i am very excited to introduce tonight's guest. he is an award winning local author, journalist and history writer with an expansive 35 year

career. he has worked on nine books total, including some of the popular for dummies books, u.s. history, the american revolution and lessons from the great depression, respectively. and i hear he also plays a mean harmonica. please welcome steve wiegand. thank you. thank you very much. welcome. i'd like to thank c-span's booktv for being here to record this for posterity. and also a big thanks to our hosts here at changing hands. for those who are unaware of this, changing hands is something of a phenix institution. it's not only a bookstore, but it's a bar. and if they didn't lock up at night, you could live here. i'd like to begin with a quote from mark twain, who said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. i'm pretty sure that's true, because i feel right now like buffalo bill cody did almost

exactly 150 years ago. cody had just started his stage career and he was appearing in a really awful play in saint louis. and while play was going on, he spotted his wife in the audience and he went to the front of the stage and he called out, oh, mama, i'm an awful actor. does this look as bad out there as it does feel up here? so i mention this because i'm an awfully bad public speaker and b my wife is here and she's already got her head down. so. but i hasten to add that, cody, that night got a standing ovation. so i hope you'll keep that in mind. when i finally shut up. the book i'm talking about tonight is. entitled 1876 year of the gun the year that wyatt custer, jesse and the two bills, buffalo and wild created the wild west and why? it's still with us. i realize that's a long

subtitle, but in my defense, there was a book that came out about jesse james the year after he was shot in 1882, and it had a subtitle that was 56 words long. and this is a much better book right here. and matter of fact, i recommend you buy ten or 12 copies tonight and then you don't have to worry about christmas shopping. as the title implies. the book is about the year 1876 and the wild west and where i got started on it was i wanted to explore the idea of how a wild west legend became a wild west legend. and i looked at one or two exam bulls, and i noted three and four, and then five, and ended up with six. and then incidents and wild west icons. and all of them happened to be in the year 1876. and i briefly. describe the six events in

january of that year, a 22 year old bat masterson was in his first gunfight with a us army corporal. over a saloon girl or a poker game. or maybe both. and he shot and killed his first man in may of that year. wyatt earp, who is a deputy marshal in wichita, kansas, had been fired for beating up the political enemy of his boss and was declared a vagrant and was asked to leave town. and two weeks later, he wandered into dodge city and became a deputy marshal. there in the next month, june, lieutenant colonel george armstrong custer led the seventh calvary to the southeast corner of montana. and the results were not favorable for the seventh calvary or custer. about four weeks after that, there was a skirmish in the northwest corner of nebraska called the battle of war bonnet creek. and at that battle, a really

fantastic clay dressed scout named william cody, engaged in what was it that amounted to a rifle duel between himself in a cheyenne warrior? he killed the warrior, scalped him, and then later displayed the scalp in his stage, shows as the first scout for custer. a little bit after the battle at war, bonnet creek, wild bill hickok sat down to play poker in deadwood, south dakota, and didn't get up from the table. he was shot in the back of the head while playing. and then in september, a gang of eight bank robbers led by cole younger and jesse james, rode in the northfield, minnesota and robbed a bank there. four people were killed and the bank got away and the bank robbers got away. with $26.70. so i focused the book originally on the six events and the

biography is of the people that were involved and how they came to be where they were and how those events fashioned the legends that they all became. but in the course of the research, i found myself looking more and more into the year 1876, and it turned out to be one hell of a year. for one thing, it was america's 100th birthday. that was a very big deal. i give you a bit of a laundry list of things that happened during that year. for one thing, america held its first world's fair in philadelphia, was called the centennial exposition. it lasted six months and it drew. 10 million people over the six months. and to make that number even more significant, that amounted to about 20% of the entire american population at the time. so it was quite, quite a big deal. the other thing that happened, that was the first world's fair in america. we also had our 23rd president

election, which turned out to be one of the most bizarre, corrupt and bitter presidential elections in our history. and so, from a historical perspective, it was really interesting. and then there are a whole bunch of other things that were invented and innovated during that year are popularized. the typewriter, a mechanical calculator that took up 40 square feet, weighed a ton, and consequently didn't catch on. budweiser or beer. fleischman yeast. heinz ketchup, hyers root beer and the banana. and i should note that well-mannered americans in 1876 eight, they're bananas with a knife and fork. and there was even an attempt on election day, 1876 by a gang of counterfeiters out of chicago to steal the body of abraham lincoln and hold it for ransom. so it was that kind of year.

