Lincoln County War (¿quién es?)

This week, we discuss the Lincoln County War and the legend of Billy the Kid.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to an hour of our time, the podcast where
we pick a topic, research it, come back to tell
you what we've learned. Today, we're continuing our series about
the Old West by talking about the Lincoln County War,
the bloodiest conflict in the history of New Mexico, if
not the Wild West altogether. It also spawned the legendary
figure of Billy the Kid. I'm Joe. So right before

(00:35):
we started recording, my wife was helping me using her
zoom account.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yes, but she was looked at me and you know,
I'm doing a great, fantastic podcasting right now. But I'm
wearing a like my radiest gray hoodie. Actually this is
not my radiest hoodie. I have one that literally has
like acid burn in it from battery acid. That's the
story for another day.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
It's covered in rats, covered in rats.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's just it's actually just made out of rat hair.
But anyway, she was like, is that a Is that
what you're wearing? And I was like, yeah, just talking
with talking with Dave, no offense brother, and she was like,
don't you like have a video? So she was she
was concerned that the podcast audience would would think that

(01:28):
I look for that.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
I look, I gotcha. Yeah, no, because you guys you
can't see us, and we don't really use video for
social media promotion much anymore either.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
So yes, So if you're if you're out there in
uh in you know, radio land, just imagine that I
am dressed impeccably right now. Actually imagine Dave and I
are kind of dressed like Doc hall Day and uh
White from uh from the film Tombstone.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, or maybe like Emilio Estevez.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
And nah, but not young guns too, not young Guns too.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Have you ever heard any like at the time, a
lot of like the women who really liked that movie
called it young buns.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Oh yeah, Well, as my friend from college is fond
of reminding everyone, all chaps are assholes, that's true, and
I that lives as an intrusive thought in my head.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, when someone says assless chaps, they really just mean
that they didn't put anything underneath them.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah. And when someone or everyone says like and this
doesn't happen a lot because we live in the Midwest,
they're a lot of cowboys here, but someone mentioned something
about chaps. I have to resist surge to say, did
you know that all ass or all chaps or assholes.
So that's not what you bring up and play company, right,

(02:53):
But why why are we talking about young Guns despite
or besides the fact that it has a amazing soundtrack
by John bon Jovi Not bon Jovi, I'm pretty sure,
just just Jon and I actually think that might be
the second one. And the reason I know this is
because my mother had that record our CD. She had

(03:16):
owned that CD and when you said the thing about
young buns and I'm she definitely called that together and
I I don't like it.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah. Oh yeah, Well, why we're talking about all this
is because we are still on our Wild West month
of January here. Otherwise suppose this, uh you know, this
episode's coming out on February seventh, So.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
But for just keeping it going, Yeah, well.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Honestly, we just didn't think that the The Tombstone and
the the Ok Corral episode would be two parts. It
was just very very dense, and you know what, this
is also a very dense story and there's a lot
of people to keep track of. Maybe it's a little
less dense, but we're gonna be talking about the Lincoln
County War.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Well as it is just as like kind of like
a way to keep things manageable. I am not really
going to use a ton of names in as much
as I can, because these two gangs had all like
had a ton of people, and we'll talk about the

(04:31):
main people, but man, there's a lot of people getting killed.
And it's like, you know, I think audio format, you
can't see these people's like names written down. I just
I think it's gonna like kind of wash over you.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, it's gonna blurt together a little bit. But it
involves some, you know, very well known characters of the
Old West. Yeah, most notably Billy the Kid.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Billy the Kid, this is this is kind of a
thing now launched his his legend.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Oh, I mean, it was kind of I mean, he
was extremely young when he died, so this is kind
of like, yeah, this is this is the big event
of his life.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
It was, and then well he became like an outlaw
sort of after this. But the guy who's like for
like a year, Yeah, the guy who's most famous for
are the most the guy who's most responsible for making
Billy the Kid famous is the guy that killed him.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Oh oh absolutely, Yeah. So a couple of things I
want to say about Billy the Kid, just to start here.
You know, there's that there's only one photo of him
that we've been able to trace as actually being of
Billy the Kid. There are other ones that people claim
or Billy the Kid, but in that photo he looks
like a real I don't know, I'm gonna say slack

(05:53):
jawed yokel. But apparently he was a pretty good looking guy.
And I was eating something or listening to something. They
were saying, imagine having your worst photo be the photo
that you're known for forever. Also, in the photo, he's
holding his gun in well, actually, I'm looking at it

(06:15):
now and oh, I see what it is. Sorry. In
the photo his revolver is on his hip, but on
his left hip. But this image is actually flipped. Yeah,
so he was not left handed, despite like the famous
movie about about him, what was it called, like the
left handed the left handed gun. Yeah, he was not

(06:35):
left handed.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
I remember watching some one of these like dumb late
night you know History Channel or whatever shows, way way
way way back in the day that was like using
this as like part of some conspiracy theory that he
actually like survived and and you know, lived to be

(06:57):
an old band. It's because like they flipped the picture
and he was actually not left handed all this kind
of stuff.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, no, that that's that's not how that went.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah. Well, what I wanted to say real quick about
Billy the Kid just fast forwarding to the end of
his life, because I think this is important. It was
actually I watched I just don't usually do for this.
I watched a lot of YouTube videos because I don't know.

