ordinary white men. Twenty-six years ago next November I was camping on the high "divide" between the Arkansas river and the Beaver, with a party of Government Indian scouts, members of three friendly tribes,--Osages, Pawnees, and Kaws,--employed by order of Gen. Sheridan in his winter campaign against the hostile Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowas. It was a terribly gusty day, one of those so characteristic of our Plains region at certain times of the year. As with closely wrapped blankets we huddled around our little fire of buffalo-chips, the dust and ashes would rise in miniature whirlwinds and go dancing over the prairies until they exhausted themselves. I asked a venerable chief of the Osages who was present, "Little River," nearly eighty years old, what those fitful spirals indicated, in order to draw from his savage mind his ideas of the forces of nature. He replied: "They are the spirits of some southern Indians, killed and scalped up north, going back to the lodges of their people." I thought that if he had substituted the word "matter" for "spirit"--for everywhere we tread upon the dust of a lost civilization--probably he would have been nearer the truth than in the statement of one of the superstitions of his race.Sitting Bull from Inman's book
Among the many myths of the American savage, the disposition of the soul after its separation from the body, and its close connection with its scalp, vary according to the religion of the tribe. With some, the "journey to the happy hunting-grounds" begins immediately; with others, the spirit remains near the grave. Again, if an Indian dies away from the lodges of his people, the spirit returns at once to them, where it hovers, as if reluctant to leave. Among the "upper-river tribes" it is believed that before the spirit finally departs from those who have died of wounds received in battle, "it floats toward a great cliff overhanging the Missouri, and carves upon the wall of rock a picture showing the manner of death." It is believed by most Plains tribes that the soul attaches itself to the scalp; that the soul of a person scalped does not suffer from the wounds inflicted on the body, but that the converse is the case where the scalp is not torn off. There are many instances on record where men have been scalped and yet survived the terrible ordeal, but in every case the scalper supposed his victim dead, the latter taking good care that the foeman should not be disabused of the supposed fact. One who kills himself in battle, accidentally or purposely, has positively no hereafter; he is irrevocably lost. Those who are struck by lightning, or die by any other apparently direct operation of the "Manitou" (the Great Spirit), are hurriedly buried where they fall, without any ceremony, and no mound or other mark is erected over them. If after a battle there are found corpses not scalped or their bodies not mutilated, it is certain that those persons came to death by their own hand, for it is part of the religion of an Indian not to scalp or mutilate the body of an enemy who commits suicide. His superstition in regard to persons dying by suicide or by lightning is as religiously observed as any other of his myths. Knowing this deep-rooted superstition as well as I do, I have been led to believe--though the statement may provoke discussion among those who know nothing of the Indian character--that the death of the lamented.
CUSTERS DEATH Gen. Custer in that awfully unequal battle of the "Little Big Horn" was not according to the accepted theory at that time, viz.: that he was killed by the Indian chief "Rain-in-the-face." The tale (which I regard as an idle fiction so far as the facts are concerned) as it has been told a thousand times and copied in the newspapers of the world, is, that one day the General's brother Tom, at one of the military posts where the regiment to which he was attached, the famous Seventh Cavalry (commanded by the General), was stationed, had a dispute with Rain-in-the-face, and struck him. The savage was furious with rage, but suppressed it, and mounting his pony rode off sullenly to his lodge. Years after the death of Gen. Custer, Rain-in-the-face, who unquestionably participated in the battle of the Rosebud (as the action is sometimes called), is said to have related that he killed Gen. Custer, thus avenging himself for the indignity put upon himself by the General's brother Tom, so long before. In all probability the story was made out of "whole cloth" by a certain New York newspaper correspondent, in whose journal it first appeared. I knew him well, and his reputation for unexaggerated truth was far from being as orthodox as he of the cherry-tree fame. (The myth relating to George
Washington chopping down the cherry tree) Because it had a plausibility about it, and was highly sensational, the statement was accepted by the general public, or those who were not familiar with the methods of the North-American savage. No doubt Rain-in-the-face did, as would all Indians, treasure up such a grievance as that of having been insulted by a blow from a white man; but the circumstances of the battle of the Little Big Horn in all its horrors, so far as it is possible to know them, preclude the possibility of Sitting Bull permitting a subordinate chief, as was Rain-in-the-face, to arrogate to himself the right of revenge in the case of such a noted "white warrior" as Custer. If by any probability Rain-in-the-face did kill Custer, he certainly would have scalped him and mutilated his body. Custer was not scalped, nor was his person at all abused; and the reason generally given for this immunity from the common custom of savage warfare is, that the Indians had such a profound admiration for his wonderful bravery that they spared the great "white warrior" that humiliation. This is the weakest point of the whole argument--for the greater the man in the savages' estimation, the more eager would they be to secure his scalp.