so i decided to write about all of this in an effort to sort of put things in context, take the wild west events on the one hand, and what was going on in the rest of america at the same time. because it's kind of important to keep in mind that in 1876, 80% of the american population lived east of the mississippi river, and they were there for is familiar with the wild west as they were with timbuktu or tokyo or someplace else. in terms of the context, we often think about history as a linear succession of events. it's this happens and this happens and then this happens. but it's not like that. the past is just like the present. there's a whole lot of things happening at the same time. for example, the day that wyatt earp was being pushed out of town in wichita for being a vagrant, eli lilly was opening in offer to some pharmaceutical company in indianapolis.

and at almost the same hour that custer in the seventh cavalry were being killed, 40% of the seventh calvary were being killed at the little bighorn. alexander graham bell was at the centennial exposition and introducing his telephone. and i should add that one of the people in the audience for alexander graham bell was don pedro, who was the emperor of brazil at the time, and in fact, was much more popular than the american president at the time, who was u.s. grant. one thing i try to do in this book is explore the difference between liars and legends. this book is filled with liars, with the possible exception of the author. it's also filled with legends again, with the possible exception of the author. i think there's a big difference between the two. alive is is basically an untruth. it's the anti truth.

but a legend is is sort of an amalgam. it's it's based on facts. it has lies sprinkled into our gross exaggerations. and what comes out of the legend and what sometimes comes out of a legend is the truth. i'll give you an example. but first i want to say that why we need legends. we seem to have an innate need as humans to have to have legends. and perhaps it's because we want to have a commonality of purpose. we want to we want to relate to each other as a society or as a culture. and we that helps build sources of inspiration for us as we go forward as a as a society or a nation. and maybe it's just because we like good stories. i'll give you an example about the creation of a legend a little bit more detail, and then the rest are kind of glossed over. in 1921, bat masterson died at what was then the ripe old age

of 68, and he was famous enough to merit obituaries in newspapers all across the country. now, bat had a very good sense of humor, so it's entirely possible that he would have gotten a big kick out of his obituaries, assuming that he didn't mind being dead because the obituaries were about equal parts. nostalgia and admiration. and horse manure. i'll give you an example. the saint louis post-dispatch called him, quote, quite the deadliest man in america for stand up gun fighting. had he cared to commemorate his homicidal achievements in the orthodox way. it is estimated that his pistol handle would have been decorated with from 22 to 28 notches. the washington herald credited him with killing a man during a poker game, helping drag the guy outside and going back in to finish the game. the new york times had him

holding off 300 indians for three weeks with only eight companions at the battle of the doby, walls and not to be outdone, the louisville courier courier general journal made it nearly a thousand indians and only six companions. in fact, bat masterson killed three men and gunfights. and at the battle of adobe walls, he had 28 other buffalo hunters, and they held off about 700 indians for three days. so i'm picking masterson here for two reasons. and one is that it's relatively easy to trace the main source of his legend as a as a gunfighter who had killed two dozen people, plus, in gunnison, colorado, there was a hotel called the tabor house one early morning in august of 1881, a bunch of army officers were sitting around and they were joined by a the managing editor of the new york

sun, and they were buying him drinks and he was buying them drinks. and he asked them if any of the stories about the gunfighters that he'd heard were true. and there was an army surgeon named dr. cockrell, and he said, no, they were mostly a lot of baloney that really didn't happen. but then he pointed to a fellow who was standing in the doorway of the billiard hall at the hotel, and he said, you see that guy over there? that's a man who's killed 26 men, and he's only 27 years of age. his name is w.b. masterson of dodge city, kansas. he killed his men. in the interest of law and order, whether young the journalist from the new york sun believe this or not. he didn't like get in the way of a good story. and he filed this story. and the story ran in the sun. now, the sun was a very important newspaper at the time. and so the story was picked up and run in newspapers all across the country.