(07:31):
I basically I had kind of like already done all
the all the note taking that I needed to for this,
and then I was kind of just like tracking down
other other leads and I was just seeming like kind
of what other people had said about this. There was
a there's a YouTube channel like it's called the Cynical Historian,

(07:53):
so shout out. I can't vouch for any of his
other videos, to be honest, but I watched one and
it seemed like this guy's actually like a historian, like
a real history and like PhD history, and he was
talking about this being part of his dissertation, so like, oh, okay, yeah,
not just some Yahoo yeah davids like oh, we're watching

(08:14):
YouTube videos, that's what we're doing this week. But anyway,
he pointed out that it's very relevant that Billy the
kid's last words or do you know? His last words were.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
I don't And that seems like something I would know
that the first thing I would want to read.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah, so yeah, because you love you know, that kind
of kind of thing like the cob stuff. As we've
discussed on the podcast. His last words were kim as
kim z, which means oh right, who is it? Oh
is it? Who is it?

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yes, And this person was pointing this YouTuber was pointing
out that it is relevant that a man who was
born in the eastern United States did not know Spanish
before his family moved to Mexico, to New Mexico, that
his last words were in Spanish. Yeah, because I think that, like,

(09:05):
we just aren't going to get be able to delve
into a ton of this complexity. But like a lot
of inca has been spilled writing about this conflict, and
one of the things that kind of gets like overlooked,
I guess is that, yes, it was a battle between

(09:28):
these two like kind of warring factions of guys partly
based on revenge and money, but also this was tied
into kind of political and racual conflicts that were happening
at the time. New Mexico was kind of a volatile place.

(09:50):
One of the reasons why you had all these armed
people was because they were armed too to fight indigenous people,
because this was at the height of the extermination campaign
against several of the tribes in the southwest. And also

(10:15):
you have conflict between the largely Spanish speaking Hispano population
of New Mexico is essentially the original residents of the
original not the original residence. The original residence were the
indigenous people, but the people who had been there for many,
many generations coming into conflict with the Anglos, the Americans

(10:38):
who were moving in, and then conflict between Republicans and Democrats,
essentially people who had been on the side of the
Union in the Civil War which had just recently ended,
and people who had been on the side of the Confederacy.
So anyway, I think we may ultimately end up because
the show is supposed to be an hour not talking

(11:00):
by a lot of that stuff, But like, I just
want to make sure that we highlight that that complexity
is in there.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, you got to you gotta set the stage a bit.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
And I also think the last thing I'll say before
we kind of before we get into it is that
I think that this I wanted to do this episode
because I think it is that the exception that proves
the rule that I was talking about last time. And again,
it is not my idea that the wild my thesis
that the wild West was not as that there was

(11:29):
not as much wanton violence as people think, and that
most of the violence that we hear about in legend
was actually sort of like organized violence. So again, think
about Okay Corral. Three total people were killed, and yes,
it was obviously like a bloody conflict, but it was

(11:50):
kind of like again two factions who were sort of
vying for control of this town. This was a much
much bigger conflict that is, yeah, rightly called war and
culminating against it they called the Battle of Lincoln because
it was you know, they all had kind of like

(12:11):
different motivations. Uh. They there wasn't like a good guy's
and a bad guy's side, so to speak. But it
is the case that this was not just you know,
dudes getting drunk and shooting each other in the street.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah. I think you know we talked about with with
the Okay Corral. You know that the line between good
guy and bad guy is pretty pretty thin. There, but
I think it's even thinner here. Yeah, because this was
more of like a you know, a feud and less
about like law and justice. And obviously with that one

(12:49):
it became a feud. There was like a law and
justice angle there.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, they were ultimately trying to like enforce the laws
of the town. There was the whole thing about why
it er like, you know, the sheriff's wife and you
know that kind of stuff that they kind of like
brought them into conflict. But yeah, this is just like
two bunches of assholes, and and it got the fight
got so the fight got so bad that the US

(13:15):
government tend to step in. Yeah, and I didn't really
think about this at the time that we started studying this,
but the we may end up hearing a lot about
something called the Posse Comptatis Act.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah. I was gonna bring that up, yes.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
In in our current time and that is that stems from, uh,
from this this time period. So yeah, well yeah, it
directly was a result of this, all right, So we
want to get it get in it here absolutely.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
You know. Also, they always talk about you know, people's
last words, but I think unless you're shot in the head,
you know, you might say something, but probably the last
words yeah fuck yeah, it just doesn't sound as good.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Uh yeah. I mean I want to say that my
last words will be like something cool, but they'll probably
be like yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
I heard somebody say once that they were afraid that
their last words would be like whoop.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be like yeah shit, whoops whoops.
The other thing I got really interested in this, I'm
not going to talk about guns and stuff a bunch.
I promised I kind of talked about that last time.
You're going to be these folks are gonna be using
a lot of the same weaponry that we talked about
last time. And we'll talk a little bit about something

(14:56):
to start with here that is very near and dear
to my heart, because I believe that we have mentioned
a couple times on this podcast that I am actually
a native New Mexican. Was born in New Mexico, moved
when I was like three years old, so I don't
even remember very much of it. Learned actually quite a

