Hey everybody, this is Joshua Heston.
And I'm Lisa Martin.
And this is the Dark Ozarks on the Branson Podcast Network.
We're an exploration of everything that's dark in history, mysteries, the paranormal,
and everything else.
We explore the noir, the unknown, cryptozoology, UFOs, paranormal, and all the dark stuff that
happens in the Ozarks.
You can find Dark Ozarks on Branson Podcast Network on Facebook under Dark Ozarks, as
well as our YouTube channel, Dark Ozarks.
We'll leave no stone unturned to bring you the dark history, mysteries, and legends of
the Ozarks.
Welcome to the Dark Ozarks.
We are discussing the Oklahoma Ozarks.
Yes, there are Oklahoma Ozarks.
We will get back to that in a minute.
But first we want to remind you that the Dark Ozarks podcast is now available on Branson
Podcast Network, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Substack, or
about any other podcast platform.
So are there more differences between the Oklahoma Ozarks and the Eastern Ozarks than
there are points in common?
I think that most people will find more similarities overall from the fact that it was such a rugged
territory and a place to lose yourself from trouble to the character of the people who
made it home, to the legends, and to the dark history.
We will return to the part of the Ozarks you may not have known even existed.
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Subscribe today to be entered in the drawing.
And now you can get Dark Ozarks t-shirts for sale at DarkOzarks.com and ParanormalScienceLab.com.
We encourage you to check out Always Buying Books in Joplin, Missouri, in person and online,
on Facebook, and at the website, AlwaysBuyingBooks.com, for all of your reading needs, including a
large section on the paranormal history and more.
Not to mention, the building is haunted.
Tell Bob and Elise that we sent you.
We also want to thank Beard Engine Brewing Company in Alba, Missouri.
Beard Engine Brewing is the only English-style brewery in Missouri and has been twice named
Missouri's best brewery by the Missouri Brewers Association.
Great beer and great food in a historical building with a noir past.
And yes, their building is also haunted.
Tell Nate and Tiff that we sent you.
Lots of ghosts.
It is the Dark Ozark, so that comes with the territory.
But it might come also as a surprise to some that for some reason, the Ozark mountain plateau
does not stop at the Missouri and Arkansas state line.
That's right.
Yes, Virginia.
The Ozarks are in Oklahoma, too.
In a good chunk, we're talking about a very rugged continuation of the upland plateau
of the Ozarks extending over into the Tahlequah area.
And that ruggedness combined with some socio-historical features really combined to make the Oklahoma
Ozarks a phenomenal place to hide out, in some cases, even longer than was the case
with the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks.
True.
And in a very real sense, a number ran that direction to get out of trouble they got into
in those Ozarks here.
They did.
And there are, of course, stories of at least one Christian County bald knobber escaping
from the Christian County Jail and disappearing into Indian territory, which later became
Oklahoma.
That happened quite a bit, actually.
And people might be surprised that what is now Oklahoma, what was Indian territory, was
in many ways was sort of, quote, a no man's land.
Because really the only real law enforcement for a very long time was out of Fort Smith
and Arkansas.
And all of the US Marshals would, the US Marshals were in charge of most law enforcement in
the territory.
And so they would have to go over there from Fort Smith.
And actually quite a few really legends and compelling stories came out of that.
One that a lot of people are familiar with, of course, is Judge Isaac Parker, who in about
1879 was assigned to the Western District of Arkansas and charged with basically cleaning
up the territory.
That he was and that he did.
It's interesting for me, of course, to look at many of these characters and personalities
that certainly at the time were larger than life personalities that then became mythic
folk heroes in the 20th century due to their essentially reincarnation as almost fictional
characters on typically on the big screen.
That's true.
Very, very, very much so.
And Westerns in particular visited all of these characters and Judge Parker was no exception,
probably most prominently in Hang'em High with Clint Eastwood.
Very, very true.
And we're going to talk about John Wayne a couple of times on this particular episode,
but I can't help but pull this book off from my coffee table.
True Grit by Charles Portis.
Exactly.
It's one of my favorite novels and of course, it really deals with those essentially social,
historical and political factors that you cross at the time before the creation of Oklahoma's
state, you crossed the Arkansas state line in the Indian Territory, the Missouri state
line in the Indian Territory, things changed dramatically from a legal standpoint.
What was that dynamic that they were basically looking at at that time?
Well, for one thing, it was not a state, it was a territory.
So basically, it was governed much more loosely by the federal government, not as hands on.
And basically, for all intents and purposes, the only people with authority to do anything
were the US Marshals, the federal judge and the military.
That's a pretty thin scattering of officials considering the scope of the land involved.
Right.
And then you had tribal lands that began in the 1830s.
So some of those areas, it was a little even more murky because you had tribal oversight,
but for certain things, they sometimes cooperated, sometimes didn't with the military, etc.
So often outlaws would try to, if depending on who they got along with, they would try
to lose themselves on tribal land because then it was even harder for them to be found.
But we think of, we know names from this time period of outlaws, but we don't know as many
of the law men in the Indian territory.
We do other, you know, Kansas and Missouri and so forth, you know, like Bat Masterson
and wider people like that.
But probably the most interesting US Marshal was Bass Reeves.
Yeah, that's a very fair assessment.
And very, very compelling story.
I mean, he was born a slave.
He was illiterate and ended up in Oklahoma and ended up becoming a US Marshal.
And he would memorize the warrants.
He would memorize what they looked like and everything, but he technically couldn't read.
And he had the best track record of bringing in his men.
Actually he brought in every man he was sent to get.
Which is very impressive.
Very, very impressive.
And including his own son.
Wow.
He was very rigorous in his ideas of right and wrong.
And his son, in a fit of anger, had ended up killing his wife when he found out she
was having an affair with another man.
And a warrant was issued.
And so they let him know and they let Bass know that his son, that this warrant was there
because they didn't want him to be shot.
And he said, well, if anyone's going to bring him in, it's going to be me.
And he brought him in and he stood trial and he ended up being convicted and I think served
life in prison.
That's impressive.
Overall, everything is.
And was Reeves essentially operating out of Fort Smith?
Yes.
Later, after he retired as a US Marshal, he worked as a lawman.
I want to say he was in Clearmore for a while.
But he was pretty elderly at that point.
And if I remember right, losing his eyesight before he retired.
But what people may not know is you know his story, as you said, from the bit screen, because
he is the inspiration.
I hate it when I just go blank for the Lone Ranger.
I'll think of it a minute.
Is it the Lone Ranger?
Yes, the Lone Ranger.
That's what I was thinking.
But I think it is fascinating and incredibly powerful and an unfortunate commentary that
most people wouldn't be able to draw that through line from a historical perspective.
That's true.
And particularly, you know, being African American.
But yeah, Bastard's is quite the inspiration.
And so it's interesting as we talk through some of this history tonight, we're going
to talk about a lot of outlaws.
So you have to kind of balance that.
You have, you know, Ivy Parker, the hanging judge, and Bass Reeves, as opposed to some
of these other things.
So you had huge personalities on both sides.
You really did.
And essentially mythic heroes and folk heroes and individuals who probably without their
even their imagining impacted American culture several generations later.
They couldn't have conceived of as a as that level.
And some of them probably would probably be pretty ticked off that they didn't get any
merchandising rights.
Yes, that certainly way before George Lucas came up with that brilliant move for Star
Wars.
Oh, it's just actually just watching ET over the weekend.
Speaking of merchandising, some of the extended DVD information had a series of slides showing
toys inspired by the movie.
And I was a little embarrassed on how many of them I recognized from my childhood.
It is what it is.
I know.
And the aspects is a little bit of you've already hinted at, but an enormous number
of African Americans may found a home at various times in the in the Oklahoma Ozarks and in
Oklahoma and in African American culture and and folk culture as well had really, really
important influences on the development of the state and on the Eastern region, as well
as the fact that mentioned several times prior to Oklahoma statehood, which I believe was
1907, it was Indian territory and specifically named as the because with the removal, the
federal removal of of tribes from ancestral lands in the east, Oklahoma became the place
that they were sent.
Yes.
And in part because that was just past the edge of quote civilized.
You know, civilization as things started to go further west.
So very, very much so.
And the consistent the inconsistent federal negotiation of moving Native Americans to
locations that were, quote unquote, uncivilized because those areas were not going to be exploited
yet in terms of white settlement.