and from that time on, masterson had a reputation of a guy who killed desperadoes by the dozen. the other part, the other reason i chose that masterson is to illustrate the lies versus legends idea in that he wasn't very shy about helping the legend, along by telling a few of the lies and i give you an example that masterson spent the last 20 years of his life as a journalist in new york city, and at the time he was sports editor for the new york morning telegraph. and he had an old acquaintance from the west that came to visit him. and this guy collected memorabilia and he bugged and bugged bat for one of his guns. so bat finally relented and he went to a pawnshop and he bought an old 45 revolver and took it back to his newspaper office and carved 22 notches in the handle of the gun.

and when the guy came back, he gave him the gun and the guy said, does this represent the people you've killed? and that masterson said, i didn't tell him yes, and i didn't tell him no. i simply said i had encountered either mexicans or indians, and he went away tickled to death. so that's sort of an example of how these guys got to be legends. now, one thing i want to point out that i didn't try to demystify or debunk or these deacons struck these these fellows i wrote about, they were the real deal. they definitely were worthy of legendary status. bat masterson really did shoot down to texas cowboys who had just killed his brother on the streets of dodge city. wild bill hickok really did shoot an opponent in a gunfight through the heart at a distance of 75 yards and if you've ever shot a pistol, particularly a pistol of that vintage, that's a miraculous shot.

but wild bill hickok was really a deadly gunfighter and a really crack shot. george custer was a bona fide civil war hero. he had seven horses shot out from under him during different battles in the civil war. and he was a key part of the union's victory at the battle of gettysburg. and as an army scout, buffalo bill cody once wrote 350 miles in 60 hours on a mule to carry dispatches back and forth between three army forts. and he had to walk the last ten miles because the mule ran away. of course, there's a less heroic part to that story in that when buffalo bill caught up with the mule, he shot him. so so the people i write wrote about are certainly legends. legend, worthy and just on what they really did, let alone the stories that were made up about them. so one of the things i found

interesting was that there were people that were equally legend worthy, who aren't legends. and i don't really know why that if there's a single answer to that and i'll give you an example. there was a fellow named bill tillman. he had a law enforcement career that spanned 50 years. he was a deputy sheriff. a sheriff, a city marshal, a deputy federal marshal and chief of police. he was in more gunfights and shootouts than batman masterson, wyatt earp and wild bill hickok combined. masterson wrote about him. it would take a volume the size of an encyclopedia to record the many daring exploits and adventures of this remarkable man. tillman even died a wild west legend. death. he was killed in a gunfight outside a speakeasy in tulsa at the age of 70. but i doubt more than one or two of you have ever heard of bill

tillman. on the other hand, there was a 21 year old thief and murderer whose wild west career lasted less than a decade and it had more than 50 movies made about him. his baptized name was patrick henry mccarthy, but he's better known as billy the kid. and so maybe in the legends racket, it's good to have a catchy nickname and not be named something bland like bill tillman. but i'll give you another case. there was a fellow who was a civil war hero and who rose rapidly at a very young age to the rank of general. and after the war, he stayed in the army, except at a reduced rank, and begged the war department to send him west to fight indians. and they even wrote a book about his experiences. he kind of got it. he eventually got his way and was sent west, and he was kind of a hard -- when it came to driving his men. he didn't treat them very well and he pushed them hard and he eventually led them into a trap where they were heavily

outnumbered. he was he was wounded in the head. he had a broken leg. and he held out with this men for more than a week eating rotting horse flesh before they were rescued. now, until i got to that last sentence, it sounded like george armstrong custer. but it wasn't. it was a guy named george foresight. the fight was known as the battle of beecher, ireland. it happened in 1868 and pitted 50 soldiers, cavalrymen against about 600 indians in all but six of horse sites. command survive. and because of his strategy and defending the island, they were on. so why have most americans never heard of george foresight, but they've heard of george custer. well, first, i didn't wear buckskin. he didn't have long flowing blond locks. he didn't hobnob with newspaper editors and washington politicians. he didn't blow his own horn at

every opportunity. and he didn't have a wife who made it her crusade for 50 years after his death to deify him and make him a legend in the wild west. and i point this out, because none of these guys became legends on their own. they were all one way or another, the darlings of media. maybe it was newspapers like in masterson's case, while bill hickock was the subject of a cover story in a harper's magazine, which was a national magazine and later on, they were the subjects of movies and television shows. and so they became part of the american tapestry. and i'll be glad when i'm finished here. if you want specific examples of each of these guys kind of metamorphosis into a wild west legend. but i wanted to mention that the cultural historian richard