(15:17):
bit of Spanish along with English. But I want to
talk about in New Mexico because I think, like again,
the history of New Mexico has a lot to do
with why the town of Lincoln or the County of Lincoln,
which was the largest county in the United States at
the time, was so violent. And obviously the history of

(15:39):
New Mexico goes back to prehistory, but I'm not going
to talk about that. We do know that people were
inhabiting New Mexico as early as twenty three thousand years ago,
based on some footprints that were found just in twenty seventeen,

(15:59):
So that's pretty cool. So anyway, yes, people have been
inhabiting this place for quite a long time. But we're
gonna skip way, way, way way ahead to like the
sixteenth century. The Spaniards were captivated by a legend of

(16:20):
the Seven Cities of Gold, tales of you know, fabulous
wealthy cities to the north, and so that led the
Spanish to travel north. A settlement that was what will
become modern day Santa Fe was established in sixteen ten,

(16:41):
and so this period of times, it's part of New Spain.
During this time, it is the case that the Spaniards
treated the indigenous people far better then the Americans would later,

(17:05):
although there was obviously still quite a lot of conflict
after after the Mexican War of Independence in eighteen twenty one,
New Mexico became part of the First Mexican Empire, and

(17:25):
so you can look at some older maps, it doesn't
have the same exact shape that the state of New
Mexico does now. And there was actually Texas try to
seize part of New Mexico around eighteen thirty six, which
kind of failed. But then after the First Mexican Republic

(17:54):
transitioned to something called the Centralist Republic of Mexico, which
is like the Second Mexican government about eighteen thirty five,
so they had a new constitution and everything. They actually
like had worse ties with the population in New Mexico,
and actually that sort of drew them closer to America

(18:19):
via trade and things like that. Following the Mexican American War,
which I do think we should talk about, which is
eighteen forty six to eighteen forty eight, Mexico seeded all
of its northern territories that's California, Texas, New Mexico to
the United States. Also, like part of what would become

(18:42):
Arizona was also in that, but that was Arizona wasn't
the thing at that point. Texas was admitted as a
state in eighteen forty six, and they again tried to
like claim parts of New Mexico. But what's really interesting
is New Mexican was eligible to become a state for

(19:03):
sixty years. They did not become a state until nineteen twelve.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 1 (19:10):
I know? And I asked, I asked my wife earlier
this evening wherever dinner. I was like, why do you
think that is? She was like, I bet it has
to do with racism. Yeah, I'm sure, to which I replied, however, did.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
You guess specifically? Like why?

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Well, because I mean, I think a lot of people
in this country don't really think about this, but there
are a lot of people in this country, millions and
millions and millions of people who speak Spanish are of
Mexican ancestry. They did not migrate here. The border changed

(19:55):
to encompass where they were living.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yeah, so America just sort of happened around them.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yeah, exactly, American happened. So that's the great to put it.
So you had this this large Hispamo population that basically
the you A lot of people in the US did not,
you know, think could quote unquote integrate into the rest
of the country. So it took quite a long time

(20:23):
for and actually a lot of people in New Mexico
sort of liked being a territory.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah. Well, at least, you know, at least one hundred
and fifty years have gone by since the day of
Billy the Kid, and we have finally reconciled with that
that issue.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, I'm really glad. I'm really glad that we have
no further issues with racism and Spanish speaking people. Yeah. So,
but anyway, in after the Mexican American War, New Mexico
becomes a territory. There is a lot of unrest though

(21:06):
in this period of time because both in the Civil War,
both the Confederate and the Union governments claimed ownership of
New Mexico Territory. The Confederacy claimed the part in the South,
which they called the Arizona Territory. And Dave, I've decided
that we need to do a episode about the the

(21:29):
big it's called the trans Mississippi theater of the Civil War,
which like no one ever talks.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
About, but I'm not that even means.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Well, it's like the western part of the Civil War.
And because you remember, like the western state skinny minted
to the Union was like a huge impetus for the
start of the war.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
Oh yes, like whether they would be whether they'd be
your slave.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
And so then that gets you to post Civil War
and why the County of Lincoln is named Lincoln. It
is aimed after Abraham Lincoln as a fuck you to
the former Confederates now Democrats in the States.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
And that's fun.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
So you have Texas is largely Democrat. New Mexico territory
is largely Republican. And there's also a lot of but
because the territorial system bred corruption, because the territorial governors
kind of like acted like many kings because they were,

(22:35):
you know, fairly autonomous. Sure, so that gets you to
the like kind of powder keg that was happening around
the late eighteen seventies and the time of Billion Kidd
and the Lincoln County War.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
I think one other thing to point out some of
the characters that we'll talk about some are Irish Cathlicks
while others are British. Yes, and so there is tension
there as well.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
So why is that Part of that is actually there
was a lot of well, so there's a lot of
corruption in land dealing, like this was after the Land
Grant Act. But a lot of the governors were like
basically like selling those land claims and things like that.

(23:29):
But prior to the Civil War, the Mexican government actually
like encouraged a lot of Europeans to migrate to this
area in order to populate it, which would act sort
of as like a a buffer against the aggression of

(23:51):
previously the Republic of Texas then later the United States. Right,
so that's kind of like there was a history of
Europeans immigrating here prior to this, So thank you for
pointing that out. Yeah, because so you've got like you've
got Americans, White Americans, Europeans, new essentially New Americans who

(24:15):
were formerly Mexican citizens absorbed into the US. You have
several Native American tribes that are all armed to the teeth. Yeah, yeah,
all right, So we want to get into it here.

