Legends and Tales of the American West Read online

  THE PANTHEON FAIRY TALE AND FOLKLORE LIBRARY

  African Folktales by Roger D. Abrahams

  Afro-American Folktales by Roger D. Abrahams

  American Indian Myths and Legends by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz

  Arab Folktales by Inea Bushnaq

  Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Moss Roberts

  The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

  An Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katharine Briggs

  Favorite Folktales from Around the World by Jane Yolen

  Folktales from India by A. K. Ramanujan

  French Folktales by Henri Pourrat

  Gods and Heroes by Gustav Schwab

  Irish Folktales by Henry Glassie

  Japanese Tales by Royall Tyler

  Legends and Tales of the American West by Richard Erdoes

  The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland

  Northern Tales by Howard Norman

  Norwegian Folk Tales by Peter Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe

  The Old Wives’ Fairy Tale Book by Angela Carter

  Russian Fairy Tales by Aleksandr Afanas’ev

  Swedish Folktales and Legends by Lone Thygesen Blecher and George Blecher

  The Victorian Fairy Tale Book by Michael Patrick Hearn

  Copyright © 1991 by Richard Erdoes

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover as Tales from the American Frontier by Pantheon Books in 1991.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Legends and tales of the American West / edited, told, retold, and illustrated by Richard Erdoes. p. cm. Originally published: Tales from the American frontier. c1991. (Pantheon fairy tale and folklore library). eISBN: 978-0-307-80161-6 1. Tales—West (U.S.) 2. Legends—West (U.S.) 3. Frontier and pioneer life—West (U.S.)—Folklore. 1. Erdoes, Richard. II. Title. III. Series: Pantheon fairy tale and folklore library.

  GR109.T35 1998 398.2’0978—dc21 98-15793

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: “Thunder Bay” from The Saginaw Paul Bunyan by James Stevens. Copyright 1925, 1947 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and renewed 1953 by James Stevens. “Good for Our Assets” from Saloons of the Old West by Richard Erdoes. Copyright © 1979 by Richard Erdoes. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  American Folklore Society: “The Two Witches” from “A New Mexico Village” by Helen Zunser, from Journal of American Folklore 48:188, 1935. Reprinted by permission. Not for further reproduction.

  The Richmond Organization: Excerpts from Billy the Kid collected, adapted, and arranged by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax. TRO - copyright © 1938 (renewed) Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, N.Y. Reprinted by permission.

  v3.1

  To Jean, my favorite storyteller

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  It Ain’t Necessarily So

  Foreword

  Chapter 1 Ohio Fever

  The Devil and Major Stobo

  The Cheater Cheated

  The Wild Hunt

  Dreams

  The Skeleton Hand

  The Wild Hunter of the Juniata

  The Consequences of Not Letting a Man Have His Drink

  The Laughing Head

  Chapter 2 The Long Hunters

  Tarzan Boone

  Swallowing a Scalping Knife

  That’s John’s Gun!

  A Clever Runner

  A Damn Good Jump

  The Warrior Woman

  The Corcondyle Head

  Chapter 3 Backwoodsmen

  The Irrepressible Backwoodsman and Original Humorist

  Grinning the Bark off a Tree

  Davy Crockett on the Stump

  The Drinks Are on Me, Gentlemen

  Gouging the Critter

  Jim Bowie and His Big Knife

  Won’t You Light, Stranger?

  Ohio Poem

  Chapter 4 Ring-Tailed Roarers of the Western Waters

  A Shooting Match

  Did Such a Helliferocious Man Ever Live?

  Like Father, Like Daughter

  She Fought Her Weight in She-B’ars

  He Crowed and Flapped His Wings

  A Fight Between Keelboatmen Averted

  Stranger, Is This a Free Fight?

  The Screaming Head

  Stopping Drinking for Good

  Chapter 5 Mountain Men

  Little Big Man

  Kit Carson and the Grizzlies

  Run for Your Life, White Man!

  Old Solitaire

  Pegleg Smith and Headless Harry

  Mind the Time We Took Pawnee Topknots?