And then as soon as white settlement began to encroach on those areas, then we find a
new area to remove.
And we thought that particularly dance over and over here in our or in my region of the
Missouri Ozarks with particularly the relocation of the Delaware and the Kickapoo tribes, among
others, but those being the dominant ones.
But of course, the the removal of the Osage first so that the Delaware could be moved
in and then the removal of the Delaware.
So to the white settlers could be moved in and the then of course, the the most notable
the 1830s forced march of the of the Cherokee on multiple trails of the Trail of Spheres,
which had again those those multiple pathways or routes led through Arkansas, through Missouri
and and and terminated in modern day Oklahoma.
Yes.
And and and also during that same period, a lot of people might not realize that during
as that was happening, that march was happening in the mid 1830s, it also coincided with several
years of drought and bad game years for the Osage, who had already been relocated to Oklahoma
in Kansas, what became Kansas.
And so literally as that relocation of the civilized tribes is going to Indian territory,
the Osage actually pushed back into southwest Missouri and there was a war in southwest
Missouri fought with the military, including on the square in Carthage, Missouri.
That is all but forgotten, that conflict is all that forgotten and very, very fascinating
in in tragic, really.
I mean, when you look at the the movements of people and then fast forward actually to
Oklahoma becoming a state all the way into comparatively say comparatively recent times
100 years ago in the 1920s, I'm still wrapping my head around the fact that it is the point
20s.
I personally think that it's almost 1999.
But and I'm 17, but I'm not an is not in in the 1920s.
A very interesting dynamic, which I think we'll we'll dig into a little bit later, but just
as a note early on in the episode is that that similar theme of moving various tribes,
various Native American tribal groups into certain areas that were unwanted until that
land became wanted.
And then finding new and unnervingly intricate ways to separate the the people from the land
yet again.
And in the 1920s, we saw a renewed attempt after the discovery of oil in on Osage tribal
lands that had been established previously after the Osage had been removed from their
ancestral lands several times already.
Yes.
Basically they had finally been relocated to a part of Oklahoma that ironically had
one of the richest oil deposits in the world under it.
And when oil was discovered, in fact, Chief Lookout worried that that it would actually
put his people more in danger, made their future more insecure than secure.
And ironically, in some ways, he was right.
And a couple of things.
One was pure greed and another was that suddenly you had the Osage, many of the tribal members
become extremely wealthy.
And of course, as happens, generally when it happens, some really flaunted their wealth
and that caused a lot of jealousy.
And so the way that the allotments and the rights were written, it was actually the most
intricate arrangement of any tribe and in some ways was designed to try to protect their
interests.
But basically, if a tribal member intermarried with a non-tribal member and they died, their
interest went to the spouse.
And so ultimately what happened is you had a number of tribal members who had intermarried
with white settlers and then a series of murders occurred in the 1920s of over 200 tribal members
in basically efforts to obtain those rights.
The FBI got involved and it was actually one of the seminal cases that J. Edgar Hoover
used to justify the expansion of the FBI.
Well, when you combine the high number of murders, first of all, in a comparatively
small region with a comparatively sparse population, we're dealing with a statistically significant
percentage of the population that was getting killed.
Well, yeah.
I mean, even today in a much more populated area, today if that many people died by murder
in that period of time, I think it was about a year in say Tulsa, which is close to half
a million people, that statistically would be a significant spike even today.
Yeah.
You think about just how devastating this was to the people of that region and the manner
in which the murders took place were awful.
I mean, it was extremely varied as well in the sense that it was just find unique ways
to kill these people.
Yeah.
It seemed to be done in a way to maximize terrorizing people.
It really does appear that psychological warfare is part of it.
And of course, this is incredibly significant moment historically for the Osage people.
Of course, as you mentioned, this was a situation in the history of the nation that J. Edgar
Hoover utilized to expand the FBI.
Ultimately, what was the overall outcome?
Well, I mean, there were trials.
Some were found guilty.
There were a lot of efforts to try to cover it up by certain people.
People were appalled, but it was a huge story, but I don't think it was as huge of a story
as it probably would have been now.
But ultimately, the intervention did in the murders and the oil rights stayed in place.
But it's something that still lingers to this day as a shared trauma for Osage people.
One of the references for tonight is a summer 1995 article by Renard Strickland, Osage Oil,
Mineral Law, Murder, Mayhem, and Manipulation.
And in that, there was a really interesting quote.
The Osage continue to struggle with a system originally designed to strip them of their
resources.
And that was pinned in 1995.
I found that really, really fascinating.
Yeah.
And then there's a more recent book about the murders of the Moonflower people, which
is another name for the Osage.
The book is about four or five years old, I'd say now, written by a New York Times reporter.
It was very good, and actually, it was the basis of the movie that was just filmed there
last year.
I don't think it's been released yet.
But I know Brendan Fraser's in it, and I can't remember who all's in it.
But actually, several A-list stars are in it.
So hopefully, it is a good telling of the story.
I would hope so.
And generally speaking, I would assume that it is.
I would say so.
I don't know any particulars.
But if it's faithful to the book, then it should be.
One of tonight's topics in regards to Oklahoma that I found really, really fascinating is
the term social bandit.
Yes, yes, I did too.
But when you think about it, it's pretty apropos.
And it fits a lot of outlaws and bandits in the North and to be honest, pretty, there
are a handful out West, but I would say that category pretty much was kind of in this region
more than anywhere else.
Very much so.
I mean, we see essentially in terms of mythic folklore of Western civilization, we have
Robin Hood, and then we go straight to Jesse James.
Jesse James and then the Dalton gang and so on and so forth.
And people may be going, what's a social bandit?
No, it's not that they're friendly.
Although certainly, certainly a lot of people talked about how charismatic the James brothers
could be.
Definitely in terms of it's difficult for me to make any contemporary comparisons with
certainly in the United States with our admittedly not exhaustive list, but still our list of
notable outlaws that not only achieved some level of mythic status, even during their
lives, but were lightning rod figures, largely based on their regional popularity.
I mean, even when you get to the Depression era, you get that a little bit, but not really
during the time period so much.
The closest would be Bonnie and Clyde, and that is a lightning rod because some people
just view them as hardened criminals and they shouldn't be quote glorified.
But they did have that social bandit aspect and part of that is that of their popularity,
of the population, the area and being protected and so forth.
And they did have that in areas, particularly in Northeast Oklahoma.
They did.
And the other person that really comes to mind is pretty boy Floyd.
Yes.
That is true.
And pretty boy Floyd was everywhere all over the Ozarks in Missouri and Oklahoma.
And he gets a bit of that mystique, not only from sort of being a homegrown boy and being
protected by people, but also in large part for the question marks of was he involved
in this crime?
Was he involved in that crime?
Yes.
Maybe yes, maybe no.
Everything from the Kansas City Massacre to the Young Brothers Massacre.
Was he there or not?
We don't really know.
And again, speaking to the just the far reaching aspects and we see this with Jesse James,
we see this with pretty boy Floyd in particular and also, of course, with Bonnie and Clyde.
But the incredible power of a fast horse and several decades later, a fast car were I think
an informing part of the meat toast.
But it reminds me, of course, a lot of my family is from southern Iowa, which is vastly
removed from the Ozarks in terms of just distance.
And to this day, I believe to this day, certainly during my growing up years, the county seat
of Wayne County, Iowa, Gordon, would celebrate Jesse James days every summer because Jesse
James had robbed a bank there during his during those days and actually reading a book a couple
of years ago, two years ago now, reading a great, incredibly well researched book on
Centerville, Iowa, over the entire history of the county, really of Appanoos County and
surrounding environments mentioned the reasonably well documented reality that pretty boy Floyd
and one of his friends had stolen a car and then abandoned it because it caught fire,
I think, on a on a particular road not far from Numa and Jerome, Iowa, the particular
corner next to a cemetery and had left the car on top of the hill that specific location
described is in front of my sister's farm.
See, that's, you know, you know, those are those are such interesting, you know, stories
of the fact that, you know, you have a direct connection, you know, and there and that happens
in those arts everywhere with people who that there were connections with Bonnie and Clyde
or Jesse James.
We've been told stories at events by people, you know, family members, you know, handed
down the stories of the, you know, one of them coming to the house or Bonnie and Clyde,
you know, partying at a joint on the river in Oklahoma, you know.