(24:36):
So March twenty seventh, eighteen seventy, Lincoln County is founded.
It occupies a fifth of all the New Mexico Territory,
which makes it the largest county in the United States.
So if you're trying to administer this county, it is

(24:57):
very difficult because it is a vast land area. And
this is before the actually This is just after the
Transcontinental Railroad, the last sort of piece of New Mexico
was actually purchased. The Gadsden purchase was purchased from Mexico

(25:22):
in order to make a way for the part of
the Transatlantic Railroad. Okay, give it a head to April thirty,
eighteen seventy six, William Brady is elected the sheriff of
the town. An Irish immigrant, Lawrence Murphy, basically has a

(25:46):
monopoly on the town. They own, the store they own.
They are buying every people's cattle, not paying them very
good prices for it, to the point where their operation
is actually they're just the house the house, and they
even control like who gets elected sheriff. So Murphy, Lawrence

(26:11):
Murphy's the big boss, right, He's the one that picks
his friend William Brady to get elected to be the sheriff.
Right June twenty ninth, eighteen seventy six, So just just
a few months later, so you've got you know, this
guy Murphy owns almost all the land. A man named

(26:35):
John Henry Tunstall comes to the county and buy some lam.
He opens a ranch and he opens his own store.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Interesting, I have that as November of eighteen seventy six. Oh, interesting, Well,
at some point in eighteen seventy six after that election.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
Well he sorry, I believe he comes to at the
end of June founding the ranch and the store. I
think comes later. If that helps resolve that timeline with
what you have.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
I mean my timeline literally what I had read was
eighth November he arrives in Lincoln County. No, maybe not
so with the intention to develop a ranch. Okay, but
it's irrelevant. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Eighteen eighty seven. Beginning
beginning of eighteen eighty seven, Billy the Kid enters New Mexico.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
And Dave and you had a lot of information about
Billy kids, so feel free to chiming about him, more
about him than any point. Sure, sure he and he
truly was a child, because he would only live for
four more years after this.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, I mean he would have been seed eighteen seventy seven, right.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
I think he was seventeen went during.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
He'd he'd he'd have been seventeen. Yeah. He was born
Henry McCarty. Yeah, sometime in eighteen fifty nine in New
York City, So he wasn't in.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
New York City.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
New York city. He goes by many names. William H.
Bonnie is a common one, but Billy the Kid becomes
the name he's most known by. It Supposedly it's a
reference to not just him being young, but it's actually
more of like a Billy goat kid. But he likes

(28:41):
his name, he embraces it.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Well, that's important, all right. So then the so you've
got this conflict here between Murphy and the House and Tonstall.

(29:05):
In February eighteen seventy eight, the war begins and the
war lasts like almost like exactly one year, because the
end both starts on February eighteenth with this inciting incident
and it ends on February eighteenth. There, I mean, it's

(29:25):
not like an actual war, so it's no like treaty
or anything. So it's kind of hard to say like
exactly when you know the quote unquote war begins and ends.
But you know what I mean, right, sure, But what
happens was Sheriff Brady again, the guy who was sort
of installed by Murphy has and his posse shoots Tunstall.

(29:47):
I believe they shoot and right in the head, yes,
And then when this happens, that's that's the inciting incident
of the Lincoln County War.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, his killing is witnessed by a number of people,
the group that becomes known as the regulators, regulators in
which Billy the Kid is one of them, and he
is one of the people who witnesses.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, along with along with a Nate Dog and Warren
g Right.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
If you don't know, if you do get that reference,
it's probably time of ice your knees.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
If you don't get the reference, then look it up.
I guess sorry. They basically yeah, and the one side
of this conflict is so they're called the they're called
the Murphy Dolan gang. Dolan referring to his business partner

(30:55):
James Dolan. So Murphy and Co. And then Dolan and Co.
So that's how you get Murphy if you if you
read about this and you hear about the Murphy Dolan
faction versus the regulators, then that's that's where this comes from.
It's him and his business partner, these you know, fat

(31:15):
cats and a monopoly in the town. Sure, okay, Yeah,
So just a little bit more of what happened there
that this actually like went to the Secretary of the Interior,
which determined that Tunstall was shot in cold blood, and again,

(31:35):
like you said, the murderer was witnessed from a distance
by several people, including Billy the Kid. Now, this is
really I think dramatized in that movie Young Guns, because
I think it is true that Tunstall was was kind
to Billy the Kid and some of these other people.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Oh yeah, I think Billy, Billy really took this hard.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, but in the movie, I think it's like basically
like he's like their adopted father figure, so to speak,
and like it's a little bit dramatized. But these guys,
obviously I've.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
Never seen I've never seen Young Guns.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
But it's okay, sure it's but yeah, so these guys
obviously had a loyalty to Tonstall, so they essentially swore vengeance.
They they were deputized by the Lincoln County Justice of

(32:36):
the Peace along with a constable. They had legal warrants
for Tunstall's murders. So this is like, again, this is
not a situation where you have like the outlaws. On
the one hand, it's a little bit of common workoutkin
than we talked about last time. It's not like the
outlaws on one hand, and the you know, the the

(33:00):
the lawman. On the other hand, you had you had
officers of the law on both sides. Oh yeah, which
is why I say this was not just like you know,
wanton violence. This was like more about political corruption and
like these were like organized gangs of men who were
you know, fighting now with each other. Okay, so that

(33:21):
murder Tonstall that sets all this emotion. Okay, then so
you've got this posse. Led By was not led By,
but it includes Billy the Kid, who is uh going
and trying to hunt down Tunstall's murders. April twenty seventh
of that year, is about two months later, Billy the
Kid and the rest of the regulators ambushed Sheriff Brady

(33:46):
in front of Tunstall's store and killed him. Do you
have anything else to say about that?