  Lover Boy of the Prairies

  Putrefactions

  The Injin Killed Me Dead

  Heaven According to Old Gabe

  Damn Good Shootin’

  Uncle Joe the Humorist

  Ba’tiste’s Nightmare

  Song of the Voyageur

  Chapter 6 Timber!

  Paul Bunyan and His Little Blue Ox

  Paul Bunyan Helps to Build a Railroad

  Kidnapped by a Flea

  Thunder Bay

  Chapter 7 Gold! Gold! Gold!

  Tommy-Knockers

  It Had a Light Where Its Heart Ought to Have Been

  He Ate All the Democrats of Hinsdale County

  A Golden-Haired Fellow

  Treasures of Various Kinds

  The Missing Chest

  Chapter 8 Git Along, Little Dogies

  The Saga of Pecos Bill

  The Taming of Pecos Bill’s Gal Sue

  Coyote Makes a Texas Cowboy

  The Heart-Shaped Mark

  The Skeleton Bride

  Western Jack and the Cornstalk

  Better Move That Drat Thing!

  Being Afoot in Roswell

  Outstunk the Skunk

  Chapter 9 They Died with Their Boots On

  No-Head Joaquín and Three-Fingered Jack

  The Headless Horseman of the Mother Lode

  El Keed

  El Chivato

  He Rose from the Grave

  A Whale of a Fellow with a Gun

  The King of the Pistoleers

  A Western Duel

  The Nuptials of Dangerous Davis

  Killing Off the James Boys

  Theme and Variations

  The Winchester Ghosts

  Chapter 10 Bucking the Tiger

  A Hard Head

  Indians Can Play Poker

  Jim Bowie Takes a Hand

  The Curly-Headed Little Boy

  Shall We Have a Drop?

  Colonel Tubbs Strikes It Rich

  Good for Our Entire Assets

  The One-Eyed Gambler

  Chapter 11 Lady Wildcats of the Plains

  Born Before Her Time

  How Old Calam Got Her Name

  Calamity Jane Meets a Long-Lost Lover

  Chapter 12 The Man Who Never Was

  Deadwood Dick

  Deadwood Dick and the Grizzly

  Deadwood Dick to the Rescue

  Chapter 13 An’ That’s My Roolin’

  The Law West of the Pecos

  Ah Ling’s Hommyside

  Fining the Deceased

  The Hanging of Carlos Robles

  Roy Bean’s Pet Bear

  Judge Ba
rker, Old Zim, and the One-Eyed Mule

  El Cuatro de Julio

  A Drink’s Worth of Punishment

  Chapter 14 Sky Pilots

  Preachin’ One Can Understand

  The Parable of the Prodigal Son

  Lissen to the Heavenly Poker Player!

  Hear What the Great Herd Book Says!

  A Funeral Oration

  A Black Hills Sermon

  Chapter 15 Critters

  The Valley of Headless Men

  A Loup-Garou, or a Windigo, or Maybe a Carcajou

  The Call of the Wild

  The Windigo

  The Great White Stallion of the West

  Until Judgment Day

  El Diablo Negro

  Snake Yarns

  A Rolling Snake Gathers No Moss

  The White Snakes

  A Pair of Fine Boots

  The Young Man Who Wanted to Be Snakebit

  The Peg-Leg Cat

  Chapter 16 Mostly Lies

  Somebody in My Bed

  The Weather

  It Gets Mighty Cold Around Here

  Texican Liars

  Chapter 17 Miracles, Saints, and Witches

  The Three Lost Daughters

  The Two Witches

  The Owl Witch

  San Isidro and the Angel

  A Riddle

  The Many-Times-Killed Young Man

  The Caveman of the Hermit Peaks

  The Miracles of Chimayo

  The Miraculous Staircase

  The Hitchhiker

  Source Notes

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  It Ain’t Necessarily So

  Reader beware! This is a book of legends and fairy tales, not a work of cold, factual history. Sagas of the American West differ from those of other countries insofar as they often deal with real, historical personalities made into fairy-tale characters. Some events had hardly occurred when mythmakers were already at work to corriger la vérité, as the French put it, making poetical mountains out of historical molehills.

  Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie did not fight to the death at the Alamo, but surrendered and were later butchered. John Colter did not hide himself inside a beaver hut in company with its furry tenants, but under floating driftwood. Wild Bill Hickok, “King of the Pistoleers,” could not shoot straight. Pegleg Pete did not amputate his own leg, but let Bill Sublette do it for him. Calamity Jane did not acquire her name because she rescued a soldier from dire calamity, but because gentlemen, after spending a night with her, were struck by a “venereal calamity.” Deadwood Dick, Paul Bunyan, and Pecos Bill existed only in some writers’ vivid imaginations. All true, but when faced with a choice between sober fact and beguiling poesy, I have chosen poesy every time. Damn the debunkers!

  These tales are all well over one hundred years old. They reflect the language, foibles, and prejudices of their time. The settlers who despoiled the Indians of their land called them “fiends,” “heathens,” or “red devils.” They were themselves often considerably more savage than those they called savages. Scalping, after all, was a white man’s invention. And of course, you hate most those whom you have injured and robbed. On the other hand, there was much intermarriage, legal or illegal, between whites and Native Americans, some of the pathfinders and trappers becoming more Indian than the Indians themselves in the process. White America could never make up its mind whether to look upon the Indians as noble savages, unspoiled children of nature—morally superior to their white conquerors—or “fiendish redskins.” The Indians, for their part, had their own choice epithets for the palefaces—“fat-takers,” “hairy fools,” or “evil spidermen,” in their respective languages. We should not forget that white bounty hunters going after human game, “to make room for civilization,” received ten dollars for every scalp from an Indian male and five dollars for those from women and children.

  In the Southwest, those called Anglos and Norteamericanos called the Hispanics “greasers.” The locals retaliated by calling the invaders “gringos.” However, it was the Hispanic vaquero who taught the newcomers how to become cowboys, enriching the American language with such words as “lasso,” “rodeo,” “corral,” “remuda,” “bronco,” and innumerable others.

  Some of the stories that struck the nineteenth-century frontiersman as funny seem outrageous to us now, yet are an unerasable part of our folklore. The Frontier West was macho country, in which, sometimes, women played a conspicuous part. It was a violent land in which folks went to see a hanging as nowadays they would go to a movie or a county fair. And yet, reading today’s newspapers or watching the news on the idiot box, one might come to the conclusion that the Old West was a comparatively peaceable place. Colorful, raunchy, violent, lyrical, tragic, or funny, these tales are not always—to use a modern term—“politically correct.” Enjoy them in a spirit of innocence.

  Richard Erdoes

  Foreword

  Myths are indications of people’s soul and character. We carry within us the memories of age-old ancestral tales, transmitted by mouth from generation to generation until the arrival of the myth-killing boobtube. In the words of Joseph Campbell, “Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of human life.”

  Legends become a nation’s fate. The Odyssey embodies not only the poetry of the ancient Greeks, but also their restless, adventurous nature, which urged them to sail their frail oared crafts from the Black Sea to the Pillars of Hercules and beyond, to the Land of Amber on the Baltic shores.

  The Saga of the Nibelungs epitomizes the German’s lust for war—war for its own sake, waged not to win, but to die.

  In the stories of Gargantua and Pantagruel shines forth the spirit of France—l’esprit, élan vital, humor, ribaldry, the love of women and the good things in life.

  The essence of American legends, particularly of western tales, is exaggeration. Nowhere else in the world can one find boastful grandiloquence like this. It is an exaggeration born of space—tales as big as the continent, stretching from sea to sea, stories evolving from a background of mighty rivers, endless plains, and shining mountains. It is this penchant for exaggeration which, in our own days, gave rise to a John Wayne, a Rambo, or a Batman. In western tales everything is larger than life, blown up out of all proportions as super-trappers fight super-Indians, super-ghosts, and super-bears. Lies are super-lies, as big as the proverbial Ocean of Grass.

