Billy the Kid
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Our most noted outlaw in the West is Billy the Kid. His legend has outgrown the real facts of this sometimes hated, sometimes loved young outlaw. He’s a mystery in spite of all that has been written about him since before he was killed. Today we still do not know who his real father was. We do not know the exact date of his birth or where he was actually born. The very first documentation about this youth is the marriage record of his mother, Catherine McCarty to William H. Antrim in the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe on March 1, 1873, and lists one of her sons as Henry McCarty.
We thought we knew all the facts when we all read the book Sheriff Pat Garrett wrote in 1882, a year after Billy’s death, entitled The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, the Noted Desperado of the Southwest, whose Deeds of Daring and Blood made his Name a Terror in New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico. The title itself suggests to most of us the beginning of exaggeration and the exploitation of one Billy the Kid. Garrett employed a ghost-writer by the name of Ash Upson, an out-of-work, has-been newspaperman. Much of Upson’s writing is prefabrication except possibly the part that Garrett wrote about his killing of Billy the Kid. Upson is the father of the myths surrounding Billy the Kid that has been perpetuated ever since. An example: "Billy killed 21 men, one for each year of his life!" Only four documented killings can be laid at Billy’s feet, and these were in self-defense. The book to read that corrects the misconceptions in Garrett-Upson’s book and sets the record straight is Frederick Nolan’s re-print of that book that came out in 2000, entitled simply Pat F. Garrett’s The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid, an annotated edition with notes and commentary by Nolan. It is an eye-opener!
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Some of the more than 8,000 Navajo who surrendered to Kit Carson during his 1864 campaign of destruction through their homeland. <BR>(National Archives [#111-SC-87976])
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When you say "Bosque Redondo" it has a melodious, pleasant sound, but the reality is just the opposite. It was the scene of one of the saddest events in the nation’s history.
General James H. Carleton was in command of the Military in Arizona and New Mexico in 1862. Settlers were in danger of marauding Indians, and Carleton made it his first priority to conquer the Mescalero Apaches and Navajos. His plan was to put them on a reservation under military guard, teach them farming and livestock raising to encourage self-sufficiency.
For almost 100 years the Bosque Redondo (round wood) had served as a trading post. Here the Spanish and Mexicans traded with the Apaches and Comanches. General Carleton had visited the area ten years earlier and recalled the trip. He felt the Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River would be a good site for the Indian reservation he had in mind. He obtained President Lincoln’s approval, and 13,000 acres were set aside to establish the fort, named for General Edwin Vose Sumner, under whom Carleton had served. Unfortunately, Sumner died while the fort was being built.
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