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Ummmmmm no, nothing specifically. This is the first kind of
example of the revenge killings.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Yeah, so it's it's basically, yeah, it's like the classic feud.
You know, someone is killed and then now they after
exact revenge and kill someone else, and it's just like
sort of spirals. It is. It is exactly that. Yeah,
that's that's uh great.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
And they are gangs. Yeah, I mean That's that's what
it is.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah, Okay, again, there are a lot of names. I
guess I would mention their names were real quick. And again,
so we've got uh but Billy the Kid.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
Richard Dick Brewer, Frank McNabb, brew, Doc Skurlock, Jim French,
John Middleton, George Coe, Frank Coe, Jose Shavez Chavez, Charlie Bowdery,
Tom Afolliard, Fred Waite who was a chickasaw and Henry

(35:02):
Newton Brown.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
This is this is a multi eminent group two. I
think again, it's like relevant to point out, sure, okay,
what happens next? So Sheriff Brady is murdered. I don't
like zoom in here. I can't see the next thing.
May so just a few days later, m the next

(35:35):
thing that happens is something called the Blackwater massacre. So
on a few days later, the regulators are So they
had Africa.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
About about a month about a month after, well three
weeks after, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
So they had. They were riding back to Lincoln. They
had apprehended some of the Murphy Dolan gangs. They were
taking them through the foothills along the Blackwater Creek and
it they claimed that they had to kill them because
they were trying to escape, but they looked at the

(36:20):
bodies and they had like eleven bullet holes in them.
So they they murdered William McCluskey, who was trying to
help them escape, Buck Morton, and Frank Baker again some

(36:40):
of the members of the other gang. So yeah, no one,
no one believed that they had killed them, you know,
out of defense or something like that, because there was
eleven regulators and there was eleven bullets. So it definitely
looks like they executed them in the creek, right, Yeah.

(37:02):
So yeah, anyway, again, a lot of these accounts are
like it's secondhand, so the the the eleven bullets thing
is like sometimes disputed. It's it's hard to say. But anyway,
they they killed.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
Some little sensationalized often So.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
Yeah, they killed some of the other gang in cold blood. Okay.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
So then later on, you know, Joe to Button, you know,
you're saying the eleven bullets might be kind of blown
out of proportion. One thing, I don't remember whether we
talked about this with the Okay coral stuff, but at
this time, the stories of these outlaws in the Old

(37:48):
West or at the time and just in the West.
It was very popular with readers in the eastern part
of the United States, and so often those are the
ways that we're getting these stories, these publications that sent
that news to the East, and often it's sensationalized because
it was like a popular thing to read. So that
does cloud the information a little bit.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, that's a good point. And then also again, yeah,
some of these things are like they were told later
to a biographer, kind of like we talked about last
time with Whiter, kind of like spinning his own legend
later on his life, that kind of thing. I mixed

(38:33):
up two things in my in my nose. I'm so
sorry the Blackwater massacre happened first in March, and then
William Brady, the sheriff, was killed. So sorry. So William
Brady again, he's the sheriff. He was asked. He was
asking the attorney General of the territory, the New Mexico Territory,

(38:57):
to basically come and help because you have had a
lot of violence happening. At this point, this went up
to the territorial Governor, Samuel b. Axtell. The governor decreed
that the Justice of the Peace that had given the

(39:20):
warrant to the regulators or deputized them had done that illegally,
so that meant that now the regulators whose actions had
been legal were now illegal, so they're now kind of
like outlaws. He also revoked the Deputy US Marshal's status,

(39:44):
so that made Sheriff Brady the only lawmen in Lincoln County.
So now it does kind of become a tale of
you know, outlaws versus lawmen.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Right, They're they're literally taking the law into their own hands.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Now, okay, so now what happens, I'm sorry, is is
now they're now their al law has been they're still
out for revenge. April first, some of the regulators, including
Billy the Kid, got ready. Uh. So they keep using
Tunstall's debt, they keep using his store as like a

(40:22):
home base, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
They attack Brady and his deputies on the main street.
Brady got shot at least twelve times, and he's one
of his deputies was also killed. Two of his uh.