And I think it is a point that was made in the research material, which is very interesting
is that this sort of milieu of the social bandit really only exists in America, aside
from the Robin Hood myth, which, of course, the Robin Hood myth took close to a thousand
years to be fleshed out.
It did and had a number of editors along the way and lots of twists and turns to it.
And with our with our American outlaws, we're we're not dealing with with centuries of fabricated
story.
We're dealing with individuals that much of their lives have been clearly documented.
Many aspects of their lives were were associated with first person accounts, not only in front
of themselves, but also lots of individuals in the Ozarks elsewhere also.
But Arkansas, not Oklahoma Ozarks, Missouri Ozarks in particular, some in Arkansas.
And it really follows through there is a through line of the the hallmarks of what I think
too many of us simply make sense.
You look at the lives that they led, their reasons for doing things.
There's a vicariousness that is involved.
There's a common sense element that is involved.
There's a an element that many everyday Americans, law abiding Americans would.
Look at the actions of some of these gangs and go, you know.
In my situation, either I do that or, you know, if I was in their situation, I would
do that.
Or if I was in their situation, I hope.
I would do that.
Yeah.
And, you know, that's that's one of those things that to the time period that these
things happen, you had relatively little law enforcement, relatively less social more a
enforcement, you know, peer pressure and in part because of rugged territory and sparse
populations, et cetera.
And so the.
Even though America has always and even during that time period pride itself on being law
and order and, you know, stable, et cetera.
That time period and this part of the country, because of those factors, what was just an
upright and moral not only was fuzzy, but it was very situational.
It was.
There was a lot of distrust of law enforcement when there was law enforcement.
And there was it was an interesting note.
Of course, we're referencing many cases in this situation, not all for tonight, but outlaw
gangs of the middle border published in Western Historical Quarterly in 1981 and a lot of
distrust of of local law and a lot of blurring the lines in particular.
We're talking about Oklahoma in particular, a lot of blurring the lines between.
Survival and essentially banditry.
Rustlers et cetera.
And in ways that would probably be shocking to some people now, but it came down, I think,
to the fact that in some cases, if you were going to choose between rustling cattle that
presumably based on the size of some of the herds that the herd owners would likely not
miss or be able to trace as opposed to being able to feed your family.
Those types of very basic elements.
Exactly.
And here a good example that kind of illustrates all of this and actually very much ties those
arts together with all this is Wyatt Earp in his early days, Wyatt Earp started out
as his first law enforcement job was in Lamar, Missouri.
And in 1869, he was 21 years old and his father had been a marshal.
They were at this point very stable.
His brother owned a grocery store in town, et cetera.
And then basically circumstances intervened and his bride of only a few months dies.
He ends up leaving town under a cloud of suspicion of embezzlement and promptly goes to Indian
territory where he and a couple of other fellows basically steal horses and get arrested, taken
to Fort Smith.
And well, actually not Fort Smith.
Where was the court before?
Because literally they're arrested a few months as they're getting ready to move the court
to Fort Smith.
And I'm trying to think, Mountain Home maybe?
And he escapes and then goes to Kansas and then back to Illinois and gets arrested gambling
and with prostitution and so forth for a few times before then becoming a lawman again.
So it's a good illustration of your heroes aren't always just white hats, et cetera.
And also on the social bandit aspect of it, Lamar has officially forgiven Wyatt Earp for
any transgressions of stealing because they celebrate Wyatt Earp days every September.
Which I'm just wrapping my head around on the eve of Earp leaving Lamar for the first
time if someone had beamed into that moment from the future and said, by the way, you're
going to be not only a cultural hero, but they're going to celebrate you with a festival
every year.
I wonder what the response would have been.
Exactly.
It's a good illustration of this idea.
And you know, maybe and I have to wonder if part of it is part of being such a young country.
And not being able to rely on eons of mythology.
That's a good point because while certain aspects of folklore were being built up around
real and imagined people and certainly there was an aspect of mythologizing from the top
down in terms of George Washington to obviously Abraham Lincoln, you know, individual Daniel
Boone, Davy Crockett over into a more mythic aspects, Johnny Appleseed over into Paul Bunyan
and Babe the Blue Ox, so on and so forth.
I think there was something deeply resonant about the Dalton gang, about the James gang
that would really speak to a different, speak in a different way to the American story and
to the American, the soul of the American people that, you know, you look at some of
the, for example, the far Northwoods mythos and lore.
Yes, it's fun.
You look at what Washington Irving wrote in terms of various tales.
It's fun.
It's spooky.
It creates a sense of place.
You look at some of the varying generations of top down American mythos with Washington
and Lincoln and with those, you know, and ultimately the establishment of Presidents
Day and generation after generation of school children being forced to cut things out of
paper in terms of silhouettes and hanging them and not saying I was scarred by that,
but maybe I was.
Anyway.
My top hat, my construction paper top hats never came out right, but it came to the land
of Lincoln.
There was a lot of demand in terms of continuation.
Lots of pressure.
Lots of pressure in first grade in February.
Terrible weather, February in Illinois is not a fun time.
That's the reason I moved to the Ozark.
But I'm not remotely bitter.
I'm just saying that I'm not scarred by the experience.
But I think that there is something very akin to more in the realm of, I would say, fair
on the spectrum with Babe the Blue Ox being at the extreme and George Washington being
at the center.
I think as we're moving westward, we start to see folk heroes in the terms of Davy Crockett,
folk heroes in the terms of, honestly, old hickory, Andrew Jackson.
Very much so that there is a grounding.
And of course, there's this cultural roller coaster between how individuals saw them at
the time into seeing them created into these heroic figures, particularly through comparatively
the modern media and the pop culture in the 20th century, and then their deconstruction
in the latter part of the 20th century into the early 21st century to say, oh, those people
that you thought were so heroic, here's 16 reasons why they weren't, please insert clickbait
page here.
Those types of things and long dissertations on why all of the American heroes that we
can't believe are heroes are not heroes, et cetera.
And I think that there's an injection of reality with the James Gang, with the Dalton Brothers,
and the Dalton Doolin Gang.
I would say also with Pretty Boy Floyd, just in terms of they didn't need, although they
certainly in the course of Jesse James, they have the movies, but they didn't need the
movies at the time.
They were heroes, they were folk heroes at the time.
And in large part, based on the actions and the decisions that they were making while
being outlaws.
Well, and a good example of that would be specifically the James Brothers.
Frank, after Jesse was killed, about a year later, he turned himself in, and he literally
walked into the governor's office without anyone recognizing him, et cetera, walks into
the governor's outer office and there's 15 clerks working, and finally a young lady asked,
you know, say, can I help you?
And he says, I would like to speak with the governor.
And she says, can I have your name to tell him who's here?
And he just said, Frank James, and then everyone went, ah!
And ran out of the room.
And of course he goes in and he surrenders, surrenders his gun, first time in over 20
years, and tells him, tells the governor that it was the first time he had allowed another
man to touch his gun since 1861.
And then later after the show trial, et cetera, which we've covered in other episodes, he
tried to settle down to a quiet life.
And remarkably, there were only two known examples where he kind of used his name in
any way.
He tried to avoid that, but people didn't allow him really.
At one point, you know, to make money, a department store in Dallas, Texas, hired him to be a
shoe salesman.
And they did it, they thought, well, people will come in because they want to see what
Frank James really looks like and everything.
And he was more mild-mannered, very articulate, you know, his personality was a bit different
than Jesse's.
And the story goes that actually they had so many people try to come in and they ended
up tearing up the store over time that they let Frank go because it was costing them more
money and damages than sales.
But while he worked there, there was apparently this town bully there in Dallas that had quite
a name for himself and came in and he wanted boots.
And so he was being helped by this, you know, this mild-mannered salesman and tried on a
pair, told him what he wanted, he brings them and doesn't like that.
And they go through about 12 pairs and the guy starts getting irate and said, you know,
can't you bring me a good pair of boots?
And he says, well, sir, I think that's a good pair of boots you have on there.
And he said, really?
Do you know who you're talking to?
And he said, no.
And he tells him his name and he goes, well, I'm sorry, I don't know you, sir, but I still
think that's a good pair of boots.
And do you know who you're talking to?
And he said, no.
And he said, Frank James.
The fellow replied with, I do think those are a good pair of boots and bought them.