THE THEORY OF CUSTERS DEATH My own theory is--and the fact that Custer was not scalped or mutilated is not the only confirmation of it--that the General killed himself to escape the horrible torture that awaited him should he be captured alive. His capture was what Sitting Bull had undoubtedly determined upon, the moment he saw the tide of battle unmistakably turning in his favor. Custer was known to all the Plains tribes; he had given them ample cause to remember him, and these savages would never have allowed an opportunity to capture him alive to be defeated by permitting some aggrieved chief to kill him in order to gratify a personal revenge--the game was too big. The Indians called Custer the "Crawling Panther," because he usually fell upon them with his troopers as stealthily as does that animal upon its prey. To those unacquainted with the methods of the American savage of the Great Plains, the statement that suicide would be infinitely preferable to the chances for life after having been captured by the Indians, may seem overdrawn, and wicked to be thought of. But if they had seen, as I have, the remains of men, women and innocent babes horribly mutilated, burnt, butchered, and hacked to pieces, they too, if they knew such a fate awaited them beyond the possibility of a doubt if captured alive, would unhesitatingly court death by their own hands, suddenly and immediately, rather than wait for the other, a few hours or days more remote, perhaps, but certain, and horrible in its prolonged agony. I know that it was commonly understood, if not actually agreed to among the officers at frontier posts, that each one should reserve the last bullet in his revolver for himself in the event of a horrible contingency. I have known of many officers in the long-ago of my early service among the Indians, who, whenever they went on an expedition against the hostile tribes, invariably had concealed about their persons, easily accessible, a small capsule of prussic acid or some equally potent and swift messenger of death, to be used in case of a possible contingency. Custer, it will be remembered, was shot through the head, and it was a curious coincidence that two or three of his subordinates whose bodies were found near his had been shot in precisely the same manner. In view of all these facts, there can be small doubt that those officers carried out the plan of death determined upon, the moment they recognized the hopelessness of their situation. That the story of Rain-in-the-face, if he ever told it, is not at all likely to be the truth, may be inferred from the fact that the average Indian, as I know him, when discoursing of his own prowess is the most unconscionable liar, and the truth is not in him. Of course if Rain-in-the-face could prevail upon a newspaper correspondent to flatter him in regard to the part he took in a battle in which a great white warrior was defeated, he would rather lie to that correspondent than not; and that is just what Rain-in-the-face did in this instance--provided, always, that the correspondent did not invent the whole tale. The truth of how Custer came to his death can never absolutely be known, for out of that awfully unequal conflict there came but one miserable Crow Indian and Col. Keogh's celebrated horse "Comanche," alive. From the fact that the great soldier was not scalped, the theory I have suggested is certainly more plausible, and will be accepted by all who are familiar with the customs of the Indians, than that story which has made the rounds of the newspapers a dozen times.
references & Further Reading:TALES OF THE TRAILSHORT STORIES OF WESTERN LIFE BY COLONEL HENRY INMAN Late Assistant Quartermaster, United States Army AUTHOR OF "THE OLD SANTA FÉ TRAIL," "SALT LAKE TRAIL"
(Project Gutenberg)
Maj Henry Inman Jr. (1837-1899) - Find a Grave Memorial
New Study Debunks Tales of Mass Suicide at Custer’s Last Stand | HISTORY
News - Skeletal Study of Custer’s Men Questions Suicide Claims - Archaeology Magazine
Sunday, September 13, 2026
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Saturday, September 12, 2026
Podcast: Iowa's Outlaw Trail, The White Pole Road. By G.C. Stevens
Join us on a journey down Iowa's Rustic Highway.
The White Pole Road, Iowa's own Outlaw Trail.
Friday, September 11, 2026
Post Card 1874, One card and a mysterious message: By G.C Stevens
Post Card from the Authors collections
A post card written on the Iowa frontier, a response that will never have closure. But the recipient is identified as Mary Charlton who appears in the 1870 census, but she is living one county over in Adel, Dallas County Iowa, and she 19 years old. Which would have made her 23 years old at the time when the card was written, mailed and received in December of 1874.
United States POSTAL CARD. Denomination 1 cent
From the Stevens Collection
U.S. POSTAGE ONE CENT
Postmark:
DES MOINES, IOWA
DEC 18
10 A.M.
Handwritten Address:
To Miss Mary Charlton
Casey (Iowa)
Guthrie Co. Iowa
Back (Message Side):
Dateline:
Des Moines, Iowa
Dec 18 1874.
Message: Friend Mary, Your letter received. Before answering it, however, I want you to tell me what questions it is you refer to that you asked me in your first letter. I can't think of any that remain unanswered.
Truly Yours,
Jim M McLaughlin
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