(40:45):
Two of the other gang members tried to go over
and get the arrest warrant from Brady's body or possibly
to get his rifle, it's not clear, Okay, and they're
obviously getting shot at during this time. Okay, so that
was the first of many gunfights that happens in the

(41:07):
middle of the street.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Damn.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Three days later, the regulators headed to a place called
Blazer's Mill, which was a sawmill and a trading post. Then.
So they're basically they're having a meal there and a
rancher named book Shot Rogers Bookshot Robbers, this is a cool,

(41:35):
cool name. Yeah, he was just going in to get
his check from like the ranch there, but he was
listed as one of the people on their arrest warrant
for Tunstall's murder. So they start shooting at him and

(41:57):
chasing him. He kind of like hole up in a
little this this place where they're at Blazer's Mill is
like a complex of buildings. He holds up one of
the buildings and he actually manages to kill one of
the regulators and wound four others.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Yeah, he kills let's see, he killed Brewer, yes, and
wounded Middleton, Skurlock, co and McCarty.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Yeah. Like I said, I'm not even saying the names.
I'm just saying which faction at this point. Although I
did that to say Buckshot Roberts because that's great.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Although really cool thing. George Coe. He survived this wound
and he I have a photo of him here from
nineteen thirty four as an old man.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Yeah, a couple of these guys lived at the time.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
The last survivor of the Blazer's Mill shootout. So mm hmm,
I think last survivor. I mean nineteen thirty four, we're talking,
you know, fifty five years later.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
Well Brewer was the leader of the Regulators at this point.
So they elect another guy McNabb as their their leader,
and then later these guys. Yeah, so the the Murphy

(43:37):
Dolan faction allies themselves at this point with a outlaw
gang called the Seven Rivers Warriors, which sounds pretty badass, honestly.
So so again like again you have like, yes, they
are officially at this point on the quote unquote the
side of the law, but it's there's a lot of corruption,

(43:58):
as I mentioned. Oh yeah, so they get in. So
the Seven Rivers Warriors get in a shootout with three
of the Regulators at a place called Fritz Ranch. McNabb
who is that that point the leader of the Regulators
is shot and killed. And at that point.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Is that Charlie Sheen plays in the movie.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Oh God, I don't know. I have not seen that
movie in a long time.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
M hmm.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
So the next day, some of those seven Rivers warriors
are actually killed in Lincoln, and the Regulators got blamed,
but no one can ever prove that they did it.
I supposed to seems likely, but it's yeah, it is.

(44:59):
It's not clear like they were actually killed. We just
know that some of the members of that gang allied
with the Murphy Dolan faction, died in Lincoln that day.
So some of the Regulators take up defensive positions in
the town and a shootout begins. So they're trading shots

(45:20):
like in the town of Lincoln with the Dolwan gang
and also members of the US Army Cavalry who were
either coming through town for some other reason or possibly
were sent there to try to keep the peace. Yeah,

(45:41):
So this leads to the biggest conflict, which is a
few months so Simmary tensions. And then this gets to
the Battle of Lincoln, which happened on July fifteenth, eighteen
seventy eight. So at several different points they've been shooting

(46:03):
at each other actually in the town. At this point
on July fifteenth, the two groups of regulators were surrounded
in two different parts of town. So then you have
so you have the regulators and then the Dolan Murphy

(46:27):
Slash Seven Rivers gang on the other side. This this
part I did one time. This part I did want
to talk about some of the Some of their regulators
during the battle chased a few of the Dolan men

(46:52):
into an outhouse and they had and these guys had
to crawl into the bottom of the outhouse to escape.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Oh wow, that's uh, probably not great.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
It's better than dying, but.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
I mean maybe it's sort of the defense.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Yeah. Yeah. The two the two main places where they
were hold up were in a house called the McSween house,
and then uh, and then a store. The people who
were hold up in the Billy the Kid was in

(47:41):
the McSween house, and then some of the other people
were in the store. So so over the course of time,
they're just training fires to standoff. They're they're shooting at
each other through the town. And they kept this up
until the army happened came into town under the command

(48:04):
of Colonel Nathan Dudley. They started pointing their cannons at
the Ellis store. And so at that point, Billy the
Kid Doc Scurlock and some of the other men ran away,
leaving the people in the mix. The rest of the
people in the McSween house to get captured or killed.

(48:26):
Right July nineteenth, so this is the like several days later,
they've been training gunfire through the town for several days.
Here the Murphy Dolan factions set the McSween house on fire.
There were actually children in the house. Susan McSween and

(48:48):
another woman and five children were allowed to leave, but
the men stayed inside and they were trying to like
fight the fire. By nightfall, the men inside the house
were able to escape out the back door of the

(49:08):
burning house. So several people died during this this fight,
at least two of the seven Rivers warriors, but several
of the regulators.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Got away, including Ability.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Including Ability Kittie. Crucially. Now, this was kind of that
was like the kind of the end of the It
was in the end of the conflict. It was it
was the end of the war, so to speak, because
what happened was the surviving regulators, especially the Ability kids,

(49:51):
sort of continued the fight as like fugitives, but they
they sort of scattered at this point and they were
doing now they were doing things like like you know,
actual like outlaw stuff like rustling cattle and robbing people
and things like that. Eventually they were all tracked down

(50:12):
and killed, including Billy the Kid. The Posse Comment Tatis
Act was signed by Ruther Rudvy Hayes in on June eighteen,
eighteen seventy eight. It actually would have prevented the use

(50:35):
of federal troops. So this is the law that says
that federal troops can't be used for domestic law enforcement.
That's why I said we'd probably be hearing about that.
But Hayes invoked a earlier act, the Insurrection Act of

(50:55):
eighteen oh seven, to send troops into sort of keep
quote unquote keep the peace.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Yeah. That Act empowers the President to deploy the US
military and National Guard troops within the United States in
particular circumstances, like to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
Mm hmm, sorry, so actually you might you might? You might?