And the only other time that's recorded that I've found that he kind of used his name was
at one point he and his wife, I forget where they were living and people had figured out
that it was him.
And so neighborhood children would come and knock on the door and ring the bell constantly
trying to get him to answer the door.
So he put a piece of paper above the doorbell that said, this is the house of Frank James.
And no one rang the bell after that.
But to me, it illustrates that that milieu of social bandit really did exist for those
things to happen.
It did and I'm going to come back to this Richard White article for just a moment.
I love this paragraph.
Given social conditions in Oklahoma and Missouri, there was a decisive allure in strong men
who defended themselves, righted their own wrongs and took vengeance on their enemies
despite the corruption of the existing order.
Such virtues were of more than nostalgic interest in praising bandits.
Bandits admired them more for their attributes and their acts.
Bandits were brave, daring, free, shrewd and tough, yet also loyal, gentle, generous and
polite.
They were not common criminals.
Yes.
Well, and there was a lot of reality to that with a number of them, particularly the James
brothers and the younger brothers, because they came from means and quote of the time,
quote good families and were cousins, by the way.
So, you know, so they were not seen even in their time, even in the early days as, you
know, sort of petty thieves, common thieves.
And I think that there's a, of course, the article makes mention and it's interesting
because it makes mention of, first of all, were they some sort of, you know, socialist
reform fighting for the new American peasantry that largely gets dismissed in the sense that
that really was not the perspective of the times.
It was not the perspective of the individuals who were being outlaws at the times.
There was one one sort of academic accusation that the surrounding countryside pretended
to be supportive of the gang because they were afraid of them.
That really doesn't hold up in terms of contemporary literature.
No.
The isolated individuals might have been if they were at odds politically, but overall
no, the areas that they had strongholds in shared worldviews.
And there's the common theme that really appears to resonate is that their, for lack of a better
term, their well-mannered and polite and gregarious banditry really reflected a rugged individualism
that was popular and was an expression of what we would even today consider to be a
perhaps mythic, but still American ideal.
Oh, definitely.
And you still see it in advertising and entertainment today.
It's just you're not on a horse or robbing a train.
I mean, it is sort of a characteristics that are viewed as admirable.
I think the American psyche is, well, it's great if you have these characteristics and
you aren't committing crimes, but if you are committing crimes for the right reasons, we
still admire it.
And in a seemingly contradictory way, it adds to the street cred.
Literally, yes.
The Ardmore, Oklahoma State Herald had this contemporary statement to make in regards
to the Dooland Dalton gang.
Their life is made up of daring.
Their courage is always with them and their rifles as well.
They are kind to the benighted traveler and it is not a fiction that when robbing a train,
they refuse to take from a woman.
It is said that Bill Dooland, at present the reigning highwayman, is friendly to the people
in one neighborhood, best doing all sorts of presents upon the children.
It is his boast that he never killed a man.
This is as fully a romantic figure as Robin Hood ever cut."
And ironically, Bill Dalton admired and envied Jesse James, which of course, who had much
the similar reputation.
And of course, the demise of the Dalton gang or most of the Dalton gang was because specifically
they were determined to do what Jesse James did not accomplish in Northfield, Minnesota.
Yes.
And ended up with a similar result and actually worse numbers lost.
So there was definitely some parallels there.
I was going to say for anyone's wonder, because the Dalton gang did operate in Oklahoma a
lot.
The James gang did at times and they hid out at Robbers Cave in Oklahoma.
And of course, there is a lot of legends that they buried quite a bit of treasure in Oklahoma.
And some people say, oh, it's just legend, but in 1913 to 1915, Frank James moved to
Oklahoma and then the same time period, Cole Younger got out of prison and he went down
there the same place.
And the story goes, they were trying to find the treasure that they had buried there 30
years before.
Just that, just the mystique of buried treasure is powerful in and of itself.
And then you start adding in these layers.
It gets enticing to say the least.
From a mythological, legendary, historic perspective.
There's one other quote I wanted to run past you because I just think that it was really
interesting to me that the social bandits who metaphorically rode out of Missouri and
Oklahoma into America at large quickly transcended the specific economic and political conditions
of the areas that produced them and became national cultural heroes.
The outlaws were ready-made cultural heroes.
Their local supporters had already presented them in terms accessible to the nation as
a whole.
The portrait of the outlaw as a strong man, writing his own wrongs and taking his own
revenge had a deep appeal to a society concerned with the place of masculinity and masculine
virtues in a newly industrialized and seemingly afeet quarter.
Oh, that is interesting.
I would say that there's a lot of validity there.
Particularly the quote the ready-made.
And part of that was because the mythos of those bandits was ready-made and created specifically
by newspaperman, particularly John Edwards.
I mean, there is, you know, some people would argue that you wouldn't know who Jesse James
was if it weren't for John Edwards, too.
We ran across a number of times in the dark Ozards because again, in this time period,
you know, it sits people in smoke and mirrors, it seems, but he was the adjutant to Joe Shelby
during the war and of course, and had met and run into the James brothers during the
war as they fought under Quantrell and Bloody Bill Anderson.
And then when he returned to the newspaper business, he took up the mantle of basically
creating the Robin Hood version of Jesse James.
And I think I'm just contemplating on this in terms of the hero impact because there
is something, I think, especially for little boys, there's something very enticing about
an outlaw hero.
The guy that, you know, your aunt or your grandmother might tell you not to be emulating
is the very person that you want to play out.
Oh, true.
And I think also for at least some little girls that, you know, aren't too girly girly.
Which is actually an excellent segue to Bell Star.
Who was girly girly?
Well, and just coming back to was it Frank who always carried a copy of Shakespeare with
him?
Yes, and could quote Shakespeare very, very well.
And you think about that just for a moment and we do see this, this was one of the arguments
that somehow the James or the Daltons were fighting against social classes, etc.
And it was it referenced, of course, the James that referenced Joe Shelby to make note that
these were individuals who came from memes.
In many cases, they were extremely well educated.
And you cannot distill this to the simplicity of class struggle.
No, actually, a number of that, particularly in that time period, and once we're talking
about most of them were very well educated and had means.
And so it kind of turns that stereotype on its head, really, if you know that.
And just a thought to add into that, I think it's a century and change being removed from
this culture.
But we were in the rare times that we have photographs, it's very easy for a contemporary
analyst to look at these individuals and they're dressed ruggedly, they have, you know, they
frontier garb, etc.
And somehow erroneously assume that these were poor people or these were uneducated
people.
It's one of the I understand the dynamic that you have a cultural folk hero in a liminal
space of banditry, etc. distilled over generation and generation.
And naturally, an outcome of that is to think of them as, you know, poorly spoken or poorly
educated or, you know, fill in the blank.
Right.
But it really speaks to sort of your armchair analyst, I say, as I relax in my armchair,
you're an analyst, a cultural analyst, looking at, for example, contemporary photos from
the 1880s and arriving at a lot of incorrect conclusions about these people.
These were individuals who, you know, will take Myrish or Ubell.
We will take Frank James, just two examples, Cole Younger, I think you could put him right
in there.
Individuals, Joe Shelby, very much so, although he's not a bandit, but that was thanks to
the war.
That, you know, that because if you take if you took Joe Shelby's actions and just moved
them five years forward, history would have would have probably remembered him a little
bit differently.
So, individuals who, again, extraordinarily articulate, educated, thoughtful individuals
who I would say that their intelligence led to some of the successes of their exploits.
And in some cases, like Joe Shelby and Frank to their longevity.
Yes, no, I agree entirely there.
And you know, it's a few episodes back when we were discussing Joe Shelby, there's one
quote of someone describing he and his men, you know, riding to Mexico and getting to
the Rio Grande.
Someone said, you know, they could, you know, here came these 600 Missourians and see this
man with black hat and plume and, you know, the red beard and he looked like somebody.
And I think that's a good summation of a lot of these characters is that, yeah, they looked
like someone because they knew how to carry themselves.
They knew what they were doing and they were intelligent, smart people, or they wouldn't
have survived as long as they did.
No, no, and they were also living a very dangerous life.
And so in some cases, you know, the individuals who didn't survive as long, you know, attrition,
essentially, and then in a very unique American asymmetrical battlefield.
Well put.
Agreed.
And I'm specifically thinking of Bell Star.
Yes.
We got to, we got just a couple of months ago, we were standing outside her house.
