Anyone who has read some of the story of his life knows that Lew Wallace, the Territorial Governor of New Mexico at that time, had intended to pardon him or at least give him amnesty for testifying about the Lincoln County Wars. However, events intervened and Henry Antrim, known as The Kid because of his age and small stature, didn’t receive the pardon or amnesty.

Over the years, Billy, with his aliases of William H. Bonney, William Henry McCarty, and later someone who claimed to be him, Brushy Bill Roberts, has been a focal point of much of New Mexico’s tourism. Old Lincoln Days in August with the outdoor pageant “Last Escape of Billy the Kid” is the oldest running folk festival in the United States, according to some. The Court House from which he escaped looks much the same as it did then because it has been well preserved. To visit Lincoln is to step back in time.

The question now seems to be whether Governor Bill Richardson will actually pardon him after all these years. Garrett’s descendents are objecting as they feel it is a reflection on their ancestor, Pat Garrett, who is credited with having killed Billy.

Controversy and mystery are two attention-getters, no matter how recent or how long ago. So, another chapter in the saga of Billy the Kid is unraveling in our time as, no doubt, another one will in generations to come. The legend lives on.

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Billy the Kid

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!

The biggest controversy concerning Billy is whether he was a good kid gone bad or just a natural-born killer. I opt for a "good kid gone bad." He lived at a time in the Territory of New Mexico when strong men made their own law, took care of their own problems, settling many of them with a gun. Even a small person, or young boy, was made equal by Samuel Colt. What made Billy different was his daring, his "devil-may-care" attitude, and a boldness and wit that older men, gunmen included, hadn’t counted on in such a youth, and paid the consequences. In many exploitative books on Billy he was put down as ignorant and uncouth. The fact is he was very intelligent, could read and right well, spoke fluent Spanish, and was not awed by those who supposedly thought they had power over him.

The Lincoln County War would have ended the same with or without Billy’s participation, yet in the end Billy was made a scapegoat by the notorious Santa Fe Ring made up of greedy and ambitious lawmakers, governors, and lawmen under their rule. Billy was the only warrior in that terrible conflict that was brought to trial and sentenced to be hung. His fame came with his daring escape from the Lincoln County jail, killing two professional guards with his hands and feet in shackles.

Billy became a romantic is the eyes of many when instead of heading south to Old Mexico to safety, he opted to go to Fort Sumner where he felt save among friends, some of them women. It was his love for Paulita Maxwell that led to his death. Her brother, Pete Maxwell, wealthy stockman and land owner, in a message to Sheriff Pat Garrett, told of Billy’s whereabouts and Billy’s attention to his young sister. There on the moonlit night of July 14, 1881, Garrett in the dark with Pete in his bedroom with his posse of two outside, came Billy in search of something to eat. Seeing the two men outside he stepped inside the bedroom door from the covered porch and asked Pete: "Quien es?" Garrett recognized Billy’s voice, drew and fired two shots, one fatal bullet struck below his heart. Billy had hesitated to fire (some believe he had no pistol at that moment) and was backing away when he was killed.

Old Fort Sumner, south of present town of Ft. Sumner established in 1906 with the coming of the railroad, is where Billy the Kid is buried, in the old military cemetery. Today, he and his two pals are surrounded by iron bars to keep souvenir hunters from stealing the small footstone and chipping away on the big tombstone. Ironically, even in death Billy is not free from iron bars.

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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])

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.

Carleton put his plan for the reservation into action by ordering Colonel Christopher (Kit) Carson to kill any Apache man who resisted and to take all women and children prisoner. Eventually 500 Apaches were brought to the Fort.

Carson then went to Canyon de Chelle in Arizona and gave the Navajos Carleton’s order, "Surrender or die." He commanded his men to cut down all the peach trees that were growing in Canyon de Chelle, some 1,000 to 1,200 trees. The soldiers were also told to cut all wheat and corn. Thus the Navajos were starved into submission as they had no surpluses of grain or fruit.