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Do you think to yourself, like, well, how does how
doesn't the other act kind of undo this Insurrection Act?
But the Insurrection Act is sort of looked as a
an exemption yea to the pasta Coomatatis Act. So it's
the exception to the rule.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
It's one of these things where it's it hasn't happened
in sort of modern times, so it's never been repealed.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Well, yeah, it could, it could happen.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Well I met the Insurrection Act. Oh wow, Yeah, it
seems seems bad. Yeah, there's like a slight bit of
good news I guess that comes out of this. Susan McSween,

(52:24):
wife of Alexander McSween, who I think I've skipped over,
was Tunstall's partner and one of the leaders of the
the Regulator faction. She actually hired an attorney to pursue
charges against Dolan and the rest of the the Murphy

(52:47):
Dolan faction and also like trying to get amnesty for
the surviving Regulators. She was actually able to take a
large sum of land and establishing a ranch in Three Rivers,
New Mexico, and she got like extremely wealthy and died

(53:13):
at age eighty five in nineteen thirty one. So the
the and the Murphy Dolan monopoly on the town. Obviously,
their their reputation in the town was very much tarnished

(53:36):
after this, even though they sort of won the battle
and their monopoly was never the same. So basically everybody
sucked and the people in the county were very much
tired of the violence. Yeah, so this was kind of
used as, like you said, like the prime example of

(53:59):
like the wildness of the West, and launched kind of
the legend of people like Billy the Kid. I think
Billy the Kid is the The only other historical figure
who has been the subject of more films is Jesus Christ. Yeah, Okay,

(54:27):
and that's obviously stuff like that's like fuzzy because they're
which move which films are you counting and things like that,
But he has been depicted in film, you know, quite
quite often.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Yeah, And we can get into the kind of the
legends about him surviving here in a minute, but let's, uh,
should we talk about his death specifically?

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Yep, yep. He after the lincol County War, he became
an outlaw and that wa hampened to him.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Yeah. He had a five hundred dollars bounty on his
head put there by Governor Wallace, governor of the New
Mexico Territory, and there was a rumor that he was
seen in the vicinity of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and

(55:15):
a Laman by the name of Garrett headed there with
a few deputies July fourteenth, eighteen eighty one to question
a friend of Billy the Kid named Pete Maxwell. Garrett
was speaking with Maxwell in Maxwell's darkened bedroom around midnight,

(55:39):
and out of nowhere, Billy the Kid unexpectedly just enters
the room and he couldn't see who his friend was
talking to because of the really dim light in the room,
so he drew his revolver and Joe he.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
Said, ken is ken is?

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Who is it? And Garrett recognized his voice and fired twice,
striking him once in the chest, just above his heart.
And he is buried there. Yeah, in Port Sumner, New Mexico.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
Yeah, he was the only he was actually the only
one of the regulators that was not permitted amnesty. The
new governor gave amesty to all the other regulators except
for Billied Kid for the and this was for the
murder of Sheriff Brady towards the beginning of the the conflict.

(56:39):
So that's why he had that bounty out in his head.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
Yeah. Yeah, so you know, as far as legends of
his survival, So Pat Garrett, who's the sheriff that shot him.
There was one legend that they were actually secretly friends
in the garret. It staged this whole thing so that
Billy the Kid could get away and Grek could get
the bounty on his head. There were a lot of

(57:09):
people who claimed to be Billy the Kid over the years.
It's kind of like a Anastasia situation.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Yeah, nineteen forty eight, there was a man in Texas
named Allie Roberts. He went by Brushy Bill Roberts.

Speaker 3 (57:26):
Brushie Bill Roberts, not to be confused with Buckshot Roberts.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Right. He claimed to be Billy the Kid, and he
actually went before the new Mexican governor at the time
to seek a pardon. But you know, nobody really took
him seriously. So there have just been a lot of
other people who have claimed to be Billy the Kid.
But as you know, as I mentioned, it's widely thought

(57:54):
that he died in eighteen eighty one, and there was
only one confirmed photograph, a pharaoh type of him in
existence that was taken in eighteen eighty.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Well, so if you have a bounty or a warrant
out for you and then you get killed, but but
actually you didn't get killed, like you fake your own death,
Like is the warrant still out for you?

Speaker 2 (58:22):
You know what I mean, that's a good question. I mean,
Garrett did collect the bounty, So at some point, once
somebody collects the bounty, isn't it it's over. Yeah, you
know it's like, you know what, how do you define
brain death? You know? But you know in this case,
it's like how do you define you know?

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Being wanted hard to say, So I want to give
like maybe, like I know we don't usually do this,
but I think I'd like to give like just a
quick summary of all the stuff, because we talked about
a lot of events. I want to just try to
boil it down to so everyone can have a little
bit of a yeah, you know, you you can get

(59:05):
a grip on what we were talking about. Does that
sound good?

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Yeah? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
So. You see the town of Lincoln, it's sort of
town sort of owned by the Fat Camp merchants Lawrence
Murphy and James Dolan. Incomes the Englishman John Tunstall and
his friend Alexander McSween trying to set up a competing business.