Yes, her, the house she grew up in.
And the funny thing is, you look at that house and it has an addition on it that's been put
on later.
That house wasn't that big.
But it was the house of one of the largest landowners in the region.
And one of the wealthiest men in the region.
Although you look at that house now and you most people would look at and say, oh, that
was, you know, a tenant sharecropper or something, you know, because it's a small house.
Yes.
And not so at all.
And then of course, we've stood in front of where her nest home was in Carthage on the
square that had the Carthage Hotel and they lived there.
And both places, ironically, are haunted.
Yes.
And of course, the home that we're referencing, is it Red Oak 2?
Yes.
Just out of there in Jasper County, fantastic Route 66 location.
And ironically, the house that the Dalton boys grew up in in Oklahoma is there as well.
The properties are just migrating the Red Oak.
Yes, they are.
It's like the house in the legend of Baba Yaga on Chicken Leg.
They just get up one day and walk the Red Oak.
Big Lowell would be proud.
He would.
But seriously, so you have both of those, you know, the houses that the Dalton boys
and Bell Star grew up in sitting right there and both of them with activity.
And I think what you said about seeing pictures, et cetera, I think that's very deceptive too.
And I think in Bell's case, it really is because most of the photos, at least that I've seen,
are a little later in her life, although she died at 42.
She died young, shot in the back.
Now a neighbor, and I forget his name, was charged and convicted and actually executed
for her murder.
But there are so many questions about whether he really did it.
It is still listed as unsolved.
And it was over a dance, actually.
And whereabouts was that?
In Oklahoma, she had a ranch and she had gone to a dance and had danced with this neighbor
fella and he asked her for another hand and she declined and then danced with a share
cropper.
And the story went he was mad that she wouldn't dance with him again and he followed her home
and shot her.
And he was convicted.
But then so many people doubt that most people say now we really don't know if he did or
not.
So most of the photos are from that time period and she looks fairly rough at that point.
I mean, unfortunately, she had lived a pretty rough life from the time she was 14 on.
Yes.
And one of the things, because we're often talking about Bell Star in relationship to
the Missouri Ozarks and especially in relationship to a very young career, the essentially teenage
spy career during the Civil War.
But you move into her later career when she is an adult and it is figuring heavily, heavily
involves Oklahoma and of course the Oklahoma Ozarks.
But are some in terms of that aspect of her essentially outlaw career, what are some really
standout moments for you that resonate in terms of this personality?
Well, of course, she married Henry Star and now Henry robbed one of the banks at Coffeeville
as well as the the Dalton's attempted to.
But she had been involved in some of the robberies, etc. and Judge Parker at Fort Smith got to
be in his bonnet.
He he wanted to put them in prison and they the marshals and the prosecutor, which is
one of the Clayton brothers, and we've discussed him in the past, were really focusing on trying
to build a case against them.
And the story goes that Bell actually paid someone to kill Clayton at a county fair,
but then found out that they had issued a warrant for her arrest and that Bass Reeves
had the warrant.
And rumor went that she called off the hit on Clayton at that point.
Eventually.
Now, one of the articles that we had tonight actually say that she was never convicted
of anything.
Now, that's not exactly true.
Judge Parker sent her to prison, federal prison in Minnesota.
And after she got out of prison, she bought a ranch in Oklahoma.
Oh, it's.
But you know, that's sort of the counterpoint to is you have, you know, not only was she
wealthy, but she was, you know, she wasn't debutante, spoke multiple languages, played
multiple instruments, et cetera.
And you had the sight of her as the bandit queen, but she was also a mother.
Her daughter Pearl and her son, Bud, they referred to him as Bud, you know, which was
her brother who was killed in the war.
And I like that dichotomy because she fits the mold of the social bandit.
But yet she was a mother.
But most of the photos that you see of her later in life, she looks pretty rough.
And so people would look at that and not as and I think probably not assume that she had
the background that she did.
Very true.
And you know, again, I think it's a it's a it's a common theme that I'm excited that
we're exploring on tonight's episode is the misconceptions, the unspoken misconceptions
that arise around these characters.
I agree.
I think that Bell is more complicated than most people assume.
And in some ways, she she I mean, she's well known, but she doesn't quite have the reputation
of, say, even Clamaday Jane or any Oakley.
And I think partly because, again, as you said, she died fairly early.
And and before the traveling like the Western shows and stuff, you know, exactly what I
was going to say before having the opportunity to do something that I'm sure is not uniquely
American, that's a unique expression of Americanism.
The idea that you get out of prison and then you go on the road playing yourself for vaudeville.
Pretty much so.
You know, the you know, Buffalo Bills, while West shows and so forth, which, of course,
they took to Europe, too.
So I mean, when you say, you know, it wasn't uniquely American, it was American, but the
Europeans relished in it.
And and I think there's a you know, that that that interesting through line of.
Culture, history, folk art, bombast.
Free enterprise, capitalism, anything for a buck, whatever goes.
That is it's sometimes easy to get disdainful about it when you see it on parade today,
but it has an incredibly long lineage in terms of making up our culture and something that
you see not inconsistently is taking turns into the extraordinary macabre, extraordinarily
macabre aspects when a an outlaw meets their end and then their corpses put on display
for a nickel of view.
Very true, very true.
And that I mean, that happened quite a bit in part.
For two reasons, one to prove that it really was them.
And for people who didn't know who they were or didn't know them to know to recognize them
to see what this this notorious person really looked like.
And I think, you know, that morbid curiosity is the same thing as during the same time
period, people going to public execution, public hangings, you know, you take the family
and a picnic basket.
I'm still planning mine out in terms of the menu.
You know, and also, you know, all of those things and then reaching this apex, and it's
also an opportunity for the local drugstore to pay off their, you know, their debt.
Look, honey, we can finally get a new roof.
And at the rate they're coming in, we only need to be doing this for maybe another 12
hours.
Exactly.
But you know, and what amazes me with that, though, is that how long that went on.
I mean, you know, that they happened with the Depression era gangsters as well, you
know.
It did.
I'm just off on my own little tangent, but I'm imagining, you know, the owner of the
local business trying to figure out how to get word to the next town to hobble the horse
temporarily that's carrying the court injunction against the display.
Well, that's the thing is that for that time period, you know, a lot of times it really
wasn't one.
The injunction came when it got too smelly, I think.
The crowds are coming in anymore for the flies.
Right.
It's again, I think it's, you know, part of the complex magic of the American West and
such a great deal of the American West, of the mythos of the American West was created
in the Ozarks.
That much of that complexity, we experience bits and pieces of it enough to find it alluring
in various ways or interesting or vicarious.
But at the end of the day, this was a really, to put it bluntly, a really weird moment in
Western civilization.
I mean, it really was.
But in some ways, it's kind of a very honest moment to do.
Very.
I mean, I'll explain my thought structure on this, but weird in the sense that in many
cases the individuals who were at the fringes of American settlement were, as we've noted
before, often individuals of considerable means.
They were often highly educated, highly intellectual in terms of their reading and their
forewithal, but they were also moving to these fringes because of their desire for a variety
of things, obviously to exploit natural resources for their own gain, yes.
And I say that lovingly because that's what we do.
We want to do well at what we do.
But there was also a driving force of the virtues of individualism and the virtues of
survival and the virtues of these elements that the bandits, the social bandits, really
ultimately manifested or expressed in a unique way into larger society, but that are American
virtues, American ideals.
They did not want to be under somebody's thumb and structured and etc. etc.
They wanted to be at the at the fringes, at the edge where they could make a name for
themselves, where they could create something new, where in some cases they could, for lack
of a better word, term, feel as though they were truly being themselves and expressing
themselves in and those at the same time were doing so at the in some cases the edges of
survival at the edges of endurance at the edges of of having material in terms of, you
know, that, for example, Bell Star's father, wealthy landowner, but the building you look
at it today, it's not the Hermitage, it's not Mount Vernon.
The infrastructure resources simply were not there to do that.
And I'm assuming based on the decisions of many of these individuals, they were okay
with that because they knew that was the price they had to pay to be themselves in this space.
I think so and with the idea that over time they could develop that that that small house
would become the bigger house etc.
And in his case, he did end up owning basically the north side of the Carthage Square with
all the buildings, you know, so he did do that.