slotkin suggests that legends are basically stories that we tell on retail until they become symbols of how we think as a society and how we behave as a society. for example, the battle of the little bighorn, as you heard it ad nauseum, in all kinds of different versions. and so that if i tell you my favorite team played on sunday like they were custer at the last. dan you know what i'm talking about? if i say if you tell me that you're getting out of dodge, i've seen another five episodes of gunsmoke to say, okay, i know what you're talking about. you've got a bad situation and you're doing a prudent thing by leaving legendary figures as individuals. they sort of fill the same role. so if you stand up to a boss who's kind of pushing you around, bullying you, you're like wyatt earp at the oc corral. or if you're getting treated by a used car salesman like he was jesse james, you get the

reference. even if you don't know anything about jesse james or wyatt earp. and it doesn't matter in this case that both wyatt earp and jesse james killed people in cold blood at different times in their career. it's the image and not the reality that that matters. and i'd like to end this with an anecdote that i think sums up why we need legends, both wild west and otherwise. it took place on a cold and rainy morning in september 20, 20 and around a cemetery monument of a hometown hero. the hometown was northfield, minnesota, which is a community of about 20,000, and it's about 45 minutes south of the minneapolis saint paul metroplex. the hero is a fellow named joseph lee heywood, who died 144 years and two days before this particular ceremony. heywood was a 39 year old civil

war veteran with a wife and a daughter. he was also an employee of the first national bank of northfield. he was working as the bank's cashier on that afternoon of september 7th, 1876, when the james younger gang showed up and demanded that he open the vault. now, the vault had about $12,000 in it, which is about $334,000 in 2022. money. that money represented the town's treasury. it represented the reserves for the local college and a reserve. it represented most of the life savings of the people of northfield. and the people lived around northfield. heywood refused to open the vault. and frank james. first he cut him with a knife, then he pistol whipped him and knocked him down. and then he put a bullet through his head. now, unlike dodge city or deadwood or some other places,

northfield is a treasure chest of wild west experience. they have a museum at the bank, at the site. but if it wasn't for this bank robbery, we would know northfield if we knew them at all. as the birthplace of multiple military drill. but every year they have a ceremony to remember heywood. and with the exception of my wife and myself, the rest of the crowd at the gravesite were locals. a genial fellow named steve underdog, who happened to be the ceo and president of the local hospital, gave a brief speech. he said the point of the ceremony was to honor a man who had put the well-being of the community before his own safety. he pointed out that in 1876 there was no fdic insurance, there was no federal or state safety net and if the james younger gang had gotten away with that money, it was gone. these people were broke. it was going to be very hard to replace any of it.

so heywood was again, was just a normal, everyday guy. he refused to hand it over and he died because of it. and mr. underdog explained and compared heywood sacrifice to the sacrifices that were made during the covid 20 crisis by people that we don't think of as heroes. grocery store clerks, nursing helpers. fast food operators. and under all said most of the time when we get through a crisis, we come out of it because these regular folks make the difference. it's always regular folks that save the world. i think he's right. legends can entertain us. they can inspire us. they can educate us. and they can bind us together as communities, nations and cultures. but it's the regular folks who have thus been entertained and educated and bound together, who go out and save the world.

and that's precisely why we need from time to time to manufacture legends and transfer more real people like that master center, wyatt earp or buffalo bill with all their flaws and human failings and the lies told around them in the legends, because we take inspiration from that. and that's what i have to say. so thanks for listening, and i'll be glad to take questions or comments, but no criticisms. steve, what can you tell us about gun laws in the year 1876? they yes. steve, can you tell us anything about gun laws in the year 1876? they varied widely. there were it kind of interesting. they were virtually not gun laws in big places like new york city or chicago in a lot of the wild west towns, there were gun laws.