(59:35):
So they were first like kind of fighting through like
the legal system, and then they started actually fighting with
guns until the town like erupted in an actual like
full scale battle. So the uh so Tonstall was murdered,
probably in cold blood by the sheriff's posse. Uh Then

(01:00:00):
this caused his supporters, who called themselves the regulators, to
regroup around his partner McSween and tried to enact vengeance.
Then they shot the sheriff, but not the deputy. The

(01:00:20):
shot the sheriff, William Brady. They actually they actually did
shoot his deputy, and then the new sheriff, George Peppin,
became the sheriff. So in the following weeks, McSween and
the regulators sort of like skirmished with Sheriff Peppin and

(01:00:42):
his posses. McSween brought his regulators back to Lincoln on
July fourteenth, and for five days they duked it out,
you know, from building the building. Eventually the residents of
the town brought Lieutenant Colonel Dudley and the US Army,

(01:01:06):
but they didn't really do much. They sort of pointed
their cannons at mcsween's house. McSween died and some of
the regulators, including Billy the Kidd, escaped president In the
aftermath that we didn't mention was the president Rutherford Hayes

(01:01:27):
dismissed Samuel Axel, the territorial governor, and he pointed a
new governor, Lou Wallace, which I found out also later
became the author of Ben hurr.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Oh. That's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
And they brought in the army to sort of quel violence.
This This new governor is the one that granted amnesty
to all of the outlaws except for Billy the kid
who was like as you said, later shot and killed.
That is the on Lincoln County War. There you go,

(01:02:06):
So yeah again, I think that this is sort of
I think this is sort of the exception that proves
the rule. This was so violent, like you said, tales
of this surely made it to newspapers in the East,
along with other things like the Dodge City War, which

(01:02:31):
was not actually no no bullets were fired, even though
Dodge City was like infamous for being dangerous. Then later
those like sort of newspapers become books like we talked
about last time in nineteen thirty one, why or Frontier Marshall,

(01:02:55):
and then shows like gun Smoke, and then Hollywood took over.
I mentioned to my father learn Law that the shootout
of the Ok Corral or the Gunfight of the Ok
Corral was never called that until nineteen fifty seven. But
the film that we talked about with Kirk douglasson Burt Lancaster,
and he was he was very surprised. And this is
a man who watches like a ton of Westerns. So yeah,

(01:03:19):
a lot of the things that you think about from
Old West are not surprisingly like Hollywood concoctions.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Well, I'm reading more about Brushy Bill here. Apparently there's
a lot more people that believe that he was Billy
the Kid. Then maybe I let on, including President Harry Truman,
apparently Bill O'Reilly who wrote a book about it. Both
of those.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Fucker has written so many books about like killing different people.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Yeah, but also the character of Brushy Bill is the
narrator of Young Guns too.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
I see, that's right, because yeah, because the conceit is
that he did survive.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Correct, that he survived and lived out his days in Texas.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
But Dave, just because a lot of people believe that,
you know, you know, doesn't mean that it's true. Because,
as a lot of people have been telling me on
the internet this week, dinosaurs aren't real.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
A lot of people I believe that I wasn't suggesting
that it was true. I just said that the consensus
is that Brushy Bill was not Billy the Kid. But
there are maybe more people that took that claim seriously
than I thought. There's also a classic Robert Stack episode
of Unsolved Mysteries from nineteen eighty nine about it, which

(01:04:43):
I would love to find.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
Oh yeah, gosh, what a what a scary man?

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Yeah, the Unsolved Mysteries, like just like the theme when
I was a kid, used to scare the hell out
of me.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Yes, me too. So I failed to mention this at
the top of the episode. But during this episode, I
have been drinking a glass of whiskey. A local distiller
makes a whiskey called Whiskey War, which I thought was
the perfect beverage.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
That's a High Bank distillery, right, Yes, it made me
think I was just there last week.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
Yeah, whiskey and a beer just made me feel like
I'm sitting in a saloon in Dodge City or a Lincoln,
New Mexico.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Yeah, and you would recently breathe in a bunch of dust,
so that it works out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
I also I also might have the consumption right all right, Well,
that is that is the Lincoln County War. Is there
any last thoughts you have?

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
Dave No, I'm just kind of interested, you know, you
know how to get a hold of us an Hour
of Our Time podcast at gmail dot com or through
our Instagram. I'm just kind of curious to know if
people like the the Old West tail. You know, we
hadn't really done much about the Old West, and there's

(01:06:03):
a lot more we could talk about if that would
be of interest, So I'd be curious to know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
Yeah, there's a lots to talk about. We kind of
we kind of now covered like the two of I
would say, the three most famous Wild West cowboys haven't
talked about wild Bill Hiccock yet, so we can always
always do that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
We haven't talked about the Trail of Tears, which is
something we want to talk about. Oh well, yeah, obviously
we're not specifically the Old West then, but like it's
really this time period, the reconstruction era, that we haven't
talked a ton about. So yeah, yeah, shoot us the line,
let us know what you think. Yep, all right, Well,

(01:06:47):
on that note, we'll talk to everybody soon. Thank you
for listening to an Hour of Our Time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
If you like what you heard, explore our catalog of
over two hundred episodes, and rate and review us on
your platform of choice.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
And if you'd like to support what we do, visit
patreon dot com. Slash an Hour of Our Time podcast