And I think building on what you said, I think part of an unspoken part of this recognition
of these people that may be tacitly some people don't want to admit is they looked at that
in the same time, contemporarily, and also in retrospect, look at some of these people,
the situations that they were in and came out of and there's a I think for a lot of
people, they don't want to admit it, but you at least a silent recognition that these people
came out of situations like the Civil War and being branded outlaws and basically left
with little legitimate means of supporting yourself and right or wrong as far as the
law goes.
They survived and more than survived where most people wouldn't have and I think that
is something that Americans admire.
And today, people all go the same way over billionaires.
That's very true.
And in some ways, what's the difference?
Very, very true.
It's it does it really helps to create that sense of perspective.
And it is definitely a continuation of a theme.
I'm curious if this is as true in other cultures as in American culture, but certainly in American
culture, we love a winner.
Well and we love a winner and we love social mobility.
And let's face it, coming out of Europe, traditionally, there was from 99.99% of the people there
really was not any opportunity for social mobility.
So we have always applauded that in America.
And then when you have someone who does it despite all of those circumstances that they're
in, whether you agree how they got there or not, I mean, implicitly, there's a nod of,
you know, they made it, they got through, they figured out a way where most people wouldn't
have.
Yes.
Yeah.
And it's powerful.
It's very, in a weird sense, it's deeply inspiring.
Yes.
It's very complicated.
Which I want to, we'll come back to the Marlow brothers in a moment, but speaking of complicated,
I want to segue directly into John Wilkes Booth in Oklahoma.
This was news to me, but I think it's appropriate when you take into consideration the extraordinary
heightened emotions involved with Lincoln's assassination, the swift retribution that
took place afterwards, or apparently swift retribution.
And then the weird, definitely not in the sense of Jesse James as a folk hero, because
they don't really think that we see Booth in any of that light, but as a folk figure
with his own conspiracy theories that just crop up at various times and cause certain
levels of perplexity.
Well, and I think, aside from the fact that Americans tend to do that with a lot of prominent
people who die in odd ways, there actually were, there are some facts that I think kind
of propelled this idea that Booth survived and went west and lived a long life, et cetera.
One is that the way he was killed in the barn, specifically there had been orders not to
kill him, and one soldier just started shooting, and it ended up being a soldier that they
think actually had Southern empathy.
And so that started stories that this was a cover, and there were accounts that the
body did not match his medical records, et cetera.
And so you had these ideas floating around that maybe they did not really get him.
So it leaves the possibility of people ruminating about this, and then people making claims
they are that person years later or on their deathbed, which not only happened with him,
but with Jesse James, all kinds of, you had people who claimed later that they were Billy
the Kid and Jesse James, et cetera.
So it's kind of like Anastasia.
And you did have someone who impersonated her for decades and fooled a lot of people
at royal courts in Europe who were related to the Romanovs.
And then she was not her.
And I think first of all, it speaks to a very interesting aspect of mental state and celebrity
impersonation.
I don't have the complex background necessary to decipher the mental state that would make
someone want to do that, but it's not terribly uncommon or simply the desire for fame or
the desire for attention is in some instances extremely alluring.
And in an earlier era where it was much easier to hide, it was also much easier to pretend.
Yes.
It's much harder to have that off the grid presence now and not leave, it's much harder
not to have a paper trail, et cetera.
And I think for a lot of people, a lot of people don't even realize how much different
it is now versus then in those regards.
I mean, a lot of people didn't have birth certificates or anything else.
So they could reimagine their story.
And so if you were inclined to do so for whatever reason, people did.
But yes, so yes, there's this theory that John Wilt Sputh lived out of his life in Oklahoma.
And as with all great and perplexing conspiracy theories, it's difficult to for sure say that
that didn't happen.
As far as I know, they've never done DNA testing on those remains.
And I'm not sure what actually happened with his remains after.
I'm not either come to think of it.
That might be an opening of someone being able to do this if they really can't be found.
So now the reference that I have says that the man purported to be Booth, his body actually
was embalmed and put on display until it disappeared.
Yes.
And it was put on display for public viewing and claimed to be Booth.
A lot of that happened.
A lot of those kind of things seem to happen in Oklahoma, actually.
They did.
They really did.
It makes me worry to do investigations over there.
I don't know if I might end up in somebody's front register.
Just don't die or get embalmed in Oklahoma.
We're teasing.
Yes, we are teasing.
Now I handed it to John Wayne references.
The first, of course, is True Grit.
The first, and of course, there's two films, one with John Wayne and what looks like the
Canadian Rockies are standing in for Oklahoma in that film.
I'm not exactly sure where it was filmed, but it certainly wasn't Oklahoma, even though
that's where the Arkansas and Oklahoma is where the book, the original novel by Portis
is based.
Then the second film, which is by the Coen Brothers, isn't it?
I'm not sure if the Coen Brothers produced it, but Jeff Bridges played the lead.
Yes.
I love it.
The soundtrack is fantastic.
I think it was shot in northern Texas.
It definitely has much more of a regional vibe to it.
It does appear much more realistic for the setting of where it's supposed to be.
It's a phenomenal film.
Highly recommend it.
To be perfectly honest, I like it better than the original.
I do too.
Although I love John Wayne.
I do like the original.
Well, I have mixed feelings about the original, but I do like John Wayne.
Yeah.
I mean, I'll say this.
Growing up, I liked the original.
When they announced that they were doing the remake, I hoped that it would be good.
My opinion is they knocked it out of the ballpark.
I agree.
It actually makes me want to... I have it on DVD and may put it in later tonight just
because.
As far as films, there's a very unique Oklahoma connection with a great John Wayne film, The
Suns of Petey Elder.
Yes.
It's really a great story in a lot of ways that turns a lot of these cliches on its head.
I think so.
Of course, we're talking about the tragedy that took place in regards to the Marlowe
family.
Yes.
When we say that it inspired the film, The Suns of Petey Elder, very loosely, there was
a biography written in regards to the Marlowe brothers.
In 1892 and in the 1950s, Hollywood purchased the rights and then ultimately made The Suns
of Petey Elder with John Wayne and Dean Martin.
They changed a lot.
Yes.
They did.
But what I find very interesting is one that you can't just categorize the Marlowe brothers
as white hat or black hat.
That's a good point.
It is, I guess, in a real sense, it's a very realistic story that doesn't have quite the
mythos or the social bandit aspect so much.
There's a lot of what I would classify as terror, survival, and pragmatism.
Yes.
I think this is the only story that I know of that the prisoners not only thwarted a
lynching mob but ran them off twice.
Yes.
There's some confusing aspects to this.
The general take or my general take is that the various members of the Marlowe brothers
may or may not but probably didn't commit the crimes that they were being arrested for.
That's my take.
We really don't know because of everything that happened afterwards but those questions
really never got sorted out.
They were being arrested for stealing horses, if I remember right.
They were from Oklahoma.
They were Oklahoma sons.
But they ended up basically in Texas and had gotten arrested before the brothers got arrested
originally, if I remember right.
They were in jail.
Basically one of the landowners got a posse together and it included the city attorney,
jail guards, etc. to basically break them out of jail and lynch them.
They basically got a hold of weapons in the jail and fought the mob off.
I don't have the documentation on this but I know we messaged about this a little bit
earlier prior to the episode.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that in some way, shape or form they had direct
Welsh ancestry.
I'm drawing from two points on this to make my case very prematurely.
One their puckish sense of survival.
Two their kinship.
And three, one of the brothers who went by the name of Epp as a nickname, his actual
name was Llewellyn.
That's very possible.
They definitely come off as coming out of Celtic honor culture in Clannadge.
One of the brothers escaped.
That was Boone.
They kept trying to find him.
He ultimately comes back to represent them, to plead their case and gets arrested.
But in between, they decide to move them to another jail and they get ambushed at Dry
Creek and it becomes known as the Dry Creek Ambush or Massacre.
And by a mob, it ends up looking like some of the guards that are moving the prisoners
are involved and throw weapons to the mob.
And again, the city attorney who was at the first mob is there and giving orders to the
brother.
They're shackled together, two brothers to two brothers.
Two of them get killed, each shackled to another brother.
And ultimately the brother, the living brothers to survive and then to fight off the mob have
to hack off their dead brothers.
In order to separate themselves because they were shackled together.
They were shackled together and each of the ones that were still alive had been wounded
at this point.
They had to do that to then fight off the mob.