there were no carry within the town limits. in fact, the battle at the okay corral was basically about violation of the misdemeanor of carrying guns in the town limits. dodge city had had a similar law, in fact, that masterson, his brother ed, who was the city marshal, was attempting to disarm a couple of texas cowboys who had failed to turn in their guns. and it turned into an argument. they pulled out their guns and they shot him at point blank range that masterson at the time was sheriff of ford county in which dodge city is located. he came running and pulled his own gun and shot down both of the cowboys. but the whole tragedy was over a basically what was an infraction or a misdemeanor over gun control. so the gun control laws would be the sometimes rarely enforced,

depending on the circumstances, and sometimes they'd be strictly enforced. but if you go to dodge city now, they have a sign that says, gun, gun, gun control strictly enforced. and it's purportedly from the 1870s. and it's full of bullet holes. so i don't know how well it worked. i know you said that bat masterson kind of liked to propagate his his legend building. and everything, whereas wyatt earp involved in in that same thing and really early hollywood. no, wyatt earp was a very interest of the six people or groups. he is the most confounding to to delineate because wyatt earp was he had no discernable sense of humor.

he had very few friends. he was taciturn to a fault. he had his own real fierce sense of justice. that was personalized. it wasn't based on wearing a badge. and in fact, wyatt earp spent probably more of his life as a criminal than he did as a as a law enforcement officer. he didn't like publicity. he didn't he wore plain white shirts and black pants and often went around without a gun at all. but he wanted to. but he had a bad, very bad reputation during his life, or a very shadowy reputation during his life. in fact, in 1896, he was the referee of the heavyweight championship fight in san francisco. and he called a foul on one of the the boxers. and there was a lot of money riding on it, as there usually is on boxing matches. and he was considered to have thrown the fight. i personally don't think he did

because i don't think the evidence adds up that he would have done that. but for a while, in the 1890s, if you said somebody, wyatt earp or something, that meant they cheated and it was a nickname, a national saying that, well, they wyatt earp that election or they wyatt earp that horse race. so in his later years and he lived to be 80, he was in los angeles and he pals around with some of the silent movie stars. tom mix and williams hart, and tried to get a movie made that sort of cleaned up his image. never happened. he also tried to get a book written about him that would set the record straight or so. he he thought. so he hired a guy named stuart lake who was a a journalist and wanted to write, had learned about that writer from bat masterson while working in new

york and wyatt liked stuart lake. he just didn't like talking to him. so lake would sit down and interview him on sunday mornings at this little house that wyatt lived in. and i would say yes, no, yes. i don't remember. so when earp died, lake was forced to fill in a whole lot of gaps. and so he made up a lot of stuff. and he he. glorified or put forward words that maybe never said changed some events around and the subsequent movies that came out after that were based on stuart lake's book. and in fact, the tv show the life and legend of wyatt earp in the fifties. stuart lake was a consultant on that. so the image that we have of wyatt earp as this fearless pulled the log gunfighter. not so much. it's not that he was a bad guy.

it's just that he wanted to make money. there were a lot of easier ways to make money than being a cop and so he did things like he ran saloons, he ran illegal gambling houses, he fleeced miners and nome. he fleeced miners in idaho. he was involved in some confidence. schemes in los angeles. and he didn't want that left behind. so he downplayed all of that. so i don't know if that if that's specific enough for you. i can go into more detail, but and i should add as a postscript that tom mix and williams hart were both pallbearers at earp's funeral. any additional information on the corrupt election that year? i'd be interested. well, the country was so divided

and the the senate was in the hands in 18. i should back up a little bit. ever since the civil war, congress had been in the hands of republicans, as had the presidency. but in 1874, congress had gotten itself involved in so many scandals and so much corruption that the democrats took over the house. well, the republicans are still in control of the senate. the republican candidate was a fellow named rutherford b hayes, who was a union army general. and he was governor of ohio. and he was a pretty upright guy. he was scandal free as a governor and as a congressman for a while. and his opponent was a fellow named samuel tilden, who was the governor of new york and who had developed a big reputation as a corruption fighter. he's the guy that bought, brought down boss tweed and the tammany hall ring in new york. and he was a real crusader for

clean government. so the election was going on at the same time, reconstruction in the south was failing. the there were a lot of federal troops in in the south still trying to protect the rights of freed african-american slaves. the election came down to if tilden would carry the south because the democrats hated the republicans who were the party of lincoln and he would win the. because he had. he would take new york. he would take some western states. and he would take the south. that night came and went and they count the votes. and lo and behold, tilden had won the popular vote by a pretty good margin. and he'd won the electoral vote maybe there was a fellow named sickles, and i'm blanking on his first name, who is a11 legged