Having gained control over them, Carson started them on the long walk to the Bosque Redondo, some 400 miles. Many died en route and more died when they arrived at the Bosque. The Navajos were certain dreadful things would happen to them because all their lives they had been warned against crossing three rivers. And they had crossed three rivers on their long walk:  the Rio Puerco, the Rio Grande and the Pecos.

The Apaches were already at the Fort and it was believed they spoke the same language as the Navajos. However, they did not, and conflict ensued as they were old enemies. Food was always in short supply, and that alone was enough to cause conflict. By the fall of 1864, there were about 9,000 Navajos at the Fort and by winter there was a shortage of firewood in addition to food shortages.

The Indians were ordered to plant trees by placing a live cottonwood branch into the moist earth banks of the many ditches. During their forced internment, they planted over 12,000 trees between December 1864 and April 1865. The trees were planted for future use as firewood and some planted at that time still stand. Corn, pumpkins, beans and wheat were raised, but often there were crop failures.

In 1865, all Mescalero Apaches strong enough to travel deserted the fort and returned to their own country in the Sacramento Mountains. But it was another three years before the U. S. Government acknowledged the Navajos’ sovereignty over their homeland, and allowed them to leave the fort.

The Peace Treaty was entered into on June 1, 1868, and the Fort Sumner military experiment ended. A  column ten miles long left Fort Sumner on June 18, 1868, for the Navajo homeland in northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. It included 7,304 Indians, 1,500 horses and mules, and 2,000 sheep, along with 50 Army wagons and a cavalry escort – an impressive and touching sight even to a hardened soldier; a never-to-be-forgotten spectacle to all who saw the Long Walk Home.

One hundred years later a group of Navajos from Arizona returned to Fort Sumner to reenact the signing of the Peace Treaty. A marker was placed near the Fort Sumner State Monument to commemorate that event, and Navajos bring stones to leave near the marker in memory of the Long Walk. There is a feeling of sacredness at the site.

In 1968, a portion of the Fort and the Bosque Redondo Reservation was declared a New Mexico State Monument. A three and one-half million dollar visitors center and exhibit is proposed by the state to capture the emotions, memories and history of that sad era. Some Navajos are reluctant to recall the event. However, President Peterson Zah of the Navajo Nation and President Wendell Chino of the Mescalero Apache Tribe have appointed tribal members to serve as project advisers. A Navajo architect, David Sloan of Albuquerque, has been hired to design the center.

Author Tony Hillerman says too few Americans are aware of those dark chapters in our National history . . . a memorial at Bosque Redondo would help to teach future generations of injustice done and of the courage and endurance of the Navajos and Apaches, our fellow Americans.

"Cage the badger and he will try to break from his prison and regain his native hole. Chain the eagle to the ground – he will strive to gain his freedom, and though he fails, he will lift his head and look up at the sky which is home – and we want to return to our mountains and plains, where we used to plant corn, wheat and beans."
– Written by a Navajo in 1865.

At dawn on June 18, 1868, the people began their long walk home.

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"WITH HIS BOOTS OFF"
(Billy’s Obituary)

Billy Bonney, alias Antrim, alias Billy the Kid, a twenty-one year old desperado, who is known to have killed sixteen men, and who boasted that he had killed a man for every year of his life, will no more take deliberate aim at his fellow man and kill him, just to keep himself in practice. He is dead; and he died so suddenly that he did not have time to be interviewed by a preacher, or to sing hymns, or to pray, before that vital spark had flown, so we cannot say positively that he has clum the shining ladder and entered the pearly gates.

The bullet that struck him left a pistol in the hands of Pat Garrett, at Fort Sumner, last Saturday morning, about half-past 12 AM in the room of Pete Maxwell. Governor Lew Wallace will now breathe easier, as well as many others whom he has threatened to shoot on sight.

No sooner had the floor caught the descending form, which had a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other, than there was a strong odor of brimstone in the air, and a dark figure, with the wings of a dragon, claws like a tiger, eyes like balls of fire, and horns like a bison, hovered over the corpse for a moment, and with a fiendish laugh, said, "Ha! Ha! This is my meat!" and then sailed off through the window. He did not leave his card, but he is a gentleman well known to us by reputation, and there by hangs a "tail".