And the long and short of it is a number of the members of the mob were ultimately found
guilty of crimes.
The Marlow family sued and was awarded damages for the loss of life of the brothers who were
killed.
And the two surviving brothers ultimately then moved to Colorado.
Can't imagine why they didn't want to stay.
And became model citizens and actually became law enforcement officers.
Yes.
And when I read that, I'm like, you know, I don't blame them for the last part.
No, I really don't at that point.
No.
The best protection possible.
We're going to move out of state and we're going to become police in that regard.
I love this in 1891 after sentencing mob members for their part of the attack, federal judge
A.P. McCormick had this quote.
This is the first time in the annals of history where unarmed prisoners shackled together
ever were called a mob.
Such cruel courage that prefer to fight against such great odds and die if at all in glorious
battle rather than die ignominiously by a frenzied mob deserves to be commemorated in
song and story.
This again, I guess, is the definition of social bandits.
Yeah.
We don't know whether or not they were really guilty of what they were accused of.
And to me, their story just really speaks to, again, a sense of kelpick kinship and
a sense of pragmatism and response or reaction in the face of increasing odds.
And a story of survival and tragedy that it is certainly in our time and place and, you
know, it does have strong elements of the social mandatory.
In this particular case, they did not have the support of the community.
It was the community that was trying to kill them.
That's true.
I mean, that is true.
But as a definite through line is their story in perhaps an unanticipated or offbeat way
injecting itself into the public consciousness of the popular consciousness, the Americana
consciousness with a film, a 1965 film, that most people who watched that film have no
idea that it is in some way inspired by the original events.
That's true.
Yeah, you would not know that it's based on true events.
And I think that for me, you know, it really speaks to just sort of the character of the
person, you know, coming through that the way they did and fighting as the judge noted.
And perhaps it's either was extremely, extremely hubris or indication that they were innocent,
that the older brother came to represent them and ended up in jail for his efforts.
So, but arrested by the same people that were in the mob.
Correct.
So I'm currently leaning toward their innocence.
Yes.
I mean, actually, I mean, in some ways, it has a little bit of overtone of Lincoln County
Wars in New Mexico and Billy the Kid sounding and in fact, another Oklahoma boy that's in
the readings for this week was Frank Waite, who left Oklahoma to become a cowboy and ended
up in Lincoln County working for John Tunstall, who was killed by the basically the large
cattlemen in the area and his employees then rode against them, including Billy the Kid.
And then but Frank Waite survived and was a law abiding citizen for the rest of his
life, much like the surviving Marlowe brothers.
It's inter almost like interlocking circles in terms of the individuals involved and the
just the experience.
Something that I want to talk about that involves some paranormal aspects just briefly, or maybe
not so briefly is Fort Gibson.
Yes.
And I'm looking forward to making it at Fort Gibson soon.
I've not been there, but you have and that's interesting, interesting experiences as well.
Yes.
Fort Gibson is very, it's very interesting.
It was a very early frontier fort established in the 1820s.
And when it was established, it really was on the frontier.
And basically it guarded the sort of the south western edge of those arts.
And you had some interesting names go through there, including Jefferson Davis, it was his
first station out of West Point.
And the remains of the building that he worked in are still there.
You just don't, you know, we have all these conceptions of the Civil War.
But again, most of these leaders even on Confederate side were union officers.
And he was there in the early 1830s.
And it saw a lot of a lot of activity before the Civil War and during the Civil War.
Actually it was the southern end of the supply train from Fort Scott, Kansas, and from points
in southwest Missouri.
So a lot of the bushwhackers in southwest Missouri and partisan rangers that whose job
was to disrupt union movements spent their time attacking the supply trains going to
Fort Gibson.
And it was the Arkansas River, the Vertigris River and Grand Rivers converge, creating
market at that point.
So in terms of river navigation from that point, and then supply chain, overland supply
chain to that point, this was an incredibly important location.
Yes, in fact, there were there were there were skirmishes even with Quantrell right
through there.
And where the armies were the army and the Confederates would fight across the rivers.
And tell me a little bit about your experience at Fort Gibson.
My own experience is that that some of the buildings have a lot of energy or a lot of
heaviness.
And you just there are a couple in particular you just really felt like you were walking
through points in time, if that makes sense.
I did not have a personal paranormal experience, but the Rangers there are pretty open talking
about what happens there, which you don't get at a lot of the parts.
But they taught openly about seeing apparitions at times, hearing voices.
But the one the story that moved me the most and I heard this from two different Rangers
is that at times they there's there's an open big open field in one part of the fort, and
that they will look out there at night if someone's there at night and there are phantom
campfires and they've seen images of tents.
And it's just images of an encampment, including the fires, etc.
And the first fellow who told me I thought, okay, he's embellishing, you know, he came
across as someone that he's embellishing.
And then later in the day, in another part of the fort, taught to someone else and he
gave a very similar account, but he did not he came across as just being very straightforward
and straight laced about it.
And I did not get the idea he was embellishing.
And so they really painted the scene of seeing this and they said there be sometimes they
will do night events and that you can just look out and it's almost as if you see encampment
that's slightly translucent.
Which is both really cool and really creepy all at the same time.
Exactly.
I like it.
It's very interesting.
And another thing is that it's actually a fort that it's straddled the old west and
that it was in use to I think the 1890s if I remember right.
Or very near, yes.
Yeah.
The location for the military.
Yeah whereas a lot of the forts in this region after the Civil War were decommissioned it
continued for decades later.
That's I think the more we talk about it the more I'm like I've got to get over there.
Yeah I want to get back.
It's been a number of years since I've been down there but it's really neat.
I would encourage anyone if you get the opportunity to check it out.
And even just the many of the locations that we're talking about in the eastern Oklahoma
which is the western Ozarks are extraordinarily beautiful.
It is a very pretty country.
It really is.
So what do we want to talk about?
Anyone talk about Underhill?
Oh our Depression era gangsters.
William Underhill Jr.
Born on March 16th 1901.
And in Joplin, Missouri.
And died at the age of 32.
And is the and we get to talk about Jay Eger again.
He basically is the reason that the FBI instituted field offices.
What is your there's a couple of key quotes that really jumped out to me about Underhill.
That the one that he began to show a certain amount of interesting behavior that his mother
said was the result of a childhood accident that quote didn't leave him quite right.
Well it made me kind of think of Jody Hamilton.
Yeah.
In Texas County.
He was kicked in the head by a mule as a kid.
It does make you wonder if perhaps maybe he did have a closed hit injury.
Because I mean there were violent criminals in that time period.
Ruthless.
Cold.
I mean you know.
Dillinger.
Clyde Barrow.
Pretty Boy Floyd.
Et cetera.
And then there was Wilbur Underhill who just really just was one step beyond that in a
lot of ways.
So it does make you wonder if he didn't have a closed head injury or something that which
generally will modify personality and accentuate certain traits.
And usually ends up either being violence or being over sexualized one of the two.
And the descriptions of him and just how far he would go to get away et cetera made you
wonder.
And I mean there is a reason that his nickname was the Tri-State Terror.
And because of all of his activity in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.
And basically he was so ruthless that they basically created an office for the FBI in
Oklahoma City to pursue him.
And I mean and I mentioned it before we started tonight.
But they even went as far as I think almost villainizing him even more than they had to
if that's even possible by doing things like when they at one of his trials because he
was I mean he was sentenced to life imprisonment twice I believe.
He kept escaping.
But they had psychologists testifying and evaluating him based on phrenology.
And this is in the mid-20s when it already had pretty much been debunked as invalid.
Phrenology for anyone who doesn't know is the quote the science of attributing character
traits to your physical traits.
Yes.
And basically a form of eugenics which if you're curious just go Google it.
And go from there.
To a nasty trail that ends in 1930s Germany if you have any idea there.
And has some uniquely American cross ties.
Yeah it was basically well it was created and invented in America.
Yes it was.
Sometimes those things get a little close to home.
My introduction to phrenology actually comes from an episode of The Muppet Show.
I think I must have missed that one.
There is a very brief skit in which Fossey Bear has put together his new vaudeville moment
and he apprehends Kermit in the middle of the show and announces that his new talent
is phrenology.
Kermit inquires and Fossey says that it's the art of telling the future of someone by
feeling the bumps on their head and then proceeds to run his fuzzy bear hands over Kermit's
plastic eyes.