foreman, a union army general, and he was kind of a republican operative, and he started studying the return laws. and he figured if they could turn four states in the south from the democrats to the republicans. hayes would win the electoral college and become president. so four weeks after the election, there was turmoil about the whole thing. both parties sent people to the south to canvass and to oversee election counting. both parties shamelessly bribed and swindled and conned and threatened people. it came down to going to congress and congress did what it usually does, which is try to pass the buck to somewhere else. and since the senate was in control of the republicans in the house was in control, the democrats, they said, what can we do with this? and it got so nasty that at one

point on the house of representatives floor, a democrat pulled a gun and stuck it in the face of a republican. so again, i get back to mark twain saying that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes compared to what we've got now. anyway, the congress punted to the us supreme court. your supreme court was eight republicans and seven democrats, and so you can guess how that came out. they voted 827 to give the election to rutherford b hayes, who had lost the popular vote by a wide margin. and the only saving grace was is wasn't an awful president. and he had pledged to run only one term and he only ran one term. and he also was immortalized in uruguay as a great american president because. he refereed a a a war between uruguay and argentina. and in fact, for a while there was a district in uruguay that was named hayes, and there was a

stamp with him on it. so he was a great deal more popular in uruguay than he was in the united states. anything. yeah, i the you're picking a year 1876 is is an interesting is very interesting because you know there's so many years, i guess that could be picked right like bill bryson did the summer of 1910 1927. it was an example, you know, and the idea of so many things happening at once is great. have you thought about any other years? well, i got to be honest, this is a total accident. i, i had started out looking a couple of wow. s legends and kind of dissecting how they became legends. and the first one i came across was the bat masterson incident in what was then called sweetwater, texas, and is now

called moby de texas. and i could get into why they changed the name, but suffice to say that in comanche moby--- means buffalo dung. but they didn't know it at the time, so they went ahead and named it. so i kind of fell into 1876 because i had masterson and i knew that the battle of the little bighorn had taken place. then i knew that wild bill had met his end in 1876. i sort of knew that the northfield bank robbery had happened, so i started looking for other other wild west legends in that year, and it just kind of all fell into place. and then i started looking at the year 1876 and all of the mesa and things that happened that year. so yeah, it would be bill bryson's book in 1927, where he features babe ruth and on flying across the atlantic. i think he did that deliberately. my it was an accident.

you know. yeah. i think twice you bring you bring you the like. right? so i notice several of the photo credits. the wagon name. yes. and so i was curious, have you had the opportunity to visit most of these places where you where would you especially recommend. yeah, i should particular the the photo credits are from my wife. she'll who is a an excellent photographer and she works very cheap. so yeah we did go to in fact we went to all six of the places, the locations and several other places as well. over the course of a year, maybe a year and a half and recommendations, the buffalo bill center of the west, which is in cody, wyoming, is a it's

like four museums in one, and it's it's really well worth visiting can't dodge city is an interesting place because it's a working cowtown literally a cow town the two biggest employers in dodge city are meatpacking companies and they still have hundreds of thousands of cattle waiting to be turned into big macs outside the town. but they've also got some interesting they've got an interesting museum there. they've got a replica of a front street in dodge city, the long branch saloon. and it's an interesting place to visit. deadwood is a beautiful place and in the cemetery where wild bill hickok and queen mary jane are buried, it's a beautiful place. the trouble with deadwood is it's a little over commercialized. they have legalized gambling. there, so it's a little bit too heavy on the calamity. jane, curly and the wild bill. hot dogs, that kind of stuff.