From the Santa Fe Weekly Democrat, July 21, 1881.

Billy the Kid’s legal name was Henry McCarty; all the rest were aliases. No one really knows when or where he was born or how old he was when he died, but he was probably at least 23 years old in 1881. Billy killed or helped kill at least twelve men, but there isn’t any proof that he boasted of killing twenty-one. Billy was shot between 10:00 PM on Thursday, July 14^th and 1:00 AM Friday morning, July 15^th, 1881; the first-hand accounts of what happened that night vary as to the exact time. His friends insisted that Billy was unarmed except for a kitchen knife that he was carrying to cut some meat, but Pat Garrett and his deputies swore that he also had a pistol. In any case, although some may doubt whether he was transported directly to the fires of Hell by Satan himself, most agree that Billy deserved his fate at the hands of Pat Garrett. — G. S. Smith

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Billy the Kid Grave. Photo by Phyllis Eileen Banks.

The Fort Sumner Chamber of Commerce brochure that touts the community as the Pride of the Pecos contains another item not often seen on such brochures: "Attitude Friendly." Those words beckon you, inviting a visit.

Located on U. S. Highway 60 halfway between Albuquerque and Lubbock, Texas, 160 miles each way, old Fort Sumner was built in 1862. General James H. Carleton built the fort seven miles southeast of the present town at the Bosque Redondo (round wood or grove) as an Indian reservation for the Navajos and Apaches. These Native Americans were forced to leave their homes and walk 400 miles to the Fort, an episode in our history known as the "Long Walk." The post was named for General Edwin Vose Sumner who died as the new fort was being built. It is now a state monument, one of five in New Mexico.

This site was abandoned in 1868 and the old buildings and some of the land were sold to Lucian B. Maxwell. With the coming of the railroad in 1905 – 1907 the town moved north and merged with the settlement of Sunnyside, marking the beginning of the modern Fort Sumner.

DeBaca County’s seat, the town has a population of 1,269 with 2,252 in the County according to the 1990 census. At an elevation of 4,030 feet, the climate is mild with winter temperatures in the 30s-40s and summers in the 80s-90s.

The economy consists of irrigated agriculture, with a six-month growing season; ranching, small businesses, gas and oil.

Water sports are plentiful with nearby Sumner Lake State Park and the Pecos River.

The infamous Billy the Kid is buried behind the old Fort Sumner Museum in the Ft. Sumner Military Cemetery. The Museum is located four miles east on U.S. Highway 60/84 and south three miles on Billy The Kid Road.

Another historical attraction in Fort Sumner is the murals in the Court House. They were painted in the 1930s under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) by a young Texico, New Mexico, artist Russell Vernon Hunter. He was also the WPA director for the State.The scenes depict the old fort, Billy the Kid, farming, ranching and the coming of the railroad. Twice a year the Physical Sciences Laboratory of New Mexico State University uses the Fort Sumner Air Park as a base for launching balloons for scientific research, operating there twice a year.

In mid-June the four-day Old Fort Days Festival is celebrated. There is a Wild West Shoot-Out, a Camp Meeting, an Arts and Crafts Show, the Great American Cow Plop, Horse Shoe Games, Mud Tug of War, Sourdough Biscuit Toss, a Living History Demonstration at Fort Sumner State Monument, a rodeo, a dance, Little Britches Games for 12 year-olds and under, and a Cowbelles’ Barbeque.

If that isn’t enough there is the World’s Richest Tombstone Race. Because Billy the Kid’s tombstone has been stolen three times, event planners dreamed up this race. Each entrant is given a replica of the tombstone, some as heavy as 80 pounds. The object is to carry it, throw it over the obstacle, jump the hurdle, pick up the tombstone, turn and come back. Many fall by the wayside but the winner receives $1000 cash.

To sum it up, Fort Sumner is a small-town place where you can take a pleasant stroll or a walking tour of the historic buildings. Wherever you go you will be greeted with a wave and a smile.

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