And Kermit runs him off the stage.
So just a little creepy yeah.
Just a snitch but I think there is a comparative point that I can't help but make in regards
to between Underhill and Billy Cook.
And the point is you know he's born in 1901 and in 1910 he's convicted of burglary and
he's sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary for five years beginning at the age of 17.
Boy that does sound familiar.
Doesn't it?
And I would at least lightly conjecture that his experience five years in the Missouri
State Penitentiary in Jefferson City probably had more to do with what happened afterwards
than phrenology.
That's very likely.
You know and the counterpoint to Billy Cook would probably support that.
So whatever might have not been right after the childhood accident probably was a lot
less right after that.
But it's kind of funny that or ironic that he's not as well known now as some of the
other criminals of the day.
And I think in part there never was a romanticization you know of him or his deeds where you know
pre-boy Floyd was seen as dashing and to be generous and this and that.
And of course Bonnie and Clyde and who developed that mystique and John Dillinger etc. but
Underhill was really just you know to be honest probably more successful as a criminal than
most of them.
I would agree.
You know we talked about something and this is going to sound flippant but I don't think
it is.
We talked about the fact that America loves a winner.
You know America loves to vicariously experience the certain traits of rugged individualism
and these types of things.
In terms of folk heroes and outlaws and celebrities America also loves very attractive people.
True true.
And I think to a large degree Bonnie and Clyde literally pretty boy Floyd, the James gang
etc. these were these were people that the American public enjoyed looking at.
I mean that's true.
I mean you know certainly an argument could be made that Bonnie and Clyde were not you
know were not as attractive but it was the rest of the story that became attractive.
The romance and that fatalistic romance that Americans are drawn to as well.
But you know certainly John Dillinger was you know movie star good looks and people
responded to it.
And you know we have the either the benefit or the perceptual liability of viewing Bonnie
and Clyde through the lens of Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.
Yes and so as people after the movie started looking at the story it's filtered through
that yes.
It is but something that I think that you mentioned that is incredibly powerful is the
romanticized aspect of their love their romantic experience while on the run.
Yes and that's something that made that more of a unique story.
Where some of the other gangsters they certainly had love interests or wives or whatever.
It wasn't quite the same as both being on the run that way and then of course you know
Bonnie was married to another man at the whole time etc.
So it's that that forbidden fruit aspect etc. that people are intrigued by.
It's very salacious and it sells newspapers and it gets people talking and of course it
was Wilbur Underhill's desperate attempt to successfully honeymoon that ended up getting
him killed.
That's true that is ironic you know that is ironic that that aspect could have made it
more of that romanization but it did ultimately it didn't.
He was on his honeymoon when he was found and ultimately shot and killed.
I know I mean he was shot five times and ran another 16 blocks.
That's adrenaline.
Yes before breaking into a furniture store and collapsing on one of their beds.
But I do think that the tenor that I get is that I think people were were so afraid of
him at this point that they just decided that boy it's just better that he's gone you know
no matter what all the circumstances.
And you see that like various figures various characters in some cases the exploits begin
to resonate and others it is just we wanted to end.
We just want to we want the person out of commission.
We don't care whether it's prison or grave we just need this to stop.
And you know I think you know draw just a comparison back to here in Taney County but
the secrecy and then the romanticization that we see with the bald numbers as opposed to
out bowling where the county just celebrated that he was dead.
Yes and I think I think I think there was that aspect to it I really do.
And I am I'm also needed to have the benefit of it but I also had reference for a book
by Artie Morgan the Tri-State Tear of the Life and Crimes of Wilbur Underhill and it's
interesting point talking about just that is that he was one of the murders he was tried
for actually was in Ottawa County Oklahoma Miami and the prosecutor just openly stated
that he killed he killed a man in a robbery and that he just openly say that he intended
on plenty placing under hills ass in old Sparky the name for the Oklahoma's electric chair
come hell or high water.
Which is not a statement that you would hear today.
I can appreciate it though I just I do want to I would do want to briefly interject how
much I appreciate the fact that you just casually do have a book on this subject.
My my my life varies a little bit but an interesting point in this is during the trial and this
may have a trip you know contributed to prosecutors demeanor in making this statement that while
the trial was going on at key points multiple times that Wilbur Underhill's mother would
feign a an attack and flop out for sure to disrupt the proceedings.
You do what you got to do I I found an interesting aspect of this under hills fiance Hazel Jared
Hudson was a sister of the outlaw Jared Brothers and as a part of the wedding present for Hazel
Underhill and several others Rob the bank in Frankfort Kentucky.
Well you know.
As you do.
You know it's got to show his girl how he really feels.
Somehow I just did not come off as romantic as Bonnie and Clyde.
Although they apparently were trying really hard.
Yes.
Maybe maybe they were trying too hard I'm not sure.
That may be that may be the case.
But it is interesting because you have I mean the the the the story of under hills life
is as intricate and compelling as any of these others.
And the fact that it is it's very interesting how capricious and arbitrary it is of what
we end up selecting as a as a society to remember it not.
It is it is and sometimes it makes sense sometimes it doesn't sometimes it's just as you mentioned
it is extremely capricious in terms of who gets remembered as spoke Europe.
I think with with the James gang I think with the particularly James gang additionally the
the Dalton brothers there there are elements in their story that really contribute the
the key building blocks to logically supporting their ethos.
But then other cases it's anybody's guess.
That's true I mean it's you know.
It's kind of you know it anyone's guess and but I do want to mention it's kind of interesting
that under hill he also his his partner through a lot of his crimes at least until until about
the last year of his life because his partner ended up in prison was Harvey Bailey.
Yes Harvey Bailey is kind of interesting.
He is.
Boy striking takeaway is that he closely resembles Mr. Drysdale from Beverly Hills.
He did you know I never thought about it but he he does look a lot like.
And and Harvey he originally was I think from West Virginia but he ended up in Missouri
and Oklahoma during this time period and he and under Hill worked together and had a gang
and I think it's fair to say that Harvey probably was the brains of the operation but he ended
up going to prison and going to Alcatraz.
He was one of the first prisoners at Alcatraz and was there for a number of years and it
seems that after Harvey went to prison things kind of started unraveling a bit for under
Hill.
But it is kind of interesting too that and again it's the interconnectedness that at
one point Harvey Bailey was holed up on a ranch the same time that machine gun Kelly
had kidnapped a million oilmen millionaire Urschel for ransom but they were on the same
ranch and didn't know each other was there and Bailey was not involved ironically.
And another thing is that Bailey in under Hill at one point were suspected of being
involved in the Kansas City massacre and part and partly I think because Bailey was frequent
in Joplin a lot and the massacre was planned in Joplin by Defy Farmer who had a large safe
house here for gangsters.
Ironically Farmer tried to once his connection came out he tried to frame Mara Barker and
her boys for being involved.
He grew up with Mara Barker ironically in Webb City Missouri and that didn't work and
then for a while they suspected that Harvey and Underwood were involved but they weren't
and Farmer ended up in Alcatraz also actually a little before Bailey for his involvement
and then ironically years later after Defy Farmer dies Harvey Bailey marries his widow
and they both lived in Joplin until they died in the 70s and 80s.
Which is rapidly getting us into that space of we throw around the term modern era but
I mean this is getting closer to touch basically in terms of.
Whereas Under Hill was the tri-state terror his partner Harvey Bailey was the Dean of
American bank robbers that was what he was known as and he was also the most successful
he got away with over a million dollars during the 20s and early 30s which would equate to
four or five million now and but he lived a long life after he got out of prison.
Yeah h-91 which is impressive all the way around.
It really it really is it really is so it does kind of it's almost it made you wonder
in a little different aspect but the dichotomy between their personalities reminds me of
Jesse and Frank James.
That's a really good point I can really appreciate that observation.
You know and I think Harvey and Frank both seem to be moderating forces and when they
were removed from the situation that's when things went downhill for the other ones.
And I think we see something similar in regards to Quantrell and then the men around him.
Yes very much so.
That's agree.
That's we have covered a lot.
We have and there's still there's a lot more that can be covered on the subject which
I'm sure we'll revisit at some point.
Yes absolutely.
But that may be a good place to wind up and we want to remind everyone not to forget to
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bring the Darkos Arts to everyone.
On the next episode we are going to be discussing healing plants, witchcraft, and shamanism.
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