but it's okay. the other moby de texas is a town of about 100. it doesn't have a grocery store. it doesn't even have a taco bell, which i think in america is against the law. and there's not really much there other than that was where pat masterson had his fight. the war bonnet creek memorial battlefield memorial is in northwest nebraska. if you can find it, good luck. we spent about 4 hours going up and down dirt roads and about 104 degrees. and before we finally found a guy who said, i kind of know where it is and we got there. and it's basically a grassy field. it's got barbed wire around it to keep the cows out. and it's got one. there's a picture in the book of basically the memorial, which is nothing. so and northfield is a it's a

pretty little town. but other than they have the bank, they've turned into a museum and the museum is really nice. but other than that, there's not much there. now, other places we went, we went to jesse james gravesite in missouri. and the funny thing about that is they still do a tradition that jesse james mother started after he died. his he was buried there. he's not there anymore. but his grave, his original gravesite was there. and she covered it with pebbles from the river nearby. and she sold the pebbles to tourists, came by for $0.50 a piece. and of course, when the pebbles ran low, she went down and got some more and put them on there and they still do that. you can still buy a pebble for $0.50. so it's one of the few things in america that inflation hasn't affected. so we went to custer. oh, little big one. i would highly recommend the little bighorn national

monument. it's there was a fought for two decades by the native american tribes that wanted to be at the at the little bighorn. and they made a compelling case to congress. in congress that it's usual 20 years of mulling it over. and finally funding it. so now it's a very well balanced site. it's very moving. you can picture how awful they had to be for both sides. fighting under this broiling sun at quarters being shot at, no water. and you really get a good sense of what it must have been like to be there at the time. so i would i'm glad you pointed that out, because i would highly recommend the the little big horn battlefield. anything else you're going to ask me about? the women i am this this is this

is my wife. and i knew she was going to ask this question that obviously. oh, go ahead. why aren't there any women legend in this year or partly the women weren't picked up by the media at the time. the dime novels or the magazines or they just weren't recognized as a good subject. that and the movies and tv picked up their cues from the 19th century media. but that's not to say they weren't really interesting. women behind all these guys. and one is elizabeth custer, who is known as libby. custer died in 19 in 1876, and he was immediately vilified as a bozo who led men into an awful situation. and part of that was true. and part of it was because his higher ups didn't want to take the blame for any of it.

libby custer made it her lifelong crusade, and she lived about 50 years after he did, she wrote three books about living with custer, and they're very good books, and they're not at all sentimental or are overly romanticized. she lectured tirelessly and profitably about being married to custer, and she pretty much single handedly turned his image around from being a jerk to being a hero. of course, after she died, he went back to being a jerk. so everything since libby custer died in the 1930s has been pretty much slander that custer was not a great character. batman. dawson's wife was an interesting figure. her name was emma, and she was in show business. and her first show business deal was she hooked up with this guy named jim molson, who was a runner? he was a guy who ran races for a living. and that was really popular in

the 1870s because a, it was easy to set up the you could bet on it. and three, it was easy to fix. so he would race and sometimes he couldn't find anybody to race, so she would put tights, which was very risque at the time and give it get a 25 yard head start and race this guy. and so she would even win. and she also became a vaudeville performer where, you know, the indian clubs that look like bowling pins there was that was a real swinging those around over your head and juggling them was a big popular fad in the 1870s. and she became known as the queen of clubs because she was really good at this. well, she runs into bat masterson in denver, where he's running vaudeville theater, and they hit it off and eventually get married and she was so simpatico with that. masterson, who is a tremendous boxing fan, that she would dress up as a man so she could sneak

into boxing matches because women weren't allowed to prizefighting matches at that time. so, agnes, like one more while hitchcock's wife was, probably one of the most famous circus performers and circus personalities of the century, she was a slack wire walker. she was one of the best horse riders in america. she owned our own circus. she was one of the first people to put circuses on trains so they could move around. and in fact, when she died. in 1906, she was in obituaries from coast to coast. and while the hickok was in the very last paragraph, she was also the widow of wild bill hickok. who? the famous shooters, everything else was about her as a circus performer. so there were women involved. they just weren't at the forefront because of the prejudices. i mean, in 1876, women couldn't vote here it was the country was

celebrating the centennial of, becoming the justice for all and liberty for everybody. and half of the population couldn't vote. so that's why women weren't at the forefront. and plus, i'm a guy i just gravitated the. anything else, anybody else i can i can make long answers that are short questions. okay. when did the if you've been trumped. when did the culture change from looking at these? who perhaps under the guise of law and order easily killed people to looking at them? because nowadays, if that happened, we would be labeling them mass murderers.