  Heroic tales rise out of a people on the move, discovering what is unknown, possessing themselves of new, strange lands, leaving history behind, pushing into a barely perceived future. Bragging is elevated into a novel, uniquely American art. Strangers introduce themselves: “I’m a rip-tail roarer! I can whip my weight in wildcats and tackle a grizzly without flinchin’! I was suckled by a she-bear and the click of a six-shooter is music to my ears. I’m from Texas, gentlemen. They call me the Great-Rip-tailed Roarer!”

  The answer to this brag might be: “I’m the double-jawed hyena of the West. I got two rows of nipples and holes bored for more. I pull up trees by the roots an’ if a mountin gits in my way, I jest kick her to one side. I’m a rarin’, tearin’ tornado of chain lightning, the idol of all wimmin and bad news to their men. I hail from Missouri, gentlemen. I’m half horse and half alligator!”

  Fellows such as these had women to match. A toughened “soiled dove of the prairie” might announce herself: “I’m the human wildcat! I can lick a mountain lion with one hand tied behind my back! My bonnet is a hornets’ nest garnished with bear claws. My dress is all wolfskin. I can scream like a panther and outdance any gal from here to Californy. I have a baked horny toad for breakfast and can take on ten gentlemen in a single hour and leave ’em limp with exhaustion! They call me Deadwood Dolly!”

  The legends of the Old World go back to the dawn of history. They are peopled with gods and heroes of Ancient Greece, Egypt, and Babylon. They carry the traces of deeds of Thor, Odin, and Celtic faeries. By contrast, tales of the American West are newborn, a prod
uct of, at most, a measly two hundred years. They deal, therefore, in many cases with real people and real events, with such backwoods characters and mountain men as Mike Fink, Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyan, Kit Carson, or Killbuck. Some of these men became legends in their own lifetime thanks to the fertile imagination of eastern journalists and writers of penny dreadfuls who had Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett kill three Indians with one bullet, subdue ferocious grizzlies with their fists, swing Tarzan-like from vines and branches to save themselves from savage pursuers. A fanciful article in Harper’s Weekly made Wild Bill Hickok, the King of the Pistoleers, into a culture hero overnight. Other writers manufactured out of whole cloth a love affair between him and an outrageously romanticized Calamity Jane, in reality a horse-faced, alcoholic sometime prostitute. In reality, Wild Bill could not hit the side of a barn at five paces according to those who really knew him.

  Buffalo Bill was, 90 percent of him, an invention of Nat Buntline’s creative mind. Deadwood Dick never existed except in the pages of a New York city slicker called Ed Wheeler.

  David Crockett pretended to be annoyed with the writer who had made him into a living legend, so annoyed that he decided to write his own autobiography. Crockett complained that the author of his spurious “autobiography” “professed to give my narrative (as he often does) in my own language, and then puts in my mouth such language as would disgrace even an outlandish African. He must himself be sensible of the injustice he has done me, and the trick he has played off on the public. I have met with hundreds, if not thousands of people who have almost in every instance expressed the most profound astonishment at finding me in human shape, and with the countenance, appearance, and common feelings of a human being. It is to correct all these false notions, and to do justice to myself, that I have written.” Thus the irrepressible backwoodsman made his own myths, “full of lies as a dog has fleas,” in the opinion of one contemporary.

  The men out of whose lives fairy tales were created did indeed exist. Their legends are history turned upside down; for the overwhelming part they are fiction, but with a microscopic dash of fact to give them verisimilitude. Many of these folk heros were less than imposing in real life. Kit Carson was a diminutive fellow weighing 135 pounds with his boots on. Brooklyn-born Billy the Kid was a buck-toothed juvenile delinquent, Calamity Jane ugly as sin. Many of these supermen and superwomen, by modern standards, were not very attractive personalities. One nineteenth-century author wrote, somewhat apologetically: “If it be objected that many of these worthies seem to lack a sufficient respect for the sacredness of human life, their surroundings should be remembered. If they were apparently too ready with the knife or the trigger it was because their own lives were felt to be held cheaply by many about them who were unrestrained by the law.” The writer added piously: “At least we have glorified no gory outlaws, nor have we painted in alluring colors the road to the penitentiary and the scaffold.”