Wild Bill Hickok & Dave Tutt

My book entitled Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents has been released (or at least it's available for order from online bookstores); so for the next several posts, I thought I'd touch briefly on some of the subjects covered in the book. A few of them I have already mentioned in previous posts, but most of them I have not previously mentioned.
Chapter One of the book is an account of Wild Bill Hickok's shootout with Davis Tutt on the Springfield square shortly after the close of the Civil War. I won't try to recount the event here, but I'll mention two or three things that struck me as remarkable as I was doing my research, because they were things I was not already aware of. The first thing is that the circumstances surrounding the event and the guilt or innocence of either party were not black and white. In the popular myth, of course, Wild Bill is the good guy, but in reality, he had something of a notorious reputation himself, at least around Springfield. Many Southern-leaning citizens felt that the jury, composed almost exclusively of Northern sympathizers, brought in its not guilty verdict more because of the fact that Hickok had been a Union soldier and Tutt had served in the Confederate army than because of the circumstances of the duel.
We usually hear that the Hickok-Tutt gunfight grew out of dispute over a card game, but I was a little surprised to learn that Tutt, according to at least one report, was not actually involved in the game. Tension between the two men (partly over a romantic rivalry) had supposedly already reached such a point that Hickok refused to play cards with Tutt, and the dispute that led directly to the gunfight involved a prior debt that Hickok owed Tutt, not a debt arising out of the game that occurred on the fateful day.
Finally, my research has led me to believe that the gunfight occurred later on the same day that the poker game took place, not the next day as many accounts suggest. It should be remembered that back in those days card games were often played during daylight hours, mainly because of the unavailabilty of electric lights. Since the gunfight took place around 6 p.m., it seems logical to conclude, and the evidence seems to suggest, that the card game had taken place earlier the same day, not the previous day.

Baxter Springs

Few towms in the Ozarks have a richer history than Baxter Springs. (I consider Baxter Springs in the Ozarks, although admittedly it's right at the western edge.) The town is famous on at least three separate counts.
First it is well known as the site of Quantrill's battle and massacre there in October of 1863. After attacking Fort Blair, which was still under construction at the time, and being repelled, Quantrill attacked and annihilated a Union wagon train under General James Blunt that was on its way into the fort, leaving over ninety bodies strewn about the field.
Baxter is also famous for being the first cow town in Kansas. During the years immediately after the Civil War, before the railroad reached towns farther west like Abilene and Wichita, Baxter Springs was the main destination for herds of longhorns driven through Indian Territory from Texas to Kansas. After the long journey along the Shawnee Trail, the cattle would usually lay over in Baxter before being herded (later shipped) on to their final destination. Part of the reason for Baxter's rise as a cattle town was the fact that Kansas had laws that allowed the Texas longhorns to enter the state only during specified months, and the cattle would lay over in Baxter, which at the time was located south of the state line in the Cherokee Neutral Lands, while awaiting passage. Although Baxter's life as a rowdy cow town was short lived, for a while it roared just as loudly as its successors farther west. Larry O'Neal of the Baxter Springs Heritage Center and Museum told me yesterday that the only thing the other towns had that Baxter lacked was a famous marshal like Wyatt Earp. I reminded him that probably part of the reason Baxter lacked a famous lawman was because two of the town's early marshals were killed in the line of duty. I find it a little ironic that perhaps the only reason they didn't become famous was that they didn't live long enough to embellish their stories the way Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok did.
Baxter declined for a time during the late 1800s after its hurrah as a cow town, but it revived in the early part of the twentieth century during the tri-state district's lead mining days and once again became a booming town for awhile.
Baxter has a few other minor claims to fame, too, such as being the hometown of golfer Hale Irwin, but the first three are the main ones.
By the way, Treble Heart Books has just released my new historical novel, entitled Showdown at Baxter Springs, that is based on the town's heyday as booming cow town. As far as I know, it's the only western ever set in early-day Baxter Springs. For anybody who's interested, you can order the book directly from the publisher at http://www.trebleheartbooks.com/SDLarryWood.html.

Wyatt Earp

Many people, when they think of the Old West, automatically think of places farther west than Missouri--places like Dodge City, Kansas; Tombstone, Arizona; and Virginia City, Nevada. Actually, though, there was period of time immediately after the Civil War when the Ozarks region was the Old West.
For instance, Wild Bill Hickok's shootout with Davis Tutt immediately after the Civil War on the square in Springfield is widely considered the first gunfight of the Old West era. And, as I've mentioned in previous posts, the lead-mining town of Granby, Missouri, was one of the wildest and most lawless towns in America in the years leading up to and immediately following the Civil War. Then there was Baxter Springs, Kansas, at the edge of the Ozarks, which lays claim to the title of "First Cow Town in Kansas."
Another example is the fact that Wyatt Earp; who, of course, went on to Wild West fame as a lawman in places like Wichita, Dodge City, and especially Tombstone; got his start as as a lawman when he was hired as the constable of Lamar, Missouri, in the fall of 1869. Earp left Lamar, though, about a year later under a cloud of suspicion, and he was subsequently sued twice in Barton County, once over an allegation that he had failed to turn over public funds that he had collected while serving as constable and a second time over a charge that he had falsified court documents. In fact, although dime novels, movies, and TV made Wyatt Earp into a hero and a romantic legend of the Old West, a cloud of controversy or suspicion hovered over much of his whole career. The point at hand, though, is that it all started here in the Ozarks, America's first Wild West.