well, none of them killed a lot of people. despite the exaggeration, like, well, you didn't kill 26, though. he killed three. so 26 was the i guess what you're asking is why was that a why was he considered a hero or. yeah, because he killed 26 men. well because part of the legend was that the people he killed needed killing. they were bad guys and it was a killer be killed situation and they don't talk about him, you know, shooting anybody while the hickock who was involved he was he was a a city marshal in several kansas tough kansas cattle towns. he wasn't gunfights and he was in some fights that frankly, were life and death. he was jumped on one time in a

in a saloon by two members of the seventh calvary. and they grabbed him around the neck from behind. and one of them pulled a gun and put it to his ear and fired. but the gun misfired. and while they were struggling, wild bill got his guns out and shot both of them and realizing that it was probably not going to be popular with their cohorts in the seventh cavalry, he crashed out the back of the saloon, went back to his room, got a winchester and a box of cartridges and went to the town cemetery to wait for his his last stand. but the soldiers are smart enough to realize it was wild bill hickok. they were going up against. so they didn't show up and the next day he left town. but he was also not above tricks. he was a drunk one time was on a horse and pulled a gun on him and said, i'm going to shoot you while bill and hitchcock said, gesture behind the guy and said, don't shooting boys. he's drunk. and when the guy turned around,

hickok pulled his gun and shot him. so. those kind of things were considered pretty admirable. if you could do that kind of thing. so i think that's that's why, you know, now it's a little different situation sometimes. and also they weren't cameras to record some of this stuff. so we don't know really what happened. we just know what was recounted by the witnesses. do you cover the origin of a bat? masterson's nickname when you're and how much veracity there to that there's you know, it's it's i don't know what the answer is. his name was ed birth was william bartholomew. master orson. he was born in quebec and his family moved to kansas when he was in his teens. and he changed his name. for some reason, nobody knows why. to william barclay masterson and people called him that. and the theories are everything

from after he was wounded badly in his first gunfight, he carried a cane and he was use that to bat people around the head. so that's one thing. another was he looked a lot like a french-canadian scout whose name was that he was name was something baptiste and they called him bat and then a third is that it was just a a derivation of the word of bartholomew. so it's not really clear why he was called bat masterson, but it stuck and in the in the wild west, it was great to have a nickname or a name like that. you were dirty dave root, a bar or texas jack johnson or turkey creek. jack in turkey creek jack johnson or texas vermillion. you got more respect than if you walked in and your name was bill jones, so that might have been part of it, too.

i don't know. anything else. now, you have to read the book to find out the rest of it. i have a question here. so we have sort of examined the ways that 1876 was drastically different from today. but was there anything that was actually really similar that stood out to you. yeah, there were. and part of it has to do with who we are as americans. and i don't want to get overly poetic, but. americans in 1876 had just gone through or ten years past had gone through a civil war. and they were restless. they were on the move. and there was a wild west to be explored. and as i said, eight out of ten americans still lived east of the mississippi. but there were immigrants coming in by the tens of thousands who wanted cheap land. and there were people that want

americans who were already here that wanted to go with them and so the idea of the frontier was was wide open and we've always been a restless people since we since we got here is european-american anyway. and i think that's still true today. i think that we do innovation maybe instead of moving to idaho, but that restlessness and that desire to to on and do something else, whatever we're doing, i think that's still with us. and clearly, the political divide goes up and down in 1876, it happened to be just as bad as it is now in terms of the the dichotomy ten years from now, maybe it'll be like it was in 1904 where things were pretty stable. but i also think that we're not americans in in throughout our history. we're not great thinkers. we haven't put you know, we

don't have a lot of philosophers. we don't have a lot of artists that are recognized the world round as and we don't have with the possible exception of the author, great writers. but we do make things, we do things, we create things, we look at problems and we say, this is how you do it and what happened at the centennial exposition that came out because we had dozens and dozens of better ways to do things from barbed wire to sewing machines to butter churns to the typewriter to weaving things and textile mills. and we were good at that. and we still are good at that. and everyone's why you hear the woe is us. we've lost our edge on making semiconductors or exporting something, but we're still we still do pretty well. we still hold our own. i think i think that's something that we've had for the last

hundred and 50 years. so. that it. well, mark twain said that few centers are saved after the first 20 minutes of the sermon. so you guys are all in pretty good shape. thank you very much.